Friday, April 11, 2025
Where Do Book Complaints Come From? The State of the Library Report
Thursday, April 10, 2025
PA Tells Trump To Back Off In Slickest Way Possible
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 provides that “[n]o person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
But in one weird trick that right wingers like to use, they have reinterpreted that to mean "don't deny any white guys cool stuff that other people get," grouped those naughty behaviors under the DEI label, and tried to back it up by brandishing the SCOTUS decision for SFFA v. Harvard-- the one that struck down Affirmative Action.
Having decided that simply declaring their new version of the law was not enough, the regime has declared that every state and local district must sign a loyalty oath, saying they have reviewed the regime demand and admit it's a requirement for federal financial support. This is an attempt to get state and local educators to comply in advance, as if the courts have already agreed with the regime's assertion that DEI is actually illegal.
Many Democrat-led states and districts have pushed back hard. California and Vermont told districts to go ahead and ignore the loyalty oath demands. Chicago's mayor said, "See you in court."
Pennsylvania has simply employed ju-jitsu or a double-reverse or whatever you want to call it.
First, the latter from Executive Deputy Secretary of Education Angela Fitterer was sent via e-mail, like the regime's demand, because if the regime doesn't know how to manage major pieces of business, we can play that game to.
Second, the PA letter is addressed "Dear Sir or Madam," underscoring the fact that the regime's edict was sent out unsigned.
Third, the letter affirms that Pennsylvania follows Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1864, always has, always will. So no problem here. It ignores the attempt to re-interpret that language and simply addresses the issue that the feds pretend to raise--whether or not people are following Title VI.
We'll see how this plays out. Maybe someone at the federal ed department will actually sign a real letter saying, "No, we need you to swear allegiance to our cockeyed new definition of Title VI." Or maybe they will just say, "See, Pennsylvania also agrees to follow Title VI" and pretend that people don't mean two entirely different thing when they talk about Title VI. Maybe they'll get pissy and yell, "No, you have to agree that Title VI only means what WE think it means and not what people have thought it meant for the last sixty years."
It's not as feisty as some states, nor as subservient as others, but it puts Pennsylvania on the right side of this issue. I do love a display of passive-aggressive non-compliance, and anything that puts MAGA "clarifying" and reasserting their racist intentions is better than the obsfucatory bullshit they've been employing.
"We're just demanding you follow Title VI," they said, pleased with their own cleverness at owning the libs by turning their own laws against them.
"What a coincidence," says Pennsylvania. "We have been following Title VI all along and have every intention of continuing to do so. So glad we agree on this."
We'll see what the next move is.
Wednesday, April 9, 2025
Wendell Berry's Rules for New Tech
Wendell Berry was born in 1934 and grew to be a writer across a wide number of forms, as well as working as an activist and farmer, mostly in rural Kentucky. He opposed the Vietnam War, debated Then-Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz, and published a critique of George W. Bush's post-9/11 strategy. When he was 76 years old, he and 14 other protestors got themselves locked in the Kentucky governor's office to protest mountaintop removal coal mining (strip mining on steroids). And he's still at it, delivering hearing testimony in 2022.
Berry came up with rules for things; you may very well have seen some over the years. There are his 17 rules for a sustainable local community, and his 9 rules for consumption, but today I'm looking at his 9 rules for technology. Blogger Ted Gioia reminded me of these rules; Berry whipped them up as a response to friends who were trying to convince him that a computer would be a step up from handwritten copy typed up on a thirty-year-old typewriter ("Why I Am Not Going To Buy A Computer," 1987).
The rules have many applications, but they fit very nicely for the conversations we continue to have in education, particular the heavily-pushed AI. So let's take a look.
The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces.It should be at least as small in scale as the one it replaces.
It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, and this includes family and community relationships.
Monday, April 7, 2025
Dangerous Learning and Culture Panic
Sunday, April 6, 2025
ICYMI: Columbus Edition (4/6)
Naval Academy removes nearly 400 books from library in new DEI purge ordered by Hegseth’s office
Saturday, April 5, 2025
Maybe It's The Racism
“I really still don’t understand how it’s a political statement,” she said. “I don’t think the classroom is a place for anyone to push a personal agenda or political agenda of any kind, but we are responsible for first making sure that our students are able to learn in our classroom.”
Friday, April 4, 2025
Trump, McMahon, and Gollum's Lie
They couldn't resist. Faced with a choice between either sending education back to the states in the form of unrestricted block grants or using the power of that big pile of money to force states to bend the knee, the administration just could not throw the Ring of Power away. Especially when they can use The Precious to force their most favorite thing in the world-- making someone bow to them and kiss the ring, acknowledging that Dear Leader is their master, and they will do as Dear Leader tells them to.
