The Wrong Civics and Language

Rick Hess makes a point about civics education, specifically, how the real world lessons of civics are teaching an entire generation the wrong lessons. 

There’s a lot of handwringing about what the hell America’s young people are thinking. They’re deeply anxious about the future. They’re shockingly comfortable saying that it’s okay to use violence to stifle speech. They’re skeptical of democracy. They exhibit a disturbing affinity for socialism.

This isn’t good. And while it can be easy to slip into grumbling—“Damn kids, get off my lawn!”—every generation goes through this handwringing. As we turn into our parents, it’s easy to forget how worrisome our parents found us.

That doesn’t mean the concerns are misplaced, though. I think they do go beyond the inevitable “kids today” grumbling. 

We might also throw in the mental health issues and general air of dread. We're going to wrangle over some details (I still haven't located that school where the teachers are all teaching that America is awful), but I have to agree with his larger thesis:

A reasonable observer could conclude that America’s leaders are striving to deliver a lesson in dysfunctional democracy, irresponsible stewardship, corrupt capitalism, and disdain for the rule of law.

Add fear and panic to that list. You can list all the examples yourself, and while Hess may reach a little too Both Sides this, again, he's fundamentally on point. If you are a young American, it's been a while since you've seen the government actually work, or even seen more than a handful of politicians attempt to act out of principle and patriotism rather than opportunism and tribalism. We haven't seen government perform its basic functions (pass a real budget on time lately?) and we haven't seen it respond effectively to a crisis. 

Covid is only the most recent example-- I'm not talking about the flatfooted response to it in real time which is in many ways understandable, but the immediate work of turning it to political advantage, an impulse so overwhelming that Donald Trump doesn't dare brag about his one legitimate accomplishment in getting a vaccine out quickly and helping life get back to slight-more-normal. 

We can look back at the housing collapse of 2008 and the recession it spawned, or cast back to the Enron scandal (only 2001, and lots of folks have already forgotten). In so any cases, institutions failed, and our civic institutions focused on getting use from the damage rather than mitigating it. 

We are drowning in debt and dysfunction, a malignant late-stage capitalism dominated by make-nothing rentiers, watching government harnessed to nothing more profound than one man's thirst for fealty and vengeance. I have to nod when Hess writes, 

Honestly, if I were a teen or a twentysomething watching this unfold, I might have trouble mustering much faith in our institutions or values, too. I’d certainly be skeptical of educators who yammer about foundational principles when our leaders evince such blatant disrespect for those values in practice. Indeed, I might regard faith in democratic norms or free markets as a sucker’s game, best left to those ill-informed or naïve enough to ignore the evidence they can see with their own eyes.

This dovetails with another piece from the free market axis of reformerland. Robert Pondiscio returns to the point that teaching should embody humility and neutrality, his familiar point that teachers are not supposed to enter the classroom as "change agents" or "architects of democracy."

Public education is, however, an essential government service. It exists not to change society but to sustain it—to transmit the shared knowledge, language, habits, and civic norms upon which self-government depends. That mission requires restraint, not evangelism; humility, not heroism.

I actually agree with Pondiscio; teachers should enter the classroom as agents of the community, not crusaders for their own ideology. 

Except...

In the world where under-thirty folks have grown up, as described by Hess, where would they have identified the "shared knowledge, language, habits, and civic norms" on which the country depends. When the President has spent a decade trashing civic and legal norms, when a vocal part of the body politic is hollering to undo the civil rights movement. If you are of Certain Ages, as Hess, Pondiscio and I are, it may be easy to remember the ideals and norms central to this country on its best days. If you are under thirty, I'm not sure those things are obvious. If MAGA is correct in their general set of beliefs, then there are a bunch of old norms to be thrown out; if they are wrong, what is there for teachers except to be self-directed rebellious "architects of democracy." (You can substitute your favorite far-Left bete noir if you like; I just don't think that voice is very loud right now).

I'm trying to dance around a lot of rabbit holes here, but if you are someone who has been holding the wrong end of America's diversity shtick for years, none of this is new. The Youngs are not the first to deal with the idea that the government might not be trustworthy and the dominant culture might not be hospitable, even as there is constant battling over what the "dominant culture" really is. Is it the loudest one? Is it the culture that a well-connected ideologically-driven government-linked organization insists is the "true" one? The one that gets most media coverage, or the one that saturates the interwebs? Is it the locally dominant culture that a teacher should represent? 

