Friday News Roundup

Why $2B in New School Funding is Leaving Minnesota Districts Scrambling for Cash (The 74)

Lately, we’ve focused on Vermont and their looming financial troubles with their public school system. But schools across the country are suffering from increased expenses and decreasing income. The 74 online reported this week that,

“When the Democratic ‘trifecta’ in control of Minnesota’s House, Senate and governor’s office announced last spring’s K-12 education finance bill, there weren’t enough superlatives in the thesaurus to fuel the sound bites. The more the $2.2 billion in ‘new’ spending on public schools was ‘historic.’ The number of initiatives funded was ‘sweeping,’ the predicted outcomes for students and teachers ‘life-changing.’”

“Now, district leaders statewide are scrambling to explain to their communities that, in fact, they are facing massive cuts. In many places, balancing the budget will mean layoffs or school closures.”

“Like their counterparts throughout the country, Minnesota school systems are facing the one-two punch of the end of COVID recovery aid and enrollment losses – in many places, going back years – that means less per-pupil state money. School funding experts call this a fiscal cliff.”

Under Pilot Program in Texas and Florida, Tutoring Fees Depend on Student Progress (The 74)

Performance pay has always been a controversial issue for public education decision-makers. When I worked for the Houston Independent School District, we were one of the first districts to approve performance pay for teachers and administrators, based on how successful their students were in their learning. Sadly, performance pay went away in Houston and most other districts in America, due to teacher union pressure and communities not really understanding how the performance pay was calculated.

This week The 74 online reported that,

“Anyone who sells products to public schools can tell you education is a huge market. Schools spend billions of dollars annually on contracts for everything from HVAC maintenance to technology services and tutoring. Almost all agree to pay vendors for goods or services rendered, not for the student outcomes they produce. But,…a handful of school districts are trying something new.”

“Following the example of organizations in health care, social services and both early and higher education, some districts are experimenting with outcomes-based contracting, paying vendors, at least in part, for improvement in student learning. That’s the closest one can get to a money-back guarantee in education.”

“Tutoring is particularly well-suited to outcomes-based contracting, since boosting achievement is its raison d’etre. Contracts that pay more when students show academic growth – and pay less when they don’t – incentivize tutoring companies to produce results and save public money when the fall short.”

With tutoring serving as the most recent example of performance pay, maybe we can get back to the days when adult learning leaders, who showed the most impact on getting their young learners to become smarter and stronger, were awarded a higher salary, and those adult learning leaders who didn’t, weren’t.

New Study: Two-Thirds of Teachers Censor Themselves Even When They Don’t Have To (The 74)

When it comes to classroom teachers watching what they say and do inside their classrooms, it seems like we are living in a new world.

The 74 online reported this week that,

“Two-thirds of U.S. teachers have limited discussion of political and social issues in their classrooms, even in places where there is no law or policy prohibiting instruction on race, gender identity, sexual orientation or other hot-button topics, according to a new survey conducted by the RAND Corp.”

“That means twice as many teachers as are legally barred from discussing what critics call ‘divisive concepts’ have chosen to curtail their own classroom speech.”

I haven’t been in a classroom recently, but I can only imagine how restricted classroom conversations are these days in U.S. history classes or science labs.

We live in scary times.

Report: Kids’ Mental Health Tops Reasons Why Parents Consider Changing Schools (The 74)

“Nearly half of families considering new school options – especially parents of middle schoolers – say the main reason they’d make a switch is their children’ mental health, a new report shows.”

“Districts that have faced historic enrollment losses could lose even more families if they don’t respond to student needs…”

“Based on a survey of what the researchers call ‘open-minded parents’ – those who show interest in school choice options – 46% said their children’s mental health drove them to find something different. Among middle school parents, the rate was 54%, followed by 48% of high school parents and 44% of parents with elementary school children.”

When I was a school principal, I talked to parents about three promises we would make to them if they would enroll their children in our school. First, I promised to do whatever we could do to make sure their children were safe and secure. Second, I promised to make their children academically excellent during their time with us. And third, and this turned out to be the most important to my parents, I promised that their children would experience a positive and strong school culture, a culture that emphasized equity, celebrating differences, student voice, and being proud of their personal pursuits and the school’s success.

It’s not surprising to me that social and emotional considerations continue to be most important to parents.

An Unorthodox Plan to Pay Students to Write Curriculum Is Raising Achievement (EducationWeek)

According to EducationWeek online this week,

“[Kate] Maxlow…began to overhaul [Hampton City, Virginia’s] curricula in 2016 to address lagging student achievement in the district, where about half of the roughly 20,000 students are economically disadvantaged.”

“…Maxlow realized that student engagement – and student voice – needed to be a central part of the work.”

“About seven years and hundreds of man hours later, Hampton City has curricula designed with significant student input and classrooms full of activities students hate to miss out on, in part because they created them themselves.”

Here’s an idea! Train young learners how to define, plan, execute, and evaluate their own learning. Because, once you do that, you have a young learner that knows how to design their own learning, and more importantly, own their own learning for the rest of their lives.

Enjoy the weekend. Snow in Iowa today. Til Monday. SVB