This lawsuit popped up on my radar a few days ago and I let it sit, thinking foolishly that maybe I was reading too much into it. But a Washington Post op-ed from Corey DeAngelis confirmed the worst-- privatizers are ready to try to eliminate public schools entirely.
Education is speech. The curriculum taught, the books assigned, and the values reinforced inside (and outside) of the classroom all convey a message. The Constitution has long recognized that parents—not the government—hold the paramount right to direct that message for their own children.
That's part of the argument. The rest is familiar as well.
Parents also have a legal duty to provide or arrange for educational speech.
In other words, I should not have to pay for a system that educates Other Peoples' Children. Their children are their problem.
Nor is the suit merely about eliminating the public system.
Nebraska’s scheme flips free speech on its head, mandating educational speech then penalizing viewpoints other than the government’s: parents who wish to exercise their right, whether by homeschooling or by choosing a private school, must forgo tens of thousands of dollars of educational benefits available to other families who acquiesce to the government’s viewpoints.
In other words, I should not have to pay for Other Peoples' Children to get an education, but taxpayers should absolutely help me subsidize the education of my own children.
I didn't read the DeAngelis op-ed because the presence of his op-ed in the Washington Post is precisely why I don't have a subscription to the Post any more. But I'm sure it's plenty incendiary and rage-baity. The very idea that public education violates the First Amendment is so destructive and counter-intelligent, but that appears to be where they want to go. The whole system is unconstitutional.
Update: Okay, someone shared it with me. He used his big boy voice for the Post, but it's still an astonishing reach. "Universal school choice resolves the constitutional problem while preserving public support for education," he writes. Tear down public schools, end the promise to all students, and open up the unregulated free market. In many ways, I suppose this whole business is just the quiet part out loud-- this has always been the goal for some of these folks all the way back to Milton Friedman.
The libertarian Reason magazine is taking this seriously, which is not surprising. NCLA says that "Plaintiffs do not seek to end, defund, or influence public schools," and that's pretty clearly bullshit. What other effect can we expect from ruling the entire system unconstitutional? Maybe the idea is simple extortion-- give us a pile of money or we'll tear down your schools-- but the effect would be the same. Who knows how Nebraska's court will jump on this, and there's a whole counter-argument to be made that education (as folks on the right love to point out) is no business of the federal government; public education is a feature of state constitutions.
So it's easy to look at this suit and argue that it will likely fail. That's not really the point; folks on the far right have always been willing to play a long game and make legal and policy moves that slowly inch the Overton window over and move into courts until, voila! We get Dobbs.
So I'm watching this as the next front of the ongoing attack on public schools, the new argument that will be repeated ad nauseum. Pay attention, folks.
McMahon's particular brand of passionless functionary was on display Sunday morning for a dozen minutes with Dana Bash. The interview kicked around a few topics, and featured one moment that highlight's McMahon's lack of understanding. I've watched it so you don't have to: here are the topics of the day.
The cost of going back to school. Bash opened with the cost of supplying a child for school. $175 for school supplies! "Packing a school lunch is up more than 10%," said Bash. "What do you say to parents" struggling with the costs and economic strains?
Good soldier and millionaire McMahon sticks with the party line of denial. There may be some price "upticks," but "the general economy is strong" and doing so well. Also, parents have a lot to look forward to because the administration has done work "to make sure that parents are more in charge of the education that is going on in the states" etc etc. So McMahon offers parents denial followed by changing the subject. Which leads directly to the department's hot new talking point--
Sex stuff. Expect to hear repeats of the statistic that one in ten students will have been sexually molested in school. McMahon manages to suggest that faculty are the main problem here and the administration is really working on that. She singles out California as place that shuffles teachers. Bash interrupts to ask if McMahon just pulled that stat out of her butt and McMahon says no the department did a study, based on some data-- "the general education statistics that were afforded to us." It should be pointed out that the California issue is a real thing, as reported by KQED and ProPublica, and the whole subject deserves attention (though this administration may not be the folks to do it). She says they have "really been cracking down on that as well" though how, exactly, is unclear. But it's two minutes into the interview and you already forgot that this started with a question about the high cost of sending a kid to school.
