Recent data on school district spending gathered by the Virginia Public Access Project appear to support the conclusion of a late-February Reason Foundation study assessing the relationship between state K-12 education spending and student outcomes.
The foundation concluded that increased spending does not always correlate with higher test scores, and less spending doesn’t always mean poorer outcomes.
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Eighty-two percent of teachers say that the general state of public K-12 education has gotten worse over the past five years. This is according to a new Pew Research Center survey conducted in October and November of 2023. That’s not the only shocking statistic from the survey, either, which overall offers a grim statistical map of the fault lines fracturing our education system. However, these trends may offer some insight into how to fix our schools.
First, the teachers. Most teachers (77 percent) find their job frequently stressful, and a large majority (70 percent) say their school is understaffed, which may contribute to the fact that over 80 percent of teachers say they do not have enough time in the work day to complete all necessary tasks.
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A Tennessee committee is scheduled to begin its review on the state’s use of federal funding for K-12 education at 2 p.m. on Monday with presentations from Tennessee’s Office of Research and Educational Accountability and the state’s Fiscal Review office.
The Joint Working Group on Federal Education Funding is scheduled to hear from education and financial experts during two weeks of committee meetings as state leaders evaluate the possibility of rejecting federal education funding coming to Tennessee.
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Per student spending in Michigan is up 24.8% over the past 17 years as Michigan has pumped more money into K-12 education while enrollment has been in a two-decade decline.
Enrollment fell 17.5% between 2003-04 and 2020-21, from 1.71 million students to 1.44 million. Two years later, after a nominal gain, it was down to 1.43 million. There was just one year in the 20 with an increase other than 2021-22’s nominal rise, a year impacted by COVID-19.
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The Tennessee Comptrollers Office released last week updated interactive online maps and dashboards related to the state and K-12 education. The dashboards and maps allow citizens to access information on both private and public schools for the 2021-2022 school year.
Included are data on teacher salaries, student enrollment, educational attainment, school building quality, and state and local funding available for Tennessee’s public schools and school districts.
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After months of debate and negotiations between Governor Katie Hobbs (D) and state Legislative leaders, the Arizona State House and Senate have passed a $17.8 billion state budget with bipartisan support, delivering some wins and losses for both sides of the political aisle.
“From day one, our Majority has been focused on getting the job done for our constituents: putting Arizona families first, protecting the vulnerable, and growing opportunity and freedom. We’re conservatives. We believe you should keep more of your money and the government should spend less. That’s why we believe this is Arizona’s Budget — a budget that reflects our needs, gives back, spends smart, and addresses real issues,” said House Speaker Ben Toma (R-Peoria). “We needed a budget that the Governor would sign that accomplishes our goal of putting Arizona families first. This budget accomplishes both.”
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Indiana scored the latest school choice victory with nearly all, save for 3.5 percent of families with school-age children, qualifying for the state’s new voucher program, The Wall Street Journal editorial board noted last week.
“The hits keep coming on school choice in Republican-run states,” The Journal editors observed, detailing:
The new law raises the income cap to 400% of the free- and reduced-price lunch income level, which is now about $220,000 for a family of four. The bill also removes the other criteria for eligibility so that any family under the income limit can apply. Tens of thousands of additional students could qualify, and a legislative analysis projects that some 95,000 students might use the program in 2025, up from about 53,000 in 2023.
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I have some advice for Tennessee’s new Commissioner of Education, Lizzette Gonzales-Reynolds. Please know that you will never be everyone’s cup of tea. And that statement of fact is true for all of us.
However, everyone is worthy of respect. In an Age of Irreverence, it is worth remembering that simple truth. We are all created in the image of God. It doesn’t mean you have to accept others’ beliefs, or even agree with them. However, it is a good starting point for human interaction.
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A senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation says leftist lawmakers in Democrat-led states such as Minnesota and California are feeding into a culture of victimization and identity politics with their plans for mandatory K-12 ethnic studies curricula, the goal of which, he says, is actually to erase American culture.
