DFER Pushes The Same Old Baloney

Whenever you encounter Democrats for Education Reform, it's important to remember that they are not meant to be actual Democrats. As explained by their founder Whitney Tilson (the guy who just got smoked in his run for NYC mayor), reminiscing about the days he was trying to help a reformy anti-public ed group--

The real problem, politically, was not the Republican party, it was the Democratic party. So it dawned on us, over the course of six months or a year, that it had to be an inside job. The main obstacle to education reform was moving the Democratic party, and it had to be Democrats who did it, it had to be an inside job. So that was the thesis behind the organization. And the name – and the name was critical – we get a lot of flack for the name. You know, “Why are you Democrats for education reform? That’s very exclusionary. I mean, certainly there are Republicans in favor of education reform.” And we said, “We agree.” In fact, our natural allies, in many cases, are Republicans on this crusade, but the problem is not Republicans. We don’t need to convert the Republican party to our point of view…

And that has been DFER's function ever since. Take right wing talking points, polish them up a bit, and insist to Democratic politicians, "This is what Democrats really believe and need to do to win." 

Their "new path for education reform," floated back in May, is more of the same. Jorge Elorza, former Providence mayor and current DFER chief, issued a white paper (a "white paper" is a blog post on good stationary) entitled A Democratic Framework for An Abundance Education Agenda, and it's the same old same old. 

The attempt here is to tap into the abundance movement, and if you're wondering what that is, join the club. Maybe it's about redirecting philanthropy, or maybe it's about getting Democrats out of the red tape business and into the teaming up with private business business, and if you're thinking, "Hey, I smell neo-liberalism," you're not alone, though there's also a valid point in there about how some Democratics are lousy managers of whatever they've been put in charge of.  Fortunately for our purposes, it doesn't matter, because Elorza is just waving at "abundance" (Abundance is about outcomes, not ideology—Abundance is about Getting Big Things Done) while he does the same old DFER dance.

Elorza says that abundance can help the party that turned out to be broken in 2024. 

Abundance offers a home for those of us who share broadly progressive aims, who not only want to enhance government’s capacity to deliver but also believe market-based solutions should be enlisted in the effort, who believe in the power of innovation and in technology’s ability to accelerate progress, and who, ultimately, want our policies to lead to real, material improvements in people’s lives.

Yeah, neo-liberal techbro stuff here. All throat clearing to get ready for a swing at education.

Dems used to be viewed positively on education, and now they're not. Elorza will not connect this to Dems themselves deserting public education and teachers through support for Common Core, Race to the Top, and varieties of school choice, all buttressed with the argument that schools are failing and teachers suck. Elorza says "Americans are not buying what we're selling" and then recaps the Clinton and Obama education years as if they were education wins, so I'm not sure which salespersons he's dissing here. No, he's pointing fingers elsewhere--

Many Americans believe Democrats kept schools closed too long during the pandemic, that we have focused too much on ideological battles, and have focused too little on classroom success. Meanwhile, too many Democratically-run cities and states are home to failing schools, sluggish Covid recovery, widening achievement gaps, and students who are unprepared for the future.

All false, but I'm not taking the time to debunk here. I'll just note that here he is simply amplifying right wing talking points. 

He wants Dems to know that the GOP has been wining in education by "championing school choice and making education a centerpiece of their national and state-level platforms" except that of course what they've made a centerpiece is a bunch of culture panic noise, not education at all. He gets one thing right-- he says that Dems have no clear national education vision.

On he rolls with more right wing talking points. We spend so much money on education, but our test scores are low! Gaps! 

And then we give more funding to failing schools, he gasps. Dems have "abandoned the spirit of innovation that gave birth to new school models and changed lives at scale in New Orleans, Camden, Washington, D.C., and many other places" he says, citing several locations where ed reform failed to achieve anything that it promised. 

Remember the old right wing reformy complaint about looking at inputs instead of deliverables? He's dusted that one off too. Did you miss someone claiming that schools look exactly as they did 100 years ago? He's got that, too (also, cars and houses look a lot like they did 100 years ago, unless you give them more than a superficial glance).

But he's got three pillars to guide us in this attempt to get behind that same reformy apple cart from 25 years ago. 

Pillar #1-- Innovation

We need a "start-up style ecosystem," because it is cool to run experiments on children. He cites charter schools, learning pods, microschools, hybrid education, and unbundled learning as "new school models," which they absolutely are not. 

