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Stark Contrast

Trump is “all in” on school privatization, Harris stands with public schools

As Donald Trump and Kamala Harris prepare to debate tonight, the education agenda of each candidate deserves a look.

NPR digs in to some key issues, and the differences are stark.

School privatization, for example:

First, he’s [Trump] calling for universal school choice. This would, in theory, take public dollars normally spent on a child’s public education and give them directly to parents to spend at whatever school they want, whether it’s public, private or homeschooling at the kitchen table.

By contrast:

Harris has been an outspoken supporter of public education and has been courting educators’ support.

Democrats, on the other hand, made clear in their 2024 platform that they’re against any effort that could weaken the nation’s public schools. “We oppose the use of private-school vouchers, tuition tax credits, opportunity scholarships, and other schemes that divert taxpayer-funded resources away from public education. Public tax dollars should never be used to discriminate.”

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42%

Stress and demands of teaching make the job not “worth it”

Teacher pay and support are not keeping up with the demands of the job, according to a recent report.

But also, challenges addressing student mental health. Challenges addressing cell phone use. Challenges addressing the behavioral and mental health challenges created by cell phone use.

The share of teachers who say the stress and disappointment of the job are “worth it” has fallen to 42%, which is 21 points lower than other college-educated workers, according to a poll by Rand, a nonprofit think tank. As recently as 2018, over 70% of teachers said the stress was worth it.

That’s a pretty rapid decline – and one that has accelerated post-COVID.

Policymakers aren’t exactly rushing in with solutions, either.

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Virtual Charter Schools: Actually Useless

PA study demonstrates harms of virtual charters

Peter Greene takes a look at research out of Pennsylvania on virtual charter schools. The results are not great. At all.

Last year, research showed problems even beyond the actual years of schooling. “Virtual Charter Students Have Worse Labor Market Outcomes as Young Adults,” a 2023 working paper from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, showed a correlation with several undesirable outcomes:

“Virtual charter students have substantially worse high school graduation rates, college enrollment rates, bachelor’s degree attainment, employment rates, and earnings than students in traditional public schools.”

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Photo by freestocks.org on Pexels.com

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Indiana Voucher Madness

A warning about expanding school voucher schemes

As Gov. Bill Lee and his legislative allies continue to push expansion of Tennessee’s school voucher program, warnings come pouring in from other states.

The latest bad news about vouchers comes from Indiana, where the costs of that state’s program have ballooned by 263% over a period of five years.

” . . . the cost is projected to grow 263 percent in just five years. This expansion is predicted to force public school districts to either make severe cuts or ask taxpayers for more money through public referendums.”

This was warned about long ago:

The Voucher School District
Gov. Bill Lee promoting school privatization

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Yes, It’s the Guns

An educator asks us to dig deeper

In the wake of the latest school shooting, educator and blogger Peter Greene asks us to consider some things.

First, it IS the guns.

Second, there’s more.

It’s the guns. It has always been the guns. It’s the worship of a distorted view of the Second Amendment that says your right to own the means of killing other humans matters more than my child’s right not to be killed. Your pursuit of happiness beats my life and liberty. Heck, just last week, a conservative federal district judge ruled that there’s a Second Amendment right to own a machine gun. We’re about to mark the anniversary of 9/11, an event so shocking that we still tightly regulate riding on an airplane. 

Greene adds that the heat of our rhetoric is also problematic:

I have to believe that it’s past time to look hard at our own culture. It’s not just that the past fifteen or so years have seen the country more divided and polarized. It’s how some of us talk about that polarization.

We’re going to destroy the opposition, obliterate them, use power and force to dominate them and silence them, drive them out of the public arena. So many of our conflicts are discussed with the language of violence and war. This is not new, but the intensity and frequency is.

He notes:

We don’t talk about how to get along with people that we think are wrong. We talk about how to wipe them out.

And if you are young, it has been like this for most of your life. 

It’s hard to argue with his conclusion.

It’s also hard to argue that policymakers make kids a priority.

Not only do we continue to see lack of action on gun violence, but we also see policymakers who fail to invest in schools – and in the teachers in those schools.

We see a crisis in the Department of Children’s Services that continues to fester.

We see a failure to provide free meals at school to all kids, every day.

Our policies indicate our priorities – and for policymakers in Tennessee and in many parts of the country, kids just aren’t a priority.

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16%

That’s the percentage of teachers who would encourage someone else to enter the profession

A recent story indicates that the long-running and persistent teacher shortage is not improving.

In fact, one recent survey of teachers found this disturbing stat:

Today, only 16% of teachers said they’d recommend the profession to others

This comes just two years after a survey of teachers that indicated most don’t want their own children to enter the teaching profession:

Just 37% of respondents in the national, random-sample survey would want a child of theirs to become a public school teacher in their community.

This pair of data points paints a disturbing story: Teachers are overwhelmed and no longer see the job as one they’d wish on someone else.

