Friday News Roundup

It’s Friday, and here’s your News Roundup.

Schooling vs. Learning: How Lax Standards Hurt the Lowest-Performing Students (The 74)

According to author Chad Aldeman, writing in this week’s The 74 online,

“If someone I care about has a piece of food stuck in their teeth, or a tag is sticking out the back of their shirt, I tell them. I believe telling them the truth is the kind thing to do.”

“Likewise, when students are struggling, failing to turn in work or at risk of falling behind, teachers should tell them. It’s kinder – and fairer – for educators to set clear expectations and hold student to them.”

“Many school have started to take the opposite approach. Perhaps in the mistaken belief that it’s gentler to give struggling students second and third chances, schools across the country are essentially withholding honest feedback from kids (and parents) through no-zero grading policies or by passing students along even though they haven’t mastered the content.”

“These trends started before the pandemic but have accelerated since then. And they’ve created a growing disconnect between subjective evaluations like grades and objective data like attendance and achievement. Student grades and graduation rates are rising to new highs, while attendance and academic performance are hitting modern lows.”

“Most recently, the testing company ACT announced that average scores were lower this year than at any point since 1991…”

…

“Economist Eric Hanushek has framed this distinction as the difference between schooling and learning. Schooling in this context refers to the amount of time students stay in class, while learning is a measure of what they actually know and can do. It may be easier to keep kids in school, but learning is the more valuable metric that educators and policymakers should pay attention to.”

“Hanushek estimates that the lost learning suffered by students during the pandemic will translate into a lifetime 6% tax on their earnings. That’s the average, and the losses are even larger for Black, Hispanic and disadvantaged students who fell further behind. Multiplied across the nation and over each child’s lifetime, that works out to an economic loss to the country of $28 trillion.”

Learning depends on negotiation between the adult learning leader and the young learner. If the negotiation is genuine, and captured in the young learner’s learning plan, then there’s hope “learning loss” will be addressed by something others call “breakthrough learning” – learning that doesn’t depend on class periods, school days, or academic years.

Why a Judge Stopped Texas form Issuing A-F School Ratings (EducationWeek)

According to the article appearing in EducationWeek online last week,

“A Texas judge has ordered the state not to release annual A-F school ratings in response to a lawsuit from dozens of districts that argued changes in the accountability metric were unfair and announced in a way that violated state law.”

“Travis County Judge Catherine Mauzy issued a preliminary injunction in the case, ruling that the districts would likely succeed in their arguments. The order will stop the state from announcing its latest school grades until the judge can consider the full case in a trial set to being in February.”

“School ratings based on test scores remain among the most polarizing of education policies since the debuted in the 1990’s. The scores can affect real estate prices, shape public perception of schools, and affect teacher morale, studies have shown.”

“A coalition of more than 100 districts, including Dallas, argued in the suit that releasing the ratings in November, as the Texas Education Agency had planned, would cause them irreparable harm, opening the door for potential state intervention in some places and increasing public confusion about schools’ performance. Their arguments come as state lawmakers consider expanding private school choice options in a special session.”

“Applying a new, tougher formula to last school year’s data would unfairly make it appear that their schools have worsened – even though outcomes have actually improved in many cases, the districts contend. To comply with state law, Education Commissioner Mike Morath should have made districts aware of the criteria at the start of the 2022-23 school year instead of releasing a preliminary draft in May, the lawsuit said.”

While adults argue, learning suffers. Texas, and other states, are wrong to insist that schools are the basic unit to measure learning. They’re not.

The individual young learner is.

Why Governors Are Exerting More Control Over Schools (EducationWeek)

Today, EducationWeek online reported that,

“A struggle for power over Ohio’s schools is the latest example of a growing trend of governors asserting more control over K-12 school policy in their states.”

“Earlier this year, the Republican-led Ohio state legislature passed a two-year budget that included a provision converting the Ohio Department of Education, led by a superintendent chosen by the State Board of Education and Workforce, led by a director appointed by the governor.”

“The budget also asserts more state control in day-to-day teaching in an effort to shift Ohio schools to research-backed reading instruction. It includes a requirement that schools adopt a state-approved reading program by the next school year and a ban on the use of the three-cueing method in literacy instruction.”

Top-down strategies to improve K-12 learning doesn’t work. Witness what is happening in Texas right now when the Lone Star state’s education agency has attempted a “takeover” of the Houston Independent School District.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – if there is one institution more poorly prepared to improve learning for young people than the traditional school district, it would be state government.

Ohio will learn that soon.

That’s the Friday News Roundup for today, November 3^rd. Have a great weekend. SVB