Elon Musk Has Some Education Thoughts

Elon Musk has some thoughts about education, and because he's Very Rich, Fortune Magazine decided it should share some of those thoughts, despite Musk's utter lack of qualifications to talk about education. 

Reporter Christiaan Hetzner mostly covers business in Europe, so it's not clear how he stumbled into this particular brief piece, which appears to be lifting a piece of a larger conversation into an article. I'd love a new rule that says every time an outlet gives space to a rich guy's musings about areas in which he has no expertise, the outlet also publishes a piece about the musings of some ordinary human on the topic--maybe even an ordinary human who is an expert in the area.

Hetzner launches right in with both feet.

More than a century ago, Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw wrote, “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.” Well, Elon Musk is a doer with a lot of children, and he’s reached the conclusion he doesn’t want his kids to learn from some has-been or never-was simply because they landed a job in a local school thanks to a lack of competition.

It's not clear if Hetzner is editorializing or trying to channel Musk's point of view (I think perhaps the latter), but somebody here is really full of it. I'm not going to argue about Musk's doer qualifications, though his ability to profit off the work of others and his interminable botching of twitter leave me unpersuaded of his genius. But this characterization of teachers is some serious bullshit. And things aren't going to get better.

Over his lifetime, teaching fundamentally remained the same experience: an adult standing in front of a chalkboard instructing kids.

Of course, I don't know how they did things in South Africa when little Elon was a young emerald prince, but the "school has never changed" trope is tired and silly and a clear sign that someone knows little about what is happening in education, which has been highly interactive for decades. 

But sure. There is still an adult in a classroom, much as cars are still four wheels, one in each corner. But perhaps that's because Musk appears bothered that the shifts in tech that are "upending the labor force" haven't yet touched teachers. 

Musk calls for compelling, interactive learning experiences. His example is that, rather than teaching a course about screwdrivers and wrenches, have them take apart an engine and in the process learn all about screwdrivers and wrenches. I'm sure that my former students who learned about operating heavy machinery by operating heavy machinery, or learned about welding by welding, etc, would agree. I'd even extend his argument to say that instead of trying to teach students to read by doing exercises and excerpts, we could have them read whole works, even novels. 

But just in case you're not catching who Musk blames, Hartzen notes that Musk says that the system failed students because "the talents of the teaching staff tasked with imparting this knowledge to their students were sophomoric at best."

Then Musk throws in an entertainment analogy. Teachers are like the "troubadours and mummers of yesteryear who traveled from one backwater to the next, offering their meager services to those desperate for their brand of amateur entertainment." Education today is like "vaudeville before there was radio, TV, and movies." Which compresses a variety of different developments, but okay. 

Then along came Hollywood, and a critical mass of the most talented screenwriters, directors, and actors around joined forces to produce compelling and engaging content that can cost tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars.

So, what? We're supposed to inject hundreds of millions of dollars into education? And does this idea still work if we notice that the "content" cranked out by Hollywood is only "compelling and engaging" to some people. 

Finally, Musk throws in a reference that Hertzen calls "bizarre"-- thespians entertaining the locals in Small Town U.S.A. with a "low-budget rendition" of the caped crusader couldn't compete with Christopher Nolan's Batman. 

Are we sure? Are there not people who wouldn't be interested in either? Are there not people who find live performance far more compelling? I may be biased here, but we just spent two weekends playing to packed houses of folks who could have just stayed home and listened to the album or watched the movie. 

Look, some analogies fail because they aren't a good match for what they're analogizing, and some analogies fail because they are wrong to begin with ("this is just like the way a hummingbird lifts tractors out of tar pits"). Musk manages to fail both ways. But, you know, he's rich, so he gets to have his terrible insight elevated by a major magazine. Add that to the list of things that interfere with meaningful education discourse in this country.

Aunt Peg: An Appreciation

Margaret Feldman was born and raised in my small, the daughter of a musical family. Her father led the Baptist Sunday School Orchestra, and by recruiting members for that group brought a great deal of musical talent to the area. Like many folks in this area, her father had struck it rich in the newly burgeoning oil business. In his case, he developed a method of refining oil into a lubricant for watches and founded the Fulcrum Oil Company. It made him a healthy income, as did the jewelry store his father had started years before.

Margaret was a standout athlete at our local high school. After graduation she went on to Vassar. When she graduated, the second world war was heating up in Europe, and she went to work in DC in the office William Donovan at the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor for the CIA. Through her work, she came to know a wide variety of people from many walks of life and parts of the world (including Moe Berg, the baseball player who was also a spy).

But at the end of the war, her father had passed away, and so she came back home to run Fulcrum, becoming one of the few female CEOs in the country. Along with other women running a company, she was profiled in a Dun and Bradstreet publication in 1959. 

She got her teaching papers and went to work at Franklin High School, the same school she had graduated from years before. She taught English and quickly became department head. She retired in 1970, only because the district at that time had a mandatory retirement age for teachers. Several board members voted not to accept her resignation. 

Aunt Peg (her nickname by this point) stayed involved in the district. She substituted, and even when she was not working, she stopped by. Never married, no children of her own, she watched over those of us following in her footsteps. She dropped copies of the New York Times crossword in some teachers' mailboxes. Her ability to reach out to a vast web of contacts was legendary; she once presented a teacher with a baseball newly signed by a major league player. She held a summer "reading club" for select students from the school, a combination special tutoring and summer school program. When a new teacher arrived in town and made Peg's acquaintance, she lobbied hard for her hiring. That was Merrill, my work sister, about whom I have written before. 

When Peg passed a little more than thirty years ago, many of her former students gathered together, raised funds and created a foundation in her name. That foundation funds an annual essay competition for students in all of the county's high schools. They get a prompt, the essays are submitted, the director of the competition whittles down the stack, and then a group of local high school teachers judge the essays and select a winner. There are scholarship dollars, and a pair of traveling trophies that are engraved with winners' names and which sit at the school of the year's winner. 

For years, Merrill was the director of the competition. Now I do that job. We had the reception for the finalists and winners last night. As we heard each finalist read their essay, I looked around the room and realized that I was the only person there who had met Peg face to face. 

It is hard to estimate the reach of some teachers. I never had Peg in class, other than as a substitute, but I got to know her more as a teacher. Some of the teachers who inspired me were inspired by her, so I guess I was a sort of professional grandchild of hers, and my own students-now-teachers are great-grands and so on. Peg was old school, neither warm nor fuzzy, but fiercely dedicated to literature and writing and what we could learn from them about ourselves. There was never nonsense in her classroom, not even when she was subbing, but there was plenty of humanity, and a demonstration of how wide and deep and rich a life could be, even if it started here in our small town.

When you retire, you become a sort of ghost. You step off that boat careening downstream and you are left behind, out of sight around the bend, so swiftly it can take your breath away. Every year, the competition gives me the chance to remind a few people about who Aunt Peg was, but it's clear that her influence has mostly outlived her name, her memory. 

