Weekend To-Do List

11/17 - 11/19

and

Nov 17, 2023

1. How Schools Should Address the Israel-Hamas War

READ/LISTEN: Rick Hess and Jal Mehta took to the pages of Education Week to discuss the challenges K-12 educators face in addressing the Israel-Hamas war with their students. Mehta encouraged teachers to remember the role schools play in shaping society:

They should both encourage students to take stands on issues that they see as important and try to help students develop more complexity in their thinking. They might ask students to realize that these goals are sometimes in tension—that movements often require a certain kind of clarity and moral force that seeing complexity and nuance sometimes dulls. But perhaps students can land in an even richer place, where they are still able to take a stand, but in a way that incorporates rather than rejects such complexity.

Read more here. Chris and I also discussed this topic on this week’s Citizen Stewart Show. Listen here.

2. Bill Maher’s Catholic School Is Open for Enrollment

WATCH: Bill Maher eulogized the downfall of public education in a recent segment of HBO’s “Real Time.” After playing videos showing violent student behavior, Maher coined public schools “diploma mills that allow students to graduate without demanding the kids know basic shit” and proposed a chain of non-Catholic Catholic schools:

“In 1970, only 2.7 percent of the kids who went to Catholic school were not Catholic. Now it’s 22 percent. Catholic school eighth graders are two full grade levels above public school kids, because their school isn’t a safe space for f–king off. They’re told, no, you can’t be on your phone here and your pronouns are shut up and sit down. How f–ked up is this country that to get a no-bulls–t education now, you have to go to the place that’s completely based on bulls–t?”

Maher goes on to share the rules for Bill Maher’s Catholic School, ranging from no phones, no participation ribbons, and no vaping. Watch more here.

3. Want Better Child Care? Learn From the Military

READ: Erica Phillips wrote for The 74 about the success of the Military Child Care Act of 1989 and its impact in creating accessible, reliable, and high-quality early education for working parents. Phillips is the executive director of the National Association for Family Child Care and says the Act should be used as a blueprint for a federal child care education model:

Every parent wants what’s best for their kids and high-quality child care should be broadly available. A well-funded early care and education system enhances workforce participation, particularly among women. As parents have more opportunities to work and advance in their careers, their families and the overall economy benefit.

4. What a Virginia School District is Doing to Prevent More Student Deaths

READ/LISTEN: After 30 Richmond, Virginia students died by gunfire in just three years, three Washington Post reporters spent a year inside the city’s Huguenot High School to better understand the impact of youth gun violence. The district implemented a trauma-informed approach to address the violence five years ago, including creating ‘restorative rooms’ and ‘healing lounges,’ but the effectiveness of the approach remains unclear:

In Richmond, Jones will have to come up with a more definite answer soon. Richmond funded much of its trauma-related work with pandemic dollars — money given by the state and federal government to help schools cope with virus chaos. It must be spent by September of next year.

Read the powerful piece from Sabby Robinson, Hannah Natanson, and Moriah Balingit here. The Post has also produced a companion podcast series. Listen to episode one here.

5. How America’s Greatest Experiment Led to Public Education

READ: Adam Harris’ latest in The Atlantic reminded readers that the existence of universal public education, not a guarantee in America’s early days, is largely due to the work of freedpeople and their advocates during the Reconstruction era. After walking readers through the history of this evolution, from the impact of leaders like Horace Mann and Mary D. Brice to the McDonogh Three and Ruby Bridges, Harris ends his piece by suggesting that the Supreme Court’s recent decision to end affirmative action marks a pivot in this storied history:

The history of the South illustrates that efforts to splinter or deny education on the basis of race will inevitably diminish even those who lead those efforts. “Create a serf caste and debar them from education, and you necessarily debar a great portion of the privileged class from education also,” Mann once argued. But the history also demonstrates the inverse: Making public education truly public and equal for all is the cornerstone of a nation.

6. Advocating for the Future of Rural Schools

READ: Rural schools in the U.S. support more students than the country’s 100 largest school districts combined. So why do rural students lack adequate access to broadband internet, mental health care, and school transportation? Libby Stanford reported on the latest findings from the National Rural Education Association, which argues that lawmakers have a responsibility to pass more equitable funding laws to better serve rural students:

“We’re told frequently that we’re at an inflection point, be it an inflection point for inflation, or an inflection point for political coalitions, the structure of labor, the nature of work, and so on,” said Klein, who is an education professor and chair of the teaching, learning, and foundations department at Eastern Illinois University. “If that’s true then we’re at a point of incredible importance to shape the future of the generation of rural students and the relationship to their communities and the nation more broadly.”

7. Want to Understand the Rise in Homeschooling? Ask Randi Weingarten.

READ: Sareen Habeshian reflected on homeschooling’s rise in a news round-up for Axios earlier this week. The AFT’s Randi Weingarten quickly responded:

CNN commentator Mary Katherine Ham argued in an op-ed for Reason that Weingarten’s leadership during COVID-19 played a major role in dismantling trust in public schools:

While there are many reasons for the shift, a significant factor is leaders like Weingarten left a vacuum parents had to fill. When they did, parents learned they could do it without the leaders who left them in the lurch. Their kids' education could be flexible and tailored, without the constraint of having to sit at a desk between four walls for seven hours a day. Parents learned they had the power to fix some of the problems the pandemic posed.
There's little indication she and others who presided over this disaster will do much else than continue to get paid richly and exchange back pats for their promotions within elite circles.

Read the round-up in Axios here and Ham’s response to Weingarten here. Rikki and I also discussed the rise in homeschooling on a recent episode of Lost Debate. Listen here.

8. Tennessee Will Say Yes to Federal Government’s $1.3 Billion

READ: After Tennessee’s House Speaker Cameron Sexton proposed that the state reject federal funding earlier this year in order to sidestep civil rights protections based on race, sex, and disability, Tennessee State Senator Jon Lundberg announced on Thursday that the state will accept the funding. The about-face comes after two weeks of legislative hearings over the matter. Tennessee is already ranked in the bottom fourth of states in spending per pupil, a reality that caused advocacy groups to take Sexton’s threats seriously rather than dismiss it as political positioning:

“We’re taking this seriously, because this would be such a consequential step for the state to take,” said Gini Pupo-Walker, who leads The Education Trust in Tennessee. “We’re trying to ensure lawmakers are getting accurate information during the discussions.”

Read more from Marta W. Aldrich in Chalkbeat here.

9. While New York City Says Goodbye to $547 Million

READ: New York City’s Department of Education will cut $547 million from its budget this year and $600 million next year as part of Mayor Eric Adams’ decision to cut $4 billion from the city’s budget over the next 18 months. Some of the hardest-hit programs will include Universal Pre-K ($120 million), Summer Rising ($20 million), community schools ($10 million), and a new computer science teaching initiative ($3.5 million). Adams blamed the cuts on the city’s migrant crisis, a slowdown in tax revenue growth, and the looming end of COVID stimulus funding. Advocates for Children said the cuts will not only harm vulnerable children but could threaten their legal rights:

“We are particularly concerned that these budget plans will result in even more egregious violations of the rights of students with disabilities, English Language Learners, and students in temporary housing or foster care,” Advocates for Children executive director Kim Sweet said in a statement.