Also, get rid of barriers to innovation by scrapping regulations and "reforming restrictive teacher contracts," because the visionary CEO model of schools just hates it when the help gets uppity. "Break the culture of compliance" is one I'll go along with, except of course that the whole point of reforming restrictive teacher contracts has always been to have power to force teachers to be more compliant. 

Create systems that adapt? Again, if you don't think schools have been adapting like crazy for the last century, you haven't spent any time inside them.

Treat and pay teachers like high skill professionals, not assembly line workers. Everyone says this. Nobody wants to foot the bill.

There's a paragraph that pretends to connect all this to abundance, but it doesn't. 

Pillar #2-- Accountability

Man, these corporate guys love their deliverables. 

At a systems level, accountability doesn’t necessarily mean testing regimes or micromanagement—it means focusing on continuous improvement and student-centered results. Politically, it is about having a sense of urgency, it is about shifting our focus from inputs to outcomes, and it is about refusing to write a blank check for things that are not working.

Except that for several decades now, accountability has meant exactly testing regimes and micro-management. You can't just breeze past the "measuring" part of accountability, because it's really, really hard to even agree on what should be measured, let alone how to measure, and no politicians, least of all Democrats, have shown an inclination to delve into that hard stuff.

He's very hung up on giving funding to failing schools, because if a school doesn't have the resources for success, then don't give them more resources until they... what? This was another great old failed policy-- failing schools would be taken over by turn around experts, and it virtually never, ever worked.

He wants to get rid of tenure, of course, because we can fire our way to excellence. Oh, and stop social promotion of students. 

Abundance? Well, the test score gap is large and we need to Try New Things (though all his suggestions are Old Things). "Our North Star should be outcomes for kids, period" is a great line, until we have to decide which outcomes and how and when we'll measure them, and policy makers never want to deal with this difficult nitty gritty by which their policies live or die. What does this have to do with abundance? No idea.

Pillar #3-- Choice

DFER wouldn't be DFER if they weren't arguing for choice policies (just like the GOP). Charter school, vouchers, vouchers with other names that test better with voters-- Elorza is for all of it. Dems can shape these "tools to align with Democratic values" by putting most needy families first, protecting civil rights, public accountability-- three examples of policies that choice fans have consistently rejected. 

Abundance message? There's no one size fits all education solution. Yeah, nobody ever thought of that before abundance was a thing. Elorza envisions a national system in which schools are really, really different from each other, rather than, I guess, community based schools. One thing that always burns my toast about ed policy discussion--why is it that these folks always talk as if every student in America lives in a population-dense cityscape. 

Frameworks and champions

Elorza thinks this all makes a nice broad framework on which to campaign and govern on. Sure, for campaign. Govern on this? That's a joke. Every one of his ideas depends entirely on the specifics and nuts and bolts (e.g. all your schools are really different, so how does transportation work). 

Because "disrupting the status quo is almost certain to incur the wrath of powerful stakeholders—teachers’ unions, bureaucrats, community activists, and local political leaders" (because DFER agrees that teachers are the enemy of reform), Elorza thinks that governors are best positioned to lead, because if there's anything that works great in education, it's top-down policy edicts that roll over local control. 

DFER deserves to die

This white paper has nothing to offer that is either A) new or B) not GOP-lite. If you believe all the stuff he's laying out here and you're picking the governor you'd like to live under, why would you pick Josh Shapiro over Ron DeSantis? 

DFER was always an attempt to get right-tilted conservative policies into power when the actual right-tilted conservative politicians were not in power. But the political calculus in this country has changed. There is nothing new in this pitch except the attempt to throw "abundance" into the rhetoric, and no audience for this tired reformster dance.

Sal Khan Flunks Lit Class

Sal Khan has established himself as one of the big names in the world of Tech Overlords Who Want To Reshape Education Even Though They Don't Know Jack About How It Works.  

These days Khan is pimping for AI, including publication of a terrible book about AI and education, and John Warner's review of that book ("An Unserious Book") pretty well captures the silly infomercial of that work. You should read the whole thing, but let me share this quick clip:

Khan is in the business of solving the problems he perceives rather than truly engaging with and collaborating with teachers on the actual work of teaching. He turns teaching into an abstract problem, one that just so happens to align with the capabilities of his Khanmigo tutor-bot.

More than fair. 

