%*cking *bleep* on School Grounds

Good Morning!

Hope you all are doing well. Depending on where you are at in the United States, you might be deep into testing season, or you will be starting soon. I got curious - Hey Chatgpt, what do you have to say about standardized testing in the United States?

Chatgpt: Beeboop! Boop…beeeeeep….erhmm…

As of my last knowledge update in January 2022, standardized testing remains a prevalent and controversial aspect of the United States education system. Federal and state governments continue to use standardized tests to assess student proficiency, teacher effectiveness, and school performance. The Common Core State Standards, introduced in many states, have influenced the development and implementation of standardized tests to ensure consistency in evaluating student learning across regions. However, ongoing debates persist regarding the efficacy, equity, and potential biases associated with standardized testing, leading to discussions about potential reforms in assessment practices.

Well, I could not have put it better myself. Controversial indeed.

Cheers to your Sunday morning ☕

Empowering parents through school choice

Utah is one of many states that continues to take the lead in the idea of school choice. The states that lead in school choice tend to lean more conservatively. This is quite fascinating because the idea of school choice that began with the concept of charter schools was a progressive idea first presented by a man named Ray Budde in the 19070's and was championed in the 1980s by a former union leader in Pennsylvania, Albert Shanker. The idea was to empower more teachers in the public school, and when its results showed success, there began a push to expand. This idea of school choice became more prevalent in the 1990s and into the 2000s. 

The idea of once empowering teachers to improve their curriculum has now been perverted to parents being empowered to where their child goes to school. Voucher programs are the vehicle in which parents can receive money, usually from the funds allocated to public schools, and parents can now use this for private schools or other alternative programs. In Utah, the funds can be used for: 

• Private school tuition

• Educational software and hardware/homeschool

• Micro school tuition

• After-school program 

The voucher program is being awarded under the title of the Utah Fits All Scholarship program, which provides up to $8,000 for qualifying K-12 students. So far, 12918 have been awarded and will continue until April 15. The fund has a total of $82.5 million dollars. Only some students can qualify. There are three different criteria in which you can meet to be awarded the scholarship: 

Students whose family income is at the 200% federal poverty level or less

Students whose family's income is between 200-555% of the federal poverty level

All Utah K-12 students, regardless of family income. 

The last point makes it clear that these funds can be used by anyone, even families with the means to pay private tuition. There certainly is a concern here that wealthier families can take advantage of this as they have the means to navigate this program better than families of fewer means. 

This program is another shot at taking down the public school system, and the question here is whether the choices parents have to send their kids elsewhere are better than those of their local public schools. If there are issues with teachers, staff, and the building etc. etc., why not try to fix the current system instead of diverting funds to private establishments? 

How do teachers feel about these voucher programs? 

In the name of Fundraising 

This one cannot be accurate or it could be something The Onion might publish: At a high school in Edmond, Oklahoma, there is a video of students licking feet covered in things like peanut butter and chocolate. There are also videos of armpits being licked.

Yes, this is real. 

This was all done in the name of fundraising. The surfaced videos are from 2020, and some footage goes as far back as 2015. The question one has to ask here is...

Where were the adults? 

The teachers? 

Administrators? 

Where was anyone to say this is probably not a good idea? Also, how did students even get to where they believed this was okay? 

During the fundraising event, no teacher or administration was present. Yet, the surfaced videos have been in the open on the school's YouTube account. It is hard to imagine that any investigation will not lead to anyone being blamed because the teachers and administration at this school are responsible for these actions. 

What do you think? 

For a second, we thought about including links to to the videos but decided against. If you have not seen them, it’s better that it remains this way.

They are coming this time

In Louisiana, an AI tutoring program is being implemented due to students falling behind during the pandemic. $30 million was requested by the State Superintendent of Education, Cade Brumley, to expand the tutoring program. The goal is to expand the tutoring program at a low cost, and to not blow up the budget.

Most teachers and other stakeholders can agree that there needs to be additional support beyond what students are getting in the classroom for them to catch up to where they were before the pandemic. Teachers can only provide so much time to any one student, and hiring additional staff can be challenging. When it comes to people, the reality is they can be costly and unreliable. 

The program that Louisiana has implemented is from a company called Amira Learning. What Amira Learning does is adapt to what students need, providing customized feedback based on what and how students respond. The cost for the program is $20 per student versus $3000 for a human tutor. The results are promising, as is the case where students' reading scores increased with elementary school kids in Utah, but the company mentioned that students can show much more improvement if they utilize the time they are supposed spend with the AI tutor. 

There is certainly a lot more improvement that can be made, and a larger sample of students will give us a better idea of how this is something that can be beneficial to students who need the most help if you would like to read more about it here on how Louisiana is looking to AI for Affordable K-12 tutoring. 

Closing Bell

On this day in 1862…

The United States issued it’s first paper money in the following denominations:

$5, $10, $20, $50, $100, $500, and $1000.

🤯