Thursday, March 18, 2021

THE TOP BANANA: TODAY'S EDUCATION HEADLINES Thursday, March 18, 2021 #REDFORED #tbats #openonlywhensafe #edchat #K12 #learning #edleadership #edtech #engchat #literacy #edreform

THE TOP BANANA
TODAY'S EDUCATION HEADLINES

Teachers union demands transparency after COVID-19 cases shut Philadelphia school - Chalkbeat Philadelphia - https://philadelphia.chalkbeat.org/2021/3/17/22336985/teachers-union-demands-transparency-after-covid-19-cases-shut-philadelphia-school on chalkbeat

Top-Notch Language Conversation/Pronunciation Site “Peaksay” Now Lets Teachers Create Classes! | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... - https://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/?p=116310 on @Larryferlazzo

Your Unvaccinated Kid Is Like a Vaccinated Grandma http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheAtlantic/~3/Ay-V6mmInvI/

Expanded testing part of Biden administration school plans | National | gazette.com - https://gazette.com/ap/national/expanded-testing-part-of-biden-administration-school-plans/article_19bd963b-16a4-5897-83f7-29c5969b570c.html on @csgazette

The U.S. government is taking another step to encourage schools to reopen, saying it will give $10 billion for Covid-19 testing. https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-to-give-10-billion-to-schools-for-covid-19-testing-11615996819?reflink=desktopwebshare_twitter via @WSJ

Will Classroom Social Distancing Rules Change? - The New York Times - https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/17/us/schools-reopening-social-distancing-cdc.html on @nytimes

Senator Schumer Comes Through On Education Equity https://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/editorial/senator-schumer-comes-through-on-education-equity/2021/03/17/ via @JewishPress

CDC set to revisit advice on spacing between students amid new evidence https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/schools-reopening-distance-cdc/2021/03/17/6d252502-8740-11eb-bfdf-4d36dab83a6d_story.html?tid=ss_tw

School nurses have become crucial in battling the pandemic, but Texas doesn't require districts to have them https://www.texastribune.org/2021/03/18/texas-school-nurses-coronavirus/

Help your kids, but not too much, says new Stanford study https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/helicopter-parenting

Marking one year COVID anniversary, Hite talks Philadelphia reopening, stimulus, new school year in Chalkbeat interview https://philadelphia.chalkbeat.org/2021/3/17/22336763/marking-anniversary-hite-talks-philadelphia-reopening-stimulus-new-year-in-chalkbeat-interview

Loudoun schools to ramp up to four days a week of in-person school in April https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/loudoun-county-schools-four-days-april/2021/03/17/ae43bde0-8750-11eb-8a8b-5cf82c3dffe4_story.html

OPINION: We ignore middle school students at our own peril https://hechingerreport.org/opinion-we-ignore-middle-school-students-at-our-own-peril/

Many parents eager to sign up kids for NJ COVID-19 vaccine trials https://www.njspotlight.com/video/many-parents-eager-to-sign-up-kids-for-nj-covid-19-vaccine-trials/

Education Dept. Begins Rolling Back Trump-Era Policies On Defrauded Students https://www.npr.org/2021/03/18/978574707/education-dept-begins-rolling-back-trump-era-policies-on-defrauded-students

The Latest Stimulus Package Includes $130 Billion For K-12 Education https://www.npr.org/2021/03/17/978288289/the-latest-stimulus-package-includes-130-billion-for-k-12-education

White House to Spend Billions to Increase Virus Testing and Ease Reopening https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/17/us/politics/coronavirus-testing-schools.html

San Diego County Back in the Red and Schools Are Back in the Green http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/obrag/IrDB/~3/PUT_ApPWCg8/

Thursday’s Must-Read Articles On School Reopenings | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... - https://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/?p=116296 on @Larryferlazzo

Ethnic Studies Curriculum Needed in California https://www.laprogressive.com/ethnic-studies-debate/

Bad News in Kentucky: Legislature Passes Voucher Bill | Diane Ravitch's blog - https://wp.me/p2odLa-tRp via @dianeravitch

Education Research Report: Crisis in Rural Community Colleges - http://educationresearchreport.blogspot.com/

Lt. Governor Mark Robinson launches new website to report 'indoctrination' in North Carolina public schools - ABC11 Raleigh-Durham - https://abc11.com/mark-robinson-lt-governor-indoctrination-in-schools/10423650/#new_tab via @ABC11_WTVD