In an op-ed at the Washington Examiner Tuesday, Mike Gonzalez wrote that what is most disturbing about the leftist call for mandatory K-12 ethnic studies curricula in government schools is that most of the lawmakers proposing these bills are actually “not in the least bit interested” in learning about the minutiae of the hundreds of ethnic cultures represented in the United States. Rather, “they care only about American culture — or, at least, how to erase it.”
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The Florida Board of Education has approved an expansion of the state’s “Parental Rights in Education” bill that would prohibit classroom instruction in sexual orientation and gender identity in all K-12 grades, rather than only K-3.
In March 2022, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed into law H.B.1557, known as the “Parental Rights in Education” bill, a measure that bans classroom instruction by teachers or third parties on the topics of sexual orientation or gender identity in grades K-3, “or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”
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A brief filed this week in Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court by a Harrisburg think tank argues the school-funding system the court recently found unconstitutional must change to provide educational choice.
In the amicus curiae filing, the center-right Commonwealth Foundation (CF) notes it has frequently studied K-12 education spending in the Keystone State since CF’s founding 35 years ago. The foundation’s analyses have determined that increases in spending don’t necessarily improve learning outcomes. CF posits policymakers should consider this finding in light of the recent court ruling deeming numerous districts underfunded and instructing a new system that funds them more bountifully.
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There’s a world of difference in the abilities of elementary school students in the Trotwood-Madison City School District, outside Dayton, Ohio. Some low-performing fifth graders are only capable of reading first-grade picture books with basic words like dog and cat, says Angie Fugate, a district specialist focusing on gifted education. In the same classrooms, the aces read at a sixth-grade level, devouring thick novels that adults also enjoy, including the Harry Potter series.
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Historically, the Federal Government had limited involvement in Public Education. That changed in 1965 when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) into law.
ESEA doubled federal expenditures for K-12 education and gave the federal government much more input into education. That has been the debate ever since, central control of education versus state/local control.
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Speaker of the Tennessee House Cameron Sexton (R-Crossville) caught some of his fellow lawmakers by surprise with last week’s announcement of his intent to introduce legislation that would stop the state from accepting federal K-12 education dollars.
As Senate Education Chair John Lundberg (R-Bristol) told The Tennessee Star, “The proposal wasn’t even on my radar, but now that the idea is out there, I’m intrigued by the prospect of peeling back the onion and taking a look at the many layers involved in accepting money for education from the federal government.”
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The College Board announced Tuesday that it will be updating its framework for its Advanced Placement (AP) African American Studies (APAAS) course following its rejection by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) and his state’s Department of Education (FDOE).
The College Board said in a statement its final framework for the course will be released on Feb. 1, reported WESH.
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The school choice movement is gaining momentum as states focus on legislation that would give families greater freedom to select their child’s education, advocates told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Utah, New Hampshire and South Carolina are pushing for more expansive school choice legislation that would increase the value of school choice vouchers and the number of eligible students, while states such as Arizona and Florida have already implemented programs that provide vouchers to students outside of the public school system. The increasing push for more school choice legislation across the country is because other states have provided the model to do so, advocates told the DCNF.
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Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that could reverse the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger decision, in which SCOTUS asserted that the use of an applicant’s race as a factor in an admissions policy of a public educational institution does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The current case specifically cites the use of race in the admissions process at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. The plaintiffs, Students for Fair Admissions, maintain that Harvard violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, “which bars entities that receive federal funding from discriminating based on race, because Asian American applicants are less likely to be admitted than similarly qualified white, Black, or Hispanic applicants.”
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Democrats seized a political trifecta in Lansing for the first time in 40 years, and now two legislators are suggesting changing the state’s education policies.
