Category Archives: Education / Youth

And So It Begins

Duck and cover: It’s a new year, with a new session of Indiana’s General Assembly. Hoosiers will be spared the chaos we are witnessing at the federal level, but what emerges isn’t likely to be pretty.

According to the Indiana Capitol Chronicle, our legislative overlords have a number of priorities–among them, continuing their focus on public education, aka telling educators what they can and cannot do in their classrooms. In addition to fiscal and personnel concerns, the Chronicle reports that

Republican state lawmakers have also hinted at the return of a contentious “curriculum transparency” bill that would limit classroom discussions about race, as well as a bill that seeks to prohibit sexually-explicit content in school library books. Versions of both bills sparked widespread debate during the 2022 session, but both failed to pass.

Top GOP legislators are additionally pointing to a draft “Don’t Say Gay” that could ban Indiana teachers from holding classroom instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity.

I will forego my usual rant about these mean-spirited culture-war assaults to describe an (equally misplaced)  impending effort to “improve” high school curricula.  The article quotes Speaker of the House Todd Huston, who wants lawmakers to “reinvent” that curriculum, and responses to that effort  by the “usual suspects.”

Longtime chairman of the House Education Committee, Rep. Bob Behning, R-Indianapolis, said the state’s high school curriculum needs to better prepare students to enter the workforce and should include greater emphasis on the importance of post-secondary education.

Part of that could include making math “more relevant” by tying components like financial literacy, simple interest and mortgage rates into coursework, he said. Other options include more apprenticeship programs — and making those types of opportunities more easily count towards a student’s diploma requirements.

Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner has also doubled-down on the importance of adding additional work-based learning opportunities for students and making it easier for high schoolers to access post-secondary education credentials before graduation.

I am so tired of these persistent efforts to redefine education as job training.

Let me begin by saying I have absolutely nothing against job training, practical skills, or the transmittal of “useful knowledge.” The inculcation of skills and information required to obtain and keep employment is clearly an important endeavor–both for the individual and for society–and the increasingly technical nature of work in the 21st Century often necessitates a significant amount of training.

But both individuals and society pay a steep price when we substitute the transmittal of useful knowledge for education.

It isn’t just Indiana. On college campuses, the years since the Great Recession have been brutal for almost every major in the humanities, and for the social science fields that most closely resemble humanistic ones — sociology, anthropology, international relations and political science. Technology and engineering have gained at the expense of the humanities (and with them, majors in things like sports management and exercise studies…)

That emphasis on job training and the neglect of subjects long thought to be necessary to an individual’s ability to live a good life is also reshaping high school curricula.

When an “education” is limited to the transmission of technocratic skills–when we are teaching students how to derive the one correct answer to that math problem or the one correct way to program that computer–there is a very real danger that we are creating a culture in which every issue has a “right” answer and a “wrong” answer, a prescription for disaster in a world where ambiguity and complexity require careful analyses grounded in a knowledge of history, philosophy and science abetted by critical thinking and communication skills.

Life in the 21st century will require today’s students to do more than find a job and reconcile their bank accounts. They will have to wrestle with confounding ethical and moral questions. They will  be challenged to cope with social change, to work with different people having different perspectives, and to appreciate new insights. It will require them to fulfill the obligations of citizenship.

At best, a real education can only provide young people with a “tasting menu,” a sampling of the intellectual riches that generations of scholars and thinkers have amassed. But ideally, that sampling should do three things: foster a thirst for lifetime learning; give them a foundation for understanding the complexities of the world in which they must function; and inculcate an appropriate intellectual modesty–a recognition that there is infinitely more to know.

We are cheating students when we fail to at least introduce them to the intellectual and cultural products of those who have gone before. Making a living isn’t remotely the same thing as making a life.

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Fewer Teachers, Fewer People Running For School Board..

Can you stand one more lament about the Right-wing assaults harming public education?

In a recent column for the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin reported on an alarming academic study. Researchers found

that the “virulent stream of hyperpartisan political conflict” has had “a chilling effect on high school education.” Teachers are seeking to avoid controversy by “pulling back on teaching lessons in civics, politics, and the history and experiences of America’s minority communities;” incidents of verbal harassment of LGBTQ students are on the rise; and many teachers and administrator are planning to leave their jobs.

The authors of the report surveyed 682 public high school principals, who confirmed that organized campaigns have attempted to intimidate public schools and force changes to align with right-wing ideology. The researchers write, “Our survey data make clear that political conflict over a set of hot button issues occurred at more than two-thirds (69%) of public schools across the nation during the 2021-2022 school year.” Moreover, “Half of all principals report that parents or other community members sought to limit or challenge teaching and learning about issues of race and racism. Nearly half report challenges to school policies and practices related to LGBTQ student rights.” And a third of principals said “parents or community members raised challenges to school library books they deemed inappropriate.”