In short (ish), I think teachers should serve the community and not their own personal agenda (up to a point but not, say, requiring LGBTQ persons to pretend they are straight). But that's a pretty complicated tangle of stuff to sort out.

But I have a thought. I think there's something the culture is promoting that may be even worse than messed up civics. I may have a professional bias here, between years of teaching English and writing, but we have a big problem with language.

We are drowning in an absolute ocean of bullshit and lies, so much so that we implicitly understand that there are times when words simply don't mean what they say, or even anything at all. My siblings and I have to explain to our 91 year old mother that all the things that pop up on her computer screen are simply lies and can be ignored (thank God her phone is now out of circulation and she no longer gets calls from lying marketeers). I am daily amazed at how we have accepted the idea that to simply function and get through the day, one must assume that a huge percentage of the language one encounters is deliberately dishonest. 

Mike Johnson can offer some absurd statement and he knows he's lying and all of us from all the tribes know that he's lying and he knows we know, but this is language used as a sort of jousting match that doesn't resemble the actual purpose of language. AI uses language as a sort of constructed tool that is in no way related to the idea of one intellect trying to communicate with another. Dear Leader long ago embraced the notion that language is a stick you use to poke other people, and that said poking can be done more effectively if one lets go of the antique notion that your words should be connected however loosely to reality.

At the same time, the playing field is loaded with people whose whole professional career is about selling a particular idea or accomplishing advocacy goals, regardless of what they have to say or do to get the job done. Or consider the feckless Democrats, who too often end up paralyzed because are trying to craft language that will push the voters in the right direction, instead of trying to communicate what they actually believe. 

Language is our most basic tool for bridging the gap between humans, yet we increasingly accept that it is also useful to manipulate others or fend them off. Is it any wonder that the Youngs are struggling with feelings of isolation? 

We can say, correctly, that this is not new, that language has always been used at times to manipulate and manhandle, but I'll argue that for whatever reason (politics? internet explosion? modern media?) it is now way way worse than ever, and dangerously so.

So yes-- we would be better off as a country if people worried more about the lessons they are teaching the Youngs when it comes to civics, but I say the same for language.

We won't, as a culture. do it, because too many people find the abuse of language too useful, and because it would be hard to win their favorite arguments if they argued honestly, with words that actually say what they mean. That in turns brings on a lot of conjecture about what someone is up to and why, with that conjecture also wrapped in layers of dishonest baloney. So instead of talking about what we're really talking about, we get trapped in endless arm wrestling over how to "frame" the discussion aka redefine the language so that it means what we want it to mean. 

So if you're in a classroom, make the use of accurate and honest language a daily, explicit value. Value language as a tool for communicating and understanding rather than manipulating and attack. Cool thing about this is that it requires zero ideological baggage, but if we want to argue about the ideological baggage we have, the deal is to discuss it with honest and accurate language. There are so many days when I look at what is going on in the country and think we could do some much better if we would just talk about what we're actually talking about instead of trying to leverage bullshit as a sort of force against opponents.

We can't have a real discussion about or display of civics without accurate and honest use of language. But with honest and accurate language, there's not much we couldn't talk about; even if we couldn't settle it, we would at least emerge with a better understanding of what's going on. 

It's a big dream, like dreaming that we'll have a culture that values civics and culture and considers what effect adult misbehavior is having on the children. But it's a dream worth having. And if all that seems too complicated, I'll leave you with a simple principle that I try to use with my own children. It's not complicated, but when I'm making my choices about what to do and how to do it, I boil it down to a simple question--

What do I want my children to see me doing?

If only we could get a few more people to try that out. 

MS: Pushing for Privatization

Douglas Carswell at the Mississippi Center for Public Policy is excited about all the great privatization pushing that's been going on in the state lately.

MCPP is one more right wing thinky tank connected to and funded by all the usual folks; extra points for having taken on Carswell, a leader of the Brexit movement, as their president and CEO. 

This guy

Mississippi is a state that really aligns certain right wing priorities-- get rid of taxes, get rid of public schools, and just generally get rid of government, all of which is, I'm sure, fully disconnected from the state's past as a place where a lot of white folks really don't want to be told that they have to provide certain public services for those not-white folks. With all that in mind, they would really like to move to universal taxpayer funded vouchers and, really, a pure voucher system where no schools are funded at all and parents get a couple of bucks to go out and do who knows what for their children. 

