Six on History: Schools
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But behind these efforts lie specific trends that could prove particularly toxic. The risk: They may make teachers believe they are on such thin ice that they end up whitewashing the U.S. past rather than dare to communicate hard truths about it.
That’s the key takeaway from a new report from PEN America on the latest batch of restrictions moving forward in GOP legislatures. The report shows that these efforts are expanding and getting more pedagogically pernicious in their goals.
The report’s top-line finding: Dozens of proposals have already been introduced this month to limit how our nation’s racial past and present are taught. That’s striking enough, but what’s underneath these efforts also matters.
The third: Many come with a “private right of action,” allowing parents and citizens to seek to levy their own punishments against teachers, such as suing them in court. Put all this together, and the aim seems to go beyond the traditional exercise of state authority to set curriculums.
Instead, this seems to treat teachers as subversive internal threats who must be zealously rooted out at any deviation from orthodoxy. The vague drafting of prohibited concepts, combined with threats of action and/or punishment, seem structured to make educators feel constantly at risk, chilling the range of discussion.
Another Indiana proposal would bar teachers from using materials that “include” what it describes as “anti-American ideologies.” The report notes that the bill text doesn’t describe what these might be.
“A parent could complain that a teacher’s lecture about the Jim Crow era or about the persistence of racism and sexism in American life constitute anti-American ideology, and must be punished with the full force of the law,” Sachs told me.
Something like this already happened. Tennessee parents objected to the teaching of a book that portrayed the Jim Crow era in blunt and graphic terms, insisting it would make kids “hate their country.” Tennessee law prohibits teaching “concepts” that might make someone feel “discomfort” due to their race.
A ban on teaching a supposed “anti-American ideology” could open up more such objections, Sachs told me. This label, he said, might be applied to anything a teacher says that betrays someone’s “personal idea of what constitutes the nation and its values.”
All this points to a deeper question. Let’s say you accept objections to the idea that the U.S. founding was inherently white-supremacist or that our national experiment is irredeemably doomed to fall short of our founding values. Even so, why should teachers fear raising such concepts in classrooms, if only as ideas that have been debated throughout U.S. history and still are?
Some of these laws ban the “concept” that the United States is “irredeemably racist or sexist,” and some ban the idea that slavery and racism represent anything more than full-scale betrayals of our “authentic” founding. Proponents sometimes cite Martin Luther King Jr.’s belief in the ultimate promise of America’s founding in justifying this.
“King said he hoped America could live up to its stated ideals, but nevertheless he wrestled with whether that was possible,” historian Kevin Kruse tells me.
As Sam Adler-Bell explains in an important essay on these laws, one of their goals is to place that very inquiry by King — whether that was possible, whether that is possible — beyond the reach of pedagogy, to remove it from the agenda entirely.
Similarly, some abolitionists, including William Lloyd Garrison, believed white supremacy undergirded the Constitution itself. Irredeemably so, in fact.
The question is whether teachers may fear that offering materials that treat these questions as up for debate is itself too risky, Kruse noted. But don’t we want kids to learn that these questions really were seen as up for debate by great historical figures?
“We shouldn't shy away from this more complicated, more accurate picture,” Kruse told me. “Democracy is an ongoing project, and we should all be wrestling with whether our actions live up to our ideals.”
Judging by the way some of these laws and proposals are drafted, however, this seems to be exactly what they’re designed to discourage."
Wealthy NYC private schools tapped ballooning state aid to pay teachers
By Michael Elsen-Rooney daily news Education Reporter
A little-known state subsidy for private schools is growing by leaps and bounds — and a handful of the city’s wealthiest institutions keep cashing in.
The program, which reimburses private schools for the salaries of math, science and technology teachers, started out with $5 million in state funding in 2017, and is slated to receive $55 million this year under the budget proposal released last week by Gov. Hochul.
Several well-heeled city private schools with tens of millions of dollars in their endowments took advantage of the subsidy, the Daily News reported in 2019. That trend has only increased in the following years, according to a News review of the most recent state data.
