Friday News Roundup

Here’s your Friday News Roundup!

New Indiana Tutoring Program Empower Parents, Encourages School Collaboration (The 74)

Last week, The 74 reported that,

“The $15 million program, Indiana Learns, is aimed at students who scored below proficiency in math and English on last year’s ILearn state test and qualify for free and reduced-price school lunch. Participants can come from private, charter or district schools, and each will receive a guaranteed $500 from the state to pay for tutoring outside regular school hours to recover learning lost during the pandemic. Families can visit the Indiana Learns website to see if their children are eligible, and can start selecting tutors on October 15^th.”

Great idea. Not enough money. If a tutor charges $20/hour, then $500 provides for 25 hours of tutoring. That’s a good start, but most of these kids are going to need more than 25 hours to catch up in math and English.

Let’s keep an eye on this one.

The Psychological Toll of High-Stakes Testing (Edutopia)

According to Edutopia, there is,

“One problem with standardized tests: We don’t fully understand what they measure. On the face of it, they are designed to provide an objective appraisal of knowledge, or perhaps even of inherent intelligence.”

“But a recent study by Brian Galla, a psychology professor at the University of Pittsburgh, with Angela Duckworth and colleagues concluded that high school grades are actually more predictive of college graduation than standardized tests like the SAT or ACT.”

“That’s because standardized tests have a major blind spot, the researchers asserted: The exams fail to capture the ‘soft skills’ that reflect a student’s ability to develop good study habits, take academic risks, and persist through challenges, for example. High school grades, on the other hand, appear to do a better job mapping the area where resilience and knowledge meet. Arguably, that’s the place where potential is translated into real achievement.”

There are so many ways to assess learning better than standardized tests.

Why are we still using them, often times as the sole predictor of a young learner’s academic abilities?

The $1.1 Billion Math Solution? Gates Foundation Makes Math Its Top K-12 Priority (The 74)

The 74 reported this week,

“As the nation witnesses unprecedented declines in academic achievement, one of the largest education philanthropies has announced it will fund $1.1 billion in K-12 math initiatives over the next four years.”

“The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s investment marks the beginning of a decade-long strategy to prioritize math gains, particularly for Black Latino, and low-income students, making the subject its primary K-12 investment for the next decade.”

Years ago, The New York Times Magazine printed an article which asked the question: “How Many Billionaires Does It Take to Fix the U.S. Public School System?”

The answer was “zero,” because no matter how much money billionaires give to our public school system annually, that amount pales in comparison to the money districts receive from public taxes, primarily property taxes.

So, unless the country makes a commitment to fixing math over the next decade, my guess is that Bill and Melinda’s money will make the same impact as much of theirs has in the past – making very little difference when it comes to our country’s overall public-school success.

DMPS Closure of 3 Low-Income After-School Sites Causes Hardships, Raises Equity Concerns (The Des Moines Register)

The Des Moines Register reported earlier this week that Metro Kids, an after-school program for about 900 students in kindergarten through fifth grades at 22 Des Moines schools, will close 3 elementary programs serving primarily at-risk Hispanic students.

The Register reports,

“Some parents and school officials are now questioning the fairness of those closures – all at schools with larger Hispanic populations and a high proportion of low-income students.”

“’I really had an issue with them cutting our program here because…I feel like it causes issues of inequity,’ Willard [one of the schools impacted] principal Julie Kruse said. ‘Some of our families struggle to make ends meet, and just a little bit of gas money to have to drive to another location means a lot to them.’”

Public schools are inherently inequitable, especially when it comes to black, brown, and poor kids.

Texas Schools Are Sending Out DNA Kits, Stark Reminders of Uvalde Shooting (The Washington Post)

The Washington Post reported this week that,

“Texas schools are encouraging parents to store their children’s DNA and fingerprint records in case they need to provide them to law enforcement if kids go missing.”

“For many, the rollout – less than six months after a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas – brought to mind a grisly problem: school shootings.”

“As one middle school teacher in San Antonio said: The word missing ‘means a lot of different things.’”

“After the shooting at Robb Elementary School in May, families of children who were unaccounted for lined up to provide DNA samples to help identify bodies torn apart by bullets.”

“…the move has sparked anger and distress from some parents, teachers and advocates of gun control, who would rather officials focus on tighter gun safety laws, background checks and better security at schools.”

“’Texas Governor Greg Abbott is choosing to send DNA kits to schools that parents can use to identify their children’s bodies AFTER they’ve been murdered rather than pass gun safety laws to proactively protect their lives,’ Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, tweeted about the Republican leader.”

Does anyone smell a rat? It seems like Greg Abbott and his fellow Texas Republicans find it easier to prepare for the worst scenario any parent could imagine than to take necessary action, like passing stronger gun safety laws, to help prevent that worst scenario from occurring.

Educators Are Deeply Conflicted on Teaching Heated Cultural Issues, Survey Finds (EducationWeek)

EducationWeek reported this week that,

“Nearly a third of teachers who have chosen not to address controversial topics in the classroom worry about professional or legal consequences for talking about race, gender, and sexuality, a new Education Week survey shows.”

“And while large majorities of teachers, principals, and administrators surveyed opposed state restrictions on teaching certain topics, roughly a quarter favored restrictions in teaching about race, the Holocaust, and slavery, and nearly a third said they would support restrictions on sex education and on discussing gender and sexual orientation.”

This is troubling. 1 out of 4 teachers in today’s classrooms favor not discussing the Holocaust and slavery? 1 out of 3 teachers support restrictions on sex education and discussing gender and sexual orientation?

Seems to me like our adult learning leaders have forgotten what they are there to do.

The best teachers I was around didn’t cower when difficult topics arose. In fact, the best teachers I was around approached those topics with professionalism and leadership.

Have a good weekend. SVB