Area school districts react to reintroduced bill requiring cursive to be taught in schools – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Third-graders at Lake Country School in Delafield practice cursive writing on Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2019.(Photo: Scott Ash/Now News Group)

State legislators have reintroduced a bill originally introduced in 2019 requiring cursive in schools to be taught.

State Rep. Jeremy Thiesfeldt and state Sen. Joan Ballweg, along with senators Alberta Darling, Stephen Nass, Howard Marklein, Lena Taylor and Van Wanggaard,reintroduced the bill, which issimilar to AB 459. That billpassed the state Assembly in 2019 before stalling in the state Senate during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Co-sponsoring the bill are state representatives David Armstrong, Rachel Cabral-Guevara, Barbara Dittrich, James Edming, Gae Magnafici, Clint Moses, David Murphy, Jeffrey Mursau, Donna Rozar, Ron Tusler, Michael Schraa and Daniel Knodl.

If passed, the bill would require that cursive writingbe incorporated into the state's model academic standards for English language arts. Specifically, it would require elementary students to be able to write legibly in cursive by the end of fifth grade.

It would alsorequire all school boards, independent charter schools and private schools participating in a parental choice program to include cursive writing in their respective curriculums for elementary grades, according to the bill's text.

"We just think it's an important part of a particularlyyoung mind, speaking specifically of kids when they first start school," Thiesfeldt said in a phone interview June 22. "Those first few years are when most of the learning takes place, and it's important for us to maximize the amount of learning they can get in that time, and I believe cursive writing is part of that."

Ballweg said she hoped cursive would not become a lost art.

"There is evidence that shows that it does more to actuallyput the left and right sides of the brain together to work together. (It) provides for greater dexterity moving forward and just helps you retain more information and gets your entire brain working when you're working in cursive," Ballweg said.

"I know over the years, of course, it's important that we all learn to type so that we can do emails and everything else that goes along with being on the Internet and learning that way, but I think this is a way of communication that needs to be preserved, and if we don't teach it in schools, it's not going to happen. People can, moving forward, decide what kind of format they want to use when they are writing. But it is something that I think we should train so that people have that background as an option."

The bill, SB 431, has been referred to the state Senate Education Committee, according to the state legislature's website.

Some area school districts are already teaching cursive.

The Germantown School District offer cursive writing instruction in third grade, said Brenda O'Brien, the district's director of teaching and learning.

"While we do recognize the prioritization of digital communication, research tends to support how putting pencil to paper reinforces reading in a way that fingers to keyboard does not, ashandwriting provides students a better idea of how words work in combination," O'Brien said in an email."Additionally, research tends to support how learningcursiveenhances fine motor skills."

It's a similar story in Menomonee Falls schools, where Superintendent Corey Golla said the district has continued basic instruction on the subject at the elementary level and hasnot discussed any changes to that requirement.

But he added that the district opposed the legislation on the basic grounds that the community consistently endorses local control.

"Our school board is elected to make these decisions in partnership with our community and our leadership team.We have also opposed any unfunded mandates from the Legislature," Golla said in an email.

The New Berlin School District does not have a formal curriculum for teaching cursive in its classrooms. However, the district begins exposing students to cursive in second grade. From there, the district gives students the opportunity to practice cursive writing in the third, fourth and fifth grades, saying it knows they may run into it outside of school and at minimum wants students to be able to sign their names.

Superintendent Joe Garza echoed Golla's concerns about state mandates.

"In almost all cases, we support local control and believe it should be up to local school boards to determine whats taught in our schools, especially considering how much is already mandated from the state and federal levels," Garza said in an email.

Palmyra-Eagle School District public relations coordinator Caitlin Kirchner said the bill is in line with the practices the district is already doing and would not change its curriculum.

Eagle Elementary School principal Katie Robertson saidthe school has taught cursive as an intentional handwriting unit during the third grade. She said the school uses a program called "Handwriting out Tears" to teach students.

"We feel that there is a value in this instruction, and provides students with an opportunityto use this writing artform. Students continue to usecursivein the classroom beyond third grade and have opportunities to imbed it into their fourth- and fifth-grade learning," said Robertson.

Waukesha School DistrictAssistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning Jody Landish said with the district's adoption of the Benchmark Phonics program, handwriting is already incorporated into the curriculum. She said cursive writing starts in the third grade.

"If the proposed bill passes, it will not adversely affect the instruction we have in place in Waukesha," Landish said in an email.

The Wisconsin Department of Instruction said in an email that thedepartment does not take a position on bills until the scheduled hearing.

But the Wisconsin Association of School Boardsdid take a position on the bill.

WASB government relations director Dan Rossmiller said the organization generally opposes bills that would impose unfunded curricular mandates on schools or attempt to micromanage decisions best left to local discretion.

"Whatever the merits (or lack of merits) of bills imposing cursive writing mandates on schools, such bills seem oddly out of step with the realities of the learning disruption that occurred during pandemic," Rossmiller said in an email. "We think lawmakers would better help students by focusing on helping schools help students recover from the learning disruption caused by the pandemic than by adding new mandates."

Rossmiller said the WASB also opposed similar bills in 2019. He said the new proposed draft appears to be identical to the bills considered last session.

ContactAlec Johnson at(262) 875-9469 oralec.johnson@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @AlecJohnson12.

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Area school districts react to reintroduced bill requiring cursive to be taught in schools - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel