School Shootings, Religion in School, Teacher Shortage, Reform, Charters, Vouchers
GUN VIOLENCE
Wake Up, America! You Have a School Shooting Problem!
Since this blog post of Steven Singer's was posted less than a week ago, we've had yet another school shooting...this one in Los Angeles. And we have heard talk of a Trump/Russia/NRA connection...
What has been done to curb gun violence in the US since Newtown (2012)? Columbine (1999)?
"Thoughts and prayers..." Absolutely nothing.
According to an FBI study that looked at incidents from 2000-2013, nearly one quarter of all U.S. shootings took place at schools. And they’re on the rise.
Yet this latest incident barely raised an eyebrow in the collective consciousness.
Hardly anyone even attempted to offer a solution.
The reason?
Since Sandy Hook, we’ve effectively given up.
In December of 2012 a gunman walked in to Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and killed 20 children and six adults, and we did nothing.
We stood by after the murder of elementary kids and couldn’t get up the collective energy to do one damn thing to stop things like this from happening again.
No new regulations.
No assault weapons ban.
No gun buyback programs.
NOTHING.
CHURCH AND STATE
Local School to Train Teachers After Church/State Violations
Last Monday (1/29/2018), I posted Public School Prayer and the Constitution – Conflict in Louisiana which dealt with a lawsuit against a school for violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
This case from Michigan, deals with the same sort of thing. Here, however, school authorities have made a commitment to teach their teachers about the law.
Here are three more publications, each endorsed by a variety of religious and civic groups, which will give you a good background on how to handle religion in public schools.
- Religious Liberty, Public Education, and the Future of American Democracy: A Statement of Principles
A suit may still be filed over the Bible study before school starts, but this is a good development overall. And it needs to be replicated nationwide. These problems are so pervasive all over the country that the Department of Education should force all public schools to have a mandatory in-service day to train teachers and administrators on what the law says they can and cannot do within the parameters of the First Amendment.
REFORM/TEACHER SHORTAGE
Cycle of frustration
The constant drumbeat of so-called "education reform" has been that public schools are "failing." "School failure" really means societal failure. It's odd, isn't it, that America's "failing" public schools are located in high poverty areas...and all the "bad teachers" are teaching at those schools while America's schools for the middle class and wealthy are excelling. It's odd because out of school factors contribute to school achievement much more than teachers do...yet policy makers don't accept responsibility for societal failure which leads to "school failure."
The national attack on public education which began in earnest in 2001 with the passage of No Child Left Behind (though school privatization has long been a right-wing/libertarian dream) has done nothing but disrupt and damage public schools around the country. Part of the attack, especially here in Indiana, has been against public school teachers and their unions.
The current attempt to improve educational achievement by lowering standards for becoming a teacher, is a direct result of the attacks on teachers.
[Note: the amendment discussed in this editorial has not yet been passed into law (as of Feb 2, 2018).]
The pattern in Indiana education policy has become all too familiar:
1. Pass a law to disrupt public education in the pursuit of “reform.”
2. Express dismay over the repercussions of the new law without acknowledging what caused them.
3. Pass another law to “fix” the problems created, doing additional harm to public schools.
The most recent example surfaced Wednesday when a last-minute amendment was added to a bill to allow public schools to fill up to 10 percent of staff with unlicensed teachers. Why is this necessary? Because some school districts are struggling to hire faculty in the face of teacher shortages. Why are there shortages? Because laws regarding teacher evaluations, tenure and collective bargaining have made the field less attractive.
REFORM
The Sad Impact of Corporate School Reform on Students with Emotional/Behavioral Disabilities
Thanks to Nancy Bailey for her continuing attention to the damage that so-called education "reform" causes students with disabilities.
School choice is not going to do anything to fix these problems.
- Charters and most private schools have a record of pushing kids with emotional/behavioral difficulties out.
- As taxpayers we don’t know what takes place with children who are home schooled.
We need strong public schools, schools with resources that will address the needs of children and teens.
- How does one address the mental health needs of students who sit in front of screens for school? Too much tech exacerbates mental health problems!