Khan's book touches on his love for Ender's Game, a book whose main point appears to have sailed far over Khan's head. The book series is about children who are tricked into running a genocidal space war by being hooked up to a gamified simulation. Khan thinks the book is about "how humans can transcend what we think of traditionally as being human."

That's not a one off. Khan put his reading skills on display a few months ago in a Khan Academy blog post in which this "avid reader" offers five recommendations, complete with summaries, sort of.

Khan likes to say that Khan Academy was inspired by Isaac Asimov's Foundation series: "The concept of collecting and spreading knowledge for the benefit of humanity deeply resonated with me." Asimov's future history (now at about 18 books) is about many things, including human society being manipulated and directed by a robot with some mild psychic powers, but okay. Let's look at his five recommendations.

A Little History of the World

E. M. Gombrich covers history from cave dweller says to just after WWI. Khan appears to know what he's talking about here, saying that it "reads like a magical adventure that inspires true wonder as the reader journeys through our shared story on this planet." Though I'm not sure Khan caught the very humanist tones of the book. "In many ways, Gombrich has the same approach to education as Khan Academy does—showing that learning is best when paired with accessibility, joy, and wonder." Khan Academy videos are about joy and wonder? 

The Art of Living

Epictetus, a Greek stoic philosopher, was a sort of classical Ben Franklin, and this book collects a whole bunch of his observations about Living a Good Life under headings like Your Will Is Always Within Your Power, Create Your Own Merit, and Events Are Impersonal and Indifferent. What Khan gets from it is some sweet, sweet marketing copy:"

This quote resonates with me: “The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.” The sentence perfectly captures the spirit of Khan Academy. By surrounding ourselves with passionate, supportive learners like you, we can create an environment where everyone can thrive.

Three Body Problem

Cixin Liu's trilogy is a huge nut to crack, but Khan reads it as "a skilled blend of both scientific and philosophical speculation that challenges our assumptions about who we are and what our place is in the universe." And, okay--there's a lot to discuss and argue about the work, but our place in the universe appears to be painfully small and the work is arguably a huge FAFO novel about humanity biting off way more than it can chew. Khan thinks it fits in an age of AI. when we should "double down on its positive uses while placing reasonable guardrails to mitigate the negative." I am pretty sure any number of SF novels could have been plugged in here.

Great Expectations

I taught this Charles Dickens classic innumerable times, and his summary would shame the dimmest freshman. 

The novel follows Pip, a young man whose life is shaped by opportunity, wealth, and societal expectations. Throughout history, these forces have dictated access to education and determined a person’s future. Pip’s journey highlights the inherent unfairness of this system.

Well, that's not what "expectations" means in this novel. And that's not exactly what shapes Pips life. There's also sheer happenstance (because Dickens) and love and the social status strictures of Victorian England. Most of all, it's about Pip coming to terms with himself and his goals in life in a story of moral regeneration. I confess to loving the richness and depth of this novel, far deeper and human that a complaint about fairness, and it is painful to see Khan reduce it to those few sentences.

A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court

Hoo boy, does Khan miss the boat on this one. 

In this book, Hank Morgan, a knowledgeable American engineer from the late 1800s, finds himself magically transported to King Arthur’s England in the 500s, a far more backward and ignorant time than the fanciful tales of legend. He also discovers that his knowledge of science and engineering is nothing short of magic to the people of Camelot. Through his experiences, he realizes that the best way to “liberate” people is to educate them in science, critical thinking, and humanist ideals.

Connecticut Yankee is one of Mark Twain's darkest works. It starts as a simple lampoon of the romanticized view of medieval times, but Morgan's "upgrades" to the past include the creation of firearms and other modern weaponry. Morgan wins a duel by shooting a bunch of knights with a pistol, and then in the climactic battle, uses modern technology to slaughter 30,000 cavalrymen (sent by the Catholic Church, which is a major antagonist in the novel). Thus, science "liberates" a whole bunch of people from breathing. If I wanted to pick a novel that demonstrates the corrupting dangers of technology, I could do worse than this one.

I would guess that Khan had ChatGPT write the list for him, except that I'm not sure that a bot wouldn't do a better job. I know it's just a little fluff piece for his company's blog, but damn-- someone who wants to commandeer the shape and direction of education out to be better than this. This is a guy who sees what he wants to see and not what is actually there, a serious absence of critical thinking skills for someone working in education.

