I was going to write up something on the literacy bill

 ...but instead I am going to tell you to read this, from someone in Connecticut, because we could learn from their example!

You can do whatever you want creating (blue) hills of paperwork for teacher prep programs to prove to you that they’re doing what you already require them to do. But when it comes to fascism masquerading as curriculum reform, that’s a Yeah-No. Friends don’t let friends.

You’re like: all schools need to have high quality curriculum. I’ve BEEN SAYING there is no such thing, but it’s like you guys are stuck at a rotary and can’t find the damn exit. You’re Charlie on the MTA never getting off. You’re like trying to find ya clickah and coming up with bupkis.

There's Matt Damon, there's Dunkin', you should read it.  

Some days are like that

 We had a one-two punch of "who's in charge of this, anyway?" around public education late yesterday:

• The Trump administration announced that they are moving special education and civil rights enforcement out of the Department of Education; special education is going to Health and Human Services and civil rights to the Department of Justice. This has of course something that this administration been warning of/planning for some time, but it appears they now are rolling forward. 

  The change will move some of the most essential and integrated functions provided by the federal Education Department to two separate agencies and further accelerates the dismantling of the department without congressional approval. Senior department officials said the changes would not reduce or affect students’ rights and would instead lead to more effective services for students and families. But many details are still being worked out.

  I think it's fair to say, given what we have seen of this administration, that this is not going to work out well for students and families.

• The conference committee working on the literacy bill for Massachusetts came out with their joint work, which can be found here. DESE is now going to have a list of what curricula a district may use, and districts have to choose from the list unless they can get a waiver to use curricula that they can prove works (no room, note for new curricula there). No curricula included may include:
  

  implicit or incidental instruction in word reading, visual memorization of whole words or guessing from context and picture cues, also known as MSV or three-cueing, as a substitute for identifying a word.

  
  Words mean things and barring "implicit or incidental instruction in word meaning" from reading instruction may be the silliest inclusion I have read recently.
  Already, it has been asked if barring "guessing from context and picture cues," which is a large reason we actually use picture books with children, would bar the use of picture books:
  

  "Does it mean you can't show a student a picture? Of course you can. Children's books are always illustrated."

  That isn't a ridiculous question, and that it isn't well understood how VARIED are the methods by which children gain access to the quite complex skill of reading underlines that this is not a decision that should have been made by the Legislature. 
  Oh, and they stripped out the $25M fund for implementation. 

The graduation report is out

 ...and now rather than talking about what people think it might say, it can be read. You can find the whole thing here. (I haven't read it yet.)

The report says it is to the Governor and "Legislative Colleagues," but the first formal discussion will take place at a special evening meeting of the Board of Ed on Monday evening at 5 PM. The agenda isn't up yet, but the livestreams come over this YouTube channel. 

State House News (link via WGBH) reports that two things of note for those who have been following this: 

1. This isn't going to happen right away: "The report proposes the implementation of the first MassCore cohort entering 9th grade in 2027-2028, and the implementation of the other requirements the next school year with incoming freshmen."

2. The Council appears to have doubled-down on the recommendations that the state-administered final exams count when it comes to graduation: 
   

   The report recommends one state-designed exam in English language arts, one in mathematics and one in science, while also encouraging further exploration of a history and social science assessment. The tests would be designed, administered and scored by the state and taken when students complete specific courses.
   Unlike the December recommendations, however, the final report explicitly states that "Performance on the EOC assessments will meaningfully count toward students' academic record and path to graduation." 

   Exactly how much those exams would matter remains on open question. 

   The report says, "Following additional planning and engagement of stakeholders, the Council co-chairs will determine the specific role that EOCs will play in students' academic record and graduation." 

   That language leaves unanswered whether graduation could ultimately depend on passing the exams, and seems to contemplate a significant role for test performance.

   As a number of us have been consistently noting: the state is the entity required to ensure there is a public education system that fulfills its constitutional obligation to each student. 