Carswell sent out his weekly update, declaring that "school choice is our top focus" and "remains our north star." 

The House Education Freedom Committee heard some folks talk about choice, including Mississippi Center for Justice Director of Education Equity Dr. Kim Wiley, who described how Arizona's voucher system has become a budget-eating monster. 

But Carswell wants to underline an appearance from Erika Donalds, Florida's big-time money-making school choice advocate, who apparently appeared on this occasion wearing her Moms for Liberty hat. Donalds certainly earned that hat, who knew and worked with that crew even before they started the M4L shtick. It's just that you don't see her waving the M4L hat around very often. They also heard from Patrick Wolf, Arkansas's go-to guy for shoveling privatization baloney (sometimes he even writes up some "research"). Lindsey Burke, the education chief at the Heritage Foundation (where she authored the education parts of Project 2025) and now Deputy Assistant Secretary-- she has also stopped by.

Caswell explains how choice would work, and provides some specific answers. Particularly notable is his explanation of how choice wouldn't lead to overcrowding:

Under our proposal, schools would get to set capacity limits and decline additional students if full. Schools could also reject students with significant disciplinary issues, maintaining safe and focused learning environments.

This is remarkably frank; school choice would be the school's choice. "We're just too full," they could say. Or "We think your child would be detrimental to our school's learning environment." Which seems fine, because exclusionary education has never been a problem in Mississippi in the past, right? Not that I should pick on Mississippi-- virtually every taxpayer-funded voucher program includes provisions that allow private schools to exclude whatever students they want to exclude. School choice is school's choice. That right of the school to discriminate is, in practice, given far more weight than any supposed "parent power." But Caswell is a bit unusual in laying it out so plainly.

Caswell also argues that all the other states that surround them are doing it, which is quite the argument to make in the Deep South, with its collective history of educational inadequacy.

Caswell offers other weak sauce as well. Folks say that choice programs defund public schools, "but that's misleading." "Misleading" is a great word for when you want to say "Well, they're not wrong, but I'd rather get you to look at something else." Caswell offers the free market argument-- if public schools don't want to get defunded, they should beat the competition. Of course, they're not competing on a level field-- they can't, for instance, reject students for whatever trips their fancy. Caswell also throws in his version of "fund students, not systems" which is an education version of "I want insurance to fund my broken leg, not my doctor" as if the system is not the "how" of serving the student.

This is particularly odd coming from Mississippi, where the public school system has produced the "Mississippi miracle" which conservatives are holding up as proof of the awesomeness of phonics and Science of Reading, and while there may be a mountain of baloney behind that "triumph," it is being touted as an achievement by the system.

Caswell asserts that school choice works. It's pretty to think so, but that's not what the evidence says. But for an outfit that would like to do away from any instruments that require taxpayers to support education for other peoples' children, a voucher system that pays parents to give up their right to a free guaranteed education is just the thing. 

There are education reformsters who pursue choice because they believe in the magical marketplace or the benefits to students, or at least talk the talk. MCPP is not one of those. They barely discuss the educational aspects of their policy plans, which are coming on the heels of their successful drive to eliminate income tax in the state. They keep talking about "access to the educational opportunities that their kids deserve," but of course those opportunities will only be available to certain select children. 

It's worth noting that Mississippi was always a big state for segregation academies, and some private schools that are essentially segregation academies are still thriving in the state. I bet those private schools will be more than happy to get big fat taxpayer subsidies under a universal voucher plan. Like a little mini-brexit with a state payoff. 

ICYMI: Reunion Edition (9/28)

It's my high school graduating class's 50th reunion this weekend, and a class reunion is always something.  I suppose some day, when the education "system" is a loose free market where people switch back and forth, the idea of a special event to get together with the people you spent your youth with-- I suppose that will be quaint and unusual. But for right now, it's fun. I missed out on part of the fun because I am also conducting the pit orchestra for a local production of "Singin' in the Rain" so it's been a busy week. Well, who wants to be bored.

Here's the reading list for the week. Read and share.

What schools stand to lose in the battle over the next federal education budget

Cory Turner at NPR with an explainer about the three budget proposals in DC and what schools could be hit by.

Why Teaching Math for Test Results Is Not Enough

Jose Luis Vilson reminds of us some important factors that need to be discussed in the math instruction world.

Just one regret: Sarah Inama reflects on year of controversy

For Idaho Ed News, Emma Epperly reports on the teacher who caused all sorts of trouble by putting up a poster that said everyone is welcome.

