My Local Paper Bites The Dust

My local newspaper is shutting down.

The newspaper is published as two newspapers (same content, different mastheads). The Derrick, as the name hints, goes back to the days of the oil boom in Western Pennsylvania. The News-Herald is the fusion of two newspapers that merged a little over a century ago. A few decades ago, they were combined into one news operation. Like many other news outlets, they also entered the online world, experimenting with different versions of paywalls. They were about to be sold, but that deal fell through, and the company, citing the usual (drop in subscribers, drop in advertisers). The last issue will be published on March 20.

It is hard to describe just what a gut punch this is to the community. The newspaper is where people read about local sports, school board meetings, city council meetings, obituaries, and a wealth of stories about local people and activities. The newspaper has been doing just what a small local paper needs to do-- providing news and coverage that local folks couldn't find anywhere else. 

Will someone pick up that slack? There are no radio stations with local content. We are located about halfway between Erie and Pittsburgh (which has newspaper problems of their own), too far outside their media markets for them to bother with coverage of our area. We have a local county-level web site that so far has had about one reporter, and has depended on looking over the newspaper's shoulder for much of its content. They are now advertising an initiative to scale up, but that's going to involve creating basically a whole news organization from scratch.

For local organizations and government bodies looking to communicate with the community, the prospects are now much dimmer than ever. 

The newspaper was our newspaper of record. Who lived here? What did they do? What were their stories? All of that was set down in print. Now what will become of all those stories of all those lives? How will history be recorded? Will history be recorded? A big city may have other avenues for creating those sorts of records. We do not. 

The loss feels very personal. Pieces of my own history are in that record. A photo of my family when we moved to town. High school graduation stories. Pictures of my kids in local events. My father's obituary ran in the newspaper; when my mother passes, where will that life be noted?

And, as longtime readers may recall, I have written a weekly column for that newspaper for almost 28 years. The pay was--well, I don't think cutting my pay would have saved the paper-- but the chance to create something that added to a unique local flavor gave me a sense of giving a tiny something to my community. And the writing discipline required to meet a weekly deadline has shaped who I became as a writer and a teacher. It's a big chunk of my life to say goodbye to. 

Journalism has always relied on a problematic business model ("We will gather a crowd and sell you access to their eyeballs") married to a sense of civic responsibility with an occasional too-large helping of political opportunism ("You provide the pictures and I'll provide the war"). I wonder, too, about the effects of our economic split-- particularly the finding that the wealthiest 10% drives 50% of the spending. What does that mean for areas like mine where the wealthiest 10% don't live? 

Our new situation is already the situation of many communities across the country, news desserts now lacking one of the main sources of glue that holds a community together. People make a lot of noise about how journalism is important for keeping an eye on officials and bringing to light shenanigans and misbehavior, but local journalism is also hugely important for telling and sharing the stories of the people share community with. The small triumphs, the minor milestones, the rich and varied stories, the slow unrolling of history, and all the other part of the small town narrative that the AP is never going to pick up-- that's what we lose.

Instead we're left with the sloppy ephemera of facebook gossip and other social media baloney. It sucks.

I am sad for all the people who are losing their jobs and all the stories that now will not be told and the huge gap this will create in my county. This is terrible news; ironically, it may be the last terrible news that the newspaper reports. 

More Federal handouts For Charter Schools

Among the various bills thrown at Congress is one that finds new ways to throw public money at charter schools.

HB 7086, the "Equitable Access to School Facilities Act," proposes to send money to charter operators, via the state, to buy and build facilities for schools.

The cost of coming up with a building to put charter schools in might seem like part of the cost of being in the charter school business, but charter operators don't much care for having to fork over the money. In some states, legislators have solved the problem by just allowing charter schools to just take public property. Florida is rolling out a law that lets charters take public school real estate in whole or in part just by saying, "Hey, we want that." It's an extraordinary law, sort of like the opposite of eminent domain, in which the facilities that taxpayers have bought and paid for suddenly belong to a private business. 

HB 7086 wants to propose a similar federal solution, delivering grants to any states that come up with clever ways to gift taxpayer dollars to charters that want to build or buy some facilities, or want to come up with fun ways for charters to grab taxpayer-funded buildings.

