| | | | |  | | By Juan Perez Jr. | A RELIGIOUS TEST — The country’s Catholic schools are facing calls to sever ties with a prominent secular partner, after controversy over LGBTQ-affirming material rippled through a corner of the internet in recent weeks. — NWEA is a nonprofit widely known in the education community for its standardized testing, training and research products. It is being acquired by the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt education technology and curriculum behemoth, in a deal sure to reverberate across the industry. — Yet NWEA is now a target of one Catholic organization’s crusade, social media debates, and emails to superintendents that question whether church schools are tacitly supporting an ideology that offends the religion’s doctrine. — The dispute with the conservative Lepanto Institute has grown enough to spark concerns from Catholic school leaders, launch a meeting with NWEA, and prompt a top executive to try soothing parochial school concerns with a letter that insists its tests do not contain gay-affirming themes. — “Regarding our assessments, we do not have any LGBTQ+ related content within our testing and reporting platforms,” NWEA executive Fred McDaniel told Catholic educators in a late January message obtained by Weekly Education. — The National Catholic Educational Association, the professional and advocacy branch for church schools, declined to comment. The future of NWEA’s relationships with nearly 2,000 Catholic schools is unclear. IT’S MONDAY, FEB. 13. WELCOME TO WEEKLY EDUCATION. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said he'd prefer that Republicans pick a governor to be their presidential nominee in 2024. The Republican said he'd choose a governor "every day of the week" over someone from Congress. Reach out with tips to today’s host at jperez@politico.com and also my colleagues Michael Stratford (mstratford@politico.com), Bianca Quilantan (bquilantan@politico.com) and Mackenzie Wilkes (mwilkes@politico.com). And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter: @Morning_Edu and @POLITICOPro.
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| | | DEEP PARTNERSHIPS — The dispute started with blog posts. — The Virginia-based Lepanto Institute in late January attacked NWEA’s policy advocacy work and posts on the education group’s teaching blog — including entries that detail a Pride month reading list for K-12 students and discuss how reading tests can include identity-affirming passages. — The institute’s leader, who lambasts Catholic and other Christian religious organizations deemed to act against church teachings, believes Catholic schools should now end their relationship with NWEA. — “They intend to use their institution in order to enact policy change, and they’ve already established that policy change includes the LGBTQ agenda,” Lepanto Institute President Michael Hichborn said of NWEA to your host. “Every dime spent by the Catholic church with this organization helps to further that agenda.” — More than 1,900 Catholic schools in 84 dioceses used NWEA’s standardized tests as of April 2022, as part of a partnership said to affect nearly 400,000 students. NWEA is also a corporate supporter of the National Catholic Educational Association. — In his letter to Catholic school leaders on Jan. 26, McDaniel emphasized that “NWEA values the deep partnerships we have with schools within the Catholic diocese across the nation.” — The Lepanto Institute’s published criticism still prompted a call with Catholic education association leaders and NWEA representatives several weeks ago “to help address questions and concerns,” NWEA spokesperson Simona Beattie told Weekly Education in a statement. — “We reiterated that our testing and reporting platforms do not contain LGBTQ+ content,” Beattie said. “Our test item content is developed and reviewed following a rigorous process, including reviewing for bias, sensitivity, and fairness.” — “As part of our commitment to partnership,” Beattie added, “we did emphasize that we will keep our partners updated of important changes to our testing and reporting platforms that may impact them.” — As for NWEA’s blog posts, Beattie said, they are not meant to represent its official positions.
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Former Vice President Mike Pence speaks during an interview on Nov. 16, 2022 in New York. | John Minchillo/AP Photo | PENCE ON PARENTS — Former Vice President Mike Pence is putting the conservative parents’ rights movement at the center of his potential 2024 campaign this week, as a federal appeals court takes up a high-profile case concerning transgender students. — Pence will travel to Minneapolis and Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Wednesday to deliver speeches that, according to his nonprofit Advancing American Freedom group, will focus “on defending parents' rights and combatting the Radical Left's indoctrination of children.” — Pence’s planned remarks are part of a newly-announced initiative, backed with an initial budget of $1 million, that his group says will use digital advertising, rallies and volunteer advocacy efforts to “advocate for policies that restore parental rights.” — The former vice president’s effort will also draw renewed attention to a federal lawsuit backed by prominent conservative groups. — The Parents Defending Education organization sued the Linn-Mar Community School District in eastern Iowa last year over its policy of facilitating students’ gender-identity transitions without parental notice, the Iowa Capital Dispatch reported. — A judge denied the group’s request for a preliminary injunction, prompting an appeal that again seeks to block the district from carrying out the policy. A panel of Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals judges is set to hear oral arguments in St. Paul, Minn. on Wednesday. Pence plans to speak while the court hearing occurs. — “The strength of our nation is tied to the strength of our families,” Pence said in a statement. “And we cannot stand idly by as the Radical Left attempts to indoctrinate our children behind parents’ backs.”