The voucher question is not entirely sliding below the radar in Massachusetts

 ...as it was mentioned today on NEPM in this exchange between Carrie Healey (NEPM) and Colin Young (SHNS): 

Pressure is mounting on Governor Maura Healey to opt Massachusetts into a new federal scholarship tax credit program. Donors can make contributions of up to $1,700 to an approved scholarship group in a participating state that would be distributed as aid.

This is an issue that has quickly turned into a nationwide political football. While Democratic governors in states like Wisconsin and Kentucky have vetoed participation over concerns that the private voucher system lacks public accountability, Republican gubernatorial hopeful Mike Minogue has upped the ante for Healey by promising a maximum campaign donation if she signs on now (and pledges to enact it himself on day one if he's elected.) So, what is known about how this program would impact Massachusetts education funding?

There's not a lot specifically known.

Now, the teachers unions have come out in full force against this. They argue that this is the same as what's known as the voucher system, where they see it as a siphoning of public money towards private education, where by giving people tax credits for these donations that largely benefit private organizations and private schooling, that it's taking money away from public education.

Now, people being able to take a $1,700 tax credit could help in the name of affordability, at a time when Massachusetts has a really high cost of living and our governor is up for reelection, pledging to tackle that high cost of living. So, she has a real tough spot to be in right now.

What are we hearing from the Healy administration regarding her timeline for a decision?

They're playing the 'wait and see game' big time. They have said they have not decided that the state will not opt in, but they want to see more detailed rules from the US Treasury and the IRS before they actually decide to opt in.

And has the other Republican gubernatorial candidate, Brian Shortsleeve, weighed in on this issue?

He has. He's in support as well. He has said that if he's elected, he would opt Massachusetts in on day one as well.

If they're waiting on more detailed rules, we'll be waiting until the end of September.

It is very worrisome and disappointing that a Democratic governor in this state which prides itself on our public educations system would even need to think about this one, though. 

SCOTUS reject second student free speech case in two weeks

 As we're winding down this session of the Supreme Court, there have been two decisions recently that centered on student speech in schools, and in both cases, the Supreme Court declined, backing up earlier decisions that have sided with school districts. 

The first centered on a 3rd grader wearing a baseball cap with a AK-47 and the words "come and take it" on it. The Appeals Court found: 

...school officials made a reasonable forecast of substantial disruption to the school’s educational environment

...in part due to both the age of the students involved and that it was not far from Oxford High School in Michigan. 

The case most recently decided centered on the perception of the school expressing a view: 

A freshman identified as E.D. sought to hang flyers for a local chapter of the national organization Students for Life of America at Noblesville High School in the fall of 2021. But a dispute over a political photo included in the advertisement led the clubs to be shut down.

The lower courts sided with Noblesville, using a four-decade-old precedent on student speech known as Hazelwood School Dist. v. Kuhlmeier. The 1988 ruling concerned the regulation of school-sponsoned publications, allowing administrators some control over content that might be perceived as the opinion of the school.

While the student could use the school bulletin board to advertise for the club, the school objecting to the political statements used as the illustration was backed by the courts.

School buses as tourist attraction

 

You may not know this, but not everywhere on earth has yellow school buses. For many, well, let me quote a visitor: 

“I have waited my whole life for this,” said Martin Friel, a teacher from Scotland, explaining that the only time he’d ever seen a yellow school bus before Saturday was in an episode of “The Simpsons.”

I mentioned back in May that the Scottish soccer fans--the Tartan Army--rented school buses to take them from Providence, where many of them are staying, to the matches in Foxboro. WGBH rode along on one of the buses this weekend. 

And if you've ever wondered why it is a U.S. thing to have yellow school buses, just today, that question was asked over on Ask Historians on reddit, and you can find that thread here.

Also, if you find school buses interesting, I recommend Why Busing Failed: Race, Media, and the National Resistance to School Desegregation by Matthew Delmont. This is particularly true if you are engaged in Massachusetts education and have been given the impression that the Boston busing decision was a failure of policy. 

