Friday News Roundup…

It’s Friday the 13^th. Time for the news roundup.

Fuller: Biden’s New Charter School Rules Are an Assault on the Right of Families of Color to Choose the Best Education for Their Children (The 74)

I don’t know Howard Fuller well, but I’ve always respected his opinions when it comes to public education and why it isn’t working for more kids in this country. Dr. Fuller serves as a distinguished professor emeritus at Marquette University and is a former superintendent of the Milwaukee Public Schools.

Last week, Fuller wrote an opinion for The 74 that criticized the Biden administration for enacting more strenuous rules when it comes to charter school operation. Fuller writes, “It has been obvious since his presidential campaign that President Joe Biden is not a supporter of charter schools. The reason has never been clear to me. Does he oppose the movement for philosophical reasons, or does he believe it is the most politically advantageous path to travel? No matter what his reasons are, his administration is pursuing a path to act on his disdain for charter schools. On March 11, his Department of Education put forth a new set of rules that, if adopted, will cripple and maybe even eventually help kill the chartering effort.”

I’ll go one step beyond Fuller and say that it’s clear President Biden and his education staff, including Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, are doubling down when it comes to investing and showing support for a broken public school system. The feds are investing big money on the belief that public schools in this country can be fixed. I’m sorry to say this doubling down won’t work over the long run because many schools are broken and beyond repair. The delay in providing a fix will be especially damaging to poor kids and their families.

Public school innovation left Washington D.C. a long time ago, if it was ever there in the first place. Just look at the projects the Investment in Innovation grants funded during the Obama administration. Innovative? I think not.

We should stop looking to the federal government, or most state governments for that matter, for solutions when it comes to improving learning for our kids, especially those who are black, brown, and poor.

Governor Greg Abbott Says Federal Government Should Cover Costs of Educating Undocumented Students in Texas Public Schools (The Texas Tribune)

As I write this, I sit outdoors at a Houston coffee shop. I lived in Texas 35 years before retiring and moving to the Northeast in 2018. And here’s what I’ve concluded about Texas – I don’t know this place any longer.

According to The Texas Tribue, Governor Greg Abbott wants the federal government to pay for the public education of undocumented students in Texas schools, arguing that President Joe Biden’s administration’s decision to lift the Title 42 policy will bring an influx of immigrants across the border that is “unsustainable and unavoidable.”

Lloyd Bentsen would have never said something like this. Neither would Ann Richards. And, neither would George W. Bush. This just isn’t the way Texans behaved when I lived in the state. Greg Abbott and his cronies should be ashamed. And we’re talking about children.

That’s why we need to get poor kids, undocumented or not, out of our public school system. To keep our kids away from characters like Governor Abbott.

What Do Top U.S. Companies Think Schools Could Do Better? We Asked (EdWeek)

EdWeek decided to ask representatives from top U.S. companies what schools could do better.

Greg Muccio, Southwest Airlines’ senior director of talent acquisition said, “Problem solving requires teamwork, and the only way to learn teamwork is if you’re on a team.”

Ron Smith, Salesforce’s vice president of education initiatives agreed, “Problem solving is central to how individuals work with others in a group setting.”

Amazon’s Victor Reinoso, global director of philanthropic education initiatives offered “Our basic theory is that computational thinking, problem solving, and creative skills are broadly applicable, whether students end up working directly in software development or not.”

There’s a lot more advice for schools in the article, and the entire piece is worth a read.

But here’s the deal – public schools don’t do much of anything these U.S. companies want them to do. Experiential learning can’t be assessed by a written test, so traditional schools haven’t been that interested in spending time on the exact skills our businesses are telling them they need to see in their new hires.

So, we must ask the question: how relevant are public schools today if they aren’t preparing our kids for today’s, or tomorrow’s, work force?

As Absenteeism Skyrockets, Schools Get Creative About Luring Back Lost Students (The 74)

According to The 74, “Chronic absenteeism has hit 40% in the nation’s two largest districts, New York City and Los Angeles, and is reaching dangerously high numbers in many districts in between.”

Metro Nashville Public Schools tried to lure students back by offering DJ parties, complete with grilled hot dogs and hamburgers, while pointing to lack of affordable housing as a possible reason for the chronic absenteeism. Sonya Thomas, executive director of Nashville PROPEL, a parent advocacy organization, said she appreciates what the district is trying to do, but thinks officials could be overlooking important reasons students are absent. Thomas went on to say, “I don’t think it has anything to do with affordable housing,” and urged educators to ask themselves “What does the school culture look like when students enter the building?”

Sadly, the answer to that question is that too many schools don’t have a culture at all, or, if they do, it’s a bad one.

What America Spends on K-12: The Latest Federal Snapshot (EdWeek)

America invested $795 billion in local, state, and federal money on its K-12 public schools for the 2019-20 school year, according to new annual federal school spending data released this past week. The figure is roughly comparable to the federal government’s $700 billion defense budget.

Four-fifths of all public education spending went to salaries and benefits. Traditional public education remains a system that still depends a lot on humans to make it work, or not work.

$17,000 separate the state with the highest and lowest average per-pupil spending. Remember that statistic the next time you hear someone say they are going to solve the equity problem inside public education.

Education funding is highly volatile, depending on where you live. Delaware spent 12.8 percent less on K-12 schools in the 2019-20 school year than it did the previous year. New Mexico, by contrast, raised spending a year over the previous year by 9.3 percent. And these changes aren’t based on learner needs for the most part. Those changes are about politics, and budget surpluses or deficits.

NOTE – I’ll be on vacation next week and a few days after that, so my next column will hit the ABPTL website and all social media outlets Wednesday, May 25^th. Let’s talk then.

Have a great weekend! SVB