OK: Fake History and Walters Follies

Oklahoma's state slogan has been through a variety of changes, but they may change it to "We rewrite history." Oklahoma has been working on revised standards for history classes in the state for a while now, and just as they got down to the finish line, those standards picked up just a few more objectionable additions.

Sash Ndisabiye and Bennett Brinkman for NonDoc got their hands on a copy of the proposed standards, and there have been a few changes since the standards were set out for public comments.

The headline-grabbing change calls for high school students to "identify discrepancies in 2020 election results by looking at graphs and other information, including the sudden halting of ballot-counting in select cities in key battleground states, the security risks of mail-in balloting, sudden batch dumps, an unforeseen record number of voters, and the unprecedented contradiction of "bellwether county" trends."

What's the goal here? If they can get high school students to look over all the "evidence" that failed to convince a single court, maybe they can finally uncover someone who will find in favor of the Big Lie? No, I expect the hope is just to convince a few folks that the Big Lie is true, and 15-year-olds are about the only demographic left with which they have a shot. Easiest to rewrite history for those who haven't read much of it yet. 

NonDoc reports that this change (and many others) were made after the public comment period, and were also not pointed out to the Board of Education before it voted on the standards. 

If course, that might be because the Board is no longer a group of hand-picked allies of Oklahoma's Dudebro-in-chief of Education Ryan Walters. That's fallout from ongoing feuding among Oklahoma's big name GOP politicians. Walters tried to get State Attorney General Gentner Drummond to make some noise about Trump's anti-diversity edicts to support Walters own response, but Drummond, who has often clashed with Walters, called it "manufactured political drama" intended to get Walters more attention. Drummond is running for governor, Kevin Stitt wants to keep being governor, and Walters sure looks like he's running for something (especially now that Dear Leader didn't call him to DC). 

Then Walters decided to require all schools to send him a list of every undocumented immigrant child, and even Stitt thought that was too much ("picking on kids" he called it) and fired three members of the Board of Education. Walters put two of them on a new made-up thing called the "Trump Advisory Committee" because his old BFF Stitt is now part of the "liberal DC swamp."

Which is why it was one of the new members that ended up telling NonDoc, re: the standards changes, "In the spirit of full transparency, I question why this was done in the 11th hour and why no mention of this was made during the presentation at the board meeting."

House Common Education Committee Chairman Dick Lowe told NonDoc that the standards were already "on the edge" because of the overt Christianity references.

That's not the whole of it. The standards have the usual dopey standards features, like the kindergarten standard that calls for kindergartners to read primary and secondary documents and identify the main ideas of the text. But some curious political items just sort of quietly slipped into the standards.

"Identifying major policy issues" became "Explain the effects of the Trump tax cuts, child tax credit, border enforcement efforts including Title 42 and Remain in Mexico policy, consumer and business confidence, interest rates, and inflation rates prior to the COVID-19 pandemic."

Or how about “Identify the source of the COVID-19 pandemic from a Chinese lab and the economic and social effects of state and local lockdowns.”

And just in case any upstart history teachers feel the urge to make Infrastructure Week jokes, the sneaky revision eliminated “Describe bi-partisan efforts to address the nation’s infrastructural needs.” Rewrite away!

Unfortunately, at the contentious February 27 meeting of the state board, Walters created the impression of a looming deadline and the standards were improved, sneaky changes unseen.

Senator Mark Mann, a former teacher who sits on the Senate Education Committee, summed it all up for NonDoc.

“Anytime you put nonsense like this out, it does two things: One, it makes teachers worried (…) So they just leave something out and don’t teach it, and then kids aren’t understanding and grasping the concept. Or, they do what a lot of teachers have done, and they just decide, ‘You know what, I can go make more at Paycom. I’m not putting up with this stuff anymore.'”

Yup. State standards are most often a PITA paperwork exercise, and once you see that some of them are nonsense, you fill out your lesson plans to look compliant, and then you ignore the damned things. The effect?

“Ryan Walters, clearly, outside of being a total disaster, has done nothing to help solve the teacher shortage,” Mann said. “He’s added to it because teachers don’t want to work under him.”

This next governor's race in Oklahoma is going to be really interesting for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is to see if Ryan Walters has established such a noisy, dysfunctionally high profile that he may be the first state education chief to be an actual campaign issue. It was Stitt who raised Walters up to the state level; let's see how hard he runs away from that. And then, once we see the outcome, we'll see how the Oklahoma state standards rewrite the tale. 

Come Talk With Me About "Choice"

If you are in the NW PA area, I'm inviting you to join me for an evening explainer about school choice.

The school choice world is complicated' even as "choice" policies have spread, the language and technicalities of the school choice biz have become the kind of maze that is mainly understood by folks who spend their days reading through the laws and the bills and the policy discussions. You know-- people like retired teachers who write about education. 

There are so many issues in the wind, from federal vouchers to education savings accounts to the prospect of religious charter schools to (in the case of our state) the annual attempt to pass a new voucher bill (a scary prospect in a state with a Democratic governor who is voucher-friendly). 

So in a couple of weeks, I'll be whipping out some slides and trying to make it all make sense to the average human being who is doing more than swimming in education policy all day.

If you're in the neighborhood, I'll be in the meeting room at the Oil City Public Library on Thursday, March 27, at 6:00 PM. Admission is free and I would be delighted to see you there.

ICYMI: Birdie Edition (3/16)

I spent the week playing trombone in the pit for a local production of Bye Bye Birdie, which is not always my most favorite show in the world, but I love watching the students lay their hearts out on stage. If you don't know the show, it spins off the drafting of Elvis and the hubbub over sending a pop star off to the military while his fans work themselves into a frenzy. But the necessities of casting in high school productions often create intriguing side effects. Like, what if Belle's wacky inventor father was instead her wacky inventor mother? In this production's case, Conrad Birdie is Black. Doesn't change the show in big ways, but it gives it a slightly different flavor. 

At any rate, that show has been the big user of my evenings this week, but I still have a reading list for you. Here we go.

‘We're left reeling': Three Arizona school districts lose millions in federal funding amid push to end DEI policies

Here we go. Somebody used the word equity and now students in three districts will have to pay the price.

Musk's War on Farmers and Hungry Kids

Andy Spears offers quick take on Trusk's attempt to screw children and farmers in one fellonious swoop.

Linda McMahon’s Fake ‘Mission': The States Already Control Education

I've missed Peter Cunningham, a little, sort of. But here he is in Education Week pointing out that the "send education back to the states" rhetoric is baloney.

Chaos and confusion as the statistics arm of the Education Department is reduced to a skeletal staff of 3

Jill Barshay at Hechinger tries to unravel the destruction of the whole data wing of the department.

The Strange Bedfellows Fighting School Vouchers

Jennifer Berkshire has been on a tear lately. Here she is with more information about how there's a whole load of voucher opponents on the far right.

A School District Rejected a Black Author’s Book About Tulsa for Its Curriculum. Then the Community Decided to Act.

I love it when a book ban is thwarted by regular human persons in a community. Phil Lewis tells the story.

GOP voucher plan would divert billions in taxes to private schools

Yeah, I'm still mad at the Washington Post, but this piece by Laura Meckler is a good summation of the federal voucher plan.

Billionaires Pave the Way for Trump’s Federal Vouchers in the School Privatization Movement

Mike DeGuire provides more information about those federal vouchers. It will not make you feel better.