That, of course, is the gig. Most teachers don't even have a tiny award named after them; they do the work, exert the influence, fire up another set of students, and the effects of their work get passed along, hand to hand, linking an unforeseeable future to an unfathomable past. Happy teacher appreciation week!

VT: An Unqualified Ed Chief, Whether They Want Her Or Not

Vermont had been short an education secretary for about a year when Governor Phil Scott got his heart set on Zoie Saunders, despite Saunders having a less-than-spectacular resume.

Zoie Saunders has barely any background in public education. She attended the Dana Hall School, a private girls’ school in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Her first jobs were in the pediatric health care field, then she went to work in strategy for Charter Schools USA, a Florida for-profit charter chain, in particular profiting from taxpayer-funded real estate business. CSUSASUSA 0.0% was founded by Jonathan Hage, a former Green Beret who previously worked for the Heritage Foundation and Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Florida’s Future.  Here's League Education Chair Patricia Hall talking about how CSUSA rakes in the bucks:

Our shining local examples in Hillsborough County are owned by Charter Schools USA. My first glimpse of Winthrop Charter School in Riverview in November of 2011 was during a scheduled visit with then Rep. Rachel Burgin. When told the two story brick building was a charter school, I was mystified. The site on which it was built was purchased from John Sullivan by Ryan Construction Company, Minneapolis, MN. From research done by the League of Women Voters of Florida all school building purchases ultimately owned and managed by for-profit Charter Schools USA are initiated by Ryan Construction. The Winthrop site was sold to Ryan Co. in March, 2011 for $2,206,700. In September, 2011 the completed 50,000 square foot building was sold to Red Apple Development Company, LLC for $9,300,000 titled as are all schools managed by Charter Schools USA. Red Apple Development is the school development arm of Charter Schools USA. We, tax payers of Hillsborough County, have paid $969,000 and $988,380 for the last two years to Charter Schools USA in lease fees!

After six and a half years with CSUSA, Saunders moved into the job of Chief Education Officer for the city of Fort Lauderdale, a job that involved expanding education opportunities, including nonpublic schools.

Saunders took her first job in public education, chief strategy and innovation officer got Broward County Public Schools, in January 2024; her job there was the lead the district’s work to “close and repurpose schools,” a source of controversy in the community, according to the Sun-Sentinel. But her time as a school-killer for a public system was short, because Vermont was calling.

Once Scott announced his hiring choice (on a Friday), pushback was swift and strong. John Walters at the Vermont Political Observer, a progressive blog that has been all over this, noted that the lack of qualifications for the job was not the bad part:

The bad part is that her experience as a school killer and her years in the charter school industry are in perfect alignment with the governor’s clear education agenda: spread the money around, tighten the screws on public education, watch performance indicators fall, claim that the public schools are failing, spread the money around some more, lather, rinse, repeat. Saunders may not qualify as an educational leader, but her experience is directly relevant to Scott’s policy.

Objections to Saunders in the job were many, including her lack of any apparent vision for job. Add to the list the fact that she'd never run any organization remotely as large or complicated as a state's education department. 

Saunders moved into the office April 15, but the Senate still got to have a say, and what they said was, "Nope." They voted her down 19-9, a thing which pretty much never happens. 

 And Scott went ahead and put her in office anyway.

Roughly fifteen minutes after the Senate rejected her, Scott appointed Saunders the interim Secretary of Education, a thing that does not require any Senate approval and which he presumably doesn't have to move on from any time soon, particularly given she has announced her 100 day plan. Scott did not appear moved to appoint an interim during the year since Dan French resigned the post.

Scott characterized the vote as a "partisan political hit job," even though three Democrats voted with the GOP senators to approve. He characterized attacks on Saunders as "unfair," "hurtful," and "false."

Scott kept spinning in the aftermath, claiming that it was false to say that she only had three months 4experience in public education, even though she clearly only has three months of experience in the public education sector. As John Walters reported, Scott also tried to pin the defeat on "outside groups." Walters pointed out that Scott has previously said he favors "CEO experience more than public school experience," though Saunders doesn't have that, either. 

Ethan Weinstein at vtdigger reported that Saunders was unfazed by her interimness. 

“I’ve never been one for a title,” she said, nodding to her “interim” moniker. “I’m really about being engaged and doing the work.”

In an interview with Vermont Public on April 18, Saunders was not particularly impressive, After she brought up Vermont's funding system, she was asked how she would change it, and her answer was argle bargle about just learning and it wouldn't just be her decision and she's really good at developing shared visions with diverse stakeholder groups. Data driven. Collaborative. Absolutely unwilling to say what she thinks a good answer would be.

In that same interview, she was asked about charters and choice, including vouchers to religious schools. "Do you think there should be any limits on the amount of public funding that goes to private schools in Vermont?" First, she wants to make the "charter schools are public schools" point. Sure. Then a long non-answer-- she thinks the feds say you have to include religious schools and she knows that Vermont has been trying to take care of the discrimination-by-schools piece of that, but on and on saying nothing, certainly nothing about what she thinks is right or should be policy.

She did directly say that she's not interested in bringing charter schools to the state of Vermont. So that's a clear statement. But then she's asked about closing smaller schools, and that triggers more corporate speak about student outcomes and local control and not an actual answer to the question. Asked for her view about Ron DeSantis anti-DEI policies, she does manage to work in diversity and inclusion and support for all students in her answer. 

She comes across as a sort of corporate tool who is either trying to avoid expressing her vision or simply doesn't have one. Is that better or worse than having a Ryan Walters type who has a strong and toxic vision that he's willing to spew regularly?  

 Many folks around the whole approval flap report a lot of vitriol and nastiness around this whole business. On the one hand, that's a shame. On the other hand, when you nominate for the post of education chief people who are clearly unqualified and who are also closely associated with anti-public ed interests, it's going to rile folks up. At this point, we've seen that movie several times, and it always ends badly. Good luck, Vermont.  

ICYMI: May Mart Edition (5/5)

The first weekend in May in my small town is a big festival of growing things, with both parks filled with vendors selling plant and plant-related stuff. My own interactions with plants are limited to A) appreciating them and B) killing them. But this is still a cool thing. And it takes some of the sting off the sadness of the closing of our theater production today. 

But this week it's a large reading list, so enjoy and share and I hope it's pretty where you are.

Remember Betsy? Michigan education leaders blast Trump for ‘abandoning’ public schools

From The 'Gander, Kyle Kaminski interviews some education leaders who point out the obvious--if you care about public education, Trump is probably not your guy. Includes an appearance by Friend of the Institute Mitch Robinson.

Does ‘Grading for Equity’ Result in Lower Standards?

At EdWeek, Risk Hess interviews Joe Feldman, who proceeds to gently explain how a recent Fordham critique of equitable grading was pretty much wrong. 

Press Reports Ranking American High Schools Mislead the Public

Yes, the US News rankings are junk. Jan Resseger explains.

Pennsylvania Taxpayers Are Funding Discriminatory Religious Schools

Catherine Caruso covers a report that I reported on as while back, but she does it in The New Republic, so hooray for more people getting the message about Pennsylvania's crazy discriminatory voucher program.