School Privatizers Fundamentally Change Public Schools

Stephen Dyer looks at how a voucher program actually changes the fundamental nature of the public schools that are left with students the private schools don't want.

What the Right Gets Right About What's Gone Wrong with Public Education

Jennifer Berkshire notes that many on the right have decided that schools need to provide more than job training-- and they're correct.

Breaking Up Public Schools Dangerously Divided the Nation!

Nancy Bailey points out that if you take away what was once the shared experience of all students and break it into silos, the nation pays a price.

On schools and social media

Vermont just passed a law limiting social media for schools, and it's a reminder of the many ways that students and social media don't mix well. Tracy Novick has some thoughts.

A Publicly Funded School System, With Zero Accountability To the Public

David Pepper explains why Ohio's voucher system is a guaranteed source for bad behavior.

School choice doesn’t need federal funding

Kevin Garcia-Galindo in the Carolina Journal provides the conservative argument against opting into the federal voucher program.

“A Third of Teachers Are Terrorists”

That's a Steve Bannon quote, and John Merrow is here to break down the foolishness (with a side of voucher debunking).

From Kindergarten to Kimmel

Anne Lutz Fernandez points out that MAGA has been warming up its censorship routines on K-12 teachers long before they went after Jimmy Kimmel.

Trump Attack on Fair Housing Will Impact Public School Integration

Going after fair housing is a more wonky pursuit for the Trump regime, but Jan Resseger explains how that will cause problems for schools.

James Kirylo: America’s Peculiar Love Affair

The indispensable Mercedes Schneider provides a guest post looking at America's love affair with guns and the price children pay for it.

Waiting for the Unraveling

TC Weber gets into the picture on the ground in Tennessee, and this week it's a grab bag of various education shenanigans, from vouchers to test results.

It's official. I'm taking Crazy Pills.

Stephen Dyer again. As the feds decide to drop some more charter money on Ohio, he points out the sad, failed history of the last federal attempt to goose Ohio's charter industry.

The Chatbot in the Classroom, the Forklift at the Gym

Alfie Kohn dives into the world of school AI and finds it more disturbing than impressive. Great compendium of writing about the topic.

Video Shows GOP Education Official Bolt From Reporter After Announcing His Resignation

Ryan Walters borrowed a TV studio to announce his resignation, then ran away from that station's reporter afterwards. The video of him swiftly escaping questions is a fitting image with which to end his reign of incompetence.

Over at Forbes.com, I wrote about an important book of teacher voices from the culture wars, and new data showing the teacher pay penalty is at an all-time high. At the Bucks County Beacon, I looked at Pennsylvania's problems in filling teaching positions. 

This week's clip defies categories, but it's still fun.

Sign up for my substack. It's free and makes it easy to stay caught up with whatever I'm cranking out.

OK: Ryan Walters has Resigned For Cushy Anti-Union Gig

Ryan Walters announced Wednesday night that he was resigning as Oklahoma's Dudebro-in-chief for Education. He made the announcement, of course, on Fox. 

His new gig is right in line with his work over the past couple of years. He will be the new CEO of Teacher Freedom Alliance, whose aim, Walters says, is to dismantle teachers’ unions and align school curriculum with “American exceptionalism.”

Teacher Freedom Alliance is yet another of those anti-union groups for teachers. They just launched in March of this year, and the special guest was Ryan Walters himself. 

TFA (they really should have checked to see if the acronym was taken) is a project of the Freedom Foundation. Who are they? Well, their website gives us a good introduction to them:

The Freedom Foundation is more than a think tank. We’re more than an action tank. We’re a battle tank that’s battering the entrenched power of left-wing government union bosses who represent a permanent lobby for bigger government, higher taxes, and radical social agendas.

Their language when approaching teachers and other members of public sector unions is a lot about liberating public employees from political exploitation. Their language in spaces like fundraising letters is a bit more blunt:

The Freedom Foundation has a proven plan for bankrupting and defeating government unions through education, litigation, legislation and community activation ... we won’t be satisfied with anything short of total victory against the government union thugs.

Destroy unions and defund the political left. And they work hard at it, too. They have put an army of foot soldiers out there going door to door in hopes of turning an entire state blue. In one example, they sent activists dressed as Santa Claus to stand outside government buildings, where they told workers they could give themselves a holiday gift by exercising their right not to pay that portion of union dues that goes to political activity.

