- The controversies swirling around reading in the U.S.
- The non-thinking math classroom – and how it can change
- What is the best way for students to spend class time? It depends
- A call to rethink New York City’s teacher-evaluation process
- The effect of the four-day week on Oklahoma high schools
- Marilyn Burns on a well-framed fractions problem
- Recommended superhero graphic novels and trade books
- Online resources on women’s suffrage
- How to make recess a positive experience for everyone
- What research says about play in early-childhood classrooms
- Texas teachers grapple with preparing students for high-stakes tests
- Jason Reynolds on stories, creativity, and book bans
- Books that middle-school students love to read
- Refreshing the literary canon
- Explaining retrieval practice
- Dealing with workplace gossip
- Vetting a school leader while playing a round of golf
- Middle-school students plan a full-day field trip in New York City
- Building psychological safety in classrooms
- Reducing tension between teachers and administrators
- Coaching teachers through collaborative exploration of data
- Two approaches to making education rigorous again
- Retrieval practice in a high-school biology class
- Insights on artificial intelligence
- Including essential Latino history in the curriculum
- Recommended children's books with multiracial characters
- Ten leadership lessons from Ted Lasso
- How exceptionally effective teachers think about their work
- Mike Schmoker on leading civil, text-based classroom discussions
- Daniel Willingham on strategies for getting the most out of textbooks
- A survey of 22,000 students in independent high schools
- Getting the most from online instruction when it's necessary
- Using ChatGPT to tailor math lessons to students' interests
- Children's books about dealing with challenges
- Mapping life expectancy
- The wisdom of Tina Turner
- Ten keys to good early literacy instruction
- Time-honored but suboptimal ways to check for understanding
- Four questions to ask in history and civics classes
- These kids speak English now, so what's the problem?
- Adjusting to the brave new world of ChatGPT
- Can department heads be more than bureaucrats?
- A study of the impact of gifted classmates in Switzerland
- Recommended children's books about trading places
- Using children's books to teach about large numbers
- Masculinity and academic engagement among young men of color
- Advice on adolescent sleep deprivation
- SLOs and teacher evaluation: how policymakers led educators astray
- The "Six Thinking Hats" problem-solving strategy
- Why do people hesitate to give helpful feedback?
- Apologizing right
- Teaching SEL skills in Socratic seminars
- Leave one, add one: an end-of-year retrieval activity
- Jewish-themed children's books
- Books to read with the film, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
- The Read Act amends the state literacy goal to having every student read at grade level every year. (Previously the goal was grade 3.)
- Requires training in evidence-based reading instruction for teachers, support staff and early childhood programs.
- Schools must use evidence-based curriculum at each grade level that is designed around teaching the foundational reading skills. (House) Districts are encouraged use evidence-based literacy curriculum in local literacy plan. (Senate)
- Requires districts to screen students in K-3 twice a year and to screen students in grade 4 who are not demonstrating mastery of foundational reading skills.
- School districts must hire a literacy lead by August 30, 2025.
- House and Senate both fund staff development ($40 million dollars give or take). The House has curriculum reimbursement monies but the Senate did not adopt the proposal for state funded curriculum.
- Instructional coherence - and what works against it
- Can in-school suspensions be over-used?
- Dealing with three unhelpful narratives about trauma
- Why learning phonics is so complex and challenging in English
- What decisions should the central office leave to schools?
- Emotional intelligence with e-mail
- Poetry books for children
- K-3 Suspensions The House bill prohibits any suspension of a student in K-3. The Senate allows suspension of a K-3 student in circumstances where the pupil creates an immediate and substantial danger to themselves or to surrounding persons or property. The Senate language was added on the floor and may not survive conference.
- Readmission Plans Both bills add requirements to readmission plans. In the past, these provisions had been left to local districts. Starting next year readmission plans must include measures to improve a student’s behavior as well as reasonable attempts to obtain parental involvement. The statute references social and emotional learning, counseling, social work services mental health services and other interventions.
- Dismissal for One Day or Less Current law authorizes dismissal that is not a suspension for one school day or less. This language is amended to limit such dismissals to less than one school day. This is a department provision and your guess is as good as anyones as to why this change was made. (Both bills)
- Make Up Work A new provision makes it the responsibility of school administration to allow a suspended student to complete all work assigned during a suspension and to receive full credit. Principals are encouraged to designate a school employee to act as a liaison to work with the pupils teachers to allow the student to receive timely course materials and monitor the completion of assignments and receive teacher’s feedback.Again, this is department language. Rather than just saying make up work was at the discretion of the teacher, additional requirements were added to administrators. (both bills)
- Nonexclusionary Discipline Schools must “attempt” nonexclusionary discipline before dismissal proceedings. We will be talking about this provision extensively in fall workshops. (Both bills)
Late last night the Education Conference Committee signaled that an agreement had been reached on the overall budget and policy provisions of the Education Omnibus bill. The committee posted the finance agreements (commonly referred to as the spreadsheets.)
