Noah Webster Educational Foundation

Month: September 2023

  • Over a Dozen Baltimore Schools Don’t Have Any Students Who Are Proficient in Math

    Over a Dozen Baltimore Schools Don’t Have Any Students Who Are Proficient in Math

    Thirteen high schools in Baltimore, Maryland, don’t have any students who are at grade-level proficiency in math, according to Project Baltimore’s recent reporting.

    Project Baltimore obtained the scores prior to the state’s publishing, revealing that in these schools, no student scored proficient in the 2023 spring state math exam, and that includes high-performing schools. The community responded largely with frustration, demanding for accountability from the district’s leadership.

    State tests have four categories that students can score into: 1 being the lowest and 4 the highest. Nearly two thousand students from 32 schools took the test, and of those students, 75% of them earned the lowest score possible at a 1, meaning they’re far from proficient.  

    Project Baltimore also discovered that in Baltimore’s top five performing high schools, only 11.4% of students scored proficient in math. And the students who scored the highest on the exams earned a 3. No one got the highest score at 4. 

    One father in the district, Desmond Stinnie, assumed his daughter would be prepared for college after going to Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, one of the five highest performing schools. However, once his daughter got to a U.S. military academy, she nearly failed out because she was not academically ready, especially in math.

    Stinnie’s daughter’s high school, Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, did the best in math proficiency at a little over 26%. The second highest school had a little more than a 10% proficiency rate. Stinnie said in response, “It’s disappointing that anyone would believe that this is acceptable.”

    Following the results, Baltimore City’s schools released a statement, noting that several eighth-grade math proficiencies did grow from the previous year. They added that some students are still struggling in math after the pandemic. The district also pointed to a lack of funding.

    This past year, Baltimore City Public Schools had it largest-ever annual budget of $1.6 billion. Not to mention, the district received $799 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds. With its funding, the district offers a number of resources to help students, such as summer learning, tutoring, longer learning sessions, and professional development backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 

    Speculation has turned to the district’s leader, Dr. Sonja Santelises, who has been in charge of Baltimore’s public schools since 2016. Last year, she earned $445,000 in total compensation, putting her at Maryland’s highest-earning public school district leader, in spite of overseeing its lowest-performing district. She’s since had calls for resignation.

    Maryland State Senate President Bill Ferguson defended Santelises, believing that no one person should be blamed for the problem. He noted that if a student is struggling in high school, they likely didn’t get support in elementary or middle school. However, Santelises has been in charge for seven years, meaning several of the high students were under her watch when they were in elementary school. 

    District parent Desmond Stinnie still questioned the district’s leadership.

    “The test scores are absolutely revealing the shortcomings of the classroom instruction,” said Stinnie. “We’re setting them up to fail.”

    Project Baltimore predicted that once the city publishes the test scores, they will be heavily redacted and most of the informaton will be hidden behind asterisks. Across the U.S., several schools have had low proficiency rates, including Illinois, Minnesota, Nevada, and Oregon. In 75 of Minnesota’s schools, no students were proficient in math this past year.

    Learn more about the truth behind school budgets.

  • Looping Part 2: Why It May NOT Be the Perfect Choice for Your School

    Looping Part 2: Why It May NOT Be the Perfect Choice for Your School

    As we discussed previously, looping is a teaching strategy where a teacher stays with the same class across multiple grades. That article focused on the benefits that looping has. Which might have left you wondering “what are the issues with looping? Does it even have any drawbacks?” Well, wonder no more because today we’ll take a look at the drawbacks of a looped classroom. 

    Relationships

    As highlighted in part one of this series, the deep relationships that often form between students and teachers is the biggest advantage to Looping. It follows, then, that when these relationships sour, they become the biggest disadvantage of looping.

    The University of Minnesota highlights some key concerns in their article on looping. “The top three concerns parents have are personality conflicts, dysfunctional class, and being ‘stuck with a bad teacher.’” To put it plainly, while many parents love looping, some worry about possible toxic interactions  in the classroom.

