Does AI Tutoring Help?

There's a whole wing of the edu-wonk world pre-occupied with "high-impact tutoring," whatever that is presumed to be. The field serves as a successor to the notion of "accelerated learning," the idea that learning gaps could be closed by teaching the students who were behind by teaching them more, faster, than the other students-- an idea that stunk for a variety of reasons.

"High-impact tutoring" is also a successor for "two-sigma tutoring," another idea that rested on a single very small, narrow, and largely debunked study. 

What all of these ideas have in common is that they are super-appealing to techbros anxious to sell some version of AI tutoring. Lauraine Langreo over at EdWeek took a look at some studies about the various ways AI can be deployed for tutoring, and she opens with what has been the guiding principle for all of these operations. 

High-impact tutoring has been heralded as an evidenced-backed solution for addressing the significant academic gaps that schools are facing. But scaling and sustaining these programs are challenging for schools because they require a lot of human tutors, time, and money.

"Has been heralded" is doing a lot of work here, but the idea that it takes a lot of humans spending a lot of time (and wanting to be paid for it) is spot on. That crucial fact about tutoring smells a lot like money to AI companies. "However," as she notes, "research on the effectiveness of AI tutoring models is limited and still emerging."

Well, that's kind. Sal Khan has taken a good hard look at his own products and discovered that-- surprise--when you plunk a young human in front of a screen and say, "Go ahead and use this program to teach yourself math," by far the most common response is "I wonder if I can get regular Youtube on this thing." Students simply don't use it.

Langreo is looking at a "brief" from Stanford that considers how AI might be used.

SCALE, part of Stanford's Accelerator for Learning (yes, that again), has a brief out that looks at the ways AI can be used, and well...tutoring by a human has a "robust evidence base." After that, every evidence base is "emergent," a research term that means roughly "there is no actual evidence of this in sight, but we kind of smell the possible concept of a piece of the beginning of a sprig of evidence just about to appear, but it's not here yet."

SCALE likes a human tutor with AI supporting the tutor behind the scenes, which they call "potentially as effective, or more effective" as an actual unaided human. This would, of course, depend on the human. But if Human plus AI gets you the same results as Human alone, that suggests at the very least that the extra cost of AI is a waste of money. If the problem your leaders are trying to solve is "How do we incorporate AI into our program," maybe this looks not so bad, but if the problem you're trying to solve is "How do we best tutor these young humans," then adding AI seems like a non-starter (even before we start considering, as SCALE does not, the various negatives associated with AI.

"AI tutoring with human support," which has been the model of computer-powered schools, from Summit to Altschool to Alpha School-- the emergent evident here suggests that implementation matters, because it's only a shade removed from AI-only tutoring, which SCALE declares has "unknown effectiveness." Sad news for everyone who thought they could just swap out an actual human tutor for some AI program and get "high impact" results.

Look, we know the most effective means of tutoring-- one teacher, one or two young humans, repeated a few times a week. It's not a mystery. But there are two longstanding responses to this. One is the eternal education response from leaders and taxpayers: "That sounds nice and I can see it would make education better, but I don't want to pay for it." The other is corporations looking at it and thinking, "I bet we could make money pretending to fix this problem."

But if you want to get some actual tutoring done, you are going to have to hire a knowledgeable human being to do it, not a bot. 

One More Reason for States to Avoid Federal Vouchers

The Trump administration has ratcheted up its attack on discrimination in schools-- by which they mean, of course, discrimination against white guys.

They have hung their interpretation on Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard, arguing that it means that there can be no programs or benefits that white guys can't have. This has been the rationale for a widespread attack on all manner of college and university DEI wokitude.

Now they would like to come after high schools. Here's the opening paragraph from the IRS press release:

The Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) have issued proposed regulations to end federal tax-exempt status for private schools that engage in racial discrimination, delivering on President Trump's Executive Orders ending discrimination and restoring merit-based opportunity.

But they are also coming after elite public high schools, as covered by Liam Knox and Erin Hudson for Bloomberg. The threat here is to come after admissions practices that discriminate based on race (i.e. preferences to anyone but white guys). 

The threatened punishment is to cut off federal funding if the school is found to be violating the administration's funhouse mirror of civil rights law. 

But there's a problem with that. As Knox and Hudson point out:

But public high schools receive far less federal money than most colleges, giving the administration less leverage over their admissions practices without action from the courts. Bronx Science, for instance, received around $44,000 from the federal government last year, and Stuyvesant got a little more than $160,000 — less than 1% of the budget at both schools.

To really get leverage over public schools, the feds need strings to pull. Specifically, purse strings. For "regular" schools, Title I and IDEA provide an opportunity (though not if they successfully convert them all to state block grants) to control local schools, particularly those who serve many non-wealthy or special needs students. 

So federal school vouchers provide another opportunity for the feds to get tighter control over local schools, including those that aren't so dependent on Title I or IDEA funds. Particularly if they adopt some of the ideas of Marguerite Rozas and use those voucher funds to finance important programs. Imagine if Bronx Science was used to taking in a couple million in federal voucher funds.

And for the MAGA crowd that thinks this would be just swell, I ask you to imagine what the power of that program might do in the hands of President Hilary Clinton or President Zohran Mamdani. You didn't like how the feds used federal purse strings to push Common Core (neither did I)-- do you really want to see that movie again?

Federal vouchers represent, among their many shortcomings, a real chance for the federal government to gain more leverage for controlling local school districts. It's a bad idea.

ICYMI: Oh, September Edition (9/6)

I can always see the big May crunch coming from a mile away, but September usually just sneaks up on me and suddenly--BAM-- I am up to my ears in One Damn Thing After Another. A show. A presentation at a writing festival. The Board of Directors' cross-country season. A friend I haven't seen in roughly fifty years coming to town. The ramp up to the biggest festival in my community. And this year, a conference that I usually never miss that I will have to miss (the Network for Public Education gathering in Texas) that includes a lot of great stuff and some good people I usually only get to see once a year. Also, the lawn needs mowing, but it has rained a gazillion days in a row. Retirement was supposed to be quieter than this.

But there is still reading to do. Anyway, here we go.

Parents Demanding Tech Opt Outs Take Their Fight to Federal Court

Lawsuits are after tech opt-outs for parents. I'll be curious to see where this one lands.

Butts on Fire

Phillip Maciak at City Chicken has been watching the robots crash and burn at the robot olympics, and it has made him feel better about his AI-in-school stance.

‘Kids literally disappeared’: Minnesota schools lost at least 1,700 students following Operation Metro Surge

Becky Dernbach and Cynthia Tu of Sahan Journal take a look at just how badly the ICE attacks disrupted education in Minnesota.

Books Can Help Teens Navigate Tough Topics in Ways Their Parents Can’t

Rebecca Stafford in People, of all places, explains why even books about Naughty Topics are important for children.

I Spent Three Days Inside Ryan Walters' Fake National Teachers Union

You may recall that Oklahoma's education dudebro-in-chief left the state for a gig leading the Teacher Freedom Alliance, a project of the union-busting Freedom Foundation. They held a confab this summer, and teacher Micah Cash was there, skeptical but open to listening. He has written a long deep dive into the event for The Pickup, and it is every second it takes to read it. 

The Nation’s Public Schools Endure Threatened and Turbulent Federal Funding

Jan Resseger explains some of the many ways that the Trump administration is screwing with funding streams, and how they may cause trouble for schools.