But God bless her, Bash did not forget and responded that sure some economic indicators are better "but the affordability crisis is real." McMahon offers a kind of half nod which could be a grudging acknowledgement of the point or a simple "Well, played, Dana."
AI in the classroom. Bash notes that McMahon issued guidance saying schools should evaluate AI tools based on evidence of effectiveness and learning outcomes. But, notes Bash, the tools haven't been around long enough for any such evidence to have been collected, yet Google and OpenAI are already shoving tools toward students. "Are you concerned that students are effectively becoming sort of guinea pigs for chatbots?"
McMahon (who has learned the difference between AI and A1) goes with the talking point that says we should watch out for screen time but make our caution based on good screens and bad screens. This launches her tale of going to Austin to see Alpha School in action. She was, of course, impressed.
The first couple of hours every day, students really have on headphones, they're in front of their computers, they're getting their subjects fed to them
Yup, that's how education works-- you just pour the knowledge into the brains of young humans and voila!! Instant smartitude. McMahon talks about "teachers" at Alpha School monitoring what's going on, but Alpha School doesn't use actual certified teachers for the job of "coach." McMahon says the beauty of the 2Hour Learning model is that "a student almost has a one-on-one tutor." They do not. AI is not a tutor for so very many reasons, not the least of which is that the AI cannot analyze where the student went wrong and guide them past that bump in the learning road. She describes how the teacher can see if the child is behind and therefore "repeat information" or see the child is ahead and speed things up-- all of which is what the magical AI is supposed to be doing, so I'm pretty sure McMahon comprehends zero parts of this whole set-up.
McMahon says with AI we should look at "who's going to get it, how long are students going to be exposed to it, what is the outcome," and that would be great for Alpha School, which carefully selects its students. We know, by comparing Alpha School outcomes with the outcomes of Unbound, their bargain cyber-charters that don't cream students, that their outcomes suck (see this invaluable Dan Meyer post).
McMahon agrees that AI products should be checked for effectiveness (not that she imagines a role for her department in doing so, because the MAGA concept of federal oversight is that there should be none and let the chips fall on those who deserve to be chip-burdened, so who exactly is checking these program for effectiveness or doing the pulling out is important, but not clear here). Anyway, she thinks Alpha School is so shiny, she supports "AI with guardrails," and again-- who is putting up these guardrails?
Bash asks if she thinks Alpha School is a proper model and she says, "Well, the PR pitch I received was convincing." I'm paraphrasing. She does note that it seemed effective at these schools for these students and she's not saying it would work everywhere, which is smart because we already know it doesn't.
AI opt out. Bash asks if parents should be able to opt out of AI, and the TL:DR answer is, "Yes." The school should make its case.
AI versus human. Bash kind of fumbles this question, but the upshot is "Is the swellness of AI tutoring outweighed by the loss of human interaction with teachers?" Even with a coach there, it's not the same as learning from a human being. Are you concerned about that. The TL:DR answer is, "No, that's not our problem." But she'll also allow that human vs. AI instruction requires a balance, as with any other new tool. Nothing can replace human interaction, both between students and teacher and between student and student. She's not wrong.
School phone bans. Does McMahon think they're a good idea. "Bell to bell no cell," she says. She's a fan. Then she's back to screen time balance, recreational vs. tutoring. This is a good a place as any to mention that McMahon was born in 1948.
CTE and College. Bash gets CTE education, but wonders if pushing career tracks in elementary school is a bit much. Of course, in MAGA world, where Certain People are destined for meat widget status and might as well get started early (see: every state that has weakened child labor laws). McMahon's quote here has some real layers:
I think what we can do is look at students. What are their interests? How do we direct them down a pathway that they're going to have an interest, you know, in school and I believe that children need a well-rounded education, but I think we have focused for too long for just that four year that path to a four year university and sometimes we ignore what the actual skill sets of those students are.
