Is It Time For Conservatives To Get Back To Ed Reform

Robert Pondiscio was at AEI after the election to wonder if the time had come for conservatives to get back to the ed reform biz. It's an interesting question, partly because Pondiscio has correctly called the winds of change in the past, partly because a new Trump administration is a fine time to consider how "conservative" and "liberal" don't precisely map onto the education debates. I haven't changed my mind about ed reform; I still love public education and disagree with massive critical chunks of the reform agenda. But for purposes of this discussion, that's momentarily beside the point.

Did conservatives go somewhere?

Here's my over-simplified history of the modern school choice movement.

Since Milton Friedman helped birth the modern choice movement, its heart has been small government, free market conservatism--and that has never been enough. At first the only people to run with it were pissed off post-Brown racists. Reagan tried to set the stage with A Nation at Risk, beginning the process of eroding public faith in and support for public schools. 

Skip ahead to No Child Left Behind, a policy project that was either an attempt to improve public education or an attempt to start loosening the bolts so it could be dismantled. Either way, it birthed a new bipartisan movement centered on accountability, standards and charter-style choice (and in barely a whisper, vouchers). 

That coalition required a sort of bargain. For conservatives, an emphasis on market-empowered choice, and for their partners, a promise that choice would be aimed at improving equity in education for marginalized group. That deal was hard to maintain, especially as it emerged that 1) choice didn't really fix America's equity issues and 2) free market conservatives didn't really mind. Some conservatives complained at being pushed out of the coalition, but then Trump was elected and the coalition was pretty much blown apart-- the social uplift side was not going to have anything to do with Trump, but there were some conservative issues as well.

Meanwhile, dating all the way back to the Obama administration, a new anti-public school wave was building, a culture panic fed by opportunists like Chris "Critical Race Theory Is Scary" Rufo and wackadoo scares like the Great Imaginary Litter Box Panic. 

In February of 2022, we could the closest thing to a formal announcement of a new partnership. Jay Greene, who in a somewhat symbolic move left academia to join right-wing activist group the Heritage Foundation, published "Time for the school choice movement to embrace the culture wars." He argued that trying to pretend to care about things that lefties liked such as equity and uplift wasn't helping the cause (also, the growing body of research showed that, academically, vouchers are a losing proposition), so instead, why not throw in with the culture panic crowd.

Which they did. The problem for conservative free market fans is that the culture panic crowd has zero interest in school choice. They have worked for two goals-- a taxpayer-funded public system that is dominated by their values, and a private taxpayer-funded voucher system dominated by their values. So instead of arguments for letting a hundred education flowers bloom and to each their own, Greene went on to cobble together fake research to show that school choice would end wokeism in education. 

So what could be changing now?

Pondiscio sees an opportunity within the election results, specifically the observation that the GOP made big goals in Florida and Texas, two states that have pushed school choice hard. Pondiscio also notes that "Republicans’ 'red state strategy' has been a yielded important victories, particularly passing universal Education Savings Account (ESA) programs in about a dozen states in the past few years."

He also sees the need to try, because (as Pondiscio regularly points out) the vast majority of students are educated in public schools, so walking away from public ed reform is essentially giving the other team a bye. "The majority of American children—future entrepreneurs, engineers, doctors, soldiers, and citizens—will continue to be educated in traditional public schools for the foreseeable future. Surrendering these institutions to the left would be an act of educational and cultural self-destruction."

There are obstacles and opportunities

It’s also an opportunity for thoughtful conservatives to re-evaluate past missteps and even make amends. That means engaging with public school teachers, a group that has borne the brunt of conservative ire in recent years. As I argued recently in National Affairs, while it’s true that teachers’ unions have often been obstacles to meaningful reform, there’s more common ground between conservatives and teachers than most people realize on a host of issues including teacher training and pay, school safety, student discipline, even curriculum.

Well, yes. It has been a couple of decades, starting with No Child Left Behind operating on the premise that a bunch of teachers were everything wrong and failing in public education, continuing with Common Core premised on the idea that no teachers could do their jobs without careful direction, and all the way up through assertions that teachers are satanic groomers and pedophiles. Not all of that is the fault of conservatives, but is true that conservatives--or anyone else--who wants to work with teachers (and they all should) will have to first apologize and second prove they aren't there to punch teachers in the face again. 

The bigger obstacle is hinted at in Pondiscio's piece. Choicers may have gotten voucher bills in many legislatures, but vouchers were on the ballot in three states and they all lost, decisively. The path to implementing vouchers remains what it has always been-- around the voters and through the legislature.

The presents a problem for conservatives, because the folks in legislatures are increasingly MAGA, and MAGA is not conservative in any traditional sense of the word. Sure, they have some of the language down, but consider, for instance, the Trump MAGA plan for education, which boils down to 1) we want to dismantle the department of education because the federal government should have no control over local schools and 2) we would like to exert total control over what local schools may and may not teach.

Actual Queen of Rumania

One key problem with choice has been accountability. Market forces do not create accountability, certainly not the kind of accountability needed to protect the educations and futures of young humans. Likewise, the argument that we can't "just trust" public schools with all those taxpayer dollars, but handing those dollars to private or charter schools is just fine-- that's not particularly conservative accountability. But MAGA is not real big on any accountability at all, which means more choice legislation that forbids taxpayers from knowing how their money was spent.

That's why I have my doubts about conservatives finding a path back to the heart of education reform, because that path is being guarded by MAGA, and if MAGA is conservative, I am the Queen of Rumania. 

But there is a useful piece of an idea here, because I'm going to argue that you can in education find plenty of conservatives involved in education. The place is schools.

Conservative and liberal and education

I have been surrounded by conservatives my whole life. My grandmother was a staunch GOP legislator in New Hampshire for much of her life, and my father was a faithful Republican as well. My ideas about conservatives come from direct contact, not what the liberal media says about them. I don't spend a lot of time worrying about political labels, and I have never fully understood exactly how political labels track onto sides of education debates.

Free market conservatives are a fine old tradition for conservatives; I think their belief in the invisible hand is sometimes sorely misplaced, but I get it. The supposed leftie allies of ed reform? That never tracked for me. Democrats for Education Reform was a deliberate attempt to manufacture a palatable political package for Democrats. Michelle Rhee, Bill Gates-- liberals? Neoliberals seem like Friedman's nieces and nephews. 

Trying to track a Dem-GOP divide in education seems fruitless, particularly now that MAGA has squeezed most actual Republicans out of their own party. Too many actors are just muddying the waters by using party affiliation to cover their actual affiliation, which is to power and money.

In education, let's instead divide the teams up this way-- Team Burn It All Down and Team Make It Work. 

Conservatives and liberals, nominal Republicans and Democrats can be found on both sides of the debates. But I would argue that "Let's take this time-tested institution and simply trash the whole thing" is not a particularly conservative point of view. Likewise, I think we would find among choice fans both people who want to trash the current system to make room for choice and people who want to use choice to make the system work better. Unfortunately, MAGA and the culture panic crowd are largely Burn It Down--and they just won an election.