The Five Questions You Should Ask Before Believing the ‘Science of Math’

Larry Ferlazzo offers a guest post from Rene Grimes, and even if you just skip to the five questions at the end, it's worth burning a free visit to EdWeek.

Dan Patrick's book ban isn't dumb. It's worse than that. 

Loren Steffy points out the dumb (including Patrick's call to ban a work on the new Texas mandatory reading list). Houston Chronicle.

Private school tuitions seeing huge jump across Florida with voucher expansion

Surprise, surprise. Vouchers make windfall revenue for private schools. In other news, sun rises in West tomorrow.

Decades of Poor Transparency and Accountability in the Charter School Sector

Shawgi Tell looks at the many ways that charter schools have proven untrustworthy.

Unsubstantiated Things People Say about Public Education

Nancy Flanagan takes on a baloney-filled article written a politician.

Move Slow, Remake Things

Audrey Watters on what meaningful change looks like.

A Child’s Citizenship Does Not Depend on a Parent’s Paperwork

The administration's latest attempt to chase Black and Brown children out of the country. Bruce Lesley explains.

More than 1 in 10 Ohio Charter Schools suspected of “testing anomalies”

Ohio has a problem with "testing anomalies," and the problem is turning up in a high proportion of charter schools. Stephen Dyer breaks down some numbers.

No One Was Blaming Parents

Sue Kingery Woltanski published column from the Orlando Sentinel, entering a debate about where the money goes in Florida's multi-tiered education system.

Report: Public Libraries Face ‘Existential Threat,’ Putting Books, Information and People at Risk

A new report from PEN America details how the attack on books has extended to public libraries.

At Forbes.com, I look at a new report that suggests using AI to edit writing is a bad idea.

Here's your reflection on the end of summer.

    

Subscribe! It's free and always will be. 

Should Schools Out LGBTQ Students

Donalt Trump has been spewing the baloney sex change operations in schools for years now (here he is repeating the falsehood in 2024), so lying about it a couple of weeks ago (in front of actual young humans, and aided in the lying by Linda McMahon) is par for the course (particularly for a guy who beats par on the course by lying ). Meanwhile, Attorney General Todd Blanche has declared a "pandemic" of gender transitions in schools.

The notion that schools where there aren't enough classrooms or books or staff, but somehow the reading teachers is taking time out of her class schedule to perform sex change operation in a fully functional OR is so stunningly absurd that it defies satire. Of all the things that never happened, secret sex change operations in schools didn't happen the most.

However, there's a real issue behind this absurdity, and whether Dear Leader has distorted it by passing his partial understanding through the funhouse mirrors of his brain or whether he's deliberately distorting the case, his secret school ORs run the risk of distracting people from a real issue being tossed into the courts.

Out in California, brought by a couple of teacher-parents, Mirabelli v. Bonta made it to the Supremes, and another in New Jersey, brought by Moms for Liberty was just filed. Mirabelli is probably what Trump was referring to. 

These cases get complicated, but they revolve around one basic question-- do public schools have an obligation to out LGBTQ students to their parents, or do they have an obligation NOT to do so? 

For the Parental Rights crowd, it's a simple question. They have should have complete control over all aspects of their children's lives at all times. The view of the extreme members of this crowd is that parents have rights and children have none. When they say, "My child is not the property of the government," the unspoken rest of the sentence is "My child is my property" and not, unfortunately, "My child is a living, breathing human being who does not belong to anybody."  

Cases like the New Jersey case invoke the parental right "to direct their children's religious and moral upbringing." 

I wish they would also invoke their parental responsibilities or their children's rights, but I really do understand their point. I would certainly prefer, for instance, that my children's teachers not deliver instruction on how LGBTQ persons are delusional or mentally ill. I am absolutely responsible for the upbringing in all its aspects, and I really don't want the school working against me.

If my children do encounter ideas that run counter to what I want for them, the major tool their mother and I have is an open line of communication. In fact, as they get older, that's pretty much the only real tool I have. 

If your child is using a new name at school and you don't know about it, there are two parties that are not telling you. If your child has come out as LGBTQ and you don't know about it, the only reason is because they have chosen not to tell you.

If a child comes out to a teacher or other school staff, that adult has a responsibility to encourage the child to talk to a parent about it. But they also have a responsibility to listen to a child who says their home will become unsafe if they come out there. LGBTQ children are a disproportionate part of the homeless population, more likely than their straight peers to be thrown out of the house. To insist that a school must out an LGBTQ student no matter what is irresponsible. 

Both schools and parents have a responsibility to look after the health and welfare of the child, and a child's health and welfare is best served ideally by a strong relationship with their parents. It helps if the parents and schools communicate regularly and openly. At the heart of all this should be care and concern for the education, health and welfare of the child-- not absolute authoritarian power of the parent-- or the school-- over the child.

Of course, many policy makers don't care a bit about parental rights. Witness the states, like Texas, where if the parent wants the school to recognize their child's trans identity, the state says "too bad." Sometimes these battles aren't about parental rights at all-- they are about policy makers' desire to erase LGBTQ identities, a stance that puts the health, welfare, and education of the child absolutely last. 

The group for which I have the least patience or sympathy is those teachers who don't want to call students by their chosen name. Grow up, get over yourselves, and call the student whatever the student prefers to be called. Spare me your religious objections; if your religion is defined by the people you are called to reject and deny, the students you think Jesus wants you to tell, "Your identity is not welcome here," you are following a brand of christianism I do not recognize.

The one thing we are not called to do as teachers is to tell students who they are in defiance of who they say they are. 

As a parent, I often think of the words of  Russell Barkley, who argues that we do not engineer children, but serve as shepherds. We don't beat them into the shape we prefer, but guide and support and nudge them along, and if they don't grow up exactly as we ordered them to, that is not a sign that someone has surreptitiously out-engineered us. 

If your child feels unsafe talking to you about highly personal stuff, it will not aid your cause to make sure that they can't trust any adults at school, either. It will just ensure that your child will feel very isolated at a very vulnerable and scary time, which opens them up to the kinds of problematic influences that you were worried about in the first place. 

Parental rights are real and important, but when they are "protected" and extended at the expense of children's rights, that's bad for everyone. Children deserve acceptance and guidance, support and safety, autonomy and guardrails, and providing those things requires a tricky balancing act by all the adults in their lives. It's a balancing act that's best managed by centering on the rights of the child and not hamfisted lawsuits, policy declarations, and press conference bloviating.

FL: State Wants To Run Church Business

The Catholic Church and Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier are in the midst of an argument about who runs Catholic private schools.

Catholic private schools, says Uthmeier, should allow students to enroll without vaccination if they plead religious exemption. Uthmeier expressed his thoughts publicly, coupled with a demand that the Catholic church explain itself within seven days. And have waved threateningly in the direction of Catholic School eligibility for Florida's taxpayer-funded school vouchers. "Nice funding stream we gave you there. Be a shame if something happened to it." 

Michael Sheedy, the executive director of the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops, responded on August 7. Here's the opening of that letter. See if you think Sheedy is intimidated:

As explained in detail below, the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops (FCCB) and the Catholic bishops in Florida do not have to justify to your office their position on Catholic teaching and their reasons for the current vaccine policies. They will, however, do so out of respect for you and your office and with the understanding and expectation that your office will respect the Catholic bishops’ constitutional rights and religious freedom. 