Note the idea that we are supposed to direct students down a pathway rather than, say, letting them choose a path on their own. Note also the notion that students' "skill sets" should determine their paths. I don't disagree that we have over-emphasized college, but the whiff of one of those systems where we sort students into future career paths early on, regardless of what the students themselves want-- well, that's a very stinky whiff.
McMahon cites middle school partnerships with community colleges, and Bash says, well, maybe that's debatable, but elementary school??!! Maybe get some critical thinking taught and leave specific trades till later. Nah, do both at once, says McMahon. But then she flips back to "we can't direct that from DC." Because each community and its school might "need" different things. This seems really close to the notion that poor communities need to teach students to be meat widgets, and wealthy communities don't. Certainly there is nothing in her formulation of education about providing opportunities or, ironically, actual choices for students. But she's right back to "and that's why we really want to return education to the states, because we shouldn't have to make sure students all have equal opportunities no matter their zip code." Okay, I added that last part.
Higher ed free speech. Bash brings up the letter McMahon sent to universities calling for more open admission and more free speech. Bash wants to know if the Trump administration will back that up with cuts of federal funds. McMahon's reply starts with "Well, we're certainly always going to monitor what our universities are doing" which is both creepy and also contrary to sending education back to the states, but she then cites an "incredible positive response" and argues that she's all about open debate by folks on both sides of the aisle. She cites Ron DeSantis saying that Florida is all about those open two-sided debates in higher ed, so clearly that's totally working.
Look, it's a foundational belief of MAGA that the dirty Lefties captured institutions, including higher education, and that to set the country aright, those institutions must be recaptured. Chris Rufo has talked about it repeatedly; somebody has a whole book coming out about it. That's the project. Anything else is a smokescreen. McMahon's call for a "collision of ideas" can't be taken seriously.
That's pretty much it. McMahon mostly snoozed her way through the interview. As usual, McMahon strikes me as someone who is perfect for the task of doing away with her job because it's a job that doesn't seem to interest her very much at all. Honestly, I'm not sure why she's here. Betsy DeVos wanted to bring kingdom rule, but McMahon is old and wealthy and seems like she's out of effs to give. She may want to watch the world burn, but I imagine she would not stick around long to bask in the glow.
You can watch it all if you want, but don't bother to make popcorn.
It has been a real experience for most of this week, with the home internet appearing and disappearing in 5-10 minute intervals. I am waiting patiently for the Institute's provider to send new hardware, but in the meantime, getting work done in little microburst has been an adventure and a reminder the degree to which internet connectivity is now a basic utility and while not exactly a necessity, it certainly ties one's feet together to have it only limited capacity. Just reminder to maybe give your wi-fi connection a little hug and tell it how much you appreciate it today.
And speaking of horrifying, intrusive surveillance, Fort Worth has stuck cameras in classrooms. Jacob Sanchez at Fort Worth Report has the whole awful story.
Bruce Lesley takes a dive into the legal questions surrounding the rights of parents-- and when the invocation of those rights imposes on the rights of children.
TC Weber, as usual, covers a variety of topics, some very Memphis-related. But I don't want you to miss this section, so here's the excerpt, and maybe go read the whole post:
The other day, I was listening to a couple of young sports-talk radio hosts discuss how they learned about the football players of their generation.
They learned through the Madden video game.
Madden lists players and their skill sets. It assigns an overall rating, then breaks a player down into categories like speed, strength, awareness, agility, throwing power, and tackling. Those ratings are useful for playing the game, and they can be a good starting point for learning about players.
The fallacy comes when you decide the statistics truly define the player. Some players are better than their Madden ratings. Others seem unable to earn theirs when the real game is on the line. A player can possess every measurable tool and still fail to recognize what is happening in front of him.