ID: Fake Superintendent To Launch Christian Charter School

Brandon Durst is back, and he has a new plan. He's starting a new charter school in Idaho. It might be a school of sport, or maybe it will be a Christian charter. 

We've seen Durst at work. He's not a big time grifter, but he is certainly emblematic of a certain type of pseudo-conservative right-wing "my only qualification is Jesus" actor that is feeling empowered these days.

A quick Durst review

The broad outlines of his career are pretty simple. Born in Boise. Attended Pacific Lutheran University (BA in poli sci with communication minor), grad school at Kent State and Claremont Graduate University (public policy, international political economy), then Boise State University (Master of Public Administration). In 2022, he went back to BSU for a degree in Executive Educational Leadership.

His LinkedIn account lists 20 "experience" items since 2000, and Durst seems to have bounced quickly from job to job until 2006, when he was elected as an Idaho State Representative for four years. Then in 2012 he was elected to the state senate, a job that he held for one year. He did all that as Democrat; in 2016, he switched his party to the GOP.

Then independent consultant, a mediator for a "child custody and Christian mediation" outfit. Then an Idaho Family Policy Center senior policy fellow. IFPC advocates for the usual religious right causes, but they have a broader focus as well: "To advance the cultural commission." They see the Great Commission in a dominionist light-- the church is to teach "nations to obey everything Jesus has commanded." And they suggest you get your kid out of public school.

Durst's had a   recent gig with the Idaho Freedom Foundation, a right tilted thinky tank that wants to "make Idaho into a Laboratory of Liberty by exposing, defeating, and replacing the state's socialist public policies." They run a Center for American Education which, among other things, maintains a map so you can see where schools are "indoctrinating students with leftist nonsense." They also recommend you get your child out of public school.

Durst carries some baggage. That one year tenure in the Senate? Durst resigned because the press got ahold of the fact that he was actually living in Idaho only part time; his wife was working as a teacher near Seattle and he was living there at least part of the time with his family. KTVB, the station that followed the story, "observed his home looked empty of furniture when stopping by to knock on the door last week." Durst insisted that his bed and clothes were there. And he blamed the split living arrangement on Idaho schools:

There's a big difference between living out of your district for an entire year, and having a family member who is a teacher that doesn't get treated well because they live in Idaho and have to find employment someplace else. I think there's a big difference, Durst said.

For a while, it looked like he would fight the charge. But in the end he resigned his seat.

2022 was not a great year for Durst. After the Idaho Senate failed to advance the parental rights bill that he was promoting, Durst confronted Senator Jim Woodward with enough aggressiveness that Woodward called the cops on him. After blowing off a meeting with GOP leadership, Durst blasted senators on social media. The Senate GOP majority wrote a letter condemning Durst for "spurious attacks against members of the Senate, meant to coerce votes and influence elections." In a press release, GOP leaders condemned Durst and said his actions "demonstrate egregious conduct unbecoming of anyone, especially a former legislator and current statewide political candidate."

The "candidate" part refers to Durst's run for the office of state superintendent. He told East Idaho News, “Parents are tired. They don’t feel respected or trusted and they want some real change in their school superintendent. They’re all talking about the same things. They want to stop the indoctrination that’s happening in their schools, they want to (be able) to make decisions for their kids." He ran on three priorities-- end common core, stop critical race theory, and school choice ("fund students, not systems"). He came in second in the GOP primary, losing to Debbie Critchfield by about 25,000 votes. Remember that name.

Durst had remarried in 2016 (in Washington state), and in 2022, his wife and ex-wife got into a scuffle that almost blew up into abuse allegations against Durst and his wife over a whack with a wooden spoon on a 14-year-old child. He explained later, “The child wasn’t being respectful, wasn’t obeying … It wasn’t even very hard, but things can happen in the political world where things get taken out of proportion, and that’s what happened here." Certainly his candidacy made the story bigger than it might otherwise have been.

In 2023, the West Bonner district was desperate enough to hire Durst as superintendent (they had gone through three superintendents in one year). The contract was a bizarre one, with numerous unusual benefits and a super-majority required to oust him. Durst lacked even the tiniest hint of a qualification for the job, and the state wouldn't issue him any kind of certificate. Durst took all of this with the quiet grace and dignity for which he is known. On his blue-checked Twitter account, he complained that something smells. "...this was a discriminatory act by a board run by those with a political axe to grind. They will be held accountable for their discriminatory actions." That despite the extreme far-rightness of Idaho's leaders.