While we appreciate the opportunity to present the rationale for school vaccine policies, we wish we could have met and discussed these concerns with your office and perhaps avoided all the public and legal posturing created by your correspondence requesting a response in seven days.   

There's irony all around here. Nobody has pushed harder for policies that funnel public dollars to private schools than has the Catholic Church. But they much prefer the model in which the state hands over the money and then leaves the private school alone. Many states have carefully written voucher laws to require the state to stay hands off, but Florida's HB 1, the 2023 voucher bill, somehow skipped that part. 

So now the Catholic Church finds itself in a completely predictable position; when you break down the wall between church and state, the church may get public money, but they also lose protection from the interference of zealous public officials who are more than happy to tell church folks how they should properly go about the free exercise of their religion (see also: every state that passed a law requiring schools to post the official state version of the Ten Commandments).

Folks on the right have also predicted this and railed against it. Government money means government interference along with a reduced ability to resist. Or, as I always say, when you mix religion and politics, you get politics. 

Or as Sheedy put it, "Government officials may no more determine the content of Catholic teaching than Church officials may determine the content of Florida law." Which is, again, ironic, because the church officials actually worked really hard to determine the content of Florida law when it comes to taxpayer education money. Three years ago, the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops thought this law was awesome.

On the other hand, if Uthmeier rubbed three of his MAGAbro brain cells together for two seconds, he would realize this is not a fight he wants to win. There isn't anything anywhere in HB 1 on which to hang his demands, so he's left with "Private religious schools that accept vouchers must do what the state tells them to or else," and I'm thinking there a lot of folks on the conservative and pro-voucher side who aren't ready to support that. 

But Uthmeier is a certified real piece of work. He's been a US Department of Commerce senior counsel and senior advisor in the Trump administration, general counsel for Ron DeSantis, and the DeSantis chief of staff until appointed AG. He whipped up a new "Free State of Florida" seal, proposed Alligator Alcatraz, called surrogacy "modern day slavery," and went after a teenage transgender girl in a national women's Irish dance step competition. He chaired the committee that illegally used the Hope Foundation money for political purposes. And he drew a contempt citation from a US District Judge for ignoring her ruling to shut down an illegal Florida immigration law. Uthmeier stated "If being held in contempt is what it costs to... stand firmly behind President Trump's agenda on illegal immigration, so be it." 

Also, part of his argument against vaccines is that they were developed using fetal cell lines. Which is not true.

And yes, as you may already have guessed, this MAGAbro who wants to tell the Catholic bishops what they believe and how to act on it is, himself, a Catholic.

So, yeah. He's that guy. So it's not hard to imagine that his principle here is "I'm allowed to tell the church what to do, but people I disagree with are not." In the Free State of Florida, that may be enough to get by.

"Any insinuation that a government official can dictate to the Catholic Church (or any religion) how to apply her tenets and dogma, violates well-established constitutional religious freedom rights," writes Sheedy. He did not conclude "Now give us our free taxpayer money and shut up." 

This is just another version of the same fight that keeps breaking out right at the very spot where choicers busted a hole in the wall between church and state. There's nobody to root for here. We'll see if Uthmeier backs down or if the whole thing ends up in court. Grab your popcorn and stay tuned.

TX: Alpha School and Voucher Grift-- It's Synergy!

At last we are seeing some of the press that Alpha School actually deserves. Lexi Churchill, in a joint Texas Tribune and ProPublica piece, shines a spotlight on the Texas emperor's wardrobe. You should absolutely read the article, but I want to underline and expand on a couple of points.

First, the switcheroo. As it has in every other state (except, of course, Arizona), Alpha failed to get approval for its attempted charter school launch in Texas. That's Texas, where the state board of education crew is not known for its rigorous standards. This is not a surprise; Alpha School's educational bona fides are still limited to puffed up unproven baloney. As Churchill notes, several journalists have now tried to verify Alpha's claims of magical success with just two hours of screen time a day, and so far, evidence has proven elusive.

But to get into the Texas voucher program as a vendor, a school just needs approval from the state comptroller's office. For that approval, a school need only show that it operates in Texas, that it’s accredited by an approved organization, that it’s been in operation at least two years and that it administers annual standardized tests. Alignment with state education standards? Proven student success? Evidence-based program administered by qualified personnel? None of that is needed.

It's worth remembering that Alpha is by no means the only school playing this game of switching back and forth between charter and voucher status based on whichever category will let them keep the money flowing in with the least possible accountability. If your state has both charter schools and vouchers, I guarantee that there are schools picking whichever designation will keep their owners happiest.

And if you wonder what exactly is the aim of Alpha school and the husband and wife team of MacKenzie and Andrew Price, there's this reminder.

At least two state education boards also took issue with Alpha’s plan to keep Price and her husband on the charter’s oversight board while the school simultaneously paid their companies, which provide services like the two-hour learning platform. The Prices acknowledged the conflict of interest and repeatedly promised to correct it.

When the Price's made their half-baked amateur-hour bid to open an Unbound cyber charter in PA, there were multiple companies connected to the enterprise.

There's Unbound Academy, which is the charter arm of Alpha School itself. Both tout the 2 Hour Learning program, which is set up as separate business. The proposal in the PA Unbound application said “In support of its operations, Unbound Academy will collaborate with 2hr Learning, Inc. to deliver its adaptive learning platform, while Trilogy Enterprises will manage financial services, and Crossover Markets, Inc. will assist with recruiting qualified virtual educators." 

Trilogy Software is owned by Joe Liemandt, the billionaire techbro who backed all of this and is currently the principal of Alpha School; Andrew Price is the CFO. Crossover (an internet employment hub currently advertising a job as Director of Academics fore 2 Hour Learning at $400K) is supported by ESW, Joe Liemandt's personal investment company; their main client is Trilogy. Crossover has a proprietary tool called WorkSmart, which surveils employee work on their computer and was promised for the PA Unbound school. Crossover Markets and 2 Hour Learning share the same Austin address. It appears that Andrew Price was also linked to Crossover, but I find no clear current evidence.

The PA application also noted that the general and administrative service provider would be YYYYY.LLC, a company whose director, president, and principal are Andrew Price.

So Alpha School comes with a whole big web of companies that it "hires" to run the various aspects of the operation, and which in turn funnel all of that money back to the Prices. As Dan Meyer noted regarding that Arizona Unbound charter, "Ultimately, MacKenzie Price, Unbound Academy’s board president, will need to decide whether MacKenzie Price, founder of 2 Hour Learning, Inc, has set a fair price for those curriculum and resource materials. Arizona taxpayers await her decision."

Also worth noting-- Alpha School has ridden a wave of buzz mostly generate by MacKenzie Price's willingness to plug her operation to any media outlet that was willing to be impressed. And yet, according to Churchill

None of the Alpha leaders named in this story, nor the company’s press office, agreed to interviews, nor did they answer most of the newsrooms’ questions, including about their test scores. An Alpha spokesperson provided an emailed response only to questions about previous reporting by other news outlets.

 So, feeling a little shy suddenly.

But hey-- so much synergy. Synergy between Alpha's lazy charter school and Texas's lazy voucher rules. Synergy within the web of money-scrubbing corporations. Who cares about weaving a tangled web if it's a profitable one.