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Deputy Labor Secretary Julie Su (center). | Roy Rochlin/Getty Images | NEA BACKS SU — The country’s largest union is supporting Deputy Secretary of Labor Julie Su to replace Secretary Marty Walsh once he leaves President Joe Biden’s administration to run the National Hockey League Players’ Association. — “We enthusiastically support Deputy Secretary Su, a nationally renowned labor policy expert, and we urge you to nominate her as your next Labor Secretary,” National Education Association President Becky Pringle wrote in a letter to Biden this weekend. — “In her role as Deputy Secretary, Su has proven herself as a skilled messenger on behalf of the Department of Labor and Biden Harris Administration,” Pringle wrote. “She’s overseen the workforce of the Department tactfully and with kindness, while building initiatives that educate workers on their rights and staunchly protecting workers who are victims of wage theft and other related crimes.” — The NEA’s support comes as Asian American lawmakers revive a lobbying blitz for more diversity in the ranks of Biden’s top advisers. — Pringle’s letter to Biden leans into Su’s upbringing, emphasizing how the deputy secretary’s “life story is representative of the stories of many American families, and underscores that America is a nation of immigrants.” — What’s not yet clear is whether Asian American lawmakers will play the same type of hardball they attempted in 2021, when they courted a showdown with the White House over its failure to tap an AAPI secretary for the Cabinet. Biden ultimately passed over Su for Walsh, POLITICO’s Marianne LeVine, Nicholas Wu and Nick Niedzwiadek report.
| | | MORE PUSHBACK — The plot surrounding a dispute between the College Board and Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis continues to thicken. — The College Board on Saturday pushed back on reports of communication with Florida over the board’s new African American studies course amid weeks of intense scrutiny — including claims the nonprofit caved to DeSantis' objections, POLITICO’s Bianca Quilantan and Andrew Atterbury report. — The Florida Department of Education claims state officials had been in contact with the College Board since January 2022 regarding the course and first questioned if it was legal under state law in July. In a July letter, the DeSantis administration claimed the pilot course would violate the state's anti-"woke" laws that restrict how race can be taught in the classroom. — The College Board argued that its revisions were completed by Dec. 22, which the nonprofit said came “weeks before Florida’s objections were shared.” — “While it has been claimed that the College Board was in frequent dialogue with Florida about the content of AP African American Studies, this is a false and politically motivated charge,” the College Board said in a lengthy, heated statement that accused the state’s education department of “slander.”
| | | | DOWNLOAD THE POLITICO MOBILE APP: Stay up to speed with the newly updated POLITICO mobile app, featuring timely political news, insights and analysis from the best journalists in the business. The sleek and navigable design offers a convenient way to access POLITICO's scoops and groundbreaking reporting. Don’t miss out on the app you can rely on for the news you need, reimagined. DOWNLOAD FOR iOS– DOWNLOAD FOR ANDROID. | | | | | | | | FIRST LOOK — The KIPP public charter school network and a coalition of other operators are urging congressional leaders to deploy more money and scrutiny for student mental health programs, as implementation of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act gains speed. — “As this law is implemented, we encourage policymakers to provide support and oversight to ensure that the allocated funds are spent with the well-being of the whole child in mind,” the charter operators wrote in a letter to House and Senate leaders. — “Research shows that investments in school security, while well-intentioned, can compound stress and anxiety for our students, especially for Black and Latinx students and students from low-income backgrounds,” school leaders said. — But shortages of qualified providers and inadequate funding are posing “significant challenges” to school efforts to expand access to care, the schools said. — The Education Department will soon announce $280 million in grants intended to boost the number of mental health care professionals in high-need school districts. The grants mark the first portion of $1 billion in BSCA funds that the department will award specifically for school mental health worker programs over the next five years.
| | | ON THE ROAD — First lady Jill Biden is set to travel to community colleges in Arizona and Indiana this week to promote White House plans for career-connected learning, after the president renewed a call for universal higher education programs during his State of the Union address. — Jill Biden is scheduled to travel to Mesa, Ariz., today and to Valparaiso, Ind., on Friday. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and Mesa Mayor John Giles are set to join today’s Biden visit to Mesa Community College. Biden is then scheduled to visit Valparaiso’s Ivy Tech Community College later in the week.
| | | — A new report from the First Five Years Fund analyzed transcripts from 35 governors who delivered addresses by this week, and determined one issue in particular cut across state and party lines: the importance of fixing child care. FFYF found that two-thirds of those governors devoted a portion of their remarks to the importance of investing in child care and early learning.
| | | — How Richneck Elementary failed to stop a 6-year-old from shooting his teacher: The Washington Post — Chicago’s push to house migrants in a closed school upsets neighbors: The Wall Street Journal — Ron DeSantis’s New College takeover is just the beginning of the right’s higher ed crusade: Vanity Fair — Schools become flashpoint for Republicans eyeing White House: The Associated Press | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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