    Student-Teacher Relationships

    The most influential relationship in a classroom is the one between the student and teacher. Problems with these relationships can come from either teachers or students. Like how a worker may dislike a particular boss and a boss may have a worker they are not fond of, some teachers may not like a particular student. Likewise,  some students will be unable to get along with a particular teacher.

     Teachthought.com notes that  “While maintaining an ongoing relationship with a respected teacher can really benefit students, being forced to continue classes where more of a negative relationship is present can really be detrimental to student advancement.” We can imagine students choosing not to apply themselves to their learning, disrupting class, or even skipping school all together to get back at or avoid a teacher they dislike. 

    On the other side of things the American Psychological Association, or APA, notes that “Teachers who have negative relationships with a student show evidence of frustration, irritability and anger toward that student.”

    The APA also observes that “In these types of classrooms, teachers may find themselves resorting to yelling and harsh punitive control. Teacher-student communications may appear sarcastic or disrespectful. Student victimization or bullying may be common occurrences in such negative classrooms.” Obviously, such an atmosphere is not good for learning. 

    Beyond being damaging for the students of a classroom, stress also hurts job satisfaction, which is a major factor in worker retention. Negative relationships can cause teachers to leave their jobs.

    Of course, all these issues can occur within non-looped classrooms. But by looping’s nature, what could be a sometimes-annoying student or irritating teacher can turn into a major issue when compounded over time.  

    Further, a teacher may look at a student as difficult and may treat them as such even if they change. As teachthought.com suggests “If a student has always been difficult in previous years, then it can be hard for you to notice they’ve changed and to react accordingly. Having to form new relationships, with new teachers, can sometimes give students that chance that they need to start over and build a new reputation.” For students with emotional issues or who have had a bad year, looping could cause these things to haunt them beyond what they would see in a traditional classroom. 

    Student-Student Relationships

    While the teacher is usually the focus in discussions on looping, the entire classroom loops together. This means that students who are being bullied or are otherwise having issues with fellow students in their class lose the possibility of ending up in a different class. As Michelle Pecanic, an education graduate student, states, “It is also possible that students who are teased and disliked by peers may find themselves in an extremely negative situation during the second year if the teacher has not found a way to eliminate this problem.”

    No one wants to be the target of bullies, and having to go back to a classroom with known bullies causes anxiety for the victim and could lead to escalation of the bullying over time.  

    Parent-Teacher Relationships

    Though they are the least involved in the day-to-day action of a classroom, parents are also affected by the continuity of looping. Parents are an inseparable part of a child’s learning life. They work closely with teachers throughout a school year. Thus, if a parent finds themselves at odds with a teacher, the tension between them can increase stress.

    Additionally, an unprofessional teacher may take out their anger with a parent on that parent’s child, which can create the negative student-teacher relationships we talked about earlier. 

    Other Problems for Teachers

    Relationships are the best and worst parts of the looping strategy, but they are not the only things at play. Teachers in a looped classroom must teach multiple grade levels to travel with their students as they age.

    Teachthought.com has this to say about teachers teaching multiple grades: “We all tend to be best when we are doing what we are really skilled at, and having a teacher switching grades each year can mean that they pass through the phase where they excel, then spend years teaching where they are less comfortable.” Likewise, the University of Michigan had this to add, “Looping will not be effective, and can be detrimental if the student is assigned to an ineffective teacher for two or three years in a row.” Placing teachers in areas where they are not comfortable makes for worse instruction and increased stress. 

    Moreover, Tracy Childers, a teacher and a writer for hmhco.com, points out, “Looping requires the teacher to be reflective on students’ every success and failure, which isn’t necessarily a negative thing. However, it is more time-consuming in the sense that the successful lesson you used during one school year likely cannot just be used again the following year if you are teaching a different grade.”

    Therefore, any teacher in a looped classroom has to develop a larger range of games, activities, and ways of teaching than their non-looping counterparts.   