My son, a high school quarterback, often talks about the difference between straight-line speed and football speed. The two are very different. Plenty of people can run a great 40-yard dash but somehow look slow on the field. They hesitate, take a poor angle, or need too much time to process what they see.
Football coaches quickly recognize the difference.
They understand that a number without context is only a number.
The same holds true when looking at student data. Test scores, attendance rates, discipline reports, grades, and growth measures can all provide insight. None should be treated as the be-all and end-all.
Like those coaches, teachers are best positioned to interpret what the data means. If you spend all day with a child, you develop context. You know whether a score reflects ability, anxiety, hunger, exhaustion, growth, boredom, or a rough morning at home.
That knowledge is not a rejection of data. It is what makes data useful.
Unfortunately, both science and data are routinely manipulated to serve unrelated goals—goals that do not necessarily benefit children.
Jose Felicianoi had some extraordinary talent beyond signing a few pop songs. Here he is on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1966 playing the daylights out of that guitar.
A coalition of Arizona voters had created a ballot measure to force accountability on one of the sloppiest taxpayer-funded voucher programs in the nation. But voucher supporters used an assortment of cheap tricks and technicalities to invalidate enough of the 420,000 signatures thrown out by the state's supreme court (members appointed by voucherphile Gov. Ducey) that the measure ultimately lacked enough accepted signatures to make it to the ballot.
The measure, which Betsy DeVos's American Federation for Children called a "calamity," would have forced some basic accountability and transparency measures on the program:
Safety measures to protect students, including a requirement that voucher-funded schools follow fire and safety codes and require background checks for all staff.
Bans on use of voucher funds for luxury and non-education items.
Return of unused voucher funds to public school district. Currently, families can bank unused voucher funds indefinitely, so those taxpayer dollars can end up filling a family’s college fund. In July 2025, reporter Craig Harris reported that around 10,000 accounts had banked over $10,000; over $440 million was sitting in accounts.
Reporting requirement to show how much voucher money is going to the private schools that accept taxpayer-funded voucher money.
Creation of a subsidy cap. Require that taxpayer-funded vouchers be available only to those families with income at or below $150,000. Currently pretty much all families are eligible, no matter how wealthy.
Require academic measures. Voucher-funded schools would have to administer and report results on the same sorts of standardized tests used by public schools. Currently, private schools have no requirements to show how well they are actually educating the students whose tuition is subsidized by taxpayers.
A post from Save Our Schools Arizona outlines some of the tactics used by the voucher lobby. Lawsuits challenged thousands of signatures on technicalities, throwing 47 different categories of objections. In one case, over 10,000 signatures were thrown out because a petition circulator used a mailbox instead of her home address out of fear for her safety. In one of the most odious examples, pro-voucher groups circulated a fake version of a petition. About 20,000 people signed both the fake and the real to make sure they had their bases covered, but that opened up a double-count of "invalid" signatures.
After picking and nibbling by the army of voucher lawyers and lobbyists, the petition was left about 12,000 signatures short.
It sucks, but the voucher lobby has a long history of promoting their program over the objections of actual voters. And for all the talk of school choice trading accountability for autonomy, Arizona has aggressively resisted any sort of accountability for their taxpayer-funded voucher program.
That is one of the major takeaways from this dustup. Voucher fans weren't resisting an attempt to end vouchers or shut down vouchers; they were fighting and kicking and throwing money to ward off an attempt to impose some basic accountability and transparency. AFC claims that "a super-majority want a program that both works for families and ensures responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars" and that the union (because they love to invoke the Big Scary Union) "will continue to exploit these sentiments to advance supposed reforms that gut the program."
Well, yes. But "gut the program"? Either that language is a gross exaggeration meant to inspire fear and panic, or it's accurate because the point of the voucher program is not education, but to give a bunch of taxpayer-funded entitlements to wealthy Arizonans to spend on whatever they want with no oversight or accountability. And if that's really the point of the program, then maybe gutting is in order.
