I remember how it was -- JR
The big school choice turnaround in Iowa that more states should follow
State lawmakers are often slow to act, but they can move quickly when voters make them feel the heat. Consider Iowa, where Gov. Kim Reynolds recently signed the nation’s third publicly funded education choice program for all K-12 students, following West Virginia and Arizona.
This represents a stunning reversal. A smaller proposal failed to clear the legislature last year. What changed?
The Students First Act will provide Iowa families education savings accounts (ESAs) that they can use for private school tuition, tutoring, textbooks, curricular materials, and a variety of other education expenses. The ESAs, funded with a portion of the state’s per-pupil spending, are worth about $7,600 annually. That more than covers the average private elementary school tuition in Iowa (about $5,400) and nearly covers the average private high school tuition (about $9,200).
Families can also roll over unused ESA funds from year to year to save for later expenses. Initially, the ESAs will be available to low- and middle-income families; they will open to all Iowa families in the program’s third year.
The policy Reynolds signed is significantly more ambitious than her proposal last year, which was limited only to low-income students. That bill cleared the state senate but failed after a lengthy battle in the Iowa House of Representatives. Although the GOP had strong majorities in both chambers, several Republicans representing rural areas raised concerns about the effects that school choice policies might have on their local public schools.
Last spring, Reynolds took the unusual step of endorsing several primary challenges to legislators in her own party who had thwarted her school choice proposal. The governor was betting that she had a better understanding of the GOP base’s priorities than the legislators she was challenging—politicians who had already proven their popularity in their districts. If they survived their primary challenges, Reynolds’s standing in the party would be significantly diminished.
Rural Republican legislators nationwide have long posed a stumbling block to passing school choice legislation. In rural areas, public schools are often the largest employers, and the local superintendents wield significant political power. Rural legislators therefore tend to heed those superintendents’ hostility to expanding school choice.
But in the wake of the COVID-19 school shutdowns, the relationship between parents and their local schools changed. "We wouldn’t have passed the ESA bill but for COVID," explained Iowa Sen. Brad Zaun, a long-time proponent of school choice. "Groups like Moms for Liberty were down at the capitol nearly every day clamoring for school choice."
But they didn’t become school choice supporters overnight. Initially, parents just wanted their local public schools reopened. Some districts—including in Des Moines, the largest in the state—stayed closed for in-person instruction for more than six months. Frustrated parents turned to the governor and their state legislators for help. Lawmakers ultimately forced schools to reopen.
But the shutdown fight had permanently changed the relationship between parents and their local schools. Many parents felt that the schools had broken faith with them. Parents were also given a window into their children’s classrooms via Zoom, and many didn’t like what they saw, particularly the politicization of instruction.
Even after schools reopened, parents remained wary and engaged. Samantha Fett, the Warren County chapter chair for Moms for Liberty, described how her group first got involved trying to remove books with sexually explicit scenes and images from elementary school libraries. "The public school administrators and school boards would just ignore us and hope we’d go away," she said.
But they didn’t. Instead, they again turned to state lawmakers. "The frustration we had the local level not making any progress, not getting any answers, and being pushed away, drove us to look for solutions outside the district system," said Fett.
Soon the parents’ groups were barraging the legislature with complaints. Inappropriate books. Lessons derived from critical race theory. Policies that put biological males on girls’ sports teams and in girls’ locker rooms. Policies kept parents in the dark about their children being called pronouns that differed from their sex.
"Schools they trusted all these years were usurping their authority as parents and they didn’t like it," said Iowa Senate President Amy Sinclair. At first the legislature tried dealing with each issue as it arose, but eventually state lawmakers offered a comprehensive solution: school choice.
"The legislature got tired of playing whack-a-mole with all the issues," said Sinclair. "School choice solved all of them at once."
Parent groups enthusiastically embraced school choice policies, like ESAs, which not only gave them the ability to choose schools that aligned with their values, but also strengthened their hand when raising concerns at their local public schools.
Reynolds also expressed these concerns on the campaign trail, explicitly framing her push for school choice as an effort to combat the radical ideology that had seeped into the public school system and to restore parental authority in education. Her gamble paid off. The candidates she endorsed won their primaries. In the general election, Iowa voters rewarded her with a second term and expanded the Republican party’s legislative majority.
Lawmakers got the message. Last month, they moved with all deliberate speed to deliver the choice bill to Reynolds’s desk.
Lawmakers in other states would be wise to follow Gov. Reynolds’s playbook.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/big-school-choice-turnaround-iowa-more-states-should-follow
************************************************To Increase Equity, School Districts Eliminate Honors Classes
CULVER CITY, Calif.—A group of parents stepped to the lectern Tuesday night at a school board meeting in this middle-class, Los Angeles-area city to push back against a racial-equity initiative. The high school, they argued, should reinstate honors English classes that were eliminated because they didn’t enroll enough Black and Latino students.