State Sen. Dayne Polehanki, D-Livonia, tweeted possible policy priorities, including repealing right-to-work, providing “adequate funding” for schools, and repealing the retirement tax.
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Afton Partners, a national organization specializing in school funding and education policy, has announced via social media a new partnership with the Tennessee State Collaborative for Reforming Education(SCORE) and The Tennessee Charter School Center(TCSC). The stated purpose of the budding collaboration is to help Tennessee’s charter school leaders better understand the operational and financial implications of Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement(TISA) – the state’s new funding formula for public schools.
TISA was passed by legislators during the last General Assembly and is slated to replace the current funding formula for the 2023-2024 school year. Touted as a formula that funds students over systems, the bill establishes a base funding rate of $6,860 per pupil, then distributes additional funding for students considered as being economically disadvantaged, having unique learning needs, or living in rural or impoverished communities. Tennessee charter schools are considered public schools and therefore receive funding through their charter authorizer at the same rate as traditional schools.
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The release of the “Nation’s Report Card” on October 24th has led to a variety of pronouncements from a variety of experts. Many have expressed grave concerns over the potential effects on students, due to lost instructional time during the recent COVID pandemic. The value of this national test, designed to measure fourth and eighth-grade student learning, is in of itself a hotly debated issue. While the interpretation of the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which supplies the data for the Report Card, may be open to debate, they do offer a large trove of valuable information that can be used in the consideration and evaluation of policy. In some cases, providing a warning of future outcomes.
This year, Florida is publically celebrating its successful outcomes. In the wake of the positive results, Governor DeSantis sent out a press release using NEAP results to defend his response to COVID and his commitment to keeping schools open,
“We also knew that younger and at-risk students would be the most impacted if schools were closed, and the results speak for themselves. In Florida our 4thgrade students rank #3 in Reading and #4 in Math, achieving top 4 in both English and Math for the first time in state history, while lockdown California and New York aren’t even in the top 30.”.
While Florida’s fourth-grade results are exceptionally positive, they don’t tell the whole story.
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Most Americans are unhappy with the current K-12 education system, according to a poll released Thursday.
About one in four Americans reported being “completely dissatisfied” with education in America, while 32% are “somewhat dissatisfied,” according to a Gallup poll. Only 9% said they were “completely satisfied” with the education system.
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The student activities director at an elite New York City private school revealed in an undercover Project Veritas (PV) video that she “sneaks” her leftwing political agenda into classrooms “wherever I can.”
“I just keep trying to disrupt wherever I can,” Jennifer ‘Ginn’ Norris is heard saying in the video, the second in PV’s “Education Series” that is titled “The Secret Curriculum.”
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Despite the COVID-19 pandemic significantly hampering K-12 education, millions of students across the U.S. are working on assignments substantially below their grade level, according to a study released Monday.
Readworks, a non-profit focused on K-12 literacy gaps, studied 65 million assignments given to three million students in the 2020-2021 school year amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused students to miss months of learning, according to the report. Students were given assignments below their “grade level,” or academic expectations correlating to their age, one-third of the time.
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Tennessee’s new public school funding program, the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement, continues to move forward and soon rulemaking for the program will begin a review by Tennessee’s Attorney General before publication for 90 days on the Secretary of State’s website.
While many details of TISA were spelled out in legislation passed in April and signed into law in May by Gov. Bill Lee, rulemaking is required to give more detailed specifics on how the funding formula will operate. Those rules passed the Tennessee State Board of Education’s review before moving on to the Attorney General review.
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The Pennsylvania Department of Education is encouraging teachers to host a “Gender-Neutral Day” for children with resources from the disgraced Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) Learning for Justice social justice education program.
The education department’s webpage titled “Gender/Gender Identity: Creating Gender-Inclusive Schools and Classrooms” contains a list of “Words You Should Know,” from “The Gender Spectrum,” which was published in 2013 by SPLC’s former Teaching Tolerance program.