He sort of quit and the board sort of accepted his resignation, and then he sued for breach of contract because he didn't really quit (God bless Idaho Ed News for its coverage of this saga). His tenure lasted basically the summer of 2023--three months, without the schools even open.

Bryan Clark at The Idaho Statesman wrote the political obit on Durst, who they called a "serial political entrepreneur" in June when he was trying to establish his "own little kingdom."

The unifying thread is overwhelming personal ambition. The causes change, but what’s been constant is Durst’s belief that he should be given the power to implement his ideas, whatever they are that week.

There has been a second constant as well: failure

So now what is he up to?

Kaeden Lincoln has just reported the newest chapter in the Durst Saga. 

Durst and a couple of failed school board candidates (who ran for the West Ada board, the district where everyone is famously not welcome) want to launch the Brabeion Academy, "Idaho's 1st Public School of Sport" (motto "Victory Through Excellence"). The K-8 school promises to open in Fall of 2026. "Brabeion" is a Greek term that turns up in Paul's Letter to the Philippians and means "prize." The school's mailing address is in a small office strip mall in Garden City. 

The board includes President Miguel DeLuna has 35 years in California law enforcement, starting out as a deputy sheriff and including 11 years as with Oakland Unified School District Police Services "at a high school with prevalent gang activity." He ran unsuccessfully for the West Ada board in 2023. Treasurer Tom Moore ran alongside DeLuna and failed. He's a retired Navy aviator. The board secretary is Jullie Dillehay, Durst's mother. Laura Warden is "a veteran homeschooler with over fifteen years of experience" and a "devoted follower of Jesus and is passionate about preserving freedom like America’s Founding Fathers and freedom in Christ Jesus." Durst is the chair, and lists superintendent of West Bonner as one of his qualifications.

The school doesn't have a physical location yet. They plan on using Hillsdale's christianist nationalist 1776 curriculum, supplemented with PragerU's whackadoo materials. 

Durst called the school a "Christian public charter school" on Twitter, arguing

Here is the bottom line: the state of Idaho provides a public benefit (a charter, aka a license) to private nonsectarian organizations, but openly discriminates against private sectarian organizations, solely due to their religious nature. SCOTUS has been clear, doing so is a violation of Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Durst told Lincoln, "Given the way the Supreme Court ruled on the case from Oklahoma, it’s still our opinion that it is constitutional to have religious charter schools. And so all of our board members are open to that potential move, but we’re taking it one step at a time.”

The way the Supreme Court ruled on Oklahoma's christian charter school was they let the lower court ruling stand-- the one that said it violated the state constitution. I share Durst's feeling that it's only a matter of time before SCOTUS okays religious charters-- but it hasn't happened yet.

When and if it does happen, though, Brandon Durst will be right there with the army of folks who have no educational qualifications other than their ideological bent. 

PA: How Badly Are Districts Hurt By Feds Holding Back Funds

On Juily 1, the federal government was scheduled to distribute federal education grants. Instead, the Department of Education sent an unsigned e-mail saying, "Yeah, we're just going to sit and think about that." It's a technique known to every parent who ever responded to a child's unwelcome request with, "We'll see." Except that in this case, the states are not unruly toddlers, but folks who expected that since Congress had duly appropriated the funds, there was no reason to think the funding wasn't going to happen. 

Even Betsy DeVos, who hated the idea of forgiving student loans, signed off on documents (reluctantly) because it was the law. But Trump 2.0 is not so interested in the laws.

Here are the programs for which the feds have decided to withhold funding.

Title I-C for migrant education ($375 million)
Title II-A for professional development ($2.2 billion)
Title III-A for English-learner services ($890 million)
Title IV-A for academic enrichment ($1.3 billion)
Title IV-B for before- and after-school programs ($1.4 billion)
Plus a last-minute addition of adult basic and literacy education

The six programs add up to $6.8 billion, and that adds up to some real money for school districts. 

At New America, Zahava Stadler and Jordan Abbott have collected and crunched some numbers that provide a more detailed picture of the damage, and I've taken a look at the bigger picture over at Forbes.com. 

But since I'm in Pennsylvania, I'm going to pull out part of a list that deals with our state. What I'm going to do here, you can do (with even more detail) with the information they have posted. One table they provide breaks down how much money the feds are threatening to take from districts, broken down by the Congressional district for each member of the House (aka "that bunch of spineless weasels who have decided not to do their jobs"). I recommend you look up your rep and call them, encouraging them to look into the extra-legal impounding of funds that they duly authorized.

