NH: Considering School Takeovers

My very first school district is in the news yet again, and this time their troubles may usher in some bad legislative choices by the state of New Hampshire. 

I started out life in Claremont, New Hampshire. The first school I ever attended (Maple Avenue School) is still there and still operating (sadly, North Street School and Bluff Elementary are not). I can still vaguely remember the layout of the playground where I ran around with my friend, fellow country kid Becky Dole, and my first crush, Lanissa Sipitakowski. After third grade, my father's employers sent us to Pennsylvania, and I have almost never made it back to Claremont. Strolling through Google maps, it looks like our old house on the River Road might be gone. The Livingston farm right next door became factory buildings years ago. 

But I still notice when Claremont makes it into the news. 

In the 90s, Claremont was the face of two major lawsuits, among the first to bring the state to task for inadequately funding school districts (you can read about it in Andru Volinsky's book, The Last Bake Sale).

Claremont is in the news again, and it's related to funding, again. It appears that all sorts of accounting screw-ups resulted in a district that believed it was financially healthy, but instead is in a real big empty hole. A deficit of millions of dollars. A deficit so problematic that the district had to get a $4 million loan from the Claremont Savings Bank to insure they could open the schools last fall. The superintendent and business manager have both terminated their employment with the district. 

This is a good example of how some huge school district messes can be the result of local issues and not state policy ideas. But this crisis has opened the door to a state policy idea, and it's a particularly bad one.

A last-minute amendment to a bill in the legislature would give New Hampshire the option of a state takeover of troubled school districts.

This is not a new idea. It has been tried before-- that's how we know it's a bad idea.

Ohio has tried state takeover and it has not gone well (Failure Exhibit A is, oddly enough, the first district that ever hired me to teach) because, among other things, bringing hire guns from outside the district to deal with its issues while simultaneously trying to learn what they are-- not a great plan. In fact, Lorain had local-style financial and accounting problems similar to Claremont's, and the guy who was brought in to fix them was a pretty complete disaster. 

Or we could look at Tennessee's Achievement School District, a bold school takeover plan that was supposed to take schools at the very bottom of the ratings and catapult them to the top-ish. It failed. It failed a lot, through several leaders and over the course of several years. 

School takeovers mostly fail, and they mostly for a set of reasons, most of all because they assume that the state can find somebody who knows how to run a struggling school district and is, for some reason, available to hire. 

Many of them also fail because their actual goal is not to fix the district, but to dismantle it and charterize the scraps, sometimes because of a childlike belief in the imaginary awesomeness of charters and sometimes because of a grown-up belief in the real power of collecting piles of taxpayer money.

The New Hampshire bill has its own interesting twists. New Hampshire already has a bill that says the state can revoke a charter school's charter or put the school in probation if the school commits any of several listed Naughty Things. So the argument for the new public school law is that public schools should be under the same sort of watch. 

The stated goal is to get audits done and audit results public. However, the proposed amendment is extremely broad. A school district can be put on probation "if the school fails “generally accepted standards” for fiscal management; if it violates state or federal law; if the school materially violates a state administrative rule or standard; if the school does not file an annual report of its finances; if the school does not follow other state or federal reporting requirements; and if the school “fails to remedy” the causes of its probation." 

Right there in the middle of the list you find that violating a state board administrative rule or standard could trigger probation, which is wide enough to drive a small planet through, Basically, the state board would be free to go after pretty much any district it was in the mood to take over. 

If the school fails probation, they get a state-appointed administrator-- a school district tsar with the combined powers of a superintendent and a school board. The very first power listed by the bill is the power to 

Override any decisions of the school district's board or the school district superintendent, or both, concerning the management and operation of the school district, and initiate and make decisions concerning the management and operation of the school district

This kind of super-CEO is what Ohio tried, and the question becomes where the heck do you find someone with this massive assortment of powers and competencies who is not already in a perfectly good job? It's an impossible job, a job that requires someone to be the best super-superintendent ever under the worst possible conditions. I suspect the assumption is that the school district is in trouble because it's being run by bozos, so any reasonably competent bozo can fix it or any barely functional charter can replace it, which mostly tells me that the bozos involved in this particular show are the ones writing laws.

The other problem with school takeover pans is that they never, ever include a part where some collection of wise people look at the troubled district and try to figure out what the problem is and what resources could be best used to fix it. This is the test-and-punish part of No Child left Behind and Race To The Top writ large-- look for a quick and easy way to determine a school is "failing," then target it not for special assistance, but for dismantling, defunding, and/or privatizing.

We could argue all day about the ethics of the takeover approach, but we can skip all that because it's like arguing whether or not it's a good idea to get spiders out of your house by setting fire to building-- it just doesn't work. Here's hoping New Hampshire doesn't turn itself into one more disproving ground for this failed policy. 

ICYMI: Mom's Birthday Edition (11/9)

My mother will be checking off another year around the sun this week. We held a modest celebration yesterday because she doesn't like a fuss. Fair enough. May you have just the amount of fuss you want from the people you love.

Here's your reading list from the week. Remember that sharing is caring.

Education Helped Power the Blue Wave

You won't find a better education-related summary of the election results than this post from Jennifer Berkshire. 

The Ketchup

Audrey Watters comes bearing an excellent assortment of links this week. More to read!

Rigid Federal Rules May Block Efforts by Dem. States to Redirect New Federal Vouchers for Pro-Public School Uses

The feds still haven't written the rules to go with the federal voucher program, but Jan Resseger explains why the idea that this money could benefit public education is looking pretty shaky.

“Every Child Known: The Slogan That Says Everything and Means Nothing”

Exceptional TC Weber post this weeks connects the dots between meaningless school administration sloganeering and the central place of relationships in education.

Consulting Firm with Deep GOP Ties Helps Launch Effort to Fully Privatize Tennessee Schools

Andy Spears takes a look at a new player in Tennessee that has plans to gut public education--and they appear to have some deep GOP ties.

Florida’s State Board Poised to Ratify Heritage’s “Phoenix Declaration”

Florida is ready to sign on with the Heritage Foundation's Phoenix Declaration, and Sue Kingery Woltanski explains why that is bad news. More culture panic school takeover ahead.

Education Board Reverses Book Ban By Harford County Schools |

In Maryland, the state board of education told a local school board to put a book back on the shelves.

Dear Centennial School Board: We Spoke. Many of You Did Not Listen. And Now We Voted You Out

There is a sequel to the tale of Central Bucks School District in PA. When their far right board lost its majority, their far right superintendent headed for the exit (with a basket of money tucked under his arm). He found a home with another district's far right board, over the vocal objections of taxpayers in the district. Now the board that hired him has been swept out of office. Full story at the Bucks County Beacon with Nancy Pontius reporting.

Mark Zuckerberg Opened an Illegal School at His Palo Alto Compound. His Neighbors Revolted

Zuck's neighbors really don't like him, so when he started running a school out of his home, they were just done and they sicced the law on him. Caroline Haskins in Wired.

