Category: The Weekend

529 Ways to Harm School Choice

December 2, 2017 11:14 am December 2, 2017

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The Weekend is usually reserved for less-topical discussions about American public education and American society in general. But this morning’s move by the U.S. Senate to pass a tax cut…

The Weekend is usually reserved for less-topical discussions about American public education and American society in general. But this morning’s move by the U.S. Senate to pass a tax cut plan brings up one of the least-sensible approaches to expanding school choice touted by the most-hardcore of advocates: Expanding the use of 529 higher education savings plans for financing private school tuition.

Dropout Nation already discussed the House Republican version of the plan, which managed to gain approval as part of the lower house’s tax cut proposal. But Senate Republicans had managed to avoid offering a similar plan. But last night, just hours after Senate Republicans hastily crafted its tax plan without a single hearing or deliberation (and often with illegibly handwritten notes redlining what little was in print), Texas Sen. Ted Cruz successfully amended the bill to include a proposed 529 expansion that is little different from the House proposal.

As you would expect, hardcore school choice activists are pleased as punch with the move. Invest in Education Foundation, whose vice president wrote an op-ed in The Hill earlier this week calling for the Senate to enact the proposal, tweeted the news proudly. Expect more to come from Heritage Foundation’s Lindsey Burke, who has been the lead player in getting Congressional Republicans to put the idea into law.

Certainly the expansion of 529s may superficially expand opportunities for children to attain high-quality education. But the key word is “superficially”. As your editor explained last month, the effort does little for families regardless of income or background.

For poor families, especially those from Black and Latino backgrounds, the 529 expansion is of no benefit to them because they don’t earn enough income to either open up and maintain a 529 account. This is especially problematic when you consider that neither Congressional Republicans nor the Trump Administration offered up an Earned Income Tax Credit-style program that would help these families gain money that they could then put into 529 plans to pay for private school tuition payments and tutoring (as well as even save for college).

Because of the nature of 529 plans, as well as the lack of a education tax credit, the Senate and House proposals raise concerns school choice advocates such as Howard Fuller have had about Education Savings Accounts: That poor families lose out at the expense of families that already have resources and can take advantage of various vehicles that allow them to save and reduce tax burdens all at once.

Yet the 529 expansion plans also don’t help middle class and affluent families. This is because the more money siphoned off from contributions to elementary and secondary education expenses, the less money will go towards college savings. Even if a family contributed the full maximum of $14,000 a year (which is almost never done), the nation’s average private school tuition of $7,700 (which is often higher in states such as California, Maryland, and New York), results in families forfeiting both the immediate contributions as well as the future investment gains and interest compounding in the process. Given the high costs of higher education, this means more middle class families lose out on the ability to help their children gain the postsecondary knowledge they need for success in adulthood.

What makes the House and Senate plans especially bad policy is tat they could have easily expanded school choice for all families by using another existing vehicle: Flexible Spending Accounts. Those are already used by families to pay for preschool and child care expenses as well as medical costs, and could have been expanded for use in financing private-school tuition and other K-12 expenditures. That move would have been even better for families who already use those plans, as well as for poor and minority households, because those are funded through paycheck withholding and would be supported by the 20 percent federal child care tax credit already in place. But this wasn’t considered.

Put simply: The 529 expansion plans are bad policy. Contrary to what hardcore choice activists want to argue, the proposals will do nothing to help the most-vulnerable children gain opportunities for high quality education. More importantly, as I noted last month, the lack of a companion plan to expand choice for poor and minority children and their families (and the uselessness of the proposal for families who are merely middle class or affluent) means that 529 expansion is merely a tax subsidy for the wealthiest families who can already pay for private school tuition out of their own pockets (and would stick to using 529 plans for paying for college savings).

When you consider that the 529 proposals are part of tax cut proposals that eliminate the Individual Mandate, a key tool for helping poor families gain healthcare coverage they need to keep their children healthy, and September’s elimination of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (which covers 8.9 million children from low-income households), it becomes even clearer that the 529 expansion plans are callous acts of policymaking by men and women who care nothing about helping all children survive and thrive from conception to adulthood.

Meanwhile any discussion about the 529 expansion proposal cannot be divorced from the Trump Administration’s White Supremacist war against Black, Latino, and immigrant children from Latin America, Africa, and Asia. This is because the administration’s failure to push for an education tax credit that would benefit those children is another example of how it has no great interest in helping anyone who isn’t White or the descendant of European immigrants. The fact that there are so-called reformers working for the administration in the U.S. Department of Education — and that Betsy DeVos is Secretary of Education — means nothing. Because they, too, are part of the administration’s concerted disdain towards poor and minority communities.

