Friday News Roundup

It’s Friday! Happy Cinco de Mayo! Here’s your news roundup.

40 Years After “A Nation at Risk,” Experts Talk About State of America’s Schools (The 74)

While away, the nation celebrated the 40th anniversary of “A Nation at Risk,” a report released in 1983 that warned America of an impending crisis unless we fixed our public schools. Well guess what, not only have we not fixed our public schools but many are in worse shape today than they were when “A Nation at Risk” was released, especially those schools serving black, brown, and poor kids.

If you haven’t read the report, it’s worth the time.

Vermont Needs Millions of Dollars Worth of School Upgrades. Will the State Help Pay for Them? (Vermont Digger)

“…Vermont’s school buildings are ‘in terrible shape,’ according to Jay Nichols, executive director of the Vermont Principals’ Association.”

“’It’s just like, you keep yelling about a problem but you never do anything about the problem,’ he said. ‘And you wonder why the problem keeps better bigger. This is a classic example of that.’”

Maybe it’s a classic example of taxpayers becoming fed up with the overall dysfunction of what we call our public school system.

Maybe it’s time to ask the voters of this country to begin investing in mobile schooling, including learning coaches, learning plans, and learning cohorts.

Two-Thirds of Teachers Say Schools Are Falling Short for Struggling Learners (EducationWeek)

According to EducationWeek online last week,

“Two-thirds of teachers believe their school is not meeting the needs of the students who are struggling the most, a new national survey of teachers finds.”

“And only 14 percent of teachers surveyed said they would recommend entering the profession.”

When I read news like this, I wonder if anyone else is reading it and thinking what I’m thinking? What am I thinking?

The most important position in our traditional school system is the teacher. It’s what the entire system is built around. And now we have 66% of that most important position telling us that schools aren’t meeting the needs of our most needy learners, and a measly 14% of those teachers would recommend others to enter the profession?

The weakest link in the chain defines the chain.

A Bipartisan Agenda for Schools is Absolutely Possible (EducationWeek)

According to EducationWeek online last week,

“Joyce Elliott was a Democratic state senator in Arkansas from 2009 until 2023 and a vice chair of the Senate Education Committee. Amy Sinclair is a Republican state senator from Iowa and the incoming Senate president and previously served as the chair of the Education Committee.”

In part, this is what they wrote about bipartisan cooperation when it comes to public education:

“We are state senators from different states. From different political parties. Nevertheless, we’ve become great friends, though there are issues on which we don’t see eye to eye. Ensuring all kids have the opportunities they need to be successful isn’t one of them.”

Elliott and Sinclair might believe this, but recent news media evidence suggests these two state legislators are in a small minority of elected officials interested in “the big picture” when it comes to our public education system.

Most are focused on transgender issues in school, book bannings in school libraries, and deciding what type of miniscule salary increase the state will offer its teachers.

I’m afraid Elliott and Sinclair’s call for bipartisan cooperation will fall upon deaf ears.

The Pandemic’s Virtual Learning is Now a Permanent Fixture of America’s Schools (The 74)

According to The 74 online,

“Americans have spent huge chunks of the past three years thinking and talking about schools in binary terms – open or closed, in-person or virtual. But with schools all but universally open and back to a normal state (however imperfect), though, these dichotomies have gotten somewhat blurrier.”

“Truth is, we didn’t reopen schools back to ‘normal’ in-person learning over the past few years…so much as we brought daily virtual learning into real-world classrooms.”

“It’s the new normal in U.S. public education – and it’s complicated. I’ve visited nearly 100 public school classrooms across three states in the past six months. I don’t recall seeing a single one without a computer screen projected onto the board at the front of the room. Lessons reliably include videos from curriculum vendors and/or the internet. On several occasions, I watched early elementary schoolers hold up badges hanging from lanyards around their necks to unlock laptops to play.”

I don’t know if I would identify the above as virtual learning.

I remember touring a school years ago that bragged about their computer-assisted abilities inside their classrooms. Upon further review, what teachers had done is put their overhead (if you don’t know what these were, ask a baby boomer) notes into a PowerPoint and flashed them on the screen.

Virtual learning isn’t mobile learning done either inside school or outside.

Kids Need to Know Their Math Facts. What Schools Can Do to Help (EducationWeek)

According to EducationWeek online last week,

“All those long multiplication tables. Times tests and ‘mad minutes’ of worksheet problem-solving. Fluency drills.”

“Somehow, getting kids to know their basic math facts continues to be at the heart of some of the loudest disagreements in mathematics education.”

“Let’s put this old misconception to bed: The cognitive science about math learning indicates that, yes, students do need to develop fluency with their multiplication tables and single-digit addition – sometimes called ‘number combinations’ – and be able to recall them automatically. The main reason why? Having these facts at their fingertips frees up working memory for students to attend to problem-solving, applying procedures to more difficult problems, and other tasks.”

Wrong.

If you’ve been paying attention to past news roundups, artificial intelligence is on its way to the American classroom, if it’s not already there. True, mathematical problem-solvers need to free up working memory, but they don’t need to achieve that by memorizing their times tables. As difficult as it is for the traditional public school leader to admit, AI will replace much of what we’ve done in classrooms over the past 100 years.

Have a great weekend. SVB