Private school vouchers: Ohio’s richest families access scholarships

Let's once again see data that vouchers are entitlements for the rich.

AI as School Monitor and Measurement

There is no earthly reason that you should not be subscribed to Audrey Watters newsletter. You get stuff like this:

One of the things that struck me about Dan Meyer's recent talk to Amplify software developers (cited above) is how the constant and repeated invocation of the "factory model of schooling" by various ed-tech entrepreneurs (their investors, their political backers) actually belies their recreation of this very thing: their obsession with efficiency and productivity, with data and measurement. They are the heirs of scientific management, not its opponents.

The First Amendment’s Establishment Clause Remains Central to the Future of Public Education

Oklahoma is going to test it yet again, Jan Resseger explains. 

Texas schools have leaned on uncertified teachers to fill vacancies. Lawmakers want to put a stop to it.

Meanwhile, in regular non-apocalyptic education issues, Texas is still having trouble staffing schools with actual trained professionals. 

A South Carolina public school has learned a costly lesson about why it needs to respect students’ rights

Drag the Black kid to the office and have her disciplined for not stopping for the flag pledge? It's time for another lesson in civil liberties, costing this district $75K.

Florida Lawmakers Push for More Cursive Writing— Why And at What Cost?

Kids these days. They don't even know how to write cursive! Florida is going to fix that, by gum. Sue Kingery Woltanski looks at the plan.

Eve of Destruction: How Close Are We?

I try not to include too much material here about the general mess we face, but we also should not look away. At any rate, here's a useful take from Nancy Flanagan.

This week at Forbes.com, I took a look at a much-deserved setback for Christian [sic] Nationalist Ryan Walters. Also, at Bucks County Beacon, a look at a conservative lawsuit in PA aimed at erasing civil rights for LGBTQ persons. 

Subscribe to my newsletter. It's free, and always will be.

There are several familiar songs in the show, but after playing it a week, this is the one stuck in my head. From the movie, which did a massive rewrite of the stage version, but kept this number.

Paying Student Teachers

Last spring, Pennsylvania launched a program to pay student teachers, and the new budget from Governor Josh Shapiro proposes major increases in funding for that program.

As a certified old fart, I shake my fist at the clouds and mutter, "Back in my day, we paid our college tuition for that semester, just like any other, and did our student teacher thing." As a cooperating teacher, I would occasionally hear one of my sixty gazillion mentees say that they really ought to be paid for doing all this work and bite my tongue so that I did not say, "Child, you have made twice as much work for me while you are here." 

However, I suspect this is one of those "Okay, boomer" moments.

For one thing, my college tuition for my student teaching semester was about $1,300. That included an apartment at the college's field office (then located at the corner of Superior and E. 9th in Cleveland). I don't remember what the cost of gas for our commute was, but a quick google suggests it was about 79 cents a gallon. 

For another thing, Pennsylvania has a teacher supply problem. It's not just that the pipeline has dried up-- the pipeline is actually broken, with many schools having chopped away at their teacher prep programs. If a million high school seniors decided this year that they want to be teachers, there wouldn't be enough college capacity to educate them. So encouraging students to pursue teaching is a double must, both to increase the teacher supply and to coax teacher prep program back to life.

For still another thing, as we have documented at great length, a lot of folks have worked really hard to make teaching just as unattractive as possible, from reducing teaching to the job of implementing canned programs, to trumpeting that teachers are just a bunch of groomers and pedophiles, to telling teachers to strip their rooms of even the simplest of messages ("Everyone is welcome here" must go). 

The program aimed to give student teachers a $10K stipend-- $15K is they took assignment in an underserved school. In return, the proto-teachers agree to work in Pennsylvania for three years. The original funding was for a total $10 million, with an online application portal-- and it was used up within hours of being made available. 

Student teachers themselves called the stipends "life changing." It seems particularly useful for those who are later-in-life students. One such student was quoted by PSEA saying, "I feel seen." 

That's a part of the value of the program-- it treats proto-teachers as if they are special and important. Lots of college students struggle with lots of responsibilities and work while they are studying, and I am perfectly okay with singling out future teachers as deserving a special kind of support, because lord knows we need a new approach to recruitment to replace the old one of Hope We Get Lucky. 

There's a proposal out there to up the funding to the program up to $50 million, and I think that would be money well spent. Pennsylvania needs the teachers. 

Education and Hierarchies

At her newsletter, Jennifer Berkshire has an excellent post this week-- I'm here to say two things. "Go read it" and "Yes, and..."

In "The Brutal Logic Behind Dismantling the Department of Education," Berkshire points out that much of the dismantling is aimed at outcomes like getting fewer students to attend college. There are a variety of reasons for this, including the idea that colleges were captured by crazy left-wingers in the seventies (e.g. Chris Rufo's "Laying Siege to the Institutions" speech) and the notion that going to college is distracting women from the important work of being baby-makers (e.g. the Heritage Foundation's wacky theories). 

Berkshire points to the Curtis Yarvin theory that we need a techno-monarch, and that requires us to demolish the "cathedral,' the set of institutions that make ordinary people believe they Know Stuff and don't need to be ruled over.

But I think the heart of the matter is captured by Berkshire in this portion of the post:

The creepiest story I read this week had nothing to do with education but with the effort to rebuild the US semiconductor industry known as the CHIPS program. Employees in the CHIPS program office have been undergoing a now-familiar ritual: demonstrating their intellectual worth and abilities to Trump officials.

In late February, Michael Grimes, a senior official at the Department of Commerce and former investment banker at Morgan Stanley, conducted brief interviews with employees of the CHIPS Program Office, which oversees the grants.

In interactions some described as “demeaning,” Mr. Grimes asked employees to justify their intellect by providing test results from the SAT or an IQ test, said four people familiar with the evaluations. Some were asked to do math problems, like calculate the value of four to the fourth power or long division.

What does demanding IQ or SAT test results from engineers have to do with the dismantling of the Department of Education? Everything. If you start from the assumption that IQ is, not just fixed, but genetically determined, as many Trump intellectuals do, there is little case to be made for public schools that try to equalize outcomes—it can’t be done. Far better to shovel cashes at the would-be ‘cognitive elite’ (an apt description of vouchers for the well-to-do, when you think about it) than to redistribute resources to the ‘lessers.’ It’s a bleak and brutal view of the world and one that holds increasing sway on the right.

I've been talking for years about the idea that Betters and Lessers drive much ed reform. When Betsy DeVos talks about letting parents and students find the right fit for an education, what she means is that students should get the education that is appropriate for their station. No higher education for you future meat widgets!

The underlying idea is that people are not equal and that "merit" is a measure of how much Right Thinking a person does. But the important part is that there are natural hierarchies in the world and to try to lift the Lessers up from their rightful place on the bottom rungs of society's ladder is an unnatural offense against God and man. Using social safety nets or other programs to try to make their lives suck less is simply standing between them and the natural, deserved consequences of their lack of merit-- after all, if they didn't deserve to be poor, they wouldn't be poor. Life is supposed to be hard for the Lessers, and trying to make it less hard is an offense against God and man. And it is doubly offensive when we tax the Betters to fund this stuff.

For these folks, education is not supposed to be about uplift, but about sorting and suiting people for their proper place in society. This sorting could be done more efficiently if the sorting happened before they even got to school, if, in fact, the school system itself was already set up with several tiers so that Betters and Lessers could have their own schools.

