For Retiring Teachers

I've been out here in the retiree pasture for a few years now (it's a lovely place upstate, with many frolicking dogs) and as some teachers are staring down the last few weeks of their teaching careers, let me offer them some advice. Here's what's waiting for you.

First, make some noise on your way out.

My regret is that I didn't throw a bigger party. Seriously. Some combination of not wanting to be That Hey Look At Me Guy and survivor's guilt (this hits hard for some folks, because when retiring from teaching is like leaping off a train barreling full speed down the tracks, and you are leaving behind others to continue work that you didn't finish--because teaching is never finished)-- anyway, I should have invited every other teacher in the building and every other person I could think of and made some noise, but I didn't want to be a bother. 

Have a project.

Everyone tells you this. Some of us go at it a bit more aggressively than others, but I don't think a teacher brain can shift easily to simply idling. The teacher brain is generally running 147 different threads all at once, and suddenly running 0 can cause the brain to just lock up. You may think you can handle a life of leisure because you went on vacation during the summer that one time, but be honest-- you were lying on the inflatable turtle in the middle of the pool and one little corner of your brain was still figuring out how to tweak that one unit for September and maybe you could rearrange the seating in your room and did you remember to order those posters yet? 

Volunteer. Start working through your pile of unread books. Travel. Take a cooking class. Find something for your brain to chew on. It took me a while to get past the feeling that there was something I was supposed to be doing, but wasn't. Being a stay-at-home dad for a couple of small children helped with that, but I don't recommend it as a solution for everyone.

Time is different on the outside.

At some point in retirement, you will think, "How did I get all this done and work full-time, too?" The answer is that teacher time is different than retiree time.

Teacher: I have a two-minute break at 10:03, so I can get some copies made, get another fifty grades in the grade book, and go pee.

Retiree: I volunteered to sit in the booth from 10:00 to 10:30, so I guess my whole morning is filled up.

The rhythms of dealing with people

For decades you have been dealing with other humans on a large scale, working to deliberately engage with dozens (elementary) or hundreds (secondary) of students and family members. They become a major factor of how you go through your days, and then, after nine months or so, they leave. 

This is not a natural rhythm for human interactions. I hope your own social and emotional health was anchored outside the classroom, but even so, retirement is a whole new game. If you're an extrovert, you may find yourself craving new sources of human interaction. If you're an introvert, you may find that the part of you that engages with other humans is screaming for a major break. At the beginning of my career, I replaced a guy whose retirement plan was to sit on the porch, read books, drink beer, and talk to nobody. 

Weeks full of Fridays

Other retirees may joke about how every day is Saturday, but teachers know that special Friday afternoon feeling, like you've been dragging a loaded semi with a chain for five days, and you just got to set the chain down. For the first year or two, it felt like Friday afternoon a lot. 

Have your support system

Another one of my retirement secrets was to be married to an exceptionally excellent woman. So I had that going for me, as well as the many connections that come from being active in many small-town activities like theater and band. A church home can be nice, too.

But you may fine that maintaining your web of humans may take more deliberate work on your part. Being at work put you in natural connection with your web of workplace proximity associates, and you aren't going to have that. If you want to stay connected, you will have to reach out. As far as the school itself goes, you will be a ghost in 3-5 years. Your work friends will be busy in the dailiness of the work, and you will not, so maintaining those relationships will take deliberate effort.

Share

You have a wealth of knowledge and experience, both in terms of content knowledge and educational expertise. You know how to organize large groups of cat-like humans. You know how to manage an undersized budget. You know how to help people understand stuff. You know what life in a classroom is actually like. 

There are people and organizations out there that would benefit from what you know. Maybe you can be some sort of activist or communicator about education, or maybe your skills can be put to work in a non-education space. Maybe it is individual humans rather than organizations that can benefit from what you know. 

Whatever the case, you still have plenty to contribute to the world. Teachers are too often reluctant to get involved, to push themselves out into the world. The "just" in "I'm just a teacher" keeps a lot of smart, capable people from making as much noise as they could. And I get it-- when you're dealing with the dailiness of your classroom, it's hard to find the bandwidth for wading into other ponds. But you don't have to deal with the dailiness any more, and you are not "just a retired teacher." You are an experienced education professional with a wealth of experience and knowledge. Somebody can use that.