The Worst Argument For Alpha School (So Far)

Well, at least the photo accompanying a Mary Randolph Scientific American story about Alpha School captures how I feel upon coming across one more puff piece about Alpha School.

I feel you, kid.

Alpha School, if you've somehow missed the noise, is a private school chain created by Texas businesswoman Mackenzie Price, her husband, and a real rich guy. It leans on the idea that a child's basic core education can be fully conveyed by a computer program in about two hours a day: Alpha School is directly connected to 2 Hour Learning, because like many private school grifts, the company is one of many companies, wheels within wheels, all handing money to each other, and through each other ultimately to the owners. 

Alpha School is expensive-- as pricey as an ivy league prep school, but the buzz has been phenomenal and ongoing. If Price could do education one quarter as well as she does PR, the school might actually have something to offer.

The Scientific American piece is notable for some of the worst arguments I've seen made for Alpha School, by the guy currently employed as the "senior learning scientist" for Alpha-- Carl Hendrick, who really ought to know better. 

Carl Hendrick is an internationally recognized science of learning and instructional design expert. I'm about to favorably review a book he co-wrote. I have on occasion forwarded some of his substack offerings. People I respect, respect him. 

And yet, the Carl Hendrick in this piece is really out in the weeds.

First, he compares AI in education to Waymo on the road. See, the autonomous car has to learn to accommodate wobbly cyclists and kids running into the street and non-straight roads-- all the things that Waymo, with its limited training for very specific urban areas, still has trouble doing. Sometimes big trouble. But Hendrick predicts that in "five or ten years" AI will be trained on "learning and all of kids' misconceptions and problems."

Thus waving away one of the problems with AI instruction-- the AI can't analyze where the student has gone wrong, what the glitch in their thinking or process might be. Is Hendrick suggesting that AI can programmed with a menu of every possible student misconception and then programmed with a response to it. Because that seems... unlikely. What he's proposing is that the program need not understand why the student is doing what they're doing, just like Waymo doesn't need to know why the bicyclist is wobbling. It's a strictly behavioral approach-- we need the kid to spit out the correct response. 

Randolph slips past some issues. "When used by a teacher, adaptive learning models like Alpha School’s have shown promise in improving student performance and understanding." That sentence is doing so much heavy lifting. Used by a teacher? Models like Alpha School's? Promise? And she cites some objections from some academics. Talking to Kelly Miller, the Harvard professor who has worked in this area. Miller likes adaptive learning, calls it "the future of education." But:

But Miller uses AI and recorded lectures to cover basic material so that her in-person time with students can be spent on more complex work. If there’s no teacher-student relationship—like at Alpha School, where adults supervising students generally aren’t trained educators—“what’s the point?” she says.

Then it's all downhill from there.

Hendrick admits that Alpha School's model isn't perfect, "[b]ut he argues that most kids aren’t getting a good teacher or instruction grounded in learning science in a classroom anyway." So... their human teacher is probably crappy, so why not give them a crappy AI program instead? Hendrick argues that people would be shocked at the varying degrees of quality within schools. In other words, AI "educators" may be bad, but humans are worse-- or at least very inconsistent.

That’s Hendrick’s biggest argument for Alpha School’s model as a solution: “You can’t scale good teaching,” he says. Software, Hendrick argues, can be updated across classrooms at once as new curriculum and instructional research emerges and can give feedback far faster than a teacher grading assignments one by one.

Emphasis mine. Added while picking my jaw off the floor. You can't scale good teaching-- so let's scale mediocre-at-best teaching? And when it comes to feedback for students, which is more important-- being fast or being good? "I got feedback on my essay instantly. It's kind of dumb and useless and even wrong, but at least I got it back quickly."

Randolph nods briefly to the 404 Media report that found all manner of problems with Alpha School. It's not the first negative coverage (here's a Wired piece about unhappy Alpha parents in 2025). 

Randolph also allows one quote that questions the selection bias involved (families that fork over that kind of money for private school tend to be highly motivated). 

She also notes that the model will be tested in some public schools, which may show if the 2 Hour AI model works with a "broader" assortment of students, but we already have some data about that. But as this piece from The Conversation points out, much of the "data" we supposedly have is bunk. And as Dan Meyer showed, 2 Hour Learning has already been tested on general population students-- and it failed hard. 

The irony here is that we are not talking about a revolutionary new technology-- the idea of a teaching machine that can guide students to cough up proper responses is over a century old. Read Audrey Watters Teaching Machines. Alpha School is parked firmly within a forest of red flags, and guys who are learning experts ought to be able to see them all waving. 

TN: Hiding Voucher Failure

Tennessee launched a taxpayer-funded school voucher program in 2019, with a proposal that barely squeaked through the House and narrowly passed the Senate. The idea was, as usual, that it would rescue students from ailing schools, and that voucher-receiving schools would receive autonomy in exchange for accountability. 

Well, forget all that.

This year's result for the state's Big Standardized Test (TCAP) are in and--whopoopsies!-- ESA voucher students failed hard, with their success percentage not even half of what the public schools scored. Just 17% of ESA students met or exceeded proficiency marks in math, and only 24% managed to meet or exceed proficiency for English. (It was 40% and 42% for public school students). In fact, the gap between public and private schools has been widening (as reported by Vivian Jones for the Knoxville News Sentinel).

So of course the legislature moved to find policy levers that could push private schools to do a better job with taxpayer money. Ha! Just kidding. Instead, Tennessee will no longer require voucher students to take the state test. Because what could be a quicker and easier way to eliminate those unfortunate signs of failure? Voucher students will still take the national standard test of their choice (look for that unimpressive-but-unwoke Classical Learning Test to pick up some market share). 

As voucher expert Josh Cowen pointed out to Jones:

“When they stop admin­is­ter­ing the state exam, then the lobby groups and the voucher sup­port­ers can just yell about how great it is for every­one and no one calls them out on it any­more,” Cowen said.

“If these res­ults showed good things, they’d be the first out there in the press con­fer­ence yelling ‘score­board!’ ” Cowen said. “The reason they aren’t test­ing is because they don’t want to see the answer.”

To be clear, the TCAP and other state BS Tests are lousy measures of school success. Those voucher-receiving schools might have some virtues not revealed by TCAP (ditto the public schools of Tennessee).

But this is the game reformsters wanted to play. They promised a future in which parents navigated an open free marketplace rich with information designed to inform the choices of the education "consumers," not a marketplace in which the preferred vendors-- the private ones-- were freed of any measures that might make them look bad. 

I respect folks who are pro-choice on principle, who believe that parents should have a choice whether that choice provides a better result or not. I disagree with them, but I appreciate their principled consistency.

But this kind of thing is just an attempt to give private schools an edge in the marketplace, one more sign that the goal here is not choice for parents, but public tax dollars for private (religious) schools. If Tennessee wants to play the BS Test game, let everyone play it equally. But if legislators just want to play a fixed game so that private (religious) schools can profit from public taxpayer dollars, go ahead and say that part out loud--and let the voters show if they support it. 

Cancelling the TCAP for the private schools that are failing it just reveals that the whole program is a grift. 

ICYMI: Bad Week Edition (8/30)

Just as we were absorbing the loss of Dolly Parton and Tim Curry, the videos started to roll in from Nepal. I confess to watching them over and over as my brain tries to wrap around the sheer scale and horror that swept down upon those people so quickly. If it were rendered as a disaster movie, it would be dismissed as too unbelievable. The people who lost their lives, and the thousands upon thousands who escaped with their lives but lost everything else. The whole thing is horrific.

