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1. It’s sad to learn that the editorial board of the Columbus Dispatch is perfectly OK with the leaders of Columbus City Schools flouting state law which requires that underutilized district school buildings be offered first to charter and STEM school operators before being offered to other potential buyers or auctioned on the open market. “We doubt CCS wants to aid its competitors by handing over buildings that could help charters become more successful.” Sad, but not surprising to me in the slightest. (Columbus Dispatch, 7/7/24) But I will admit to being caught completely off guard to learn that there is someone out there in the world (an Oscar-winner, no less) who connects the proliferation of homeschoolers and charter school students to the demise of small movie theaters, and leveraged that patently absurd linkage to weasel a $100K grant from the streaming media company Plex. This money is to be used to update the marquee of the Little Art Theater, a small cinema in the bougiest of Ohio’s small towns. So weird. (Washington Post, 7/6/24)
   
   

2. Speaking of sob stories (were we, really?), I think we’re supposed to feel sorry for the well-appointed school district in the very expensive and very exclusive town of Bay Village along Lake Erie in northeast Ohio, based on the tone of this piece. What’s the issue? An increase in voucher usage among folks who live there but opt to send their children to (even bougier?) private schools (how is that even possible?). Yes, thanks to universal eligibility, these folks are now getting a tiny fraction of their tuition covered via EdChoice. Scary. (IdeaStream Public Media, Cleveland, 7/8/24)
   
   

3. I can totally see what all these well-heeled and fortunate folks are afraid of when I read this description of the brand new classical education model charter school coming to the Columbus/Dublin area in the fall. Can’t you? Terrifying. Surely this will mean the end of every mom-and-pop movie theater in the area! Oh, the humanities! (Columbus Dispatch, 7/8/24)
   
   

4. And indeed the voucher grouchers of Lake Erie’s gold coast must be quaking in fear after reading this glowing description of student life at the Greater Dayton School, which provides a private school experience (handmade food served family-style, a beautiful riverfront campus, free onsite medical support, two teachers in every classroom, high expectations, etc.) for low-income families who opt in—at a cost of $0 per year to them. The founder tells us the cost of supporting students to the level he wants is about $30K per year, paid for by about $6,000 in EdChoice vouchers (all students are low income) and the rest made up from his own foundation’s coffers. Scary stuff indeed. (The 74, 7/8/24) All joking aside, many thanks to Patrick O’Donnell for giving us our first proper look inside of the Greater Dayton School, especially focusing on the kids’ experience. It sounds as good as promised.

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Editorial boards speak

There were two important commentaries from newspaper editorial boards published this week. First up: The Toledo Blade discussed the findings of Fordham’s latest report on the editorial page, citing the strong achievement boosts observed for students in brick-and-mortar charter schools versus their traditional district peers. “Oddly,” the editors write, “though charter school choice has been an undisputed benefit to the residents of urban school districts, Democrats who dominate the urban districts — like Toledo — have not been fans of the concept, preferring to require that underperforming public schools continue to have a monopoly on the urban environment.” Wow! Same theme on the editorial pages of the Seattle Times, where despite long-standing opposition charter schools are starting to show “promising results”, especially for the Black students who attend. The biggest problem in Washington State right now, says the editorial board, is the hard cap on charters in the state. And despite the heavily Democratic makeup of the state legislature (“and the influence of the anti-charter teachers union within it”), the editors urge a lifting of the cap to allow more successful schools to take root in the Evergreen State.

Ohio study on for-profit charter management organizations

Ohio State University professor Stéphane Lavertu and his research colleague Long Tran published a new paper in the Journal of Policy Management and Analysis recently, examining the impact of nonprofit charter schools which subcontract daily operations to for-profit management organizations on student achievement and attendance. Their results indicate that such charter schools are, on average, at least as effective as nearby traditional district schools, and that the average low-achieving student experiences greater test-score gains in charters with for-profit operators than their peers in traditional district school. However, charter schools with for-profit operators tend to be less effective than other charters nearby, particularly for students with high test scores and low absence rates. Fascinating stuff. Check it out!

