Proposed early literacy regulations now open for public comment

My laptop ran out of battery power at last week's Board of Ed meeting, so there were two sections I didn't cover: the Commissioner's evaluation, which I do not think I can summarize, and the proposed early literacy regulations. 

Those regulations have now been released for public comment per the Board vote last week. As I noted way back when I wrote about this in February of 2024, how we teach reading has become a crusade: the old way must be entirely vanquished and no one who REALLY cares about children would think otherwise.

It is, of course, not that simple, as teaching humans usually is not the simple.

Massachusetts, unfortunately, rather than learning from the early adopters of this crusade--Mississippi, anyone?--has barreled ahead, and now we have a law that mandates that all early elementary students be taught from the curricula described in the law and no other. Waivers, while provided by the law, were, the Board was told last week, only rarely going to be granted.*

This now necessitates regulations. Note that the regulations are being put before the Board:

• despite the actual list of curricula that qualifies not yet being available (it appears to not yet fully exists)
• despite the free curricula that DESE is required to provide to the estimated 40% of districts that will have to switch curricula not yet being available

Thus we do not really know what it is we're responding to. There is not--no, really not--an anathema definition so clear we all can know without further information what is included. And keeping in mind that it is "three cuing" that is barred, something we includes, and I am not making this up, suggesting that children might look at the pictures in their books, we are in a realm of akin to "Alice in Wonderland." One feels a bit as if one is talking to the Caterpillar when one listens to this being described. 

the Tenniel illustration via Project Gutenberg**

In any case, now is the time to comment on the proposed regulation. 

*this led to a rare mention of school committees by the Board; there was a question as to if school committees would have to vote for a district to pursue a waiver. It appears some Board members wanted this to be required, as they were under the impression that having the district have to make pursuing a waiver public would be unpopular.
Those under this impression greatly are misled about the relative popularity of the Department versus most local school committees with their local communities. 
**yes, I am well aware of the subtext here. No, I am not implying anything additional here. 

Cannot be aesthetically integrated: updates on Secretary Linda McMahon

we're thinking of getting tee shirts...

• You may have caught that Secretary of Education Linda McMahon spent $43,000 on furniture for the office she purports to be vacating, as the current furniture "cannot be configurationally or aesthetically integrated” into new space.
  If you're supposed to be making your job go away entirely, surely you can put up with the old desk in the meantime? 
  

• Just today, AFT announced that they are suing McMahon over the mismanagement of public service loan forgiveness. This makes something like seven lawsuits that AFT has filed against the federal government.
  

• Also on the Secretary McMahon lawsuit front, something that didn't get a lot of mainstream press, so full marks to the wrestling world here, but the effort of she and her (still though separated) husband Vince McMahon to get the lawsuit against them for the sexual abuse of minors that happened while they were running WWE has failed. As quite appropriately noted by the article here linked: 
  

  Despite allegedly being aware of abuse to minors and not preventing it, Linda McMahon serves as Secretary of Education in Donald Trump’s administration.  

• And while we're doing McMahon news, be sure to read Matt Barnum McMahon's "make American education great again" and its relationship with reality. Our revolution on education has always been the access provided to public education, and even that quite unevenly. The bit that I found most telling: regarding that federal "intrusion" in education:
  

  There is good evidence students have benefited from these efforts, and the laws have become foundational to American education. 

 

Top seven moments of Tuesday's Board of Ed meeting

1.  Hampshire Regional High School's Select Chorus singing “the world is sustained by three things: justice, peace, and truth,” asserting it is a message that is important "in these times."
   
   
2. Anne T. Dunphy Principal Stacey Jenkins, responding to a question posed by the Department, testifying that there was no program or "out-of-the-box" reason that the district's chronic absenteeism rate has improved. It was an all-school focus on "how are the children?"
   
