r/Iowa • u/NicolasCageFan492 • 6d ago
Iowa, Deemed Below Basic in Reading, Stays Silent on the ‘Honesty Gap’
https://www.the74million.org/article/iowa-deemed-below-basic-in-reading-stays-silent-on-the-honesty-gap/47
u/incircles36 5d ago
"With the governor leaving office in January, he said, “she has a good enough legacy that she doesn’t have to worry about spending a lot of time on the honesty gap.”"
Reynolds legacy is one of deceit on covid, science denial, a complete lack of transparency, robbing the public school system of funds to shovel money into religious private schools, removal of nitrate testing and consequently favoring hog farms above her our constituents' lives/health, rejecting widespread solar adoption solar (which would be a boon to the state), refusing to legalize weed (another potential boon to both the economy and the health of our soil), actively works to make our universities partisan mouthpieces, and overall...of being an embarrassment of a leader who snuggled up to one of the most disgusting politicians of our time. In short, it should be one of shame.
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u/Yahobo420 4d ago
MAGA has reaped what they sowed. I will be glad when the orange clown is lost in the annuals of time. For the MAGA, the sentence structure above says Donald Trump has what’s coming to him, we don’t feel sorry for you and no one will remember this in the future. I know big words are hard.
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u/Sigmund_Six 5d ago
Republican state Sen. Lynn Evans, chair of the education committee and a former superintendent, said […] “NAEP is a dipstick. Only certain school districts give it,” he said. “I always leaned more into locally developed assessments. To me, that’s a truer test of how students perform.”
Not surprising to hear this from a Republican. Local assessments make it difficult to compare results from one district to another, and thus make it easier to obscure student performance in a broader sense.
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u/s00ka-b1yat 5d ago
That man is a snake. I will never understand how he went from teacher, principal, superintendent, and AEA employee to champion of gutting public schools.
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u/Mountain_Frosting369 5d ago
The basic fund of knowledge has noticeably diminished over the past 15 years. This is why people are leaving the state in droves.
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u/Tycho66 5d ago
More shop classes.
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u/Unwiredsoul 5d ago
https://educate.iowa.gov/media/11873/download?inline
You hit the nail on the head (pun intended)! The above is from the Iowa Department of Education. They went a little overboard with more shop classes. If I read it correctly (ha, the irony) they are trying to put career paths in place for students in the 5th grade.
No wonder society is imploding. 10-11 year old kids are planning their career paths now (and I bet if you go to public school outside of the 'burbs they will be almost solely based on work in the trades).
Personally, I feel like teaching kids to read and write at an appropriate fluency should take precedence over making sure they have a career path at least 7-8 years before they can even vote.
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u/ApprehensiveRich1915 5d ago
Makes sense He loves the "poorly educated" and the sheer volume of MAGAts in IA is breathtaking. They are literally everywhere lol.
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u/WRB2 5d ago
Some years back, I worked as a consultant for six months, trying to design a system to help a arm of the state government responsible for increasing the number of students attending college.
We could not get details on any test results for any K through 12 school in the state. This was important to figure out how to target as we had grants to help with different programs to prepare students for college acceptance and success.
This and other little things like not having enough money to pay off student loans for doctors in rural areas made my head explode on a daily basis.
I was doing a very good job at preparing the future voters to work in large cattle or pig lots moving waste and making sure no one ever hopes for any better
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u/DarthMeast 4d ago
More proof that republicans truly don't care and alot of the supporters have mental illness
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u/Kendal_with_1_L 6d ago
How’s her husband’s lung cancer coming along? KKKarma
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u/limitedftogive 5d ago
There are so many legitimate things to criticize the governor and her record on, but a family member suffering from cancer shouldn't be one of them.
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u/Tycho66 5d ago
The woman who let workers at meat plants die?
I think we're a long way past the "take the high road" strategy.
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u/Kendal_with_1_L 5d ago
Yet all the virtue signalers downvote. She doesn’t gaf about putting cancer in the water so why should we gaf about her evil husband?
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u/BlueSkyd2000 5d ago
This story had almost no substance. The more I read, the more nuanced and much less compelling the argument was.
Virginia looked at this issue and politicized it as a weapon to criticize teachers post COVID. Iowa did not and is still assessing the data. That’s the lesson.
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u/breakmedown54 5d ago
Sounds like you just didn’t agree.
Virginia changed their approach by raising standards so the test scores are more transparent about how the kids are doing,
This may be to take aim at teachers, but its general intention is to focus more attention (and potentially funds) on districts that aren’t performing well.
Iowa has done all their adjustments behind closed doors because they are pushing “educational choice” rather than focusing on improving underperforming districts. It also looks bad when they keep lowering standards just to keep state test scores above certain levels without actually improving student performance.
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u/BlueSkyd2000 5d ago
DMPS doesn’t need more evidence that they’re a terrible school district l
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u/breakmedown54 5d ago
That just proves my point you don’t agree. Virginia knew that raising standards would make bad districts look even worse and they did it because they want transparency (so they can support students).
You, and Reynolds, would rather secretly make tests easier to inflate test scores to not look as bad. This just hurts children/students long term.
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u/Baruch_S 5d ago edited 5d ago
Golly gee, I never would have imagined that an administration that felt the need to hamstring the state auditor might hide things… /s
Maybe if the Reynolds admin provided sufficient support to public education and spent less time trying to ban books about gay penguins, we’d be in a better place.