NC school voucher dollars are funding Christian Nationalist indoctrination

It's not just PA. Justin Parmenter has been running down all of the religious indoctrination and discrimination being funded by taxpayers in North Carolina, and it's a lot.

The Making of Michele Morrow

Speaking of North Carolina, they've got a woman running for state superintendent who is Ryan Walters-level right wing. Carli Brosseau at The Assembly has produced the best deep dive into Michele Morrow seen so far.

Iowa legislator opening his own private school, to be funded by vouchers he voted for

Yes, really, Help pass a law to help people get rich, then go cash in. Also, put your wife on the board. You'd think it would all be illegal, but no... Ty Rushing covers story for Iowa Starting Line.

Reynolds’ voucher program is about destroying public education

A former Iowa superintendent doesn't think much of Governor Reynolds' plans for public schools in Iowa.

Ohio’s *School Vouchers for All*: Expanded, Expensive, but Not Audited

The indispensable Mercedes Schneider details some of the shenanigans surrounding Ohio's voucher program (a program that is currently being dragged into court).

What Is That New Car Smell?

Florida is the petri dish in which a thousand school choice bacteria bloom. For instance, would you like some of the tax you pay for your new car to go to fund home schoolers? Sue Kingery Woltanski will guide you through this bizarro voucher grift.

A San Diego charter school may shut down its high school by the end of this school year

The San Diego Union-Tribune reminds us that charter schools are routinely unstable. Turns out amateurs have trouble making them work.

A controversial group looks to join school chaplain program under proposed OK legislation

Yet another state decides that allowing faux chaplains into schools might be another way to get Christianity in there, and so another states gets to say Howdy to the Satanic Temple. Welcome to the club, Oklahoma.

Do Schools Really Need To Give Parents Live Updates on Students' Performance?

Lenore Skenazy at Reason, of all places, points out that maybe the ever-available grade portals are doing at least as much harm as good.

Ultra-conservative lawmakers target Louisiana libraries as culture war rages on

Piper Hutchinson at Louisiana Illuminator runs down the many ways that some lawmakers are trying to stomp down libraries.

The PA mother who’s standing up against book bans—and the Dems standing with her

Ashley Adams at The Keystone  looks at one mom fighting for reading rights in Chester County.

NEPC Review: The Reality of Switchers (EdChoice, March 2024)

EdChoice created a "report" claiming to show that vouchers are a money-saver for taxpayers. Voucher scholar Josh Cowen explains why the report is pure bunk and hackery.

A new lost generation: Disengaged, aimless, and adrift

Robert Pondiscio at the Fordham Institute blog attempts to put school absences in a larger context. 

School Wars

Since it was Star Wars Day yesterday, let's go back to that time that Mr. Finkle managed to spoof Star Wars and school testing all at once.

At Forbes.com this week I looked at vouchers and their transparency problem.

Come join me on substack. More subscriptions means a greater reach, and it's free!

Should We Voucherize Title I?

Spoiler alert: no, we should not.

However, not everyone agrees, as witnessed by this "policy brief" (aka "blog post with footnotes and letterhead") from Ray Domanico for the Manhattan Institute, the same right-tilted thinky tank that employs Christopher Rufo, chief promoter of critical race theory panic.

Domanico opens with some history. Title I was born of the civil rights movement post Brown v. Board. And if you're wondering why folks on the corporate right aren't fans, it could be that Title I dramatically increased the federal government's share of education funding. In 1957, the feds kicked in 1.3% of K12 district revenue: in 1977, that was 8.1%. In 2021, the percentage temporarily goosed with Covid funs was all the way to 10%. That translates to billions and billions of dollars.

Next up-- a literature review of anything that helps prove Domanico's assertion that Title I has failed in its goal of improving "academic outcomes for the disadvantaged." This assortment of papers from the Manhattan Institute and other right-tilted advocacy groups finds that Title I wasn't working, and that it was even involving things like Whole Language!

But achievement gaps--aka the scores on the Big Standardized Test as distinguished between the poor and the not poor--were not reduced. Therefore, fail. Because education has no purpose except to improve student scores on the BS Test. In fact, as Domanico correctly points out, Title I became another justification for more emphasis on the BS Tests.

Domanico is also not keen on how the Duncan-Obama administration used threats to Title I funding as leverage to push their policies, and I do not disagree, just as I do not disagree of his story that shows imposing Common Core was a big mistake, and if I could find anything from the Manhattan Institute at the time objecting to Common Core I would gladly link to it, but all I can find are pieces like this one, in which the Institute scolds conservatives for opposing Common Core when it's clearly such a worthwhile thing. In other words, Domanico is both correct and about a decade late.

He winds around to arguing that Title I is a mess because its original intention is lost in current ed policy debates and federal overreach is super-unpopular. Also, it didn't fix the test score gap. 

His proposed solution? "Modernize" Title I funding.

Using federal powers to address social inequity and education for all is a policy that "emerged in a political environment that has expired." Federal involvement in educational equity is so last century. 

Now, what you could do, Domanico suggests, is turn the Title I money into vouchers, specifically education savings accounts, where you just hand the money to families and wash your hands of any obligation to try to get them a decent education let them spend the money as they think best. The state's could also fund math and reading tutors, or "distance learning for advanced coursework for lower-income students in rural areas." Because that distance learning thing has been super-popular the last few years.

Of this idea:

The best thing that could happen to Title I is for it to be turned into a national scholarship or tax credit program for lower-income families to use for tuition in the school of their choice.

This was Betsy DeVos's Education Freedom plan, though she at least proposed a national tax credit voucher program without gutting Title I at the same time. But Domanico not only wants vouchers and to end federal funding of Title I, but he wants to be clear that, given recent SCOTUS decisions, private religious schools should get some of those sweet taxpayer dollars. In fact, he likes the idea so much that he sort of botches the wording--

Given recent Supreme Court rulings—clarifying that a state need not offer school choice but if it does, it cannot exclude religious schools—Title I funds should flow directly to religious schools chosen by the families of eligible students, ending the practice of funding local school districts to provide services to eligible religious-school students.

 Flow directly to religious schools? I thought the money flowed directly to the families, thereby avoiding charges that we were using taxpayer funds in violation of the First Amendment. Huh.

In conclusion, he really wants vouchers. Also, the feds should stop using Title I funds as policy leverage.

It's an argument that has been repeatedly made, though this is a rare chance to see it all laid out in one blogpost policy brief. It has the usual feature of so many reformster arguments-- let explain the problem to you in great detail, and then propose my solution while skipping the part where I provide an argument for how my solution actually solves anything. 

It also shows how some folks on the right cannot see what is plain to some other folks on the right. If a big problem with Title I is that federal funds come with federal strings and levers attached, then why would those same strings and levers not stay attached when Title I funds are used as vouchers?

As a sort of tag, Domanico suggests that if the feds won't shape up, maybe a state would like to just reject Title I funding. Because that clearly won't negatively affect any of the high-poverty schools that depend on those dollars. Because maybe Title I, which has all the lumbering clumsiness of any federal program, still provides a bit of a lifeline to underfunded schools and the students in them and would be better off expanded rather than gutted. 