I've argued for years that the free market is a lousy match for public education because the free market picks winners and loser, not just among vendors, but among customers. But for a certain type of person, that's a feature, not a bug. The Lessers shouldn't get a big fancy school with lots of programs because all they need is enough math and reading to make them employable at the Burger Store. 

Public schools also offend Betters sensibilities by trying to uphold civil rights. Berkshire nails this:

At the heart of the Trumpist intellectual project is a relatively straight-forward argument. The civil rights revolution in this country went too far and it’s time to start rolling it back. As Jack Schneider and I argue in our recent book, The Education Wars, the role that public schools have historically played in advancing civil rights makes them particularly vulnerable in this moment of intense backlash. It’s why the administration has moved with such ferocity against the most recent effort to extend civil rights through the schools—to transgender students. And it’s why the cuts to the Department of Education have fallen so heavily on its civil rights enforcement role. Of the agency's civil rights offices across the country, only five are still open.

 For some of these folks, civil rights are NOT for every human being who draws breath. Civil rights are only for those who deserve them by merit and by station and by Right Thinking. 

The idea of public education as a means of uplift for every student, undergirded by a system that protects and honors the civil rights of every person simply has no place in a certain view of the nation. And that certain view is currently in charge. 

Kevin O'Leary Gets an F in Education

There are some bad ideas that just won't die, and all it takes is some over-inflated rich guys with a platform to keep them alive.

Enter Kevin O'Leary, a Canadian successful businessman, middling TV personality, and failed politician. He made his big pile in software (SoftKey), tried running for office, did some television reality show stints, and is currently a crypto guy and turns up on Shark Tank. All of that, of course, qualifies him to opine about education over the airwaves. 

He did so on CNN's NewsNight on Tuesday, where he offered his theory about US student test scores.

Why? Unions. Unions that keep mediocre teachers in place in every high school in America when we should be firing them.

Yes, it's the old Fire Our Way To Excellence idea again.  

I would like to fire teachers... and I'd like to pay a lot more to the teachers that advance Math and Reading scores that push our system forward... We have broken the system long ago through unions.

And also

The lowest paid person in America that deserves a lot more money is a great teacher... and we can't in the system of unions in America, we keep mediocrity festering. We're destroying the education system.

Well, this should be easy to test. The states that have the weakest teacher unions should have the best paid and the highest scores. States like Oklahoma and Texas and the Carolinas and Mississippi and Arkansas and Louisiana and Florida and Georgia-- oh, I see a pattern here. Low pay, low test results. Apparently when you stomp on unions, you don't get instant school awesomeness. 

How do we find these mediocre teachers to fire them? We've been over this before-- using tests as a measure creates all sorts of problems, from trying to measure student growth on through using math and reading scores to judge teachers who don't teach math and reading. 

And if we do fire teachers, how easy is it to just go pick some new ones off the Excellent Teacher Tree? 

O'Leary also reinforces the odious notion that the whole purpose of schools is to crank out math and reading scores, which is a giant honking to show that he understands neither assessment nor the whole purpose of education. 

I graduated from teacher school in 1979. and one thing has never, ever changed-- the level of confident assumed expertise of some folks because they went to school. What has changed is the degree to which media outlets aggressively feed them baloney, confirming their worst guesses. But our problem in education is now the country's-- how to make progress with people who don't know what they don't know, and who know with utter certainty some things that just aren't so.

Ed Department: Worst of All Worlds

For a while this morning, CNN was running a curious quote from Neal McClusky, Education Guy at Cato Institute. 

If [Trump] says, 'We're going to have a 50% reduction in staff,' there is reason to be concerned about how the system will work: Is that enough people? We're going to learn whether or not they can do the job with fewer of them.

Some folks pounced on that quote (which seems to have since disappeared from the story) as "proof" that Cato wanted government to work after all, but as McClusky reassured his Twitter followers, he was as adamantly against the department as always (true that--say what you like, but McClusky is nothing if not consistent). 

But his comments on the halving of the department shows how MAGA can have the worst of all possible worlds.

McMahon has reiterated that her intent is to dismantle the department entirely, and I have argued that this would get in the way of the Truskian goal of using funding as leverage to force school districts to comply. Except that I may have given them too much credit, because one of the big piles of money that they have to use as leverage is IDEA funding, and it turns out that McMahon isn't even sure what IDEA is, as she revealed to Laura Ingraham. “Well, do you know what? I’m not sure I can tell you exactly what it stands for, except that it’s the programs for disabled and needs [students].”

So I suppose asking for a detailed list of which positions were cut and how it was determined that they were excess-- yeah, never mind. What we've seen at this point is "a bunch of everything."

But if they can cut the department to the point that it can't do its jobs, that's nearly as good as dismantling it. Especially since it sets up an argument before Congress of "Look, the thing isn't working anyway, so you might as well dissolve it."

I have spent plenty of time bitching about the department, which has birthed one dumb idea after another while simultaneously failing to aggressively pursue the objective of making sure all children get the equitable chance for education they're entitled to. But this is not a move that can even pretend to be about doing a better job (nor, to be fair, has anybody pretended that's what this is about). The Department put many education-related grants under one roof rather than requiring districts and states to go paper chasing different pieces of the government for their pile of money. And the department offered protection to students whose rights to a non-sucky education were threatened. Plus bonuses like teacher training assistance, which is also axed.

So now we move to keeping those functions in the department, but requiring the department to do it badly, a sort of enforced inefficiency. 

McMahon represents a different brand of uninformed incompetence from Betsy DeVos. DeVos was so bad at her job, she couldn't get much of anything done. McMahon doesn't know what she's doing--but to just smash stuff up, she doesn't have to know much. "I want a new computer," says your child, and you reply that they already have a perfectly good one, even if it's a little slow and doesn't work exactly the way they want it to. So they smash it with a rock. "Can I have a new computer now?"

Presidents Musk and Trump have gone after any piece of government that is about taking care of others, especially if it's got plenty of money lying around that could be used to prop up private corporations. It seems unlikely that anyone is going to rescue the department of education any time soon.

Money, Lies, God, and Education

Want a guide that helps make sense of our Christian [sic] nationalist moment, including education. Katherine Stewart has published it.

Katherine Stewart's The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism came out in 2019, but it is still essential reading for our current moment. One line that really hit me when I read it was this one:

It [Christian nationalism] asserts that legitimate government rests not on the consent of the governed but adherence to the doctrines of a specific religious, ethnic, and cultural heritage.

In other words, it rejects democracy. And as I read her new book, Money, Lies, and God as the current regime started tromping through government, it occurred to me that it's not just the legitimacy of government that depends on alignment with a particular set of values-- 

It's the legitimacy, value, rights, and humanity of individual persons that depends on adherence to the right doctrines.  When President Musk says that empathy can destroy civilization, when MAGA trot out dehumanizing language like the R word, it's one more sign that some people don't matter. 

Ideas like universal civil rights, the kind of thing we're in the habit of assuming as given, are not accepted by these folks. Bizarre ideas like the Trumpian inversion of civil rights and discrimination make sense if you assume that only some people have rights and only some people can be discriminated against because only some people are aligned with proper values and only those people are entitled to civil rights. Of course, only those people deserve to be in charge, to rule over those others who, because of their spiritual and ideological failings aren't fully real humans.

Remember this, and everything else makes sense.

In the new book, Stewart lays out four elements of the Christian [sic] nationalist mindset. (She also spends a couple of chapters on education-- I'll get there). Stewart argues that it's not so much an ideological checklist, but this set of views that characterizes the movement.