The Limits of AI Research for Real Writers

John Warner explaining again that actual writing is not augmented by AI.

Sexbots, students, and schools

Ben Riley suggests that AI is messing with our understanding of what public education is for. He looks at Henry Farrell and the lesson learned from online porn.

Arne Duncan's back in the mix, pushing school vouchers and praising Republicans for their school reform efforts.

I offered my own take on Duncan's op-ed earlier this week. Here's Mike Klonsky's look, including a disturbing possibility-- could Arne be testing waters for a Presidential run by one of the Democrats' griftiest con artists?

In the Trump Presidency, the Rules Are Vague. That Might Be the Point.

Matthew Purdy wrote this essay for the New York Times, and while it's not directly education-related, folks in the ed world will recognize the issue. Make the rules vague and you can just punish whoever you want to punish.

The Lack of Evidence for Ubiquitous Classroom Technology

Larry Cuban and how the desire for evidence based research somehow stops when we talk about ed tech.

How SNAP Funds the Mass Reads Coalition. Or, A Win-Win for the Walton Family

Maurice Cunningham follows the money and figures out that SNAP is tied to advocates for "science of reading."

Jury awards $10 million to teacher who was shot by 6-year-old student

Another sequel to a story covered here. That teacher shot by a sixth grader won a $10 million settlement for the principal's failure to take teacher warnings seriously.

Teachers are Patriots! Who Knew?

Nancy Flanagan points out the obvious-- teachers are not a bunch of crazed America-hating indoctrinators. And there's research to back it up!

This week at Forbes.com, I looked at how the blue wave finished the transformation of Central Bucks School District. Just four years ago, they were the MAGAist GOP board around, a scary harbinger of things to come. Now all nine seats are filled by Democrats. 

Les Paul was a genius and a monster player. This clip is supposed to be from 1951, which would be a year before the first Les Paul guitar was offered commercially. It's also three years after he was in a car accident that shattered his elbow. Rather than accept amputation, Paul had the arm set with a permanent 90 degree angle so he could hold the guitar. 1951 was also the year he and Mary Ford released this hit, one of the first demonstrations of the possibilities of multitrack recording. 

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Arne Duncan Is Now Betsy DeVos

Mind you, on education, Duncan was always the kind of Democrat largely indistinguishable from a Republican, but with his latest print outburst (in the Washington Post, because of course it was), he further reduces the distance between himself and his successor as Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. 

For this one, he teamed up with Jorge Elorza, head honcho at DFER/Education Reform Now, the hedge fundie group set up to convince Democrats that they should agree with the GOP on education. 

It's yet another example of reformsters popping up to argue that what's really needed in education is a return to all the failed reform policies of fifteen years ago. I don't know what has sparked this nostalgia-- have they forgotten, or do they just think we have forgotten, or do they still just not understand how badly test-and-punish flopped, how useless the Common Core was, and how school choice has had to abandon claims that choice will make education better in this country. 

But here come Duncan and Elorza with variations on the same old baloney.

First up-- chicken littling over NAEP scores. They're dipping! They're low! And they've been dipping ever since 2010s. Whatever shall we do?

Who do Duncan and Elorza think holds the solution? Why, none other than Donald Trump.

Seriously. They are here to pimp for the federal tax credit voucher program, carefully using the language that allows them to pretend that these vouchers aren't vouchers or tax shelters. 

The new federal tax credit scholarship program, passed as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, allows taxpayers to claim a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit for donations to scholarship-granting organizations, or SGOs. These SGOs can fund a range of services already embraced by blue-state leaders, such as tutoring, transportation, special-education services and learning technology. For both current and incoming governors, it’s a chance to show voters that they’re willing to do what it takes to deliver for students and families, no matter where the ideas originate.

They encourage governors to "unlock these resources" as if these are magic dollars stored in a lockbox somewhere and not dollars that are going to be redirected from the United States treasury to land instead in some private school's bank account. 

Democratic governors are reluctant to get into a program that "could be seen as undermining public schools." But hey-- taking these vouchers "doesn't take a single dollar from state education budgets" says Duncan, sounding exactly like DeVos when she was pushing the same damned thing. And this line of bullshit:

It simply opens the door to new, private donations, at no cost to taxpayers, that can support students in public and nonpublic settings alike.

"At no cost to taxpayers" is absolute baloney. Every dollar is a tax dollar not paid to the government, so the only possible result must be either reduction in services, reduction in subsidies, or increase in the deficit. I guess believing in Free Federal Money is a Democrat thing.

The "support students in public and nonpublic settings" is carefully crafted baloney language as well. Federal voucher fans keep pushing the public school aspect, but then carefully shading it as money spent on tutors or uniforms or transportation and not actual schools. And they are just guessing that any of that will be acceptable because the rules for these federal vouchers aren't written yet.

Duncan and Elorza want to claim that this money will, "in essence," replace the disappearing money from the American Rescue Plan Act. "In essence" is doing Atlas-scale lifting here because, no, it will not. The voucher money will be spent in different ways by different people on different stuff. They are not arguing that this money will help fund public schools-- just that it might fund some stuff that is sort of public education adjacent. 

But how about some "analysis" from Education Reform Now, which claims that the potential scale is significant." They claim that "the federal tax credit scholarship program could generate $3.1 billion in California, nearly $986 million in Illinois and nearly $86 million in Rhode Island each year," drifting ever closer to "flat out lie" territory, because the federal vouchers won't "generate" a damned cent. Pretending these numbers are real, that's $3.1 billion in tax dollars that will go to SGOs in the state instead of the federal government. It's redirected tax revenue, not new money. Will the feds just eat that $3.1 billion shortfall, or cut, say, education funding to California? Next time I get a flat tire, will I generate a new tire from the trunk? I think not.

In classic Duncan, he would like you to know that not following his idea makes you a Bad Person. Saying no to the federal vouchers is a "moral failure." 

Next up: Political advice.

Over the past decade, Democrats have watched our party’s historical advantage on education vanish.

Yeah, Arne, it's more than a decade, and it has happened because you and folks like you have decided that attacking and denigrating the public education system would be a great idea. You and your ilk launched and supported policies based on the assumption that all problems in school were the sole treatable cause of economic and social inequity in this country, and that those problems were the result of really bad teachers, so a program of tests followed by punishment would make things better in schools (and erase poverty, too). 

But now the GOP states are getting higher NAEP scores, so that means... something?

This is Democrats’ chance to regain the educational and moral high ground. To remind the country that Democrats fight to give every child a fair shot and that we’ll do whatever it takes to help kids catch up, especially those left behind for too long.

Yes, Democrats-- you can beat the Republicans by supporting Republican policies. And that "we'll do whatever it takes to help kids catch up" thing? You had a chance to do that, and you totally blew it. Defund, dismantle and privatize public schools was a lousy approach. It's still a lousy approach.