Researchers have found that “a relatively small group of hostile parents and community members are leading the charge,” despite the preferences of a clear majority of parents  who want kids to have an accurate education.( One recent national survey found that over 95% of Americans want high school students to learn about slavery, and 85% want them to learn about racial inequality.)

Perhaps the most troubling finding was the effect of this assault on students’ ability to identify misinformation. Apparently, students in classrooms with educators intimidated by these tactics show a diminished capacity to distinguish between credible and falsified information. At a time when misinformation, disinformation and propaganda are a huge problem, an ability to evaluate the likely accuracy of information is incredibly important, and the best way to help students make those judgements is by arming them with verifiable facts.

Interestingly, these assaults have been most numerous in so-called “purple” communities–areas that were previously reliably Republican but are changing– becoming more Democratic in the wake of Trump and the demise of Roe.

Many principals noted the “mass hysteria” over critical race theory, fueled by disinformation about schools’ curricula. This has impacted schools in purple communities the most, with almost a quarter of principals in such areas reporting that their school board or district leaders limited teaching on race or racism. Only 17 percent of schools in red communities, by comparison, and 8 percent of blue communities did the same.

Purple communities were also more likely to experience MAGA partisans’ attempts to ostracize or stigmatize LGBTQ individuals, Thirty-two percent of principals in purple districts report incidents of “hostile or demeaning remarks toward LGBTQ classmates,” compared with 22 percent in red or blue communities. Across all schools, the percentage of principals reporting multiple attacks on LGBTQ students increased from 15 percent in 2018 to 24 percent this year.

These political assaults aren’t limited to attacks on teachers and principals. Culture warriors trying to protect their political turf are making life miserable for school board members, too.

Here in Indiana, Hamilton County–adjacent to Marion County/indianapolis– is one of those areas that has been turning purple, and Moms for Liberty, a  national crackpot organization, ran “anti-woke” slates in several Hamilton County school districts .

As Chalkbeat reports,

The winning candidates in Hamilton Southeastern, Tiffany Pascoe (District 1), Juanita Albright (District 2), Dawn Lang (District 3), and Ben Orr (District 4), were supported by the Hamilton County chapter of Moms for Liberty, a powerful and controversial conservative group that rose to prominence by opposing mask mandates, critical race theory and social emotional learning. The group aims to install like-minded people in school board seats across the country.

Amber Huff Willis (At Large), William Anderson (District 2) and Rebecca Ogle (District 4) won seats on the Westfield Washington school board; they were also supported by Moms for Liberty Hamilton County.

The Carmel Clay  school board governs one of the larger districts in Hamilton County, and the effort to take over that board was less successful. Incumbents supporting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts were re-elected; however, one candidate who claimed that “radical liberal teachers” were “indoctrinating” Carmel students won in a very close race.

Our daughter served on the Indianapolis school board for 20 years, and I watched her spend countless hours for very little pay working with colleagues, parents and teachers to improve local public schools.

Given today’s dishonest, ugly assaults, how many citizens will willingly run for school board? Teachers aren’t the only ones deciding it just isn’t worth it.

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What Did You Learn In School Today?

As Hoosiers anticipate the upcoming session of the General Assembly–an anticipation tinged with trepidation for many of us– we would do well to focus on the harms our Lords and Masters at the Statehouse intend to visit on public education this year.

This will be a budget year, and education is a huge part of that budget. I should note that, despite the pious concerns about taxes and spending voiced by Republican legislators each year, Indiana lawmakers have thrown millions of dollars into efforts to privatize education via the country’s largest voucher program, sending those dollars primarily to religious schools while routinely shortchanging the needs of our public schools.

According to the Indiana Capital Chronicle, the state is currently short 2300 teachers, a shortage undoubtedly exacerbated by inadequate pay levels and the legislature’s obvious disdain for the profession, demonstrated by its persistent efforts to dictate what can and cannot be taught in the classroom. In the upcoming session, a don’t say gay bill will be introduced, along with one purporting to keep Critical Race Theory out of the classroom. (The fact that actual CRT has never been in the classroom is irrelevant to the culture warriors, most of whom couldn’t tell you what it is if their lives depended on it.)

Classroom teachers and school board members I’ve talked to are exhausted by the constant assaults by Rightwing parents–the uninformed demands that they teach (or omit) certain materials,  efforts to ban books or remove them from school libraries, and hysterical accusations about education perceived to be “woke.” These high-decibel accusations are front-page news, despite the fact that–according to research–the great majority of Americans who actually have children in the public schools are satisfied with the education those children are receiving.

The harassment of teachers and school board members has little to do with what actually goes on in the nation’s classrooms; instead, it is one of the more visible battlefronts in the GOP’s culture war.