Here's the Pennsylvania breakdown with the grand total of the dollars at risk.

District 1    Brian Fitzpatrick (R)     $6,693,000

District 2    Brendan Boyle (D)         $28,416,000

District 3    Dwight Evand (D)          $28,416,000

District 4    Madeleine Dean (D)       $7,670,000

District 5    Mary Gay Scanlon (D)   $36,333,000

District 6    Chrissy Houlahan (D)     $7,209,000

District 7    Ryan Mackenzie (R)        $11,402,000

District 8    Robert Bresnahan (R)      $8,734,000

District 9    Daniel Meuser (R)           $11,736,000

District 10    Scott Perry (R)               $6,989,000

District 11    Lloyd Smucker (R)         $5,959,000

District 12    Summer Lee (D)             $7,398,000

District 13    John Joyce (R)                $8,140,000

District 14    Guy Reschenthaler (R)    $6,243,000

District 15    Glenn Thompson (R)       $8,504,000

District 16    Mike Kelly (T)                 $6,667,000

District 17    Christopher Deluzio (D)  $4,902,000

I recommend you reach out to your Congressperson and ask them why the heck this money, duly okayed by Congress, should not be going out to the school districts. Ask why local taxpayers should shoulder the burden of either making up for the shortfall or doing without the services that will be cut because, even though Congress duly authorized this spending, the administration just doesn't feel like it.

Again, you can do for your state just what I've done here for PA (the tables are here). Yes, the department plans to zero these programs out in next year's budget, but that doesn't mean they get to ignore this year's budget. 

ICYMI: Post-Independence Day Edition (7/5)

In our town, the annual fireworks display is set off pretty much across the river from my back yard. So every year we have a cookout, mt brother and some friends come over and after supper, we play some traditional jazz in the backyard where anyone in the neighborhood can hear. Then the fireworks happen. There's no doubt that some years feel different than others, but our country has so many terrible chapters that it's impossible not to live through some of them. At the same time, our most immediate sphere of control involves watching out for the friends and family and community that is in our immediate vicinity. So we try to do that.

Meanwhile, I've got a reading list for you from the week. Remember to share.

South Georgia librarian is fired over LGBTQ children’s book included in summer reading display

Another one of these damned stories. She's got a lawyer; we'll see if that helps.

‘I Don’t Want Any Light Shining on Our District:’ Schools Serving Undocumented Kids Go Underground

The 74 was launched as a bad faith exercise in reformsterism and political hackery, but they still manage to put out valuable stories like this. Jo Napolitano looks at school districts that are trying to evade the long arm of the anti-diversity regime.

Cyber school facing wrongful death suit says it’s ‘unreasonable’ for teachers to see students weekly

I've written about Commonwealth Charter Academy many times, because they are a profiteering real estate-grubbing company disguised as a cyber school. Katie Meyer at Spotlight PA has this story about how CCA is resisting the state's mandate to make even a minimal effort to take care of its students.

 

Public Money, Private Control: Inside New Orleans’ Charter School Overhaul

Big Easy magazine does another post-mortem of the New Orleans charter experiment (which has now been running for twenty years) and finds, once again, that it's not as great a model as reformsters want to believe.

The Chan-Zuckerbergs stopped funding social causes. 400 kids lost their school.

From the Washington Post, one more example of why depending on flakey fauxlanthropists is not a great plan for schools.

Billionaires Support Corrupted Science of Reading 

Thomas Ultican looks at some of the forces trying to sell the Science of Reading

Making Sense of Trump's K-12 Budget Slashing

Jennifer Berkshire puts the regime budget slashing in the context of some broader, uglier ideologies at work.

Whatever Happened to Values Clarification

Oh, the misspent days of my youth, when Values Clarification was a thing. Larry Cuban takes us back to this little chapter of history.

Trump Administration Axes Funding for Key K-12 Education Programs on One Day’s Notice

Jan Resseger reports on the Trump initiative to just withhold funds from schools because, well, he feels like it.

Reading is the door to freedom

Jesse Turner on reading and his time spent teaching on the Tohono O'odham Reservation.

Fiscal Year Ends in Chaos for Florida Schools

Florida continues to set the standard for assaulting public education. Sue Kingery Woltanski reports on latest budgetary shenanigans.