Meanwhile, school starts in my region this coming week, and there's plenty to read about in the education world. Here's the list.

28 Bills, Ten Commandments and 1 Source: A Christian Right ‘Bill Mill’

This is actually an old article from last year, by Mark Keierleber at The 74 (where their policies are bad but sometimes the journalism is good). At a moment when Ten Commandments laws are facing legal challenge, it's good to remember where they came from in the first place.

Own the Room

Great back to school piece for teachers from Andrew Ordover, reminding us how much teaching is performance-- particularly stand up comedy.

Fewer Teachers, Even Fewer Students: See What’s Happening in 9,500 Districts

I respect Chad Aldeman's ability to crunch numbers, even as I usually disagree what he concludes from them. This article collects a bunch of statistics to create a picture of student population trends compared to teaching staff trends. But the real reason to check this out is an interactive map that shows the trends for every single school district in the country. 

Why Does America Disrespect Our Teachers?

Andy Spears asks the question after looking at teacher pay trends for the last thirty years.

We already returned education to the states once. It was a catastrophic failure.

Jed Bookout at the Frazzled About Education site provides a history lesson in abolishing the Department of Education. It has been done before; it did not end well.

AI Bogus Ed Tech Scheme

Thomas Ultican looks at some of the warnings about AI in the ed tech world and he is not encouraged.

Moral Instruction Will Not Stop Cheating

At Inside Higher Ed, John Warner explains that "The way to stop cheating is to worry less about cheating and more about learning."

Why parents love a school with bogus numbers

That would be Alpha School. Kelsey Piper at The Argument points out that Alpha School's much-touted numbers are so thoroughly massaged as to be useless. Well, except for marketing purposes.

I Heart Mom Populism

Jennifer Berkshire with an important political story. Corporate Dems like Arnie Duncan and DFER insist that Dems have to get behind old school ed reform, but that's not actually winning elections. What is? Support for public education.

Maybe I’m Not A Unicorn

Sue Kingery Woltanski, an oft-elected Democratic school board member in Florida, provides her own example of what Berkshire is talking about. 

Band Kids. They’re the Best.

Retired music teacher Nancy Flanagan should know. So many go on to do great stuff.

Students should only use AI for things they already know how to do well.

Daniel Willingham makes the argument for at least some certain guardrails on AI. If you don't know what you're doing, how will you know what its doing?

When ‘Parental Rights’ Means Letting a Child Die

Bruce Lesley looks at the edges of parental rights law that deny children the right to life-saving health care.

The 50 Percent Problem

Benjamin Riley looks at that Chinese study of the effects of AI use on student learning (spoiler alert: it's not pretty). Some actual evidence to support what you already suspected was true.

Ohio Legislators Should Commit Over ½ Billion in Unspent Revenue to Serving Ohio’s Most Vulnerable Public School Students

Jan Resseger suggests that the Ohio legislature could actually spend some of its extra money on fixing their school funding crisis. Do not hold your breath.

Can AI replace traditional language learning? A new study says not yet

A look at some slightly wonky research about using AI to learn collocations.

A Classroom of Contradictions

Adrian Neibauer's classroom is built on the idea that maybe his favored pedagogical paradigm isn't right for every student.

Did anyone notice that more than 1/3 of Ohio Charter Schools are on the state’s lowest performing schools list????

Stephen Dyer would like to point out that Ohio charter schools are not exactly revolutionizing education.

The Light She Left Behind

TC Weber has some thoughts about Dolly and what she contributed to Tennessee.

Loving Dolly Was Easy. Understanding Her Was Hard.

Plenty of good pieces about Dolly this week, but this New York Times piece by Tressie McMillan Cottom belongs high on the list (gift link).

At Forbes.com, I covered the Economic Policy Institute report on the teacher pay penalty.

 Been listening to this a lot lately. She always brings it for live performances.

Asking SCOTUS To Soak Taxpayers For Private Special Ed

A couple of families in Massachusetts-- and fourteen anti-public ed states-- would like to have it both ways, and having lost their bid in lower courts, they would like the Supreme Court to back their play.

How did we get here?

Massachusetts does require public school systems to provide special education services for students with special needs, which is a heck of a gift to private schools to begin with. But because the state forbids the use of public funds for private religious schools, the rule comes with a requirement that the service be provided at the public school or at a neutral location. 

The plaintiffs are characterizing this requirement creates an undue burden. Students, they claim, lose instructional time, must miss instructional time during the day, and experience stigma for having to leave class (all of which would still be true if the services were provided at the private school). 

But the backers of the case also argue that this burden makes the rule "coercive." In the states' amicus brief, this line appears:

For opponents of school choice, that is the point—to leverage taxpayer dollars to coerce families into public schools by making private education the only setting in which benefits are forfeited,

There is, of course, a solution for this-- the private schools could hire their own special education teachers and provide the services themselves. But that would cost them money, so why not get the taxpayers to foot the bill instead. 

The irony of the states that have signed the letter of support is rich, because in many states, parents must waive their rights to any special education requirements in order to attend a private school. How they complain about rules that make "private education the only setting in which benefits are forfeited," is a mystery, because that is exactly what they allow at home.

A win for the plaintiffs would hit taxpayers not only with the bill for providing the services, but for whatever means are required to transport special ed teachers hither and yon to provide services. The plaintiffs, whose children have disabilities and attend Jewish day schools, find taking their children to get services "burdensome"; they would prefer that taxpayers and the public system bear that burden.

The case, Hellman v. Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, was decided back in March in the First Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling that this rule does not "ban or penalize private schooling or deprive meaningful access to it." Further, it rationally fits with "the legitimate state interest of providing special education services while complying with the Massachusetts Constitution’s prohibition on aiding private schools." The court also rejected Equal Protection and Privileges or Immunities claims.

Lead attorney for the plaintiffs is David Hodges, the "educational choice attorney" at the Institute for Justice. The Institute is yet another libertarian legal shop, founded with Koch brothers money in 1991. They've been in front of the Supremes for several landmark education cases, notably Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue and Carson v. Makin, both of which helped promote the notion that religious folks can't freely exercise their religion unless taxpayers help finance them. 

If SCOTUS agrees to hear this and decides for the plaintiffs (both of which are not the far-fetched possibilities, I wish they were), the result would create some real challenges for a field that already suffers from trouble filling positions. How many extra staff would a district have to hire to cover the "traveling" workload, and how many people would want that job? Such decision would amount to a very expensive unfunded mandate from the court. One wonders what the court would do when a district had to throw up its hands and declare, "We cannot fulfill this requirement because the number of qualified personnel we need are not available to us." 

GA: Suing For More Religious Entitlement

In Georgia, a lawsuit has been filed that will require the state to admit its voucher program was founded on a fiction and to provide another entitlement to religious schools.

Georgia had some trouble passing a voucher law because rural GOP members correctly concluded that a taxpayer-funded voucher program would drain resources from the schools serving their constituents. Georgia privatizers finally got their bill in 2024, and from the very beginning, it was clearly not the law that was sold.