As for public schools-- most everyone working in the school wants to make it work better (I suppose it's theoretically possible that there are schools which everyone believes cannot be improved, but I doubt it). Preserve and improve the institution is a fundamentally conservative position, and if you look closely, I believe you'll find that most schools have adopted policies that draw objections not because they are trying to embark on a leftie crusade, but because they believe those policies will help the school work better. Teachers mostly support free lunch and breakfast for students not because they want to promote socialism, but because students are easier to teach when they aren't hungry. 

In other words, education debates can go so much better if folks worry more about the goals and less about which team jersey the policy is wearing.

This is not to say that there isn't a huge divide between the Burn It Down and the Make It Work folks, as well as some huge and definitive differences of opinion amongst the Make It Work crowd. And as with every issue in America these days, the entire field is clogged with unserious people who are simply trying to find an opportunity and angle; red and blue don't matter much to someone focused on green. 

So what were we talking about, again?

Could traditional ed reformsters from outside the Burn It Down crowd get involved in the education debates again? Are there bridges that can rebuilt and fences mended? Can any of it be done while Trump is unleashing God-knows-what over the next few months, and the Burn It Down crowd rules the discussion? And would you like to argue that all I've said is void because you disagree with my definition of conservatism?

Lots of maybe's there, but I do know this-- the last few years we've had lots of really loud reformster voices hollering nonsense. It surely wouldn't hurt to have more rational voices concerned about education rather than politics, and maybe not burn everything down.

OK: License Stripping May Have Been Illegal

The Saga of Summer Boismier, the teacher who dared to provide students with a link to a library that would loan books, is still not over. If you're new to this tale, I'll provide back story here, but if you're ready for the latest installment in this tale of education dudebro-in-chief Ryan Walters and his quest to punish wokitude, you can skip down the page.

Our story so far

Back in September of 2022, after Oklahoma had unveiled HB 1775, its own version of a Florida-style reading restriction law, Norma High School English teacher Boismier drew flak for covering some books in her classroom with the message "Books the state doesn't want you to read." Apparently even worse, she posted the QR code for the Brooklyn Public Libraries new eCard for teens program, which allows teens from all over the country to check out books, no matter how repressive or restrictive state or local rules they may live under.

She was suspended by the district, which said that this was about her "personal political statements" and a "political display" in the classroom. Boismier told The Gothamist

I saw this as an opportunity for my kids who were seeing their stories hidden to skirt that directive. Nowhere in my directives did it say we can't put a QR code on a wall

The suspension was brief, but Boismier decided this was not the kind of atmosphere in which she wanted to work, so she resigned, citing a culture of fear, confusion and uncertainty in schools, fomented by Oklahoma Republicans.

That wasn't enough to satisfy Walters, at the time campaigning for office. The whole business had been a high-profile brouhaha, so Candidate Walters popped up to put his two cents in via a letter that he posted on Twitter.

Saying that "providing access to banned and pornographic material is unacceptable" and "There is no place for a teacher with a liberal political agenda in the classroom," Walters called for Boismier's license to be revoked.  He made hounding her a campaign platform. And he called her out by name, arguing that the public do not want "activist teachers in classrooms" and that it's super important that "we continue to protect our kids from indoctrination. "Yes, this the same who later mandated that every teacher must use the Bible as a teaching tool in their classroom.

That, of course, led in true MAGA fashion to a flood of vulgarity and death threats directed at Boismier as reported by KFOR:

“These teachers need to be taken out and shot,” “teachers like this should not only be fired but also should be swinging from a tree,” “If Summer tried this in Afghanistan, they’d cut out her tongue for starters,” are just a minuscule fraction of the threats pouring into Summer Boismier’s inbox.

Boismier was unwilling to put up with all of this. When Walters continued to try to strip her teaching license (even though in December of 2022 she took a job at the Brooklyn Library), Boismier used a quirk of Oklahoma law to demand a trial-like hearing to dispute the department of education decision.

At that hearing in June of 2023, Assistant Attorney General Liz Stephens recommended against taking Boismier's license, saying the state failed to prove that Boismier had broken the law. Let me repeat: the Assistant AG of the state said that Walters had no case.

Boismier wasn't done. In August of 2023, she filed a defamation lawsuit against Walters. Walters filed a motion to dismiss in January of this year, and U.S. District Court Judge Bernard Jones (Oklahoma's first Black magistrate and elevated to the district court by Donald Trump) denied the motion to dismiss. Walters had alleged that Boismier was a sort of public figure, and that malice on his part couldn't be shown. The judge disagreed, saying her case looks solid enough to proceed. So that lawsuit will continue winding through the court.

Meanwhile, the state board and Walters continued to move forward to take Boismier's license. As reported by Murray Evans at The Oklahoman, they decided hold yet another hearing to "finalize the revocation" in March. Only there's a problem with that plan. In March, all of the department's attorneys quit, so they had no lawyers with which to hold a legal-type proceeding. They've postponed action until May. Once again, Walters had shot himself in the foot by just being lousy at his job.

In June, a revocation order was written, charging among other things that she violated HB 1775 including the charge that she "intended to entice her students to seek out and read" naughty books. Spicy stuff. By August, the Oklahoma State Board of Education voted to strip Boismier of her license. Reported M. Scott Cart and Murray Evans for The Oklahoman:

“She (Boismier) broke the law,” Walters said [speaking to reporters after the meeting]. “And I said from the beginning, when you have a teacher that breaks the law, said she broke the law, (and) said she will continue to break the law — that can’t stand.”

Walters said he wanted Oklahomans to be very clear that Oklahoma State Department of Education would hold teachers accountable. “The Legislature passes laws, we have rules, teacher code of conduct that goes along with those things ― those will be enforced. I wanted every parent to know they have the best teacher possible in their kid’s classroom.”

The Newest Update (And Newest Screw-Up From The Department of Ed)

"We have rules" turns out to be a pretty flexible statement in light of what was revealed when folks finally got a look at the revocation order.

Way back in 2021, a whole coalition of folks filed a lawsuit against HB 1775, and in June of this year, a federal court granted a preliminary instruction to halt significant portions of that law, including the parts about teaching banned concepts in K-12 classrooms. 

Specifically, the injunction was issued almost two weeks before Walters office wrote up the order to revoke Boismier's license for violating the law they had been told they couldn't yet enforce.

You might think that maybe they just hadn't gotten word yet, as Walters office is kind of a mess. But no -- they knew HB 1775 was stayed because they included a footnote saying that nothing in the revocation order relied on parts of HB 1775 that were subject to the preliminary injunction. So it was based on some part of HB 1775 not covered by the injunction, and that part would be...? The revocation order does not say. It does not point to which part of HB 1775 they say she violated.

