Friday News Roundup

Wait! A Friday News Roundup on a Thursday? Let’s go with it.

School Choice Is Expanding. Will Public Support Follow? (The 74)

“With new state-level programs quickly redrawing the map of school choice over the last few years, a central question may determine the movement’s continued success: Does greater familiarity with charter schools, vouchers, or education savings accounts actually make people view them more positively?”

“Two recent studies seek to provide an answer, assembling compelling evidence of public opinion but arriving at separate conclusions. One shows that first hand experience with school choice makes people more likely to support its expansion, particularly if they were skeptical of the policy at first. Another indicates that greater proximity to charter schools once made Democrats more likely to favor them, but that the relatively good feelings disappeared over the last decade.”

Where all of this is headed isn’t about school choice. It’s going to be about learner choice.

We now have the ability to design a personalized learning plan for every young learner in this country. While some are debating charters, vouchers, education savings accounts, private schools versus public schools, others are seeing the liberating force of owning your own learning, and having everything support the individual’s pursuit of that learning.

“Couldn’t Find A School”: Why Only 76% of Texas’ School Voucher Recipients Have Used Them (Houston Chronicle)

“Marissa Gonzalez was one of the first parents in Texas to receive funding from the state’s $1 billion private school voucher program.”

“Her two children have dyslexia, and their family income is below 500% of the poverty level, putting them in the lottery’s top priority group. It also meant that her children were eligible to receive more funding than most applicants.”

“But when Gonzalez received $31,000 in voucher funding for her children, she had to turn it down, joining the 24% of recipients who haven’t used their voucher funding – including both families who opted-out and who have not decided yet.”

“The user rate has puzzled leaders of the Texas Education Freedom Account program who are trying to figure out why some families outright rejected or haven’t used thousands of dollars for their children’s education.”

Experience many private schools aren’t interested in accepting dyslexic poor kids into their school. So they decide that their school is “full” and reject families like Marissa Gonzalez’s.

something beyond a simple public school to private school transfer.

Supporting home schooling, learning pods, and microschools would be a good place to start.

From Nemo to Super Mario, Ed Department’s Social Media Feed Draws Backlash (The 74)

It’s not like Donald Trump and his administration are hesitant about being sued, but being sued by a group of cartoon production companies, including Disney, might happen sooner than later.

The 74 reported this week that Donald Trump’s White House is using cartoon characters like Lightning McQueen from “Cars,” Nemo the clownfish and the Parr family from “The Incredibles” are among the animated personalities starring in the agency’s social media posts in recent months.

Following a back-to-school event Monday, the White House turned The Magic School Bus, a popular children’s book series, into The Magic Deportation Bus, where students are shown handcuffed in the back of the bus.

“’This administration doesn’t ask for permission; it thinks that doing so is weak,’ said Rebecca Tushnet, a law professor at Harvard Law School with expertise in legal issues affecting the Disney empire.”

“The fact that the Education Department’s use of [Disney’s] characters hasn’t sparked the same response suggests that ‘the administration’s tactics of seeking vengeance and punishing disagreement are factors weighing against legal action,’ Tushnet said.”

Acclaimed Holocaust Book Part of List Dan Patrick Flagged For Removal From Texas Schools (Houston Chronicle)

Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick is on the warpath again, trying to get more than 2,000 books banned from Lone Star state public schools.

Patrick called the books “filthy, dirty, and vulgar.”

Yet one of those 2,000 books, “Night” by Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel, was already approved by the Texas Republican-controlled State Board of Education this summer as required reading for 8^th graders starting in 2030.

Education Data Collection Has Cratered Under Trump. Can It Be Rebuilt? (EducationWeek)

It’s not clear if Donald Trump is concerned about the nation’s K-12 educational system.

What is clear is that Trump cares little about collecting data connected to that system.

EducationWeek reported this week that,

“The nation’s education data agency needs major changes to meet rapidly changing information needs, but years of staff and budget cuts have left the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics too unstable to adapt on its own.”

NCES’s budget has been cut by $900 million since 2025 and approximately 97% of staff and leadership have been dismissed.

Students Who Fail Dual-Enrollment Classes Still Benefit, a New Study Says (EducationWeek)

This is old news.

Back in the 1990s, the College Board released a study that showed students who took an Advanced Placement class did better in college than students who didn’t take an AP class. Students who took an AP test did better in college than those who didn’t take the test.  And students who scored a 3, 4, or 5 on the test did better than those who scored a 1 or 2.

It seems this dual enrollment study is finding similar results – 30 years later.

ABPTL will be away until Monday. Til then. SVB