Opting in to the federal tax credit scholarship program isn’t about abandoning Democratic values — it’s about fulfilling them.

When it comes to public education, it's not particularly clear what Democratic values even are these days, and my tolerance for party politics is at an all time low. But I am quite sure that the interests of students, families, teachers, and public education are not served by having the GOP offer a shit sandwich and the Democrats countering with, "We will also offer a shit sandwich, but we will say nice things about it and draw a D on it with mayonnaise." 

We have always heard that Arne Duncan is a nice guy, and I have no reason to believe that's not true. But what would really be nice would be for him to go away and never talk about education ever again. Just go have a nice food truck lunch with Betsy DeVos. 

WI: Pushing For Federal Vouchers

Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers announced way back in September that he would not join in the new federal school voucher program that is part of the GOP's Big Ugly Mess of a Bill, but advocacy groups are being put together to try to sell the vouchers anyway. It's another one of those times to pay attention just in case this is coming to your state soon. 

There is much about the federal voucher program that remains undefined, but we know the basics. It's a tax credit voucher, which means if you've got some money to burn, you can contribute it to funding a school voucher and have that contribution count as paying your taxes. The contribution actually goes to a Scholarship Granting Organization (SGO) in a sleight of move that is supposed to make it look as if taxpayer dollars aren't being diverted to funding private schools, but at least one state supreme court has seen through that baloney. 

Evers correctly noted that the federal voucher would be catastrophic for public schools. 

The usual fans of dismantling public schools and privatizing the remains did not care for the governor's decision. "Why so fast," said folks at the right wing Badger Institute (a great name which really ought to be associated with something cooler than a bunch of wealthy guys who would like to not pay taxes). "There's lots of time left to decide, and this is like free money!"

It is not. Your brother-in-law owes you a hundred bucks. You send your spouse to collect it because you need it to buy groceries this week, and they return with fifty bucks and a couple of cases of beer. "Did you spend our money on beer?" you ask. "No, my brother just gave me this instead of the other fifty dollars. So this is like, you know, free beer!" Are you convinced? Or are you just out fifty bucks that you needed to feed your family?

The Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce really wants that beer, and they have come up with a whole campaign to sell the federal vouchers. If not to Evers (who is not running for a third term and so doesn't have to care about these guys), then maybe the next governor.

Pay It Forward Wisconsin is the campaign, and it tries hard to make these vouchers look swell. There's a certain amount of creativity here-- the actual rules for federal vouchers haven't been written yet, so some of this pitch might best be considered "aspirational" or "loosely interpretive" or even "made up." 

The tax credit allows "you to donate up to $1,700 to the school of your choice." Well, you'll donate it to an SGO, which may or may not be aim that money at a particular school. Some states (like PA) allow any private school to set up its own SGO, and others do not. The law suggests that an SGO has to serve at least two schools; any private schools with multiple campuses could well satisfy that requirement. The federal law suggests that donors can designate the school, but not the student. But that could change when the actual rules are written.

PIFW also suggests that public school students could use the voucher money to fund extras like a tutor or a band trip. Except that, again, the rules haven't been written yet, and no state with vouchers has allowed for this particular use of voucher funds. 

PIFW is accepting "pledges" and notes that "If you don’t have a specific school in mind, Pay It Forward Wisconsin will direct your donation to nearby schools serving students in poverty with a proven track record of improving reading and math proficiency," all of which sure makes it sound like PIFW is positioning itself to be an SGO (SGOs get to keep a slice of the voucher pie, so it can be a profitable business to be in). 

Who's the face of all this? Dale Kooyenga is a GOP politician who is currently serving as MMAC president and the main mouthpiece for PIFW. He's an accountant and private equity guy, as well as an army reserve lieutenant colonel. When he was in the Wisconsin legislature, he helped push a plan to privatize Milwaukee schools. He loves him some private Christian schools, too. 

The idea of redirecting tax dollars to private schools is particular troublesome in Wisconsin, where public schools are stuck under a cap in state funding. 

The pitch captures some of the bizarro world nature of tax credit scholarships. Do you want to support public schools and students? You can take some of your tax dollars and direct them to schools. Or--stay with me here-- you could just pay taxes. PIFW wants to answer the question, "How can I direct my money to help students and schools?" Gee-- if only there were some sort of system for collecting a contribution from every wage earner in the state and then bundling those contributions up and portioning them out to schools. If only there were a way to do that!

But of course what gives the tax credit system value added over regular old taxation is that tax credit vouchers let you make sure that your tax dollars aren't going to support Those Peoples' Children. Let's hope that Wisconsin's next governor shares the current governor's understanding of how bad the federal voucher program would be for education. 

The Coming AI Teaching Assistant Boom (And Cheating)

Matt Barnum (who is, thank God, now at Chalkbeat) just made three predictions about AI in education, and one of them makes my head hurt.

Students will keep cheating? Yeah, that seems likely. AI will not become a super-tutor? No, of course not, particularly given that support for that concept always rests on the old Benjamin Bloom essay about super tutoring that A) involves human and B) is kind of bunk. 

But Barnum also makes this painful prediction: AI will become a ubiquitous teaching assistant.

Lord, but I want this not to be true. I want the woman he uses as an example, a high school English teacher who now uses AI to crank out college recommendation letters-- I want her to be an outlier. I want her to be shamed in her teachers' lounge. I want teachers who use AI to extrude lesson plans to be embarrassed about it and/or to be teaching at a school where nobody ever looks at the lesson plan-- including the teacher whose name is on it. And if a teacher is using their AI "teaching assistant" to grade essays, I want to encourage that teacher to leave the profession immediately.

And yet, in my pained heart, I know those "teachers" are out there. I have no trouble imagining "teachers" I've known who would be delighted about the chance to outsource some of the thinking and effort to some computer program. They're the same ones who used to use Google to find lesson plans. Beyond that, I know how tremendously pressed for time teachers are, so absolutely crunched that the prospect of getting even a half an hour of their day back would be incredibly tempting. 

This is all cheating. 

You know how I know it's cheating? Because all of these scenarios assume that the people on the receiving end of this AI slop will act as if they have received the work of an actual human.

I'm betting nobody is opening their AI recommendation letter with "I am having ChatGPT write this letter of recommendation for Pat McStudent." No, the letter (just like that ChatGPT paper about Hamlet that Pat submitted) is meant to be taken as the work of the human whose name is attached. 

I will predict that AI will kill the letter of recommendation as dead as the follicles on Dear Leader's dome. Admissions officers will shrug and say, "Well, all of these are from some LLM. There's no real point in doing this." And they will look for some other way to find out if a real human who knows the applicant wants to speak up for them. Maybe a phone call. 

It will take students roughly five minutes to figure out if their essays are being scored by a machine instead of their human teacher. What will it do to writing instruction and student growth when students realize that they are writing for an audience of zero humans? I don't know-- but I expect we're going to find out, and I also expect it won't be anything good. If no human is going to bother to read your work, why would you put any human effort into writing it?