PA: Serpents and School Boards and the ILC, Again

Here's one more story of how Pennsylvania's leading right-wing law firm wiggles its serpentine way into local districts. 

Central York School District in Pennsylvania was one of the early poster children for reactionary culture panic board take overs, and they leaped right into book banning--and then leaped back out because a Large Fuss was raised. And then continued to wrangle over book banning, particularly banning that seemed aimed at erasing LGBTQ and non-white voices. 

This was a place that made its banning choices by looking at a list of 300 works recommended by a diversity committee and saying, "Nope" to all of them, including works like Brad Meltzer's I Am Rosa Parks (a children's book). 

In the midst of all this noise were board members Vicki Guth and Veronica Gemma, who back in August of 2020 faced calls for their resignation over comments questioning any need for teaching ab out tolerance and racism. 

Gemma was the president of the board at that time, and when she didn't resign, voters took the old-fashioned route and voted her out of office, hard. Gemma did not quietly; as a lame duck, she tried to mount an investigation into the book ban controversy, taking a slant that would be used later by Ron DeSantis, arguing that some people just meddled with the list to make the board look bad. "It was a collaborative effort to destroy our reputation for political reasons," Gemma said. Because, you know, the banning of diversity texts wouldn't have looked bad on its own.

Gemma found herself a job that seems to fit. She now works as a district office manager for York County state Rep. Joe D'Orsie (R-Mount Wolf). D'Orsie introduced legislation exempting school employees from honoring the pronouns of LGBTQ+ students, similar to a policy drafted by the ILC and passed by the Red Lion Area School Board last year.

But that's not her only new gig. She's also Director of Education for the PA Economic Growth PAC. The PAC is headed by John Davis, who owns a mall in York, along with Kristen Rohrbaugh, a "seasoned brand specialist" and Don Yoder, all of whom contributed a small pile of money to the group. The group stands for "championing freedom, preserving capitalism, demanding transparency, and empowering the people," though as with many right wing groups, those stances come with asterisks.

For instance, that one about transparency.

Here's Gemma talking to Epoch Times about her gig, to combat critical race theory and DEI.

PAEGPAC did a lot of mailing work for campaigns (with Rohrbaugh's company apparently doing the design work), though they did chip in $500 to the 1776 Project PAC, a million-dollar PAC that targeted school board elections.

But now The York Dispatch has unearthed emails that show the PAC has been doing more than just sending out mailings.

Meredith Willse, writing for the dispatch, shows how Gemma put together some secret meetings to play matchmaker between York school boards and the right-wing law firm, Independence Law Center, the firm that specializes in crafting anti-LGBTQ, anti-DEI, anti-book policies for districts all across the state. 

In a March 4 email, Gemma invited members from 12 school districts across York County, warning them specifically not to bring more than four members because any more would make the meeting subject to Pennsylvania's sunshine laws. Turns out the PAC's interest in transparency has some exceptions.

Ther secret meeting was on March 15 at an East York warehouse, located in the rear of a strip mall, with catering by Round the Clock Diner. You will be unsurprised that nobody answered Willse's request for a comment.

The email referred to the ILC, a firm that many York County districts have been hiring this spring. And the email makes clear that this is a regular get together: 

We finally nailed down a date that works for most. Keep in mind we will have these meetings every quarter so if you miss this one, we can see you at the next.

In a separate editorial, the York Dispatch Editorial Board does a good job of connecting the dots. They look back to a 2005 meeting with ILC's chief counsel Randall Wenger, who had worked with another firm as counsel in the case that ultimately threw out Dover School Board's attempt to inject creationism into science classes. His take was that the board members had been to clear and transparent about their intent to inject religion into school. 

He told attendees: “I think we need to do a better job at being clever as serpents.”

So now ILC and their allies show their commitment to acting like serpents, because lying and sneaking are super-consistent with Christian values. 

Secret meetings seem to be a special technique of, which has also set up secret meetings with board members in my corner of the state. 

At this point, it's best to assume that if your board is making noise about anti-LGBTQ, anti-book policies, ILC is in your neighborhood, slithering and you just need to start turning over rocks to find them. 

It reminds me of a saying that friend used to keep on his fridge. It's about using any means to an end, to the effect that since we rarely fully achieve our ends, we are much more defined by the means we use. If you get really good at being a serpent, don't be surprised at the end of the day when you find you can't shed your skin. 

Enough Secret Sauce Coverage

It's 2024, and we're still getting education "secret sauce" stories.

Here's one from New Jersey, where Joe Malinconico provides this puff piece for Paterson's College Achieve Charter School, for which the headline says "Here's the 'secret sauce' this Paterson charter school used to boost its test scores." Malinconico has the credentials of a hard-hitting investigative reporter, but this piece is strictly unexamined PR for the school.

College Achieves is a charter chain with some presence in Paterson. Niche finds it be a middlin' school, but perhaps they don't know about the secret sauce. The chain was founded by Gemar Mills, a Paterson native famous for being a young principal leading Malcolm X Shabazz High School.

So what secret sauce does Malinconico find?

Well, there's a staff PD meeting every Friday for two hours. Since Niche says that half the staff has 3 or fewer years of experience, that could be helpful, depending on how they spend the time. They also get ten days of PD in August.

The sauce, as always, involves a very narrow definition of success, aka the scores on the Big Standardized Test went up. Malinconico did not ask any questions about how much test prep that required, nor what was eliminated in order to make room for it.

But Malinconico's education background may be a bit thin, as witnessed by this line:

The summer training focuses on preparing educators for handling classrooms in which students break down in small groups for something called differentiated instruction, essentially tailoring assignments to pupils’ various academic levels.

A quick google might have told Malinconico that differentiated instruction is neither new nor secret.

What else? Well, some classrooms get a second teacher to focus on students in need of extra help. And they've increased ELA instruction from two to three hours. 

Parents touted the high expectations, including the classrooms named for various colleges.

Malinconico did note that while the Paterson district has 16% of students with disabilities and 29.3% with English language difficulties, the charter student population shows 5% and 10.6% respectively. Charter advocates shrug and say, "Open enrollment." 

Malinconico might have looked at other features of CAPS, like the "astonishing" taxpayer-funded salaries they pay their executives, or the sweet deal in which they lease their own facilities from a related third party (taxpayers fund that, too). But no--this puff piece is just about their secret sauce.

So the secret sauce? More hours on tested subjects. More teacher supports. Fewer students who are harder to teach.

I don't fault the school--it's doing what it should do, which is use the best tools it can lay its hands on to help its students achieve. 

But we are well past the point where anyone should be providing this kind of superficial credulous coverage. It's a school. There are no silver bullets, no secret sauce, no miracle formula, and every single person on the planet, including journalists, should know better. Educating students is long hard steady work with lots of grind and very little flash. And no miracles.

Good AI Is Not Good Teaching

I would not have expected to share anything from Dan Meyer, but this is worth a look.