Finally

People still ask if I miss it, and the truth is that, in many ways, I do. The actual teaching parts were, mostly, great, though there is a tendency as a retiree to remember the best parts and not, say, the class that sat there like bumps on a log despite your best efforts. If you've taught more than six months, you have acquired a list of failures, moments when you just didn't get things to fall the way you wanted them to, and I can report that those haunt you a bit less in retirement.

Mostly I miss the actual teaching (when it goes well). I opposite-of-miss the bureaucracy, the stupid paperwork, the stultifying compliance culture, the bosses who were way more worried about stuff that didn't help me do my job, the time wasted on junk like the Big Standardized Test and BS Test prep, the-- well, it's not a short list. But the work itself? That was golden, and I'll never regret a second of it.

That question (do you miss it) is not always asked in good faith; sometimes it's asked in the same way that some people encourage a newly-married couple to smash the wedding cake into each others' faces. They just want to see someone else be miserable, so while the DYMI question is complicated and nuanced, I don't want to cater to anyone who just wants to hear me smash cake in the profession's face. I can tell them truthfully that it was the best job in the world, and if I had it to do over again, I would, and I'm still a tiny bit jealous of my former colleagues who are still in the classroom doing the work. 

Most Voucher Students Never Attended Public School. So What?

Here is one simple graphic from the folks at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, you can see the point that many folks have made over and over again-- taxpayer-funded school vouchers are going mostly to students who never actually left public school. But this leads to a big question--

So what?

This works fine for voucher advocates-- gives them a whole constituency that will fight hard to keep their free state subsidy. They will also argue that, of course, the vouchers are going to start out by supporting students who are already in private schools. So what?

How do you answer that question? Here's a couple of so what answers.

Vouchers are bait and switch.

Taxpayer-funded voucher programs are advertised as a way to rescue poor students from "failing public schools." Backers argue "Wouldn't you like some tax dollars to help rescue students in need?" which plays a whole lot better than "Wouldn't you like some tax dollars to help subsidize the tuition costs of private school students?" We know the answer to that second question-- the voters repeat that answer every time they are asked to vote for a taxpayer-funded voucher system and say, loudly, "No."

Imagine you gave money to Save The Children because of those pictures of sad poor kids and it turned out your money was buying ice cream for rich kids in the suburbs. That's taxpayer-funded school vouchers.

In fact, vouchers may actually make private schools less accessible. In Iowa, Princeton University researchers found that vouchers spurred a private school tuition increase. 

Vouchers increase state education costs.

"Let the money follow the child" is another standard voucher pitch. But when vouchers go to students already in private schools, that's not what happens. Instead, vouchers that go to students already in private schools adds on to the total cost for the state.

Say that in your state 100 students attend public school and 10 attend private school. The taxpayers are funding education for 100 students. The vouchers go in, and one kid leaves public school while 9 private school students sign up for vouchers. Now the taxpayers are funding education for 109 students. 

The effect is particularly striking in Iowa, where taxpayers now subsidize 99% of private school students. 

If the voters had decided they wanted to do this, that would be a choice. But nobody has pitched taxpayer-funded school vouchers as "Since we are paying for the education of students in public schools, we think taxpayers should also subsidize the tuition of students in public schools as well." 

Nor are vouchers simply giving private school parents their own tax dollars back to spend as they wish. Only the super-rich families contribute enough property tax dollars to fund their own children's vouchers (and not even those families if they have many children). Voucher funds require many taxpayers to chip in, not just the voucher-using families. 

Taxpayer-funded voucher programs end up being "budget busters." They represent an increase in education costs for the state that are neither discussed honestly ahead or time nor properly budgeted for. Every taxpayer-funded voucher that goes to a private or home-schooled student represents an increase in the total state cost for education. That money has to come from somewhere.

There are many reasons to oppose taxpayer-funded school vouchers, and lord knows I get into plenty of them elsewhere, but for purposes of responding to those folks who think it's no big deal that vouchers mostly go to students who were attending private school anyway, the above two points are the answer to "so what."