As State Senator Mary Boren put it (as quoted by Spencer Humphrey at KFOR) :

They didn’t even dissect anything out of 1775. I think that’s very curious to me that that they think that they can get away with enforcing House Bill 1775 and try to cover themselves in a footnote.

 Boismier herself sent a statement to KFOR:

As we expected, the order we received today doesn’t hold up to any serious scrutiny. It should be an easy call for the courts to overturn it, since Walters chose to throw out the actual facts and law in the case to get the results he wanted and campaigned on. We will be heading to district court soon to do that. But sadly, until we get that court order, Oklahoma teachers now apparently have to fear getting their licenses revoked for criticizing the wrong politician or showing students how to get a library card.

So the end of this story is not yet in sight. There are still lessons to be learned about whose rules matter and who has to follow them and what happens when ambitious politicians decide to make harassment part of their campaign platform and go all cultural revolution on Americans. Stay tuned. 

 

ICYMI: Memorial Day Washout Edition (5/26)

No parade tomorrow, which is a bummer, but the incoming weather has spooked the parade's organizers. Won't feel quite right without the annual march down our main street, but sometimes the weather just can't be ignored. Have a good weekend, and here's a whole big lot of reading for you.

The Texas School District That Provided the Blueprint for an Attack on Public Education

From the New Yorker, by Jessica Winter. I'm reading Mike Hixenbaugh's book about Southlake, and you should, too, but in the meantime, here's a quick overview of the events that turned out to be the cutting edge of the new wave of culture panic.

Segregation Academies Still Operate Across the South. One Town Grapples With Its Divided Schools.

For ProPublica, Jennifer Berry Hawes travels to Camden, Alabama to remind us that that thing we like to think we don't do any more, we absolutely still do.

Tacoma teachers, students demand school district take care of 'rodent infestation' 

A reminder that sometimes the issues of education on the ground are not big, deep policy questions.

FAQ: Education Savings Accounts and private school tuition in Iowa

Last month Jason Fontana and Jennifer Jennings published a working paper showing that vouchers led direction to tuition increases in Iowa. That was followed by a bunch of privatizers complaining, "but-but-but..." So here are the answers to all of those objections.

Evidence That KIPP Is Still Abusing Students

At Schools Matter, James Horn points to a new case that suggests KIPP hasn't entirely cleaned up their act.

If You Give The Moms A Majority…

In Florida, Sue Kingery Woltanski with a close-up look at one district where the board has gone off the rails, thanks to Moms for Liberty and their good buddy Ron DeSantis. 

Columbus school board members at odds over leaked task force document

If your plan is to screw over your teachers and gaslight your constituents, maybe you shouldn't write the plan down.

A Meaningless Education

John Warner in Inside Higher Education writes about the student search for meaning and for money. Fun tidbit: "selling out" is no longer a thing.

They're still not like us

Jose Luis Vilson on math and society and much more.

How Arizona’s school voucher program turned into a tax break for the wealthy

Copper Courier with a simple, brief overview of Arizona's voucher boondoggle.

Horticulture, horses and ‘Chill Rooms’: One district goes all-in on mental health support

Javeria Salman visits Pittsburgh's Northgate district for Hechinger. A look at a big time investment in mental health supports for students.

Black Teachers Matter. Why Aren’t Schools Trying to Keep Them?

Shariff El-Mekki addresses the issue of retaining Black teachers and offers some resources.

Conservative groups stand in way of governor’s private-school vouchers

Sam Stockard for Tennessee Lookout describes the terrain in Tennessee when it heads into the next round of headbutting over vouchers.

Feeding La. Gov Landry’s Universal School Voucher GATOR

Louisiana has its own push to expand and extend vouchers (plus a snappy name). The indispensable Mercedes Schneider has the story.

Moms for Liberty to spend over $3 million targeting presidential swing state voters

Somebody (they'd rather not say who) has given M4L a cool $3 million to go help the GOP win swing states, further fulfilling their role as conservative political operatives.

Vouchers undermine efforts to provide an excellent public education for all

From the Economic Policy Institute, a pretty direct analysis of what vouchers do and do not do.

Under Ryan Walters, Oklahoma lost federal funding to help schools respond to tragedies

Walters continues to be not good at his job.

Ryan Walters’ PR Contract Should Be Banned, GOP Lawmaker Says

Meanwhile, members of his own party think maybe taxpayers should be bankrolling his personal PR campaign.

How a Lancaster charity linked to a private Christian college influences public school policy in Pa.

Here in PA, the Independence Law Center has been the one stop shop for districts that want to ban books and make culture panic policy. Here's one piece of the puzzle of where they get their money.

Pennsylvania Treasurer candidate pledges to “fight” school vouchers

1) She articulates an absolute hard stand against vouchers in PA. 2) Look, vouchers are an issue in a non-education state race.

How Community Schools are Transforming Public Education

In The Public Interest with a look at the community schools movement and what's going on these days. It would make a good model for true public education.

‘Scary’: public-school textbooks the latest target as US book bans intensify

From The Guardian. Now they're coming after chapters in textbooks, like the chapters about vaccines and climate change.

The Schools Where the Western Canon Is King

Kiera Butler for Mother Jones takes a look at the classical schools movement and its ties to certain brands of conservatism.

Broad Coalition of Religious and Civil Rights Organizations Condemns Use of Chaplains as Public School Counselors

The movement to use "chaplains" to sneak Christianity into schools has stirred up opposition among actual chaplains. Jan Resseger has the story.

On your mark, AI is set. Go?

Benjamin Riley's substack Cognitive Resonance is a new addition to the Curmudgucation Institute blogroll, with lots worthwhile to say regarding AI in education. Plus in this one he quotes me.

My dying high school writing teacher has one more lesson. Don't wait to say thank you.

Rex Huppke with a personal piece in USA Today. I agree. Don't wait.

A Reporter's Guide To The New Apostolic Reformation

You'll see NAR pop up more and more, a dominionist hard-core far right christianist movement. This guide from Religious Dispatches covers the basics.

Clarence Thomas attacks Brown v. Board ruling amid 70th anniversary

Want something else to worry about for the future? How about a Supreme Court justice who thinks Brown v. Board is a mistake that needs to be reversed.

A Message From Your Child’s New ChatGPTchr©

Jay Wamsted envisions a whole new first day of school.

I was busy this week. Not one, but two pieces about a new report from Ed Voters PA showing waste in PA's cyber charters. A nice focused one for Forbes, and for Bucks County Beacon, a deeper dive that looks at the historical context of cyber-shenanigans.

Also for Forbes, in Idaho, the attacks on libraries has led to at least one public library becoming adults only. 

Join me on substack. It's free and easy!

More Momwashing For Privatization

The parenting bubble for anti-public ed activism is really expanding. 