The future of public funding for religiously-affiliated schools

Joshua Dunn, executive director of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s Institute of American Civics, wrote a piece for EdNext in response to the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling against the launch of a virtual charter school run by the Catholic Diocese of Oklahoma City. He considers the matter over in the Sooner State for now, but says that the state supreme court’s “inscrutable reasoning on the First Amendment’s establishment and free exercise clauses indicate” that the issue means that the issues will rise again—either in Oklahoma or elsewhere—and will need to be settled ultimately by the U.S. Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Fordham’s Mike Petrilli, noting himself to be a “lapsed Catholic”, opined that public funding going to religious schools of choice via ESAs and vouchers is a good way to ease ongoing culture wars around education, as long as certain guardrails such as targeted funding and accountability remain part of the equation.

Ambitious pilot program in Philly

Philadelphia mayor Cherelle Parker recently announced a plan to launch extended-day and -year school schedules in a select group of schools starting this fall. “When it comes to public education our goals are high, and they must be,” she said at a press conference. This includes a longer school day (7:30 a.m. through 6:00 p.m. Monday through Friday) and a longer school year (meaning, largely, that schools will be open on half days, winter and spring breaks, and other times that schools are traditionally closed). All this, she said, without making more work for teachers. The pilot program will begin this August in 20 Philadelphia School District buildings (elementary only) and five charter schools whose grade levels reach up to middle and high school. Here’s hoping this provides better support for children and families.

Virtual event with Starlee Coleman

Starlee Coleman, the incoming president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, will be interviewed live as part of Bellwether’s Summer Series of virtual events, Wednesday, July 10 at 1:00 pm ET. Ms. Coleman will be interviewed by Bellwether managing partner Mary Wells, discussing her long career in politics, advocacy, and communications; what she learned during her time running the Texas Public Charter Schools Association; and what's next for the charter sector amid a rapidly changing political environment. More information and registration for the event can be found here.

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1. Fordham’s Aaron Churchill entered the octagon was a guest on Sound of Ideas on Wednesday morning, discussing vouchers in the toughest of tough rooms. He made good points when he got to talk and stayed focused on the demonstrated benefits of private school choice for families and kids. But it didn’t really matter, in my humble opinion, unless there happened to be some folks undecided on the matter on the listening end of the conversation. I definitely didn’t hear any on the speaking end. (IdeaStream Public Media, Cleveland, 7/3/24)
   
   

2. School Choice Ohio president Yitz Frank was also trying to get through to Clevelanders on Wednesday, posting an op-ed arguing that school choice promotes diversity in Ohio schools, rather than supporting re-segregation, as some would have it. Who knows whether those who needed to hear him did so or not. (Cleveland.com, 7/3/24)
   
   

3. But let us hope that everyone is listening to the parents of Cleveland when they say loudly and clearly that “quality of classroom instruction” is their most important consideration regarding schools, with student safety a close second. These findings and more come from the results of a survey of Cleveland residents (those with children attending CMSD, those attending schools of choice, even those without school-age children) conducted by the Cleveland Transformation Alliance. I don’t see a link to the full survey findings yet, but I’ll keep an eye out. (Signal Cleveland, 7/3/24)

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The Washington Post reported recently that billions of dollars now flow to religious private schools thanks to the explosive growth of vouchers and “education savings accounts” in red states, with Catholic schools benefitting the most. A Duke Law School professor was quoted complaining that “we are, as a society, underwriting religion.” Media pundit Dave Pell wrote that this was part of a “religious war.”

But that sort of knee-jerk reaction against public subsidies for religious education is unwise. That’s because allowing religious families to choose sectarian schools for their children could very well be a saving grace for our society. And you don’t have to be among the faithful to believe so.

Indeed, as a lapsed Catholic, I understand discomfort over sending taxpayer dollars to religious institutions. We nonbelievers may not love the idea of schools engaging in religious training or taking socially conservative stances. I certainly wouldn’t send my own children to a school that is unwelcoming to gay children or the children of gay parents. Nor would I be happy for my sons to learn that the world is just 6,000 years old or that evolution is just a theory.