                                                       

ICYMI: Essay Contest Edition (5/3)

 Once a year, I'm the director of a local writing competition for high school students in the various school districts of the county. The competition is in honor of one of the giants of English teaching in our area; she graduated from here, worked in the original OSS, became a lady CEO, taught English, and left the classroom only because there was such a thing as a mandatory retirement age (you can read about her here). 

The contest has run for thirty-some years, and it is precisely the sort of thing that cheatbots make challenging, though historically our winners write way better than bots do, and I work hard to design a bot-resistant prompt. But it's a fun time for me-- part of my duties include being first reader and culling the hundreds of entries down to a manageable stack for table judges. 

So that has been my week. But I still have a reading list for you. 

The Atlantic Platforms Charter School Propaganda: Anti-Woke Edition

Paul Thomas responds to the Atlantic piece about how awesome charters are and how anti-racism is killing public schools. 

Oligarchs and Christian Nationalists Aim to Plunder Massachusetts Public Schools

Maurice Cunningham peels back the masks on another Massachusetts assault on public education, and reminds us that National Parents Union is none of those three things.

AI gives more praise, less criticism to Black students

Lots of implications to mull over in this finding, written up by Jill Barshay at Hechinger Report.

Most School Vouchers Go To Students Who Never Attended Public Schools

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has a nifty bar chart that lays out in quick and simple manner where the taxpayer-funded vouchers are actually going.

Epic founders Harris, Chaney bound for criminal trial as 2-year preliminary hearing ends

One of the nation's major charter school scams might actually result in jail time for the scammers who pocketed $22 million of taxpayer dollars in their massive fraud.

Why We Are Suing the Department of Education

It's not just that the Office of Civil Rights in the Education Department has decided only the civil rights of white guys are being threatened-- it's that they're being anti-transparent about what they are and are not doing. ProPublica has sued, and here explains why.

What Will It Take To Get AI Out of Schools?

Don't know how I missed this last week, but this New Yorker piece from Jessica Winter is well worth the read (if you can get to it).

The Big Tech Backlash

Jennifer Berkshire looks at some of the pushback against ed tech, including some of the surprising places it's turning up.

We Created the Lotus Eaters

Matt Brady writes about the students who are comfortable non-starters, and how to get them back into work.

I Write the Songs

On songwriting, music teaching, and mistakes. From Nancy Flanagan.

Broken Record

Audrey Watters finds herself writing about the same stuff, again, again. And yet, it is stuff that needs to be said, again, again.

Seniors and Kids as Profit Centers: Medicare Advantage and School Vouchers Exploit Both

Bruce Lesley explains how Medicare Advantage and school vouchers are manifesting the same philosophy to harvest profits (and provide minimum service).

Ohioans: Please Do Not Sign Petition to Get Referendum to End Property Taxes on the November Ballot

Jan Resseger has an important message for folks in Ohio.

Standardized testing and scripted lessons are failing both teachers and students

Johnathan Kantrowitz is talking about Australia in this post, but some of the description sure sounds familiar (including panic over declining test scores).

The Testing Ritual and the Steakhouse Reality

Testing, staffing, and working lunches-- TC Weber looks at it all with one raised eyebrow and more than a few questions.

Problems with the DOE's AI Guidance

There has been a lot of noise and wrestling about with the New York City schools' attempt to craft AI guidance, and while I don't generally look to NYC for guidance on anything, these five objections from Leonie Haimson are an excellent guide to the sort of questions you should be asking about your local school district's attempt to cope with AI. If you want more, Chalkbeat covers the parent rebellion here.

Kent State President claps back at Vivek. It's about damn time.

A university leader actually calls out a politician's dumb ideas. More of this, please. Stephen Dyer has the details.

At Forbes.com this week, I wrote about some important characteristics of rural schools. 

I don't love the Black Eyed Peas, but I do like an unexpected team-up.

Here Comes Another Privatization Group

Meet Schools for America. Well, more to the point, watch out for Schools for America.

This group was launched just a month or so ago. And despite the echo in the name, it is not related to Teach for America. 