Firms belonging to wife of Rep. Donalds grabbed millions in charter school contracts

Speaking of Florida shenanigans, here's a piece from Florida Bulldog that looks at the many ways that Erika Donalds has enriched herself with education funds. You Florida fans will recognize many of the names in this piece by Will Bredderman.

Unconstitutional Voucher Program Can't Be Fixed Easily

Policy expert Stephen Dyer has been all over the recent successful challenge to an Ohio voucher program. Where do they go next? No place easy.

The Trump Administration is Ending Special Education!

Nancy Bailey explains how the new Trumpian budget slashing may well end special ed as we know it.

California colleges spend millions to catch plagiarism and AI. Is the faulty tech worth it?

Turnitin is now in the AI detection biz, and it's just as scammy as their old business model. Tara Garcia Mathewson at Cal Matters has the story.

The AI Backlash Keeps Growing Stronger

If you're thinking that maybe AI isn't all that awesome, you have plenty of company. Reece Rogers reports for Wired.

Make Fun Of Them

Ed Zitron points out that our tech overlords are mostly dopes, and we should make fun of them for it.

This week at Forbes.com  I took a look at what the Senate's version of federal vouchers looks like. At the Bucks County Beacon, I broke down the Mahmoud v. Taylor decision.

Tuba Skinny is the band I'd like to play in when I grow up.

Subscribe to my newsletter and stay caught up on the Curmudgucation Institute output. 

What About A Civics Education Moonshot?

Colleen Shogan and John Bridgeland are in The Hill arguing for a K-16 civics education "moonshot," and I'm pretty sure we need that like we need more comfortable seats on a sinking ship-- it's not a terrible idea, but it doesn't address the real problem.

Shogan and Bridgeland point with alarm to the terrible results on civics testing for everyone between birth and death in this country. These two are with More Perfect, a bi-partisanish group that wants Americans to play together better, and I'm pretty sure that they are well aware that tests of civic knowledge are not the biggest signs around that civics knowledge is in a bit of a slump these days.

But their prescription is back-to-basics education about the Declaration, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, separation of powers-- all that good stuff. Plus 

Schools must teach about the virtues of pluralism, productive disagreement and critical thinking. We are teaching a generation to code; we should also teach them to decode news and information. What’s more, civics education should not begin and end with one course — it should also provide inspiring inquiries across the curriculum, kindergarten through college, to link learning with practical civic applications.

Plus history, "despite loud voices claiming the discipline has fallen victim to political indoctrination and ideological excess." Plus debate and consensus. With discussions including "scope of various levels of government, the merits of the social safety net, the roles of civil society and individuals in addressing key challenges, the disparate impacts on different populations and America’s place in the world."

Sigh.

First, my reaction is that A) some of this is already well covered by many schools and that B) what do you want to cut out of the curriculum to make room for more civics? Cause if there's anything teachers love, it's when they're in the middle of juggle fifteen balls, some thought leader sidles up to say, "We'd like you to add a couple more balls here. I know you're busy, but, gosh, this is really important. Thanks."

Second, is this really a school problem?

I mean, sure-- students should be taught the basics of how government is designed to work in this country. However, I'll bet you that schools are already doing this, already. 

The problem is not that schools are failing to teach civics. The problem is that schools could run the tap wide open with civics education 6 hours a day, 180 days a year, and it would still not be enough to counteract the firehose of civics misinformation, lies and bullshit being pumped into American society.

We've got christianist nationalism, complete with piles of ahistorical books establishing a fictional history as truth. We have multiple elected officials, plus an entire regime on a second term devoted to installing an authoritarian monarchy. We've got entire media structures devoted to spreading bullshit and lies about how the country is or should be working. Oh, and some of that stuff about history and pluralism is illegal to teach in some states.

Yeah, we've got a MAGA administration and Fox News, but sire, the civics problem in this country is because Mrs. Fleenswoggle didn't spend enough time on separation of powers with her fifth grade class last week.

Americans' problem is not that they weren't taught about our government in school. It's that there are a whole lot of folks investing time and money and energy into selling citizens of all ages an alternative history of the United States. If you expect a bunch of high school civics teachers to somehow counteract that, you should probably take your copy of the Declaration and use it to roll up some of your preferred legal-in-some-states recreational drug.