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A new documentary presented by actor and filmmaker Kirk Cameron urges American parents to embark on the journey of homeschooling in order to regain control of their children’s education and protect the future of America.
Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), CAMFAM Studios, and Fathom Events announced on Monday the debut of Kirk Cameron Presents: The Homeschool Awakening, which will be in theaters for two nights only, on June 13 and 14, at 7:00 p.m. local time.
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The Evanston-Skokie School District 65 will teach children as young as four years of age to celebrate the transgender flag, to try on different pronouns, and that the “gender binary” created by white “colonizers,” based on male and female sex, must be broken.
Education researcher Chris Rufo obtained the curriculum documents, which he published at City Journal last week.
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The Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) rallied U.S. students to participate in their annual Day of Silence Friday, during which the students are supposed to vow to remain silent in school, supposedly to draw attention to claims of “anti-LGBTQ behavior.”
According to GLSEN, which was founded by gay activist and former Obama administration “Safe Schools Czar” Kevin Jennings, the “Day of Silence” is “a national student-led demonstration where LGBTQ students and allies all around the country—and the world—take a vow of silence to protest the harmful effects of harassment and discrimination of LGBTQ people in schools.”
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Parents in Ludlow, Massachusetts, filed a federal lawsuit that alleges school officials secretly promoted their children’s gender transition and violated their parental rights by choosing not to inform them about issues related to their children’s health and well-being.
The parents, Stephen Foote and Marissa Silvestri, and Jonathan Feliciano and Sandra Salmeron, claim in their lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, Springfield Division, the Ludlow School Committee and district officials “have exceeded the bounds of legitimate pedagogical concerns and usurped the role” of parents “to direct the education and upbringing of their children, make medical and mental health decisions for their children, and to promote and preserve family privacy and integrity.”
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The number of families homeschooling in the United States has remained significantly above pre-pandemic levels even though government schools have reopened.
The number of homeschooling students increased by 63% during the 2020-2021 school year in 18 states that shared data, AP reported. That percentage then dropped by only 17% in the next academic year.
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The Florida Department of Education is rejecting more than 40% of the mathematics textbooks submitted to be used in the upcoming school year, citing critical race theory, Common Core and other language included in them that violate the state’s new standards.
“Reasons for rejecting textbooks included references to Critical Race Theory (CRT), inclusions of Common Core, and the unsolicited addition of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in mathematics,” the department said in a news release.
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A Wisconsin high school French teacher performed in drag for students during an assembly designed to highlight the “fine arts” at the school.
During Fine Arts Week last week at Middleton High School, which immediately touts itself “inclusive, innovative, inspiring” on its website, Matthew Kashdan cavorted onto the auditorium stage dressed in a revealing blue sequined dress, red boots, and a blond wig.
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A video posted to the Libs of Tik Tok Twitter account features a self-described “trans demiboy non-binary” elementary school teacher who argues parents’ claims that pre-K through third grade children are not ready for indoctrination in gender ideology are signs of “internalized homophobia and transphobia.”
“Hi, I’m a queer teacher and I, 1,000 percent, do not support this bill,” states Amanda Tooley, who apparently now uses the name “Skye” and goes by “Mx. T” in her classroom at Saturn Street Elementary Arts and Media Magnet School in Los Angeles.
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New Jersey will begin teaching its youngest students this fall that it is “normal” to “feel like you’re a boy even if you have body parts that some people might tell you are ‘girl’ parts.”
In June 2020, New Jersey LGBTQ activists, including abortion industry giant Planned Parenthood – now the second largest provider of transgender hormone treatments in the nation – praised Democrats for approving sex ed standards that indoctrinate young elementary students into the dogma that the science of biological sex is subservient to activist-invented gender ideology.
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The anticipated sales tax revenues associated with proposed upgrades to Titans Stadium could be a good idea, says JC Bowman, executive director & CEO of Professional Educators of Tennessee, but whether such a plan is “sustainable” in the long term remains a question.