It's an "issue advocacy organization exclusively dedicated to rightsizing the regulatory barriers that prevent new schools from opening across the United States." Because if there's anything that education needs, it's a group that lobbies for less regulation of charter and private schools. The group is "laser-focused on a singular mission: unlocking new school supply." 

And not just by lobbying-- they "partner directly with state legislators, committee staff, and governor's offices to introduce and advance reform legislation." 

Before we draft a single bill, we conduct granular regulatory audits—identifying the specific zoning codes, fire marshal interpretations, and occupancy classifications that block new school formation in a given state. This isn't theoretical research. It's litigation-grade documentation designed to be dropped in a committee hearing.

In other words, a bill mill. Write the bill and hand it off to a cooperative legislator.

They target some particular sorts of legislation. Zoning blocks schools form being opened in some neighborhoods. Fire codes are too strict ("A 15-student co-op in a church hall isn't the same fire or occupancy risk as a 500-seat campus") Occupancy classifications are too hard on tiny schools ("a 15-student learning pod shouldn't require a $500,000 renovation").

You see the pattern here. Small "schools," like the microschool in your neighbor's rec room or the church basement, should be able to set up a "school" without having to follow school rules. At LinkedIn they declare, "Demand for new schools—microschools, homeschool cooperatives, private schools, and innovative learning models—has never been higher."

And if you have any doubt of where they want to head, there's a tab on their site-- The Florida Blueprint, honoring Florida's new law that makes it easier to set up your pop-up-and-cash-in school in the Sunshine State. She worked as a staff assistant for Representative Paul Ryan in 2011, then went to work for the Romney Presidential campaign. 

SfA's executive director is Jane McEnaney. According to her LinkedIn McNaney is a graduate of the College of the Holy Cross with degrees in Political Science, Latin America, and Latino Studies. Then she went to Illinois, where she worked for Illinois Policy Institute, then worked for Governor Bruce Rauner for three years. She served as midwest director for TechNet ("the voice of American innovation" aka advocacy group for our tech overlords). She helped found ReDirect Chicago, an organization that seems to have existed to promote "direct education funding" in Chicago and push privatizer and upward-failing Paul Vallas in the 2023 election. 

After that she went to work as Director of Education Policy Initiatives for the State Policy Network, that delightful network of right wing thinky tanks, dark money distributors, and advocacy groups. After that, she landed at Schools for America as ED.

LinkedIn does list her as a founder for SfA, but hers is the only name appearing anywhere on the site. A promotional launch video includes a glowing endorsement by Ryan Delk, a silicon valley start-up guy who currently is running Primer, a micro-school start-up outfit that pushes teaching through the "timeless foundations of American education" aka old elementary school primers. Delk lists himself as a member of the SfA board. 

Schools for America is still pretty new. Their page for founder Stories is still "coming soon." But the Wall Street Journal let McAnaney have space in their op-ed section to opine about Florida and plug her outfit. Jeanne "Backpacks full of cash" Allen at the Center for Education Reform has plugged them. Their tweeter account is still pretty sleepy (they aren't on Bluesky). Their Youtube page is not busy, either. 

But the privatization of schooling has always been partly driven by the real estate business, so advocacy to make the commandeering of real estate easier seems right on brand. On the dead bird app, privatization fans like Alpha School's MacKenzie Price bemoan how sad it is that public schools are so reluctant to transfer taxpayer-owned assets to edupreneurs.

So I'm guessing this outfit will be active, whether helping write and pass bills to replicate Florida's "Schools of Hope" program to help private operators take public school real estate, or clearing away all those regulations getting in the way of the latest pop-up school scam. Keep an eye peeled for them in your neighborhood.

John Oliver on Chatbots

Just in case you missed this one.

Oliver plays this one as close to straight as I've ever seen him do, I suspect because he seems seriously and deeply angry about the damage being done by chatbots. This is worth a watch, but there are two points well worth underlining-

One, these bots were rushed to market long before any guardrails or responsible oversight were worked out (and really, our tech overlords don't seem in any hurry to work on them).

Two, the chatbots number one job is to get you to keep using the chatbot. They need you to upgrade to a paid version, and then they need you to stay with that bot as long and as often as possible, because that's how they maximize revenue. Again, the main job of the chatbot is to keep you talking to the chatbot.

