USED Has A New ABC Dream (But with cool charts)

A recent policy brief from the U.S. Department of Education carries the not-very-poetic title "Eliminating Educator Shortages through Increasing Educator Diversity and Addressing High-need Shortage Areas." It offers much of the same old same, but it includes one feature that makes it a must-bookmark.

What it addresses is rather old news, though it rightfully reminds us that the teacher exodus is not strictly a COVID thing, but an old thing that COVID made worse.

Well before the COVID-19 pandemic, low wages in the education profession, the high costs of educator preparation, inequitable funding practices, poor working conditions, and other factors contributed to a decline in new educators entering the field and high rates of educator attrition, particularly in schools serving large concentrations of students from low-income backgrounds and students of color.

The department's response is some bureaucratic programmy "call to action" thing called "Raise the Bar: Lead the World," 

Raising the bar means recognizing that our nation already has what it takes to continue leading the world—if we deliver a comprehensive, rigorous education for every student; boldly improve conditions for learning; and ensure every student has a pathway to multilingualism and to college and careers.

When the bar is raised in education, all our nation's students will build the skills to succeed inside and outside of school. Our students will reach new heights in the classroom, in their careers, and in their enriched lives and communities, making a positive difference in the world, for generations to come.

Which is a well-massaged piece of verbage. And it comes with goals cleverly packaged as an alphabetic mnemonic-- ABC, Really.

A is for Achieve academic excellence. That means "accelerate learning for every student" and get those "student achievement levels" (aka Big Standardized Test scores) up to higher than pre-pandemic levels, plus closing opportunity gaps. Also, "develop a comprehensive and rigorous education for every student with high-quality instruction that prepares them to be active, engaged, and lifelong learners." The "also" portion is somehow both aspirational and familiar, like someone asked Chat-GPT to write a summary of every school district vision statement. The first part? Yes, we'll accelerate learning, because everyone already knew exactly how to teach more, faster, but they just weren't in the mood. Closing opportunity gaps? Great goal that nobody has figured out how to accomplish in decades.

Each of these goals has a link to another page of strategies, likewise aspirational jargon.

B is for Boldly improve learning conditions. First goal here is to eliminate the educator "shortage" by "ensuring that schools are appropriately staffed, paying educators competitively, and strengthening pathways into the profession." Sigh. The first part is a tautology-- we will reduce the teaching shortage by making sure we aren't short of teachers. The other two are hard-to-impossible to achieve from the federal level, and in fact the details use the verb "support." 

Second goal is to increase school-based health services for students. Yes, that would be good.

C is for Create pathways for global engagement. This boils down to "make all students multilingual" and is, well--

Ensure every student has a path to postsecondary education and training, including by establishing and scaling innovative systems of college and career pathways that integrate high schools, colleges, careers, and communities and lead to students earning industry-recognized credentials and securing in-demand jobs.

So, college and career ready to be useful meat widgets. Okay, then.

So what is so unmissable about this particular page? Data and charts.

One chart allows you to select a state and see how race/ethnicity break for teachers and K-12 students. I can quickly see that in Illinois, 82% of classroom teachers are white, but only 46% of students are; I can also see that there are more Hispanic/Latino students than Black in the state. In Texas only 53% of classroom teachers are white, but only 26% of students are (and 53% are Hispanic/Latino). California? Students are 56% Hispanic/Latino; classroom teachers are 26%. In addition, this chart breaks down Education Preparation Program enrollment--are there teachers of color in the pipeline (in Texas, yes; in Vermont, no)?. I could go on--this is fascinating and the visual is very easy to take in.

Next we get a chart that breaks down classroom teachers, paraprofessionals, and school leaders. Texas shows only 33% of paraprofessionals are white, and only 49% of school leaders. States like New Hampshire and Maine are just as white as you think they are. 