One piece was a bit of linguistic sleight of hand. While folks had talked about the bill's aim to rescue students from failing schools, the bill actually said that taxpayer-funded vouchers are available to any students who live in the attendance area of a failing school. In other words, if you were a high school student in the attendance area for a failing elementary school, you were entitled to a voucher. When this was revealed, some outlets wrote about this as if someone had "changed" something. Nope. The law said what it had always said; supporters just let the conversation continue as if the bill said something different. See folks? Reading is important. In this case, not reading led to a program the cost of which blew up far beyond predictions.

The new lawsuit goes after another piece of the law. The law says vouchers are only available for students who have previously attended public schools in a failing attendance area. But three Catholic families say that this requirement violates their religious freedom and is "coercive." They should be entitled to have their religious education paid for without any such attendance requirements.

In other words, the taxpayer funded voucher program is not supposed to rescue students from failing schools. It's supposed to require public taxpayer funds to support private religious schools.

As quoted by Sydney Stallworth at WRDW, Jamie Mann, founder of New Horizons New Directions Prep Academy said “I believe parents should decide how their child is educated." Mann left off the part that adds "And all the taxpayers should pay for it, no matter what."

Lead attorney is Nathan Loyd, of the Thomas More Society, one more right-wing Roman Catholic activist law firm funded by Donors Trust, the dark money billionaire laundering operation. They are also running a New Jersey lawsuit for Moms for Liberty against a school district accused of allowing school staff to conceal a student gender transition from parents (because parents have rights and students have none). They have been involved in litigation against the ACA's contraception requirement, helped defend clerks who opposed same-sex marriage, and even went after no-fault divorce law.  As a bonus, also active in supporting the January 6 insurrection. (Thomas More was himself a Catholic martyr and the guy who wrote Utopia) I cannot fault them for going plaintiff shopping to find some good Catholics to bring this lawsuit, because a huge number of important lawsuits are brought because some lawyers went plaintiff shopping for a face to slap on their cause. Not a great way to run a legal system, but that's a complaint for another day.

Extending taxpayer-funded vouchers is a way to make the program even more expensive. When you give taxpayer-funded vouchers to students who were never in public school, you are adding entirely new costs onto your state education expenditure. The money is not following the child because no money had ever followed that child into the public school in the first place.

But if your intent is simply to create a system where religious schools (well, you know, the ones that follow the correct religion) are entitled to taxpayer subsidies, then this lawsuit makes perfect sense. 

Certainly now is the time. The Supremes have made it clear that they are very open to the legal theory that religious folks can only fully exercise religious freedom if A) they get a taxpayer subsidy and B) they get to discriminate against whoever they wish to discriminate against. So I'll pay attention to this lawsuit, but I don't have any illusions about how it will shake out. 

Your Back To School Professional Development Menu From Hell

Welcome back, teachers, to another productive year. As you know, we here at the West Hell School District like to pack these pre-student days with lots of professional development because, here in the administrative offices, we believe deeply in looking like we're getting something done, and for these few days, the only people we can do things to are the professional staff. Here are some of the selections for the upcoming PD sessions.

Welcome Icebreakers

Some of you may think it's silly to play games to help you get acquainted with people you have worked with for years, but the real purpose here is to get you reacquainted with the feeling of being treated like a child instead of a grown-ass adult. 

New Procedures Overview

We have taken those internal procedures that you barely got used to last year and changed them again. You'll need to throw out the forms piled up in your desk and/or uninstall the software on your computer to make room for the new procedural materials. This is sure to be a labor-and-time saving new procedure, by which we mean it will save us time and labor in the office by shifting the time and labor to you. Let all that excitement about teaching students suffocate under the load of soul-crushing administrative minutia. 

New Software Platform Introduction

We have adopted a new software platform for use in the district because the software we promised you we would use forever just finished its free trial period over the summer. We have not tested this new software yet, so if you run into any problems, just forward a note to the office and we'll pass that along to the company and I'm sure we'll hear back from them some time. Please do not question the usefulness of ethical concerns that come with our tech overlords; in particular, don't try to ask about the ethical or educational issues involved in the AI we're forcing into your classroom. We have heard that it is inevitable and must be accepted. Besides, it's totally free.

Terrifying Legal Stuff

A lawyer will be in to tell you some terrifying stories of teachers who did seemingly ordinary things and ended up facing billions of dollars in fines and decades in a gulag somewhere. Just try not to touch students, hand students anything, or make direct eye contact with them and you'll probably be okay.

New Stupid Social Media Tricks

A law enforcement officer will be in to scare you with tales of the newest social media trends and how to spot trouble with them in your classroom. This would be scarier except that all of these trends ended weeks ago to be replaced with new ones.

Textbook Program Training

A publisher's rep will be in to tell you how to do your job, based on the two years they spent in the classroom before giving up because they couldn't take it any more and wanted to do something cushier like pimping for a publisher. The rep will refuse to answer any questions about how to adapt the program to your classroom, and will instead offer useful advice about how she would use it if she were a teacher, and how you can use a simple 90 minutes from your thirty minute planning period to prepare materials. 

Data Session

Teachers will hunch over computer screens and try to find something useful buried in the piles of test scores from the state. There will be charts and graphs, and lots of forms to fill in with numbers and stuff, but no answers to questions like "Exactly what was this question on the test that most students got wrong?" If we just keep finding new ways to process the weighing of the pig, we are sure it will get bigger. 

Some Damned Useless Thing

We needed to block out the data time for everyone who teaches reading or math, so here's some placeholder for everyone else, because we didn't have time to find something useful for you.

Discipline

Administration wants teachers to know that they have been heard on the issues of student discipline and teacher morale, and they plan to do implement an assortment of new acronyms and programs this year that continue to put all the responsibility on the classroom teacher. Administration wants you to know that you have their full support, as in they fully support the idea of you handling this stuff yourself and not asking them to do something useful. 

Morale

Administration has heard that some of you are unhappy, and administration would like you to just shut up about it. Also, because one teacher made a procedural error last year, the full staff will now be berated like disobedient children. Thanks a lot, Brenda.

At Least One Hour of Cognitive Dissonance

No day of PD is complete without a self-contradictory. A session about how you shouldn't just use direct instruction, delivered entirely through direct instruction. A session about questioning strategies that uses none of those strategies. "Don't just read off the Power Point slide," reads the presenter off the Power Point slide.

Cavalcade of Cliches

Do you remember your why? Have you got your grit and rigor packed? Can you focus on all this inspirational language, or are you just wishing you could get some work done in your classroom? Sometimes these really do stir the soul a bit, until some admin pops up at the end to scold everyone about copier use and getting your lunch lists in on time.

Classroom Prep Time

Teachers are invited to finish preparing their rooms for the students any time after 3:30. 

Suing To Eliminate All Public School

This lawsuit popped up on my radar a few days ago and I let it sit, thinking foolishly that maybe I was reading too much into it. But a Washington Post op-ed from Corey DeAngelis confirmed the worst-- privatizers are ready to try to eliminate public schools entirely. 

The New Civil Liberties Alliance has filed a lawsuit arguing that "Nebraska’s Educational Scheme Violates Parents’ Free Speech."  And by "scheme" they mean "public education system." Here's their argument for why public education is a violation of the First Amendment. 

Education is speech. The curriculum taught, the books assigned, and the values reinforced inside (and outside) of the classroom all convey a message. The Constitution has long recognized that parents—not the government—hold the paramount right to direct that message for their own children.