    Other Problems for Students

    Every person learns in their own way. Likewise, every teacher teaches in their own way. TeachThought points this out. “In any school, just walk between different classes and observe them each in turn. We all teach differently. We may be covering the same programs, but delivery varies greatly from one teacher to the next!” Most of us have probably heard of the different learning styles by now. It stands to reason that our favored style will bleed into the way we teach as well. 

    A great teacher may do their best to use each type of learning in their classroom but are likely to do worse at teaching in a style they don’t favor. This makes for a boring and more difficult learning experience for a student who does not have one of their teachers’ learning styles.

    Additionally, looping puts students in a classroom with the same people and prevents them from meeting new people and having new experiences. One teacher quoted by edweek.com points this out. “In general, I feel it is important to give students different experiences each year. It helps us as people to learn to adapt to new situations, expand our learning styles, and develop new relationships (both with adults and peers).”

    Students need these new experiences with varied people in order to grow as individuals. One place they can gain these experiences is in the classroom. Therefore, looping can limit interpersonal skill growth if there are not extracurriculars to facilitate these skills.

    Mobile Students

    Looping as a strategy requires students to go through multiple years of school with the same teacher. As Michelle Pecanic suggests, “Looping may not be beneficial for highly mobile student populations since students do not remain in one location long enough to reap the benefits of being in a looping classroom.”

    Later, she adds, “New students, or students who move away at the end of the first year, could also be negatively affected if the curriculum in the looping  class is viewed as a two-year approach.” One student population that would fall prey to this fault in the looping system would be the children of soldiers. Military children move around often as their parents deploy or transfer. 

    Incoming Students

    In a similar vein, students coming into a classroom after its first year of looping will likely struggle even worse than those that leave early as they are attempting to break into an already established group of youth. Michelle Pencanic explains that this is “because the new students will not know the classroom routines nor will they share the same prior knowledge and experiences with the rest of the class.” In other words, looped classrooms only work on students who go through more than one cycle of looping with the same teacher. 

    Conclusion

    Looping has many benefits for students and their teachers, yet under certain circumstances benefits can be lost. Or, looping can even become detrimental to the students it’s meant to help.

    The good news is that there are strategies to avoid some of these problematic situations. Having more than one teacher teaching at every grade level can give students and parents a way to leave a classroom they don’t like. Providing top notch training for teachers and extra time during the year for planning lessons and thinking of ways to help their students can lessen stress for teachers and ensure that every student gets a quality program.

    Even with these fixes looping may still be far from perfect, especially for mobile students. 

    Classrooms using the looping strategy can help students to achieve new heights in their education. The impacts of the relationships that can be forged between teacher and student within a looping classroom are powerful. Looping can give teachers time to see where a student needs help and give them the opportunity to be a person with which students are comfortable. Students in looping classrooms usually see marked improvement in grades, teachers are often happier, and everyone, even the parents, are usually more acquainted with each other and can more easily navigate the frictions of the day-to-day.

    Looping is a great strategy, but it is just that, a strategy. And as with all strategies there are times when it should be employed and when it shouldn’t. To put it plainly, you must think about all of the factors that make your student, school, or classroom unique before deciding if looping is right for you, your school, or your child.    

  • Podcast Ep. 84 “America’s Educational Roots: Why the Founding Documents Still Matter” with Guest Paul Skousen

    Podcast Ep. 84 “America’s Educational Roots: Why the Founding Documents Still Matter” with Guest Paul Skousen

    American values are being forgotten or rejected. To reverse this trend, we need to return to our founding documents.

    How can Americans maintain their freedoms? How can they prevent the loss of their rights and liberties in a country that seems determined to undermine their very identities? In this episode, we’re talking with Paul Skousen, author of The Federalist Papers Made Easier. Paul is a father of ten, journalist, and professor. Before his current career, he worked for President Reagan and in the CIA as an intelligence officer.