The linked study, done by Pew prior to the midterm elections, underscores the fundamentally partisan nature of the assault.

As the midterm election approaches, issues related to K-12 schools have become deeply polarized. Republican and Democratic parents of K-12 students have widely different views on what their children should learn at school about gender identity, slavery and other topics, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

They also offer different assessments of the influence parents, local school boards and other key players have on what public K-12 schools in their area are teaching. Republican parents with children in K-12 schools are about twice as likely as Democratic parents to say parents don’t have enough influence (44% vs. 23%, including those who lean to each party). And Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say school boards have too much influence (30% vs. 17%). These parents also differ over the amount of input they personally have when it comes to what their own children are learning in school.

At the same time, Republican and Democratic parents – including those with children in public schools – are equally likely to say they are extremely or very satisfied with the quality of the education their children are receiving (58% each) and that the teachers and administrators at their children’s schools have values that are similar to their own (54% each).

The large differences between what Republican and Democratic parents believe their children should learn are illuminating.

When it comes to what their children are learning in school, U.S. parents of K-12 students are divided over what they think their children should learn about gender identity: 31% say they would prefer that their children learn that whether someone is a boy or a girl is determined by the sex they were assigned at birth, and the same share say they’d rather their children learn that someone can be a boy or a girl even if that’s different from their sex at birth. A 37% plurality say their children shouldn’t learn about this in school.

There is also no consensus when it comes to what parents want their children to learn about slavery: 49% say they would prefer that their children learn that the legacy of slavery still affects the position of Black people in American society today, while a smaller but sizable share (42%) would prefer that their children learn that slavery is part of American history but doesn’t affect the position of Black people in American society today.

The self-appointed education experts in Indiana’s General Assembly should take note of another Pew finding: more parents say that state and federal governments have too much influence on what goes on in the classroom–and complain that teachers and principals don’t have enough.

Perhaps if legislators respected teachers–and compensated them accordingly–we wouldn’t be frantically searching for 2300 more of them.

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Parental Rights (But Just For The Right Parents..)

I still remember experiencing an epiphany of sorts when–some twenty years ago–a group of parents wanted the Indianpolis City-County Council to pass an ordinance  preventing children from accessing certain books from the public library. The library had responded by offering what I felt was a reasonable accommodation: parents who desired to control what their kids could check out could fill out a form at the library, and librarians would require parental approval for materials their children wished to read.

Nope–not good enough.

These advocates of “parental rights” insisted that no child should access whatever it was that had them up in arms. That’s when I realized that what these parents really wanted was the right to control the decisions made by other parents.

That mindset is all around us.

Elon Musk believes in free speech for racists, anti-Semites and homophobes–but not for critics of Elon Musk.

Anti-abortion fundamentalists want “religious liberty” defined as the imposition of their religious beliefs through the passage of laws that ignore the liberties of people whose religions differ.

That absolute disregard for the rights of people who disagree with them–and their utter un-self-awareness of that hypocrisy– is obvious in so many of the fights being waged by these culture warriors. The anti-mask, anti-vaccine “freedom fighters” are a great example–they don’t care if they endanger friends and neighbors; It’s their rights that matter.

E.J. Dionne recently made that point in an op-ed about the “parental rights” extremists who’ve been showing up at school board meetings and demanding that certain books be banned. He noted that this new round of censorship “has sturdy roots in a right-wing movement that uses slogans around “parental rights” to defend removing books from libraries in the name of “protecting” children.”

The scare quotes I put around parental rights and protecting kids will invite immediate denunciation and provide an opportunity to say that terrible liberals like me are against parents exercising their responsibilities and protecting children….

Opponents of censorship heartily agree that parents should have an important say in how schools work and how public libraries serve our children. What we’re against is a willful ideological minority imposing its views on everyone else, dictating which ideas should be forbidden in public institutions that instruct the young.

As Dionne noted, the same disregard for the rights of other parents permeates the movement’s dishonest “anti-CRT” assaults. (I think everyone who screams about our schools teaching Critical Race Theory should be challenged to define it. They have no clue. What they really want, of course, is whitewashed history…) Dionne cites several surveys that confirm the desire of a majority of American parents to teach accurate history, warts and all.

“We found that Americans of all political orientations want their children to learn a history that celebrates our strengths and also examines our failures. Americans overwhelmingly agree that the experiences of minority groups are an important part of that history. And they agree that if students are better informed about America’s past there’s a better chance of not repeating past failures.”

When it comes to book banning, a survey for the American Library Association in March asked: “Would you support or oppose efforts to remove books from local public libraries because some people find them offensive or inappropriate and do not think young people should be exposed to them?” It found 71 percent were opposed.

There is an appeal to the idea that parents should have some control over what their children learn,” Hart Research’s Guy Molyneux, who has polled extensively on educational issues, told me. “But parents don’t want a situation where the most upset parent determines what other children learn or what books are in the school library.”