The third chart breaks down student race/ethnicity within the EPP pipeline by program (traditional, alternative IHE based, alternative other). In Pennsylvania, alternative non-IHE programs have a far higher percentage of future teachers of color; in Texas, it's traditional programs that have a higher percentage of TOC.

Finally, a graphic that shows which teacher specialty areas are hurting in how many states. No surprise-- special ed positions are struggling in 45 states, followed by math and science at 37 each. You can also look state by state to see who's having trouble finding what. 

These charts give very broad strokes, which in many states hides some extreme differences between rural and urban districts, but it's still a quick, clear source of data, most of it from within just the last year or two. You can read through the department saying more or less the right things, or you can just skip to the cool charts and graphs to see what things look like in any state you're interested in.

Secular Education Is Not Religious Persecution

When I was teaching, I did not serve lunch during my class. None of the teachers in the building did. That does not mean that we forbid our students to eat any lunch at all during the appointed time. It doesn't mean that we were somehow suggesting that food is a bad idea, that they would be wrong to eat. It just means we left that part of their life empty and unclaimed, available to be filled by them at the proper time with the food of their own choosing. We can talk about food, about how it operates in society, maybe even talk about our personal preferences. But none of that meant I was going to serve up my preferred dish and demand they eat it. 

When I was teaching, I did not provide matchmaking services for my students. I did not fix them up with classmates or try to steer them to what I judged to be appropriate life partners. That does not mean I was suggesting that they should never date or enter a relationship with anyone ever. It just means that that particular portion of their life was something I left alone, for them to address, or not, as they wished in their own time and their own way. 

The repeated complaint from certain sorts of christianist advocates is that secular education-- education that takes place on the state side of the church and state wall-- somehow pushes "atheism as a state-sponsored religion."

That's baloney.

Secular education, like my lunch-free and non-matchmaking classroom, is education that simply leaves a space for students and their families to fill as they think is best. 

We might discuss religion (as a teacher of US literature, I couldn't avoid it), but as a secular educator, it was never, ever my job to suggest or require that a particular set of religious beliefs are correct. It was never my job to serve up my own faith for them to consume, willing or otherwise. That space, that religious faith-based part of their being, was (like many other personal spaces) theirs to fill as they saw fit. The absence of religion does not mean the presence of atheism.

Why do christianists insist that this sort of secular education is such a terrible threat to religion, some sort of government-enforced atheism?

A generous explanation would be simply that they simply believe so strongly in the correctness of their faith that they can't help but want to push it on others. That they see those who believe incorrectly as reckless drivers racing full bore for the edge of a cliff, and they can't just stand by and let that happen.

Or maybe it's a belief in a collectivist fate, the notion that a nation's citizens must follow the proper god in the proper way or suffer a disastrous national fate. A sort of spiritual socialism.

Or the less generous explanation, which is that they enjoy the power of being the dominant cultural and religious group and they are scared and angry in their bones about losing all that. Even less generous--we're talking about christianists who believe that freedom to exercise their religion must involve freely discriminating against and condemning all those with whom they disagree.

But what I find most striking about all of these is that underlying them is a lack of faith in their faith. These are followers of a tiny god, a god who depends so heavily on having followers train up more believers that this god could not survive without them. Schools should train young believers and fill that space for faith constantly and completely because... what? Because if schools don't do that, young folks would naturally not take to the True Faith? We need to enforce official school prayer and Bible reading because if we didn't, students would never pray nor read the Bible on their own? Because God's authority and appeal are so limited that a non-believing third grade teacher can overpower them?

It strikes me as a meager faith, a faith that needs human-exercised authoritarianism to survive, as if somehow the majesty and grace of God are inadequate to overcome human obstacles. 

Which is an even more problematic idea since a secular, non-sectarian school presents the exact opposite of obstacles to faith. Secular schooling, following the First Amendment, simply doesn't endorse any particular faith, leaving that space open and ready to be filled as the student chooses to fill it in whatever time and manner they choose. It may just be my own faith talking, but I think that space will be best filled by use of heart and mind and free will with which God gifted them, and not by force-feeding from the hands of humans.

