Friday News Roundup

It’s Friday. Time for the News Roundup.

Why Parents Aren’t Reading to Kids, and What It Means for Young Students (The 74)

Maybe there are other reasons our kids aren’t reading as much these days, other than social media.

Houston Chronicle’s Lisa Falkenberg has written about Houston Independent School District leaders frowning on kids reading books in classrooms. Instead, young learners are asked to read short passages and expected to answer questions about those passages to prepare for end-of-year standardized tests.

Now The 74 points to a report that says less than half of America’s children are read to daily.

“The 2025 HarperCollins survey found less than half, around 41%, of children between the age of zero and four were read to every day or nearly every day; a decline of nine percentage point from 2019 and I

Output equal inputs. If reading has stopped being a priority for parents, most kids will be off to a bad start when it comes to loving literature.

Communism, American Exceptionalism Latest Flashpoints in State History Standards (EducationWeek)

Honestly, when I read this post I thought I was reading something from the 1950’s.

“In Texas, the state board of education has adopted a framework to guide its forthcoming standards revision process that critics argue overemphasizes Texas history at the expense of world history and geography. The board has appointed social studies content advisors who espouse teaching that the United States was founded as a Christian nation or have pushed for district curriculum overhauls that scrub references to diversity.”

“And in Florida, newly adopted social studies standards on communism instruct educators to teach students about the ‘repackaging of Marxist ideology’ in current political discourse, and the ‘dangers of propaganda’ in modern media. Historians have said the standards present a skewed picture and minimize the consequences of McCarthyism in the United States.”

As a trained historian, I wince at stories like this. When countries begin to mistakenly rewrite their history, bad things usually happen.

In Arizona, the Typical ESA Recipient Already Attends Private School, Study Finds (The 74)

When education savings accounts started to appear across the country, I was hopeful that finally we could provide the necessary resource to poor families for them to withdraw their children from sucky schools so that they could enroll at a better campus.

But news out of Arizona, and I’m guessing most other states are following the same pathway, tell us that ESAs are being used mostly by middle-class or upper-middle-class families to subsidize tuition costs for kids who are already enrolled in private school.

How disappointing, and frankly, noncreative.

If ESAs aren’t used to provide more choice to young learners and their families than attending the local private school, then we have lost a big opportunity to use money in a different way so that primarily black, brown, and poor kids, trapped in low-performing schools, have greater choice about where and how they learn.

Teachers Need Help Reaching Teens Who Missed Basic Reading Skills. Can PD Help? (EducationWeek)

EducationWeek reported this week that,

“…a growing number of students in recent years have transitioned past 3^rd grade without those foundational [reading] skills, putting them at risk of falling further behind as reading texts become increasingly complex and other courses – like algebra and history, for example – rely on kids’ ability to build their knowledge base.”

“The solution in theory seems simple: Provide these students with focused interventions to catch them up. But the reality is much more complex, educators and experts say.”

“Teachers in later grades – even those teaching in English/language arts classrooms – typically don’t get a lot of training on foundational reading skills in their certification programs, and many available reading interventions are designed for young children rather than those on the cusp of adolescence.”

America’s secondary reading strategies emphasize content acquisition instead of practice and improvement. In other words, kids read to learn content instead of practicing and improving their reading skills. Therefore, there are few secondary school teachers that can help their students improve their reading skills. Also, there isn’t enough time spent in middle school or high school practicing reading improvement.

This is a problem.

But a possible solution might be artificial intelligence. AI seems to be capable of offering a training regimen that can improve reading abilities – for all ages. If AI is a possible remedy to low reading skill, then school districts would be smart to change many of their current policies that either limit or ban entirely artificial intelligence inside classrooms.

Iowa Will See Record Cold Weather. Will Districts Cancel School? (Des Moines Register)

This might be a sign of me just getting old, but I can’t ever remember having school called off because of cold weather.

But several Iowa districts have established school policy regarding cold weather and cancelling school.

For the record, it seems of those Iowa school districts that do call school off due to cold weather, -30 to -40 degree wind chill is the standard.

I’m so old I don’t even remember if we knew what wind chill was back then.

I’ll be back Monday. Til then. SVB