So the Department of Education will require every school and state to sign a statement certifying that they will absolutely comply with the administration's demand that they never, ever touch that nasty DEI stuff. Otherwise, the administration will withhold the money. Dance, puppets! Dance!
This is yet another probably-illegal Trump move; the federal government is expressly forbidden to dictate to local schools how they are going to do business. But Trump wouldn't be the first President to look at that obstacle and say, "I'll bet we can work around this." No Child Left Behind and Race To The Top wore that obstacle down to barely a speed bump.
So rather than wait for the courts to weigh in and then Trump to ignore them and then for them to weigh in again, I have an idea about how districts can deal with this.
Lie.
Pinky promise that you will never ever touch the dirty DEI. Make the pledge. Sign whatever piece of paper they concoct. And then go back to doing what you know is right.
I mean, lying is the Trump way. Say whatever the hell you want, make whatever claims suit you, and then go back to doing whatever you intended to do. Breaking agreements and welching on contracts is the Trump business way, and given the amount of government contractual obligation being cut off in mid progress, it's apparently the Trump government way as well.
And Trump and McMahon are lying right now with this demand. The administration continues to be coy and vague about what, exactly, about DEI they want stopped. One reason is because having clear rules reduces the dependence on Dear Leader. It's not just that the chilling effect will lead to people over-complying in advance. It's that having a clear rule would mean that people wouldn't have to constantly turn back to Dear Leader for approval. "There are no rules," says the authoritarian ruler. "Not even rules I make. There is only me. Don't ever take your attention away from me."
The DEI rules are also vague because even these guys know that saying out loud, "The nice things must always be only for the white people. You must never give attention, privilege, or support to non-white people that is more than what white people get."
See, they are lying about what this edict requires.
If you are a long-time regular reader, you know that I am not a fan of lying. I hate lies. Lying is a toxic activity, and it always comes with a cost.
They are lying about what they want, about what they are demanding schools to do. What they appear to want is A) for every school and state in the country to acknowledge that Dear Leader is the boss of them and B) stop trying to give nice things to people who aren't white.
I hate lies. But schools are now in a lose-lose, lie-lie situation. Either they accept the lies implicit in the edict, or they lie about what they are going to do. One of those lies allows for mistreatment of students and erosion of the independence and local control of schools. The other lets educators do the work they are supposed to be doing.
Gollum could not willingly give up the ring of power, and he used it for terrible purposes. Would it have been wrong to lie to him? These are the kinds of moral dilemas we face these days.
I was about halfway through my career when I concluded that teaching is a sort of guerilla battle in which one pursues the work and does whatever one must to circumvent obstacles, even if those obstacles are things (and people) that are supposed to be supporting you. How many teachers dealt with requirements to tag every bit of every lesson plan with the specific standards it would address by simply adding whatever tags filled up the space and then went back to work, paperwork requirements met. Schools could do that again.
Difficult times call for difficult choices. I'm just saying.
Wednesday, April 2, 2025
OK: Another First Amendment Lawsuit
Oklahoma's Education Dudebro-in-Chief just loves him some lawsuits, so he's decided to launch another one, this time going after the Freedom From Religion Foundation in a federal lawsuit that pushes back against a challenge to his efforts to inject Christianity into Oklahoma classrooms.
The triggering event for Walters appears to have been a cease and desist letter sent to Achilles Public School on behalf of a parent who objected to a beginning the day with a mandatory prayer and teachers reading Bible verses to students. Walters says this is about more than a single school, but does not name other schools in the suit. FFRF surmises that these may be references to other complaints against Oklahoma schools that were peacefully settled in previous years.Walters statement about the suit boils down to "We won't let these out-of-state atheists try to erase faith from public life." FFRF is based in Wisconsin.
The sequence of event laid out by the complaint puts the letter in the context of his drive to address the “dismantling of faith and family values in public schools.” It notes that he made his Bibles-in-classrooms directive, then opened the Office of Religious Liberty and Patriotism, and so, in line with that, an APS teacher started using Bible verses in lessons, and the school started including prayers in morning announcements. Shortly after that, the superintendent received the letter regarding “unconstitutional school-sponsored prayer and bible readings.” FFRF requested that the school knock it off.
The actual argument cites the "trendy disdain for deep religious convictions" line from Espinoza. It argues that Oklahoma is super-religious (therefor, I guess, they want religion injected in schools). OSDE and Walters are doing their job of determining what Oklahoma students should learn, and FFRF
has interfered with and continues to interfere with Superintendent Walters’s and OSDE’s statutory duty to oversee Oklahoma’s public schools and their duty to implement curricular standards, investigate any complaints levied against an Oklahoma school, and advocate for its students and parents.