Meanwhile the 529 expansion proposals will do damage to efforts by reformers to expand choice, especially vouchers and charter that have proven to help poor and minority children escape failure mills. Progressive and centrist Democrat reformers who have just begun warming up to the idea of moving beyond charters as a vehicle for school choice, now find themselves on the defensive as ideological fellow-travelers, angered by this tax subsidy for wealthy families, will oppose nearly every form of choice. Congressional Republicans basically weaponized a key approach to transforming American public education, playing into the hands of traditionalists such as the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and suburban districts, the most-fervent opponents of helping poor kids escape failing schools.

There is no way anyone who calls his or herself a champion for all children and a school reformer can be pleased with the passage of this proposal. Not one way. At all.

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The Weekend

On 529s and the Intent of Movements

November 4, 2017 9:35 am November 4, 2017

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The other problem with 529s for school choice: Yesterday, Dropout Nation explained why the plan by Congressional Republicans and the Trump Administration to transform 529 higher education savings vehicles to expand…

The other problem with 529s for school choice: Yesterday, Dropout Nation
explained why the plan by Congressional Republicans and the Trump Administration to transform 529 higher education savings vehicles to expand school choice does little for poor and minority communities who lack the incomes and wealth to use them. But the more your editor and others think through the plan itself, the more it becomes clear that it will even harm middle-class families as well as damage efforts to ensure that all children attain higher education they need for success in adulthood.

How is that possible? Start with how 529s currently work — and how the Congressional Republican proposal would pervert it.

When a family contributes to a 529 plan, they are looking to grow the dollars they put in so that at least a portion of higher ed tuition costs are covered. This is done over time by investing contributions of up to $14,000 a year (or $70,000 in one year to cover a five-year period) into mutual funds as well as money market accounts similar to certificates of deposit issued by banks. Over time, those initial dollars (as well as additional contributions over time) should grow thanks to investment growth and interest compounding.

But this isn’t possible if families start tapping 529 accounts to pay for private school tuition costs or even tutoring expenses. Why? Because the more money siphoned off from contributions to elementary and secondary education expenses, the less money will go towards college savings.

Say a family contributes to the full maximum of $14,000 a year. [Most never do.] They may be able to avoid cutting into long-term college savings if they limit K-12 expenses to around $4,000 a year. But the average private school tuition in the United States is $7,700, according to the U.S. Department of Education — and in many places such as Maryland, private-school tuition is even higher. Put simply, the more money spent out of the 529 on private school and tutoring costs, the less money will be saved for college. They also lose out on future investment gains and interest compounding in the process.

Some of these issues would have been avoided if Congressional Republicans chose instead to expand the use of Flexible Spending Accounts — which are used to pay for preschool and child care expenses as well as medical costs — for use to fund private-school tuition and other K-12 expenditures. That move would have been even better for families who already use those plans because those are funded through paycheck withholding and would be supported by the 20 percent federal child care tax credit already in place. But this wasn’t likely proposed.

One reason lies with Heritage Foundation and its education czar, Lindsey Burke, who have been the prime proponents of the 529 expansion. The other lies with the overall intent of Congressional Republicans to pay for the $1.5 trillion tax cut. The proposals in House Resolution 1, along with the 529 transformation, likely have the affect of decimating American higher education. If successful, those moves will damage the futures of children regardless of background to gain knowledge they need for lifelong success.

This effort against higher education includes the proposed elimination of the lifelong learning credit of $2,000 (which is used to by nontraditional collegians to offset the cost of tuition), the $5,250-per-person deduction given to companies that offer higher ed tuition assistance programs to their employees, and changes that would only reduce the percentage of taxpayers who can reduce their tax burdens by itemizing donations to universities and nonprofits from 30 percent to five percent.

Viewed against those other moves, the expansion of the use of 529s for use on K-12 costs would damage higher education by making it even harder for families to save for the tuition costs. Which means that this is an even worse plan for children than even I realized. When you add in all of the other proposed changes to the tax code that also harm families — including the elimination of deductions for medical savings accounts and adoption expenses — the Congressional Republicans and the Trump Administration can be accused of waging war on the efforts of middle-class and even poor families to help their children survive and succeed.

