Here are a few of last week's interesting quotes and comments...SCHOOL FUNDING, TEACHER PAY
Teacher pay is a problem in Indiana, too
Teachers have marched in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, Colorado, Kentucky and North Carolina. They marched for more funding for education...only partly for higher pay. In Indiana, teachers pay has dropped 15% since 2000. Class sizes have grown due to loss of funding as well as from funding redirected to charter and voucher schools.
Former Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction, Glenda Ritz, warned Indiana lawmakers to "take steps" to avoid and "impending education crisis." I don't expect the Republicans, with an 80% majority in the State Senate and a 70% majority in the State House, to ease up on school "reform." It will be up to teachers to make their voices heard.
Will Indiana teachers step up for their students like teachers in other red states have?
From Glenda Ritz in IBJ (Indianapolis Business Journal).
Support for our students is really the most important issue for educators in the field. The protests around the nation are about teachers—and parents—making their voices heard about the decline in public education spending used to provide students with the learning environments, resources and opportunities that they deserve.
Indiana schools might struggle to hire teachers, but there’s no shortage of ways to become one
Indiana politicians are scrambling trying to find ways to lower the requirements for teachers in order to offset the teacher shortage. In truth, the shortage is a result of years of anti-public education legislation making the teaching profession less and less desirable to young people entering or graduating from college.
Each year the super-majority in the legislature passes laws against public education. They have nearly eliminated collective bargaining for teachers, diverted needed funds to charter and voucher schools, adopted a flawed grading system for schools, and insisted on using student test scores to evaluate teachers. The current and past Republican leadership in Indiana has made the teaching profession more difficult and less attractive. It's disingenuous for them to complain about a teacher shortage they created. It's an insult to all the public school teachers in the state who were actually trained in education.
From Shaina Cavazos in Chalkbeat
Controversial policies paring down licensure requirements have spawned debates about how to balance a teacher’s education and preparation with a school’s need to fill jobs. State legislators and policymakers have argued for years now that relaxed rules will encourage more people to become teachers — but the data shows that so far, relatively few are taking advantage of those opportunities.
Opinion | Don’t punish schools because Johnny can’t read. Invest in them instead.
Public schools in many states, like Indiana, punish students and their schools for their learning difficulties. Third grade retention laws require students to repeat third grade, a misguided plan which is contradicted by both current and past research.
We need to provide services to students, not label them as failures. Politicians may respond "...we don't have enough money." To that, I say, quit cutting taxes on corporations and people who can pay more.
From Nancy Flanagan
Michigan’s third grade mandatory retention legislation is a dramatic but useless remedy to the problem of children who struggle to read when they’re eight or nine years old. We're not doing kids favors by flunking them. Says educational psychologist David Berliner, regents professor of education at Arizona State University:
"It seems like legislators are absolutely ignorant of the research, and the research is amazingly consistent that holding kids back is detrimental."
How Unequal School Funding Punishes Poor Kids
- The U.S. spends less on its children than other advanced nations.
- We have a much higher rate of child poverty than other advanced nations.
- We are one of only three members of the OECD to spend more money educating wealthy children than poor children.
From Michelle Chen in The Nation
In 17 states, including relatively affluent Connecticut and Maine, the school systems “provide less funding to their higher poverty school districts, even though students in these districts require more resources to achieve.” In many states, including Michigan and Arizona, poor kids are priced out of educational equity: “only the lowest-poverty districts have sufficient funding to reach national average student achievement outcomes.”
A Guide to the Corporations that are De-Funding Public Education and Opposing Striking Teachers
Our representative democracy has sold itself to the small number of citizens with the most money. We have become an oligarchy where the ultra-wealthy buy candidates for political office or buy the office for themselves.
From Molly Gott and Derek Seidman in Little Sis
The austerity and privatization agenda for education goes something like this: impose big tax cuts for corporations and the .01% and then use declining tax revenue as a rationale to cut funding for state-funded services like public schools. Because they are underfunded, public schools cannot provide the quality education kids deserve. Then, the right wing criticizes public schools and teachers, saying there is a crisis in education. Finally, the right wing uses this as an opportunity to make changes to the education system that benefit them – including offering privatization as a solution that solves the crisis of underfunding.
ON THE 64th ANNIVERSARY OF BROWN
In today's America, schools are more segregated than before the 1954 landmark decision, Brown v. Board of Education.
From Nikole Hannah-Jones
Today, the 64th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling might be a good time to actually read it. You'll note it doesn't talk about test scores or achievement gaps. It does talk about citizenship, democracy and caste. https://t.co/lDLwvgno7A
As long as we can pretend that the SCOTUS's ruling in Brown was about resources, then we can justify the neo-Plessyism of the modern educational landscape, where we once again pretend we will make separate schools equal so we don't have to do the real work.
— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) May 17, 2018
ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER SCHOOL SHOOTING
This Is School in America Now
A government which does nothing when the nation's school children are being shot in their classrooms, does not deserve your vote. #RememberinNovember.
From James Poniewozik
You send your kids to school, and one of the things they learn is how not to die.
WHAT ABOUT THE CONSTITUTION?
With Trump Impeachment at Stake, Will Evangelical Voters Show up for the Midterm Elections?
In the following quote, Evangelical leader David Lane indicated his preference for establishing a theocracy in the U.S. There are millions of non-evangelicals living in the U.S. who wouldn't vote to be ruled by the Religious Right. In addition the Constitution stands in the way.
First, theocracies generally expect the leaders of the government to be part of the ruling religion. Article VI creates a problem with that, since...
...no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.Second, the First Amendment clearly states that
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion...By definition, establishing a biblically-based culture, establishing a religion.
It's strange how the Religious Right (which now owns the Executive Branch) ignores the founders' desire to create a secular society.
From Evangelical leader, David Lane
We are really clear about what we are doing," Lane tells CBN News. "There is no hidden agenda about it. We're trying to restore America to our Judeo-Christian heritage and re-establish a biblically-based culture in America.
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