Friday News Roundup

It’s Friday! Time for the News Roundup.

High-Need Connecticut School District Doing “Things People Don’t Believe Are Possible” (The 74)

Stories like this one come along too many times to ignore, but still school districts struggle to replicate successful models.

The latest exemplar on the list of “outstanding turnarounds” is the Meriden, Connecticut school district.

According to The 74,

“Meriden is Connecticut’s lowest funded school district – and seven of its eight elementary schools are beating the odds in literacy scores.”

“An almost decade-long overhaul of the district has been a systematic transformation – rooted in consistency across classrooms and campuses, accountability, hands-on oversight, relationships and trust.”

Expected reading proficiency at one elementary school was 34%. The actual number was 71%.

Another school’s expected number was 24%. It turned out to be 60%.

The other elementary schools expected proficiency compared to their actual proficiency was 28% to 50%, 22% to 52%, 19% to 51%, and 16% to 54%.

No one in Meriden is happy with 50% proficiency, but all data is headed in the right direction.

Which leads us to a question we ask a lot here at ABPTL – Why don’t we do what we know is the right thing to do?

How Far Can You Stretch a Starting Teacher Salary? We Crunched the Numbers (EducationWeek)

A number of legislatures are trying to pass laws that require $60,000 to be the starting salary for teachers in their states.

EducationWeek selected a Maryland school district – Kent County – to test whether $60,000 is enough to cover first-year teachers expenses. A first-year teacher in Kent County earns $56,240.

Food, housing, transportation, internet and mobile, medical, civic (entertainment, travel, pet care, etc.), personal, college debt, and annual taxes add up to be $59,910 for a Kent County first-year teacher who earns $56,240.

More school districts across America are more like Kent County than those who are different.

And that makes the teacher compensation model we are following in this country unsustainable.

Parents, Schools Clash Over Movement to Abolish Screens (The 74)

A Vermont state legislator is co-sponsoring legislation that would give parents an ed-tech “right of refusal.”

According to The 74,

“A former English teacher, he was never a fan of the shift toward every student having their own laptop. Technology, he said, isn’t making students any smarter.”

“’In fact, we know it’s making them dumber,’ he said, expressing a view shared by parents across the country, especially those with students in the elementary grades.”

“When his fellow lawmaker read the bill, she imagined how tough it might be for teachers to accommodate such requests. An English teacher herself, she also speaks from experience. Her students do research online, where the information is more up to date than books and academic journals. A 2024 American Federation of Teachers survey showed 83% of teachers use technology in the classroom daily.”

How do you “refuse” technology? Live in an underground shelter? Move to Idaho?

No, there won’t be any “right of refusal” moving forward when it comes to technology and its influence over the way our young people learn.

ABPTL will take a break next week, but we’ll be back Monday, April 27^th. Til then. SVB