The bill comes courtesy of Rep. Juan Ciscomani, an Arizona Republican, who just wants to make sure that every school is a great school. In a press release, he explains:

Sadly, access to appropriate and affordable school buildings for charter schools continues to be one of the biggest barriers to growth. Unlike district schools, charter schools aren’t guaranteed access to school buildings or traditional access to facilities funding sources like local property tax dollars.

Yeah, I was going to open a restaurant, but access to food and cooking supplies was a big barrier to growth, so maybe the taxpayers would like to buy that stuff for me?

Or maybe when you decide to go into a business, you do it with a plan that takes into account the cost of being in that business. Certainly the notion that building and financing facilities is easy peasy for public school systems is disconnected from reality. When West Egg Schools want a new building, they have to convince the taxpayers or else that school board will find themselves voted out of office. 

If you want to get into the charter school biz, you need a plan about how you'll manage the cost of getting into the charter school biz. "Well, get the feds to drain taxpayers to fund it for us," is not such a plan.

Also delighted by the bill is BASIS Educational Ventures, the big honking charter chain that may have the occasional financial issues, but gets a pass on having to display financial transparency. 

The bill does display one of the lies of the charter movement-- that we can finance multiple school systems with the same money that wasn't enough to fund one. Not that I expect any choicers to say so out loud. But no school district (or any other business) responds to tough money times by saying, "I know-- let's build more facilities." The inevitable side effect of choice systems is that taxpayers end up financing redundant facilities and vast amounts of excess capacity, which means taxpayers have to be hit for even more money. Legislators continue to find creative ways to A) ignore the issue and B) legislate more paths by which taxpayer money can be funneled to choice schools.

This bill hasn't died yet. Tell your Congressperson to drive a stake through its heart.

OH: Legislature Considers Extortion and Revenge Against Public Schools

This is just wild.

In Ohio, over 330 local school districts and a bunch of public school parents has sued the state over two of the state's five taxpayer-funded school voucher programs, charging they violate the state constitution. And they've been doing pretty well. 

The assertion has been that the voucher program is unconstitutional because it funds private schools. As the judge wrote in the first round win (this case will inevitably work its way up to the state supreme court) for the plaintiffs:

Defendants argue that EdChoice is not unconstitutional because the State has always funded private schools. Though this may be true, the State may not fund private schools at the expense of public schools or in a manner that undermines its obligation to public education.

Well, Rep. Jamie Callendar has decided that while the case is working through the courts, the legislature should throw some muscle around and try a little extortion and revenge against those school districts.

Callendar is a long-time rep (first elected in 1997, then taking a term-limit break before returning in 2018) who has been a big player in school privatization in Ohio. 

His HB 671 is pretty simple. The state will withhold funding from any school district involved in the lawsuit. The money will go into escrow, and the school district can't have it until they drop their lawsuit.

This is bananapants. For one thing, this is not even clever or subtle extortion. This isn't even "Nice school district. Shame if anything happened to it." It's just flat out, "Let me do what I want, or I'll set fire to your district."

For another thing, this does not really set up a great defense for a case in which a main point is that the legislature, by creating voucher programs, is doing financial damage to public school systems. That brings up the question of the legislation's intent ("Gosh, we didn't mean to hurt public schools with our voucher program!") and this bill really undercuts any protestations by the legislators that they would never, ever try to hurt their beloved public schools.

One can only hope that this bill will die a quick and definitive death, but in Ohio ("The Florida of the Midwest") nothing is certain.  

When the State Takes Over Religion

Tennessee Republicans want the state to join the club of states pushing the Ten Commandments into public school classrooms. It's a move that ought to set up alarm bells in Christian churches all across the state.

House Bill 47 uses the standard dodge for justifying this violation of the First Amendment-- the Ten Commandments sold as a "historically significant" document.