Meyer is one of those guys. He bills himself as a math teacher, a job he did for six years back in the 00s. Mostly he's been a consultant and thought leading ed talking head guy. These days he's working for Amplify, that abomination of an ed tech company that was Joel Klein's big project after he was done screwing with NYC schools. 

So, yeah, Meyer is one of those guys.

But I'll listen to anybody and consider the message, not just the source, and I think Meyer just said some things worth listening to. At the ASU+GSV gathering to celebrate the AI Revolution in Education, Meyer stood before an audience of ed tech fans and explained why AI is not going to revolutionize teaching (and while he's doing it, manages to take a swipe at the "silver bullet" thinking of previous ed tech revolutions.)

I keep passing along these sorts of pieces because my sense is that a lot of teachers have a bad feeling about AI in education, but can't quite articulate what the problem is, and this is another presentation that helps fill that gap.

Meyer, for instance, talks about how teaching is about inviting and developing student thinking, and AI cannot do either of those things. He also provides an interesting model built on the first mile and the last mile, which explains why AI-assisted teaching may seem to create more work than it saves. And he explains how context is important to teaching, and teachers can consider that context while AI cannot. 

Meyer can be a bit floppy in the mouth, and I don't think it's too cynical to assume that Amplify is pre-disposed to see AI as a malevolent business threat, but the talk is only 19 minutes and I think they're are 19 minutes well spent. 

What Does A High-Quality School Look Like

We are not going to identify high quality schools by focusing on scored from the Big Standardized Test. In fact, by treating those scores as the single defining feature of a HQS, we encourage school leadership to move in the wrong direction. 

So what are the defining features of a high quality school? 

Reflects Local Values

Long, long ago, I spitballed a school evaluation system that started with massive data collection about what the taxpayers of the district most valued. I still think that's a good idea. The story of the last twenty-five years is the story of state and federal government pushing their own ideas down on local districts, and I'm not sure that has improved a thing.

A high quality school would be very much of its community, reflecting local values, tradition, and style. 

Now, this comes with a huge caveat, because there are communities whose values arguably include "Keep Those People's Children away from mine." The HQS represents its entire community, so that includes issues as well. I'm not comfortable with the federal and state government telling a local district what and how to teach, but I'm perfectly okay with them telling the local district who to teach, and that they may not try to deprive Certain Students out of a complete quality education. So--

Quality Education For All

This means the rich kids, the poor kids, the kids of every race, the LGBTQ kids, the kids with special needs. It means that the school is a safe and welcoming environment for all students, physically and emotionally. It also means the students with various different goals and talents and inclinations. Because a HQS would provide

Multiple Paths For Students To Succeed

Test-centered schooling accentuated the worst tendency of traditional public education, which is to treat education as if it's a single race on a single track to a single finish line. In fact, students are headed in a thousand different directions, racing, strolling and stumbling toward a thousand thousand different life destinations. 

A HQS would reflect that, allowing students to pursue excellence in every direction from welding to nursing, music to accounting. A HQS embraces the idea that student achievement looks like a million different things, and it celebrates, supports, and encourages all of them. It is also structured so that students can switch and mix and match easily. Students graduate from the system with a sense of confidence and direction about their own future, whatever that might be.

A Culture of Attainable Excellence

In a HQS, students, teachers, and administrators believe that excellence and achievement are attainable, and the school culture is centered around the pursuit of that excellence (which is definitely not the same as attempting to stifle non-excellence), and the recognition that excellence is always a moving target.

That also goes with a culture that supports the idea that more learning leads to more life choices. 

Education

My HQS doesn't have a single "how." The teacher part of my brain is, when it comes to the classroom, far more pragmatic than ideological. What works today? Let's do that. 

My frequent definition-- helping students identify and build the best version of themselves, grasping what it means to be fully human in the world. I realize that may sound warm and fuzzy, but it's not-- you get there by learning a ton of rich content and creating a vast library of skills. How? It depends--we're talking about building a personal relationship with the world, and like any relationship, it's shaped by the person involved.

I Have Deliberately Skipped The How

I'm not sure I've said much radical here. The root of most education debate has been either "Okay, how do we create this" and "That sounds expensive--could we come up with a cheaper version."

I'm not going to address the "how" because I don't think all HQS look the same, and there are multiple pathways to get there. And we'll disagree about that--I don't think you ever get there with a classical academy, with its insistence that there is one set of always-right answers and "being educated" means learning that list. Nor do I think market forces (part of the Twitter thread that sparked this post in the first place) will ever get us HQS for more than a select few. I also have thoughts about how such a school should be managed and funded, but those are other long posts. 

This is the long rambling post I promised Mike Petrilli, who asked the question. Here you go, Mike. There's more in my two part post about how to do education choice (Part I and Part II). Maybe some day you can invite me to DC to sit on a Fordham panel. Thinking about what a high quality school would look like is always worthwhile--perhaps more worthwhile than all the "how" conversations that continue to rage.

TX: Greg Abbott Wants Teachers To Dress Regular

Correspondent Steve Monacelli of the Texas Observer turned up a clip of Texas Governor Greg Abbott at the Young Conservatives of Texas convention in Dallas, splaining how folks ought to dress. 

In Lewisville, Texas… just a month ago, they had a high school teacher, who is a man, who would go to school dressed as a woman in a dress, high heels and makeup. Now, what do you think is going through their minds of the students that are in that classroom? Are they focusing on the subject that that person's trying to teach? I don't know. What I do know are these two things. One is this person--a man, dressing as a woman--in a public high school in the state of Texas--he's trying to normalize the concept. "This type of behavior is okay." This type of behavior is NOT okay! And this is the type of behavior that we want to make sure we end in the state of Texas.

Now, as with many moments of culture panic, this one has some factual issues. As Wayne Carter reported for Channel 5, what actually happened was that students encouraged a popular chemistry teacher to dress up for a spirit day. Students laughed, life went on. But then someone put a picture of the teacher on line, and all culture panic hell broke loose. The school district did a policy review and determined that no dress-up day rules had been broken, but so many folks decided to release a barrage of hateful and threatening comments that the teacher resigned. 

Carter spoke to students ("He's never brought his sexuality or any of his political ideas into his teaching. He's always teaching chemistry. It's always chemistry") and parents of the school (We're conservative, but this is silly and hurting students). 

So you can file this specific incident in the file right next to the periodic panic over supposed school litter boxes for student furries aka "Things That Upset Certain People But Did Not Actually Happen."

Also, at least some of Abbott's motivation here is pretty clear, as he pivoted directly from "This Terrible Thing Happened" right over to "Parents ought to have school vouchers so that they can get their kids away from this sort of Terrible Thing That Didn't Actually Happen."

But. All that aside, we've still got a governor arguing that behavior that doesn't conform to his particular idea of gendered behavior should be outlawed and stomped on. Kind of takes me back to all those years when women weren't supposed to wear pants, or smoke cigarettes. Author Kate Chopin walking around in pants a century ago scandalizing Louisiana bluebloods. Boys wearing earrings!!Dogs and cats living together! 