Make it easier to expand charter schools? Texas lawmakers will have that debate - https://www.expressnews.com/news/education/article/Make-it-easier-to-expand-charter-schools-Texas-16033090.php#new_tab on @mysa

CNN segment raises questions about union commitment to school reopening - kappanonline.org - https://kappanonline.org/?p=81813 by @alexanderrusso on @pdkintl

Dallas trustees lowered the district’s academic goals because of the pandemic. DISD kindergarteners are still off-track - https://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/2021/03/18/dallas-trustees-lowered-the-districts-academic-goals-because-of-the-pandemic-disd-kindergarteners-are-still-off-track/#new_tab via @dallasnews

Local School Districts Suddenly Have Unprecedented Cash https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/education/local-school-districts-suddenly-have-unprecedented-cash/

A petition from Maine parents gives the Supreme Court an opportunity to protect religious freedom in education, writes Michael Bindas https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-supreme-court-has-unfinished-school-choice-business-11616000813?reflink=desktopwebshare_twitter via @WSJOpinion

US schools prepare summer of learning to help kids catch up » Albuquerque Journal - https://www.abqjournal.com/2371064/us-schools-prepare-summer-of-learning-to-help-kids-catch-up.html on @abqjournal

Miguel Cardona: Education secretary says school in the fall 'will look more like what it was before Covid' - CNNPolitics - https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/17/politics/school-reopening-covid-19-miguel-cardona/index.html#new_tab

DeSantis knocks critical race theory in civics curricula - https://apnews.com/article/race-and-ethnicity-ron-desantis-florida-coronavirus-pandemic-naples-56d68d06e08105796e87c684f95bf1a7#new_tab on @ap

Proposal would change Tennessee law to let for-profit companies run charter schools https://tn.chalkbeat.org/2021/3/17/22337221/proposal-would-change-tennessee-law-to-let-for-profit-companies-run-charter-schools via @ChalkbeatTN

As U.S. Sees Encouraging News Over All, Northeast Looks Like an Outlier - The New York Times - https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/03/17/world/covid-19-coronavirus#a-national-teachers-union-objects-to-changing-the-cdcs-six-foot-distancing-rule-for-classrooms on @nytimes

1 in 3 CPS students back in classrooms are being taught by remote teachers, principals association says - Chicago Sun-Times - https://chicago.suntimes.com/education/2021/3/17/22336546/cps-reopening-remote-learning-public-schools-black#new_tab

Big Education Ape: Teacher Tom: Partnering With Parents - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2021/03/teacher-tom-partnering-with-parents.html

Cancel the F**king Tests! | The Merrow Report

Big Education Ape / 1h

Cancel the F**king Tests! Last week in this space I put forth nine reasons why it was absolutely essential that students be required to take machine-scored, multiple-choice bubble tests once they return to school. This was an entirely facetious essay that maintained, among other things, that NOT giving tests would cause an economic recession but that GIVING tests would make it easier for student

Bad News in Kentucky: Legislature Passes Voucher Bill | Diane Ravitch's blog

Big Education Ape / 1h

Bad News in Kentucky: Legislature Passes Voucher Bill Kentucky Republican legislators passed a voucher bill, which now goes to Democratic Governor Andy Bashear. The Governor will likely veto the bill, but the legislature can override his veto with a simple majority. This is the ultimate vengeance against teachers, who organized in 2018 to fight the Republican plan to change teachers’ pensions. T

Education Matters: Tallahassee Republicans continue to attack schools, students and teachers

Big Education Ape / 1h

Tallahassee Republicans continue to attack schools, students and teachers Representative Dennis Baxley out of Ocala, whose day job is that of a mortician has proposed radically changing the Bright Futures scholarship program, a program that annually pays the college tuition for tens of thousands of high school graduates that attend Florida schools. He says some college degrees do not lead to emp

Closing America’s Education Funding Gaps

Big Education Ape / 1h

Closing America’s Education Funding Gaps America is in the midst of a profound political reckoning. Against the backdrop of an unprecedented public health crisis and steadily rising death toll, a historically deep economic recession, and widespread protests against police brutality and racial injustice, people across the country are awakening and grappling anew with longstanding issues of inequa

Urge the Mayor and the Council to use a big chunk of the federal funds to reduce class size next year! | Class Size | A clearinghouse for information on class size & the proven benefits of smaller classes