Some folks boosting (or contributing to) the coming AI teaching assistant boom talk as if teachers will offload some cognitive labor to the machine, and that will be the end of it. It won't be the end of it. The substitution of AI for human will affect and alter the results. It changes the process, the whole process, from inputs to outputs to reactions to the changed process. The notion that you can just swap out teacher judgment at this one point in the process and nothing else will be altered is naive and foolish. It's like figuring you can swap out mushrooms for burgers at your barbecue, or replace bolts with molded tofu in an automotive assembly line.

To grapple honestly with all this, a teacher would need to stand in front of her class and announce, "I am not going to grade this assignment. I'm going to have ChatGPT do it instead. What do you think?" Or saying, "I can send a letter to the college for you, but I'm going to have ChatGPT write it. Is that okay with you?" And in a nation of three million teachers, there may well be some that are doing so. I hope there are. I hope there are many, soon to be more. Because it's going to take a lot more honesty and soul searching and a whole lot less cheating to get through the advent of AI in education. 

Enshittification: The Book

I've followed Cory Doctorow for a few years now, and was certainly among the masses of people who, when he coined "enshittification," pointed and hollered "That's it!"

What Doctorow has explained is the process by which the once-bright promise of the internet has been turned to crap. And now, rather than hunting down the various articles and posts in which he has elaborated on his idea, you can get it all in one book-- Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It.

The process by which so many services have been degraded is not, he argues, "the Great Forces of History bearing down on our moment," but a bunch of deliberate, purposeful choices that people with power didn't have to make. And it has a very clear pattern. Doctorow's simplest explanation of enshittification boils down to four steps:

1) First, platforms are good to their users.

2) Then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers.

3) Next, they abuse their business customers to claw back all the value for themselves.

4) Finally, they beconme a giant pile of shit.

Doctorow lays out the specifics by looking at several case studies-- Facebook, Amazon, iPhone, and Twitter. All once brilliantly important; now just a pain in the ass.

There are more details to understand. How competition is killed, and then regulation is also gutted, making it both impossible to enter the marketplace and to police that one monolith controlling the sector. Why everyone wants you to use their app instead of just accessing via web browser (nobody is regulating what they can do on an app with your info or money). Why you aren't allowed to fix anything yourself (because "fixing" might involve third party circumnaigation of what the techno-bros want). And how AI is so very useful for twidlling the dials so that our tech overlords can determine just how bad they can make things without losing customers over it.

There are applications for education here-- read enough about the digital publishing biz and digital textbooks will not seem like a remotely good idea. 

More importtantly, I think that should school choice ever reach a tipping point, it would be ripe for its own version of enshittification, where captured families and gig working teachers and even education vendors could be squeezed dry as investors profit.

But mostly this is a book that helps explain why everything is so crappy, and the broadest definition of enshittification-- actively and purposefully making a product worse so that it will be more profitable-- seems to be everywhere.

Doctrorow has some ideas about how to make things better. The bad news is that making your individual consumer choices aren't high on his list of Likely To Help Actions. The solutions are mostly political and regulatory, and that part of the book is well worth reading as well. This is a book that has an awful lot to say about why we are where we are right now. If you have been following Doctorow on this, you won't find anything new here, but you will find all of his ideas on the topic in one convenient location. An excellent holiday gift for people who are generally angry at the techno-world but haven't figured out what's wrong yet.

What The Success Sequence Teaches

Ohio has decided that all students should be taught the Success Sequence; the notion that students should graduate high school, get a job, get married, and make babies--in that order! And you know this is a swell idea because the Heritage Foundation provides model legislation for this very thing. There's an important lesson in the Success Sequence, but it's not the one supporters talk about.

The sequence has occasionally been oversold ("Follow these three rules and you will join the middle class!") and the "data" used to bolster it is a little suspicious (like claiming that only 2% of people who follow these rules end up poor anyway--2%?! Really?)

There's also a causation vs. correlation problem. Do people end up in the middle class because they follow the sequence, or is the sequence easier to follow if you are already in the middle class? Do people who mess up the sequence end up more likely to be poor, or does poverty make it really hard to follow the sequence?

Philip Cohen makes a case for why the sequence is bad public policy, noting that costly initiatives to sell the redemptive power of marriage have utterly failed. Of the advice to wait, he says

Success sequencers believe it’s hypocritical to hoard this advice and only dispense it to the children of privilege. But you can’t wish away education, career, and marriage uncertainty or impose order on instability by force of will. If we’re not prepared to guarantee all women the same opportunities as those in my classes have, it’s not reasonable to demand the same attachment to the success sequence that those opportunities make feasible. In the absence of that guarantee, you’re simply asking, or requiring, poor people to delay (until “they’re ready,” in Sawhill’s terms, meaning not poor) or forego having children, one of the great joys of life, and something we should consider a human right.

And he points out the connections between the sequence and race and class

Not coincidentally, the history of welfare politics in the United States is intricately bound up with the history of racism against black women, who have been labeled pathological and congenitally dependent. The idea that delaying parenthood until marriage is a choice one makes is highly salient and prized by the white middle class, and the fact that black women often don’t have that choice makes them the objects of scorn for their perceived lax morals. The framing of the success sequence plays into this dynamic. For example, Ron Haskins has argued that welfare reform was needed to “[change] the values and the approach to life of people on welfare that they have to do their part.” The image of the poor welfare “taker” has a race and a gender in America.

To further muddy the water, there's a 2021 study funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services which found those who finish high school, work full time, and get married are less likely to experience poverty, but it doesn't really matter what order they do them. 

There are also several conservative problems with the conservative argument--or, at least the one they openly admit to. For one, the very clear implication of the sequence is that young women should have birth control freely available to them, thereby making it easier to postpone the Making babies step until all others have been completed. But that's not what these folks want at all. Jay Greene and Lindsey Burke at the Heritage Society argued the country needs more babies, and the problem is that too many women are going to college and postponing baby-making. 

Which takes us to the other issue for conservatives-- do they really want young women to get a job before they start procreating? Because if the goal is for them to be staying home to make and raise babies, then the job step seems extra. 

So why make teaching the Success Sequence a law? Listen to bill supporter Senator Jerry Cirino:

We have been throwing money at the war on poverty, and where has it gotten us? Not very far. We need better life decisions to be made.

Teaching the Success Sequence is about driving home one idea that is central to right-wing policy:

If you are poor, it's your own fault.

This is central to so many MAGA policies. If you are poor, it's your own fault-- so we shouldn't have a taxpayer-funded safety net. If you are sick, it's your own fault-- so we shouldn't have taxpayer-funded health care insurance. And if you don't have the resources to educate your own children, that's your fault, too-- so we shouldn't have taxpayer-funded public education. 