Intent Makes a Movement: One of the most-interesting questions this week was incidentally raised by Columbia University scholar and New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb in his response to an essay by University of Virginia Professor Fred Schauer on whether the White Supremacist protest that led to mayhem and carnage (including the murder of Heather Heyer) last August should lead cities to find ways to restrict the free speech and assembly rights of protestors. That question? How do you distinguish between movements and mobs.

In his piece, Cobb attempts to argue that the difference between a movement and a mob lies with whether the goals are primal or not. From where he sits, the Unite the Right protestors were the latter because their goals are driven by racial bigotry, which makes them primal (based on tribalism that is hard-set in all of us). On that front, I would argue that he is incorrect. This is because what distinguishes movements from mobs isn’t their goals, but their organization and their intent.

All movements are primal in some way. Movements to end colonialism and oppression, such as Mahatma Gandhi’s effort to end British colonialism of India, are driven by the urge to be free. Those that oppress, such as the Nazis and other 20th-century Fascists (as well as the American White Supremacists off which they partly modeled themselves) appeal to authoritarian instincts.

Even the modern school reform movement, is driven in part by primal urges. In this case, the desire for learning as well as to protect the most-vulnerable, the latter being derivative of the maternal and paternal instincts most parents have for their children. Traditionalists, in turn, are also driven in part by the urge to protect the influence and power they have gained over time.

To dismiss the desire to act on primal instinct as either base or merely a province of mobs is to ignore the noble and ignoble feelings that drive both positive and negative social movements.

What differs a movement from a mob is organization and effort. They are intentional. Which is why what happened in Charlottesville (as well as the White Supremacist rally that happened last month in Shelbyville, Tenn.) are so troubling.

As Vice and other outlets have reported , the new-era White Supremacists behind Charlottesville spent months planning their protests before they finally descended on the Virginia college town. This included discussions on the Daily Stormer and other forums about logistics, messages, even what weapons to bring to the event. Given that they prepared for violence, White Supremacists such as Jason Kessler and Chris Cantwell expected Heyer’s murder, as well as the anticipated that their allies would brutally assault counter-protestors such as DeAndre Harris.

The Unite the Right players, in turn, are part of a larger White Supremacist movement that extends far beyond their numbers that day in Charlottesville. As Buzzfeed noted last month an investigative piece, those ideological and political ties extend to Breitbart, the media outlet controlled by Robert Mercer and Steve Bannon, both of which have played key roles in sustaining the presidential campaign of the current Occupant of the White House and his administration. It also extends to President Donald Trump himself, who put White Supremacists such as Bannon on his White House staff, as well as gave comfort to the Unite the Right crowd after the carnage and mayhem by claiming that that they were “good people”.

Trump and the White Supremacist protestors, in turn, share the same intent: Official state discrimination against Black, Latino, Asian and immigrant men, women, and children. The latter advances this intent through protests, violence, media campaigns, and their own interactions with people Black and Brown. The former and his administration do so through policy, legislation, and executive branch action, all of which has been documented by this publication. In fact, the Trump Administration is merely doing under the business of the White Supremacists that support it.

Mobs don’t have tax-exempt statuses and corporate filings. Movements do.

Put simply, the new-era White Supremacists end up in Charlottesville and Shelbyville are as intentional as any positive social movement. Nothing they do is accidental or incidental; they intend on relegating poor and minority communities . They may be the opposite of the Black Lives Matter and school reform movements of today. But the new-age White Supremacists are still a movement, one that resembles the Klu Klux Klan during its golden age of 1920s (when it counted at least two million members — ncluding eventual U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black– and actually controlled Indiana’s state government) and the collection of White Citizens Councils, Klan groups, and Southern politicians who opposed the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s.

So all of us opposed to them, especially those within the school reform movement, must deal seriously with their intent and their organization. We must address the immorality of their beliefs and the anti-intellectualism of their ideas and proposals. Simply dismissing them as a mob, especially for the illiberal (and unacceptable) purpose of stamping out their liberty, will never work.

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The Weekend

The Legacies of Education’s Past Before Us

October 29, 2017 1:42 pm October 29, 2017

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The Rosenwald School Next Door: The legacies of America’s Original Sin run through American public education — and often leave their marks on the nation’s physical landscape even in plain sight….

The Rosenwald School Next Door: The legacies of America’s Original Sin run through American public education — and often leave their marks on the nation’s physical landscape even in plain sight. Your editor and his family sees one each day, as we drive from our home in Bowie to church, passing a humble building on Church and Old Stage Roads surrounded by an old Masonic lodge and trees on what is left of an old farm.