A voucher by any other name

 ...still doesn't smell sweet, with all apologies to Shakespeare.

You may have noticed a recent flood of reporting around the--let's call them what they are!--vouchers that are a creation of the OB3 bill. This is due to Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy Kevin Salinger having delivered remarks in a closed-door session earlier this week which were subsequently released. The provision of the bill goes into effect in January; guidance was expected, well, now, but now we are told is coming the end of September. I think that this this summary from Education Counsel out of D.C., is also useful, as is this resource guide from In the Public Interest.

You might remember that this is a pass through: those able can donate to an organization that then provides scholarships from those funds to those eligible, in any state in which the governor has opted into the program, who are from a household with income no greater than 300% of the area’s median gross income. The voucher piece of this is a redirection of what would be federal tax dollars instead to, through the pass-through, private education; per K-12 Dive: 

Starting in 2027, taxpayers will be able to donate up to $1,700 annually to a scholarship-granting 501(c)(3) organization. They then would be eligible for a 100% federal income tax credit for their contributions.

You get a federal tax break if you do this. 

You might remember from the write-up I did of the first round of the Massachusetts push about this the rosy picture of what this can be spent on doesn't bear out. Josh Cowen, whose work on vouchers I appreciate a great deal, came out with what I'd characterize as a "get that money" post this week. As he outlines: 

Yes. Even under the most narrow interpretation of the law, school districts can provide services that students may purchase in addition to their state-funded base funding that comes with enrollment.

The key words there are "may purchase." This is not funding that flows to schools from the public education they, by law, already provide. This for additional programs that families can CHOOSE TO BUY from the school district, that the district creates (or I suppose already has, if a school already charges for some sort of bonus services). The problem, and I again think Peter Greene has outlined this well, is that this has nothing to do with the provision of public education to all students: 

...schools could be explicitly offering a Basic Minimum track. That Basic Minimum could be funded by local taxpayers, and everything offered in the Premium track would be funded with federal dollars, leaving the “extra” offerings at the mercy of donor generosity and federal rule-making. Instead of moving closer to fully funding public schools, federal vouchers will provide excuses to fund them less.

Again, these are not dollars that are going to flow into public schools to "support" programs we already are required to have. The only way this will go to public schools is if they are for shiny special programs that cost more and are outside of the requirements of the school. Anyone who argues otherwise hasn't done the reading. 

Cowen's main point (I think it is fair to say) is that these dollars are going to be coming from every state, and so every state should be sure that they can also receive them. I will say that this "money only flows out" argument doesn't hold a lot of water with me, as I am familiar with the way the federal revenue and expenses work with relationship to my state. 

I also don't buy the idea--agreeing with Joshua Weishart, who outlines it well in this thread--that there isn't a real cost to public education in this system. First, we have ongoing concerns over if federal education funding is going to continue and continue to serve those most in need. I do think this gives fodder to those looking for cuts, if what they see are 50 states opting into systems that remove dollars from federal public coffers and redirect them to private (or privately directed) education. We don't need Title I any more then, right? Or IDEA?

There is a basic question here: Do we believe in public education of all at the public expense or not? It thus isn't entirely a surprise at who we see, even here in Massachusetts, coming out in favor of such a program; this is another round of neo-liberal education reform, which was unfortunately popular on both sides of the aisle. To again quote Peter Greene: 

But what is not being discussed is the effect that such a system could have on the public school mission. From “we are going to try to give your child the best possible education we can afford” to “we are going to give your child the bare minimum and if you want more than that, you’ll have to either pay for it yourself or go shopping for a voucher.” From a system funded and controlled locally with assistance from the state to a system that depends on donations funneled through the federal government.

I will again say that I am concerned that this may have popularity near the Governor's office. We need to be clear: this is not money that can support the programs we need to provide in public schools.