PA: Central Bucks Super Gets Solid Gold Parachute

Since he was hired by them in early 2021, Superintendent Adam Lucabaugh has backed the ultra-right majority of the Central Bucks school board. Now that the winds have changed, they are set to reward his loyalty as their last act.

Central Bucks has drawn national attention for implementing a wave of conservative policies. They instituted a book banning policy, aided by the Independence Law Firm, the legal arm of the Pennsylvania Family Institute ("Our goal is for Pennsylvania to be a place where God is honored, religious freedom flourishes, families thrive, and life is cherished.") They banned pride flags. They suspended a teacher who defended LGBTQ students. They implemented a policy that required the school to out LGBTQ students with a "gender identification procedure". No student name changes allowed without a note from home. Both the ACLU and the U.S. Department of Education came after the district for creating a hostile environment for LGBTQ students-- so they hired a noted anti-LGBTQ lawyer to do an internal investigation; the resulting report might not have been entirely forthcoming (but it was expensive).

And Superintendent Lucabaugh has backed them every step of the way, and they thanked it for him handsomely-- just this summer they boosted his salary from $229,500 to $315,000, making him the second highest paid superintendent in the state (behind Philly), as well as extending his contract to 2028.

Then Central Bucks became one of the school boards to see their Moms for Liberty style board majority obliterated. 

This morning Jo Ciavaglia at the Bucks County Courier Times broke the latest news-- Lucabaugh has suddenly resigned. 

It seems safe to predict that the new board will not be composed of Lucabaugh fans. But that board won't be seated until December 4. Until then, the old board is in place, and they have fashioned a solid gold parachute for their favorite superintendent. 

The proposal is a $630,000 severance package, which would mean that Lucabaugh would score over a million dollars for two years of work. Not too shabby.

But to sweeten the pot, the board is also prepared to hire him as a "consultant" to stick around till the end of November (his resignation will be effective tonight, the 14th) for another ten grand.

The nine page separation agreement spells out some details of that $630K price tag. Lucabaugh will be paid $32,105.81 for 26.5 days of unused vacation. He'll also get $30.288.50 for 25 unused sick days. If that seems sweet, well, there's more.

Lucabaugh agrees to forfeit 41 of his accumulated sick leave of 235 sick days, "saving the district $49,673.14," in exchange for which, the district will pay him $235,038.76 for the rest of the sick days. Also, pay for his unused personal and administrative emergency days.

Oh, and medical benefits for him and his family through June of 2024. 

There's a mutually agreed upon press release, which everyone agrees not to contradict, which frames this as a mutual decision to separate. It says, in part of the separation:

This will allow the new School Board, which will be seated on December 4, 2023, to select a new superintendent for the School District. It will also allow Dr. Lucabaugh to pursue other opportunities in the educational arena. The School District wants to thank Dr. Lucabaugh for the extraordinary leadership he has provided through very difficult and contentious times. He always stayed above the fray and focused upon the educational mission of the School District notwithstanding other distractions that existed. The Central Bucks community has profited from his leadership and the School District hopes his successor will be able to maintain the high standards that he has established.

I'll bet there are more than a few teachers who would love to see such a generous handling of their resignations. 

FL: More Meat Widgets Now

Blogging at Bridge To Tomorrow, a blog focused on "a strong K-20 pipeline for physical scientists and engineers," Paul Cottle noticed something about the latest output from a semi-obscure feature of the oversight group for Florida's university system. The Board of Governor's regularly adopts a list of Programs of Strategic Emphasis, and Cottle noticed that something has changed.

Prior to this week, the Programs of Strategic Emphasis list included a broad range of degree programs in STEM fields and other fields of particular interest to the state, including teaching degrees and certain business degrees like accounting. The idea was to encourage universities to educate students in fields where they could easily find jobs after graduation, regardless of where those jobs were.