For many, that is the only real lesson of the Success Sequence-- poverty is the result of making bad choices (and why should I pay taxes to make up for your bad choices). Accident, illness, unexpected disaster, job loss, jobs that don't pay a living wage, a lack of resources necessary to make those Really Good Choices-- those are all just excuses made by folks who lack the fortitude to grab their bootstraps and heft away. But hey- it's never too early to start telling the Poors that their problems are their own fault, or their parents' fault, and therefor taxpayers shouldn't have to help you out. Good job, Ohio. 

ICYMI: Get Out The Vote Edition (11/2)

The vote is coming, and while it may be a sleepy off year in your neck of the woods, in PA, Jeff Yass has decided he'd like to get rid of three not-sufficiently-rightwing state supreme court judges, so I'm crossing my fingers and hoping people have paid attention. Locally, we are also looking at a measure to create stable sustainable county funding for the local library system, which you might think was a no-brainer, but instead it has brought the "who needs books" and "no new taxes" and "I don't use it so why should I pay for it" crowd out in force. So we'll see how that turns out. 

In the meantime, here's your reading list for the week.

Florida redeems McCarthyism, anti-communism with classroom guidelines

Proposed legislation favors teaching that "McCarthyism" is a mean word that unfairly stigmatizes swell patriotic Americans. There's more. Yikes. Jeffrey Solochek reports.

Parental Rights or Children’s Safety? Proposition 15 Has the Makings of a Texas Tragedy

Bruce Lesley looks at a Texas proposal that will enshrine parental rights at the expense of children.

Texas Ban on Transgender Course Content Sows Chaos

Emma Whitford at Inside Higher Ed looks at the chaos created by vague rules banning mention of trans persons.

Vouchers are (still) roiling red state politics

Jennifer Berkshire looks at how vouchers are still creating all sorts of conflict among conservative ranks. Among other things, they've finally noticed that vouchers can be used to make taxpayers support Islamic schools.

Teachers Are Using AI to Help Write IEPs. Advocates Have Concerns

Evie Blad at EdWeek reports that some special ed teachers are using IEP writing AI to "reduce cognitive load" aka "save them having to think a lot." Somebody is going to get sued and they're going to deserve it. And nobody is better prepped to call in their lawyers than parents of special needs students.

The Illusion of Learning: The Danger of Artificial Intelligence to Education

Robert Pondiscio with a solid argument about the trouble with AI in education. Yes, I know some readers get cranky when I bring Pondiscio up, but this time you will find virtually no air between his ideas and mine when it comes to this subject.

What a Silent Film Teaches Us About AI

Julian Vasquez Heilig watches a quick silent by film genius Georges Melies, and has some thoughts about AI and learning without learning.

What Rhymes With Nazi? Far-Right Posse in American School Ponzi

If you want to be additionally alarmed about the state of education under the regime, here's Josh Weishart to draw some more uncomfortable parallels.

Christian Nationalists and Texas Public Schools

Thomas Ultican takes a look at how some Texas school districts are getting a bunch o'Bible into their classrooms.

Who ARE these people? Part II

Nancy Flanagan is still wondering where the True Believers in this regime are coming from and what, if anything, schools can do about it.

Banned Together

Steve Nuzum watches a film about book banning shenanigans that he has lived through.

State and Federal Governments Keep Attacking the Teaching of Honest History

Jan Resseger questions the war on honest history (warning: Chris Rufo ahead)

A Voice for Public Schools and Educational Equity

Eleanor Bader interviews Diane Ravitch for The Progressive on the occasion of her new book. Sharp and to the point as always.

Multiple mental models of the mind

Here we are in numerous conversations about artificial intelligence, but what does "intelligence" even mean? Ben Riley can help us get started.

When AI prophecy fails

Cory Doctorow explains the problems that are coming when it turns out that AI can't do all the jobs that firing-happy bosses are planning on.

Federal judges using AI filed court orders with false quotes, fake names

Speaking of which, the Washington Post reports on federal judges who let AI file a bunch of sloppy baloney in place of their own actual human work.

This week at Forbes.com I provided a look at Diane Ravitch's new book. At the Bucks County Beacon, a group issues a report on right-wing bias on school boards. 

There's a fun video series called Jam in the Van-- kind of a twist on Tiny Desk concerts-- and they have some great stuff. Here are the Boogaloo Assassins from 2017.

Sign up for my newsletter and avoid the hassle of social media. Free today and always.

PA: Charter Plans $25 Million Stadium

The Executive Education Academy Charter School of Allentown, PA, has just broken ground on plans for a $25 million stadium. The massive athletic complex will connect to the school and sit on top of a 300-stall parking garage and offer 4000 seats, a press box, and concessions. The field will be turf, be supported by concrete columns and sheer walls, and span 126,713 square feet. 

The complex will be near Coca-Cola Field, home of the minor league baseball team the Lehigh Valley IronPigs, with whom the charter will apparently share parking, the result of some protracted negotiations. The Lehigh Valley Planning Commission approved this thing. 

You are thinking, perhaps, that EEACS must be one hell of a school, and well, no, not really. According to Niche, the school rates a B-. Its test results are not great-- 36% proficiency for reading and 16% for math. Graduation rate is 95% (which tells us nothing about cohort attrition). There are 1,431 students K-12, and 100% of them are Free of Reduced Lunch students. According to School Digger, the student body is 5.4% White, 17.1 % Black, and 75.3% Hispanic. Allentown's population is 26% White, 8% Black and 60% Hispanic. 

Ironically, Niche says that girls and boys athletic participation is very low. Their football team plays AA ball and had a record of 6-5-1 this season. The Raptors also play AA basketball. 

In short, a pretty run of the mill charter school. Why do they need a $25 million stadium? That's not really clear. 

Some coverage notes that there are even more expensive and expansive stadiums out there at public schools, particularly in Texas and Georgia. Buford High School in Georgia just played its first games in the $62 million Phillip Beard Stadium.

But the Buford stadium came with controversy, with lots of observations about district priorities. But Buford's football team is ranked #9 nationally, and the stadium was actually paid for by the city. 

However, what we really want to notice about the Buford stadium is that the whole business involves decisions by locally-elected officials, both from the city and the school district. If people object to having their tax dollars spent this way, they can make their displeasure felt at the ballot box.

Not so for the EEACS stadium, because like any other charter school, EEACS is a privately owned and operated business-- it just happens to be funded by the local taxpayers, and if they don't like the idea of tax dollars funding a big beautiful stadium, well, too bad.

EEACS started operation in the fall of 2014, and lists four founders. Jennifer Mann, former Democratic state rep, now operating a consulting firm. She appears to have no current office with the school. Carol Trench, who appears to have worked with Philadelphia charter group ASPIRA and is now a Philly principal.

