Friday News Roundup

It’s Friday. Time for the News Roundup.

Harrison vs. High Ed: How One Lawmaker is Weaponizing Social Media to Eradicate LGBTQ+ Curriculum (The Texas Tribune)

Representative Brian Harrison from Midlothian, Texas.

Although he did not pass one of his own bills in the last Texas legislative session, Harrison has taken it upon himself to shut down most, if not all, LGBTQ+ courses and program across the Texas higher education landscape.

“’Nobody thought I could do it,’ Harrison said…. ‘Everybody was mocking me – I’ve become used to that down here. People didn’t think I’d be able to get the professor fired (at Texas A&M), much less…the president of the university – one of the biggest universities – fired. And then look at the ripple effects.”

Most recently, Harrison attacked a LGBTQ+ program on the campus of Texas State University and got that shut down.

Instead of focusing on real problems in his state, like water shortages in East Texas and the High Plains, politicians like Harrison have chosen to take on an issue that, at best, is a microdot on the political landscape.

9.3% of the American population identify as LGBTQ+.

The Post-Pandemic Promise of High-Impact Tutoring (The 74)

There’s a new book out titled “The Future of Tutoring: Lessons from 10,000 School District Tutoring Initiatives.” It’s author is Liz Cohen, Vice-President of Policy for the education group 50Can.

Amongst Cohen’s findings are these:

Tutoring must take place at least three days a week, sessions should last at least 30 minutes, sessions are with a consistent tutor, there are no more than four students working in a group.

Tutoring must be strategic, meaning that tutoring works best when it is a strategy in service of a broader goal – like reading improvement.

Tutoring requires resource investment, meaning money already budgeted for another purpose has to be moved to support tutoring. You can’t do tutoring on the cheap.

And finally, someone in a leadership position has to own tutoring – something like a tutoring czar.

ABPTL has always been a big proponent of tutoring.

Hey President Trump, instead of playing the role of “chief destructor” when it comes to programs supporting kids, why don’t you ask Linda McMahon to spearhead a national tutoring program to make kids smarter and stronger in their reading, writing, and problem-solving skills?

Hey Donald, instead of pining for the Nobel Peace Prize, why don’t you do something that really could help America?

Does Extended Time on Tests Actually Help Students With ADHD? (EducationWeek)

For the record, extended time doesn’t help students with ADHD take tests.

But that’s not why this article made this week’s Roundup.

Time has always been a confusing challenge when it comes to our traditional K-12 system.

I think it would be fair to say that our current public education system hasn’t figured out how to use time effectively, therefore they maintain time expectations (constraints) created in the 20^th, maybe the 19^th, century.

It’s time to change how we look at time when it comes to learning. It’s time to believe and accept this mantra: “Whereas today time is the constant and learning is the variable, moving forward our expectation should be seeing learning as the constant and time as the variable.

Education Department Leans on Right-Wing Allies to Push Civil Rights Probes (The 74)

This could be dangerous.

Linda McMahon’s Department of Education has now partnered with a number of conservative non-profits to support initiatives that are important to the Trump administration – like supporting parent and student rights.

For years, it’s been accepted practice for conservative – and liberal – organizations to stand by their President during press conferences or bill signings. The difference now is that the non-profits closely associated with the Trump administration – like the conservative Defending Education – are quoted in press releases and offering decisions as if they are our country’s Department of Education.

According to The 74’s Linda Jacobson, this hasn’t really happened before, at least in recent memory.

Many Young Adults Barely Literate, Yet Earned a High School Diploma (The 74)

“One in four young adults across the U.S. is functionally illiterate – yet more than half earned high school diplomas, according to recently released data.”

This recently released data comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, a part of the U.S. Department of Education facing major funding cuts.

Two points here.

First, if 25% of young adults are functionally illiterate, yet over 50% have earned a diploma, then that is another sign of a failed public school system and a mandate for creating something better.

Second, if we keep cutting funding from groups that provide this type of information to us, how do we make good decisions moving forward?

Or wait, maybe that’s the point.

I’ll be away until Wednesday, October 22^nd. Til then. SVB