Friday News Roundup

It’s Friday. Time for the News Roundup.

Trump Plan Would Phase Out Rural Ed Fund: District Leaders Say It’s “Vital” (The 74)

Donald Trump overwhelmingly carried the rural vote in both the 2016 and 2024 presidential elections, so why isn’t the American farmer benefiting more from Trump’s leadership? First, there were the tariffs, then higher gas prices during planting season, and now it seems Trump is getting ready to phase out rural education funding so important to small public schools serving farming families across America.

The 74 reported earlier this week that,

“The Rural Education Achievement Program is among the 17 funding sources that the Trump administration wants to roll into a $2 billion block grant. Congress approved $220 million for REAP this year, but under the president’s plan, governors and state education chiefs would decide whether rural districts would get extra money.”

Here’s the deal about block grants – at least on the state level. Whereas you had one set of politics at the federal level when REAP funding was passed, now you will have 50 political debates at the state level so that rural schools receive their same funding. And, as ABPTL has pointed out before, leaving these decisions up to the states invites some to approve funding while others reject funding, which invites inequitable treatment for school-aged farmers just because of what state they live in.

Reading Scores Are Awful. Can Teaching History Help? (EducationWeek)

Matthew Levey, who helped found the History Matters Campaign and, in turn, the Knowledge Matters Campaign, recently had this to say in an interview with Rick Hess, opinion writer for EducationWeek:

“The Knowledge Matters Campaign advocates content-rich, high-quality curriculum and instruction based on the sciences of reading and learning. It grew out of years spent visiting classrooms and studying what actually improves reading comprehension and critical thinking. Students understand texts better when they have knowledge about the world – the classic example is that kids get more out of reading a story about baseball if they are familiar with the game.”

Actually, Robert Marzano wrote about the importance of background knowledge to create strong reader and learners back in 2004, so what Levey is promoting here isn’t new stuff.

The problem is that traditional schools never constructed a learning day where background knowledge and reading strategies were the main focus of the curriculum, at least on the secondary level. Both were lost in a school day packed with 45-minute periods covering six or seven disjointed topics.

What Do Parents With Young Children Want? A New National Survey Offers a Glimpse (The 74)

According to a new survey posted online by The 74,

“A majority of parents with young children do not have the work or childcare arrangements that they want, with their biggest concern being the lack of quality time with their children, according to a new report published by the New Practice Lab at New America.”

“It may not be altogether surprising that parents in the United States are not satisfied with their leave, care and work options. After all, it is one of the only developed nations that lacks a national paid-leave program for new parents, and childcare in this country is unaffordable and inaccessible to many families.”

But it seems our policymakers are more interested in oversea wars, searching out and punishing political rivals, and building an octagon on the White House grounds than providing parents time to be with their children along with quality childcare when they can’t be present with their kids.

Why don’t we do what we know matters?

Headed to the lake. I’ll be back June 8^th. Til then. SVB