These days, the building is a duplex, a home for those who live in it. But from 1927 to 1952, it was one of many schools funded by the Rosenwald Fund which helped fund schools for Black children in rural communities where Jim Crow-controlled districts were unwilling to serve them with adequate classrooms.

There’s a long history of education on this site. The first school for Black children on this acre of what was then called Collington was built in 1875, a decade after the end of the Civil War. As with so many schools of the time, it was a simple one-room building that often served as many Black children as possible in spite of opposition from White men and women still upset by the end of slavery and the loss of the Confederacy during the civil war.

The first Collington Colored School did its job as well as its could as did the teachers who worked within it. But by 1927, the building was no longer adequate for the job. Even with a declining population of Black people in Maryland and Prince George’s County, many of whom fled to New York City and Philadelphia to escape from Jim Crow, there were still plenty of children in the area who needed to go to school. So the local parents-teachers organization (which, like many of those serving Black people, was separate from a National PTA that tolerated segregation), began agitating for a new schoolhouse.

Photo courtesy of Fisk University.

Being a Jim Crow district in a Jim Crow state, Prince George’s County Public Schools was of no mood to build a new schoolhouse for the Black kids in its care. So the Rosenwald Fund, established a decade earlier by the president of Sears, Roebuck & Co., at the behest of Booker T. Washington to build schools for Black children, stepped in to help. In 1927, thanks to Rosenwald and the Black families in the community, this building was constructed, west of the old school (which has since disappeared into history). For the next 25 years, Black children in the are attended the school, getting as much of an education as allowed by a district uninterested in doing anything for them.

The Collington school would be one of the 5,000 school buildings the Rosenwald Fund would help construct between 1917 and 1931. It would do a lot of good. As Daniel Aaronson and Bhashkar Mazumder of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago determined in a 2011 study, the construction of the schools contributed to Black children gaining an additional year of education compared to peers who had no access to school. Along with programs such as the Jeannes Fund, which recruited Black men and women to teach in those schools, the Rosenwald Fund reduced achievement gaps between Black and White children and help more African American attain high school diplomas and even college degrees. All of this despite the obstacles erected by White men and women who thought Black children didn’t deserve opportunities for better lives.

As for the Collington Colored School? It would operate until 1952, two years before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that official segregation was illegal. that year, the Prince George’s County district shut down the school even though it wouldn’t desegregate its schools until two decades later, because it was too small to operate. This fate befell many of the other segregated Black schools built since the end of the Civil War. The old schoolhouse on Church and Old Stage was then sold to the Roman Catholic archdiocese and its Holy Family parish, which them used it to provide religious instruction to the Black children in its pews.

By the end of the 1960s, the building was sold again to Richard Spriggs, who converted the building into a duplex and whose family still owns it. Despite Bowie transforming from a place for the White landed gentry and their horses to a bedroom suburb of Washington, D.C., home to the wealthiest African Americans in the wealthiest Black county in America, the old schoolhouse still remains, one of many Rosenwald Schools still around, though without any historic medallion to signify its past.

As we fight to transform American public education as well as end the policies and practices that damage far too many Black and other minority children, we have to also remember that the dark past isn’t so long ago. In fact, the problems of the past and the solutions for the future can be seen right in front of us, often on little roads that we pass by on the way to fighting the present and shaping the future.

Another Way to Help Improve Civics Education: These pages have devoted part of the past few months to addressing how reformers and others can transform history and civics education so that all of our children gain comprehensive knowledge of the good, bad and ugly of our nation’s past as well as help build a better nation. One way can be seen in a high school in Fairfax County, where the Street Law program is teaching children about the workings of Congress and the nation’s municipal governments.

There in that school, a group of corporate lawyers take time with a class discussing how bills become laws and how celebrities such as talk show host Stephen Colbert participate in shaping how the nation addresses issues such as immigration reform. The high schoolers, in turn, bring up their own experiences in learning the consequences of laws. This includes a move by officials in Falls Church to end a special meal tax that was used to finance the traditional district’s sports activities.

Few in the school reform movement know about organizations such as Street Law and ThinkLaw, which use real-life examples to help kids think through issues in society. Even fewer realize their value. Street Law, in particular, runs annual professional development seminars that help teachers understand the inner workings of the federal judiciary as well as providing mock court sessions and other lessons for children from poor and minority backgrounds. Between 1995 and 2015, Street Law has given high-quality civics education to 300,000 of our youth, while ThinkLaw, run by Teach For America Colin Seale, works in charter and district schools in Nevada, Texas, and Washington, D.C.