Jeanne Allen's Center for Education Reform has just rolled out the Parent Power Index! It assigns arbitrary values measures three vaguely defined qualities-- choice programs, charter schools, and innovation-- and gives each state a letter grade. There's nothing new being quantified here, just the same old anti-public school, anti-union wine in new parentified wineskins. 

In choicer marketing, "freedom" is out and "parent power" is in.

Maybe it's just an attempt to create some synergy for Betsy DeVos's favorite choice evangelist and American Federation for Children "senior fellow" and his new book about the parent revolution.

But to find someone who's really doubling on momwashing anti-public ed activism, we turn to the American Federation for Children, which is launching a whole new initiative-- Moms on a Mission!

AFC is one more dark money group, probably one of the largest school privatization outfits in the country. It was organized and funded by the DeVos family. It has had a variety of names, including American Education Reform Foundation and Advocates for School Choice, Inc, and has suckled up some other DeVos initiatives like "All Children Matter," a group that was fined for election misconduct in Ohio and Wisconsin.

They're tied to ALEC, the conservative corporate bill mill. They've had a variety of projects, including Ed Newsfeed, a program for planting fake news stories on local media. They're still running Black Minds Matter, School Choice Boyz and Federacion Para Los Ninos. 

Their leadership is a veritable privatizer who's who. Betsy DeVos gave up her chairman of the board spot to go work for Trump. These days the chair is William E. Oberndorfer, who co-founded the Alliance for School Choice, one of the root organizations of AFC with John Walton and has his own foundation that is busy pumping up charters and groups like Jeanne Allen's Center for Education reform and Jeb Bush's Foundation for Excellence in Education and EdChoice (formerly the Friedman Foundation).

The board also includes John Kirtley (Florida School Choice Fund, Florida Charter Institute), Kevin Chavous (DFER, New Orleans voucher plan, K12), Rosemarie Nassif (Center for Catholic Education) and Scott Walker. A staff of 49. We could run through the whole crowd, but you get the idea--there's a lot more to AFC than just Betsy DeVos.

Moms on a Mission doesn't have its own tab yet, but AFC announced their launch on May 11 (Mother's Day).  

Across the nation, school choice is opening wide the doors of opportunity for children, thanks to a powerful force: Moms. Parents are the ones who know and love their children best, and moms are often the front line confronting the obstacles that would otherwise hinder opportunities for their little ones.

There's a brief inspirational video. Also, an introduction to some of the moms.

There's Clarice Jackson, an activist from Nebraska who served as Commissioner of African American  Affairs (2021-2024) under Pete Ricketts and Jim Pillen. She has worked with dyslexia organizations and founded Black Literacy Matters in February of 2022. She has a great story about working as a paraprofessional in school and encountering a young girl struggling to read and write, and coming to realize that with an incarcerated mother and "strapped" grandmother, the girl "lacked the help she needed at home." Jackson eventually adopted the girl, and the story is a compelling example of a school dropping the ball. Of course, it's also the story of realizing that someone would have to step in and take over for the actual parents, who could not manage the job because they were overwhelmed by their own circumstances. Not sure how school choice would have helped.

Tera Myers is the Ohio mother of a child with Downs Syndrome. She spoke at the 2020 GOP convention in praise of Donald Trump. Myers is a member of Mansfield Alliance Church and is a "Mentor Mom" at Berean Baptist Church MOPS Program, or Mothers of Preschoolers. She serves as a state and national parent advocate for Education Freedom, the Trump administration's proposed scholarship program, and is a consultant for Washington D.C.-based American Federation for Children. That last part doesn't appear in the Moms on a Mission website.

Holly Terei makes plenty of appearances on Fox News, perhaps because she's the National Director of Teacher Coalition for No Left Turn In Education, where the Georgia mom hopes to see "teachers and parents working together to push against the progressive woke agenda that has infiltrated America’s public schools." NLTE is yet another culture panic group fed by Tucker Carlson; a Florida chapter head single-handedly made his district the country's leader in book challenges.

Becki Uccello is also an activist parent of a child with special needs, which has made her a frequent voice speaking in favor vouchers in Missouri. The former public school teacher used a voucher from the Herzog Tomorrow Foundation to send her daughter with spina bifida to Catholic school (her son did just fine in public school). Herzog is a foundation aimed at trying "catalyze and accelerate the development of quality Christ-centered K-12 education so that families and culture flourish."

So once again, some experienced activists coded as moms, their activist bona fides downplayed or erased. There's a definite emphasis on students with special needs, which is an interesting choice given that so much of the choice school world is not available to those students. At the same time, it makes a certain sense because so many parents of students with special needs are (or at least feel) ill-served by public schools. 

Moms on a Mission is just getting on its feet, so it remains to be seen how it figures in AFC's ongoing work in dismantling public education. But if these moms ("moms just like you!") show up in your neighborhood, they aren't there to give public education a hand. 

Moms For Liberty 3.0

First, there was Moms For Liberty Beta, called the Florida Coalition of School Board Members. Then came the actual Moms For Liberty launch, a group of ladies who were upset about masking and school building closures. That gave way pretty quickly to M4L 2.0, the group that was all about banning naughty books and clamping down on LGBTA ideology (whatever that is).

M4L 2.0 cruised along pretty well for a while. But as more people came to understand what they were up to, their thin skins, their desire to tell other moms what children should be allowed to read. their intolerance-- well, opposition started to swell. And their last election round wasn't very impressive (we'll never know exactly how unimpressive because, perhaps already sensing that their brand was tarnished, they backed away from endorsing so many candidates). And their beloved Ron DeSantis had to slink home in humiliation and defeat. And they went on 60 Minutes and couldn't really explain the terrible alleged indoctrination they were crusading against.

Make way for version 3.0.

The moms have been rolling this out for a while, like the time M4L honcho Tina Descovich appeared at the DeSantis presser about how his book ban was being abused.  She led with the statistic that the literacy rate in Florida is 40%, which is about 40% off (it's 80%). I think she means to say that the proficiency rate on the NAEP is 40%, and at this point anyone who says NAEP proficiency is "at grade level" is just not trying to get it right (NAEP proficiency is A or B level). But her point is that there is a public education crisis in America.

Then she wagged her fingers at the "media in the back of the room" and says "All you can do is be obsessed with book bans that are not happening." She hammered home that "we the parents" have had enough, and when is the media going to start covering the literacy crisis.

They're currently rolling out 3.0 in a series of town halls, like this one in North Carolina hosted by co-Mom Tiffany Justice as reported by Emily Walkenhorst.

Speakers focused on problems in public schools — chiefly, worsening student behavior and test scores that remain below pre-pandemic levels — and suggested more discipline and having schools cut ties with federal programs and outside nonprofits as solutions.

You can watch the whole thing here (all two hours and eleven minutes of it). Some of the standards are here. Open with a Jesus prayer. Stand up for parents' God-ordained right to control their children's everything. Indoctrination! But then we swing on to other topics. 