Big Education Ape / 1h

Urge the Mayor and the Council to use a big chunk of the federal funds to reduce class size next year! | Class Size Matters Urge the Mayor and the Council to use a big chunk of the federal funds to reduce class size next year! | A clearinghouse for information on class size & the proven benefits of smaller classes Urge the Mayor and the Council to use a big chunk of the federal funds to reduce cl

Bruce D. Baker and Robert Cotto Jr.: The underfunding of Latinx-serving school districts - kappanonline org

Big Education Ape / 1h

The underfunding of Latinx-serving school districts - kappanonline.org The underfunding of Latinx-serving school districts An analysis of spending in U.S. public schools reveals dozens of districts — many with large Latinx enrollments — that are underfunded compared to other districts in their region, even though they serve children with much greater needs. When analyzing questions of fairness in

CURMUDGUCATION: School Choice Dinner Party

Big Education Ape / 1h

School Choice Dinner Party Pairagraph is a website set up around the idea of conversations, or debates, around a particular question. The website organizers invite a pair of people to address the question in turn for a total of four posts of no more than 500 words each. It's a fun little concept that has, so far, been applied to a broad range of topics. I was recently invited to join in one of t

Biden needs to pursue student loan forgiveness - USA TODAY

Big Education Ape / 1h

Biden needs to pursue student loan forgiveness Student loan forgiveness: Biden can restore a broken promise We found a minefield of deceptions by student loan companies and negligent indifference by government officials. Kelly Finlaw is a middle school art teacher in New York City. Over the last year, she has also been called an “essential employee,” a “frontline worker” and — a term she has cert

In Which I Think of Ways to Respond to My Legislators | Live Long and Prosper

Big Education Ape / 1h

In Which I Think of Ways to Respond to My Legislators Indiana is ready to add more public money to the state voucher program for private — mostly religious — schools. House Bills 1001 and 1005 would give nearly a third of the state’s increase in education funding to the 5% (10% if you count charters) of the students who go to private schools . I had written to my local state rep, Dave Heine , bu

YESTERDAY

THE TOP BANANA: TODAY'S EDUCATION HEADLINES Wednesday, March 17, 2021 #REDFORED #tbats #openonlywhensafe #edchat #K12 #learning #edleadership #edtech #engchat #literacy #edreform

Big Education Ape / 23h

Big Education Ape THE TOP BANANA TODAY'S EDUCATION HEADLINES Biden admin unveils $10B school testing plan for Covid-19 https://politi.co/3cCTfj0 via @politico Department of Education to Host National Safe School Reopening Summit on Wednesday, March 24 | U.S. Department of Education - https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/department-education-host-national-safe-school-reopening-summit-wednesday-m

Big Education Ape

Teacher Tom: Partnering With Parents

Partnering With Parents

By nature, I consider myself an introvert, so when our daughter was born, I happily stepped into the role of stay-at-home parent. Of course, I looked forward to the "parenting" part, but I equally, and a bit secretly, embraced the "stay-at-home" aspect of the job title. As I held my newborn, I imagined our cozy life, snuggling, puttering around the house, eating snacks, reading storybooks, and playing in the garden. My homebody self imagined a kind of utopia effectively walled-off from the rest of the world where my wife, the extravert, would go off into the world to slay the dragons, while the two of us nested, unmolested, at least for a time, by the stresses of being out in the world.

And it was something like that at first, but among her first sentences were, "Let's go somewhere" and "Let's do something," a clear indication that she was her mother's daughter. I took this to mean that she was asking me for preschool, but when I ran the idea by my wife, she said, "No. She has a stay-at-home parent. Why would we send her off to be raised by strangers if we don't have to?" She had a point, but just in case, I ran the idea of preschool by my mother, who said, "Why would you do that? She has you. Besides, once their gone they're gone. Keep her at home as long as you can." Another compelling argument, but I there CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: Partnering With Parents

Cancel the F**king Tests! | The Merrow Report

Cancel the F**king Tests!

Last week in this space I put forth nine reasons why it was absolutely essential that students be required to take machine-scored, multiple-choice bubble tests once they return to school. This was an entirely facetious essay that maintained, among other things, that NOT giving tests would cause an economic recession but that GIVING tests would make it easier for students to social distance because they would be chained to their desks for hours.