As always, there is language of which my mother would not approve. But some of this is shocking-- I knew most of these stories, but to see it laid out, and hear the quotes from the techbros-- it's all very alarming. And a reminder that these bots should be nowhere near children.

AI Is Not For Amateurs

Ben Riley has pulled a lot of attention lately for the story of his father, who turned to AI for advice on how to manage his cancer, and died because of it. Riley gets into the experience of being a New York Times story subject in a recent post, and looks into the reporters idea to show oncologists the advice the AI was providing. Riley shares their responses, and even for AI, it is shockingly, horribly wrong.

A trained cancer doctor would recognize that it was nonsense. An amateur might be fooled by how AI manages to mimic the look and feel of s real medical report.

This points to a recurring theme in AI use. The "human in the loop" principle is all about including a human being who can actually understand--and check-- the AI output. Or consider one of the more popular AI assignments for students-- have a LLM write about a topic you know well, and count up all the mistakes it makes. In other words, experts.

Large Language Models can perfectly mimic form and confidence. They have, literally, no shame, less than even the most shameless bullshit artist that ever sold you some Florida real estate or a White House super-duper ballroom. They are elegantly mechnized Dunning-Kruger machines. 

I recently sat and talked to someone who works in the computer tech and coding world and describes himself as a power user of AI. AI does save him and his team time, but there are caveats. AI doesn't remember what it has done. "It's like talking to a smart person with Alzheimer's." And it is not trustworthy. The project has to be broken down into chunks, and then each chunk has to be run through testing, designed by and/or involving a human coder in order to determine if the code actually does what it is supposed to do. The resulting process is still faster than the old all-human approach, but it still requires the involvement of humans with expertise to check the work, go back, re-do, check again, and on and on. It is most definitely not "Press a button and an hour later a fully-completed project is ready to go."

The conversation raised lots of questions for me. If the AI is doing all the entry-level grunt work under the watchful expert eye of human accountability sinks, then where will the future expert eyes come from? 

I'm also thinking of all those folks happily burbling "I use AI to write my journalism-flavored content" or "I use AI to write my lesson plans," and wondering if their process looks similar, if they are taking the bot through building up a lesson plan step by step, carefully examining each product every step of the way with their own expert eyes. Because I'm betting not. 

Because while coding involves a lot of time-intensive grunt work hours that can be collapsed by AI, writing things does not. Doing the thinking work (outlines, brainstorming, etc) is how you get ready for the writing work, and that includes writing a lesson plan. If you have the AI write the outline, you still have to do the thinking part. In short, if you use the bot to write your lesson plan in a responsible, professional manner, I don't see it saving you any amount of time.

In fact, if you really are an expert, I'm betting lesson plans or writing by bot, if done well, will actually take more time than just doing it yourself. The people who are finding it botting their way through the work are, just like the students using cheatbots, the folks least qualified to use the bot without producing junk. 

It is the central irony of AI is that it's really only safe to use if you are already an expert in your field. And that's a terrifying thought when you consider that AI has the potential to completely gut the pipeline that would ordinarily produce experts. 

Mind you, expertise is not a guarantee of well-used bots. AI repeatedly encourages users to trust its illusory expertise. Last week CNN reported that a top-ranked lawyer at "one of the most prestigious firms on the planet" became the latest in a long string of lawyers tripped up by AI error. He had to send a letter of apology to a judge after submitting a filing loaded with errors-- it took three pages to highlight and correct all of them. The mistakes were caught by opposing counsel. 

All of this underlines one clear idea-- of all the people who shouldnt be using AI, students shouldn't be using it the most. Jessica Winters, in her recent New Yorker article, cites a host of experts who point out the many ways that AI is not a useful, appropriate, or even safe tech to include in education. But it is already oushed heavily in all manner of K-12 education. 

The Chromebooks, which the students use in every class and for homework, came pre-installed with an all-ages version of Gemini, a suite of A.I. tools. When my daughter, who is in sixth grade, begins writing an essay, she gets a prompt: “Help me write.” If she is starting work on a slide-show presentation, the prompt is “Help me visualize.” She shoos away these interruptions, but they persist: “Help me edit.” “Beautify this slide.” The image generator is there, if she’d ever wish to pull the plug on her imagination.