Moms For Liberty 3.0 is deeply concerned about student achievement (have you seen those dreadful NAEP scores-- let us misrepresent the amount of proficiency) and school discipline (here's an anecdote about something awful that happened to a kid in school). Also, special needs students are not getting their proper services.

The complaints about indoctrination, gender ideology, CRT--all the classics--are still part of their shtick. And these days, the happy warriors who once handed DeSantis a shiny sword are now decrying the political persecution of Donald Trump. Witch hunt! Also, M4L 3.0 will no longer do political endorsements, but you know, that's just because they're designated candidates were harassed. 

Does 3.0 represent a serious shift for the organization? Not really. The fundamental message of M4L has always been the same-- public schools are scary and terrible and good God-fearing people should either take them over or abandon them. Parental rights (but not student rights)! As Chris Rufo, hot young culture panic agitator, told a Hillsdale College audience, "To get universal school choice, you really need to operate from a place of universal school distrust." 

M4L have aligned themselves with far right group like the Heritage Foundation and the Leadership Institute. Their leaders are experienced and well-connected comms professionals. None of that has changed. 

Like anyone else whose mission is to manage comms and break things, they are going to periodically adjust their approach and set aside old dull tools for new, more effective ones. Learning loss panic has been hot for a while, and school discipline problems are a legitimate issue. "Beware outside groups" is a new skin for their old government-imposed LGBTQ/SEL panic wine. 

New tools. New approached. New talking points for the brand. We'll see if the new tools help them achieve their usual goals. 

ICYMI: Christmas Eve Edition (12/24)

Later today I'll see my grandchildren, some of whom have flown in from the Left Coast. The Board of Directors, upping their game from previous Christmases, have bounded out of bed early every day this week. And not only are stockings not hung, but unwrapped presents are stashed in various corners of the house and car. At the same time, this is an odd holiday for my family; sad for some reasons and joyous for others. However you meet the season, here's hoping that it's a good one for you.

And yes, I still have some stuff for you to read, if you have a spare minute.

Newly Surfaced Video Of Moms For Liberty Advisor Reveals Religious Extremist Agenda

Jennifer Cohn at the Bucks County Beacon has been doing some tremendous job tracking both the Moms and the christianist right. This piece does some tremendous dot connecting.

What Kind of Bubble is AI?

Cory Doctorow considers the future of AI. "AI is a bubble, and it’s full of fraud, but that doesn’t automatically mean there’ll be nothing of value left behind when the bubble bursts."

The Community Schools Movement Is Running Headlong Into Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s Hard-Right Agenda

What happens when schools designed to meet the needs of communities and families run into the DeSantis agenda? Jeff Bryant has the story.

Utah charter schools want student data from school districts — so they can advertise to families

Yes, competition is swell, but charter fans would like to give their schools some extra tools to help them "compete."

Fighting Book Bans in Kentucky Schools—and Beyond

At The Nation, Ramona Pierce looks at how reading repression is playing out in Kentucky, where students and the community are fighting back.

Harvard student goes viral for takedown of Moms for Liberty co-founder in Florida

I loathe headlines with "takedown" in them, but this piece highlights Zander Moricz. You may remember him from his graduation speech in which, forbidden to mention gay students, he talked about those with "curly hair" instead. He went back to Sarasota (he's a student at Harvard now) to take Bridget Ziegler to task for condemning publicly what she herself does privately. It is a great speech.

Federal judge rules school board districts illegal in Georgia school system, calls for new map

Gerrymandered school remain a popular segregation tool. A federal judge has told Georgia to shape up. Jeff Amy reports for the AP.

About the “Bizarre Coalition” Weighing Standardized Testing “Big Changes,” and More.

The indispensable Mercedes Schneider takes a look at the strange coalition that has come up to fic high stakes testing, and how it compares to some bizarre coalitions of the past.

Someone complained about a book in a Great Barrington classroom. Then the police showed up

Once again, this time in Massachusetts, somebody decided to call the law to go into a school to look for a naughty book. Quite a surprise to the English teacher who was still in the classroom when the cop showed up.

A peek into the experience of a student journalist at New College

Chloe Rusek is a journalism student at New College, the one that Ron DeSantis is trying to turn into a conservative powerhouse. This is her story of trying to interview university president Richard Corcoran. And trying and trying. 

Why Youngstown State matters more than Harvard

Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Inquirer says that what's happening is not as important as what's happening at the many public universities where most students attend. And what's happening is a version of The New College--party hacks are being put in charge.

Panic! Pandemic Learning Loss!

Thomas Ultican reads the latest chicken littling from The 74 and says, "Hey, wait a minute." And he has data.

A Crowded Table

Nancy Flanagan offers a holiday reflection. 

ICYMI: Fall Back Edition (11/5)

Enjoying your extra hour? Or is this just a sneaky plot to leave us groggy and disoriented when elections roll around on Tuesday (in PA, anyway). Either way, I have some reading for you from the previous week.

I've Been To Over 20 Homeschool Conferences. The Things I've Witnessed At Them Shocked Me.

Heather Stark has a girl empowerment book series that she pitches at homeschooling conferences. She writes for Huffpost about the stuff she has encountered ("I am 20 minutes into the presentation when a woman interrupts me. 'When are you going to talk about God in all of this?' she asks.")

Moms for Liberty and Bible “Porn”

The indispensable Mercedes Schneider takes a look at Moms for Liberty's relentless opposition to naughty books, and holds it up against one book with many naughty bits.

Moms for Liberty unexpectedly finds itself at the center of a heated suburban Indiana mayoral race

Speaking of the Moms, Isabella Volmert reports for the Associated Press on how they've turned up in a mayoral race. I'm not sure how unexpected it is, but the Democrat in the race is using his opposition to the Hitler-quoting chapter to improve his own chances.

School Choice is Becoming Involuntary Tithing

Anne Lutz Fernandez looks at how states have started to "separate taxpayers from more money on behalf of churches." I do like "involuntary tithing" as a way to describe it.

The Undead "Invest In Kids" Act Creeps Back into the Capitol

Illinois's voucher law is scheduled to lapse soon, and so lots of voucher fans are doing their best to keep it shambling about in undead form. Julie Vassilatos writes about it. 

What are "evidence mills?"

Let's say you need some evidence so you can call your new program product "evidence-based." Is there a handy place to order up some evidence? Why, yes, yes there is.

Neenah school district will raise taxes by nearly 4% as cost of voucher program jumps 44%

This particular example is from Wisconsin, but it's the same old story-- more vouchers = higher local taxes and/or fewer local services.

What Happens When Teachers Aren't Valued?

You already know, but Andy Spears lays it out here.

Texas tried to fix its teacher shortage by lowering requirements − the result was more new teachers, but at lower salaries

At the Conversation, the unsurprising news that when you lower standards, pay goes down, and when pay goes down, people don't to meet rigorous standards, and your clever solution to a teacher :shortage" just makes things worse.