First, the belief that America is going straight to hell. We are surrounded by evil powers that threaten everything we care about. Every election is apocalyptic, every opponent an existential threat. I recognize this from the many loud complaints about Joe Biden. I would characterize the Biden presidency as a return to the tradition of mediocre white guys in charge, but for folks in the movement he was such a huge agent of satan, and he is still invoke to fuel that fearful reaction.

See it to in the narrative that education has been "captured" by Godless socialist lefties who have installed pedophiles and groomers in every classroom, waiting for the chance to de-penisify your sons. 

Second is the persecution complex. White Christian (particularly men) are under attack, besieged and put upon. Stewart cites a survey in which the vast majority of Christian nationalists say that white folks experience just as much or more discrimination as minority groups. She also argues that it's not so much economic anxiety as status or culture anxiety that drives the movement (though I can see how money serves as a stand-in for status).

Third is the notion that Christian [sic] nationalists have a "unique and privileged connection to this land." The insistence that this is a Christian nation, and therefor tied to Christian roots, means that it makes sense to them to insist that the Bible be in classrooms and prayer in schools. People who are aligned to the correct set of values and beliefs are entitled to rights and privileges that other people are not.

The fourth piece of the mindset that "Jesus may have great plans for us, but the reality is that this is a cruel place in which only the cruel survive." So what others may seem as punitive policies of unnecessary and deliberate cruelty ("the cruelty is the point") are not so much an expression of anger and hatred as a desire to force people to see the world as it really is. What some see as a deliberate attempt to make life shitty for others can be, from the Christian [sic] nationalist mindset, an almost-kind attempt to tear peoples' blinders off so they can see and deal with the world as it really is-- shitty.

Put those four together and you get the look at how these folks tick, and once again, it's not because they are stupid and/or evil. It's not a new set of views-- the Puritans would nod along with most of this and, as I would tell my 11th grade students, if you wanted a mindset that would equip a group of people to survive and persevere the nightmarish conditions that those first pilgrims faced, you couldn't do much better. Southern colonists might have been sustained by the promise of wealth and independence, but the Massachusetts crowd could rest secure in knowing that live is always a cruel struggle, but as people with a special connection to God, they would take their place at the top of this particular mountain. Now their descendants are pissed off that a bunch of people who don't even have that special connection to the Correct God are being carried up to the top of the mountain via an easy trip that they haven't even earned by being Right People.

Stewart looks at education. She gives a section to a pretty thorough look at how Moms for Liberty leverage the idea that Moms have "special moral authority" (even if the Moms are seasoned political activists). She also takes a look at the crowd that argues that since school prayer was abolished, schools have become "temples of secular humanism" that teach, as Oklahoma's education dudebro-in-chief Ryan Walters, atheism as a secular religion. Stewart attended a M4L gathering, and those pictures are stunning. Stewart has a sharp eye, an ability to spot the moments that really capture and illuminate the larger picture.

Stewart says there are two basic types of groups undermining public education-- the Proselytizers and the Privatizers. Both have powerful backers, and Stewart has done an exhaustive job of locating and naming names. They share a desire to dismantle public education as it is and repurpose the funding for religious organizations and private schools, all intended to bring up students who believe their preferred brand of religion and/or their preferred brand of conservative politics (because part of the persecution they suffer under is a society that indoctrinates children into Wrong Thinking, so if they can just capture institutions, they can properly indoctrinate children in Right Thinking. to which millions of teachers say, "Good luck with that").

Again, not new. Stewart quotes Jerry Falwell from 1979, dreaming of "a day when there are no more public schools; churches will have taken them over and Christians will be running them." She also nods back To Milton Friedman's 1955 paper that laid the groundwork for the idea of education not as a public good, but as a consumer item that gets bought and sold on the open market where consumers get what they can afford. If they can't afford much, well, life is cruel and human beings aren't equal and if you got the short end of the stick, that's your problem.

As one member of the Ziklag group explains, the goal is not to "just throw stones," but to "take down the education system as we know it today."

In Mr. Lancaster's System, Adam Laats talks about how early 19th century reformers wanted a school system to help deal with all those naughty children out on the streets. I wonder if the future imagined by some of these folks would take us back around to that concern, or if the wealthy this time would just build higher walls for their gated communities.

Stewart's book is well-sourced and pulls apart the many layers and differences within the many parts of the movement. She has done a ton of leg work and interviews, resulting in a book that is illuminating and instructive, if not particularly encouraging. But these days there's a lot of noise and smoke and not-particularly-useful theories about what is happening and why; this book brings some much-needed clarity to our difficult moment in US history. For folks whose focus has been mostly on education, this helps put the education debates in a wider context. I strongly recommend this one. 

ICYMI: Sleepy Morning Edition (3/9)

Did you reset your clock? You know--that one clock in your house that doesn't reset itself? Go ahead. I'll wait.

I finally joined the Washington Post exodus. I have a sentimental attachment to the paper; Valerie Strauss championed and occasionally printed my work, and that didn't just widen my audience, but was one of the few things that caused my co-workers to notice that I was Up To Something. But Strauss has moved on and Jeff Bezos has decried that the paper will espouse no opinions other than his, and while I know enough journalism history to know that this is not a new and unheard of feature in the newspaper biz, I don't have to pay for the privilege.  

I have been doing this weekly digest post for almost ten years now, and it feels more necessary than ever, as the media landscape becomes increasingly unreliable. Amplification of important ideas is a critical responsibility of folks in the social media world so do share. Also, a side note-- I do not include in this digest pieces that I addressed in a regular post, but share those, too. 

Okay, here we go.

Diversity, Political Culture and Middle School Band

I do love it when Nancy Flanagan gets a little salty. Here she looks at the anti-diversity directive from the Department of Education and finds the fingerprints of Big Brother.

What Now for Democrats for Education Reform?

DFER, the privatizers in Democrat's clothing, are having some trouble. Good. They've earned it. Maurice Cunningham has the story for The Progressive.

Introducing the Juicero, Only for Reading

It's the dumbest product ever, only this time for reading. John Warner offers a reality-based response.

A Rural Alaska School Asked the State to Fund a Repair. Nearly Two Decades Later, the Building Is About to Collapse.

On the ground, it is not always about high-falutin' policy issues. Sometimes it's just about providing a safe building. For ProPublica and KYUK, Emily Schwing has the story.

"Educational Pluralism" as Another Name for Privatization

Thomas Ultican looks at a recent The 74 article that asks, why can't we just be more like Europe. 

When America Persecutes Its Teachers

Clay Risen at The Atlantic walks us through some history as a reminder that going after teachers for having ideas of which the government does not approve--that's not a new thing. In particular, a look at when the red scare came to the schoolhouse.

The GOP is Cracking Up Over School Vouchers

Jennifer Berkshire looks at the voucher-related cracks in the MAGA coalition. If only there were an opposing political party that could take advantage of them.

AI Chatbots have telltale quirks. Researchers can spot them with 97% accuracy

Well, perhaps. But it's still something.

"Do It Yourself" - a Poem

David Lee Finkle heard rumors that his students were using online summaries to "read" the assignment. So he wrote a poem.

TN Lawmakers Seek To Deny Education To Some Kids

Andy Spears reports on a Tennessee bill aimed at challenging the SCOTUS decision that ruled that undocumented children still get an education.

Influencers and Expertise

Audrey Watters shares more important connections about ed tech. Also, a mildly disturbing picture of a goose.