That's part of the argument. The rest is familiar as well.

Parents also have a legal duty to provide or arrange for educational speech.

In other words, I should not have to pay for a system that educates Other Peoples' Children. Their children are their problem.  

Nor is the suit merely about eliminating the public system. 

Nebraska’s scheme flips free speech on its head, mandating educational speech then penalizing viewpoints other than the government’s: parents who wish to exercise their right, whether by homeschooling or by choosing a private school, must forgo tens of thousands of dollars of educational benefits available to other families who acquiesce to the government’s viewpoints.

In other words, I should not have to pay for Other Peoples' Children to get an education, but taxpayers should absolutely help me subsidize the education of my own children.

I didn't read the DeAngelis op-ed because the presence of his op-ed in the Washington Post is precisely why I don't have a subscription to the Post any more. But I'm sure it's plenty incendiary and rage-baity. The very idea that public education violates the First Amendment is so destructive and counter-intelligent, but that appears to be where they want to go. The whole system is unconstitutional. 

Update: Okay, someone shared it with me. He used his big boy voice for the Post, but it's still an astonishing reach. "Universal school choice resolves the constitutional problem while preserving public support for education," he writes. Tear down public schools, end the promise to all students, and open up the unregulated free market. In many ways, I suppose this whole business is just the quiet part out loud-- this has always been the goal for some of these folks all the way back to Milton Friedman. 

The New Civil Liberties Alliance is one more dark money group from the usual gang of reactionary billionaires like Charles Koch and Leonard Leo. They are not bush league-- they helped take Chevron to court.

The libertarian Reason magazine is taking this seriously, which is not surprising. NCLA says that "Plaintiffs do not seek to end, defund, or influence public schools," and that's pretty clearly bullshit. What other effect can we expect from ruling the entire system unconstitutional? Maybe the idea is simple extortion-- give us a pile of money or we'll tear down your schools-- but the effect would be the same. Who knows how Nebraska's court will jump on this, and there's a whole counter-argument to be made that education (as folks on the right love to point out) is no business of the federal government; public education is a feature of state constitutions.

So it's easy to look at this suit and argue that it will likely fail. That's not really the point; folks on the far right have always been willing to play a long game and make legal and policy moves that slowly inch the Overton window over and move into courts until, voila! We get Dobbs.

So I'm watching this as the next front of the ongoing attack on public schools, the new argument that will be repeated ad nauseum. Pay attention, folks.

McMahon Doesn't Understand Education

McMahon's particular brand of passionless functionary was on display Sunday morning for a dozen minutes with Dana Bash. The interview kicked around a few topics, and featured one moment that highlight's McMahon's lack of understanding. I've watched it so you don't have to: here are the topics of the day.

The cost of going back to school. Bash opened with the cost of supplying a child for school. $175 for school supplies! "Packing a school lunch is up more than 10%," said Bash. "What do you say to parents" struggling with the costs and economic strains? 

Good soldier and millionaire McMahon sticks with the party line of denial. There may be some price "upticks," but "the general economy is strong" and doing so well. Also, parents have a lot to look forward to because the administration has done work "to make sure that parents are more in charge of the education that is going on in the states" etc etc. So McMahon offers parents denial followed by changing the subject. Which leads directly to the department's hot new talking point--

Sex stuff. Expect to hear repeats of the statistic that one in ten students will have been sexually molested in school. McMahon manages to suggest that faculty are the main problem here and the administration is really working on that. She singles out California as place that shuffles teachers. Bash interrupts to ask if McMahon just pulled that stat out of her butt and McMahon says no the department did a study, based on some data-- "the general education statistics that were afforded to us." It should be pointed out that the California issue is a real thing, as reported by KQED and ProPublica, and the whole subject deserves attention (though this administration may not be the folks to do it). She says they have "really been cracking down on that as well" though how, exactly, is unclear. But it's two minutes into the interview and you already forgot that this started with a question about the high cost of sending a kid to school.

But God bless her, Bash did not forget and responded that sure some economic indicators are better "but the affordability crisis is real." McMahon offers a kind of half nod which could be a grudging acknowledgement of the point or a simple "Well, played, Dana."

AI in the classroom. Bash notes that McMahon issued guidance saying schools should evaluate AI tools based on evidence of effectiveness and learning outcomes. But, notes Bash, the tools haven't been around long enough for any such evidence to have been collected, yet Google and OpenAI are already shoving tools toward students.  "Are you concerned that students are effectively becoming sort of guinea pigs for chatbots?"

McMahon (who has learned the difference between AI and A1) goes with the talking point that says we should watch out for screen time but make our caution based on good screens and bad screens. This launches her tale of going to Austin to see Alpha School in action. She was, of course, impressed.

The first couple of hours every day, students really have on headphones, they're in front of their computers, they're getting their subjects fed to them

Yup, that's how education works-- you just pour the knowledge into the brains of young humans and voila!! Instant smartitude. McMahon talks about "teachers" at Alpha School monitoring what's going on, but Alpha School doesn't use actual certified teachers for the job of "coach." McMahon says the beauty of the 2Hour Learning model is that "a student almost has a one-on-one tutor." They do not. AI is not a tutor for so very many reasons, not the least of which is that the AI cannot analyze where the student went wrong and guide them past that bump in the learning road. She describes how the teacher can see if the child is behind and therefore "repeat information" or see the child is ahead and speed things up-- all of which is what the magical AI is supposed to be doing, so I'm pretty sure McMahon comprehends zero parts of this whole set-up.

McMahon says with AI we should look at "who's going to get it, how long are students going to be exposed to it, what is the outcome," and that would be great for Alpha School, which carefully selects its students. We know, by comparing Alpha School outcomes with the outcomes of Unbound, their bargain cyber-charters that don't cream students, that their outcomes suck (see this invaluable Dan Meyer post).

McMahon agrees that AI products should be checked for effectiveness (not that she imagines a role for her department in doing so, because the MAGA concept of federal oversight is that there should be none and let the chips fall on those who deserve to be chip-burdened, so who exactly is checking these program for effectiveness or doing the pulling out is important, but not clear here). Anyway, she thinks Alpha School is so shiny, she supports "AI with guardrails," and again-- who is putting up these guardrails? 

Bash asks if she thinks Alpha School is a proper model and she says, "Well, the PR pitch I received was convincing." I'm paraphrasing. She does note that it seemed effective at these schools for these students and she's not saying it would work everywhere, which is smart because we already know it doesn't.

AI opt out. Bash asks if parents should be able to opt out of AI, and the TL:DR answer is, "Yes." The school should make its case.

AI versus human. Bash kind of fumbles this question, but the upshot is "Is the swellness of AI tutoring outweighed by the loss of human interaction with teachers?" Even with a coach there, it's not the same as learning from a human being. Are you concerned about that. The TL:DR answer is, "No, that's not our problem." But she'll also allow that human vs. AI instruction requires a balance, as with any other new tool. Nothing can replace human interaction, both between students and teacher and between student and student. She's not wrong. 

School phone bans. Does McMahon think they're a good idea. "Bell to bell no cell," she says. She's a fan. Then she's back to screen time balance, recreational vs. tutoring. This is a good a place as any to mention that McMahon was born in 1948.