The second-largest single recipient of state funds during the 2018-19 school year — the most recent for which data is available — was Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School, an Upper West Side institution that charges nearly $57,000 a year for tuition. The private school that once counted former President Donald Trump’s son Barron as a student reported more than $40 million in the bank in June 2020, and still collected $333,000 from the state to cover teacher salaries.
Packer Collegiate, an elite Brooklyn school with annual tuition over $50,000 and savings exceeding $26 million in June 2020, according to financial filings, took in $110,000 from the state handout.The tony schools are two of 400 that applied for reimbursements, data shows.
That raised red flags for some lawmakers and education watchdogs, who questioned whether subsidizing wealthy private schools is the best use of public funds.
“For the State of New York to subsidize these private schools charging $50,000 to $60,000 to go to school, I say no to that,” said state Sen. Robert Jackson (D-Manhattan), a longtime education advocate who’s fought to increase state funding to public schools. “That money could be used better at schools in our city and state where kids need it the most.”
Jackson acknowledged, however, that state funding for private schools amounts to not a “whole lot of money” compared with the more than $31 billion Hochul plans to spend overall on education next year. [clever negotiation tactic: "say no" to it, but let the reporter lead you to quickly "acknowledge" $55 mil is no big deal! ]
Madia Coleman, a Hochul spokeswoman, said the governor is “committed to ensuring a quality education for every student, and the vast majority of state education aid goes to public schools. [where the vast majority of students NYS students are enrolled] Access to STEM education is integral to the growth of our state and economy, and this grant program has grown, which is why Gov. Hochul is proposing to expand funding to meet the program demand and ensure the state can reach more student.”
Representatives from Columbia Prep and Packer Collegiate did not respond to requests for comment.
"The vast majority of the recipients are religious schools, including many with chronic enrollment and financial struggles and scores of students attending on scholarship", said Maury Litwack, the executive director of the TEACH coalition.
For some of the schools receiving the extra cash, the funding has been a godsend, said Jim Cultrara, the director for education at the New York State Catholic Conference.
“We have had parents not enroll their kids in Catholic schools because we weren’t able to offer rigorous program options including those in the STEM [science, technology and mathematics] field,” exacerbating long-running enrollment declines at parochial schools, Cultrara said. The state subsidy is “keeping our schools open and competitive,” he said.
Any private school with educators certified to teach math, science or technology or with a master’s degree in those fields can apply for the subsidy.
"Joshua Acuña sees his chosen profession — education — as a calling.
He says he’s not in it for the economic reward, but the 30-year-old is making less than $20,000 as a full-time educational assistant at Santa Fe Public Schools, even after more than a decade in the field.
Acuña went through Santa Fe Public Schools himself and has high hopes of becoming a teacher.
But as he tries to earn his bachelor’s degree in education at New Mexico Highlands University while attempting to sidestep debt, one thing keeps getting in the way.
Money — specifically, the lack of it.
Acuña says he is heartened by legislation proposing to raise the salaries of teachers in the state’s three-tier licensure system by $10,000. If passed by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, starting teachers would earn a minimum of $50,000 annually, with middle-tier teachers moving to $60,000 and the top tier at $70,000.
In addition, Lujan Grisham wants to give 7 percent pay raises to all public school employees.
But will that help make a difference in a troublesome and widening teacher shortage?
Educators, lawmakers and those leading teacher training programs say yes — in the short run. But they also say it is only a start, adding raises need to be continual. Even, then, they acknowledge there is still no guarantee New Mexico can stem its capsizing retention numbers among the people who head its classrooms.
“This is one of the most important initiatives moving through New Mexico,” Mary Earick, dean of the School of Education at New Mexico Highlands, said of the raise proposal. “For the first time in New Mexico, a teacher in the midrange will make a living wage. This is critically important for the recruitment of educators.”
Mary Parr-Sanchez, president of National Education Association New Mexico, said the tier increases will make New Mexico teacher salaries more competitive with surrounding states such as Texas and Colorado, where the average teacher salary is about $3,000 more than it is here.
That’s particularly important in school districts that border those states, where educators can easily commute across state lines to make more money.
