A Turkey Day Smorgasbord

Thanksgiving is right around the corner, so here is a smorgasbord of thoughts for you to enjoy with your turkey and pumpkin pie.

It’s tradition in my family to start Thanksgiving morning with a delicious assortment of kolaches. We all have our favorites – sausage with cheese, fruit, or pumpkin. Kolaches are a delectable way to start a day of feasting.

The delectable start to this article is news coming out of Vermont. Recently, Vermont Digger announced that they would launch the “77 Questions” project. According to VTD,

“’77 Questions’ is the Underground Workshop’s collaborative reporting project for the 2022-2023 school year, exploring the students’ experience of Act 77, the law that brought early college, personal learning plans, dual enrollment, proficiency-based learning, the high school completion program and other changes to Vermont’s schools.”

“77 Questions” will be an on-going series of articles, written by young learners, detailing their experiences with a Vermont law that intended to empower youth to define, plan, execute, and evaluate their own learning. We’ll keep an eye on this moving forward.

After the kolaches have settled in our tummies, it’s time to focus on the “big bird.” I can’t remember a Thanksgiving without turkey, and everything else is secondary to its preparation.

The same can be said for how schools spend their money and how those decisions impact young learner’s performance. If you want to know what a school district’s priorities are, don’t bother looking at their strategic plan. Instead, focus on their budget – how they choose to spend their money.

Just this week The 74 reported that,

“Most school districts adopted their budgets last spring, long before state and national test scores laid out the extent of pandemic declines, particularly in math.”

“That’s why some school finance experts are urging districts to redirect some of their plans for federal relief funds toward learning recovery before that money is actually spent.”

“’From our perspective, a pivot does seem warranted,’ Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, said last week during a webinar. While it’s normal for districts to get assessment results after they’ve finalized their budgets, this year, she added, the achievement gaps are ‘more glaring.’”

“Her team’s analysis of National Assessment of Educational Progress data, released last month, showed that almost 2 million middle and high school students – who would have scored in the proficient range if the pandemic hadn’t occurred – are not below proficient.”

The turkey is usually the main course to the Thanksgiving meal. What’s the main course here, or the overall lesson to remember?

School districts don’t “pivot” well. They are most comfortable when they don’t even have to consider a “pivot.” With that stated, with all due respect to Dr. Roza, what is needed today shouldn’t be considered a “pivot.” What is needed now, based on the NAEP data recently released, is a whole new and different approach to getting our young learners smarter and stronger.

Occasionally, during the Thanksgiving feast, you will take a bite of something, and it doesn’t really taste the way it should. I remember one Turkey Day when the mashed potatoes were suspect because sour milk was used during their preparation.

An article from The Des Moines Register this week smells sour – like those mashed potatoes did so many years ago.

The Register reports about parents in a small but growing town west of Des Moines – Van Meter,

“This largely white Iowa town where baseball legend Bob Feller learned his fastball has become the latest battlefront in America’s culture war over race and sexual identity.”

“Armed with a new Iowa law aimed at giving families more control over what their children are learning in public schools, more than 130 townspeople have signed a petition seeking to have the Van Meter Community School District remove lesson plans they say promote a liberal political agenda.”

“Their ‘Back to Basics: Preserving The Integrity of Van Meter Schools” petition accuses teachers and administrators of using a social-emotional learning curriculum laced with ‘gender ideology’ and ‘divisive critical race ideology.’ And it calls for their children to receive a ‘nonpolitical’ education devoid of sexual and sexually graphic content.”

You know I’m a big advocate of parent empowerment when it comes to their children’s learning, but, I’m sorry, this story stinks like sour mashed potatoes.

130 people should not be able to prevent others from including social-emotional learning and critical race theory in their learning, if that is what is decided by the young learner, their adult learning leader, and the young learner’s family.

If those 130 townsfolk want to start their own microschool to promote everything anti-everything, then I guess that is their right as Americans.

As much as it pains me to say this, I think we’ve arrived at a time when mass public education isn’t working for too many of us these days. Maybe it’s time to break it up and break it down. And, if we decide to do that, then we must understand we run the risk of creating microschools full of young learners and their families learning the wrong things but convinced they are always right.

Like I said – sour mashed potatoes.

Finally, dessert.

Today’s dessert comes in the form of an article posted on Getting Smart titled “Every Student Needs a Learning Coach.” Nate McClennen, from the Getting Smart group, writes,

“The recent $50 million investment in CoachHub builds confidence that coaching matters and can be effective. Demand has surged for executive coaches that can help develop and support leadership in the corporate sector. Productivity, staff longevity and talent acquisition in organizations can be amplified when leaders are effectively coached. These one-on-one interactions with an expert matter.”

“A parallel trend exists in K-12, especially during (and after) the pandemic Tutoring, especially 1:1 high dosage formats, has proven to be critical in closing learning gaps exacerbated by the pandemic. Excellent mentorship and coaching of teachers, while difficult to implement, demonstrate the power of coaching in the K-12 sector. Coaching platforms like Edthena (which recently introduced automation of some coaching) also support educator coaching.”

“As learning becomes more personalized, learning opportunities expanded and unbounded, and learning science research more robust, an updated and revised advisory role is more important than ever. Currently, most public high schools have advisors, serving a couple hundred students each, with a primary role of guiding course selection and post-secondary options. Additionally, counselors play a social-emotional and therapeutic role in some schools. Some public schools, public charter schools and private schools have long-advanced advisory as a program, with a defined set of learning experiences to not only coach and support, but teach transferable skills.”

Long time college football coach Mike Leach said it this way:

“You’re either coaching it, or you’re letting it happen.”

And that’s your pumpkin pie for this Thanksgiving season.

I’ll be away until Monday. May you and your family have the most restful and peaceful Thanksgiving holiday.

Til Monday. SVB