There are, in fact, Christian discussion groups out there still debating the lady pants thing, and often coming to the entirely reasonable conclusion that different cultures at different times have different ideas about what male and female clothing should look like. Meanwhile, we've had a whole court case over whether or not a charter school can forbid girls to wear pants (it can't, and the Supremes aren't willing to chime in).

I can't even imagine how Abbott would draw up the Texas Code of Heteronormative Behavior for Teachers. And would the penalties be a kind of sliding scale, or would a shiny earing or bit of rouge receive the same punishment as a flowing sequined ball gown? Are skinny jeans allowed? Would Texas Rangers drag the offending teacher out in cuffs so that any non-conforming students can fully get the message that Their Kind are NOT okay or welcome in Greg Abbott's Texas? Will Texas be outlawing any and all behavior that looks kind of LGBTQ-ish, or will this just be for teachers? Is Abbott's dismay go beyond regular LGBTQ stuff and extend to all non-conforming behavior, like funny hats or ugly sweaters? 

I'm leery of the word "normal," which always has lots of heavy lifting to do. But I do like the word "ordinary," as in, LGBTQ people are an ordinary part of the human experience, as are people who fall outside of whatever standards of behavior are considered Properly Conforming. Should teachers refrain from choices that might cause distraction in the classroom? Sure. But that's a far cry from tagging all non-conforming teachers for harassment and firing and whatever else Abbott meant by saying he wanted to end that type of behavior. 

ICYMI: Opening Weekend Edition (4/28)

We've opened our community theater production of Jesus Christ, Superstar, and it is going wonderfully, with some excellent audiences and great performances, while my shoulders are holding out through the prolonged arm flapping every evening. It just feels great to help create a performance and put it out into the world, live and in person. Hope you have something equally delightful in your corner of the world. 

Let's see what there is to read this week.

Teachers Aren’t ‘Silicon Valley’s Lackeys’

This Jack Bouchard piece is well worth using up one of your free EdWeek views. He makes some point that go beyond just the question of what place AI has in education. 

When a child, frustrated at the opacity of a Toni Morrison novel, wants to know when she will ever use this, I reply, “You might never! And that’s OK, because you’re a human being and you have more important things to be than just useful.”

Ex-athletic director accused of framing principal with AI arrested at airport with gun

Speaking of special uses of AI, here's a bizarre story from Baltimore.

Florida Republicans eye control of more county school boards in November election

More of the same old same old anticipated in Florida this year.

University of Memphis plans to launch new K-12 district this fall

Laura Testino reports for Chalkbeat on a new sort of school district about to hit Tennessee.

Recommendations for Books You Should Not Read Because You Do Not Care

Maurice Cunningham has some reading suggestions for those interested in the world of dark money and its influence.

No Matter What You Call Them, Private School Vouchers Are Bad for New Jersey

School finance expert and music teacher Marl Weber lays out the explanation of why the new proposal for New Jersey school vouchers would be a bad idea.

DeSantis said public schools were religious when US began. Is he right?

Short answer: no. But the Tampa Bay Times reporter Jeffrey Solochek talked to a lot of smart people about DeSantis's version of US education history to get a longer answer.

A Brief History of Automatons That Were Actually People

Brian Contreras at Scientific American looks at fauxtomation, the process by which companies use actual humans to fake AI.

The Return of the Tradteacher

You're on line, so you've probably heard about tradwives. Nancy Flanagan talks about the affection for tradteachers.

A trans teacher asked students about pronouns. Then the education commissioner found out.

Sarah Gibson at New Hampshire Public Radio has the story of that time the state education commissioner decided to go after one trans teacher.

How Book Bans, Threats to Honest Teaching of History, and “Don’t Say Gay” Bills Harm Our Children and Undermine Education for Citizenship

Jan Resseger looks at some of the damage done by culture panic in this country.

Plans to put libraries in most Michigan schools get support from educators and parents

What a whacky idea! Hannah Dellinger reports for Chalkbeat.

Louisiana: Lunch Breaks in Question for Teen Workers

News about this bill was in last week's list, but this week the indispensable Mercedes Schneider has more information about who's pushing the bill. Prepare to be unsurprised.

Over at Forbes.com I wrote about the practice of pep rallies for the Big Standardized Test. 

As always, you are invited to sign up for my substack. It's free, and it puts all my stuff in your email inbox, where you can do with it as you will. 

ACT Will Be For Profit (And Join The Ghost of Pearson)

ACT, the runner-up in the college prep testing races, will be acquired by private equity firm Nexus Capital Management. 

This "partnership" will transform the company into a for-profit entity. The press release heralding this change is larded with all sorts of argle bargle heralding--well, see for yourself:

“Our partnership with Nexus Capital Management uniquely positions ACT to meet a watershed moment in our nation, as the demand for talent is growing and becoming more diverse. The need to prepare learners for success after high school for both college and work has never been higher, nor has the need to ensure that every learner has access to equitable college and career planning resources, guidance, and insights,” ACT CEO Janet Godwin said. “Partnering in this way will complement and amplify ACT’s proven platform of education and work readiness solutions to support the needs of students, educators, and employers alike. We will accelerate our plans to meet the needs of our stakeholders as they navigate an evolving and complex system to develop the essential skills critical for success in a rapidly changing world of work.”

“This partnership will create more pathways to degrees, credentials, and skills acquisition for people at any stage of their lives,” said Daniel A. Domenech, chairman of ACT’s board of directors and former executive director of AASA, the School Superintendents Association. “The time is right to move into the next phase of ACT’s long-term growth strategy alongside a partner with significant industry expertise, giving ACT the scale and capital necessary to deliver on its promise of education and workplace success.”

This is a fine example of the kind of writing that ChatGPT could take over-- lots of word things that don't say much of anything.

As for the "significant industry experience" that Nexus brings to the table--well, let's take a look at some of ACT's new portfolio-mates. The Los Angeles firm also owns chucks of FTD, Dollar Shave Club, Lamps Plus, Sugarbear, TOMS, MediaLab, a chemical company, and some others. 

Including Savvas Learning Company, formerly known as Pearson U.S. K12 Education. 

Yes, back in 2019, after a year of shopping for a buyer, Pearson sold off its U.S. curriculum and instructional materials business to Nexus Capital for $250 million. It was a hell of a deal for {Pearson, which got 20% of the take from the business going forward, and will get 20% of net sales price should Nexus ever sell the business. "We can't make this business work, but if you do, you have to give us 20% of your success," is a heck of a deal, and may explain why it took a year to find someone to take it.

Nexus changed the company's name and its CEO Bethlam Forsa declared a new tradition of innovation that would include “new digital technologies, diverse classrooms, broad social trends, and new research-based teaching and learning practices that are transforming education as we know it.” Savvas now provides "next-generation learning solutions for students" along with "adaptive technology that delivers personalized instruction," "high-quality instructional materials," and, of course, "The Science of Reading." If nothing else, Savvas is in touch with current buzzwords.