Steve Flavell is a co-founder and currently serves as Chief Operations Officer. Flavell has some actual background in education, but has worked mostly in behavioral health and as an administrator with Success Schools. He's paid around $150K. Robert Lysek is a co-founder who serves as CEO. Lysek appears to have started out with a career in law enforcement in mind (University of Florida), and was even a deputy sheriff in Pinellas County, FL. But he shifted to Camelot Education, founded Success Schools, and has been busy with PA charter schools for a while. 

Lysek was tagged for Pennsylvania's Superintendent's Academy in 2018, and he seems generally to be the public face of EEACS. He's paid just under $200K for his work.

How exactly is EEACS paying for this $25 million project? Currently they have an operating budget, according to their website, of $20 million. 

But this is not their first big athletic project. In March, 2023, they announced that they would be building a 28,000 square foot fieldhouse for around $7 million. For that project, they partnered with the Lehigh Valley Health Network. Announced Lysek:

Our partnership with LVHN is a game-changer for Executive. Besides collaborating, the partnership will bring internship opportunities to our students with a career pathway program, scholarship opportunities — along with in-house expertise that will provide us with athletic trainers, strength and conditioning professionals and medical and mental health programs that will benefit all our students.

No such partnership has been announced for the football stadium.

We can debate all day the wisdom of dropping huge piles of money on school athletic facilities. But at least with a real public school, that discussion can be held by representatives elected by the taxpayers. EEASC gets to throw all these taxpayer dollars around without having to answer to taxpayers at all. 

More Administrators Should Be Scared

I almost feel sorry for Ebony Parker, the former assistant principal who is being sued for a pile of money by the teacher who was shot by a sixth grader.

Parker is in court again because she was told multiple times that the child had a gun in his backpack, and she didn't do anything about it. Parker has already been indicted by a grand jury for criminal charges of neglect and abuse regarding the incidents.

Teacher Abigail Zwerner was shot; the bullet passed through her hand and into her chest. Doctors determined that it would be safer to leave the bullet in place, so Zwerner gets to carry that little memento around for the rest of her days.

But I really do feel almost sorry for Parker, because administrators do this kind of shit all the time. All. The. Time. Parker just happened to lose the lottery.

Ask any teacher. It's likely they can tell the story of some administrator minimizing a concern or dodging a student issue.

This child was talking about suicide. "Well, just keep an eye on him all the time."

This child keeps bullying Janie on the bus. "Well, you know, boys will be boys."

This child screams and acts out every day in class. "Have you tried moving her seat?"

This child keeps calling the LGBTQ student in class names. "Maybe you should call home."

I just this student to the office five minutes ago for disrupting class by throwing their desk at other students. Why is he back in my classroom? "Well, we had a little chat and I think he'll be good now."

This child threw a book at me and hit me in the face with it. "Well, you look okay now. Maybe you should call home."

This child threatened to shoot me and other students in class. ""He was probably just worked up. Keep an eye on it, won't you?"

A good administrator is like a solid roof-- they keep the rain and snow and sleet off the teacher's head so that she can do her job. That includes helping students manage problems that go beyond the teacher's classroom duties.

I am not arguing that every disruptive or troublesome student needs punishment. But they do need some combination of consequences and support, and when administration tries to slough off those needs, when administration just kicks the can down the road, there can be really ugly outcomes. 

I've worked for several administrators whose problem-solving technique was Make Some Ineffective Noises and Hope The Trouble Passes. That's simply not okay. It doesn't provide safety and support for teachers to do their jobs. It also doesn't serve the interests of the students-- not the ones with the problem and not the ones who are in that same class.

I don't wish a life-derailing lawsuit on anyone, but I do wish that lawsuits like this one would scare some administrators into getting out of their cushy office chair and doing their damned job. That includes taking seriously teacher warnings about a threat to the education or safety of students. If you can't do it because it's the right thing to do, do it at the very least because when the worst happens, someone is going to hold you accountable. 

Diane Ravitch Gets It

Over at Forbes.com, I've posted a piece about Diane Ravitch's new memoir, An Education. That's my grown-up fake journalist piece; but I have a few more blog-appropriate things to say. 

Most folks know the basic outline of the Ravitch career, that she was a recognized and successful part of the conservative ed reform establishment who then turned away from the Dark Side and joined the Resistance--hell, basically co-founded the Resistance. 

I have never heard her talk or write much about what that change cost her, and she doesn't really talk about it in those terms in this book, but the early chapters show just how in that world she was. Connected to all the right people, welcome at all the right gatherings, in demand as a speaker, and the people--the names just keep coming. Ravitch was in the Room Where It Happens, and not just in it, but close friends with some of the folks in it with her. And she walked away from all that.

I don't point to that to say we should feel sad for what she gave up, but as a sign of just how tough she is. She looked at the reality on the ground and concluded that she had to change some core beliefs, and having changed them, she had to act on them. If there was more of that kind of intellectual and ethical toughness in the world, the world would be a better place. It's unusual enough that folks on the privatizer side have often assumed that someone must be paying her off, and a handful of people on the public school side were reluctant to fully trust her. 

There are other details in the book that attest to her guts and hard work. Her first book, The Great School Wars, was a history of the New York City public school system-- a massive research project that Ravitch in her mid-thirties just assigned to herself, a project so thorough and well-constructed that she could use it as her PhD thesis. 

There are lots of fun details in the book-- imagine the young Diane Ravitch swinging on a rope ladder outside a Wellesley dorm room where a formal dinner was in progress.

The book tells the story of how she got there, how she concluded that the policies that she had believed in were simply not so. And again-- many another person would have at that point either kept going through the motions, or retreated to a quiet cave, but Diane instead became an outspoken critic of the very policies, organizations, and people who had been her professional world.

Back in the early 2010s, I was a high school English teacher in a quiet rural and small town corner of Pennsylvania. I knew things were happening in education that just felt really wrong, and I went searching for answers. What I found was Diane Ravitch's blog, which was like a gathering place for many voices of advocacy for public school. It was where I found many writers who could help me make sense of things like Common Core and NCLB's undermining of public education. 

There are several people who were responsible for my finding an audience (or the audience finding me) but it was Diane's blog that got me my earliest connections to audiences. I didn't know any of these folks, didn't have any of the connections that hold together movements. At my first NPE conference, the most common question I got was some version of "Who the heck are you and where did you come from?" Diane's network had made it possible for me to find my connections with a larger movement.

I'm just one example of how Diane's extraordinary generosity in sharing her platform allowed all sorts of supporters of public education from all across the country to connect and support each other. It's a notably different approach to leadership than, say, making a movement all about yourself in an attempt to collect personal power on the backs of followers instead of lifting everyone up to be a leader and activist in their own little corner of the world.

The book provides part of answer to where a person like Diane comes from, where that kind of intellectual and ethical courage and diligence come from. And it also provides a clear, compact explaining of where modern ed reform has gone wrong, from the toxic test-and-punish approach of NCLB to the billionaire-driven privatization push to the culture panic debates currently raging. If you want to hand someone a quick simple explainer of what has gone wrong, you can do worse than the last few chapters of this book.