The district earlier this school year replaced the honors classes at Culver City High School with uniform courses that officials say will ensure students of all races receive an equal, rigorous education.
These parents disagreed.
“We really feel equity means offering opportunities to students of diverse backgrounds, not taking away opportunities for advanced education and study,” Joanna Schaenman, a Culver City parent who helped spearhead the effort, said in the run-up to the meeting.
The parental pushback in Culver City mirrors resistance that has taken place in Wisconsin, Rhode Island and elsewhere in California over the last year in response to schools stripping away the honors designation on some high school classes.
School districts doing away with honors classes argue students who don’t take those classes from a young age start to see themselves in a different tier, and come to think they aren’t capable of enrolling in Advanced Placement classes that help with college admissions. Black and Latino students are underrepresented in AP enrollment in the majority of states, according to the Education Trust, a nonprofit that studies equity in education.
Since the start of this school year, freshmen and sophomores in Culver City have only been able to select one level of English class, known as College Prep, rather than the previous system in which anyone could opt into the honors class. School officials say the goal is to teach everyone with an equal level of rigor, one that encourages them to enroll in advanced classes in their final years of high school.
“Parents say academic excellence should not be experimented with for the sake of social justice,” said Quoc Tran, the superintendent of 6,900-student Culver City Unified School District. But, he said, “it was very jarring when teachers looked at their AP enrollment and realized Black and brown kids were not there. They felt obligated to do something.”
Culver City English teachers presented data at a board meeting last year showing Latino students made up 13% of those in 12th-grade Advanced Placement English, compared with 37% of the student body. Asian students were 34% of the advanced class, compared with 10% of students. Black students represented 14% of AP English, versus 15% of the student body.
The board saw anonymous quotes from students not enrolled in honors classes saying they felt less motivated or successful. One described students feeling “unable to break out of the molds that they established when they were 11.”
Tuesday marked Ms. Schaenman’s first time attending a school board meeting in person in years. She wandered the hallways of City Hall with fellow parent Pedro Frigola looking for the right room, clutching a stack of copies laying out the two-page resolution they and a few dozen other parents are asking the board to adopt.
Mr. Frigola said he disagrees with the district’s view of equity. “I was born in Cuba, and it doesn’t sound good when people are trying to achieve equal outcomes for everyone,” he said.
His ninth-grade daughter, Emma Frigola, said she was surprised and a little confused by the decision to remove honors, which she had wanted to take. She said her English teacher, who used to teach the honors class, is trying to maintain a higher standard, but that it doesn’t always seem to be working.
“There are some people who slow down the pace because they don’t really do anything and aren’t looking to try harder,” Emma said. “I don’t think you can force that into people.”
For a unit on research, Emma said her teacher gathered all the reference sources they needed to write a paper on whether graffiti is art or vandalism and had students review them together in class. Her sister, Elena Frigola, now in 11th grade, said prior honors English students chose their own topics and did research independently.
In Santa Monica, Calif., high school English teachers said last year they had “a moral imperative” to eliminate honors English classes that they viewed as perpetuating inequality. The teachers studied the issue for a year and a half, a district representative said.
“This is not a social experiment,” board member Jon Kean said at a meeting last spring. “This is a sound pedagogical approach to education.”
Gail Pinsker, a Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District spokeswoman, said the shift this school year “has increased access and provided excellent educational experiences for all of our students.”
Several school districts have scaled back plans to eliminate honors classes after community opposition. San Diego’s Patrick Henry High School planned to eliminate 11th-grade honors American literature and U.S. history last year, but reinstated both after listening to students and families, a district spokeswoman said.
The school district in Madison, Wis., pulled back on plans last year to remove stand-alone honors classes and now lets students earn an honors label within general classes. A Rhode Island district made a similar move.
Those who support cutting honors classes point out that the curriculum of honors courses often doesn’t differ substantially from regular classes. Honors classes often move at a faster pace and the students complete more assignments. Some can boost grade-point averages or give students an advantage when applying for college.
Critics say attempting to teach everyone at an elevated level isn’t realistic and that teachers, even with the best intentions, may end up simplifying instruction. Instead, some educators and parents argue schools should find more ways to diversify honors courses and encourage students to enroll who aren’t self-selecting, including proactively reaching out to students, using an opt-out system, or looking to teacher recommendations.