But I also understand the distress that many religious families experience when forced to send their kids to public schools that teach ideas and values directly at odds with their own. Indeed, many of today’s education culture wars arise from this clash of values. It’s possible for open-minded Americans to support practices like comprehensive sex education, LGBTQ-themed books for elementary schools, and teaching that gender is just a social construct while also acknowledging that religious conservatives would find all of this deeply problematic.

But here’s the good news: In a system of school choice, we don’t have to fight these culture wars out in the public square. We can let families vote with their feet and send their kids to schools that better align with their own moral values. Just as we already let families opt their children out of sex education, so too can we let them opt their children out of public schools altogether.

This notion of educational pluralism, as Johns Hopkins scholar Ashley Berner has written, is widely prevalent in Europe, Australia, Canada, and much of Asia, demonstrating that it’s no right-wing smoke screen for biblical schooling.

Indeed, there’s good reason to believe that, as more parents gain access to school choice, including the option of sending their children to religious private schools, we will see today’s education culture wars recede. Religious families won’t need to storm school board meetings to denounce the latest progressive obsession that’s being foisted upon their kids because their kids will be happily learning in private schools instead.

No doubt, many Americans have concerns about private school choice that go beyond the question of religious instruction. I share some of these concerns myself. I don’t love the idea of tuition vouchers going to wealthy families that don’t need the help. Nor am I convinced that just because a school is private it is necessarily high quality (though urban Catholic schools can boast a proud history of serving poor children and children of color well—and school choice will help sustain such schools). I prefer programs with quality control mechanisms, especially through regular assessments of student learning. Thankfully, several states with the largest programs have crafted policies that prioritize lower-income families and demand at least some transparency around results.

So the secular argument for private school choice is that, done right, it should help students learn, while also easing our education culture wars. Pluralism, in other words, can bring greater peace. All of us, regardless of our faith, should be able to say “amen” to that.

Charter schools are in for a slog. It doesn’t matter who wins in November. Joe Biden is not a fan. Donald Trump was lukewarm on the topic when he had his hands on the switch. Even the president’s potential replacements are bad on the issue. The broad bipartisan agreement that fueled the birth and growth of charter schools is a distant memory. Ironically, this comes as their academic results continue to shine. The fact of the matter is that charter schools are no longer the outpost for Democrats and the halfway house for Republicans that they were during the Clinton-Bush-Obama years.

Indeed, most Democrats now abhor anything outside the one best system and are all too eager to lump charter schools into the same bucket as vouchers, education savings accounts, and parochial schools. Although most charter advocates hold firm to the notion that charters are public schools, the loudest voices on the left have long insisted that they’re not—not really. For them, the push for a religious charter school in Oklahoma simply confirms their priors. (Last week’s state supreme court decision might help, but only until it’s likely overturned at the federal level.) On the other side of the ledger, Republicans have become more enamored with private and faith-based options. Louisiana just became the twelfth state to enact a universal voucher plan—an incredible feat considering there were none three years ago. As these programs become more established in red states, the right could be emboldened to come out swinging against charters as a weak-kneed alternative to the real thing.

The latest omen is a paper published by the Heritage Foundation titled “The Woke Capture of Charter Schools.” Authored by Jay Greene, Ian Kingsbury, and Jason Bedrick, the report claims that charters are more “woke” than their traditional neighborhood counterparts, as measured by the frequency of eight key words and phrases in publicly available parent-student handbooks: diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, restorative, social-emotional, gender identity, and culturally relevant/affirming. The report raises more questions than it answers, but the allegation alone is enough to antagonize the only party that can realistically embrace charter schools in today’s polarized, populist climate.

Methodologically speaking, the biggest concern is the paper’s small sample size, drawing from only 211 charter handbooks (there are nearly 8,000 charter schools nationwide). There’s also a question to be asked as to whether all eight of Heritage’s keywords are necessarily signs of wokeness. Are “diversity” or “inclusion” unalloyed evils? How about “justice” divorced from social justice? Plenty of dumb things have been done in the name of “equity,” but many still use it as shorthand for high expectations for all. The attacks on the Walton and Gates foundations, among others, read borderline conspiratorial. What’s more, there’s a huge gap between what’s printed in a handbook versus what actually happens in classrooms. Taken together, these wonky concerns serve to undercut the authors’ conclusion that charter schools have gone woke.