The committee has been relatively quiet all week, at least in public. Three short public meetings were held passing relatively non-controversial articles. Indian Education, finance and civics course requirements, and the READ act were adopted publicly on three separate days. Each meeting took about 30 minutes. (Representative Heather Edelson worked on the READ act for several years and deserves significant thanks for her accomplishments.)
The spreadsheets reveal the big-ticket items. The good news is the increase on the foundation aid formula. Schools will receive a 4% increase in the formula in the first year and 2% in the second year. State law will provide an automatic inflationary increase in the future capped at 3%. Nearly $700 million will be paid to school districts to reduce special education costs.
The bill contains some funding for unemployment benefits, the question being whether it will be enough. This money is the result of the very hard work of the Education Management lobbyists. The total is $135 million over two years. The fate of bargaining terms and conditions of employment is still up in the air. The provisions were included in the Labor bill agreement. We will not know if this becomes law for a few days.
The dozens of new policy provisions are currently being reviewed by the revisor of statutes office. After the conferees agree on what they want, the Revisor’s office puts all of the language into a 300-page bill. That is happening now and will be released to the public later today. A public meeting is scheduled for 3:00. This is basically informational, with a host of congratulations and thank you(s). While a vote may be taken, the legal aspect of this is the signatures of at least three senators and three house members from the conference committee on the report. That may in fact be done before the meeting.
The behind-the-scenes word is that the bill may be up on the House floor as soon as Saturday, but that is not decided yet. The House and Senate are in a hurry, they would like to finish by next Friday. Getting Education done is one step toward that goal. Taxes and Health & Human Services are still undecided and pose the biggest challenge for both sides.
As the line goes—“The devil is in the details”. The details will be released sometime later today. I’ll have a report on Monday on those items. We are hopeful that some agreements on discipline are in the final bill.
The conclusion of the conference process represents a significant milestone for the Senate Chairs. Both Senator Kunesh and Senator Cwodzinski chaired education committees for the first time. They both were a pleasure to work with and carried a very heavy load as first-time chairs. The House Chairs were equally easy to work with. Representative Pryor and Representative Youakim concluded a successful year with this conference agreement. Representative Youakim came back to education from the Property Tax committee and brought significant skills to the table in fashioning a major portion of the state budget. Politics and issues aside, these are people that we enjoy working with.
By the way—the House and Senate agreed this week that session will reconvene on February 12, 2024. (Time to start working on the supplemental budget.)
Have a good weekend.
And happy Mother’s Day to the moms.
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Several conference committees met today but education wasn’t one of them. All work is going on behind closed doors. In the end, impasse over major issues gets decided by leadership. The Speaker, Majority Leader and the Governor’s office will make the call on impasse items. That hasn’t happened yet but could happen in the very near future, possibly over the weekend.
In the meanwhile...
Another 5 matters in the Education Omnibus bills of the House and Senate.
Both bills have an entire section on the Read Act. (Reading to Ensure Academic Development). In short, the goal of the bill is to improve literacy. Five provisions in the Act that are of interest.
It is possible but unlikely that Education will meet this weekend.
Enjoy some spring weather between the raindrops.
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The morning started with the Pension Commission taking up the proposal to reduce the normal age of retirement from 66 to 64. (HF3294 Walgamott and SF 3314 Cwodzinski). The authors gave spirited presentations in support. Pensions are Education Minnesota’s largest priority this year. The hearing room and witness list were filled with teachers. It is well known that Minnesota is an outlier with a retirement age of 66 and the push to 64. Rule of 90 qualifiers can retire earlier, but most defer their retirement to age 63. Years ago most districts had provisions to pay retiree health to age 65. This made early retirement much more manageable. As those provisions were removed and the cost of health insurance skyrocketed, individuals were forced to work longer in order to maintain coverage.
The bill is not opposed by anyone, and the current plan is to pay the employer share out of the new monies provided in the K-12 target. The “historic investment” in K-12 may be severely limited by the time teachers and principals get to the bargaining table. The bill could be attached to any number of bills if leadership decides to move the bill forward.
The Education Omnibus conference committee met for an hour on Thursday and adopted several non-controversial provisions that appear in both bills. A short discussion took place on the Warroad team names but no action was taken on that subject. The Chair indicated the committee would not meet tomorrow but may meet over the weekend.
And here you go:
Another 5 items in the Omnibus bills:
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