In an interview with The Tennessee Star, Bowman assessed recent statements by Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton about the state investing in upgrades to Titans Stadium with the expectation that sales tax generated from major events could be invested in K-12 education, particularly in the state’s rural areas.
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Thales Academy, offering schools with a high quality private education at affordable rates, is planning to expand from its elementary school in Franklin, Tennessee, to two new buildings for the middle and high school levels.
Robert Luddy, the founder and chairman of Thales Academy, told The Star News Network the expansion in Franklin is “off to a really good start because we have one campus open.”
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Senior Education Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) Kerry McDonald told The Star News Network the time is ripe in America for greater innovation and entrepreneurship in providing new education models for parents exiting the government school system.
Many parents got an up-close look at what their children are learning in public schools for the first time during the pandemic school closures and subsequent remote learning, leading them to consider education alternatives.
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In an interview with The Star News Network, nationally known school choice advocate Corey DeAngelis said teachers’ unions would be incentivized to push for more student-focused policies in public schools if school funding followed the child and more states adopted school choice programs.
DeAngelis, the national director of research at the American Federation for Children, is also an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, and a senior fellow at the Reason Foundation.
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A new documentary exposes Critical Race Theory (CRT) as the “hidden agenda in America’s schools,” as it also emphasizes the “corrupting influence of teachers’ unions” and urges a return to the true education of American children.
Fathom Events, the film’s distributor, notes on its website Whose Children Are They? seeks to “pull back the curtain about what is truly happening in our public schools today.”
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A study released last week has found more than one in three children in grades K-3 are unlikely to be reading on grade level by the end of the current school year unless they receive major remedial help.
Curriculum and assessment company Amplify analyzed data from more than 400,000 students in kindergarten through fifth grade and found that, while students have begun to rebound from the learning loss suffered during school closures amid the coronavirus pandemic, considerable gaps remain in basic reading skills, Education Week reported.
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Of late, Fox News has been hosting a series called “The MisEducation of America” featuring gatherings of critical race theory’s critics—such as Carol Swain of Vanderbilt University—focusing on the danger of teaching racially divisive versions of American history. According to Swain, a black professor of political science at Vanderbilt, forcing kids to do things like play games called “privilege bingo” are “a prime example of how CRT, has seeped down to K-12 education, and it disturbs students.” Further: “All of these critical theories with Marxist roots are destroying American education, and parents have to save their children. But they also have to work to save other people’s children.”
Although the media and our universities may choose to ignore Swain’s complaint, she is actually understating the problem she and “MisEducation” host Pete Hegseth are featuring. I’m not sure I see “the Marxist roots” of the crusade against white people and their history in quite the same way Swain and Hegseth see it. We are indeed witnessing class warfare but not of the kind that Marx foresaw. It is a war being waged by white elites against the “basket of deplorables,” the predominantly white, working-class, and small-town Americans whom these elites hate and want to divest of human dignity. Similar conflicts are going on simultaneously in other Western countries, featuring equivalent social conflict.
In none of these cases do we find Marx’s appeals to the proletariat to rise up against those who control the means of production. In fact, we are witnessing exactly the opposite. An alliance of corporate capitalists, feminists, the LGBT lobby, and black race hustlers are directing their fire on the working class, which seems to be the least affected by the hegemonic ideology of wokeness. If anything, we are now looking at what Pedro Gonzalez has characterized as “the counterrevolution of the ruling class.” If Marxist theory, which supposedly is “seeping in” has any application, it would be as an analysis of how our elites are suppressing those they are stepping on and trying through increasingly vicious hate speech to isolate.
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Homeschooling is here to stay and the time has come for policymakers to acknowledge that fact. After years of increasing at a rate of about 3 percent a year, the number of parents choosing to homeschool their children has spiked, triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the portion of children being homeschooled doubled from 5.4 percent during the 2019-20 school year to 11 percent in 2020-21. Among Black families, homeschooling jumped nearly five-fold during that time, from 3.3 percent to 16.1 percent.