Because a few readers thought I was being serious, I thought it might be helpful to try to state directly and clearly how I really feel. Let me put it in caps, the typed equivalent of shouting from the rooftop, to make things perfectly clear: REQUIRING TESTS THIS SPRING WOULD BE CHILD ABUSE! Because this school year has been unpredictable, abnormal, and inconsistent, why would anyone expect anything but skewed (screwed up) data from mandatory tests, particularly because students who have been ‘remotely schooled’ all year do not have to take the tests, and no one is clear yet about how the tests would be administered to students now attending CONTINUE READING: Cancel the F**king Tests! | The Merrow Report

Bad News in Kentucky: Legislature Passes Voucher Bill | Diane Ravitch's blog

Bad News in Kentucky: Legislature Passes Voucher Bill

Kentucky Republican legislators passed a voucher bill, which now goes to Democratic Governor Andy Bashear. The Governor will likely veto the bill, but the legislature can override his veto with a simple majority. This is the ultimate vengeance against teachers, who organized in 2018 to fight the Republican plan to change teachers’ pensions.

The rightwing group EdChoice, formerly the Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation, was thrilled:

Public school supporters normally fight back in-person when pension reform and school choice are up for votes in Frankfort. But this year, Kentucky’s Capitol is closed to the public because of COVID-19, so the halls are empty. However, the bills dealing with those issues are still moving through.

“It’s a really big day,” said Andrew Vandiver with EdChoice Kentucky, a group that supports school choice.

After years of fighting for school choice, EdChoice Kentucky hoped to see it become law Tuesday.

“It’s just about fairness,” said Vandiver. “Trying to make CONTINUE READING: Bad News in Kentucky: Legislature Passes Voucher Bill | Diane Ravitch's blog

Education Matters: Tallahassee Republicans continue to attack schools, students and teachers

Tallahassee Republicans continue to attack schools, students and teachers

Representative Dennis Baxley out of Ocala, whose day job is that of a mortician has proposed radically changing the Bright Futures scholarship program, a program that annually pays the college tuition for tens of thousands of high school graduates that attend Florida schools.

He says some college degrees do not lead to employment and went as far as calling it an entitlement program, failing to understand the benefit that it provides to the many families that use is that is then paid forward by having students attend local schools and with them then in turn living and working in Florida. Bright Futures is also heavily financed by the Lottery, not the general fund.

Teachers, colleges, parents, and as you can imagine student groups have fiercely opposed the proposed changes, but they do have one group that seems to overwhelmingly support it and that is republican legislators in Tallahassee. Which begs the question why? I believe it is because they do not understand the value of education and have a pathological dislike of public education and everything that comes from it. You see it is not just students and their scholarships that they are seeking to cripple but teachers and public education itself.

There is currently a half dozen anti-teacher union bills working their way through Tallahassee including one by local representative Cord Byrd. He wants to make it more difficult to join and stay in unions by stopping automatic reduction withdraws. His proposal would only affect teachers, not police or firefighters which are also heavily unionized. He says it is because he wants to narrowly focus on education, but the reality is Byrd like his fellow local republican politicians, Yarbrough, and Fischer, routinely do all they can to marginalize and CONTINUE READING: Education Matters: Tallahassee Republicans continue to attack schools, students and teachers

Closing America’s Education Funding Gaps

Closing America’s Education Funding Gaps

America is in the midst of a profound political reckoning. Against the backdrop of an unprecedented public health crisis and steadily rising death toll, a historically deep economic recession, and widespread protests against police brutality and racial injustice, people across the country are awakening and grappling anew with longstanding issues of inequality, opportunity, and justice—and confronting the hard truths of the American experience for people of color.

One of the starkest examples of this inequality, as well as a leading cause of it, is our nation’s highly unequal and highly segregated K–12 public education system. By underinvesting in our public schools, we rob millions of American children—particularly Black, brown, and low-income children—of the opportunity to succeed. Inequality, in effect, begins at birth.

While we have known for decades that the United States is failing in its commitment to provide equal educational opportunity, there is far less consensus and understanding of how to reverse these trends. Now, for the first time ever, The Century Foundation (TCF) has calculated the level of investment needed to lift up every student in the country that is currently falling behind. In other words, in this report we estimate what it would cost to provide each child in America—no matter their background—with the opportunity to succeed in school.

Inequality begins in childhood: The United States is underfunding our public schools by nearly $150 billion annually, robbing millions of children—predominantly minority and low-income children—of the opportunity to succeed.