Louisiana has similar dopey law on the books, currently being challenged in court as unconstitutional (which it is). Texas also currently requires to post the decalogue in classrooms, and that's in the courts, too.  Indiana is trying to run a bill through its legislature, though like Tennessee, it's trying to hedge its bets by making the posting of the commandments voluntary rather than mandatory, because maybe if you violate the First Amendment just a little on a local level, it's not quite so unconstitutional (spoiler alert: it's still unconstitutional).

The loophole that states try to fly through is one that suggests that if you teach Bible stuff for a secular purpose, that's okey dokey. Hence the repeated technique of calling to post the commandments next to documents like the Bill of Rights and the Constitution (presumably none of the supporters would be cool with a caption reading "Post THIS violates THAT"). Tennessee's bill just includes the Ten Commandments in a list of other documents.

Violation of the First Amendment? Absolutely. But Christians ought to be alarmed. 

This is the state telling people of faith how best to understand their own sacred texts ("The Ten Commandments handed down by God are just like the Constitution written by humans"). This is, in fact, the state telling everyone what the sacred text actually says (there are, in fact, multiple versions of the Ten Commandments in the Bible, and any state-approved version is also a state-edited version). 

And this is the state playing religious favorites. In Louisiana, the Hindu community said that if we're posting "historically significant" scripture, the Bhagavad Gita belongs up there, too. Expect other religions to do the same (and probably the Satanic Temple, too), requiring someone in state government to declare which religions are or are not "historically significant." In the case of Tennessee, the law's list includes "and other significant documents," meaning the local school board is going to get to make big decisions about both religion and history. There's no way that can end badly.

Folks who applaud these kinds of bills always imagine that their own version of religion will be the winner, that their version of faith will be ascendant. They should develop better imaginations. Giving the state the power to pick winners and losers in the world of religion is just dangerously dumb. It has never ever in history worked out well, which is undoubtedly why the framers were so committed to keeping government out of religion. 

I wish I knew who said this originally, but I'll keep repeating it-- when you mix religion and politics, you get politics. Laws like the ones proposed in Tennessee and Indiana ought to have everyone lined up in opposition, and Christians ought to be in the front of the line. 

WV: Removing Accountability From Private Schools

West Virginia passed a law to allow taxpayer-funded school vouchers in 2021, and they've been tweaking it ever since. They opened it up to more and more students. Consequently, the costs of the program are ballooning: when the law was passed, supporters declared it would cost just $23 million in its first year, and now the estimate for the coming school year is $245 to $315 million. 

With that kind of money on the line, you'd think that the state might want to put some accountability and oversight rules in place. You know-- so the taxpayers know what they're getting for their millions of dollars.

But you would be backwards. Instead, the legislature is considering a bill to reduce accountability for private and religious schools.

SB 216, the Restoring Private Schools Act of 2026, is short and simple. It consists of the current accountability rules for private, parochial or church schools, or schools of a religious order-- with a whole lot of rules crossed out.

What are some of the rules that the legislation proposes to eliminate for private and religious schools? Here's the list of rules slated for erasure:

* The requirement for a minimum number of hours of instruction.

* The requirement to maintain attendance and disease immunization records for each enrolled student.

* The requirement to provide, upon request of county superintendent, a list of the names and addresses of all students in the school between ages 7 and 16.

* The requirement to annually administer a nationally normed standardized test in the same grades as required for public schools. Ditto the requirement to assess the progress of students with special needs.

* Since there's no test requirement, there is also no requirement to provide testing data to parents and the state department of education.

* The requirement to establish curriculum objectives, "the attainment of which will enable students to develop the potential for becoming literate citizens." Scrap also the requirement for an instructional program to meet that goal. 

So under this bill, private schools would not have to have a plan for educating students, would not have to spend a minimum amount of time trying to educate students, and would not have to provide the state with any evidence that they are actually educating students.

The bill does add one bit of new language:

As autonomous entities free of governmental oversight of instruction, private, parochial, or church, schools may implement such measures for instruction and assessment of pupils as leadership of such schools may deem appropriate.

In other words, private religious schools accepting taxpayer-funded vouchers may do whatever the hell they want.  

The bill is sponsored by Senator Craig Hart. Hart calls himself a school teacher, and is mentioned as an agriculture/FFA teacher, though I could find no evidence of where he teaches. He was elected in 2024 after running as a hardcore MAGA. He has pushed for requiring Bibles in school, among other MAGA causes. 