But it takes money and bodies to provide more lessons to more children. Street Law, in particular, does this with the help of corporations and law firms donating pro bono time as well as cash. It will take even more money and bodies to expand what these organizations do. This is something the school reform movement and the organizations within it can do if those complaining about the quality of civics and history education wanted to help.

They can start by calling up Street Law and ThinkLaw to learn how they can help out. If they want to know more, they can call up one of Street Law’s past honorees, former New York City Chancellor Joel Klein, or chat up Seale himself. And since some of the leading lights in the movement are Yale Law School graduates and have experience crafting and filing civil torts, they can also take some time out and reach out to these groups to lend a hand. Take the opportunity and become part of the solution.

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The Weekend Three Thoughts

Rick Hess’ DeVos (and White Supremacy) Problem

October 14, 2017 4:37 pm October 14, 2017

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Hess Protests Too Much: Your editor keeps a few things in mind when it comes to American Enterprise Institute education czar Rick Hess’ jeremiad in Education Week about a protest banner…

Hess Protests Too Much: Your editor keeps a few things in mind when it comes to American Enterprise Institute education czar Rick Hess’ jeremiad in Education Week about a protest banner accusing U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos of being a White Supremacist during her appearance last month at Harvard University. The first is that AEI’s star-studded board includes the education secretary’s brother, Erik Prince, who is also a prime donor to the think tank. That conflict must be considered when reading anything Hess writes in defense of her. Secondly: Hess himself has earned a reputation for being racially myopic, especially in his dismissal of focusing on achievement gaps in transforming public education as well as his statement that expanding school choice rewards the supposed irresponsibility of poor and minority families. Simply put, when Hess discusses any issue involving race, he is often projecting.

All that said, let’s concede one of Hess’ key arguments in that piece: That the Harvard student who displayed the banner could used better choice of words. Not because, as Hess argues, accusations of White Supremacy are tossed around too liberally these days (more on that in a second). But because the protester could have offered more-direct complaints about DeVos’ tenure that are on the mark.

There’s the move made by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to reduce the scope of its investigations into systemic overuse of suspensions, expulsions, spankings, and even restraints and seclusion (solitary confinement) against Black, Latino and other minority children, essentially scaling back the agency’s mission of protecting the most-vulnerable children. There’s DeVos’ tepid response in August to the violence by White Supremacists in Charlottesville (which echoed that of the rest of the Trump Administration). There’s also her consistent failure to condemn the bigotry of her boss, the current Occupant of the White House, who has consistently accused undocumented Latino emigres of being rapists and members of gangs. Finally, there is her unwillingness and inability to stand up for other vulnerable children, from transgendered youth to the 800,000 undocumented youth and adults brought to America as kids who now face deportation thanks to the Trump Administration’s move to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

None of this, by the way, includes her general unwillingness to embrace the civil rights mission of the Department of Education as laid out in the Every Student Succeeds Act and other federal education policies. An issue made clear again earlier this week when her priorities list was revealed, none of which mentioned doing right by poor and minority children.

As you would expect, Hess didn’t mention any of those issues in his critique. After all, he would have to concede that those protesters would have a legitimate point to make, even if he disagreed with them. More importantly, in acknowledging those issues, he ends up weakening his main argument: That far too many people, including progressive and civil rights-oriented school reformers, are too willing to accept (and toss around) accusations of White Supremacy and racial bigotry.

This is because, like a number of prominent White intellectuals outside of education policy such as New York‘s Jonathan Chait, Hess fails to admit is that bigotry in general, and White Supremacy in particular, isn’t some binary thing. That is, White Supremacy isn’t simply about someone being an active bigot or professing their hatred of people from other racial and ethnic backgrounds.

All racism, including White Supremacy, is a continuum of actions that are often divorced from personal and social intentions. A Klansman or Skinhead can occasionally do good for — and even save the life of — people who he generally hates. At the same time, a person who isn’t a bigot, even someone who has committed themselves to helping those who don’t look like them, can support or remain silent about policies and practices that maliciously or incidentally damage the lives and futures of poor and minority people. More importantly, as author Richard Rubin once surmised in his famous essay on the jurors who let off the murderers of Emmett Till, individuals regardless of their position and power can find themselves unwilling to challenge and oppose those policies as well as the men and women who are promulgating them.