I, Human

It's behind the New York Times paywall, but this guest essay by Margaret Renkl is a beautiful statement of support for the human touch over the AI assistants plaguing us.(H/T Larry Cuban)

Media Manufactures Mississippi "Miracle" (Again)

Paul Thomas again debunks the "miraculous" reading achievements of Mississippi.

NCLB’s Curse: 12 Reasons Reading Scores are STILL Poor

Nancy Bailey breaks down a dozen ways that the curse of NCLB is still with us and our students.

A Two-Legged Stool

Steve Nuzum reports from South Carolina, where a school voucher bill was struck down by the state court, so legislators decided to just try passing the same thing again.

DeWine’s Budget Includes Full Phase-In of OH Fair School Funding Plan. Why Will Majority of School Districts Lose Funding?

Jan Resseger tries to sort out the new Ohio mystery-- how can a boost in school funding be turned into a cut? 

Simon says Focus on Students, Not Just Their Ability to Take a Test

It's a miracle. There's a legislator in Florida who is trying to help public schools. Sue Kingery Woltanski shares this improbably story.

Dismantling the U.S. Department of Education: A Direct Threat to America’s Schools

Julian Vasquez Heilig breaks down the issues raised by dismantling the Department of Education. Pretty comprehensive look.

Texas and Florida Are Canary in Coal Mine of Schools Run by Uncertified Teachers

Eleanor Bader reports for Truthout on the growing problem. Good look at the national issue.

First Black Graduate

Akil Bello has set out to collect a particular data point-- when did colleges have their first Black graduate? It's an interesting pile of information (and you might be able to help collect info). It's also kind of discouraging, but as he says, it feels like information we ought to have.

The government doesn't know that AGI is coming

Benjamin Riley contests the claims that computers with human-ish intelligence are right around the corner.

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More Big Brother Tech

This week Axios reported a scoop that takes us to another extension of the surveillance state. Big Brother wishes he could have pulled this off.

The State Department has set out to catch foreign students who support Hamas and eject them from the country, and they are going to do it by using AI to scan student social media accounts. 

I don't want to argue about Hamas vs Israel here. I do want to note the absolute terrifying level of surveillance being used here. AI will scan the internet, scrape up whatever, and flag anyone who has displayed a Double Plus Ungood idea so that the government can then take action against that person. 

Today it's foreign students who express too much sympathy for Hamas. But tomorrow? There are no limits, other than legal guardrails, a bureaucratic sense of decency, and a lack of imagination. So maybe tomorrow we scan teacher social media accounts to see who is doing forbidden diversity stuff. Maybe we search through government employee accounts to see who can be fired for insufficient loyalty to Dear Leader. 

And of course this would have to be done badly, by training the AI to work from the administration list of Forbidden Words, which gets us such genius moves as removing archival reference to the Enola Gay and various people whose last name was Gay, because, you know-- Don't Say Gay. 

Tying repressive, invasive, rights-violating surveillance to Artificial "Intelligence" is just the chef's kiss to bad policy. AI doesn't read, doesn't understand, doesn't interpret. It acts just as badly as it is trained to act. It does not know better. To use it as a means of tracking down Unapproved Ideas is irresponsible and just plain wrong.

It's an alarming first step, a whole new kind of cyber attack.  

Rural Education Myths

I was in the ruralish education biz for almost my entire teaching career, and one small thing that wears on you is that policy discussions almost always ignore rural needs and realities.

The current Trusk administration buzz saw looks to continue that tradition. Take the privatization of the United States Postal Service-- there are plenty of private delivery services right now, and they mostly won't deliver to our most rural areas (they hand those packages off to the USPS). 

School "choice" policies are built on assumption of a relatively large, dense market. Meanwhile, Catholic private schools in my county have closed because they couldn't get enough students to enroll, and there are no private options springing up in their place. Like rural delivery, it's a market private operators don't want to enter because it's too hard to make money serving it. \

If, for instance, Title I funds turn into block grants and those turn into vouchers, rural areas will take a double hit-- a loss of needed Title I funds for the public school and no options for any sort of private vouchery options (this is where folks pop up to chirp "Oh, but you could start a micro-school" because everyone enjoyed that so much during the pandemic and also it works great in places with sub-optimal wi-fi connections). 

So many people don't get small towns and rural areas (e.g. every movie and tv show depiction of a small town), and that includes people who create policy. 

There's a nice piece in The Conversation by Sheneka Williams, Darren DuBose, and Kimberly Clarida, three Michigan State University rural education researchers, in which they distill much of their research into three important but unrecognized truths about rural education.

Rural communities are becoming more diverse.

The three researchers are talking mostly about race, and that is on point-- rural areas are not all white any more. There are increasingly people of color in these communities.

From 2010 to 2020, over 2 million white people left rural communities, while more than 2 million people of color took their place. The number of rural people who identified as multiracial doubled to nearly 4 million over the same period, and all rural communities except those in Arizona saw an increase in their Latino population.

That tracks. So does a point made by rural Missouri blogger Jess Piper, who points out that most rural people are not farmers. Politicians often calculate that if they address some sort of farm policy, then you've done your bit for the rural vote. 

But the typical rural family is not some redneck farmer. Rural areas include a broad range of human beings engaged in a broad range of human endeavors. Though I will say there's one things that rural areas mostly don't have-- super-rich people. I've always maintained that's one of the many, many reasons that trickle down economics fails; there's nobody here in my region to trickle down on the rest of us. And my region provides a sort of laboratory of that, because 150-ish years ago we became the center of the oil industry. We were loaded with rich folks, and to this day we live amongst the many benefits that their wealth brought to town (though some of those gifts have become troublesome white elephants). Then that ended, and we're all quite aware of the money that isn't here and what we aren't able to get done. Sooner or later, if you want stuff, somebody with money has to invest it, spend it on your community. It's not strictly a rural problem-- read Andre Perry's Know Your Price to see how it happens for certain urban communities. 

But I digress. Point is, folks working from a stereotypical picture of who lives in rural communities and what the need (or don't) is working from the wrong script, so they'll get the wrong answers.

Rural educators know how to succeed.

Rural schools lack resources, but rural teachers are expert at working around that lack (which is not to say they couldn't be even better with the resources). The three writers also show this as essentially an extension of the previous point--because folks in high places don't really understand the nature of rural communities, the cultural capital of rural areas is ignored.

One glaring example is that rural communities are rarely represented in teaching materials and curricula, which frequently ignore their local knowledge, traditions and values. This creates a gap in students’ ability to see themselves in jobs and positions outside of their personal contexts. And it hampers teachers’ ability to leverage student strengths when teachers are unprepared to connect with their backgrounds.

There are teachers in rural schools who are prepared to connect--they are the teachers who grew up in those same communities. But they are very much in a Do It Yourself situation. 

The researchers also make the point that policy makers favor things like closure and consolidation of schools. Pennsylvania is a perfect example. In the 1960's, the state had a huge number of small borough and township school districts, and the state pushed consolidation (yes, our current 500 districts is considerably fewer than previously). That left many smaller communities with one school; that school often served as a community hub, and a major source of property value and tax base in that community. When the last fifteen years of further consolidation and closure came along, those single schools were closed, delivering a hammer blow both culturally and financially. There are plenty of factors that created the pressures behind these moves, but at no point did policy makers stand up for rural schools and communities and try to hold back this wave that has hollowed out many rural communities.