Said Eric Kerns, superintendent of Faith Christian Academy, “It just gives private schools a lot more flexibility in what they would be able to do as far as assessment and attendance and school days. Our accountability is that if people aren’t satisfied with the education they’re receiving, then they go to another private school or back to the public school or they homeschool.” Also known as "No accountability at all." A school is not a taco truck.

As reported by Amelia Ferrell Knisely at West Virginia Watch, at least one legislator tried to put some accountability back in the bill. GOP Sen. Charles Clements tried to put back a nationally-recognized testing requirement and share results with parents. Said Clements

I want to see private schools survive, but I think we have to have guardrails of some sort. There’s a lot of money around, and it’s a way for people to come in and not produce a product we need … I think it just leaves the door open for problems.

Exactly. And his amendment was rejected. The School Choice Committee chair said the school could still use a real test if they wanted to, but the bill would allow more flexibility to choose newer test options; I'm guessing someone is pulling for the Classical Learning Test, the conservative unwoke anti-SAT test. 

Democrat Mike Woelfel tried to put the immunization record back; that was rejected, too.

Look, the Big Standardized Test is a terrible measure of educational quality, and it should be canceled for everyone. But for years the choice crowd promised that once choice was opened up, we'd get a market driven by hard data. Then it turned out that the "hard data" showed that voucher systems were far worse than public schools, and the solution has not been to make the voucher system work better, but to silence any data that reveals a voucher system failure.

The goal is not higher quality education. The goal is public tax dollars for private religious schools-- but only if the private religious schools can remain free of regulation, oversight, or any restrictions that get in the way of their power to discriminate freely against whoever they wish to discriminate against. 

This is not about choice. It's about taxpayer subsidies for private religious schools, and it's about making sure those schools aren't accountable to anyone for how they use that money. It's another iteration of the same argument we've heard across the culture--that the First Amendment should apply because I am not free to fully exercise my religion unless I can unreservedly discriminate against anyone I choose and unless I get taxpayer funding to do it. 

We've been told repeatedly that the school choice bargain is a trade off-- the schools get autonomy in exchange for accountability, but that surely isn't what's being proposed here. If West Virginia is going to throw a mountain of taxpayer money at private schools, those schools should be held accountable. This bill promises the opposite; may it die a well-deserved death. 

Think of the Children

"We're doing this for the children" has been one of the most often-used excuses for bad policy ideas. "The education system puts adult concerns ahead of children's concerns," has become a golden oldie among folks who want to put their own adult goals ahead of children's concerns.

You would imagine, for instance, that putting children's concerns first would mean schools operating with accountability and oversight so that children's right to a quality education are protected. If you believe in choice, then you might want to defend a child's ability to choose by guaranteeing that vouchers provide a full cost of tuition, that schools are forbidden to discriminate against students, and that enough quality control is in place to insure that students can choose safely. Those guards for student concerns are not only not in place, but are actively rejected. 

The real tell is that old favorite, "Children do not belong to the government." That's true as far as it goes, but the problem appears when someone, for instance the Washington Senate Republicans, say the second part of the statement out loud--

Your children do not belong to the government, they belong to you.

Well, no. Your children do not belong to anyone. They are not chattel or domesticated beasts of burden or toasters. They are live human beings, and as such, nobody's property. 

But some "conservative" folks don't see it. These are the folks who are already working from a world view that says some people are more valuable, more deserving of power and wealth than others, and way too often for them, children are another brand of others, useful only as potential future Correct Believers or meat widgets. 

We have to ban books because being exposed to any mention of sex, however slight, might damage their tender psyches. We can't teach about slavery because it might make the white kids feel bad (though couldn't the white kids choose to identify with the white folks who stood up against slavery). Children are the reason that certain adults should be allowed to narrowly confine what can and cannot be taught. That way they can grow up to be the kind of adults that current adults desire them to be.

Oh, and when it comes to life-saving vaccinations, it's more important to honor the vaccine-averse desires of adults than protect the health of the children.