In fact, not only are teachers actively leaving the profession, but school systems are also seeing a shortage of qualified applicants to replace them.

Teachers cite two primary reasons for the crisis: lack of support and low pay.

The Teacher Shortage Crisis is Here

Policymakers in Tennessee and across the nation have been warned about this problem for years. And have done and continue to do little to address it.

It’s a policy choice. And it says making investments in public schools – and by extension, the kids who attend them – is not worth it.

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Swamped

Schwinn loses Florida job in spending scandal

Former Nebraska U.S. Senator Ben Sasse recently resigned his position as President of the University of Florida amid a spending scandal. Among the allegations are increased travel spending and hiring associates who worked remotely – in Nebraska, DC, and Nashville, among other locations.

That Nashville hire? Former TN Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn.

WUSF reports:

UF also disclosed this week that – since Sasse’s resignation – it has terminated the jobs of four of six of the employees whose travel records it provided, and a fifth resigned.

It also fired at least one other senior Republican appointee by Sasse, Penny Schwinn, who had been allowed to work as vice president for K-12 education from her home in Tennessee for a salary of $367,500. It agreed to pay her three months’ salary, or about $92,000, when it fired her, effective July 31. Schwinn was the former Republican commissioner of education for Tennessee.

It’s not the first time Schwinn has experienced travel troubles:

Frequent Flyer?

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On Charter School Accountability

Once opened, charter schools are rarely closed

Part of the supposed allure of charter schools is that they are held accountable. Some proponents even suggest they have more accountability than traditional public schools. After all, based on poor performance, a school board or charter authorizer can close a charter school.

Except that rarely happens.

Instead, as Peter Greene points out with an example from Pennsylvania, once opened, charter schools are rarely forced to close. And, even if an authorizer does take action to close the school, legal battles can keep a school open for years.

The charter system was sold with the idea that charters would be accountable to authorizers, that they would have to earn the right to operate and continue earning it to maintain that operation. The Franklin Towne situation shows a different framing, one that is too common in the charter world–once established, the charter doesn’t have to earn its continued existence. It doesn’t need authorization from anyone; instead, authorizers build a case to close down the charter. Authorization to operate, once given, can never be withdrawn without protracted legal battles.

Tennesseans have definitely seen this myth play out. In fact, the authorizing of charter schools at a local level has also been superseded by Gov. Bill Lee’s handpicked charter school commission.

Roll Tide Roll

The state commission can force districts to take charters that local elected officials don’t want. And that commission can then allow those charters to stay open – even if they aren’t meeting community needs. Even if they are actually harming the students they take in by way of poor performance.

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A Cabal of Privatizers

By voucher and charter and other means, profiteers want access to public school funds

In a recent story in The Education Report, I note that privatizing profiteers are using the rhetoric of the culture wars to gain ground in the quest to access funds meant for public schools.

What’s interesting is that local communities aren’t clamoring for charter schools. Instead, these schools (and also school vouchers) are being pushed by Gov. Lee and a cabal of privatizers who seek to dismantle the public education system.

In the piece, I take a look at work by Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider that seeks to illuminate the current state of the battle over public schools.

As the pair of public education defenders note, the true story of public schools is one that largely looks like success – higher test scores, for one and other outcomes that bode well for society writ large.

But, they say, this is expensive – and deprives oligarchs of an opportunity to turn a profit.

Here’s how they explain it:

It’s very common to hear that our public schools are failing. And it’s very useful rhetoric if you’re running for office, or if you’re a policy elite intent on convincing people that they need you. But it simply isn’t true. If you look at polls, a majority of Americans do believe that the nation’s schools are mediocre; yet that same percentage of people report that their own children’s schools are doing quite well. So, which one are they likely to be more informed about—the schools down the street, which their children attend, or the 98,000 schools they’ve never set foot in? The simple fact is that for the past four decades, since the Reagan administration’s “A Nation at Risk” report, we have been telling ourselves a story about failing schools that doesn’t match reality on the ground. And, by the way, if test scores are the currency that you value, scores are up across that period.

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The Power of Teacher Strikes

Research says strikes DO lead to increased compensation

In a state like Tennessee, where policymakers continue stagnant investment in teacher compensation, the question arises: How can educators achieve improved pay?

The answer: Strikes!

Yes, state law forbids teacher strikes, but there are ways around such a prohibition (as striking teachers demonstrated in states like West Virginia and Oklahoma).

Peter Greene takes a look at research on the impact of teacher strikes:

In “The Causes and Consequences of U.S. Teacher Strikes” from the National Bureau of Economic Research, authors Melissa Arnold Lyon (SUNY Albany), Matthew A. Kraft (Brown University), and Matthew P. Steinberg (Accelerate) “revisit the question of how strikes affect wages, working conditions, and productivity in the context of the U.S. K-12 public education sector.”

The findings:

Strikes were most often about compensation, and the researchers find that the strikes did produce positive effects, with pay increases following in the post-strike years, regardless of the length of the contract agreement.

image of signs saying "strike"

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