Rural educators know how to tap into local resources, knowing that little support is coming from the state or federal government. But policy makers rarely make an attempt to tap those resources.

Rural students are high achievers

The trio notes that students in rural schools score higher on math and reading tests than urban students, and rural students have a higher graduation rate. 

What rural students lack is the extras that non-rural students enjoy. From summer programs to enrichment programs to personal SAT coaches, nonrural students have opportunities that rural students do not. Rural students end up with lower going-to-college numbers. 

There's no earthly reason to imagine that rural students are any less capable than their nonrural counterparts. None. 

It is a myth that rural schools are filled with farm kids who aren't all that bright being taught by teachers who are less-than. It is not a myth that rural schools are under-represented and simply -- I can't say ignored, because to ignore something you have to see it and deliberately look past it. Rural education is more commonly invisible to folks in the policy world. 

I expect that problem is likely to be even worse under the current regime. Guttung funding as a prelude to privatization will be a double slam for rural districts. Those districts will see a loss of funding and will have limited ability to replace those funds by raising local taxes. At the same time, they are not attractive markets for any high quality education-flavored businesses; those communities are more likely to end up with a "school" aisle in their local Dollar General. Rural students deserve better. 

DeSantis: More Shootings, Please

This week in his State of the State speech, Ron DeSantis announced that it was time to get over the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School shooting--that would be the one in Parkland in which a 19-year-old killed 17 and injured 17 others in the deadliest mass shooting at a high school in US history. 

After that shooting, the state put in place a piddly excuse for an attempt to make such horrors less likely, but even that is too much for DeSantis, who specifically wants to get rid of language raising the age to purchase a shotgun or rifle from 18 to 21 and also the red flag law that lets family members or law enforcement petition the court to remove someone's firearms id they are risk to themselves of others. You know-- like maybe a 19 year old with a long history of racism and fascination with mass shootings. 

“We need to be a strong Second Amendment state. I know many of you agree, so let’s get some positive reform done for the people in this state of Florida,” DeSantis was quoted by the Florida Phoenix. 

Also, he'd like to have open carry in the state.

Because nothing is more important than an American's God-given right to shoot other people. Because we should go to any length to "protect" a fetus, but once it's a live child, its life is less important than someone's right to fire off a couple of rounds at anyone that bugs them. Because this is one more way politicians can show that for all their talk, they don't particular care about young humans. 

On the right column of the blogspot version of this blog, I have had one image parked for years. It's not complicated

I would say that it's the least we could do, but of course the least we can do is nothing, and Ron DeSantis would like us to get back to doing that. 

The only bright spot here is that the legislature doesn't seem to have his back on this. Good. DeSantis should be ashamed that he can't even produce a bad argument for his favored policies other than complaining that Florida has "lagged on this issue." What a bummer-- imagine all the people who are going to some other state because it's easier to shoot people there. 

Scary AI Teacher Coaching Tool

This seems like several kinds of bad ideas, and some schools are absolutely going to go for it.

What if teachers could have a sort of feedback and self-evaluation tool working with them every day, powered, of course, by AI? Well, dream no more.

Teachers get little feedback on classroom performance, nor is it possible to collect a ton of data while simultaneously doing the job. Kathleen Moore at the Times Union reports cheerfully:

Enter AI. The AI tool uses cameras and audio recordings to report on whether the teacher looked at or walked through each section of the classroom, how often they used group work, and many other techniques. Even the words the teacher and students use are tracked.

The AI works with the Mathematical Quality of Instruction, which comes to us from the Center for Education Policy Research. It is, they tell us, "a Common Core-aligned observational rubric that provides a framework for analyzing mathematics instruction in several domains." Ruh-roh.

It considers five domains-- common core-aligned student practices, working with students and mathematics, richness of mathematics, errors and imprecision, and classroom work is connected to mathematics. And I'm not going to dig any deeper because 1) I've got my doubts about how much of that an AI can actually measure and 2) common core. 

The fresh-faced assistant professor promoting this AI eval is Jonathan Foster, who started out teaching math (well, he really started out in South Carolina's Teacher Cadet program, a pretty nifty program aimed at getting high school students started on the path to teaching) at the Montessori Academy of Spartanburg. He was hired by SUNY at Albany in 2023. 

GT reports that Peter Youngs and Scott Acton of University of Virginia (education and computer engineering, respectively) are leading the project.

The money? Why, from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-- a cool $1.4 million. 

They are field testing the tool on some early career teachers, who "have been receptive" but also complain that the AI "isn't good at noticing everything." No kidding. AI cannot understand or interpret in any conventional sense of the words. It can only scan for particular words or positions in the room. Which means that this system will inevitably train teachers to incorporate an assortment of odd behaviors and vocabulary for no reason other than it will game the AI.

While all of that provides reason enough to give this coaching tool a big fat side eye, here's a sentence that just hints at bigger issues:

But the AI can give them daily feedback, without it going on performance reports.

Yet.

I'm trying to imagine a universe in which administrators and policymakers say something along the lines of, "Well, the computer is just sitting there chock full of performance data on the teachers, but we should definitely not use that at all."

No, this tool is just a half-step away from being your computerized teacher evaluator, counting every day of your work as part of your professional measure. Some administrators would love it because it would save them time. Policymakers would love it because it generates numbers, so you know it's reliable hard data and all scientific and stuff. And if that's not scary enough, let's imagine what happens when someone hacks into the system. 

"Oh, but it's just math teachers," I hear you say. I invite you to travel to that imaginary universe where there is definitely nobody saying, "Yeah, with just a few tweaks we could totally use this to evaluate reading or history or home ec or phys ed teachers."

Foster gamely tries to head off the idea that this AI could be used to substitute for teachers. "I see the act of teaching as a human endeavor," he tells Moore, and I agree, but how human is a human who is taking career advice from an AI coach? 

It could be worse. I expect that right now, someone is out there programming an AI to work with the Charlotte Danielson framework. In the meantime, it's one more sign that teachers should prepare to meet their new robot overlords. 

McMahon's Three Convictions

Linda McMahon is now the latest in a long line of deeply unqualified Secretaries of Education, and she has hit the ground running with her memo about the department's Final Destination Solution Mission. 

She's pro-disruption! Nobody is more qualified than parents to make educational decisions (so non-parents should not be allowed to serve on a school board?). She started out to be a teacher almost (which, tragically, puts her far ahead of many of her predecessors). Education shouldn't be plagued with corruption and unjust discrimination (but the department has already thrown out many complaints of what I guess was just discrimination). She is a font of privateer right wing talking points.

McMahon focuses on three convictions, which, if nothing else, may give a clue which of the administration's conflicting education goals (end federal meddling in education, and increase federal meddling in education) she is going to pursue. None of them are good news.

Parents are the primary decision makers in their children’s education.

Send education back to the states! Then the states can send it back to parents and voila-- government has sloughed off any involvement in or responsibility for public education.

We should not take seriously any parental rights declaration that does not include recognition and protection of students' rights. Both their rights to safety and their rights to make choices about their own lives. 

It's also worth noting that this "empowerment" of parents is never accompanied by sources of information to help inform parental choices, nor regulation to assure parents that what they encounter on the free market is actually sound. Kind of like "We will abolish the FDA so that consumers are free to select from among a panoply of products that may or may include some which are poisonous, but we're sure the market will sort that out."

Taxpayer-funded education should refocus on meaningful learning in math, reading, science, and history—not divisive DEI programs and gender ideology.