Still, it’s not a pretty picture—and Andy Rotherham presciently comments that charter schools might not have a chair when the music stops:

The Republicans are no picnic in general these days. Here, although they’re allergic to accountability in some of these [education savings accounts] programs, they are pretty good on school choice. That’s the awkward reality Democratic education reformers have to accept. What charters need to do is engage, maintain, and build on that Republican support while also organizing parents to actually pressure Democratic leaders to moderate their posture here and again make charters a default consensus position. That can’t be about partisan politics, it has to be about charter politics.

Can education reformers accept this “awkward reality?” Heritage is no picnic either nowadays, but setting aside the problems with its new paper, the Heritage education shop has some sharp minds with criticisms worth contemplating. For example, the embrace of restorative practices by schools might make for good partisan politics, but it stinks when it comes to the charter variety—especially at a moment when incidents of student misconduct are on the rise. Similarly, the repudiation of meritocracy is a lousy way to win over converts, to say nothing of the six in ten Americans who say most people can get ahead if they’re willing to work hard.

Heritage’s findings prompted me to go down memory lane and dig out the family handbook from the Connecticut charter school that I founded twenty years ago. None of the eight keywords identified by Greene, Kingsbury, and Bedrick made an appearance back then. Organized around “general information” and “student behavior,” the message to parents is staid by today’s standards:

We believe in teaching students to live up to [our core values], much the same way we teach them addition and subtraction in math. We correct any student, anywhere, anytime—but we do so in a way that requires them to practice the desired behavior. Most people think of discipline and think of controlling children. Discipline, however, is a means and not an end; discipline is also one of life’s great gifts. Disciplined people are far more likely to achieve their goals.

As you can probably tell, my school was unapologetically focused on two things: academic excellence and character development. There wasn’t enough time in the day for anything else, let alone political grandstanding or virtue signaling.

Rotherham is right that charter advocates would do well to “engage, maintain, and build” Republican support for charter schooling because trying to woo Democratic elites on the merits of charters feels like a lost cause. This means dialing down the progressive dogma, focusing less on politics and more on practice and pedagogy. It means paying more attention to whether kindergartners can read, do arithmetic, and embrace the Golden Rule.

The good news is that parents of all stripes remain strongly supportive of charter schools. In spite of assertions by Heritage, the idea that charter schools all went woke is far from reality. However, Heritage’s paper should be a clarion call for the charter community not to lose conservatives and Republicans, which includes pushing back against allegations that all charters have gone woke. Charter advocates must recognize the need to shore up their support on the right, even in blue states. And they should never shy away from advertising that they still embrace traditional values like “justice.”

Inquiry-based learning in STEM classrooms, long a contentious topic, has been making news since the introduction of the controversial California Math Framework. This student-led approach aims to foster engagement by sparking curiosity and critical thinking. Rather than passively receiving knowledge from an instructor, students take an active role in their learning by searching for evidence, constructing arguments, and collaborating with peers.

So does it work? The short answer is yes, but only when done well and at the correct skill level.

Much of the recent criticism of inquiry-based learning (or at least the version of inquiry-based learning embraced by California) stems from its discouragement of rote memorization. That, in turn, could hinder students’ development of “math fact fluency,” or the ability to recall addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts flexibly and efficiently. My colleague Daniel Buck has pointed to seemingly problematic examples of students suggesting multiple ways to solve a multiplication problem. For example, to multiply 12 by 7 in an inquiry-based classroom, some students might add 12 seven times, while others take the sum of 10x7 and 2x7—whereas a student who has memorized their math facts can quickly and confidently recall “84!” without needing to engage in higher-order thinking.

So what’s more valuable: students creatively constructing a well-rounded picture of their math facts or the ability to recall facts quickly when needed?