That is no longer true.

Now the list is driven by the imperative to supply “critical talent to support Florida’s economy”. The list was driven primarily by workforce demand data from within the State of Florida. Giving students opportunities to compete in national and international job markets is no longer valued.

Being able to find gainful employment has always been important for young humans, but there is a difference between putting student needs first and prioritizing the demand of business for more meat widgets. While those two needs will always be related, they also include a basic conflict. When a business wants to hire ten twiddle masters, it's in the business's interest for State U to turn out 100 people with twiddle mastery degrees, but that means that 90 of those grads are going to be stuck. 

The PSE list, according to the state's power point, provides students with a "positive return on investment" for the degree and supplies Florida with "critical talent to support Florida's economy." This is higher education as advanced vocational training. And if that's the aim of college, then we can expect the same attitude toward K-12.  And while that slide at least pays lip service to students, another slide lists the key stakeholders whose "input" was incorporated-- "Staff from the Governor’s office, legislature, universities, key agencies, & the private sector." 

Cottle provides one stark example of whose priorities are being emphasized here:

One example makes the impact of this shift abundantly clear. According to the New York Fed, as of February 2023 the college major with the highest early- and mid-career median wages nationally was chemical engineering. But Florida doesn’t have large chemical companies like Texas, Louisiana and other states do, so chemical engineering is not in the new Programs of Strategic Emphasis list. So since chemical engineering is not important to Florida’s businesses, it should not be important to Florida’s universities.

Florida apparently intends to address its meat widget shortage by reducing students' ability to look for work elsewhere. But that fits, as Florida is among the states looking for ways to roll back child labor laws, because businesses need meat widgets to get to work as soon as possible, so let's not worry about their wants, needs, safety, etc. 

I wish this weren't a harbinger of things to come, but it sure looks like one. Narrowing education to simple job preparation. Undoing child labor laws. Insisting that people ought to be getting married and making more babies. Bitching about how people don't want to work these days. Even stout resistance to a universal health care system that would decouple health care from employment. All fit with news of and panic about a labor shortage, which may be inevitable just because Boomers are getting old. But business needs meat widgets, preferably easily replaced and therefor cheap ones. And as with most terrible things, Florida is out there in front.

OH: Foxes in Charge of Henhouses

Ohio has become a prime exhibit in another version of public school takeover, and it's already showing how corrupt that version can be.

Education privatizers all face the same basic problem--their policies are not popular with actual citizens, who won't vote for them. So pro-privatization politicians have to circumvent that darned democracy thing.

Ohio has been working hard at this, cementing a heavily gerrymandered legislature that is not particularly interested in the will of the people Exhibit A: the voters may have enshrined abortion rights, but the GOP legislatures is working hard to somehow undo that and keep it from happening.

In this approach, you just keep taking power away from any part of the government that might not do as you wish. In Ohio's case, that has meant commandeering the Department of Education and putting it directly under the governor's control. The old board included 11 elected members (the governor got to appoint 8), and that's just too much democracy for Governor DeWine.

The new department is now the Department of Education and Workforce (because, you know, one of the primary purposes of public education is to crank out meat widgets for business), and DeWine has made his choice to head up this new department. And what a choice it is.

Meet Steve Dackin.

Dackin has been a district-level school administrator for districts. In 2015 he was put on the board of KnowledgeWorks, a big Gates-funded reformy monstrosity ("I had the opportunity of working with EDWorks and KnowledgeWorks at a local level, and am looking forward to sharing those experiences as a member of the board of directors.")  He's not there now. 

But his most infamous activity comes from his time on the state board of education. He was vice-president and in charge of developing a job search for the next state superintendent. After he had determined what the best candidate should look like, he resigned from the board and applied for the job. Then he got the job. Then a large number of Ohioans raised their eyebrows so hard that Lake Erie's water level rose ten inches. So after less than a month on the job, Dackin resigned, citing that "concerns have been raised" and he didn't want questions about "revolving doors" to distract "from the important work ahead for schools, educators, and especially children." Setting aside the prediction of children having important work ahead, the resignation seemed pretty clear cut.