There is the usual dismissal of the wall between church and state:
FFRF claims as its basis for such interference as its desire to “promote the constitutional principle of separation of church and state.” Curiously, neither the word “separation” nor the word “church” appears anywhere in the text of the United States Constitution. By contrast, the Declaration of Independence makes reference to God, a “Creator,” a “Supreme Judge,” and “Divine Providence,” thereby solidifying the notion that a complete “separation of church and state” was never the intention of the Nation’s founders.
The complaint also paints FFRF as just annoying busybodies, going all the way back to their response to the 1996 Oklahoma bombing. The audacity.
In reality, their actions are nothing more than the very prejudice, hatred, and bigotry they pretend to despise hidden behind a thinly woven cloak of constitutional championship.
Finally, Achille is a small town and FFRF has 40,000 members. So FFRF, argues the complaint in "an analogy sure to draw FFRF's ire, is Goliath picking on a David.
And while the plaintiffs face "irreparable injury," not so the FFRF
as the Defendant has no interest in how the State of Oklahoma chooses to govern its citizens, how the duly elected Superintendent of Public Instruction performs the duties of his office, or how Oklahoma’s public schools implement curriculum and standards set forth by the OSDE and the State Board of Education. Granting an injunction weighs in favor of public interest. If the citizens of Oklahoma are unhappy with their elected officials, the solution is at the ballot box, and not in the hands of an out-of-state organization with little else to do but issue non-stop cease and desist letters to rural and independent school districts in states that are half a country away from them.
I include all these quotes just to give a sense of how angry the lawsuit is. Walters, like many MAGA christianists, just seems so angry and unhappy.
The lawsuit can't quite make up its mind about what's going on here. This Bible reading shouldn't be a big deal because the Supreme Court has long recognized "the secular value of religious texts, including the Bible, in school settings" but also the court should enjoin FFRF from interfering with the school faculty, staff or students "exercising their rights under the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment." So, there are no religious practices going on here, and also, how dare you interfere with these religious practices. But they're correct in mentioning the First Amendment, because if Walters' various Religion (But Only My Religion) In The Classroom policies aren't a violation of the Establishment Clause, I don't know what is.
So here we go-- one more case to pry apart the First Amendment and batter the separation of church and state. Who knows how this will turn out, other than resulting in one more Ryan Walters media blitz. But in the meantime, if you'd like to join or contribute to the Freedom From Religion Foundation, you can do that here.
Where Does AI Fit In The Writing Process
Sunday, March 30, 2025
Ready For An AI Dean?
From the very first sentence, it's clear that this recent Inside Higher Ed post suffers from one more bad case of AI fabulism.
In the era of artificial intelligence, one in which algorithms are rapidly guiding decisions from stock trading to medical diagnoses, it is time to entertain the possibility that one of the last bastions of human leadership—academic deanship—could be next for a digital overhaul.
AI fabulism and some precious notions about the place of deans in the universe of human leadership.
The author is Birce Tanriguden, a music education professor at the Hartt School at the University of Hartford, and this inquiry into what "AI could bring to the table that a human dean can't" is not her only foray into this topic. This month she also published in Women in Higher Education a piece entitled "The Artificially Intelligent Dean: Empowering Women and Dismantling Academic Sexism-- One Byte at a Time."
The WHE piece is academic-ish, complete with footnotes (though mostly about the sexism part). In that piece, Tanriguden sets out her possible solution
AI holds the potential to be a transformative ally in promoting women into academic leadership roles. By analyzing career trajectories and institutional biases, our AI dean could become the ultimate career counselor, spotting those invisible banana peels of bias that often trip up women's progress, effectively countering the "accumulation of advantage" that so generously favors men.
Tanriguden notes the need to balance efficiency with empathy:
Despite the promise of AI, it's crucial to remember that an AI dean might excel in compiling tenure-track spreadsheets but could hardly inspire a faculty member with a heartfelt, "I believe in you." Academic leadership demands more than algorithmic precision; it requires a human touch that AI, with all its efficiency, simply cannot emulate.
I commend the author's turns of phrase, but I'm not sure about her grasp of AI. In fact, I'm not sure that current Large Language Models aren't actually better at faking a human touch than they are at arriving at efficient, trustworthy, data-based decisions.
Back to the IHE piece, in which she lays out what she thinks AI brings to the deanship. Deaning, she argues, involves balancing all sorts of competing priorities while "mediating, apologizing and navigating red tape and political minefields."
The problem is that human deans are, well, human. As much as they may strive for balance, the delicate act of satisfying all parties often results in missteps. So why not replace them with an entity capable of making precise decisions, an entity unfazed by the endless barrage of emails, faculty complaints and budget crises?