The foundation was launched in 1991 as the Evergreen Freedom Foundation by Lynn Harsh and Bob Williams. These days Harsh is VP of Strategy for the State Policy Network, the national network of right wing thinky tanks and advocacy groups founded in 1992 (it appears that the foundation may have helped with that launch). Her bio says she started out as a teacher and went on to found two private schools. Williams was a Washington state politician and failed gubernatorial candidate. He went on to work with SPN and ALEC, the conservative corporate legislation mill before passing away in 2022. SPN started giving out an award in his name in 2017.

The foundation is not small potatoes operation-- the staff itself is huge, and the foundation operates out of offices in five states (Washington, Oregon, California, Ohio, and Pennsylvania).

Longtime CEO Tom McCabe is now the Chairman of the Board, and he has been pretty clear in his aims. “Labor bosses are the single greatest threat to freedom and opportunity in America today,” he wrote in one fundraising letter. The current CEO is Aaron Withe, the guy who headed up the door-to-door campaign the get Oregon union members to quit their unions. Presumably he didn't go door to door with the same smarm evident in his company bio pic.

The foundation gets money from a variety of the usual suspects, including the Koch family foundations, Sarah Scaife Foundation, Donors Trust, Ed Uihlein Family Foundation, the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation, and the State Policy Network. The have gotten small mountains of money from the Bradley Foundation, which also heavily funds the anti-union Center for Union Facts.

Many of these same folks helped fund the Janus lawsuit that did away with Fair Share, and the Freedom Foundation was one of the groups that immediately started to work to get teachers to leave their unions.

The Freedom Foundation has tried various pr stunts to get teachers to quit the union, like the time they sent out Halloween mailers exhorting teachers to "Stop these money-sucking vampires and TAKE BACK YOUR PAYCHECK TODAY"

So what is TFA offering? For one thing, culture panic:

We are a group for teachers and by teachers, ready to change the direction of public education, returning us to traditional, American values. Excellence, not ideology.

On the website, that's in all caps. I spared you the shouting.

Turns out the "by teachers" part is a stretch. In addition to Withe as "president" the three members of "the team" include Rachel Maiorana is the Director of Marketing and Advocacy; she is also the former Deputy National Director of the Freedom Foundation after serving as California Outreach director since 2021. She was also a Campus Coordinator for Turning Point USA, after doing "brand ambassador work for Coke and serving as a cheerleading coach. Coms degree from Cal State Fullerton.

Director of Member Programs Ali Abshire joined the program in December 2024. Before that she was a Behavioral Health Specialist at Cincinatti Children's, a program officer at the Reagan Ranch, a nanny, a kitchen team member at Chick-fil-A in Lynchburg, and a manager at Zoup! Eatery! Her BS in psychology is from Liberty University in 2022.

Executive Director Eloise Branch came from the Director of Teacher Engagement post at Freedom Foundation, after a couple of years as curator at Young America's Foundation (a campus conservatives outfit) and teaching for two non-consecutive years at The Classical Academy. She got her BA in History from Grove City College in 2017. GCC is about 30 minutes away from me, and it has fashioned itself into a small Hillsdale College of PA.

So not exactly a deep bench of seasoned and experienced educators here. What benefits do they offer?

Well, there's "dignifying professional development." And when it comes to that Big Deal that everyone frets about-- liability insurance-- their offer is novel. You get a chance to piggy back on the liability coverage offered to two other "alternative" teacher unions. You can choose the Christian Education Association (you can read their story here) or the Association of American Educators (more about them here). Both are longstanding non-union unions, with CEA very Christ-in-the-classroom emphasis and AAE more aligned with the Fordham-AEI axis of reformsterdom. Neither is large enough to provide credible support for a teacher in a big-time lawsuit, nor am I sure how hard they'd try to defend someone accused of reading Naughty Books or doing socialist DEI things.

There's a third benefit offered, and that's "alternative curricula" which includes "alternative curriculums and teaching pedagogies ranging from the science of reading to classical mathematics to explicit instruction to the Socratic Method" which may lead one to ask "alternative to what?"

If you can't already guess based on the source of these folks, the website drops more hints about what these folks consider "alternative."

We exist to develop free, moral, and upright American citizens.

The launch party was attended by 50 whole educators and a bunch of Freedom Foundation staffers.