But speaking of revolving doors-- after taking one for the team, Dackin may get to run the newly commandeered department for DeWine. It is one of the ever-amazing features of the reformster world-- it doesn't seem possible to ever screw up badly enough that you actually lose your upwardly mobile career. 

ICYMI: My Mom's Birthday Edition (11/12)

Wow, this week was a lot for a lot of folks, but here at the Institute it was the week my mother turned 90, so that was pretty exciting. She's had a challenging couple of years, but she still does her volunteer work, still sends cards to everyone for everything, and still gets on the floor to play with her youngest descendants. She's got a good heart and makes the world a better place, and this week was a reminder that we can always use a few more people like that. Lots to read--and remember, it's a lot harder to get things out and about on social media these days, so you can help by pushing out things that you think are worthy of attention.

Moms for Liberty members call the cops on Florida librarians

Adam Laats called this one a while ago--an organization that spreads like M4L has will inevitably end up empowering some over-the-top wingnuts who will proceed to make the brand look really bad. Judd Legum at Popular Information dug out this story of an attempt to get a librarian arrested for letting a 17 year old check out a fantasy book about gargoyles.

Moms For Liberty And The Dominionist Assault On America’s ‘Education Mountain’

Jennifer Cohn and the folks at the Bucks County Beacon have been right in the thick of things this week, connecting lots of dots.

Does Speaker Johnson really believe there’s no separation between church and state?

And if you're not really up on dominionism, it's getting time to study up, because you're going to hear the term more and more.

A Billionaire Megadonor Is Behind the Bill to Weaken Florida’s Child Labor Laws

Let's get those young 'uns back to work (and out of school). The wing of the reformster movement that is mostly pre-occupied with getting more cheap meat widgets for employers is, of course, active in Florida. Jason Garcia and Jordan Zakarin found some billionaire fingerprints on the Florida bill.

As Wyoming voters lose faith in churches, politics is the new religion

Ryan Burge is the expert used by the authors of The Great Dechurching, and here he's part of a piece by Kerry Drake that tracks a curious phenomenon--people who act out politically on the religious right, even as they don't actually set foot in church.

Pro-Trump Church Burns Pride Flags at Massive Bonfire

I missed this story when it ran in Newsweek a month ago. The church's name? Rod of Iron Ministries. Really. I suppose it's more subtle than The Church of The Mighty Penis, but it sure suggests that there are some other issues at play here.

The Numbers Don’t Lie: Voters Give Pennridge Democrats A Mandate For Change In The School District

Pennridge is a Bucks County district that has been steered far to the right by conservative members (this is the place that hired Hillsdale's Jordan Adams to dewokify their curriculum). But that conservative slate lost hard this week. Jenny Stephens has some of the details for the Bucks County Beacon.

Youngkin’s disastrous night shows the right’s culture war has fizzled

Greg Sargent at the Washington Post looks at Virginia. Quotes a Dem consultant with this great line: It turns out that talking endlessly about critical race theory is not a successful way to win critical races.

‘Moms for Liberty’ endorsed candidates fail to win seats in Linn Mar school board election

Here are the Moms losing out in Iowa in another supposed-to-be-a-slam-dunk race. The article's really short, but still good news.

Mat-Su Moms for Liberty’s Impact on Candidate Wins: Not Even a Participation Trophy

A look at how M4L played their hand in Alaska's MAGA country. 

NC State Superintendent Catherine Truitt refuses to disclose “outside counsel” in controversial charter school decision

They couldn't get their charter approved, so they turned to Truitt, who consulted some mystery lawyers and discovered that the company (that donated to her campaign) should get an official okay. Seems totally legit. Justin Parmenter digs in.

