Weekend To-Do List
6/16-6/18
ANNOUNCEMENT: Our Spanish-language podcast Pulso y Pendulo is up for a Latin Podcast Award and it would be very appreciated if you would cast your vote for us. You can do so here!
1. Liberals Try to Reclaim Parents’ Rights
READ: Laura Meckler, Hannah Natanson, and John D. Harden wrote in the Washington Post about the growth of liberal parents groups to face off against their conservative counterparts.
Liberal groups with names such as “Stop Moms for Liberty” are campaigning for like-minded school board candidates, lobbying legislators and training parents to show up at school board meetings. They host Zooms and Facebook pages where parents can commiserate and strategize.
These groups have had some initial success:
Last fall, conservative candidates won 39 percent of 1,834 contests in which candidate ideology could be discerned, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. The Post classified candidates’ ideology based on data from Ballotpedia, which tracks many school board contests, as well as from endorsements made by conservative groups Moms for Liberty and the 1776 Project, by DeSantis, and ratings assigned by the liberal group Red, Wine and Blue.
The Post found that liberal candidates had more success in politically conservative counties, winning 35 percent of the races, than conservatives had in liberal counties, where they won just 20 percent of the races.
Read more here.
2. Save the Champagne: Prioritize Planning for Universal Choice
READ: Garrett Ballengee took to the pages of Education Next with a timely reminder that passing universal choice legislation is the beginning of the journey (for choice proponents), not the end. Using West Virginia’s experience since its path-to-universal education choice bill was signed into law in March 2021, Ballengee lays out five key lessons for the six states (and counting) that have passed similar bills.
Let’s face it, your newly enacted program will have bumps, bruises, and will proceed with some fits and starts. Perfection is not of this world. Setbacks are to be expected with anything new, let alone something of the size and scope of a universal choice program. Not everyone in the world is as happy as you that universal choice is now a reality. There are legions of entities, from the public education establishment to unions and union-friendly media, looking for any anecdote or half-truth to besmirch the new program.
Take a deep breath and begin planning for this reality.
Gather stories about successes—big and small—and cultivate relationships with storytellers who see the world you do. Be ready to tell the story many people not only don’t want to read themselves, but also do not want others to read: education choice is good and a moral necessity.
Read more here.
3. Five More Years: New NYC-UFT Contract
READ: New York City has reached a tentative deal with the United Federation of Teachers. Reema Amina and Amy Zimmer reported in Chalkbeat about the five-year contract for the education department’s 115,000 full-time and 5,000 part-time employees. The deal would cost the city $6.4 billion, with starting salaries for new teachers jumping from $61,070 to $72,349. It also includes the expansion of virtual courses, new policies for remote work, and retention bonuses.
The annual retention bonuses would grow to $1,000 by 2026 and marks the first time the union has negotiated the benefit. From president of the teachers union Michael Mulgrew:
“We’re saying to all of our titles and every member, whether you’re in the first year or your 25th year, New York City is saying that we appreciate you, we recognize the challenges that you take on every day and you will receive $1,000 every [year] for that.”
UFT’s 500-member negotiating committee still needs to vote to send the deal to the full union. Read more about the tentative deal here. As of now, the contract doesn’t seem to cover anything related to artificial intelligence. I explained why unions will come to regret this in the New York Post last month.
4. Is Private School Still Worth It?
READ: The number of Britain’s private school alums who go on to attend Oxford or Cambridge has fallen by more than half in the last ten years. The Economist reported on the decline of traditional private schools worldwide and questioned whether the cost of attending such institutions continues to lead to higher outcomes. The piece didn’t leave the U.S. out of the conversation:
In 2021 James Murphy of Education Reform Now, a think-tank in Washington, DC, collected data from 35 of America’s highest-ranked universities and liberal-arts colleges. He found that on average about 34% of their new undergraduates were educated in private high schools. That is astonishing given that the private sector educates just 8.5% of American high-schoolers. Pupils from “independent” schools do brilliantly. The most recently published data suggest they made up about one-third of new undergraduates at Dartmouth and more than a quarter at Princeton. “Legacy” preference, whereby the relatives of alumni get a leg-up in admissions, may explain some of this. Nothing so brazenly unfair happens at British universities.
Read more here, and listen to our Regressives episode on legacy admissions here.
5. Generation Meh: New Study Suggests Lags in Student Engagement
READ: Kevin Mahnken wrote for The 74 about the inaugural State of American Youth Survey, released this week by Gallup and the Walton Foundation. The survey asked over 2,000 public and private middle and high school students to assess their school’s performance on everything from the quality of teaching to supporting students’ mental health. 66 percent of total respondents gave their school an A or B, but there were notable differences between groups. Private school students were more likely to give their school higher grades across the board, while Black students gave lower ratings on questions related to respect and physical safety.
Read more here.
6. Is Affirmative Action’s End Near?
READ/LISTEN: Taylor Penley at Fox News interviewed Jon Wang, who was rejected by six top-tier colleges despite a 4.65 GPA and 1590 SAT score. Wang is part of the plaintiff group with Students for Fair Admissions, whose cases against Harvard and the University of North Carolina will be decided by the Supreme Court over the next few weeks.
Wang told Fox Nation he talked to friends and school guidance counselors going into the application process, and they all issued a bizarre warning. "They all told me that it's tougher to get in, especially as an Asian American. I just took it as gospel," he said.
Wang is now a student at Georgia Tech and says he will never stop fighting for future generations of Asian Americans."I feel like, if I'm looking back, 10 or 20 years from now, if I didn't do it [speak up], I'd be pretty upset with myself," said Wang.
Read the interview here. We’ve also covered the upcoming SCOTUS cases extensively at The Branch. Listen to our Regressives episode here.
7. Religious Charter Sparks Backlash Among Charter Advocates
READ/LISTEN: The nation’s first religious charter school was approved in Oklahoma last week. So why aren’t more charter advocates celebrating? Sarah Mervosh shared more about the concerns within the reform movement in the New York Times:
While public schools cannot discriminate, religious schools have the discretion to act according to their beliefs, which can include hiring staff members of a certain faith or discriminating against L.G.B.T.Q. students and employees. “We did not create the charter school movement, and make all of this progress, to become more private,” said Nina Rees, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools’ chief executive.
Read more here. We also discussed this case on a December episode of Lost Debate. Listen here.
8. North Carolina School Counselors Face Ethical Quandry
READ/LISTEN: Patrick Wall at Chalkbeat covered the latest out of conservative Moore County, North Carolina, where a newly-passed Parents Bill of Rights requires schools to notify parents if students request to use different names or pronouns. Moore County Schools Superintendent Tim Locklair has recommended that school counselors both comply with the Bill and rely on their own professional judgment. The dilemma facing staff isn’t unique to Moore County:
Republicans across the country have pushed similar parent-notification rules. (The Moore County policy lifts language directly from Virginia guidelines and a North Carolina bill.) The rules target the practice in some schools of allowing gender-nonconforming students to switch names and pronouns without telling parents. To avoid outing them, some schools use students’ chosen names in class and their birth names when calling home.
Some educators and advocates defend the practice as protecting trans students’ privacy and safety, adding that most schools encourage students to eventually come out to their families. But critics say schools should never withhold important information from parents, adding that parents can’t support trans children if they aren’t informed.
Read more here.