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President Joe Biden’s administration wants to lead an electric vehicle (EV) revolution, but apparently doesn’t want domestic production of rare earth minerals vital to EVs.
The Biden administration announced a two-year study on a proposed Twin Metals copper-nickel mine in northeast Minnesota that could delay it for 20 years and stop one of the few planned copper-nickel mines in the nation while the U.S attempts to pivot to EVs from gasoline-powered internal combustion vehicles.
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Knox County Schools (KCS) approved a dual enrollment course from East Tennessee State University (ETSU) that has historically taught critical race theory. The KCS board of education approved the course offering, “SOWK 1030: Cultural Diversity,” as part of a larger list of ETSU dual enrollment courses during their meeting last week.
The course is characterized as pre-professional social work curriculum focused on social justice topics such as “diversity within diversity,” referring to intersectionality – a concept coined by preeminent critical race theory scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw.
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The Arizona Department of Education (ADE) awarded Northern Arizona University (NAU) $1 million to teach culturally responsive education in tribal schools. The grant, awarded at the beginning of last month, will apply to professional development programs and fellowships for tribal educators.
“Believing in the power of teachers and the desire to grow their capacity to write and teach curriculum that is culturally responsive is at the forefront of the Institute for Native-serving Educators (INE)[,]” read NAU’s press release.
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School groups throughout Ohio and around the nation have praised the recently signed Ohio state budget that expands education choice opportunities for parents and students.
The budget, signed late Wednesday night by Gov. Mike DeWine, increased the state’s voucher system, created a new tax-credit scholarship program and established the state’s first education savings accounts.
“Governor Mike DeWine has signed a budget that expands existing school choice options and creates Ohio’s first-ever education savings account program helping parents afford desperately-needed resources and giving them the flexibility necessary to improve their children’s educational outcomes,” said Rea Hederman Jr., executive director of the Economic Research Center at The Buckeye Institute and vice president of policy. “These bold reforms are some of the most significant that Ohio’s families have seen in a decade.”
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State Representative Daniel Hernandez (D-Tucson) voted against a requirement for K-12 students to learn about the dangers of communism, saying that white nationalism poses the bigger threat.
Hernandez issued those remarks during the House floor vote on the K-12 budget last Friday. In just over a century of existence, communism has claimed over 100 million lives. However, Hernandez claimed that the existence of white nationalism, which he attributed to the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, was far worse.
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Tennessee will now require schools to notify parents and allow them to opt their student out before implementing sexual orientation or gender identity curriculum. The legislation went into effect on Monday, when Governor Bill Lee signed it into law. Essentially, this legislation serves as a notification and opt-out system concerning sexual orientation and gender identity curriculum.
Schools are now required to notify parents at least 30 days before imposing any curriculum dealing with sexual orientation or gender identity. The law also specifies that parents have the right to examine the curriculum materials and discuss them with their student’s instructor, school counselor, or principal.
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More than 60 organizations in the U.S. have created a movement – “Yes. Every kid” – promoting policies and funding at a national and local level that focus on the needs of families and students over institutions.
At a time when tens of millions of students face nearly six months without consistent schooling, and while many schools are not reopening, the coalition argues that tax and other dollars should be sent directly to families to determine which educational opportunities are best for them.
“Families have already paid for the ability to access public education” through tax dollars, the coalition says. “Any additional funds should be provided directly to families via grants, stipends, rebates, or other mechanisms designed to help cover the schooling, courses, devices, connectivity, tutoring, socialization, extracurricular activities, and other forms of learning that have been left to parents to pay for.”
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During the second hour, caller David called into the show to inform Leahy about his experience with a Franklin school teacher who he felt was promoting communism in the classroom wall by displaying a poster featuring communist figures like Mao Tse Tung.
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