Jeff Kwitowski

Public Affairs @StrideLearn. Pro parent rights & school choice. Dad of 4 girls. Dream'n of Buffalo Bills Super Bowl & Sabres Stanley Cup. Tweets my own.

[Derrell Bradford @Dyrnwyn]

@ErikaDonalds @rweingarten Then buying the right house to get the right school undermines democracy. Mortgage choice is school choice. That’s the choice Ms. Weingarten favors. An ESA is a far fairer way to think about access. Honestly so is a Charter school lottery.

[The Free Press @TheFP]

The first time one of your children is seriously ill or hurt, you pass through a portal into a new world. You learn to recognize fear in its purest form—hot and metallic, writes Abigail Shrier for The Free Press. https://t.co/xNwGvc1PAH

[Mike McShane @MQ_McShane]

Clicking through to the auditor's reports as to why these districts are non-compliant is.... illuminating.

Someone could write just as much of a scaremongering story as they do about ESA programs. And yet, they never do. Curious, that.

[Dale Chu @Dale_Chu]

“School choice doesn’t destroy good schools; it reveals which schools were already failing their students and gives families alternatives.” @JasonBedrick and @matthewladner

[BenYount1130 @yount1130]

I don't know how many more times I need to say it: Giving kids and families a choice where they go to school is a good thing. It doesn't matter if they choose public schools, private schools, or home schools. Choice is good.
https://t.co/2FR77QAis0

[Jay P. Greene @jaypgreene]

My new piece-- According to the technocrats, education can be improved if we just “follow the science.” This all sounds great until you remember how those pushing us to follow the science during the COVID-19 pandemic produced enormous harm. 🧵1/ https://t.co/MtBIORWjeO

[Jeff Kwitowski @JeffKwitowski]

Finally found common ground with the teacher's union. 🙂

[Alexander Russo @alexanderrusso]

State teachers' union wants phone-free classrooms https://t.co/Bcar52DdBi

[Jeff Kwitowski @JeffKwitowski]

I'm not always a fan of trial lawyers and class-action lawsuits, but this one is absolutely justified. What these people knowingly did resulted in life-long damage to untold numbers of children.

[Christopher Peak @CLPeak]

Attorneys in Massachusetts just filed a class-action lawsuit against Heinemann and its authors Calkins, Fountas and Pinnell in state court over what they allege are “deceptive” and “defective” reading programs. https://t.co/iDDL8gkFvP

[FOX Sports: NFL @NFLonFOX]

For the 5th straight year, the AFC East belongs to the Bills! 🦬👑

[Jenny Clark @ClarkRimsza]

“Clark is the bubbly, upbeat culture warrior at the leading edge of the national movement for what she calls “education freedom” 🤣❤️.

Politico did their first “hit piece” on me. I can’t thank them enough for promoting our parent-focused work! 💕💖💞🤭👏

https://t.co/XcFFvMSDs5

[NFL @NFL]

THE VIBES IN BUFFALO ARE AN ALL-TIME HIGH.

#KCvsBUF

[Jeff Kwitowski @JeffKwitowski]

@rpondiscio @LoriArmistead @craighulse

[Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute @RonaldReagan]

Happy Birthday @CondoleezzaRice! #TBT to one of our favorite memories of you at the Reagan Library: "So are you for school choice or not?"

[Robert Pondiscio @rpondiscio]

Well-reported piece but it misses something essential. The Achilles Heel of Calkins approach isn't phonics, it's what comes next: worshipping student engagement to excess, and encouraging the idea that if kids just love to read they'll become good readers. It doesn't work that way.

My South Bronx school was a Calkins school. In five years teaching 5th grade, I never had a single student who could not "read" (decode). Their struggle was with comprehension. It's why I became an E.D. Hirsch disciple. My staff developers from Calkins' shop stressed reading comprehension skills and strategies; they insisted my students were bored. They needed books that reflected their interests and experiences with characters "who looked like them." Put those "just right" books in their hands and--voila!--success would follow.

But Hirsch's work described my students' struggles as if he'd been in my classroom: "No," he might have said had he been there, "it's background knowledge. It's vocabulary." An education that is all mirrors and no windows creates the *illusion* of literacy -- kids seem competent when reading and writing about topics they know, as Hirsch's work would predict, because they're reading about topics they know and understand. But it creates a "false positive" for Lucy and her acolytes. The language proficiency "skills" they demonstrate don't translate to tests or the broader world of mature literacy, because they are not skills at all. They're an effect of knowledge.

Lucy still doesn't get it: if you want kids to be broadly literate, they must be broadly educated and endowed with the knowledge that literate writers and speakers know *and assume they know* too. That's what literacy and language proficiency is. It's not a skill you teach, it's a condition you create.

[Tiffany Hoben @taoneal]

Open Enrollment: In a recent study published by the @reason, West Virginia’s open-enrollment policy scored an A, tying Arizona for 3rd place in state rankings.

Open enrollment policies allow students to transfer to public schools other than the one they were residentially assigned to. This forces schools to innovate and compete for students!

[Valeria Gurr, PhD 🐯 @ValeriaGurr]

Hispanic support for #SchoolChoice is higher than ever, and it’s shifting the political landscape. So far in #Texas #Florida #Iowa with more to come

[AvailableToAll @Available2All]

🧵 Open enrollment is gaining real traction nationwide.

More and more people believe that discriminatory, exclusionary lines shouldn’t keep middle-income and low-income kids out of the best public schools.

But as the latest report from our friends at @ReasonFdn shows, many states have work to do to make public schools accessible to all families. https://t.co/uiTr3KhbGO

[Robert Pondiscio @rpondiscio]

"Students in virtual schools are far more likely than their brick-and-mortar school peers to report incidents of bullying, trouble with teachers, or their academic needs not being met at their previous school."

https://t.co/gFPc5pJmaw

[Jeff Kwitowski @JeffKwitowski]

@InezFeltscher @JarrettStepman congratulations! Jarrett, being a girl Dad is winning everyday.