“I just don’t see how removing something from some kids all of a sudden helps other kids learn faster,” said Scott Peters, a senior research scientist at education research nonprofit NWEA who has studied equity in gifted and talented programs.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/to-increase-equity-school-districts-eliminate-honors-classes-d5985dee
****************************************************Biden Student Loan Forgiveness Plan in Trouble at Supreme Court, Lawyers Say
President Joe Biden’s sweeping plan to partially forgive student loans will likely receive a cool reception when the Supreme Court hears challenges to the program on Feb. 28, legal experts told The Epoch Times.
Biden introduced the plan in August 2022 in a move that critics decried as a constitutionally dubious attempt to shore up Democrats’ fortunes ahead of the November 2022 congressional elections. While the Congressional Budget Office said the plan could cost about $400 billion, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania estimates the price tag could exceed $1 trillion.
The student loan relief program is premised on the existence of the emergencies the Trump administration declared in March 2020 to combat the COVID-19 virus. The national emergency and the public health emergency enabled federal agencies to exercise expansive powers in managing the government’s pandemic response.
In a move that could undermine the government’s legal arguments in the pending court cases, Biden’s Office of Management and Budget said in a Jan. 30 press release (pdf) that it would extend the soon-to-expire emergencies to May 11 “and then end both emergencies on that date.”
The federal government put a pause on student loan payments and interest during the recent pandemic but then claimed in 2022 that the pandemic gave it emergency authority under the law to proceed with partial loan forgiveness. Republicans, who took the majority in the House of Representatives in January, say the emergencies aren’t justified and should be ended sooner.
About 26 million people reportedly applied under the program before courts blocked it last year. Of those 26 million, 16 million were said to have been approved before the government stopped accepting applications.
The Department of Education claims that it has the authority to move forward with the debt relief proposal, which would cancel as much as $20,000 in loan principal for 40 million borrowers, under the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003 (HEROES Act).
But lawmakers involved in the passage of the HEROES Act say the statute was enacted after the 9/11 terror attacks to provide student loan relief to military service members and their families and was never intended to be used to cancel debts en masse.
The court is scheduled to hear two related cases dealing with the program, Biden v. Nebraska (court file 22-506) and Department of Education v. Brown (court file 22-535), back-to-back on Feb. 28.
The Biden student loan forgiveness plan is flatly unconstitutional, attorney Caleb Kruckenberg of the Pacific Legal Foundation, a national nonprofit public interest law firm, told The Epoch Times.
He said Biden unveiled the debt relief program not long after the pandemic “was over anyway [and] we all sort of understood what that meant.”
Kruckenberg said that even if the Biden administration were successful at the Supreme Court, which he doubts, their stated authority would expire May 11.
He conceded that the announcement that the emergencies will terminate may render the challenges to the program moot, but mootness “is a flexible standard,” he said.
“There is a legal answer, and then there’s a practical answer. And I think the practical answer is, if the court very much wants to reach the case, they will,” he said.
It appears the Department of Education has not “disclaimed” the authority to grant student loan relief, so even if the emergency is over, the court may wonder if there is a chance the department could claim such authority again in the future, he said, adding that department officials will never say they lack the authority.
“They’ll always insist in any emergency we can do whatever we want,” he said. “And that’s a big enough risk for the Supreme Court to say, ‘We’re going to set some rules here.’
“You have to wonder what the administration is doing and … what they’re planning in the best case scenario for them. Frankly, I was surprised that they asked the Supreme Court for intervention, because a lot of us watching this case expected, and we still expect, if the Supreme Court rules on it, then the administration is going to lose.”
Kruckenberg said that the administration might be thinking politically, reasoning, “‘Well, we’re going to make the Supreme Court overturn this, so that it’s not our fault … so that we can say we tried, but the court stopped us.’”
“There will probably be two or three dissenters, but I think there’s a very clear majority [that is] going to say, probably not in a complicated opinion, that this is just completely out of bounds.” It will be “a strong rebuke of the department,” he said.
Veteran Supreme Court observer Curt Levey, president of the conservative Committee for Justice, also said he expects the Biden administration to lose.
The court may not even reach the question of how the expiration of the COVID-19-related emergencies affects the validity of student loan relief, Levey told The Epoch Times.
The HEROES Act “was clearly aimed at military personnel,” but it’s not clear whether it allows cancellation of debt, Levey said. The statute allows postponement of debt, which is what his group argued in a friend-of-court brief (pdf), he said.
So the government has overreached by going beyond military personnel and by allowing debt cancellation, he said.
“This has been a court that’s not been afraid to say, ‘Look, the executive branch is overreaching,’ whether it’s the rent moratorium or certain things with immigration, or trying to force private employers to mandate vaccinations,” Levey said.
“They have been willing to say, ‘This is overreach,’ [and] not just defer blindly to whatever the administration says a statute means.”
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