    “To me, that’s where we begin: self-education. We reach out to family and friends and neighbors, we link arms, and we share the education. And from those gatherings come the people up into the positions of civic offices to help us start to clean this stuff up.” — Paul Skousen, author

    Melvin and Paul discuss:

    • Paul’s upbringing, his father’s famous books, and how he is carrying on the legacy by finishing his father’s works and writing some of his own
    • Why education and knowledge are so important — and what the founders had to say about them
    • How we should actually read the Declaration of Independence, plus the three most important founding documents
    • Why Paul wrote his book How to Read the Constitution and The Declaration of Independence and a glimpse into how he breaks the documents down to make them accessible for beginners
    • Paul’s view of Republicans vs. Democrats, why we need both, and how imbalance can cause problems
    • Our moral foundations, how to ask the right questions, and breakdown of community
    • How we can strengthen our country through self-education

    Would you rather watch the video versions of our podcast? Subscribe to our YouTube channel to get notified every week when new episodes drop. Here’s today’s conversation with Paul:

    If you like what you heard today, stay tuned for our next episode on The State of Education with Melvin Adams.

    RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE:

    Want to dive deeper into the foundations of American education? Check out NWEF’s blog.

  • VA Governor Youngkin Pardons Loudoun County Dad Who Protested at a School Board Meeting After Daughter’s Rape

    VA Governor Youngkin Pardons Loudoun County Dad Who Protested at a School Board Meeting After Daughter’s Rape

    Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin recently pardoned the Loudoun County dad who’d been arrested at a fiery school board meeting after his daughter was sexually assaulted by another student in a school bathroom.

    At a June 2021 school board meeting, Scott Smith went to demand answers after his daughter was attacked. Smith was accosted by another person at the meeting, who attempted to spread false and destructive information about him. Smith was then grabbed from behind by a police officer, where a struggle ensued, after which he was arrested for disorderly conduct and obstruction of justice. 

    Since that 2021 meeting, Smith has been stuck in a legal battle. That was until Governor Youngkin gave him a complete pardon this past Friday. Youngkin noted that Smith was exercising his constitutional right to attend the meeting, and the offender has since been convicted. As such, Youngkin determined Smith “has been publicly and falsely accused of ‘domestic terrorism’ and ‘hate crimes’ for attempting to advocate for his daughter, a victim of violent sexual assault” and thereby granted Smith an “absolute pardon.”

    “Scott Smith is a dedicated parent who’s faced unwarranted charges in his pursuit to protect his daughter,” said Youngkin in a release. “Scott’s commitment to his child despite the immense obstacles is emblematic of the parental empowerment movement that started in Virginia.”

    Smith’s arrest did get used as an emblem for parents, but much of which was used by the media to paint a picture of radical parents at school board meetings. The National School Board Association likened him and other parents to domestic terrorists, prompting the Biden administration to track parents for threats against school board members.

    “I am not a ‘domestic terrorist,’” Smith said in a statement after the pardon was announced. “I am just a father who will go to the ends of the earth to protect his daughter. I will not ever give up in that endeavor until my family is both protected and fully vindicated.”

    Loudoun County’s superintendent at the time, Scott Ziegler, was eventually fired following the incident. That was after Ziegler denied Smith’s story that there was a sexual assault at the school, or that the predator existed. Eventually, emails revealed the whole board was notified of the attack after it had occurred. But, that didn’t stop the attacker from going to a different school within the district and assaulting another girl. Ziegler’s now being prosecuted after the Virginia Attorney General’s office found the county mishandled the two sexual assault cases.

    The offender is now 16 years old and has been charged with two counts of sodomy at both schools. However, due to a mistake by Loudoun County Commonwealth’s Attorney Buta Biberaj, he will not be listed on the sex offenders registry.