At 223 pages, this is a brisk read but an illuminating one. I highly recommend it. 

 

The Wrong Civics and Language

Rick Hess makes a point about civics education, specifically, how the real world lessons of civics are teaching an entire generation the wrong lessons. 

There’s a lot of handwringing about what the hell America’s young people are thinking. They’re deeply anxious about the future. They’re shockingly comfortable saying that it’s okay to use violence to stifle speech. They’re skeptical of democracy. They exhibit a disturbing affinity for socialism.

This isn’t good. And while it can be easy to slip into grumbling—“Damn kids, get off my lawn!”—every generation goes through this handwringing. As we turn into our parents, it’s easy to forget how worrisome our parents found us.

That doesn’t mean the concerns are misplaced, though. I think they do go beyond the inevitable “kids today” grumbling. 

We might also throw in the mental health issues and general air of dread. We're going to wrangle over some details (I still haven't located that school where the teachers are all teaching that America is awful), but I have to agree with his larger thesis:

A reasonable observer could conclude that America’s leaders are striving to deliver a lesson in dysfunctional democracy, irresponsible stewardship, corrupt capitalism, and disdain for the rule of law.

Add fear and panic to that list. You can list all the examples yourself, and while Hess may reach a little too Both Sides this, again, he's fundamentally on point. If you are a young American, it's been a while since you've seen the government actually work, or even seen more than a handful of politicians attempt to act out of principle and patriotism rather than opportunism and tribalism. We haven't seen government perform its basic functions (pass a real budget on time lately?) and we haven't seen it respond effectively to a crisis. 

Covid is only the most recent example-- I'm not talking about the flatfooted response to it in real time which is in many ways understandable, but the immediate work of turning it to political advantage, an impulse so overwhelming that Donald Trump doesn't dare brag about his one legitimate accomplishment in getting a vaccine out quickly and helping life get back to slight-more-normal. 

We can look back at the housing collapse of 2008 and the recession it spawned, or cast back to the Enron scandal (only 2001, and lots of folks have already forgotten). In so any cases, institutions failed, and our civic institutions focused on getting use from the damage rather than mitigating it. 

We are drowning in debt and dysfunction, a malignant late-stage capitalism dominated by make-nothing rentiers, watching government harnessed to nothing more profound than one man's thirst for fealty and vengeance. I have to nod when Hess writes, 

Honestly, if I were a teen or a twentysomething watching this unfold, I might have trouble mustering much faith in our institutions or values, too. I’d certainly be skeptical of educators who yammer about foundational principles when our leaders evince such blatant disrespect for those values in practice. Indeed, I might regard faith in democratic norms or free markets as a sucker’s game, best left to those ill-informed or naïve enough to ignore the evidence they can see with their own eyes.

This dovetails with another piece from the free market axis of reformerland. Robert Pondiscio returns to the point that teaching should embody humility and neutrality, his familiar point that teachers are not supposed to enter the classroom as "change agents" or "architects of democracy."

Public education is, however, an essential government service. It exists not to change society but to sustain it—to transmit the shared knowledge, language, habits, and civic norms upon which self-government depends. That mission requires restraint, not evangelism; humility, not heroism.

I actually agree with Pondiscio; teachers should enter the classroom as agents of the community, not crusaders for their own ideology. 

Except...

In the world where under-thirty folks have grown up, as described by Hess, where would they have identified the "shared knowledge, language, habits, and civic norms" on which the country depends. When the President has spent a decade trashing civic and legal norms, when a vocal part of the body politic is hollering to undo the civil rights movement. If you are of Certain Ages, as Hess, Pondiscio and I are, it may be easy to remember the ideals and norms central to this country on its best days. If you are under thirty, I'm not sure those things are obvious. If MAGA is correct in their general set of beliefs, then there are a bunch of old norms to be thrown out; if they are wrong, what is there for teachers except to be self-directed rebellious "architects of democracy." (You can substitute your favorite far-Left bete noir if you like; I just don't think that voice is very loud right now).

I'm trying to dance around a lot of rabbit holes here, but if you are someone who has been holding the wrong end of America's diversity shtick for years, none of this is new. The Youngs are not the first to deal with the idea that the government might not be trustworthy and the dominant culture might not be hospitable, even as there is constant battling over what the "dominant culture" really is. Is it the loudest one? Is it the culture that a well-connected ideologically-driven government-linked organization insists is the "true" one? The one that gets most media coverage, or the one that saturates the interwebs? Is it the locally dominant culture that a teacher should represent? 

In short (ish), I think teachers should serve the community and not their own personal agenda (up to a point but not, say, requiring LGBTQ persons to pretend they are straight). But that's a pretty complicated tangle of stuff to sort out.

But I have a thought. I think there's something the culture is promoting that may be even worse than messed up civics. I may have a professional bias here, between years of teaching English and writing, but we have a big problem with language.

We are drowning in an absolute ocean of bullshit and lies, so much so that we implicitly understand that there are times when words simply don't mean what they say, or even anything at all. My siblings and I have to explain to our 91 year old mother that all the things that pop up on her computer screen are simply lies and can be ignored (thank God her phone is now out of circulation and she no longer gets calls from lying marketeers). I am daily amazed at how we have accepted the idea that to simply function and get through the day, one must assume that a huge percentage of the language one encounters is deliberately dishonest. 

Mike Johnson can offer some absurd statement and he knows he's lying and all of us from all the tribes know that he's lying and he knows we know, but this is language used as a sort of jousting match that doesn't resemble the actual purpose of language. AI uses language as a sort of constructed tool that is in no way related to the idea of one intellect trying to communicate with another. Dear Leader long ago embraced the notion that language is a stick you use to poke other people, and that said poking can be done more effectively if one lets go of the antique notion that your words should be connected however loosely to reality.

At the same time, the playing field is loaded with people whose whole professional career is about selling a particular idea or accomplishing advocacy goals, regardless of what they have to say or do to get the job done. Or consider the feckless Democrats, who too often end up paralyzed because are trying to craft language that will push the voters in the right direction, instead of trying to communicate what they actually believe. 

Language is our most basic tool for bridging the gap between humans, yet we increasingly accept that it is also useful to manipulate others or fend them off. Is it any wonder that the Youngs are struggling with feelings of isolation? 

We can say, correctly, that this is not new, that language has always been used at times to manipulate and manhandle, but I'll argue that for whatever reason (politics? internet explosion? modern media?) it is now way way worse than ever, and dangerously so.

So yes-- we would be better off as a country if people worried more about the lessons they are teaching the Youngs when it comes to civics, but I say the same for language.