How Teacher Apprenticeship is Changing Teacher Preparation

Here's a thing they're trying in some places.

A Texas Billionaire’s Associates Are Trying to Sink a School Tax Election via Their Dark Money Nonprofit

Your list of rich guys trying to mess with education should include Tim Dunn of Texas. Here's just one example of his special brand of shenanigans, from ProPublica

Mike Miles has some explaining to do. Great teachers HISD shouldn't be afraid.

The editors of the Houston Chronicle like some of Mike Miles moves for his school takeover, but even they have noticed there are problems when you install a culture of fear.

School Board Elections Could Make (or Break) Our Democracy

From The Progressive, a reminder that elections have consequences--even school board elections. Please pay attention.

Truth & Liberty Coalition expands culture war to 30 Colorado school boards

Steve Ravey at Religion News reports on the advance of Christian Nationalism in Colorado.

This Extremist Group Calls Itself A 'Parental Rights' Org. Now It's Targeting School Boards In 1 Key State.

Nathalie Baptiste breaks down Moms for Liberty's attempt to get a foothold in Pennsylvania. (I'm sure it has nothing to do with Pennsylvania's being a swing state for 2024.) I hope people are paying attention next Tuesday.

Will Adding Even More Vouchers Improve SUFS’s Customer Service?

Florida's voucher program is starting to collapse under its own weight. Sue Kingery Woltanski doubts that adding more weight will be a big help. 

Same Monkeys At the Wheel

TC Weber breaks down the latest school evaluation monkeyshines in Tennessee.

A Reflection on the Network for Public Education’s 10th Anniversary Conference

Jan Resseger presents some highlights from the Network for Public Education conference.

Grade Retention is Unnecessary!

Nancy Bailey looks at the ever-popular bad policy of retention for students who fail a reading test.

SC Superintendent of Education Ellen Weaver Addresses School Librarians

Steve Nuzum looks at South Carolina's ed chief's address to school librarians, in all its counterfactual threatening awfulness.

A Tennessee high school let a Christian preacher lead the basketball team in foot-washing

Oh boy.

What Happens When Young People Actually Read “Disturbing” Books

A new study (admittedly a bit narrow) sees what happens if you just let middle schoolers just pick whatever they want to read.

Right-wing fake history is making a big comeback — but it never went away

A quick guide to some of the common themes of fake history.

The Great Social Media–News Collapse

At the Atlantic (beware the paywall) an analysis of what readers and big tech have done to news reporting.

At Forbes this week, I looked at a really interesting free market argument against vouchers, and a group out there trying to combat Moms for Liberty. 

Sign up for substack, and get all my education stuff for free in your inbox. 

FL: The Prequel To Moms For Liberty Is Resurrecting Itself

The Florida group that pitched itself as a conservative alternative the state school board association was an operation that featured many of Florida's busiest reformster activists. And it also featured some names now known for their work with Moms For Liberty. And this isn't just ancient history--the group is getting started up again.

The Florida Coalition of School Board Members Begins

Back in 2015 (right at the beginning of the year, because these grass roots things always organically begin at the start of the calendar year), four supporters of school choice decided it was time to bid adieu to the Florida School Board Association. They were unhappy with the actions of FSBA, particularly a lawsuit filed against the state's new voucher program. They set out to become a "financially responsible," grassroots group that supports school choice options including charter school and local control of education issues. ExcelinEd, Jeb Bush's reformster group, wrote a glowing profile under the headline "Choice for school board members comes to Florida." They guessed that they would have 40 or 50 members "right out of the gate," but they started out with just four:

Erika Donalds, (Collier County School Board), Jeff Bergosh, (Escambia County School Board), Shawn Frost, (Indian River County School Board), and Bridget Ziegler, (Sarasota County School Board). The articles of incorporation for the group are missing Donalds and instead include Linda Costello. Bergosh was the group's first president. Their first registered agent was Shawn Frost; his home address was given as the organization's address.

Out of the swamp it comes

Frost told a reporter that the group believed that FSBA dues should not be used for a lawsuit (they weren't). Said Ziegler, the coalition would rather see that money go to a classroom. 

The group was never going to meet that estimate of 40 or 50 members, but the handful of members were all well-connected major players. Other names that would be associated with the group include Rebecca Negron, Erik Robinson, and Anne Corcoran. Also, Tina Descovich. 

This is going to take some space, but understanding who these folks are really helps to clarify what kind of operation this is. And that matters because they are intending to relaunch--maybe even go national.

So who are these folks? Here are some of the names that turn up by surfing the wayback machine through old web pages for FCSBM as board members, some of who just pass through briefly.

Jeff Bergosh

The first President. Government contractor. Moved on to become county commissioner in 2016, and has stayed with the gig ever since. And he blogs. 

Nancy Stacy

A board member with a combative style, who was publicly accused of bullying a former ally. She also caught flack for some social media posts, like saying whores can't be victims of rape or "Set Bill Cosby free says this Mama Bear with sons."

Linda Costello

In 2012, the 63 year old grandma beat an incumbent for a school board seat in Volusia County. She believes in "God, greatness and going the extra mile." Husband Fred was a former mayor and a legislator; in 2016, when he decided to run again, she decided to step away from the school board post. Fred was on the Education Appropriations Committee and believed that “Education is the number one economic development tool.”

Anne Corcoran

She's married to Richard Corcoran, formerly a pro-privatization leading legislator, then transformed into a pro-privatization Education Commissioner. Then he got in trouble for bid-rigging and resigned. Then DeSantis put him in charge of New College, the liberal Florida college that DeSantis intends to turn into the Hillsdale of the South. Anne herself has been busy launching a charter school; her brother-n-law is a charter school lobbyist.

Rebecca Negron

Married to Joe Negron, a Florida senator who helped write the tax credit scholarship voucher bill. Lost a 2016 bid for Florida's 18th congressional district. Lost her school board seat in 2018 after spending a reported quarter million on the race. 

Eric Robinson

"The Prince of Dark Money," former GOP party chair, and the guy who lost a school board race even though he outspent his opponent $222K to $32K, and subject of more than a few investigations and allegations. 

Jason Fischer

Briefly a board member. Electrical engineer, Rotarian. Veteran. Ran successfully for the state house, started to run for Congress, and then dropped out to clear a path for Aaron Bean and instead ran for-- Duval County property assessor. With Ron DeSantis's endorsement. And then, just this week, he dropped out of that race. Gonna try for Congress again? Who knows, but clearly school boarding was not his big passion.

Erika Donalds

Donalds is a Tea Partier who used to be an investment banker in New York. Now she is a well-connected player in Florida.  She founded Parents' Rights of Choice for Kids (Parents ROCK). Her husband Byron Donalds is the legislator who gave Florida the law that says all textbooks must be "balanced" and that any taxpayer can challenge course content. Donalds is buds with Patty Levesque, the woman who has been Jeb Bush's right-hand woman on ed reform. 