This reality, of course, creates a conundrum for many White reformers, especially those of a conservative bent, who support practices done by others in and out of the movement that have been proven by data and evidence to damage the very children they proclaim their concern. In the case of Betsy DeVos, the reality is magnified by her decision to join a regime deliberately dead set on harming those very same kids.

Certainly, DeVos’ admirable record in expanding school choice does argue against her being an active White Supremacist. But since Trump’s election to the presidency last November, she has been unwilling to challenge him on his bigoted statements, both before and after being nominated to serve as the nation’s top education officer. More importantly, she has done nothing to intervene on behalf of children, especially those who are undocumented as well as native-born children of emigres, as they deal with the Trump Administration’s active efforts against them and their families (including moves by the U.S. Department of Justice to deny due process in deportation hearings).

In fact, by simply joining Trump’s administration, DeVos tacitly agreed to not stand up for the children Black and Brown whose families (along with their futures), the regime has essentially targeted for condemnation to the economic and social abyss. Even worse, as a philanthropist who already had an influential role in shaping education policy through roles such as chairing the American Federation for Children, she didn’t need to join. DeVos made a calculated decision to associate herself with the likes of Attorney General Jeff Sessions (who was once denied a federal court judgeship because of his rank bigotry) and Trump himself, whose long record of racism existed long before he decided to run for public office.

While DeVos may not be a bigot or a White Supremacist, she is a willing collaborator with one. That Hess fails to realize or accept this speaks more about his issues than about others within the movement who have been unwilling to defend his favorite education politician.

More on Making History and Civics Personal: There have been plenty of responses to this month’s essay on how genealogy records and other data can be used to help children better-understand American history and civics. One of the questions raised was what are other ways can teachers make history personal and relevant to the children they teach. Just as importantly, beyond understanding the nation’s tangled racial legacy, how can they gain empathy and insight on how the nation’s wars have affected society, and even understand current geopolitical issues facing us today.

One idea lies with the monuments our nation has erected to the men and women who have died in the wars of the last century. This can easily be done by teachers in places such as Indianapolis, Ind., which is home to the more war monuments than any other part of the nation.

A teacher at North Central High School in the city’s Washington Township district can take her class down to the Vietnam and Korean War memorials where the letters of soldiers killed in action are etched on the walls for contemplation. There, they can read the letter of Frederick Ben King, a native of Hammond, Ind., who was killed by sniper fire in 1968. Through a Google search, they will learn that King had a mother named Rosell and a father named Floyd. They will also find a Chicago Tribune article that will mention that he was 17 years old (and attending Oliver P. Morton High School) when he chose to enlist in the army. That article will also tell them that he had told his mother that he planned to be home by Christmas — and that he was killed one month before he could see them.

In researching Frederick Ben King’s story, the students will learn in a personal way how devastating Vietnam was on the lives of young men and women, both those who never made it home and the ones who came back scarred physically and emotionally. Through that, they will also understand how that devastation led to the end of the involuntary draft, which had been previously used to staff our armed services during times of war, as well as the passage of the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 in reflection of the reality that those who can serve the nation should also be able to pick its political leaders.

Students can then go the letter of another Indiana native, John E. Welches, who was killed in action during the Korean War in 1951. Through Census data as well as state death records, they can learn that he was the only son of a machinist named August, who never left the Hoosier State and outlived his son by 29 years. By looking at online archives on the Korean Conflict, they will also learn that John spent his last days in the Haean-myon Valley, the infamous Punchbowl, which was located just miles from the now-demilitarized zone that separates South Korea from North Korea.

Through that research, students can then learn more about the origins of the Korean War, how the United States entered into the conflict, and understand why the sparring between the Trump Administration and the government of North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong-un, is so perilous for Asia and the rest of the world.

This isn’t to say all monuments are useful in instruction. The Confederate war memorials littering the nation, for example, have little use outside of showing how people use public spaces to reshape understanding of the origins of wars and debates over civil rights. Other memorials, including many devoted to the Second World War, leave out the roles of Americans of Japanese descent who were forced into concentration camps by the federal government after Pearl Harbor, as well as the American Indians who fought ably for the nation despite the federal government’s genocidal acts towards them and their tribes.

Yet there are plenty of monuments, including the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial in Hawaii, and the monument dedicated to Japanese-American war heroes of World War II, that offer plenty for students to contemplate and reflect upon. Which makes them useful in helping those kids gain greater understanding about their nation and its long struggle to bend the arc of history towards progress for all.

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