We have always had civics challenges in this country. Since Day One, lots of folks here don't believe in democracy because they don't believe in equality. Our founders didn't agree on anything, and so our origin is loaded with contradictions and tensions. We have history stuffed with moments in which politicians worked hard to get their own way in spite of the rules rather than by following them. There isn't a single line in the Constitution that someone hasn't tried to get around. It is the most American thing in the world to deliberately try to ignore, forget, or rewrite what you know about civics. 

But sure--let's lay fixing all that on the education system. 

Educating children about the way the government is supposed to work is necessary and important work. But if your real goal is to get a nation where more people know, comprehend, and embrace our national civic life, you're going to need a much bigger and better plan than turning to school teachers and saying, "Hey, teach that stuff harder, will you."

What The Free Market Does For Education and Equality

"Unleash market forces" has been a rallying cry of both the right and some nominally on the left for the past twenty-some years. The free market and private operators do everything better! Competition drives improvement! 

It's an okay argument for toasters. It's a terrible argument for education.

The free market does not foster superior quality; the free market fosters superior marketing. And as we've learned in the more recent past, the free market also fosters enshittification-- the business of trying to make more money by actively making the product worse (see: Google, Facebook, and any new product that requires you to subscribe to get the use of basic features). 

We know what competition drives in an education market-- a competition to capture the students who give you the most marketable "success" for the lowest cost. The most successful school is not one that has some great new pedagogical miracle, but the one that does the best job of keeping high-testing students ("Look at our numbers! We must be great!") and getting rid of the high-cost, low-scoring students. Or, if that's your jam, the success is the one that keeps away all those terrible LGBTQ and heathen non-believer students. The kind of school that lets parents select a school in tune with their 19th century values.

The market, we are repeatedly told, distinguishes between good schools and bad ones. But what does the free market do really, really well?

The free market distinguished between people who have money and people who don't.

This is what school choice is about, particularly the brand being pushed by the current regime.

"You know what I like about the free market," says Pat Gotbucks. "I can buy a Lexus. In fact, not only can I buy a Lexus, but if you can't, that's not my problem. I can buy really nice clothes, and if you can't, that's not my problem. Why can't everything work like that? Including health care and education?"

It's an ideology that believes in a layered society, in a world in which some people are better and some people are lesser. Betters are supposed to be in charge and enjoy wealth and the fruits of society's labor. Lessers are supposed to serve, make do with society's crumbs, and be happy about it. To try to mess with that by making the Betters give the Lessers help, by trying to elevate the Lessers with social safety nets or DEI programs-- that's an offense against God and man.

Why do so many voters ignore major issues in favor of tiny issues that barely affect anyone? Because the rich getting richer is part of the natural order of things, and trans girls playing girls sports is not.

What will the free market do for education? It will restore the natural order. It will mean that Pat Gotbucks can put their own kids in the very best schools and assert that what happens to poor kids or brown kids of Black kids or anybody else's kids is not Pat's problem. If Pat wants a benevolent tax dodge, Pat can contribute to a voucher program, confident that thanks to restrictive and discriminatory private school policies, Pat's dollars will not help educate Those People's Children. 

Pat's kids get to sit around a Harkness table at Philips Exeter, and the children of meat widgets get a micro-school, or some half-bakes AI tutor, and that's as it should be, because after all, it's their destiny to do society's grunt work and support their Betters. 

One of the huge challenges in this country has always been, since the first day a European set foot on the North American continent, that many folks simply don't believe that it is self-evident that all people are created equal. They believe that some people are better than others--more valuable, more important, more deserving of wealth, more entitled to rule. Consequently, they don't particularly believe in democracy, either, (and if they do, it's in some modified form in which only certain Real Americans should have a vote).

The argument for the many layers of status may be "merit" or achievement or race or "culture" or, God help us, genetics. But the bottom line is that some folks really are better than others, and that's an important and real part of life and trying to fix it or compensate for it is just wrong. For these folks, an education system designed to elevate certain people is just wrong, and a system that gives lots of educational opportunities to people whose proper destiny is flipping burgers or tightening bolts is just wasteful. 

For these folks, what the free market in education means is that people get the kind of education that is appropriate for their place in life, and that the system should be a multi-tiered system in which families get the education appropriate to their status in society. And it is not an incidental feature of such a system that the wealthy do not have to help finance education for Other Peoples' Children.  

It's an ideology that exists in opposition to what we say we are about as a nation and in fact announces itself with convoluted attempts to explain away the foundational ideas of this country. Public education is just one piece of the foundation, but it's an important one.