So that's the other edu-business in the Nexus family-- the ghost of Pearson's U.S. aspiration. Will Nexus force some kind of partnership for vertical integration? Who knows. Personally, I'd rather see a partnership like getting a nice spray of flowers and some comfortable shoes when you sign up to take the test. But I expect they'll first have to solve the problem of how ACT can keep doing what it's doing and somehow end up with extra "profit" money. 

ACT says the costs of taking the test won't go up. Sure. ACT will be "unified" with its own subsidiary Encoura, so maybe initial profits will be generated by unifying some people right out of a job. 

Meanwhile, I can't wait to see the first SAT ads declaring "We're still a non-profit company. We're not trying to make money. Just trying to fund our leaders exorbitant salaries." 

 

PA: Let's Digitize The Big Standardized Test

Pennsylvania has lagged behind many other states when it comes to moving the Big Standardized Tests on line. I suspect this is related to a small disaster in our state's testing history.

If you are a teacher of a certain age, you probably recall years ago when the state decided to try the practice test in an online form. I'm not in a position to say exactly what happened, but it certainly seemed like the kind of thing that would happen if a hundred thousand students tried to log on to a system set up to handle about ten. Schools across the state wasted the better part of a day trying to get their students to connect with and complete the online version of the test. 

But Governor Josh Shapiro has announced that we are going to try again. 

Shapiro announced the plan at a middle school in Allegheny County, reported by Kim Lyons at Pennsylvania Capital-Star.

The plan is supposed to take two years, which seems ambitious. Shapiro suggests that the on line version will take 30 minutes less time to take, which I'm guessing doesn't include the time trying to get all the students logged in to their school network and then logged in to the test. 

Pennsylvania has the PSSA test for elementary and the Keystone exams for the high schools. The Keystones are the result of an ambitious plan to create end-of-course exams for everything, a plan that never quite came to fruition, thank God. The tests cost something in the neighborhood of $50 million, but that's not counting hours lost or money spent on test prep workbooks and materials that nobody would ever buy if the BS Test wasn't looming over them.

PA Secretary of Education Khalid Mumin offered this bit of bureaucratic bloviation:

While Pennsylvania is among a group of states that take a relatively minimalist approach to statewide standardized testing and administers only the minimum number of assessments required by federal law, we have listened to feedback from the field and the public and have responded with a plan that will benefit schools, educators, and Pennsylvania’s 1.7 million learners.

I'm pretty sure feedback from the field and the public would get us to Shapiro's conclusion, which is that he'd just as soon scrap the tests entirely. This is absolutely the correct choice, but Shapiro notes that it would lose the state $600 million in federal bribery funding. 

So instead Pennsylvania will do the opposite-- Mumin announced that the state would be introducing a new benchmark test to take in addition to BS Tests themselves. Yay.

The online version should cut scoring and turnaround time, though the process of sending scores back to schools still involves the step in which politicians and bureaucrats look at the results and decide what the cut scores will be this year. Since PSSA/Keystone season is right now, PA teachers can still expect to receive "data" about their current students long after they can do anything with it. 

About a third of PA schools already do the on line thing. It's not clear how Shapiro will help bring the rest up to speed, particularly in the case of schools that have connectivity or hardware issues; if everyone's going to take the test online, everyone needs a computer with a working internet connection to do it, not just a single floating class set of laptops with a 20% failure rate on any given day.

Shapiro also says that the plan is to format the questions in "ways students are already familiar with" which assumes a lot about student tech familiarity. Actually, what it means is that schools will be replacing their hard copy test prep notebooks with licenses for on line test prep software that makes sure that students become familiar with the formats.

Yes, the only good answer is still "Get rid of the whole thing." Maybe someday we'll elect people at the federal level who stop demanding it. 

Post #5000

I try not to get all meta around here, but this is post #5000 here at the mother ship of the Curmudgucation Institute, so I'm going to take moment to savor the sheer bulk that we've added to the interwebs.

First post went up on August 16 or 2013. I recommend that you do not go back and look at the early posts from what is best described as the "What exactly the hell do I do with this thing" period of my blogging. It took my a while to hit my stride. 

While this has been the main outlet for my education writing over the years, I've appeared other places as well, including a year at EdWeek, writing for The Progressive, Forbes.com, the Bucks County Beacon, some HuffPost years. I've also been writing a weekly column for the local newspaper about pretty much anything for 26 years. I have occasionally started other related projects, but those have been interrupted by life.

My big debt is to the people who put me out in front of an audience. I have some writerly instincts, but absolutely lack the self-promotion gene. Diane Ravich, Anthony Cody, Nancv Flanagan, Valerie Strauss, Jeff Bryant, a couple of guys who wouldn't necessarily want to be associated directly with me, and a host of other people who shared my stuff and passed it along have amplified the work. And that's before we even get to all the folks who have provided various forms of support all along the way, all the way back to the folks who gently suggested I rethink my original idea that the blog would look cool if it were white text on a black background. 

The single most common question I get is about how I do so much writing. The answer comes in a few parts.

1) There are plenty of people who write as much as I do. Diane Ravich passed the 5000 post mark roughly an hour and a half after she started blogging. Other folks spend lots of time polishing and crafting and that amounts to a huge quantity of writing, even if the end result just one published piece.

2) Low standards. When I started the newspaper column, I learned really quickly that I could not create a shining masterpiece every seven days, and I could either meet deadlines or settle for workable pieces that got the job done even if they weren't necessarily destined for immortality. 

3) Read a lot. An awful lot of what I have written is a means of processing or reacting to what someone else has put out in the world. It is always extra rewarding when someone continues that conversation. 

4) I gotta. As with many lines of work (including teaching), there is an itch that only doing the work scratches. I read about stuff, then think about stuff, and the next natural step for me is to write about stuff.

Google's counter, which is hugely suspect, says that there have been 12.5 million or so reads on this blog, plus however many read the substack version, plus whatever reads come to the other outlets. So some hunk of what I've written has touched a nerve or been useful to folks, and that's as much as I could have hoped for. 

I am fortunate and blessed to have done this as long as I have, and I write this sort of post not too often because this work is not about me, but about the work of public education. It's some of the most human and valuable work we do, helping young humans to become their best selves and to understand what it means to be fully human in the world. It is not easy work, and it exists at the intersection of a thousand thousand concerns and interests and tensions between so many different poles. It is one of our greatest experiments as a country, and it will never be complete, never arrive at a moment when we can collectively say, "Okay, that's it. Just lock everything down right here and don't touch a thing." Which means we will always need to keep talking about it, keep arguing for our vision of it, keep pulling and adjusting and balancing and correcting. And as long as that conversation is going on, I'll be adding my two cents. 

OK: Walters Continues (Unsuccessful) Harassment Of Teacher

Oklahoma's Education Dude-Bro-In-Chief can't seem to smack down former Oklahoma teacher Summer Boismier, but it's not for lack of trying.

If you've forgotten about Summer Boismier, let me refresh your memory before bringing the story up to date.

