What an election! Some education paths forward

•  First, I really appreciate, as always, Matt Barnum's look at the overall national picture after last Tuesday's election.
  
  
• The one national policy that might now be reversed is the federal tax credit "don't call them vouchers" for private schools. This is scheduled to be starting in the new year; will Congress be able to reverse it before it really gets going, or will they be able to pull the plug overall?
  And that's without the flip of gubernatorial seats across the country, as governors are the ones deciding if states are opting in. 
  
  
• A big state-level impact is that voucher programs in states that have state voucher programs may well be reconsidering that; Arizona, Texas, and Iowa are mentioned in that article. Texas really only had vouchers forced upon it by outgoing Governor Abbott; they were really unpopular! 
  
  
• The other big education issue in Texas is the state takeover of eight (so far) Texas school districts, which has also been unpopular. Among those eight districts is the one on which board Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa served, Austin ISD. 
  
  
• Chicago elected its first fully-elected school board ever last Tuesday in a race that saw $5.2M in spending. Results for the 21-member board are still being decided; they are due November 24. 
  
  
• I do want to emphasize again that a really troubling result from last Tuesday, as I noted last week, were the ballot questions that went against trans youth rights. But I want to recommend reading Chris Geidner, who offers hope and work, and Katelyn Burns, who also is hopeful, on the results. 

a quick round-up on some things I've been reading

 So much to cover, so little time...

• I realized over the weekend that Jensen Huang, in the news due to the honeytrap* he appears to have fallen into, in which he shared AI tech information with a spy for China, is the guy who said in an interview in September that kids don't need to learn math anymore.
  Make of that what you will. 
  
  
• "No big tech bullies in our schools" protests will take place across the country tomorrow outside of Google locations. This is particularly in response to Google's requirement that schools enable AI or lose search on Google products. This got a response from, among others, Senator Markey. 
  
  
  
  
  
• This Brookings look at changing start times without blowing up the transportation budget may well be of interest. I am going to continue to underline: having high school start as early as it still does in much of the country is not good for student learning. 
  
  
• I hadn't realized quite how many countries have been seeing student protests this fall. 
  

  “Gen Z is rising,” said Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard Kennedy School. “It is abundantly clear that a significant proportion of gen Z is tired of sitting on the sidelines while their political systems fail them.”

And speaking of not good news: SCOTUS hears St. Mary's v. Roy

 While your attention may have been on the election, the Supreme Court held arguments yesterday in St. Mary's v Roy, a case out of Colorado in which the central question is if a Catholic preschool which receives public funds may discriminate against LGBTQ families. 

While I always await Chris Geidner over at Law Dork, both Chalkbeat and K-12 Dive have coverage worth reviewing, Frankly, it looks pretty bleak. 

And now for the not-so-good news from the election

My hearty congratulations to those across the country who brought in national, state, and local leadership that will better support public education!

(including Texas, where a former school board member will serve as the next Governor!)

If you're rejoicing this morning in the blue tsunami that swept the nation last night, I do not wish to take away from your joy, but I do want to point to some election results on ballot initiatives that are not good for kids.

I will update this when or if I find more.

• North Dakota voted down the ballot initiative that would add free school lunch to the state constitution. 
  I did see some mention online that some voters objected not to free meals, but to putting it into the state constitution, so we'll see where that goes. 
  
  
• Alabama put school prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance into the state constitution. 
  
  
• In a theme of continuing to target trans kids, Colorado passed, Nebraska passed, and Washington appears headed to pass a ban on trans girls' participation in sports; Arizona passed a student bathroom ban. 

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'