We can begin to restore the promise of public education by simply investing more in our students and in our schools. A wide-ranging and rigorous body of research makes it clear: spending matters in education. More specifically, greater investments in schools translate to improved student outcomes, and these outcomes are more pronounced and significant for low-income and minority students.

Across a range of metrics, U.S. students score lower than students in other developed nations, and these outcomes vary significantly along racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic lines. At the same time, state- and district-level data show wide variation in educational spending across the country. Some school districts and states spend vastly more per pupil, and pay educators much higher wages, than others. Not surprisingly, variation in education spending largely overlaps with variation in student outcomes. In general, where states invest more in public schools, students tend to achieve higher scores and perform better.

To calculate exactly “how much” more spending is needed, TCF partnered with the nation’s leading school finance expert, Bruce D. Baker, Ed.D., of Rutgers University Graduate School of Education, to develop a first-of-its-kind national cost model study. Our model estimates what it would cost for students to achieve national average outcomes on reading and math assessments by 2021 for every school district in the country, more than 13,000 in total.

For the majority of school districts in the country (7,224 in total, serving almost two-thirds of public school students, or more than 30 million children in total), bringing students up to the nation’s current average outcomes requires greater public investment, enough to fill what we call a “funding gap.” The remaining districts currently provide funding at or above what our model estimates is needed to achieve average outcomes, and thus have no funding gap.1

We have visualized the findings of the model in a nationwide map, available above. The interactive map allows users to identify what, if any, funding gap exists for a particular school district or state. It includes estimates for both aggregate and per-pupil funding gaps in each school district and state, which serve to tell us the following:

Aggregate funding gaps provide the overall scope of the investment needed in each jurisdiction. In districts and states with larger populations of students, these aggregate gaps will be larger.
Per-pupil funding gaps, on the other hand, allow comparisons across districts and states, irrespective of population size.

In addition, we include two different estimates for what it would cost to close the gap:

The first represents the cost to states and districts if they acted swiftly to close the gap within one year.
The second represents the costs to localities if they scale up and phase in spending over five years to close the gap (the map below).

CONTINUE READING: Closing America’s Education Funding Gaps

Urge the Mayor and the Council to use a big chunk of the federal funds to reduce class size next year! | Class Size | A clearinghouse for information on class size & the proven benefits of smaller classes

Urge the Mayor and the Council to use a big chunk of the federal funds to reduce class size next year!

Class Size Matters and NYC Kids PAC are advocating for one billion dollars of the approximately $2.5 billion that NYC schools are due to get next year and the year after to be invested in smaller classes, for NYC students who will need them more than every before.

This is a chance in a lifetime opportunity to ensure that enough funding is spent the right way to make a huge opportunity for NYC kids.

If you agree, please sign our petition here; and sign up to speak at the Council’s Committee on Education preliminary budget hearings next Tuesday March 23; public testimony via video starts at noon.

You can sign up here at least 24 hours beforehand and/or send your testimony to testimony@council.nyc.gov up to 72 hours after the end of the hearing. Please copy the email to your own City Council member; you can find their names and emails by filling in your address here. Feel free to copy us at info@classsizematters.org

Here is sample text you can use, but please add any language you like:

Hello, my name is ____ and I have a child in the ___ grade in [name of public school.]

Please allocate one billion dollars of the federal funds for next year to class size reduction so that students can have the benefit of both social distancing and stronger academic and social support, which they will need next year more than ever before. Please make sure that happens, for the sake of my child and the other children in the NYC public schools.

Yours sincerely,

Name, address, email

Thanks Leonie

Bruce D. Baker and Robert Cotto Jr.: The underfunding of Latinx-serving school districts - kappanonline org

The underfunding of Latinx-serving school districts - kappanonline.org

The underfunding of Latinx-serving school districts

An analysis of spending in U.S. public schools reveals dozens of districts — many with large Latinx enrollments — that are underfunded compared to other districts in their region, even though they serve children with much greater needs.

When analyzing questions of fairness in local education spending, it’s important to understand that the value of the education dollar is relative. It doesn’t just matter how much money, in total, a school district spends but also how that figure compares to spending in nearby districts. After all, schools in the same area must compete with each other for employees. The district that spends $15,000 per pupil will have a harder time hiring and retaining the area’s highest-quality teachers and staff than will the neighboring district that spends $20,000. Moreover, each dollar will go further in districts that serve relatively affluent students than in those that serve large numbers of students from low-income backgrounds, who tend to need more (and more expensive) services.