Donalds landed a seat on the Florida Constitution Revision Commission, from which she helped launch Amendment 8, a three piece amendment that would have added civic education, term limits for school board members, and-- oh, yeah-- also a part that eviscerated school boards and allowed charters to do an end run around local voters so they could pick the taxpayers' pockets. Among her many groups was School Choice Movement, started concurrently with the DeSantis administration. In 2018, she was displaying the logo of the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity on her Collier 912 Freedom Council website. 

And she's the CEO of Optima Ed, a private ed biz that offers school management and works with a variety of partners, including Step Up For Students, the outfit that manages the money fueling school vouchers--and that outfit is chaired by John Kirtley, who reportedly runs DeVos-funded PACS  (included American Federation for Children) and who allegedly provided support for the FCSBM. Optima Ed also operates a chain of Hillsdale-powered charter schools; little wonder that she threw her weight behind Amendment 8's provision that charters be approved by the state and not local school boards.

I could call Donalds the face of charter schools in Florida, but Bridget Ziegler already did. There is a whole book to be written about Florida politicians married to women who are making money in the charter school biz.

Shawn Frost

Shawn Frost is this guy:






This particular Facebook post has since been removed, but it seems to capture Frost's special je ne sais quoi. I can personally attest to his feisty engagement style on social media. And lots of other folks have screen shots. He's pretty awful.

In 2014, Frost went after a seat on the  Indian River County School Board. Not just any seat--the seat of the then-head of FSBA. He wanted this seat, badly enough to leave his wife and children back in their home at Vero Beach, FL (the one he would use for FSCBM incorporation), and move into a room above his parents' garage to meet the residency requirements (all of this was hashed out in court, ultimately in Frost's favor).

Shawn Frost graduated from Eastern Oregon University in 2006 with a BS in Experimental Psychology and a minor in philosophy. Then he picked up an MBA from Florida's Nova Southeastern University (website text- "Prepare To Dominate") and then he taught high school science for just two years at Sebastian River High School, a high-rated IBS school. There he did things like "leveraged personal network to create 'wow factor' learning experiences" and "conducted customer focus groups and survey research on student motivators and created a 'meritocracy based' incentives program." And then he got out of the classroom and back into corporate marketing work. He's also a senior strategy consultant with MVP Strategy and Policy, a group that specializes in helping with school board races. Frost once taught a class based on The Art of War. I find no evidence that he was TFA, but he certainly fits the profile, and he does love to say that he was a classroom teacher (without mentioning that his "career" lasted two years. Frost has been (according to Facebook) a marine, a science teacher, and a senior project manager at EFront, a software learning management system. And according to that ExcelinEd piece,, he works with business start-ups.

How did this guy win a school board race for a district in which he didn't actually live? 

With some pricey help. Here's how the Indian River Guardian reported on the race:

Frost, a newcomer to local politics with some questionable residency qualifications, (See: Frost says he is living in garage apartment at his father’s house in District 1), defeated Brombach 54 percent to 46 percent. In addition to being helped by local, though nationally funded, attacks on Brombach, Frost was helped by a flood of additional attack mailers, all paid for by the Florida Federation for Children. More outside help came from individual contributors to Frost’s campaign. Some two thirds of the direct contributions to Frost’s campaign were from out-of-state donors. In the reporting period ending August 18, Frost raised $6,340, $5,500 from out of state contributors, including several described as “venture capitalists.”

By later in August, he had pulled $20K from the American Federation of Children, the group that, in 2014, was still being run by Betsy DeVos, was tied closely to ALEC, and was funding reformy candidates left and right. Well, actually, only right. 

Then came the launch of FCSBM. In 2017, Frost announced that he would not seek another term on the school board-- because he has bigger targets in mind-- he wanted to be appointed to the state Board of Education.

That didn't happen, but Frost kept plugging away. He ran for vice-chair of the Florida GOP at the same time that Christian Ziegler (husband of Bridget) ran for chair. Ziegler won; Frost did not. He kept pushing the same issues. He was the campaign manager for the 2020 Congressional run of Erika Donalds' husband. 

And as of 2021, he has a new slice of his consulting/PR/etc firm-- Logos To Eyeballs Media, filing in March of 2021 with an address that appears to be a residence in Vero Beach. The website is, at present, just a front page with dead tabs. Must be doing okay, though, because during his run for the vice-chair spot, Frost pledged that through the company he was "committing to provide $335,000 in support for Republican outreach to youth, minorities and religious voters." Not sure where that project stands. Surely it wasn't just a campaign promise.

“I serve a big God and am blessed to be in a position to give back, but it really isn’t giving back because all of the money is God’s, all of the titles and power are God’s, all of the glory should go to God,” he said.

“I am fortunate to have a front-row seat to history and simply want to do my part to serve my Country, the Free State of Florida, and the Republican Party. I work for free, I work for God, and I always have enough.”

Depending on which account one reads, either Frost or Donalds was the driving force behind FCSBM. But for the next chapter, Frost appears to be taking the lead. And we'll get to that in a bit.

What about those other two members?

Bridget Ziegler. Ziegler squeaked out a victory for Sarasota School Board in 2018. Ron DeSantis thinks she's swell. And she's married to Christian Ziegler, who decided in mid-2022 not to run for re-election to a county commissioner seat because he'll be busy helping his wife and DeSantis each run their own campaigns (that and new rules that would have made it harder for him to win).

Christian Ziegler told the Washington Post that he has been "trying for a dozen years to get 20- and 30-year old females involved with the Republican Party, and it was a heavy lift to get that demographic. But now Moms for Liberty has done it for me." That was in October of 2021, when Ziegler's involvement had gone quiet; Tim Craig at WaPo reported that Ziegler's wife was "loosely" connected to Moms For Livberty--not that she was a co-founder of this group that emerged to accomplish just what Ziegler had long searched for a tool to accomplish.

Christian Ziegler's Microtargeted Media ("We do digital and go after people on their phones") was a big player in the 2020 Florida race, on the ground for Trump and other GOP candidates. He pulled in $300K from a Trump-related PAC. He was once a Heritage Foundation Fellow. He's buddies with Corey Lewandowski. He appears to be behind the Protect Wyoming Values PAC (a Trump anti-Liz Cheney proxy), Governor Kristi Noem's election integrity website, and a bunch of other conservative Trump-backing websites. He was at Trump's January 6 rally.

And in February, after had been "effectively... campaigning for the job for years," Christian Ziegler was elected Florida's GOP party chair. Meanwhile, Bridget Ziegler is helping the right-wing Leadership Institute train school board candidates nationally.