We won't, as a culture. do it, because too many people find the abuse of language too useful, and because it would be hard to win their favorite arguments if they argued honestly, with words that actually say what they mean. That in turns brings on a lot of conjecture about what someone is up to and why, with that conjecture also wrapped in layers of dishonest baloney. So instead of talking about what we're really talking about, we get trapped in endless arm wrestling over how to "frame" the discussion aka redefine the language so that it means what we want it to mean. 

So if you're in a classroom, make the use of accurate and honest language a daily, explicit value. Value language as a tool for communicating and understanding rather than manipulating and attack. Cool thing about this is that it requires zero ideological baggage, but if we want to argue about the ideological baggage we have, the deal is to discuss it with honest and accurate language. There are so many days when I look at what is going on in the country and think we could do some much better if we would just talk about what we're actually talking about instead of trying to leverage bullshit as a sort of force against opponents.

We can't have a real discussion about or display of civics without accurate and honest use of language. But with honest and accurate language, there's not much we couldn't talk about; even if we couldn't settle it, we would at least emerge with a better understanding of what's going on. 

It's a big dream, like dreaming that we'll have a culture that values civics and culture and considers what effect adult misbehavior is having on the children. But it's a dream worth having. And if all that seems too complicated, I'll leave you with a simple principle that I try to use with my own children. It's not complicated, but when I'm making my choices about what to do and how to do it, I boil it down to a simple question--

What do I want my children to see me doing?

If only we could get a few more people to try that out. 

The Department of Labor's Poster Boy

Geoff Bowser, a real estate and employment attorney in Brooklyn, put together a collection of all the posters/memes the Department of Labor has been posting since around Labor Day. 

Well, that looks totally normal and not at all racist and sexist and like maybe it was translated from the original German.

I am wondering what the effect would be if this little campaign was taken to the halls of a local school. How could we expect students to react to this? Especially the students who are not white christian males? 

I mean, what is the message for educators and education? Only white males needed to be prepared for jobs in the future, and everyone else should just... disappear? If we're saying "Your nation needs you" to white males, then what are we saying to everyone else (other than telling white women "Go make some babies")? 

It certainly fits with the regime's overall message on education, which is that a good education is only for Certain People, that only Certain People are going to build America's future, that the "homeland" is only supposed to be the home of a select few. 

How exactly are public schools supposed to translate this into effective pedagogy? Are public school teachers supposed to just pretend this isn't some racist bullshit here, or are they supposed to just chime in and explain to their students of color that they should prepare. in fact, for life as second class citizens? Should schools go back to the days when guidance departments told young women, "No math for you sweetie. You just need a full courseload of home ec."

This is the visual equivalent of the quiet part out loud. Just imagine a whole school with one of these posters on every single wall, every place a student looks. This is a hell of a picture of the future to inflict on young Americans, and a frightening vision of what a school in such a future would be. 

ICYMI: Food Bank Edition (10/26)

Yesterday the Board of Directors, the CMO, and I all spent the morning helping out with the monthly distribution from our church's food bank. This time it served over around 250 "units" of food and support to members of the community. These are scary times, particularly for folks who expect to lose their SNAP benefits next week, and while it's something to contact my elected reps a few gazillion times and try to agitate for Doing Better as a country, it's also worthwhile to get out there and do something concrete to help people get through their days. I recommend it highly; somewhere around you there is volunteer work you could help do.

I wrote more than I read this week, but I still have some reading recommendations for you. Here we go.

This ‘public Christian school’ opened quietly in Colorado. Now there could be a legal fight.

Well, we knew this issue would be up again. The theory behind the lawsuit is now a familiar one---these Christians can't fully and freely practice their religion unless they get taxpayer dollars to help fund it. Ann Schimke and Erica Melzer report for Chalkbeat.

Trump Gutted the Institute of Education Sciences. Its Renewal Is in Doubt.

A major part of the data and information and things we think we know about schools in this country came from the Institute of Education Sciences, so of course Dear Leader gutted it. Ryan Quinn at Inside Higher Ed gets into the messy rubble and prospects for the future.

AI "agents," man

Ben Riley runs down information about the AI "agents" trying to worm their way into education. Also, a nifty assortment of links.

US student handcuffed after AI system apparently mistook bag of chips for gun

Everything going just perfectly in the surveillance state.

Where Did the Money Go?

Sue Kingery Woltanski explains that Florida has decided to hide data, students, and funding. One more amazing look at education the way only Florida can do it.

Book Bans and Bullshit

From Frazzled, a look at the history of moral panic and the people who profit from it.

Remembering Why There’s a Special Education Law

Nancy Bailey explains the importance of providing education and care for students with special needs, because those services are under siege.

AI-generated lesson plans fall short on inspiring students and promoting critical thinking

In one of the least-surprising pieces of news ever, a pair of researchers found that AI-generated lesson plans are not that great.

Now Is the Time of Monsters

Audrey Watters takes a look at the wave of AI slop in education. It is not good.

When School Content Decisions Become Unconstitutional

Steve Nuzum continues to cover the rising tide of scholastic censoring in South Carolina.

What the History of Supermarkets Teaches Us About AI in Schools

Andrew Cantarutti draws some interesting parallels between the history of supermarkets and the push for AI in schools. Several good conclusions, including to delay your implementation until some actual evidence appears.

Ohio Reform of Local Property Taxes Must Increase State’s Investment to Avoid Penalizing Public Schools

Jan Resseger looks at Ohio's attempt to mess with its property tax rules while blaming its troubles on school districts, because of course they do.

Grift, Grit, and the Great Voucher Grab

TC Weber and a pot pourri of all the Tenessee education shenanigans.

Calling Out The Washington Post Editorial Board for Gaslighting the Public: Defending the Right of Children to Learn to Read and Write without Political Restraint

Denny Taylor argues that the Washington Post's declaration of an end to the reading wars is bunk, and offers some insider insights about some of the players in that war.

The Reckoning: Sora 2 and the Year We Said Enough

Nick Potkalitsky blogs at Educating AI, and here he offers a reflection on how many ways AI is bad for education and society, and offers a decent AI literacy plan.

The Right-Wing Myth of American Heritage

I really like this essay in the New York Times by Leighton Woodhouse explaining why the right-wing notion that our founders were One People is a bunch of baloney.

Escaping the Trap of Efficiency: The Counterintuitive Antidote to the Time-Anxiety That Haunts and Hampers Our Search for Meaning

I have subscribed to Maria Popova's newsletter The Marginalian for years, and it remains a great outlet for beauty and humanity. See also "Thank You, Everything: An Illustrated Love Letter to the World"

How To Join ICE

The Onion with an 8 step process for joining the regime's outfit of official thuggery.

This week, over at Forbes.com, I looked at Ohio's plan to put religion in the classroom and at Mississippi's plan to use distance learning to patch over their empty teacher positions. 

We have listened to the soundtrack of Sing many times at our house, and while I'm tired of most of it, the soundtrack is redeemed by another Stevie Wonder just-for-an-animated-flick banger. Plus Ariana Grande, pre-Glinda. 

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