The promise of AI lies in its ability to process vast amounts of data and reach quick conclusions based on evidence.
Well, no. First, nothing being described here sounds like AI; this is just plain old programming, a "Dean In A Box" app. Which means it will process vast amounts of data and reach conclusions based on whatever the program tells it to do with that data, and that will be based on whatever the programmer wrote. Suppose the programmer writes the program so that complaints from male faculty members are weighted twice as much as those from female faculty. So much for AI dean's "lack of personal bias."
But suppose she really means AI in the sense of software that uses a form of machine learning to analyze and pull out patterns in its training data. AI "learns: to trade stocks by being trained with a gazillion previous stock trades and situations, thereby allowing it to suss out patterns for when to buy or sell. Medical diagnostic AI is training with a gazillion examples of medical histories of patients, allowing it to recognize how a new entry from a new patient fits in all that the patterns. Chatbots like ChatGPT do words by "learning" from vast (stolen) samples of word use that lead to a mountain of word patter "rules" that allow it to determine what words are likely next.
All of these AI are trained on huge data sets of examples from the past.
What would you use to train AI Dean? What giant database would you use to train it, what collection of info about the behavior of various faculty and students and administrators and colleges and universities in the past? More importantly, who would label the data sets as "successful" or "failed"? Medical data sets come with simple metrics like "patient died from this" or "the patient lived fifty more years with no issues." Stock markets come with their own built in measure of success. Who is going to determine which parts of the Dean Training Dataset are successful or not.
This is one of the problems with chatbots. They have a whole lot of data about how language has been used, but no meta-data to cover things like "This is horrifying racist nazi stuff and is not a desirable use of language" and so we get the multiple examples of chatbots going off the rails.
Tanriguden tries to address some of this. Under the heading of how AI Dean would evaluate faculty.
With the ability to assess everything from research output to student evaluations in real time, AI could determine promotions, tenure decisions and budget allocations with a cold, calculated rationality. AI could evaluate a faculty member’s publication record by considering the quantity of peer-reviewed articles and the impact factor of the journals in which they are published.
Followed by some more details about those measures. Which raises another question. A human could do this-- if they wanted to. But if they don't want to, why would they want a computer program to do it?
The other point here is that once again, the person deciding what the algorithm is going to measure is the person whose biases are embedded in the system.
Tanriguden also presents "constant availability, zero fatigue" as a selling point. She says deans have to do a lot of meetings, but (her real example) when, at 2 AM, the department chair needs a decision on a new course offering, AI Dean can provide an answer "devoid of any influence of sleep deprivation or emotional exhaustion."
First, is that really a thing that happens? Because I'm just a K-12 guy, so maybe I just don't know. But that seems to me like something that would happen in an organization that has way bigger problems than any AI can solve. But second, once again, who decided what AI Dean's answer will be based upon? And if it's such a clear criterion that it can be codified in software, why can't even a sleepy human dean apply it?
Finally, she goes with "fairness and impartiality," dreaming of how AI Dean would apply rules "without regard to the political dynamics of a faculty meeting." Impartial? Sure (though we could argue about how desirable that is, really). Fair? Only as fair as it was written to be, which starts with the programmer's definition of "fair."
Tanriguden wraps up the IHE piece once again acknowledging that leadership needs more than data as well as "the issue of the academic heart."
It is about understanding faculty’s nuanced human experiences, recognizing the emotional labor involved in teaching and responding to the unspoken concerns that shape institutional culture. Can an AI ever understand the deep-seated anxieties of a faculty member facing the pressure of publishing or perishing? Can it recognize when a colleague is silently struggling with mental health challenges that data points will never reveal?
In her conclusion she arrives at Hybrid Dean as an answer:
While the advantages of AI—efficiency, impartiality and data-driven decision-making—are tantalizing, they cannot fully replace the empathy, strategic insight and mentorship that human deans provide. The true challenge may lie not in replacing human deans but in reimagining their roles so that they can coexist with AI systems. Perhaps the future of academia involves a hybrid approach: an AI dean that handles (or at least guides) the operational decisions, leaving human deans to focus on the art of leadership and faculty development.
We're seeing lots of this sort of resigned knuckling under in lots of education folks who seem resigned to the predicted inevitability of AI (as always in ed tech, predicted by people who have a stake in the biz). But the important part here is that I don't believe that AI can hold up its half of the bargain. In a job that involves management of humans and education and interpersonal stuff in an ever-changing environment, I don't believe AI can bring any of the contributions that she expects from it.
ICYMI: One Week To Go Edition (3/30)
Banned Books, School Walkouts, Child Care Shortages: Military Families Confront Pentagon's Shifting Rules