Poisoned Water in Missouri Public Schools? Let The Kids Eat Cake.

Jess Piper has a conversation with a wealthy charter fan who figures that school choice is the perfect solution to lead-laced water in public schools. Because reasons.

The Plight of the Poorest Students in America’s Public Schools Is Hidden in Plain Sight

Jan Resseger... well, I won't say digs, because, as she points out, you don't exactly have to dive deep to see the problems.

Ohio GOP won't let democracy stand in the way of imposing their religion as law!

A reminder that these days, a certain brand of politician does not consider voting results a final word on anything. Ohio voted for women's health care rights; it remains to be seen if Ohio's GOP will let those results actually take effect.

Nonbinary teacher at Florida school fired for using 'Mx.' as courtesy title

Of course it's Florida. USA Today adds one more item for your "dumb reasons teachers can be fired" file.

Believe it or not, Generation Z prefers print books over digital, study reveals

This may or may not be news. For years, when I gave students links to readings on line, their first step was to print them out. But here's further evidence that the e-book revolution isn't coming.

How to Define Democrats for Education Reform Using Two Quotes from Democrats for Education Reform

Maurice Cunningham lays out why DFER isn't exactly what they pretend to be.

It’s Fall and I Have A Mild Case of Teacher Brain

Anne Lutz Fernandez talks about the effects of stress on the teacher brain, and what schools could do about it.

Andreessen Horowitz would like everyone to stop talking about AI's copyright issues, please

Turns out generative big language "artificial intelligence" wouldn't be profitable if developers had to actually pay for all the writing they steal borrow to "train" the algorithm.

I was busy at Forbes this week:

* Illinois becomes the first state to undo its voucher program

* Let's take yet another look at competency based learning

* Two key districts in Pennsylvania get de-MAGA-fied

I invite you to join me on substack, where you get regular emails that cover everything new I've cranked out along with old faves from the blog. It's free and it's easy and it's not subject to billionaire whims (so far). 

A Handy Guide To Privatizers

Maurice Cunningham retired in 2021 from an associate professor of political science post at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. He is an expert in the special art of tracking dark money and political connections, and his book Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization is a must read for anyone who wants to make sense of how the wealthy stage manage attempts to privatize public education.

Now Cunningham has added another useful guide for folks trying to make sense of this. For the Network for Public Education, Cunningham has created A Citizen's Guide to School Privatization. It's a trim 18 pages packed with lots of information about the money and the organizations working to dismantle public education.

The guide highlights some well known names like the various arms of the Kochtopus and also draws some attention to the under-noticed Council for National Policy. There are regional players here, and that matters--remember that Betsy DeVos was long thought of as just Michigan's problem. So the Wilks of Texas, the Uihleins of Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania's Jeffrey Yass deserve attention even they seem to be operating far away from you.

Cunningham also highlights some of the activist groups (Moms for Liberty is not the only one out there), and some state-level privatization activist groups, like Awake Illinois, Coalition for TJ, Denver Families Action, Idaho Freedom Foundation. And he covers both the conservative side and the neoliberal-dressed-up-as-lefties side.

He offers these words of warning:

Chaos is the product. It’s a lot easier to break something than to build something or to improve upon it.

The guide is useful not only for providing information about these various groups, but for connecting the dots as well. These kinds of connections are important; these days many privatization efforts operate on a local level, and as local folks push back they can feel as if they are alone and isolated when, in fact, the same kinds of battles are going on in other communities across the country. You aren't alone.

The guide is also meant to be dynamic. That is, if you know of another organization that ought to be in the guide, it can be updated to include new information. A handy feature for a guide like this, as groups pop up regularly. Expect to see new configurations in districts that were recently flipped to public school supporting boards; privatizers aren't going to give up or go away, but they may hatch yet another group to implement their newest strategy. Privatizers are loaded with resources; it's only fair that citizens have access to more information to help them recognize the threat to public education when it appears.