There are so many reasons to keep AI away from students. At the very least, we should be replacing all the cute little "become an AI expert" lesson plans helpfully provided by AI corporations with lessons about what AI is not and can not do, and nwhy children should avoid it like they avoid strangers in vans offering them candy. 

Winters asks what it will take to push AI out of schools, and the answer, I think, is a whole hell of a lot because a lot of very powerful people have bet a very large amount of money that they can push AI everywhere, regardless of what harms it will do. It is as if the wealthiest corporations in the world have bought a vast supply of very powerful crack and they now are desperate to move it into any market they can think of.

AI is not for amateurs in any field, and I only grudgingly accept that in some forms, it may have some use for some experts. In education, I think it will be awesome for cranking out lesson plans that administrators demand but don't read and teachers generate but don't use. For anything else, educators had better be prepared to use it like grown-ass experts in their field and not like a 14-year-old trying to generate a term paper ten minutes before it is due. And if using it like an expert in your field turns out to create a process that is longer and less productive than the non-AI version, well, experts should know how to get the job done.

 

ICYMI: Soccer Edition (4/26)

The Board of Directors is trying soccer this spring and their first match was yesterday, in the rain. They have not yet revealed any special aptitude for the game, but it does involve a lot of running hard up and down a field, and that is their preferred sporty activity. It gets us all outside and moving around while breathing air and touching grass and just generally interacting with real things and other humans, and that seems like rather a huge win. 

We have been a low-screen household since they boys were born. They have no phone, no tablet, little tech at all, and watch only a tiny bit of tv. Most of their screen time happens, as you might guess, at school. I'm at peace with that, for now, because they do need some basic computer literacy to deal with the world, and confining it to school seems like an easy way to put guardrails around it. We'll see if my old district (where the board attends school) will get more restrictive about this stuff.

The hard part of a school's tech policy is parents, so I am hoping that we don't-give-my-kid-a-phone parents will be growing in numbers (because if you want your child's school to have a policy restricting smart phone use, you could help by not giving your kid a smart phone). 

Here's the reading list for the week. Enjoy it in good health.

School Vouchers Fail the Civil Rights Test. The Federal Program Is No Exception

The 74 invited some folks to write a response to a Derrell Bradford piece plugging the federal voucher program. Jenny Muniz, Nicole Fuller, Ashley Harrington, and Hal Smith replied with this piece that absolutely nails the point contained in this sentence--

“Choice” is a compelling slogan, but with private school vouchers, it’s the school’s choice, not the families.

The Blue State Voucher Express

Jennifer Berkshire notes that Arne Duncan and the usual gang of reform-loving nominally-Democrat privatizers have decided to shill for Donald Trump's federal voucher program. Shame on the lot of them. She writes, "Ten years later, they’re back, armed with another pig and plenty of lipstick."

Public Schools Form Democratic Citizens

Jan Resseger looks at a paper from education and law scholar Derek Black.

 

The America We Choose: Reclaiming the Promise of K–12 Public Education

Greg Wyman examines some of the classic pendulum swings and what the pendulum is doing to public education right now. 

Anti-Property Tax Issue Proponents are either extremely dumb or extremely deceitful

Well, Stephen Dyer is pretty sure they're dumb as rocks, and he uses some colorful language to explain why the guys trying to get rid of Ohio's property tax are absolutely and spectacularly in the wrong.

What’s Behind the Push to Make Schools Adopt the Science of Reading?

Rachael Gabriel is a professor of Literacy Education at U of Connecticut and co-editor-in-chief of The Reading Teacher, so it's likely that she knows what the heck she is talking about, which puts her ahead of so many people pushing the science of reading these days. So go ahead- read one more piece about SoR. This one's at The Progressive.

Privatizers Hijack Indianapolis Public Schools

I did cover this story, but let Shawgi Tell zero in on it from another angle.

Local entrepreneurs cashing in on state funds from homeschool parents

Oh so many ways to cash in on Florida's voucher program.