The list of Things To Focus On is, of course, missing many items (art, music, writing, the ever-expanding list of "practical" items like filling out taxes and changing tires, etc etc etc). The "divisive DEI programs and gender ideology" portion is meaningless enough to be adapted to whatever grievance MAGA has decided to be outraged by. 

Are schools meant to ignore diversity and pretend that all students are the same? If equity is bad, how does one propose that inequity be administered? If schools are opposed to inclusion, who is meant to be excluded, and how should that exclusion be managed? Serving the special needs of some students comes under DEI--should that be terminated? 

The department has attempted to clarify its anti-diversity directive

"Schools may not operate policies or programs under any name that treat students differently based on race, engage in racial stereotyping, or create hostile environments for students of particular races," the letter reads. "For example, schools with programs focused on interests in particular cultures, heritages, and areas of the world would not in and of themselves violate Title VI, assuming they are open to all students regardless of race." The letter also clarified that identity-based observances like Black History Month are acceptable, as long as the events are open to all students.

Which comes awfully close to "you can't exclude white kids from anything." "Hostile environment" is a vague term that will depend entirely on how the folks in charge of enforcement care to interpret it. The language could certainly support a complaint about racism in a school, but the fact that the department has dropped a reported 10,000 complaints about disability access and sexual and racial harassment gives us a pretty good sense of which way the wind is blowing here.

"Gender ideology" is an even more mysterious term. As near as I can tell, "gender ideology" refers to anything that suggests that it's unremarkable that LGBTQ persons exist. 

Postsecondary education should be a path to a well-paying career aligned with workforce needs.

This administration is certainly not the first to want to apply return-on-investment analysis to higher education. The "aligned with workforce needs" is a popular standard for the business world; why train workers yourself if you can get post-high school institutions to create the pool of meat widgets you want (while getting the meat widgets themselves to pay for it). 

Nobody has yet figured out how to actually do this, and I don't imagine the current brain trust has any better ideas.

So what do we have here

Instead of dismantling the department and thereby ending its access to any levers of power, McMahon appears to be going with increasing the levels of micro-management by the feds in order to score some culture panic victories. 

"Final mission" tries to signal that they are absolutely going to dismantle the department just as soon as they clean up this culture panic stuff. However, the culture panic crowd is never done. I cannot imagine a universe in which McMahon says, "We have now wiped out all the terrible indoctrination and DEI/CRT/MOUSE in the education system, so we can shut down the department."

No, a culture panic movement is deeply in love with the problem, because the problem gives them license to do whatever they wish. To declare the problem solved is to give up the power they derive from continuously hammering the panic button. Like Betsy DeVos before her, McMahon may have been determined to dismantle the levers of power until she gets her hands on them and...well...maybe as long as it's for the right cause... Panic always craves power; I will put a small bet on the prediction that the department will not be tossed into the fires of Mount Doom any time soon. 

FL: No Art For Children

Florida's law about materials "harmful to minors" apparently needed a tweak, and Sen. Stan McClain has provided just the thing.

SB 1692 fixes that part of Florida law by addressing the part that defines "harmful to minors." It currently includes in that definition the clause that says that a work is not "harmful to minors" if it has "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors." 

McClain proposes to add a little language to that part of the definition, saying that it does not apply to any of the naughty stuff 

in an educational setting or to a determination made by an employee of any kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, junior high school, or secondary school, whether public or private, with regard to such material if the material is possessed by a person with the intent to send, sell, distribute, exhibit, represent, or display it to a minor and is not part of an approved instructional or library material.

In other words, if there's any depiction of "any kind of nudity, sexual conduct, or sexual excitement," then artistic merit doesn't count. If a school employee says that in their professional judgment the work has merit for the students, that doesn't count. There is a carve-out for materials specifically authorized as part of state-required health education. 

The proposal is a little confusing-- it's okay if the work is part of "approved instructional or library material," and who is doing that approving if not a school employee? But as always, the point is not to be clear, but to be scary.

To help with the scariness, the bill requires the school to pull the materials within five days of an objection being filed and the material must remain "unavailable" while being considered. The bill says specifically that the school board may not consider "potential literary, artistic, political, or scientific value as a basis for retaining the material." 

If the board doesn't behave itself, the state may withhold state funds, grants, lottery funds, or any other funds they can figure out how to withhold. Plus the district has thirty days to come up with a "corrective action plan." After which the state can decide if it wants to come up with any other punishment for the district.

We humans do threat assessment by asking 1) how likely is it that the bad thing will happen and 2) how bad will the consequences be? So top-notch threat legislation like this hits both. How likely is a district to get in trouble? Hard to say-- the law is vague and anybody can turn them in. How bad will the consequences be? Probably pretty bad, but how bad is unclear.

What is clear is that Florida students would be protected from that nasty artistic, literary, political and scientific merit. Way to close that loophole!

If passed, the bill is supposed to take effect July 1, 2025. Place your bets now on how long it will take for some sassy district to ban the Bible.

More Culture Panic From Heritage Foundation

A who's who of culture warriors has helped the Heritage Foundation conjure up yet another set of demands for American public education. Think of this--The Pheonix Declaration--as the most current list of demands from the right wing privatization crowd.

The tone was set by news releases:

Dr. Kevin Roberts, President of the Heritage Foundation, emphasized the need for a proactive approach in education. "For too long, education freedom advocates have been on defense," he stated. "It’s time to go on offense."

Yeah, "education freedom advocates" surely haven't been vocally and aggressively attacking public education for the past umpteen years. Organizations funded by powerful billionaires have been after public education for decades, while simultaneously claiming to be David up against Goliath. Sure. One of the key pieces of the right wing pitch is to complain about being oppressed and outmatched.  

That's especially a claim of the christianist nationalism crowd, and those are Heritage's people. The Phoenix Declaration is itself a fine example of how to take a few values that ought to be unobjectionable and, by surrounding them with a particular context, make them icky.

Every child should have access to a high-quality, content-rich education that fosters the pursuit of the good, the true, and the beautiful, so that they may achieve their full, God-given potential. America’s schools must work alongside parents to prepare children for the responsibilities of adulthood, including their familial and civic responsibilities, by cultivating excellence in mind and heart.

See? A few sentences from the introduction seem mostly on point. Except that phrases like "the good, the true, and the beautiful" and "work alongside parents" are recognizable dog whistly phrases; if you aren't in with the Heritage crowd, you might not get what they have in mind (we'll get to that). "Responsibilities" comes up twice, and hints at a grim "buckle down and get to work" view of life. Likewise, the pursuit of "excellence in mind and heart" is a little off for a life goal (I don't see a lot of scripture in which Jesus exhorts folks to be excellent). None of it is objectionable, and yet... In particular, all of these point toward being directed by outward measures.

Schools should equip students with the knowledge, character, and skills necessary to succeed in life as individuals and to fulfill their obligations as members of their families, local communities, and country. In order to empower families, advance educational excellence, transmit our culture, and uphold the foundational principles of our constitutional republic, we believe the following principles should guide American families, schools, and policymakers

"Obligations." And "transmit our culture." Education isn't to serve the interests of the human students, but to make them useful meat widgets. 

Well, maybe it gets better. Let's look at the actual principles.

Parental Choice and Responsibility

Parents are the "primary educators" of their children and should be free to choose "the learning environments that align with their values" and best meet the child's needs. This language of parental rights sounds so much nicer than "Educating the child is the parents' problem, and the rest of us shouldn't have to worry about it or pay for it." On top of being selfish, it's also short-sighted. 