Back in September of 2022, after Oklahoma had unveiled its own version of a Florida-style reading restriction law, Norma High School English teacher Boismier drew flak for covering some books in her classroom with the message "Books the state doesn't want you to read." Apparently even worse, she posted the QR code for the Brooklyn Public Libraries new eCard for teens program, which allows teens from all over the country to check out books, no matter how repressive or restrictive state or local rules they may live under.

She was suspended by the district, which said that this was about her "personal political statements" and a "political display" in the classroom. Boismier told The Gothamist

I saw this as an opportunity for my kids who were seeing their stories hidden to skirt that directive. Nowhere in my directives did it say we can't put a QR code on a wall.

The suspension was brief, but Boismier decided this was not the kind of atmosphere in which she wanted to work, so she resigned, citing a culture of fear, confusion and uncertainty in schools, fomented by Oklahoma Republicans.   

That wasn't enough to satisfy Walters, at the time campaigning for office. The whole business had been a high-profile brouhaha, so Candidate Walters popped up to put his two cents in via a letter that he posted on Twitter.

Saying that "providing access to banned and pornographic material is unacceptable" and "There is no place for a teacher with a liberal political agenda in the classroom," Walters called for Boismier's license to be revoked. And he called her out by name.

That, of course, led in true MAGA fashion to a flood of vulgarity and death threats directed at Boismier as reported by KFOR:

“These teachers need to be taken out and shot,” “teachers like this should not only be fired but also should be swinging from a tree,” “If Summer tried this in Afghanistan, they’d cut out her tongue for starters,” are just a minuscule fraction of the threats pouring into Summer Boismier’s inbox.

Boismier was unwilling to put up with all of this. When Walters continued to try to strip her teaching license (even though in December of 2022 she took a job at the Brooklyn Library), Boismier used a quirk of Oklahoma law to demand a trial-like hearing to dispute the department of education decision. At that hearing in June of 2023, Assistant Attorney General Liz Stephens recommended against taking Boismier's license, saying the state failed to prove that Boismier had broken the law. 

Boismier wasn't done. In August of 2023, she filed a defamation lawsuit against Walters. Walters filed a motion to dismiss in January of this year, and U.S. District Court Judge Bernard Jones (Oklahoma's first Black magistrate and elevated to the district court by Donald Trump) denied the motion to dismiss. Walters had alleged that Boismier was a sort of public figure, and that malice on his part couldn't be shown. The judge disagreed, saying her case looks solid enough to proceed. So that lawsuit will continue winding through the court.

Meanwhile, the state board and Walters have continued to move forward to take Boismier's license. As reported by Murray Evans at The Oklahoman, they decided hold yet another hearing to "finalize the revocation" in March. Only there's a problem with that plan. In March, all of the department's attorneys quit, so they have no lawyers with which to hold a legal-type proceeding. They've postponed action until May. Once again, Walters has shot himself in the foot by just being lousy at his job. 

Of course, at any moment Walters could just say, "Look, trying to punish a former Oklahoma teacher who now lives in New York and works in a library for breaking laws two years ago that the assistant attorney general says she didn't actually break--well, that's a ridiculous and petty waste of department resources, so we're going to drop the whole thing." But somehow I don't think that's what's going to happen. 

 

FL: Ron DeSantis vs. Words (Also, Satan)

Earlier this year, Florida became yet another state to pass a law allowing volunteer school chaplains. It's a bad idea for a variety of reasons (outlined when actual professional chaplains spoke out against a similar bill in Texas last year).

Both the House bill and the identical Senate bill are thin on requirements. A district that wants to use volunteer school chaplains must describe what they'll do, inform parents of the availability, and get written parental consent before a student can participate in any program with the chaplain attached. The volunteer school chaplain must pass a standard district employee background screening.

There are no requirements at all for the chaplain to have actual chaplain training, even though actual professional chaplains get a great deal of religious, professional, and ethical training (but not, they note, any sort of school counseling training). And as far as the religious part goes, well, the district has to publish a list of volunteer school chaplains, "including any religious affiliation" on the district website. And when it comes to selecting a chaplain they approve for their child--

Parents must be permitted to select a volunteer school chaplain from the list provided by the school district, which must include the chaplain’s religious affiliation, if any.

Emphasis mine. 

The bills were pretty clear. And you would think somebody who graduated cum laude from Harvard Freaking Law School could understand the plain language therein. 

But DeSantis, like too many folks, has this habit of insisting that the words means what he says they mean. 

Write a law that clearly says a book is Naughty and Bannable if it mentions and sex or upsetting stuff, but then insist that there are certain books that don't fall under the law (like Certain Classics and the Bible). Write a really dumb law that says gender identity and sexual orientation can't be taught or discussed in school, ignoring that such a law means that gender-segregated bathrooms and anything mentioning traditional gender roles--all of that is illegal. Debates keep circling back around to the assertion, "Well, that may be what the law says, but that's not what it means."

While it's conservatives that often fall into this error, plenty of conservatives are smarter. In Oklahoma, religious conservatives somehow believe that when they open the door to taxpayer funded religious charter schools, only proper Christian religion will walk through that open door, it's Oklahoma conservatives who understand that once the door is opened, any religion will walk through it. 

And who always shows up to walk through that door, committed to making a point? The Satanic Temple, of course, regularly ruffling religious feathers. And they have already announced that if this bill became law, they would be sending Satanic chaplains into Florida schools.

Is there anything in that bill that says there can't be a Satanic volunteer school chaplain? Nope, not a thing. Unless you're Governor DeSantis. As reported by Douglas Soule for USA Today:

"Some have said that if you do a school chaplain program, that somehow you're going to have Satanists running around in all our schools," he said at a press conference at a high school in Kissimmee..."We're not playing those games in Florida," DeSantis continued. "That is not a religion. That is not qualifying to be able to participate in this."

The IRS has long since granted the Satanic Temple (which, too be clear, does not recognize Satan as real, let alone worship him) status as a tax-exempt church. 

The bill's sponsor is smart enough to see the problem here (and it's not Satan). Senator Erin Grall told Soule:

I think that as soon as we get in the middle of defining what is religion and what is not, and whether or not someone can be available and be on a list, we start to run (into) constitutional problems.

Exactly. Christian conservatives will rue the day they passed these sorts of laws because either A) all sorts of non-Christian faiths are going to come through that open door and B) the only way to mitigate it will be to enact some sort of govern Department of Religion to folks like DeSantis certify what qualifies as a "real" religion. And the official government Department of Religion is the last thing anybody should want. 

It's a bad bill. Amateur volunteer untrained chaplains are not, as some folks insist, a solution to the need for more mental health supports and more school counselors. That argument is an insult to actual counseling and mental health professionals, and a dismissal of the concerns it claims to address by suggesting that literally any person off the street can come in and provide meaningful mental health help. 

And for those who like the idea because they see it as a way to get Christianity into schools? What they get, and what they asked for, and what they wrote a law to allow, is the Satanic Temple, no matter how grumpy it makes DeSantis. Maybe one of his Harvard Law School professors can explain it to him.