‘Schools of Hope’ charter operator is moving into 5 Miami-Dade high schools

Speaking of Floridian grift, don't forget Schools of Hope, the program that allows charters schools to just take buildings from the public school system. It was supposed to only affect the low-achieving public schools, but-- surprise!

If It's About Volcanoes, Teach Volcanoes

Lauren Brown offers ideas about favoring content over the vagueness of teaching "reading skills." Not sure I agree with every single word of this, but it's worth thinking about.

Bloodbath at Mark Zuckerberg-backed California school as tech titan and his wife strip funding

Well, there's no actual bloodbath, but this is the New York Post coverage of Episode #1,659,437 of Why Education Should Not Depend Upon The Kindness of Rich Guys.

Tennessee rolls back testing requirements in early voucher program

Look, no school should be held "accountable" via Big Standardized Testing. But Tennessee lawmakers decided that since tests weren't showing voucher schools to be doing better than, or even as well as, public schools, the solution was to just not make voucher schools take the test. So much for accountability via an informed free market.

A school program got millions in welfare linked dollars and now officials want answers

Hats off to Star Academy, a for-profit company run by John Alvendia. They figured out how to run an education scam and a welfare scam simultaneously!

No Need Rushing for AI in Education

Thomas Ultican talks about the need to avoid AI, and quotes some other folks, including Benjamin Riley, a "uniquely free thinker."

Pivoting Edtech Towards Humanity

Dan Meyer writes about the misalignment between humanity and edtech companies, as well as the misalignments between people who want to teach and people who want to learn.

Scott Alexander is Wrong About Lying

George Evans reached out to me to say that he had written something I might like to read and by damn he was right. This is a layered essay about the reach of teachers and the ways things come back to us later. I am always happy to find new writers that I hadn't previously found and wish more folks would send me recommendations, self- or otherwise. One thing about the interwebs and the people who write about education on them is that those writers tend to cycle through quickly. Of the people I was reading and sharing with umpty-ump years ago, only a handful are still at it. So I'm always excited to meet new folks.

The Silent Surrender of Moms for Liberty Anchorage

Mathew Beck reports that one more Moms for Liberty chapter has quietly expired, this time in Anchorage, Alaska. Thoughts and prayers.

Why Is Lower Merion School District Ignoring Its Own Technology Policy?

James Horn reports on the Pennsylvania school district that has decided that students may not opt out of screens-- even though they have an opt-out policy.

How to Manufacture Crisis with Line Charts: NAEP Reading Edition

Paul Thomas shows us how to make everyone freak out with a chart (even if the chart isn't really very freak outable). With pictures.

Why are we holding third graders back in school?

Steve Nuzum looks at the problems with third grade retention, a policy that won't go away no matter how many times the problems are demonstrated.

America’s Students Need Great Public Schools for Science!

Wasn't it cool when the astronauts did that astronaut stuff? Nancy Bailey reminds us that those astronauts didn't just fall of an astronaut tree.

Kids don’t use augmented reality like adults, raising concerns for classrooms

Jonathan Kantrowitz reminds us that having small humans use devices designed for grown humans opens the door to all sorts of problems. So maybe let's rethink using those AR headsets with third graders.

This Scammer Used an AI-Generated MAGA Girl to Grift ‘Super Dumb’ Men

Have you heard of Emily Hart, the nurse who loves God, guns, and making "illegals" go away? She's a darling of the MAGA crowd, with a huge online following. And she doesn't exist, but she is helping put through school the 22-year-old med student who created her. From EJ Dickson at Wired.

What I Learned About Millionaires At Jeff Bezos's Private Retreat

Noah Hawley writing for The Atlantic tells of his strange encounter with the very rich. And while it's all worth reading, there is this--

It’s not that the wealthy become evil; it’s that their environment stops teaching them the things that nonwealthy people are forced to learn simply by living in a world that pushes back. When you can buy your way out of any mistake, when you can fire anyone who disagrees with you, when your social circle consists entirely of people who need something from you, the basic mechanism by which humans learn that other people are real goes dark.

This week at Forbes.com I looked to Ohio, where one more school board wants folks to understand that hate does, in fact, have a home in their district. And they're getting sued for it.  

Trombones and Danny Elfman-- what else could a person need. 

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