Both my experience as a middle-school math interventionist and common sense suggest that this is a “both/and” situation. A student who has achieved true number sense should be able to recall the answer to 12x7 without hesitation and to deconstruct the problem in multiple ways.

But don’t just take my word for it. Study after study suggests a combination of automatic recall and critical thinking skills is necessary for developing a robust understanding of mathematics.

Still, grade level and other contextual factors matter when it comes to striking the right balance—and here, the California Framework goes astray. Plenty of research shows that early learners, especially those who are low-achieving, benefit from explicit instruction that is intended to build math fluency. To put it simply, students should absolutely memorize their math facts. Rote memorization and direct instruction are essential during the foundational stages of learning mathematics.

But once students have achieved math fact fluency, inquiry-based learning, done right, offers a pathway to much greater depth of understanding in math and science classrooms. In fact, a growing body of evidence suggests that students learn better with this approach, particularly in the later grades. For example, a 2008 study based in the Detroit Public Schools Community District showed that a new inquiry-based science curriculum in select seventh and eighth grade cohorts was associated with higher standardized achievement test gains on the Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) exams compared with the rest of the district.

Critics of inquiry-based learning often misunderstand the role of the teacher. Yes, students drive the discussion, but that does not mean they choose where the car is headed. For example, one effective technique is to use “back-pocket questions”—a series of scaffolded questions designed to match individual skill levels and promote productive struggle. During the lesson, the teacher circulates the room, assessing how close students are to finding the correct answer. For groups that are struggling, the teacher poses increasingly leading questions, thus allowing students to think independently while still getting to the right answer.

As this example suggests, inquiry-based instruction is an art rather than a science, and in practice, it requires immense preparation and skill on the part of the instructor. Thus, schools and districts adopting this approach should provide substantial professional development and coaching for teachers. Poor implementation can be detrimental, leaving students to struggle without adequate support.

When executed correctly, inquiry-based learning can significantly boost achievement, especially in later grades. But completely dismissing memorization and direct teaching in the early grades is misguided and risks stunting mathematical development in young learners. A “both/and” approach that considers when direct versus inquiry-based teaching is appropriate will build the strongest number sense. And especially in middle and high school, well-planned inquiry-based lessons could transform STEM classes for the better.

Starting in 2010, Congress invested more than $1 billion to assist states with their literacy improvement efforts through the Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy (SRCL) program. SRCL was designed to target funding toward disadvantaged schools (defined in several ways), encourage staff to use evidence-based practices, and support teachers in providing fully comprehensive literacy instruction. In total, this competitive program has awarded grants to fourteen states through two application rounds (with a new round just concluded). A recent study from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) assesses how well SRCL implementation has been aligned with program goals and whether student learning in grant-winning states has improved as a result.

Specifically, analysts examined data from the eleven states—Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, and Oklahoma—that won awards in 2017 during the second round of grants. The average award was $33 million and was intended to provide three years of literacy support. Data come from school leader surveys describing their approach to using the grant funds during the 2018–19 school year, district staff surveys describing how SRCL funds were used that year, wide-ranging teacher surveys in both 2018–19 and 2019–20, and state grant director interviews. The U.S. Department of Education’s What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) and Evidence for ESSA databases provided curriculum rating information. Administrative and academic data on students were gathered from various national and state level sources through the 2018–19 school year.

First up, targeting. Overall, the grant funding went where it was supposed to. On average, SRCL schools were relatively disadvantaged compared to non-SRCL schools. Across the four types of student disadvantage that states most commonly considered—low socioeconomic status, English learner status, disability status, and migrant or foster care status—73 percent of SRCL schools ranked in the most disadvantaged quartile in their state on at least one type. In contrast, just 53 percent of non-SRCL schools were disadvantaged in any way, and very few of those were in the top quartile. However, this overall finding masks some problematic targeting in certain states, where student disadvantage was minimally considered as a subgrant criteria or considered at a lower priority than SRCL intended. The analysts note that “some states that placed a heavy emphasis on targeting in the subgrant competition did not achieve it.”