    Biberaj condemned Youngkin’s pardon, saying, “The justice system does not work when a Governor becomes the judge and jury.” She also denied Smith’s claim that the offender was “gender fluid.” According to Smith, the attacker was a boy wearing a skirt in the girl’s bathroom, which may have been related to Loudoun County’s policy to allow students to use the bathroom of their gender identity.

    Smith believes the prosecutor in his case, Biberaj, wanted to make an example of him to silence parents. But, he’s grateful that Governor Youngkin pardoned him as he would still be stuck in the “screwed up” justice system.

    “I’m thankful that the Youngkin administration gave me an off-ramp to these charges that never should have happened,” Smith told The Daily Wire.

  • Do VA School Boards Have to Join the VSBA? Warren County Pushes Back in Unprecedented Move

    Do VA School Boards Have to Join the VSBA? Warren County Pushes Back in Unprecedented Move

    Melanie Salins, a Warren County School Board member, has been campaigning to drop the board’s membership with the Virginia School Board Association (VSBA) for the past year. 

    “The VSBA is responsible for many of the policies or lack thereof that are creating the problems that you are seeing in our school system today. Why would we want to continue to pay for those policies?” Salins wondered, according to an article in the Royal Examiner.

    This past Wednesday, September 6th, she got her wish as she and 3 out of the 4 other members of the board voted to end the district’s membership with the VSBA. (Watch the full school board meeting recording here.)

    Until this week, the VSBA held a monopoly as the training organization for all of Virginia’s school boards. Warren County is the first school board in the state that has chosen to break away. 

    According to the VSBA’s website, it is “a voluntary, nonpartisan organization of Virginia school boards [that promotes] excellence in public education through leadership, advocacy and services.” Board Chair Kristen Pence and her fellow board members Ralph Rinaldi, Melanie Salins, and Antoinette Funk have observed the VSBA fall short of their lofty goals, at least when it comes to helping Warren County. Salins has many concerns with the organization, such as the favoritism she believes they show wealthier districts. She also takes issue with their lack of support for families, reports The Northern Virginia Daily. “The VSBA is not in favor of notifying parents about just about anything at all. They take common sense and they train it out of us as hard as they possibly can,” she said. 

    “Looking at the big picture, I do think that the VSBA is more aligned with us than not aligned,” insisted Andrea Lo, the one member who voted against leaving the VSBA.

    Her fellow board members, though, are not the only ones questioning the relevancy of the VSBA’s support. Although Warren Country School Board has been the first to officially break away from the VSBA, individual school board members across the Commonwealth have been individually seeking or even creating membership support and training alternatives like the School Board Member Alliance (SBMA).

    While the VSBA might not be a household name outside of Virginia education circles, it has influenced nearly 1.3 million students in the state’s 132 school districts. The VSBA is not only a training organization. It also provides policy guidance, legal advice, and many other services to school boards alongside lobbying the state about issues that it deems important. 

    Many Virginians who have opposed the strong left-leaning slant of the VSBA’s policies are hopeful that Warren County School Board’s actions will open the floodgates to show other school boards a way forward without the VSBA’s monopolization.

  • Podcast Ep. 83 “The Lifelong Benefits of Music Education” With Guest Delegate Chris Head

    Podcast Ep. 83 “The Lifelong Benefits of Music Education” With Guest Delegate Chris Head

    Are we losing many of the beautiful and foundational principles of music along with the breakdown of other aspects of our culture? Today, Chris Head gives us hope for the future.

    Music influences almost every aspect of our lives, especially in our childhoods. Virginia Delegate Chris Head is not only a government official, but he has immersed himself in music from a young age and is a professional vocalist. In this episode, he talks to Melvin about music’s power to bring our country together, to help our children learn and grow, and to touch all of our lives in incredible ways. 