Parr-Sanchez said she believes the state has to continue to raise salaries for teachers and all public school employees every year “given the landscape and the fact that yesterday [Wednesday] the governor had to deploy the National Guard to schools because we are in a crisis.”
Lawmakers who once worked as educators also say continual pay raises will be key to keeping teachers happy and employed.
“They [the raises] have to be recurring, and they have to come from recurring funds,” said Rep. Christine Trujillo, D-Albuquerque, who taught in that city’s school system for 24 years.
For his part, Acuña says the raises will help support his two children, ages 8 and 10. His wife works full time while he does odd jobs to cover costs when he’s not in a kindergarten classroom at Atalaya Elementary School.
The pay was so marginal that for a time Acuña says he left the classroom to manage a gas station in town. But the classroom and his desire to become a teacher called him back.
“I wasn’t having a passion for that,” he said, referring to the gas station. “I missed working with students, so I ended up leaving that, coming back and working for pennies again.”
Citing recent increases in minimum wage rates across the country and the state, he said “you don’t even have to have a high school diploma to make more than teachers make.”
While there are many reasons teachers leave the profession or retire early — including hard-to-understand teacher evaluation systems and mental, emotional and physical health problems associated with the demands of the job — Trujillo said she thinks more money can make a difference.
The raises, Trujillo said, may make some candidates say, “Maybe this is a job I want to think about again.”
Maybe.
Long before COVID-19 arrived in New Mexico and transformed public education, the state faced a teacher shortage. But national studies and reports make it clear the coronavirus pandemic has only exacerbated the problem.
A Rand Corp. survey of teachers at the start of the 2020 school year reported one-fourth planned to leave the profession by the end of that school year. Before the pandemic, that figure was 1 in 6 teachers, the report said.
Still, some students seem eager to become teachers, Earick said, and Highlands has seen an increase in the number of candidates entering its teacher training programs — 28 percent more last year and another 1 percent this year.
She said she’s particularly excited about the fact that 22 percent of the college’s students entering the early childhood education field are Native American.
“We are working really hard to support teacher candidates who reflect the students they are teaching,” she said.
But other educator programs around the state are not faring as well. A recent New Mexico State University report on teacher shortages said 2021 brought 50 fewer graduates of teacher education programs than 2020. Practically half of those educators went through an alternative licensure process, that report said.
Hansel Burley, the dean for the University of New Mexico’s College of Education and Human Science, said that’s bad news that falls in line with national trends.
“Participation has gone down,” he said of the enrollment levels in his own teacher programs. “There are pockets around the country where you do see some increases in enrollment, but generally it’s down.”
Burley pointed to a variety of factors, some driven by student debt or challenging entry requirements to get into some programs. Other factors — a lack of respect for the profession and lingering bitterness from the era of strict standardized testing — also play roles, he said.
He’s also seen a rise in educators who arrive at schools through alternative licensure pathways. Those alternative routes are often associated with shorter tenure and poor instruction, he said.
In 2020 the Learning Policy Institute reported the majority of starting teachers in Northern New Mexico who either completed or were working through an alternative licensing program felt “woefully unprepared” for the “complex work” of leading classrooms.
Burley contends pay is a factor, but far from the only issue.
“We’ve made it a very difficult profession,” he said of teaching. “In the last 20 years or so, we’ve legislated ourselves into a pickle.”
Burley called the governor’s wage proposal a “beautiful thing” that could gradually bridge that vacancy gap. But he cautioned even if the raises become a reality, there will still be a short-term shortage.
“There’s no way we can fill that gap in a few months,” he said.
Rep. G. Andrés Romero, D-Albuquerque, a civics and history teacher, said lawmakers have to look at the reasons for teacher shortages and find other resources, besides pay raises, to address the problem.
He, too, thinks the state has to find ways to keep increasing teacher pay beyond just one year. The public, he said, should continue to pressure the governor and legislators on this issue.
Other measures can be taken, said Rep. Debra M. Sariñana, D-Albuquerque, who has introduced legislation to create a teacher residency program. The initiative, House Bill 13, would appropriate $20 million to ensure first-time teachers get to work side by side with veteran teachers for that first year.