And it's not just that this principle is a justification for selfishness and privatization. Any policy that elevates the rights of parents and ignores the rights of the child is a dangerous policy, because not all parents are awesome. The majority of parents are just fine, but I can tell you stories, and so can every other teacher, of parents who were a danger to the safety and well-being of their children. Children are not chattel, and making loud noises about a parent's "right and high duty" doesn't turn young human beings into property. 

Nor do I think that anyone at all is served by learning environments that teach the flat earth or extol the greatness of nazis. 

Parental "rights" without guardrails is both an excuse to privatize education and to abdicate collective responsibility for making sure that each young human has a shot at an education that doesn't suck.

Transparency and Accountability

The concern here is for parents. "Schools, as secondary educators, should work with parents, not attempt to serve as replacements for them," which is a good thought as long as those parents don't pose a threat to the safety or well-being of the children. The principle especially mentions "misguided policies that hide information from parents" about student mental, emotional or physical well-being, which is a dodge, because what we're really talking about here is what to do when students want to hide information from their parents, and the idea that children have no rights and parents have all of them. Schools have no rights over students; they do, however, have a responsibility to protect students, and in a country where the vast number of homeless children are homeless because their parents threw them out for being LGBTQ, that's not always an easy call.

Are there schools where staff have gone a step too far? Sure, just as there are parents who go a step too far. This will never be an easy issue to litigate, and anyone who thinks they have a simple answer (Either parents or the school are always right) is just wrong.

Truth and Goodness

I'm going to quote this whole part, because this is the shaky foundation on which the whole wobbly house rests.

Education must be grounded in truth. Students should learn that there is objective truth and that it is knowable. Science courses must be grounded in reality, not ideological fads. Students should learn that good and evil exist, and that human beings have the capacity and duty to choose good.

God save us all from people who believe there is one Truth, and they personally know what it is.  Teaching The Truth rather than teaching truth fundamentally changes the whole act of education into something else, something that does not serve anyone, not even the people trying to peddle their particular Truth.

Too often the idea that Truth can be known is delivered by someone who believes they know it. Here Heritage just hints at all the attendant problems. "Science courses must be grounded in reality, not ideological fads" is a fine argument for favoring evolution over creationism in the classroom, but I'm betting that's not what they had in mind. And the notion that humans ought to choose good over evil is not wrong, but it's useless, because everyone thinks they're choosing good-- as they see it.

What Heritage wants to argue for is education that is grounded in their idea of reality and which adheres to their view of good. Let's just skip any debate about whether they are right or not--they are sure they're right and people who disagree with them are wrong and that should be the end of it.

Cultural Transmission

Heritage argues that transmitting accumulated human wisdom and the particular culture and heritage of a country as the "central purpose" of education, but again they assume that "what is our culture" has a single known answer. They are arguing for one particular version-- "America’s founding principles and roots in the broader Western and Judeo-Christian traditions"-- of culture, as if that culture has not changed on a yearly basis, as if that culture is not informed by constant debates about what it is, as if there aren't a whole world of roots outside "Western and Judeo-Christian traditions."

Yes, education is absolutely part of transmitting and preserving culture. But the Heritage track record suggests that what they really mean is stripping the current culture of all those influences that aren't supposed to be there and restoring it to some sort of factory setting from an imaginary golden age. And that is the opposite of cultural preservation and transmission; it's locking down a preferred culture and trying to stifle its natural growth and change. 

Character Formation

Education should, in fact, prepare children "for the challenges and responsibilities of adulthood," though it would be nice if it also prepared them for the joys and beauty of human life. Thing is, there's a whole body of work intended to formally include character education-- it's social and emotional learning, the SEL that Heritage really hates. Education, they say here, should cultivate "virtues and discipline." As if the list of virtues is an immutable knowable objective thing, and not subject to arguments over virtues such as empathy.

Academic Excellence"Schools should help students achieve their full potential, going as far and as fast as their talents will take them." Well, yeah. Yeah, also, to content-rich curriculum. "No fads or experimental teaching methods." Sure. Academic excellence should be the focus. Can we get rid of the Big Standardized Test now?

Citizenship

I cannot object to a call for "an educated and patriotic citizenry," even though I know none of us will agree on what those terms actually mean, though it's clear that Heritage means that patriotic citizens agree with Heritage politics-- "ordered liberty, justice, the rule of law, limited government, natural rights, and the equal dignity of all human beings." But I'm pretty sure that Heritage's beef here is not with guys like me but with...well. they call for schools to "cultivate gratitude for and attachment to our country and all who serve its central institutions" and call for honest history that still shows that "America is a great source of good in the world." Might want to check with President Musk and Dear Leader on those.



The Phoenix Declaration is artfully done (it should be--the drafting committee contains 15 folks, some of whom are pretty smart). Some of it is silly (a call to put the pledge back in classrooms) and much of it uses broad enough terms that everyone can agree with what it says even as they totally disagree about what it means. It blows its anti-woke dog whistle hard enough to awaken the oldest, deafest labrador, and it skips over some of its biggest self-contradictions-- parents should have their choice of a school that matches their values, but all schools should be based on the values listed here. It also has a curiously dour and joyless view of education (and life), an old man waving his fist at clouds while complaining about all the lazy wokey Kids These Days.

But mostly it assumes that all reasonable Americans see it this way, and while it name checks "civil disagreement" at one point, it doesn't particularly embrace pluralism or diversity as American virtues and values.

The folks who signed off on this run the ideological gamut from A to B. Kevin Stitt, Manny Diaz, Frank Edelblut, Corey DeAngelis, Jim Blew, and folks from Hillsdale College. Institutions include the 1776 Project Foundation, Parents Defending Education, the Center for Christian Virtue, and the United States Christian Network.

Do I think this is some sort of attempt to put a fig leaf over the christianist nationalist version of education? Not really. I'm not entirely sure who the audience for the declaration is supposed to be.

I don't think it's this slice of the right wing trying to pretend to be reasonable. I think this is them believing that they are reasonable and right, that their view of education is reasonable and proper, and if they just lay their core beliefs out without the usual purple prose and rhetoric (say, Heritage Foundation via Project 2025) they will, at the very least, provide their allies with a document that lets them point and say, "See? We're not so unreasonable." There's no fig leaf here, just some of the folks who usually are waving torches and writing anti-government manifestos like Project 2025, sitting down with some of their calmer brethren and trying to stay cool.

It's remarkably cool for a declaration that we live in a time of "moral and political crises," that promises to be a beacon back toward some vision of the central purposes of education. But as I've tried to point out in some instances, many of these words are open to a broad variety of interpretation, and the core belief "There is One Truth and I personally Know what it is" really gets in the way, particularly when that truth includes items such as "all reasonable people would agree with me" and its corollary "unreasonable people should shut up." So much of the declaration could mean anything, though its creators clearly have certain meanings in mind.

Maybe it's the created-by-committee problem. Maybe it would be better if Heritage just came out and said what they really mean; I mean, I generally think they're wrong, but at least it's usually easy to see what they mean. Even the choice of phoenix is vague-- what set the old bird on fire, and what are the ashes that this one is supposed to be rising from? Are we supposed to be following the light it gives to some other place, or following the light to the phoenix itself, which is...? It's an incomplete image. The phoenix is mythical and non-existent, which fits the affection for a golden time that never existed. But I can think of better birds for this declaration.