    “[Music] is an extraordinarily powerful influence on everything. The influence that you have on culture… it’s the driving force on that because that messaging comes along even if it’s not conscious. The messaging that comes inside music is extraordinarily powerful and it begins to influence what you think, what you say, how you feel, how you respond.” — Delegate Chris Head

    Here’s a quick recap:

    • Chris talks about himself and his life as a vocalist, ministry leader, and Virginia delegate. He also discusses his efforts to incorporate music into his work with the elderly.
    • Melvin and Chris uncover the roots of teaching young children concepts through music and the lasting impact music has on the brain. 
    • How music is utilized to stir us on a deeply emotional and spiritual level.
    • Can music aid in memorization?
    • Chris warns that music can and will be wielded to promote bad messaging in culture — and he explains how we can combat this with good music.
    • What if you feel you can’t sing? How can parents make sure their family life is full of good music?
    • Why, in Chris’ opinion, it’s vital to recognize the writer’s intention for a song — and to sing all the lyrics!
    • Schools have sidelined music and music education. Why is this?
    • Finally, Chris discusses a few iconic classical pieces and gives some closing thoughts on why we need to focus on music again, both at school and in the home.

    Would you rather watch the video versions of our podcast? Subscribe to our YouTube channel to get notified every week when new episodes drop. Here’s today’s conversation with Chris:

    If you like what you heard today, stay tuned for our next episode on The State of Education with Melvin Adams.

    RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:

  • Colorado Charter School Backtracks on Gadsden Patch Ban After Video Goes Viral on X

    Colorado Charter School Backtracks on Gadsden Patch Ban After Video Goes Viral on X

    A Colorado school quickly reversed course after a viral clip revealed a 12-year-old student was reportedly removed from class for having a “Don’t Tread on Me” patch on his backpack.

    The viral clip, which made its way on X, formerly Twitter, featured a confrontation between the student, his mother, and school staff at a Colorado Springs charter school. The student, Jaiden, missed class and the school staffer explained to the mother that it was because his backpack had a patch of the Gadsden flag. The staffer said the patch was unacceptable because of its connection with slavery. The mother refuted that claim, saying the flag was flown during the American Revolutionary War. However, the staffer stood firm and said she was enforcing district policy.

    The mother, Eden Rodriguez, told the staffer in the video that it’s not right to ban the Gadsden patch since other patches are still allowed. “We teach him to always stick up for your beliefs,” she said in the clip. “The Founding Fathers stood up for what they believed in against unjust laws. This is unjust.”

    Connor Boyack, President of the Libertas Institute and executive producer for Tuttle Twins TV, shared the clip to his following. Boyack reported that one district director emailed Rodriguez as a follow-up to expound on why the flag is an “unacceptable symbol.” The director referenced the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), noting that while the Gadsden flag has a “non-racial context,” some have now associated the flag with “hate groups.” Additionally, the director said the Gadsden patch fell under the list of unacceptable items referring to “drugs, tobacco, alcohol, or weapons.”

    According to Rodriguez, she was told her son Jaiden violated the school’s dress code policy and he missed a total of three days of school. But then, the school changed direction after the clip went viral. The Board of Directors at the school, Vanguard, wrote a statement to students and families explaining the situation. The Board said the administration acted consistently with the district’s policy. The Board stated, “The Vanguard School recognizes the historical significance of the Gadsden flag and its place in history.” As such, the Board allowed Jaiden to return to class with the patch still on his backpack.

    The district also said the video did not tell the entire story. The district claimed, “The patch in question was part of half a dozen other patches of semi-automatic weapons,” and “The student has removed the semi-automatic patches.”

    The school staffer in the video, Assistant Principal Beth Danjuma, said the school takes racial issues “very seriously” and works to create consequences that can be a positive “learning experience” for the student. 

    Despite what happened, Eden Rodriguez said she’s proud of her son Jaiden for sticking with his beliefs. Jaiden said he’s glad that his story was shared, speculating that he otherwise would have still been suspended and likely later expelled. He said he’s eaten lunch alone since the incident—but, he said it’s worth it and encouraged other students to do the same. 

    “If no one stands up for your God-given rights, then they just fade away,” he said.

    How can school board members best handle First Amendment issues? Learn more in our online course.