The other takeaways? There's a great deal of grass roots opposition to the Arizona taxpayer-funded voucher grift, and therefore a huge amount of fear among the voucher promoters, a bunch of frightened folks on a throne of bundled money. Can big piles of money keep the uppity peasants away from the castle walls forever?
No state has done more to actively overrule the voices of actual voters on this issue; ironic as the state is one of the few that lets ordinary citizens propose ballot initiatives (though that capability is being slowly choked in a sea of red tape). Here's hoping that the hundreds of thousands of voters behind those signatures find other ways to make their feelings known in the state capital.
You may not have been paying close attention to the noise surrounding the news that Anthropic has tweaked its text-extruding LLM Claude so that it will now extrude text strings with "watermarks." But the whole business is worth a moment of your attention.
First, we need to know what the "watermark" is, because it's not what you think it is. It's not some sort of sort-of-visible marking that anyone with eyeballs can spot. Claude will not extrude text that has "Claude" printed on it in large-but-transparentish print. Nor will there be invisible text or a special note in the metadata.
The watermark is not visible to readers. No hidden characters, no additional text. Just a "nudge" in the selection of the next probable word. Here's part of their explanation.
Large language models like Claude work by generating one word at a time. Each time the model decides on the next word, it chooses among a list of potential candidates, ultimately selecting the most sensible or likely based on the preceding text. Take the sentence “The weather today was cold and…”. The next word is very unlikely to be “sugary.” But it is quite likely to be “overcast” or “grey.” Under most circumstances, it doesn’t matter much to the reader which of these latter two words the model ultimately chooses—the meaning of the sentence is largely the same either way. In cases like this, the choice is settled by a random number.
Watermarking uses low-stakes choices like these—which occur many times over a piece of generated text—to leave a pattern in Claude’s responses. That pattern is undetectable to the reader, but is detectable to anyone who has a key that encodes it.
Emphasis mine.
But "overcast" and "grey" are different words, with different meanings. Koebler points to an essay by John Gruber of Daring Fireball, and another by journalism academic Jeff Jarvis, in which he claims Anthropic “devalues writing” which confirm that, yes, word choice does matter. In making this choice, “Anthropic declares words fungible, language random, choice meaningless,” Jarvis writes.
But Koehler rightly sees an even more troubling foundational issue here.
It does not matter to me, necessarily, whether the output of Claude’s garbage AI text is one way or is a slightly different way. But it does matter to me that AI data scientists at huge tech companies think that word choice doesn’t matter, or that it is possible to statistically use synonyms wherever without fucking with the meaning of a sentence.
Anthropic's post talks about writing as if it's a random generation of words or numbers. It is, in one Anthropic example, just a random roll of the dice.
What Anthropic makes abundantly clear is that the question of how human writing happens, the company isn't even on their radar. They are working on an entirely different problem-- how to get a pair of dice to generate a sentence that more-or-less mimics strings of words in their training data. It is pointless to discuss chatbots as if they are just not far enough down the path to qualify as real writing tools because they are not even on that path. Anthropic wants AI-generated code to be exactly correct, but with words, one is pretty much as good as a bunch other.
The "watermark," visible only to Anthropic-created software, is meant to comply with the letter of the European Union's AI Act if not the actual spirit (See, Anthropic? Sometimes the exact wording matters!). And programmers have already figured out how to avoid it.
It all reminds me of the great Mark Twain quote: The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter - 'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.
But mostly it's the umpteenth reminder that AI LLMs don't write in any human sense of the word, nor do their corporate overlords actually aspire for them to write in any human sense of the word.
The Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter (G.L.O.V.E.) is similar to a taser but doesn't break the skin with darts (because abuse that doesn't leave a mark is easier to hide). Compliant Technologies ("#1 in hands on de-escalation") has loads of demonstration videos. They were out plugging this thing three years, simultaneously arguing that on the one hand it will bring quick compliance and control and on the other hand is kind of like that thing chiropractors use on patients.
GLOVE is being used by school resource officers in Omaha and were purchased and deployed by the Omaha police department. McKenzy Parson for KETV passed along this delightful quote:
"What we've seen thus far is immediate compliance," Jason Cvitanov said. "That's a benefit to everyone involved, because it is such a low level of force being utilized by officers, which is the goal in every situation, gaining control, using just enough force to accomplish that task. And this would be after de-escalation attempts as well as verbal commands being provided."
Cvitanov appears to be both an Omaha police officer and a consultant with a group of "elite level professional combat athletes, law enforcement, military, and medical professionals." The Omaha police department spent about $60K on 40 gloves.
The gloves have apparently been used twice in the last year. NPR figures about 50 police departments are using the devices in about 20 states. Fortune reports "The CTG-5 G.L.O.V.E. products deliver shocks ranging from 324 to 362 volts and have a hard operational limit of 380 volts. By comparison, a taser can reach between 1,200 and 1,500 volts."
There are so many differences between a cop operating in a situation where someone has broken the law and an SRO operating in a situation where a student is being non-compliant, but here's one that doesn't get discussed often enough. A police officer collects someone who has broken the law and puts them into the legal system, and the two may never interact again as they each move on in a multi-level, many-parted world.
But to claim that using force -- electrical or otherwise-- against a student will never qualify as de-escalation, because the school is a small, closed system, and the use of force to solve a problem changes the student's relationship with the school and all the parts of it. That was part of the concept of SROs in the first place-- instead of the faceless scary authority of a uniform and badge, students could develop a daily relationship with Kindly Officer Krupke that would, hopefully, make it easier for Kindly Officer Krupke to intervene in positive and de-escalating ways. I know there are other reasons to oppose SROs, but I've seen this particular aspect work, sort of, in my old school.
But if Kindly Officer Krupke is going to become the guy who slammed a kid's head into the floor or gave her the old grab-and-zap for not complying with directions quickly enough, the school is building a different sort of relationship, and it's not helpful to anyone. If we're going to move the most dysfunctional sort of police-citizen relationship into schools, one based on forced compliance and authoritarianism, that will be bad for the culture of the school and the education of the students.
GLOVEs are worse because they are so easy. Now adults who already outclass students with size and strength don't even have to work up a sweat. Kid pisses you off? Just grab and zap. It's lazy authoritarianism, cheap and easy compliance culture.
GLOVEs don't belong anywhere, but they especially don't belong in schools. We unquestionably have issues with discipline and student conduct in schools, but this is not the way. Sure hope it doesn't spread.
“About 10% of the training that a teacher would go to is based on DEI, gender identity and sexual orientation — and how to help transition children — which violates our state law and violates parental rights,” board member Julie Pickren said during the April meeting.
Pickensd shared some of the offending passages:
Teachers design and implement lessons that help students develop awareness of, sensitivity to, and respect for others. For example, accomplished teachers are aware that children may begin to question their sexual identity at a young age. Teachers know that acceptance of their curiosity will make them feel safe and secure. In such instances, teachers may feature children’s literature in which diverse gender roles are portrayed.
Yes, that sounds just terrible. Students wrestling with questions about their sexuality should understand that their curiosity and confusion is unacceptable, and they should not expect to feel safe and secure at school.
Edison has continued to follow this story; I wish more reporters were doing so. I won't pretend the issues here aren't complicated and difficult, but the moment policy makers decide that parents have all the rights and children have none, they've embraced a "solution" that is simple and wrong. Children are not chattel.
It makes me wonder-- if parents have thrown their LGBTQ child out of the house for coming out, would a school district be contradicting parental choice and thereby violating one of these parental rights laws by trying to help the student deal with homelessness?