They can never just say, "You should stop doing that because I don't like it." No, they're only speaking up in order to save the children.

Children are also useful as bargaining chips and leverage.

Every teacher who belongs to a union that had to throw its weight around has heard the argument. You can't strike, teachers, or even just work to contract, because that would hurt the students. Would it hurt the students to go to a school that has reduced resources, a disrespected staff, and a hiring policy of "If you can't find a decent teaching job anywhere else, settle for us here at Lowest Bidder School District"? It surely would. But maybe we can guilt the staff into shutting up about it.

Or take the new Heritage Foundation report, Saving America by Saving the Family, which includes the whole "desires of adults over the needs of children" shtick, and then goes on to spend 164 pages explaining how government should not meet the needs of children unless the desires of adult conservatives are met by the children's parents. 

Bruce Lesley (First Focus on Children) has an outstanding post breaking down this report, but we'll touch on some highlights here. For instance, the part where they note that the income loss that hits poor parents on the birth of a child-- but you can't give poor parents more money to cover that period because it would be "akin to a guaranteed basic income that would discourage work."

The Heritage report plainly gets that "early investments in children have high returns," yet they spend time explaining why certain people who make The Wrong Choices shouldn't benefit from those investments. Does that put adult concerns ahead of children's needs? Of course it does, but hey, the kids should have thought of that before they chose parents who didn't match the Heritage ideas of proper parenting. (Lesley suggests that Heritage is trying to do the very sort of social engineering that they often rail against, but I'd bet they simply see themselves as trying to return society to its proper factory settings.)

This is not a new argument. We are the lousiest nation in the world for parental leave, and the reason why isn't particularly complicated-- the needs of employers rank higher than the needs of babies. 

But we're about to see children used as a prop for yet another campaign. Meet Greater Than, a new campaign that declares "Real progress means putting children's needs ahead of adult desires." Doesn't that sound excellent? Can you guess what the real goal of this new campaign is? Here's a paragraph's worth of a hint from their website:

When marriage was redefined in 2015, parenthood was too. Once husbands and wives became optional, mothers and fathers became replaceable. But for a child, their mother and father are never optional, they are essential. Children need both a mother and a father to provide stability, guidance, and the unique love only a man and woman can give. No adult desire or ideology can change that.

 Yup. The folks who want to roll back Obergefell, the Supreme Court decision that recognized same-gender marriage, are proud to declare "We are the Defenders of Children." Their core allies include Focus on the Family, American Family Association, Colson Center, Family Research Council and Them Before Us. They have other allies on the national and state level. I noticed them because of an announcement that they were being joined by Pennsylvania Family Institute, the group that has worked hard to get anti-LGBTQ policies into schools. Said Randall Wenger, the PFI attorney who has personally worked to make the lives of LGBTQ children more difficult and to thwart the best intentions of their supportive parents:

I'm part of Greater Than because, since Obergefell, our laws have increasingly treated family as an abstract idea rather than a lived reality for children. We've experimented with new definitions while drifting away from the one model that has consistently supported human flourishing-- a child raised by his or her mother and father. Greater Than brings that essential truth back into focus.

The list just keeps getting longer. We have to defund, dismantle, and replace public education in order to save the children. We have to carefully control what children see and hear in order to save them. We have to create a multi-tiered education system to save the children. We have to force folks to maintain traditional families to save the children. We have to stamp out gay marriage to save the children.  

And yet. As amazing as that list is, I am even more amazed by the things that don't make it onto the Save The Children list. 

We don't have to require parental leave that insures parents are right there for the earliest months (or even years) of the child's life. We don't have to require vaccinations whether parents want them or not. We don't have to work to provide the economic supports and systems that help a young couple raise a child. We don't have to make child care affordable for parents. And we certainly don't have to direct Defense Department-sized funding and resources to make public schools fully capable delivery systems for excellent education and other supports. 

It's absolutely true-- we need to be very careful about putting what adults want ahead of what children need. But if you want to warn me about this issue, maybe show me some sign that you are part of the solution and not part of the problem. 