CTE and College. Bash gets CTE education, but wonders if pushing career tracks in elementary school is a bit much. Of course, in MAGA world, where Certain People are destined for meat widget status and might as well get started early (see: every state that has weakened child labor laws). McMahon's quote here has some real layers:

I think what we can do is look at students. What are their interests? How do we direct them down a pathway that they're going to have an interest, you know, in school and I believe that children need a well-rounded education, but I think we have focused for too long for just that four year that path to a four year university and sometimes we ignore what the actual skill sets of those students are. 

Note the idea that we are supposed to direct students down a pathway rather than, say, letting them choose a path on their own. Note also the notion that students' "skill sets" should determine their paths. I don't disagree that we have over-emphasized college, but the whiff of one of those systems where we sort students into future career paths early on, regardless of what the students themselves want-- well, that's a very stinky whiff. 

McMahon cites middle school partnerships with community colleges, and Bash says, well, maybe that's debatable, but elementary school??!! Maybe get some critical thinking taught and leave specific trades till later. Nah, do both at once, says McMahon. But then she flips back to "we can't direct that from DC." Because each community and its school might "need" different things. This seems really close to the notion that poor communities need to teach students to be meat widgets, and wealthy communities don't. Certainly there is nothing in her formulation of education about providing opportunities or, ironically, actual choices for students. But she's right back to "and that's why we really want to return education to the states, because we shouldn't have to make sure students all have equal opportunities no matter their zip code." Okay, I added that last part.

Higher ed free speech. Bash brings up the letter McMahon sent to universities calling for more open admission and more free speech. Bash wants to know if the Trump administration will back that up with cuts of federal funds. McMahon's reply starts with "Well, we're certainly always going to monitor what our universities are doing" which is both creepy and also contrary to sending education back to the states, but she then cites an "incredible positive response" and argues that she's all about open debate by folks on both sides of the aisle. She cites Ron DeSantis saying that Florida is all about those open two-sided debates in higher ed, so clearly that's totally working. 

Look, it's a foundational belief of MAGA that the dirty Lefties captured institutions, including higher education, and that to set the country aright, those institutions must be recaptured. Chris Rufo has talked about it repeatedly; somebody has a whole book coming out about it. That's the project. Anything else is a smokescreen. McMahon's call for a "collision of ideas" can't be taken seriously.

That's pretty much it. McMahon mostly snoozed her way through the interview. As usual, McMahon strikes me as someone who is perfect for the task of doing away with her job because it's a job that doesn't seem to interest her very much at all. Honestly, I'm not sure why she's here. Betsy DeVos wanted to bring kingdom rule, but McMahon is old and wealthy and seems like she's out of effs to give. She may want to watch the world burn, but I imagine she would not stick around long to bask in the glow.

You can watch it all if you want, but don't bother to make popcorn.

ICYMI: Busted Modem Edition (8/23)

It has been a real experience for most of this week, with the home internet appearing and disappearing in 5-10 minute intervals. I am waiting patiently for the Institute's provider to send new hardware, but in the meantime, getting work done in little microburst has been an adventure and a reminder the degree to which internet connectivity is now a basic utility and while not exactly a necessity, it certainly ties one's feet together to have it only limited capacity. Just reminder to maybe give your wi-fi connection a little hug and tell it how much you appreciate it today.

And now the week's reading list.

August 21, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson, America's favorite on-line historian (and a Mainer, to boot) took a look at the history of school vouchers this week. 

We’ve Replaced School Security With the Creepiest Possible System

At Slate, so there's a paywall to contend with, but Nicholas Stewart takes a look at the horrifying state of school surveillance and "security."

FWISD put cameras in classrooms at struggling schools. Why?

And speaking of horrifying, intrusive surveillance, Fort Worth has stuck cameras in classrooms. Jacob Sanchez at Fort Worth Report has the whole awful story.

Controversial group that opened ‘Colorado’s first public Christian school’ will close after 13 years

Ann Schimke at Chalkbeat has the story behind the now-defunct group that launched Riverstone, a Christian charter school.

Parental Rights Bills Forgot Children Have Rights, Too

Bruce Lesley takes a dive into the legal questions surrounding the rights of parents-- and when the invocation of those rights imposes on the rights of children.

At “Quasi-Public” Private Schools, 100% of Students Get Tuition Vouchers. There’s Almost No Accountability.

Megan O'Matz at ProPublica looks at the schools that crop up to take advantage of voucher money in an unregulated marketplace.

Setting the Record Straight on ‘Parent-Led’ Groups Attacking Public Schools

Maurice Cunningham and Jeff Bryant team up for a look at those grass roots parent groups that are just big slabs of billionaire-serving astroturf.

Let's Try to Not Become Huge Dopes

John Warner reacts to a write who has proudly announced that he handles his summer reading list by having AI whip up some summaries.

Google Turns On Gemini A.I. for Students Using Its Classroom App

This should be a New York Times gift article, and if you have Google in your classroom, you need to know-- they've aimed AI straight at your students.

Data Centers are a Public Education Issue

Jennifer Berkshire looks at the overlap between public education support and data center opposition.

Some Thoughts about National Board Certification

Nancy Flanagan is a National Board Certified Teacher and she has some thoughts about what it takes-- and what politicians could leave alone.

Everybody Should Be Somebody’s Baby: How Americans Fail Early Learners

Nancy Bailey argues that we have a way to go if we really want to invest in the littles.

Fraught Trump Era Will Intensify Challenge for Teachers to Protect Students’ Rights and Serve Their Needs

Jan Resseger looks into the legal protections for students' rights, with some help from Derek Black

A College Just Cut Theatre Opportunities and Its Students Still Don’t Know Why

In Florida. But at least they still have a big expensive Innovation Hub. Chris Peterson reports for the On Stage Blog.

“Follow the Science” — Right Up Until It Asks an Inconvenient Question

TC Weber, as usual, covers a variety of topics, some very Memphis-related. But I don't want you to miss this section, so here's the excerpt, and maybe go read the whole post:

The other day, I was listening to a couple of young sports-talk radio hosts discuss how they learned about the football players of their generation.

They learned through the Madden video game.

Madden lists players and their skill sets. It assigns an overall rating, then breaks a player down into categories like speed, strength, awareness, agility, throwing power, and tackling. Those ratings are useful for playing the game, and they can be a good starting point for learning about players.

The fallacy comes when you decide the statistics truly define the player. Some players are better than their Madden ratings. Others seem unable to earn theirs when the real game is on the line. A player can possess every measurable tool and still fail to recognize what is happening in front of him.

My son, a high school quarterback, often talks about the difference between straight-line speed and football speed. The two are very different. Plenty of people can run a great 40-yard dash but somehow look slow on the field. They hesitate, take a poor angle, or need too much time to process what they see.

Football coaches quickly recognize the difference.

They understand that a number without context is only a number.

The same holds true when looking at student data. Test scores, attendance rates, discipline reports, grades, and growth measures can all provide insight. None should be treated as the be-all and end-all.

Like those coaches, teachers are best positioned to interpret what the data means. If you spend all day with a child, you develop context. You know whether a score reflects ability, anxiety, hunger, exhaustion, growth, boredom, or a rough morning at home.

That knowledge is not a rejection of data. It is what makes data useful.

Unfortunately, both science and data are routinely manipulated to serve unrelated goals—goals that do not necessarily benefit children.

Jose Felicianoi had some extraordinary talent beyond signing a few pop songs. Here he is on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1966 playing the daylights out of that guitar.