It’s instructive to look at the questions in surveys that the culture warriors claim support book banning: one Rasmussen survey found that 69 percent of voters “believe books containing explicit sexual depictions of sex acts, including homosexual sex, should not be present in public high school libraries.” Those stocking school library shelves would agree–and it’s the height of dishonesty to use language suggesting that such explicit materials are what is at issue.

As Dionne says,

The vast majority of parents want their kids’ schools to be open and welcoming settings for education, not battlefields in culture wars designed primarily to goose conservative turnout at election time.

Unfortunately, most of these sensible parents lack the time and resources to do battle at school board meetings.

The board members who must listen to the ravings of these fringe activists need to remember that people are loudest and most aggressive when they know they don’t represent a majority–and that the parents who disagree with the loudmouths have parental rights too.

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Vouchers And The World’s Worst Legislature…

I have posted previously–several times– about the Indiana legislature’s misguided support for school vouchers. I won’t repeat those criticisms here–those of you who are regular readers, or who follow education policy, know the score. I’ll just remind you that there’s absolutely no evidence that the schools receiving vouchers do a better job than the public schools they are bleeding of desperately needed resources, and because most of the schools that accept vouchers are religious, voucher programs deepen social and civic divisions.

The truth is, vouchers are basically a First Amendment work-around allowing public funds to flow to religious schools. The Courts have accepted the pathetically obvious pretense that the funds go to parents rather than to religious institutions, so hey! no  Church/State violation.

In deep Red Indiana–which has the country’s most expansive voucher program–arguments against school vouchers have fallen on the same deaf ears that characterize other policy debates in the World’s Worst Legislature. Our rural Republican super-majority wants more guns, more women forced to give birth, and more kids “educated” in fundamentalist religious schools.

But maybe–just maybe–those of us who support public education have overlooked a messaging opportunity. Rather than pointing to research supporting the numerous criticisms of voucher programs, perhaps we need to take a lesson from Oklahoma.

As the linked article from The Brookings Institution recently reported,

Oklahoma is a deep-red state. In 2020, Donald Trump won the state with nearly two thirds of the vote. The state’s governor, both U.S. senators, and all five U.S. House members are Republicans. And the GOP holds about 80% of the seats in both chambers of the state legislature. So, when Governor Kevin Stitt and Oklahoma Senate leader Greg Treat declared a statewide school voucher bill a major priority for the 2022 legislative session, it might have seemed that its enactment would be a foregone conclusion. But when the legislature adjourned at the end of May, the voucher bill had failed by a vote of 24-22 in the Oklahoma Senate—and hadn’t even been called up for a vote in the Oklahoma House.

How could this happen? How could a bill supported by the Republican governor and introduced by the Oklahoma Senate leader fail to achieve a majority in a chamber where the GOP held more than three fourths of the seats? And why didn’t it even get to the floor of the Oklahoma House?

It turns out that in Oklahoma, like in Indiana, lawmakers don’t just divide  along partisan lines. Lawmakers of the same party who represent urban districts will also disagree with those in their party who represent rural areas. (In deeply gerrymandered Indiana, we’re talking about Republicans.)

That urban/rural division was what played out in Oklahoma.

It turns out that it isn’t just city schools that are under-resourced. A large number of rural school districts struggle financially, and have trouble recruiting teachers.  More significantly, in Indiana as in Oklahoma, there also aren’t many educational options in rural parts of the state, a situation that limits the appeal of voucher legislation to families in those areas.

When voucher proponents talk about “school choice,” they inevitably point to schools in the poorer precincts of cities. How often have we been told that vouchers would allow poor children “trapped” in under-performing schools to “escape” to a presumably  available and superior  private or  parochial school?

The thing is, those options–good, bad or indifferent–simply don’t exist in most of the small towns scattered through rural America. Those towns–most of which have been  losing population for a long time–don’t produce enough children of school age to support alternative institutions. That may be  one reason Indiana allowed its vouchers to be used at “virtual” online schools. (It appears that the state got massively ripped off by scammers pretending to be online educators…but our legislators never learn…)

Maybe the pitch we need to make to all those legislators in the Statehouse who represent Indiana’s rural areas is something along the lines of  “Do you know that school vouchers are really a way to shift tax dollars from your constituents to those pointy-headed liberals and “diverse” folks who live in the cities? Indiana’s voucher program is taking money from the good folks who live in places like  Roachdale and Pine Village and sending those dollars to folks in Indianapolis and South Bend and other urban areas.”

That argument has the virtue of being true. Of course, all the other criticisms of vouchers are also demonstrably true, and those criticisms haven’t made a dent.

Maybe, however, “the city folks are stealing your money” would be more effective, given the depth of Indiana’s rural/urban divide.

Worth a try…..

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