Friday News Roundup

It’s Friday. Time for the News Roundup.

Iowa Ranks 7^th for Kids’ Well-Being, Report Says. But Students Struggle with Reading, Math (The Des Moines Register)

The Des Moines Register reported last week that,

“A new report ranks Iowa seventh in the nation for children’s well-being, but a nonprofit leader cautions that the state still faces struggles, particularly with learning gaps in reading and math.”

“The 2024 Kid Data Count Book released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation shows that Iowa still has work to do despite its ‘good’ standing, says Anne Discher, executive director of Common Good Iowa, a Des Moines nonprofit.”

‘It still really begs the question of whether we’re doing better than average or are we doing as well as we should be – and could be – for kids?’ she said.”

“Iowa, for example is ranked No. 13 nationally in education, but a state-by-state analysis reveals ‘alarming’ reading and math rates for fourth- and eighth-graders, Discher said.”

“In 2022, 67% of the state’s fourth-graders were below proficient in reading – just shy of the national average of 68%. Seventy-two percent of eight-graders that same year were below proficient in math – which also sits just below the national average of 74%.”

Two out of three Iowan fourth-graders are reading strugglers and three out of four Iowan eighth-graders are struggling with math?

And I’m guessing Iowa isn’t the only state, traditionally a strong performer when it comes to public education outputs, struggling with numbers like these.

Why Many ‘High-Achieving’ Students Don’t Become Teachers and What We Can Do About It (The 74)

When asked by The 74 why high achievers don’t choose a career in teaching, Harvard professor Zid Mandenido answered this way:

“A lot of people might think that these signals are explicit. They’re things like parents and friends responding to you when you say, ‘Oh I think I’m becoming a teacher,’ and those parents and friends say, ‘No, don’t become a teacher. You shouldn’t do that. You’re too smart for that,’ or something like that. And that’s something I did hear among my [study] participants did mention explicit signals like that.”

“But rather what most participants reported was that it’s much more subtle. It’s things like going to career fairs and seeing that everyone is milling around corporate, high-flying jobs – legal pathways, medical pathways – but very few people standing around the teaching pathways, the sort of social, public service career pathways. It’s in lots of people coming into college and saying they’re really interested in social-impact careers, but then all of them taking pre-med, pre-law, economics, business, all those sorts of majors.”

“It’s in the really, really subtle way that as one of my participants, Amanda, mentions that when she says she’s interested in becoming a lawyer or a diplomat or something like that, people light up and go, ‘That’s a really exciting career. I’m so excited for you.’ But then when she says something like, ‘Oh, I’m interested in becoming a teacher,’ they go ‘Oh, that’s really nice.’ And then change the subject.”

Getting high-achieving young people to commit to a future in learning (and not necessarily teaching ) will demand higher salaries, and therefore a higher work status than current teachers receive.

South Carolina Budget to Ban Cellphones in K-12 Schools (The 74)

Los Angeles Unified School District just announced they were also banning cellphones.

In 50 years, maybe 20, this will be one of the stupidest decisions ever made by our traditional K-12 school system.

Teachers to Congress: We Shouldn’t Have to Work Second Jobs (EducationWeek)

Bernie Sanders is pro-public school teachers. Always has been.

According to EducationWeek,

“There’s no job more important than America than the public school teacher, according to Senator Bernie Sanders.”

“But teachers in the United States have long been ‘overworked, underpaid, and understaffed,’ Sanders said during a June 20 U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, or HELP, committee hearing examining the ‘crises facing public school teachers in America.’”

The question is this: what is Senator Sanders, and Congress in general, intending to do about teachers paid so low most need to find a second job?

The answer?

Very little. How we take care of our teachers is a mostly a local school board decision, with a bit of state influence thrown in. So when Congress gets involved in the teacher debate, they only outcome we might hope for is Washington’s “bully pulpit” works to convince Americans a change needs to occur when it comes to Mrs. Jones and her worthwhile as a 4^th-grade teacher in Newport, Vermont.

That does it for this week’s News Roundup. Til Monday. SVB