ICYMI: Arctic Edition (2/1)

Punxsutawney Phil will be lucky to even get out of his hole tomorrow, let alone see a shadow. Hope you are staying warm wherever you are. It has been a cold, ugly week, and folks are writing about many things besides education, and Lord knows there are many aspects of the current state of our nation that demand our attention. But there have been many pieces of education news happening in the background, and the mission here at the Institute is to keep some focus on them. So here we go with this week's reading list.

Editorial: Snub of Linda McMahon puts Fairfield parents on right side of history

Linda McMahon was canceled in Connecticut. Her History Rocks tour was supposed to stop at an elementary school in Fairfield. Parents said they'd rather not. The Hearst Connecticut Media Editorial Board says the parents got it right. 

DeSantis seeks to supplement Florida school vouchers with federal tax plan

Jeffrey Solochek at the Tampa Bay Times reports that DeSantis is not only opting in on federal vouchers, but wants to pile them on top of Florida's state vouchers so Florida parents can double dip. 

The Fault Line in American politics?

Nancy Flanagan considers a stunning little bar graph showing how states' education data lines up with its voting habits.

Snow Day

Audrey Watters considers snow days and, as always, a host of useful links to articles.

I try to answer the "So what?" question

Stephen Dyer has been prying apart the details of Ohio's messed-up funding system. Now he takes a step back to look at the whole picture, and possible solutions.

Trump Drops DEI Case Appeal. Is He Really Giving Up?

Jan Resseger looks at some of the journalist reactions to the regime's abandonment of their appeal over that anti-CEI Dear Colleague letter. 

After almost two-year wait, education advocates call on Supreme Court to rule on Leandro

The Leandro case in North Carolina is one of the very first cases in which the state was sued to force proper funding of education. It is also a demonstration of how plaintiffs can win such a case, resulting in the state doing not a damn thing for decades. So maybe the court can rule on it some more? James Farrell at WFAE is reporting.

Two School Districts Sue, Claiming Alaska Is Failing Its Constitutional Obligation to Fund Public Education

Alaska is getting its own version of the Leandro case. Good luck with that. Emily Schwing has the details at ProPublica.

State Board of Education poised to require Bible readings for public school students

We're talking Texas, where the state is getting ready to set a whole list of required readings that are very white and male and which include a bunch of Bible stuff. Erin Davis at Spectrum Local News.

Reynolds introduces bill supporting public charter schools as demand increases

Remember when one of the selling points of charters was that they would save taxpayers money by being more efficient and less expensive. Well, in a move that surprises nobody who was paying attention, the governor of Iowa now announces that charters are being picked on because they don't get all the taxpayer dollars that a public school gets.

Virginia Lawmakers Consider Standards for Private School Coupon Schemes

Andy Spears reports that Virginia might actually be preparing to resist federal school vouchers.

Moving Special Ed to HHS Will Treat It Like a Medical Problem. It’s Not

Chantal Hinds and Kings Floyd make the argument that special education should not be the purview of Health and Human Services. Honestly, the argument that RFK Jr shouldn't be in charge of anything at all should be sufficient, but if you want some more reasoning, this article at The 74 has you covered.

Senate Republicans fast-track universal open enrollment bill to House; could become law in weeks

The New Hampshire legislature is fast-tracking a bill to create open enrollment. Ethan Dewitt reports for New Hampshire Bulletin.

Trump administration finds California’s ban on ‘forced outing’ of students violates federal law

Because the feds are all for forced outing of LGBTQ students to their families. Eric He at Politico.

The Supreme Court will decide whether to turn teachers into informants against their students

That issue may be decided by the Supreme Court. Ian Millhiser provides good information on the case. the context, and the background. 

To avoid accusations of AI cheating, college students are turning to AI

Well, you knew this was coming. It's the AI-powered cheating arms race. Tyler Kingkade reports for NBC News.

At Forbes.com this week, I took a look at Bernie Sanders' response to the federal voucher program.

This week's music is from a little-remembered film. Dr. Seuss wrote the movie (The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T) and it did not turn out nearly as well as one might have hoped, but it still has delirious production design and a set of nifty songs. Hans Conried sings this one.

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