Several years ago, one of us (Bruce Baker) set out to identify public school districts that face this kind of competitive disadvantage — more specifically, districts where the students face greater needs than in surrounding districts (i.e., child poverty is more than 20% higher) but where per-pupil spending is less than 90% of the region’s average.

At the time, a number of national reports had just been published comparing the overall fairness of states’ school finance systems (Baker & Corcoran, 2012; Baker, Sciarra, & Farrie, 2014). But studies were also beginning to show a lot of variation within states. Even in those states that appeared to have relatively well-funded and equitable school finance systems, some districts were being left out. And that raised the question: Did those districts have something in common?

The answer turned out to be yes. Those districts where students’ needs were greater but the schools were relatively under-resourced were disproportionately located in smaller cities that served high CONTINUE READING: The underfunding of Latinx-serving school districts - kappanonline.org

CURMUDGUCATION: School Choice Dinner Party

School Choice Dinner Party

Pairagraph is a website set up around the idea of conversations, or debates, around a particular question. The website organizers invite a pair of people to address the question in turn for a total of four posts of no more than 500 words each. It's a fun little concept that has, so far, been applied to a broad range of topics.

I was recently invited to join in one of these pairings around the question "Is school choice essential to educational justice." My counterpart was Terry Stoops of the John Locke Foundation (North Carolina’s Most Trusted and Influential Source of Common Sense). I had the second and fourth positions in the debate.

Here's what I posted for my first response.

Imagine that you have a dining room with three tables set up. At one is a great feast, with the finest meats and vegetables, beautifully cooked. At another is a good, solid, if not spectacular, spread of hearty, wholesome food. At the third is bread and water.

Folks are assigned to one of the three tables to eat, but the assignment seems unfair, so one of the people enters the dining room and sets up a fourth table. This person takes a few chairs and some food from each of the other tables for their Table #4, and announces, "We will now have choice."

But there is the same number of chairs, the same amount of food, and the same range of quality. The same number of diners will eat bread and water.

Mr. Stoops has made an excellent case against the CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: School Choice Dinner Party

Biden needs to pursue student loan forgiveness - USA TODAY

Biden needs to pursue student loan forgiveness

Student loan forgiveness: Biden can restore a broken promise

We found a minefield of deceptions by student loan companies and negligent indifference by government officials.

Kelly Finlaw is a middle school art teacher in New York City. Over the last year, she has also been called an “essential employee,” a “frontline worker” and — a term she has certainly never attributed to herself — a “hero.” During this time, she has done everything she could to meet the needs of her students and make remote learning work as well as possible, all the while knowing it is no substitute for being in the classroom with her students.

Yet despite delivering on her promise to educate the next generation of Americans — even in the midst of a pandemic — the federal government has broken its promise to her. Finlaw remains stuck with nearly $90,000 in student debt that should have been canceled years ago.

Finlaw, along with millions of others, was made a simple pledge: If she worked for a decade as an educator, as a nurse or in another public service profession, her student debt would be wiped away.

The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program

That was the intent of the federal Public Service Loan Forgiveness program — a bipartisan law that recognized that spiraling student debt burdens are particularly punishing for workers in public service, and that our communities and our country are worse off if this burden drives a generation of students away from careers as educators, healthcare workers, first responders, and other public service workers. CONTINUE READING: Biden needs to pursue student loan forgiveness

In Which I Think of Ways to Respond to My Legislators | Live Long and Prosper

In Which I Think of Ways to Respond to My Legislators

Indiana is ready to add more public money to the state voucher program for private — mostly religious — schools.

House Bills 1001 and 1005 would give nearly a third of the state’s increase in education funding to the 5% (10% if you count charters) of the students who go to private schools. I had written to my local state rep, Dave Heine, but received no reply. He voted to approve the increase along with all of his Republican friends in the state House of Representatives. The bills are now before the state Senate, so I wrote my state senator, Dennis Kruse (IN-S14), and asked him to vote against increasing the vouchers.

I received responses from Senator Kruse this week. I’ll send a reply to his emails, though I doubt it will change anything. Here is what he wrote (different paragraphs are from his response on House Bill 1001 or House Bill 1005) CONTINIUE READING: In Which I Think of Ways to Respond to My Legislators | Live Long and Prosper

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Thursday, March 18, 2021