Second, spending. The vast majority of districts (82 percent) used SRCL funds to purchase a core literacy curriculum for all students or a supplemental program to help struggling readers. Unfortunately, many of these curricula were not high quality, meaning they were not supported by strong or even moderate evidence of effectiveness. Of the 236 programs purchased with SRCL funds, only 12 percent had a strong or moderate evidence review rating. No published research could be identified for almost half of the programs purchased. The fault for this is laid at the feet of skittish state grant directors. According to interviews with state officials, only two states (Montana and North Dakota) emphasized the importance of strong or moderate evidence in their grant competition process. Other frequent purchases included literacy-related professional development (84 percent of SRCL districts), books unrelated to a specific curriculum (64 percent), or parent engagement activities (50 percent).

Third, implementation. The researchers looked at six key practices of effective and comprehensive literacy instruction, including an emphasis on phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing; frequent opportunities to practice reading and writing; and regular use of formative assessments. They then assessed each district and school on its adherence to these practices. Overall, no more than 11 percent of teachers in any grade band engaged in all six practices; approximately 80 percent of K–8 teachers met at least three of the six applicable to their grade. The percentage for high school teachers was considerably lower (63 percent). Additionally, high school teachers reported emphasizing practices more common to lower grades (decoding, comprehension, grammar, etc.), which may be an indication that their students were still reading and writing at an elementary school level.

Finally, outcomes. Evidence from the first year of grant implementation shows no difference between SRCL and comparable non-SRCL schools in English language arts achievement trends overall. Combining results across states and grades, the overall difference in ELA achievement between SRCL and non-SRCL schools with similar demographic characteristics was very close to zero and not statistically significant. A tiny glimmer of hope comes from Louisiana and Fordham’s home state of Ohio, which both showed small positive differences in achievement overall. However, disadvantaged students—those specifically intended to be helped by the SRCL grant effort—showed no difference in achievement whether attending SRCL or non-SRCL schools in any state or grade.

The analysts stop short of calling the Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy program a failure, citing the possibility that a further year of implementation might yield some actual improvement. There is no concrete reason, however, to assume that previous state decisions on unproven curriculum and established patterns of weak on-the-ground implementation would change significantly without additional incentives or intervention—none of which was forthcoming. And of course, that following year of implementation was 2019–20, when Covid-mitigation disruptions wiped out both data and the positive momentum of many students who had it. Moving forward from pandemic learning losses, states can likely learn a valuable lesson from this example: Money can’t buy success in the realm of literacy interventions without focusing on evidence-based best practices that are implemented faithfully.

SOURCE: Michael S. Garet et al., “Did the Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy Grant Program Reach Its Goals? An Implementation Report. Evaluation Report,” National Center for Education Evaluation at IES (May 2024).

Cheers

• The NYC Solves initiative is revamping math instruction and curriculum in the Big Apple. —Education Week
• A new Fordham report finds that Ohio’s brick and mortar charter schools get students the equivalent of 13 extra days-worth of learning. —The Toledo Blade
• The School Toilet Summit convened in Germany to brainstorm ways to improve school bathrooms. —The Guardian
• Combatting identity politics and teaching children what it means to be an American are the keys to preserving American democracy. — Richard D. Kahlenberg, The Liberal Patriot

Jeers

• The teacher preparation pipeline is broken, focusing more on political indoctrination than practical training for prospective educators. —Daniel Buck, National Affairs
• An Alaska supreme court ruling could limit the ability of homeschooling families to spend public monies on private schooling or religious-tinged supplies and curriculum. —Alaska Beacon

• Seventeen states have mandated financial literacy courses since 2020, bring the total up to twenty-five. —The Economist
• School choice policies are proving controversial in conservative, rural communities. —Alec MacGillis, The Atlantic
• The Oklahoma Supreme Court struck down a religious, charter school, but the issue will likely rise again to be decided at the federal Supreme Court. —Joshua Dunn, Education Next

