On the graduation requirement part of the State of the State

 State House News Service has this:

Healey also puts more detail around her plan for a successor to the MCAS standardized tests as a high school graduation requirement. Voters in November eliminated the MCAS as a graduation requirement, an outcome that Healey was opposed to.

"I respect that decision. But it creates for all of us a responsibility, to make sure every student graduates ready to succeed. We need a high, statewide standard. Students, families, and employers need to know what a diploma represents. And without that baseline, it’s always the most vulnerable students who don’t get what they need," the governor's speech says.

Healey will say she is directing a "Statewide Graduation Requirement Council" including teachers, colleges, employers and students to develop recommendations for a permanent and high standard.

"We’ll evolve to a new Massachusetts model for high school excellence that best serves our children. And we'll match high standards with great opportunities – like the Early College and job training programs that give students a leg up on their next step," the governor says.

Will someone please teach her speechwriters "constitutional obligation"? It's the entire point.  

Oh, and by the way? Don't use generative AI, including the top of the Google results, for "Massachusetts high school graduation requirements" because WOW. 

If we lived in a reasonable country

 ...leadership would look at something like this: 

Many districts also used their one-time funding to take care of longstanding needs, like replacing aging infrastructure and outdated textbooks, that schools previously wanted to tackle but could not afford to do so.

...and realize "hey, there's an UNFILLED NEED here! Maybe we should do something about this!"

But instead, no, they're going to waste time persecuting trans students.  

The Globe said the quiet part out loud

 It's WAY down in this piece on teachers' salaries, but hey, they noted the fundamental inequity of funding schools locally!

Currently, about half of funding comes from local governments, and much of the rest comes from state governments, with the federal government providing little support. That means wealthier schools tend to be better funded — and they can raise additional, voluntary pools of money.

 PDF here.

That's Massachusetts in a nutshell: we have local districts that are majority local funded, whose cuts when they come are cuts of things majority state funding districts have never had. 

If you haven't read about vouchers in Ohio

 ...do be sure and read the lengthy ProPublica piece published this week. 

What happened in Ohio was a stark illustration of a development that has often gone unnoticed, perhaps because it is largely taking place away from blue state media hubs. In the past few years, school vouchers have become universal in a dozen states, including Florida, Arizona and North Carolina. Proponents are pushing to add Texas, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and others — and, with Donald Trump returning to the White House, they will likely have federal support.

It clearly cannot be said enough

 “Generative AI is an unethical technology in any way it is sliced.”

Excellent piece "The ethical case for resisting AI" from Dr. Chuck Pearson, writing from the perspective of a chemistry teacher.
Because I tend to approach this from my own framing in English and history, this part particularly struck me: 

It occurs to me that there are a lot of us in STEM fields who need to be thinking about our fields not as technical disciplines where problems need to be solved by any means at the students’ disposal, but as liberal arts where the path the student takes to the solution is as important as the solution itself. If only the answer matters, then absolutely we should be employing technology in any way we can. We need to take the attitude that it isn’t just the answer that matters. 

And the very nature of the technology itself is the evidence that the answer isn’t the important thing. How the answer is obtained, how much damage is done by the technology doing the answering, how much does the student lose by not exercising the tools they have to do the answering? 

When everything is said and done, what are we telling our students about their humanity? What messages do we send about how they are developing their minds to engage the world around them?

He also has a really good set of links for the mess of massive problems--environmental, intellectual property, human rights--that are part and parcel the use of generative AI.  

urgency needed

Last Tuesday, U.S. Border control conducted immigration raids in Kern County, California: 

 “It was profiling, it was purely field workers,” said Sara Fuentes, store manager of the local gas station. Fuentes said that at 9 a.m., when the store typically gets a rush of workers on their way to pick oranges, two men in civilian clothes and unmarked Suburbans started detaining people outside the store. “They didn’t stop people with FedEx uniforms, they were stopping people who looked like they worked in the fields.” Fuentes says one customer pulled in just to pump gas and agents approached him and detained him.

As a result:

 “We’re in the middle of our citrus harvesting. This sent shockwaves through the entire community,” said Casey Creamer, president of the industry group California Citrus Mutual, on Thursday. “People aren’t going to work and kids aren’t going to school. Yesterday about 25% of the workforce, today 75% didn’t show up.”

Emphasis added

This week, of course, Joe Biden is still president. That isn't true next week, when Donald Trump, who has made attacking immigrants a centerpiece, is.  

“I still believe in hope*

From my notebook
From last April 

Okay, so clearly my New Year's Day post on the state senate potentially taking up school funding came from a place of skepticism.

But Senator Jo Comerford is clearly so excited and happy on her Instagram post from the same day that I feel like a heel for only that take, so let's try for the optimism that is the thing one needs to keep on trying in this field of education. Our kids, after all, deserve better.