   
3. Commissioner Martinez noting how beautiful the ride west on Route 2 is this time of year. 
   
   
4. Student member Sara Khan, responding to the SIGNIFICANT new requirements being proposed by the Department for high schools, observing "this is going to be hard" for districts that don't already have MassCore or use MyCap; that her school and others are laying off teachers, not hiring them, and districts do not have the money for this.
   
   
5. Member Kristin Smidy commenting that "student buy-in" on the planning required in MyCap is a question; that its use is questionable if students don't find it meaningful or useful. 
   
   
6. Member Matt Hills considering both himself and his children in ninth grade and the degree to which this (MyCap) would have been useful/meaningful/something they were invested in and not simply a new way of tracking students.
   
   
7. Chair Katherine Craven observing that "the danger is" that districts will see all of the above as an unfunded mandate and simply not do it.

The mill village of Haydenville is where Williamsburg keeps their Dunkin'

Board of Ed for October: graduation standards

There is this memo which isn't particularly revelatory, but then there is a large PowerPoint that is not online. As the memo says:

The agency is currently developing guidance and tools to support districts towards full implementation of the proposed graduation framework. 

I am again going to point out that "fully implementing" a "proposed framework" that has yet to go through a legislative process makes no sense.

"the agency setting conditions to change practices in the field" is the theme of this year, says Commissioner Martinez

introducing MyCap and MassCore
And then hearing from researchers

regulations that the Department will bring forward for discussion next month on what?

"clarification" says Woo, that regulations proposed next month will set up requirements for what schools "must offer," not what individual students must complete

Board of Ed for October: State Student Advisory Council

 The backup provided is here, though it doesn't tell us anything

Sara Khan speaking to this from slides that are hard to see
SSAC Summer Leadership retreat
analyzed a lot of data, data gathering and analyzing

Board of Ed for October: opening comments, coming to you from Williamsburg

 The Board of Ed is here today: 

The Anne T. Dunphy School in Williamsburg (which is northwest of Northampton; it's next on Route 9, heading west).

As always, with a board that largely lives inside of 128, the meeting is posted to start later (9:30) and is going to start later than that. Many comments about the location as people come in.

The agenda is here. 

I will update as we go here.

There's more than miles between us and a new set of graduation standards

 (the above is an adaptation of a line from Lil' Abner that I cannot now find anywhere online)

As a blogger who started writing out of sheer frustration with local school district governance coverage, I have a certain amount of weary understanding of the misses that happen. This is particularly true given the undercutting of the Fourth Estate and the seemingly endless churn of local reporters (when we have them at all!) for local news coverage. 

I nonetheless was puzzled by coverage of the October 8 Worcester School Committee meeting, which appeared to take as given that the graduation report from last year was moving forward into implementation.

As we have discussed here before, more than once, this is not the case. The Department does not have the authority to create new required graduation standards. The authority to determine what a student needs to graduate remains with local school committees. The competency determination, as bound by the amended law under Question 2, is within the Department's authority, and districts now all have policies that align to that. That is, though, the full extend of the authority of the Department.

Now, I'm pretty sure--I think?--that those running things here in Worcester know that, but I remain concerned that some writing for the Department might not. Recently, every superintendent received a communication from DESE that gave a deadline of late November for a report on where individual high schools were on their graduation requirements relating to the graduation report. It referred to this Companion Guide for information. 

And nowhere in any of this was there any mention of the fact that the Department cannot simply implement the graduation report, lacking utterly the authority to do so. It takes the graduation report as something that is being implemented, and this, despite the report itself--though only v-e-r-y subtly!--noting that the Legislature would need to act for implementation.

And if you think the Legislature is simply going to pass the graduation report as issued into legislation, well, I wouldn't advise putting money on that. 

While I have come to expect this sort of confusion of local reporters who often just got there, I am troubled to see it from the regulatory agency. 

UPDATE: The backup for Tuesday's Board of Ed meeting now has this memo, which continues the "the report is a recommendation which we are working to implement" without mention of the Department not having the authority to do so.