PRIVATIZATION: CHARTERS
Nationwide Charter School Expansion Slowing Down
Some reasons for the slow-down of charter school expansion...
1. Charter teachers have begun to unionize. One reason for developing charter schools was to "bust the teachers unions."
2. "Failing" charter schools are simply converting to voucher accepting private schools to continue to receive public tax dollars.
3. Charter schools have suffered from an excessive number of scandals resulting in bad publicity.
Diverting public tax dollars to charters (and vouchers) has been a waste of money. Instead we should be working to increase resources and achievement at real public schools.
Put simply, charters are not subject to the same instructional, operational, fiscal, accounting or conflict of interest rules as traditional public schools. Therefore, in most states it’s perfectly legal for a charter school operator to give his brother the instructional contract, his sister the maintenance contract and his uncle the textbook contract. He can replace the teachers with computer programs and apps, while his own privately held company rents and leases the school building at a hefty markup – all with public money.
And somehow that’s still called a “public” school.
We have to face this simple fact: Charters took off not because they were a good idea to help kids learn, but because they were an excellent way to make a lot of money off of the government. It was a way to steal money meant to help children.
Largest Charter School Fail Ever Doesn’t Faze ‘School Choice’ Fans
The failure of this "school choice" was mostly ignored during "school choice" week.
In the run up to what was billed as “record breaking celebrations” of charter schools and other forms of “school choice,” there was a serious bump in the road when news outlets in Ohio reported the largest charter school closure ever in that state, and perhaps the nation, had suddenly sent over 12,000 students and their families scrambling to find new schools midyear.
...“My kids went to bed last night crying,” said a Cincinnati mom whose children attended the school.
“To just rip them out of the environment they are most used to,” complained another mom whose children had attended the school for eight years. “They have relationships with their teachers,” she said in a news video posted on the ECOT Facebook page.
PRIVATIZATION: VOUCHERS
How Mike Pence expanded Indiana’s controversial voucher program when he was governor
More and more money for private schools coming out of public tax dollars...which eats into money for the public schools.
Where does the money go? To whom are the private schools accountable? Where is the public oversight? Answers – No one knows...no one...and there is none.
Pence, who describes his religious beliefs as evangelical, removed the cap on the number of students who could qualify for a voucher to a private school, increased the limits on qualifying family income, and removed Daniel’s stipulation that the student had to try the public school first.
No longer was money being saved as a small number of students transferred from public to private schools. Now middle-income families already using private schools were having their tuition paid for, at least partially, by the state.
A QUICK PEEK
There are always many more articles I'd like to post than I have room for (I try to keep the Medleys to between 4 and 8 articles). Here, then, are some that I recommend...without comments.Study Finds Recession-Era Education Cuts Significantly Impacted Student Outcomes: How Many Constitutional Rights Were Violated?
...a 20 percent increase in per-pupil spending each year for all 12 years of public school for children from poor families leads to about 0.9 more completed years of education, 25 percent higher earnings, and a 20 percentage-point reduction in the annual incidence of adult poverty; we find no effects for children from non-poor families. The magnitudes of these effects are sufficiently large to eliminate between two-thirds and all of the gaps in these adult outcomes between those raised in poor families and those raised in non-poor families.
‘Distressed’ schools lost funding
No wonder Gary and Muncie community schools are distressed. Both Indiana school districts have had their budgets cut dramatically over the past decade. It’s not surprising they’ve struggled to pay the bills.
Trump’s Judges: The GOP’s Slow Poison for Democracy, and the Planet
Lawyer Richard Ayres has been fighting for the environment in federal courts for nearly five decades, but he says he’s never seen an onslaught on basic environmental protections like the one coming out of the Trump White House. Still, something scares Ayres even more than the determination of the Trump team to dismantle President Barack Obama’s climate change initiatives, shrink federally protected lands, weaken smog standards, scale back habitat for rare species, and expand drilling into the Atlantic and Arctic oceans.
What most unnerves Ayres and other veteran environmental lawyers and legal experts is the unprecedented opportunity President Trump has to fill the federal judiciary with anti-regulatory, pro-business appointees.
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