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1. I’m going to try hard with this clip to direct my concerns/irritations toward the folks who are responsible for raising them: The adults of Canton City Schools. And specifically not toward the young boys whom this new district program is meant to serve. Future 40 is a club dedicated, we are told by responsible adults, to help the participating students (a small, specific group selected solely by adults) to “become their best selves”. Specifically, to provide them with “core values of excellence, leadership skills and help them build community”. The adult leaders of the club “want to expose the kids to the success stories of students who walked the same hallways and lived in their neighborhoods” in hopes the youngsters will follow in those footsteps someday. “They realize I can be somebody. I can do that,” said one of the adult leaders, adding “It’s amazing to see the kids pay attention.” Well, see. From everything ELSE we are told, the young boys (fourth graders, 10 years old-ish) don’t really seem to have much choice EXCEPT to pay attention. (Indeed, look at those pictures. It’s been a while since I was the parent of 10-year-olds, but those faces look less like kids paying attention as kids not NOT paying attention…for whatever reason.) They also didn’t seem to have much choice about wearing those shirts or reciting that “mantra” or, it seems, committing to seven or eight years more of this same stuff. There are other flags for me in here, but I’ll stop now just in case I’m reading too much into it. But I will conclude by saying that I hope if/when I see this program referenced again, the adults running it choose to allow some quotes from kids and, more importantly, from their parents. And that these quotes are more about why they chose to be involved and what they are working to get out of it. Rather than a roster of adults talking about why these adult-selected young Black and brown boys (“It was gender and culturally specific,” said the “youth development practitioner” responsible for starting this effort. “These kids came together for a ‘we thing’,” he added, “not a ‘me thing’.”) are going to love the club and benefit from it nearly a decade in the future. (Canton Repository, 7/2/24)
   
   

2. On Monday, I’m sure my dedicated subscribers will recall (hello to all 8 of you!), I was a little rough on Bowling Green’s PR and Marketing department for making their teacher prep program’s tutoring work all about BG, rather than about the kiddos they were serving. Today, we have a far better example of higher ed PR, courtesy of Ashland University’s College of Education. From their electronic pen, we learn that AU’s teacher prep program has quickly and happily purged ineffective literacy instruction methods from its curriculum. The new curriculum “does not address any content that is contrary to research-based practices… [They] focus on multi-tiered instruction, structured literacy, data for effective instruction, language comprehension and rigorous texts for all. We focus on building our teacher candidates’ knowledge and skills in teaching phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension.” They did it quickly and they did it thoroughly. Why? Because “[i]t’s our responsibility to ensure that every P-12 learner has access to highly effective teachers and a well-sequenced curriculum that meets their learning needs,” the dean of the department explained. And their old program didn’t do that. “(We’ve been) making sure that our students, the future teachers of these P-12 learners, are prepared and ready to teach on the first day of their teaching profession.” Sounds just right to me. Go Eagles! (Ashland University, 7/2/24)
   
   

3. Finally today, this story is just ridiculously overblown—particularly the headline, which could just as easily have read “Despite growing pains, parents call Afterschool Child Enrichment program “a huge blessing”. There were delays in some families receiving reimbursements from the contractor in charge of Ohio’s Afterschool Child Enrichment (ACE) program. No question. These are, the contractor says, largely the result of trying to lessen the possibility of fraudulent claims (imagine those headlines, eh?) and are lessening as the quickly-launched effort to help students recovery from learning loss induced by pandemic school closures matures. (Indeed, everyone who is quoted here who experienced some issues has already or will very shortly receive their funds, we are told.) And since the state has just extended the deadline for using the remaining funds for a whole additional year, the complaints of “it takes too long” and “we haven’t even used all the money” ring even more hollow. Additional bellyaching—on the part of the reportage, not from any parent quoted—comes from the fact that only a handful of on-site providers are listed in certain geographic areas. Seeing as how buying curriculum, science kits, and workbooks that can be delivered to your house is a thing (“a huge blessing,” as one parent calls it), and that there’s this neat new invention called the internet, feels like the haters need to retire that talking point here. Or, you know, probably all the negative talking points. (Cincinnati Enquirer, 7/2/24)

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