Tina Descovitch ran for Brevard County School Board in 2016, with a signature issue of her opposition to Common Core. Descovitch ran on two decades in business and a degree in Communications, as well as serving on the executive staff of a US Army Commanding General. She won that election overwhelmingly, taking 48% of the vote in a primary election field of four. Then she lost in 2020. She stayed active in local school politics; after a big dustup over LGBTQ+ policy in Brevard County, she was mailed an envelope full of poop.

While Ziegler often mentions founding FCSBM in her public facing bio material, she's left it off her LinkedIn. It's not clear when she departed the group. In 2018, she had succeeded Donalds and Frost as president of the board. 2018 is also the first year that Descovich is listed as a board member.

In November of 2018, Jeffrey Solochek (a dynamite Florida education reporter) at the Tampa Bay Times asked "Whither the Florida Coalition of School Board Members?" Don't worry, emailed Erika Donalds (who with Frost and Negron was now out of the school board biz)-- Tina Descovich is going to be the new chief, the group's going to do cool stuff, new slate of members,we'll be back with a hot new website soon. "New members, new energy — exciting times."

Then in 2019, the board listing page is 404, though in that year they appear to have handed out some "fighting for kids" awards to folks like Senator Manny Diaz and Byron Donalds. By 2020, the entire website is dark. 

The group had had a good run, with plenty of lobbying and advocacy and connecting with legislators over their conservative goals for education. But for whatever reason (perhaps the requirement that one be an elected school board member to belong), they had run out of steam.

And on May 20, 2020, Descovich (as president) and Ziegler file for voluntary dissolution of the group. 

About that Moms For Liberty Origin Story

The standard origin story of Moms for Liberty is that right on January 1, 2021, two moms just kind of got together-- Tiffany Justice from Vero Beach, and Tina Descovich. Just two moms, upset about masking, gathered around the kitchen table. Hey, maybe they could fund raise by selling t-shirts!

That's not the actual origin story. The story is that Ziegler and Descovich spent a few years in a faux grass roots organization with typical right-wing goals for education (more vouchers, local control, etc), working side by side with a bunch of well-connected GOP activists. When that group folded, a few months later, Descovich, Ziegler and Justice started working on a new right-wing activism project that would not require members to stay elected to school board positions. 

Nobody picks up on this. Ziegler was successfully memory-holed. Justice and Descovich are presented as moms or, at most, former school board members-- never as seasoned GOP activists who had just finished their time on another similar right-tilted education activism group. It's no wonder they were able to hit the ground running and become a well-connected oft-promoted group--they were not starting from scratch.

The coalition is not done--they wanted to go national

There is still more to the story of the Florida Coalition of School Board Members. 

First, in 2021, the coalition attempted to go national as the Conservative School Board Member Coalition

The left has enjoyed its monopoly in education for too long at the national level and now a familiar voice in Florida has entered the national conversation. FCSBM went dark so that we could focus on other conservative causes, but the conditions created by this current administration DEMAND that we band together and share the 7+ years of experience we have with our Conservative brothers and sisters around the country.

The group filed in September of 2021 as a Florida Domestic Non-profit Corporation, with Shawn Frost as its registered agent at a Vero Beach address. Frost is listed as president, with Joe Arnold and Eric Robinson as directors. 

There's a website address listed on their promo page, but don't bother--there's nothing there. The couple of pages for the CSBMC are hosted on the website of Shawn Frost's Logos To Eyeballs website (which is in turn hosted by Kartra). The pitch promises free membership for the rest of 2022 if you sign up before CPAC Orlando ends. The application form is still live-ish. There are supposed to be videos, one featuring "our first round table discussion" with "School Board Member Bridget Ziegler and Former School Board Members Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice." It's not there. Neither is the welcome video from the organization's president-- Shawn Frost, "President, Conservative School Board Member Coalition, former Chairman and Board Member of Indian River County , Florida, School Board, Past President Florida Coalition of School Board Members (FCSBM)"

Core values? Parental rights are sovereign. Teacher historically accurate founding of America. No racism (aka no crt). Fiscal transparency and accountability. Individual members control where their dues go. 

The group has an address, but for mail only ("We have minimal staff as fiscal conservatives"). There's a phone number, but USPhoneBook reverse lookup finds no such number. The group touts endorsements from Joe Arnold, Eric Robinson, Erika Donalds, and Shawn Frost. 

However, CSBMC seems to have experienced a failure to launch. But Frost wasn't ready to give up yet.

Trying it one more time--back to Florida

In December of 2022, Frost filed again--this time it was the Florida Conservative Coalition of School Board Members. Frost is the registered agent; the three board members are Jill Woolbright, Jessie Thompson, and April Carney. Nobody is listed as president. 

Carney was the DeSantis-endorsed candidate in Duval, and a Frost client in the 2022 campaign that saw the accusation that she had been at the capital on January 6. Woolbright is a school board member who called the sheriff to file a criminal complaint over a book; she lost in 2022. Thompson was endorsed by many GOP right wingers, including Byron Daniels and DeSantis.She ran an anti-indoctrination campaign.

FCCSBM drew some press for its "relaunch" announcing Thompson as president after an organizational convention in February. Marked as a "political consultant" that the coalition will work with, Frost promised a softer version in the relaunch:

“One thing that’s different is that we are not attacking the FSBA, we don’t ask our members to decide between the two,” said Frost, a former CEO and past president of the Coalition. “We just want to support growing our members’ leadership abilities and connections so that they can stand together and fight for our shared core values.”

And Donalds was also on hand to cheer the group on while also providing some of the training at that first meeting:

“I love that they are unapologetically conservative and put it right there in the name,” said Donalds, who led the collective bargaining training. “I’m excited to see what this group accomplishes.”

Carey noted that "it was just so obvious that there is a need for a place to get professional development without the spin and indoctrination found in other groups. Among my friends here at FCCSBM, we can be ourselves."

In February, they announced an intention to hold more events in March and April. They don't have a website (they've got an address hosted by kartra, but nothing there), but they do have a Facebook page, currently with six posts. From those we can see that the group has five or six members, that they attended the DeSantis Freedom Blueprint Summit, that they once got their picture taken with Manny Diaz, and that they got some training on "education freedom" from Erika Donalds and John Kirtley--all of that posted on April 28. 

Their Twitter presence (@FCSBM-- "Leading Better and Standing Together) is a bit busier, with 338 followers--but that's the legacy account of the original group and nothing has been posted there since September 2019. 

It's always possible that FCCSBM is just doing all sorts of stuff under the radar, but they haven't had a stirred a single online ripple since their big launch. 

That's it for now

That's a lot of story, and if nothing else, it captures how much the right-wing privatizer community is so intertwined with itself. The same folks, over and over. More chapters to come, I'm sure, starting with the one in which we see if Candidate DeSantis is the wind beneath their wings or the millstone around their neck. After all, education privatization was welded onto another governor with Presidential dreams, and that didn't end well. Stay tuned.