“That new teacher would get to see everything in the classroom,” she said. “How to manage a class, how to deal with kids … testing.”
The pay raises will make a difference, but “I think what will make the biggest difference for those who come in is the way they are trained,” said Sariñana, who retired last summer after 20 years of teaching in the public schools.
For Joshua Acuña, the proposed pay hikes are “long overdue.”
For now, he spends his time helping lead lessons for his kindergarten class and racking up student teaching hours for his degree. This month, he’s teaching kindergartners about rhyming words and single-digit numbers. His favorite moments at work are not unlike legions of other teachers: He says he’s overjoyed when “the light in their head pops on” and once-confused students understand a concept.
To capture more of those moments, Acuña wants to earn a master’s degree in special education and stay in the classroom, probably as an elementary school special-education teacher.
And yet despite all that — the sacrifices he’s already made, his love of the classroom — Acuna admits he has entertained a thought that concerns those who worry about the future of public education in New Mexico.
“If I didn’t have the passion and I wasn’t going for my degree, I probably wouldn’t be in education,” he said. “But since I’m so close, I’m sticking with it.”
"The move follows a one-day walkout last week that saw half of the country's primary schools close, according to unions, who accuse authorities of failing to establish clear rules that would keep as many students in school as possible.
Teachers say class disruptions have become unmanageable with the spread of the highly contagious Omicron coronavirus variant, with many parents struggling to get vaccination appointments for their children and long lines for tests forming outside pharmacies.
In response the government promised to provide five million high-grade FFP2 facemasks for school staff and to hire over 3,000 substitute teachers to replace those forced to isolate after contracting Covid or coming into contact with an infected person.
But that was not enough for unions, who said the new strike Thursday would be a prelude to a "massive" nationwide walkout on January 27.
They want the government to hire enough substitutes to replace all teachers absent as Covid cases spread rapidly throughout schools.
Children who test positive for the virus have to remain home for up to 10 days while their classmates are forced to take three tests in four days.
Teachers also want more personal protection equipment "well beyond the amounts promised," and more fundamental investments in the French education system, where average teacher pay lags behind that of many other European nations.
However the call for a new Thursday strike was not joined by other main union groups, including the Snuipp-FSU, the largest among primary school teachers."
(AFP)
"Flush with cash from the feds and previous tax hikes on the wealthy, Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed boosting funding for Big Apple charter schools by 4.7 percent and extending Mayor Eric Adams’ authority to control the New York City public education system for the duration of his first term.
The boost will increase aid to charter schools to $17,633 per student, up from $16,844, according to the NYC Charter School Center. Two years ago, aid to charter schools was frozen.
The increase is below the overall increase of 7.1 percent for all K-12 schools, however.
“This will allow charter schools to continue to innovate, recruit high-quality teachers and staff, and provide strong educational options for New York’s families and students,” Hochul said in the briefing book outlining her mammoth $216 billion budget.
Hochul’s recommended four-year extension mayoral control of the schools is a gift to Adams. The law giving him such control is set to expire in June.
During former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s first-term as mayor, he received only a one or two-year extension from Albany to oversee the city school system, when antagonist Andrew Cuomo was governor and Republicans controlled one house of the legislature — the state Senate.
It wasn’t until 2019, when more friendly Democrats ruled the Senate, that lawmakers gave him a three-year extension of school control for the remainder of his second term.
Charter school advocates praised the increase in education aid, but said there is another pressing issue the governor and the legislature have failed to address — approving a law to lift the cap that has blocked charter school expansion in the city.
“We are pleased to see that Governor Hochul’s proposed budget recognizes the need to increase funding for K-12 education even as we continue to fight for truly equitable public funding for New York City’s public charter schools. New York City parents who are choosing charter schools deserve no less,” said James Merriman, CEO of the New York City Charter School Center.
“At the same time, we will continue our fight to lift the cap on charter schools, so that parents have the options they want. This is especially true given that more parents continue to seek charter schools even as overall public school enrollment has declined. It really is far past time to lift the cap. We look forward to working with our partners in Albany and New York City to do just that.”