Also worth noting-- the Center for Media and Democracy reports that Freedom Foundation tried this on a smaller scale in the Miami-Dade district, where they backed another faux union and, aided by Governor Ron DeSantis-backed anti-union legislation. They promised that they would "bring the nation's third-largest teachers union to the brink of extinction." They did not-- teachers voted 83% to 17% to stick with their existing AFT affiliate.

TFA is mum on one other union function-- negotiating contracts. At the launch party, Withe promised that TFA would “provide benefits and resources that are far superior to anything that the teachers unions do.” He even made an emphatic gesture on "far." That's another piece of the free market fairy tale-- the free market will just pay teachers a whole lot. This is a silly argument. First of all, the free market doesn't work quite the same when you're talking about people paid with tax dollars. Second of all, the notion that people are just dying for the chance to pay great teachers a whole lot more, but that darned union is holding them back is unsupported by any reality-based evidence. You'll occasionally find young teachers declaring that left to their own devices, they could negotiate a far better deal than the union, and, oh, honey. What kind of leverage do you think you have. But even if you could, the finite pot of money that schools work with means that you would be negotiating against all the other teachers. Maybe teaching Thunderdome would be fun, but I doubt it.

People don't pay teachers much because A) they can't afford to and B) they don't want to. And C) they especially don't want to spend a lot on education for Those Peoples' Children. And this is especially true of folks like the Freedom Foundation, who do not want to end unions for the teachers own good but because A) ending the unions would hurt the Democratic party and B) without unions, it would be even easier to pay teachers bottom dollar.

At that same launch party, Ryan Walters said, "The Freedom Foundation-- it sounds too good to be true. I promise you it's not." I suspect he's right both times-- it's not too good, and it's not true.

But now he gets to steer this anti-union cultural warboat. 

Meanwhile, Gentner Drummond, the conservative GOP state attorney general who has been a thorn in Walters' side has offered his own "don't let the door hit you" thoughts on the departure:

Ever since Gov. Stitt appointed Ryan Walters to serve as Secretary of Education, we have witnessed a stream of never-ending scandal and political drama. From the mishandling of pandemic relief funds that resulted in families buying Xboxes and refrigerators to the latest squabbling with board members over what was or wasn't showing on TV [porn, probably], the Stitt-Waters era has been an embarrassment to our state...

It's time for a State Superintendent of Public Instruction who will actually focus on quality instruction in our public schools. Gov. Stitt used to say he would make us Top Ten, but after seven years we are ranked 50th in education. Our families, our students and our teachers deserve so much more.

Spoken like a man who A) has found Walters a constant pain in the ass and B) is running for governor.

Walters was a culture warrior for christianist nationalism who could be found more often trying to raise his national profile than in his office actually doing his job. His departure is good news for Oklahoma (though it's Oklahoma, so I expect a pretty conservative replacement). As for TFA, their website proudly boasts a whopping 2,733 teachers signed up for their anti-union union, so if they're meant to be a big national player, Walters has his work cut out for him, but he may just be the unserious man for this unserious job. 

The School Choice Movement Is Dead

The school choice movement is dead.

Yes, there are a few advocates hanging on, and a zombified shell of the movement shambling about like the last remains of Common Core support among thinky tanks. But the movement is dead.

The second term of Donald Trump has unleashed what was only barely leashed before. When Jay Greene announced that it was time for the movement to embrace the culture wars, it was like announcing that it was time for a sheep to embrace a t rex. It was never going to end well for the goat. Greene himself had already had himself sheered and outfitted for a dino suit, leaving school choice in his rearview mirror as he joined up with the culture warriors of the Heritage Foundation, who have zero interest in school choice.

Oh, they still use the words some times, but mostly because they not quite ready to announce the new cause yet. But the cause is not school choice. It's school capture.

We really shouldn't call it a culture war at all. "Culture war" suggests two equally aggressive sides. But public schools and other folks on the side of traditional values of liberal democracy didn't ask for this any more than the Ukraine asked to be invaded by Russia. 

So let's call them culture raptors. 

And the culture raptors have actually been pretty straightforward. Chris Rufo has used the words "school choice," but what he has described repeatedly and in detail is the capture and conversion of schools (along with other institutions). At no point has he pretended that the goal is a system in which a broad variety of choices flourish. Betsy DeVos and her "find a school that is the best fit" shtick are so six years ago. Now we want schools to reflect the correct white Christian nationalist values.

It is becoming increasingly unsubtle, like the calls to fire any school employee who didn't mourn Charlie Kirk properly. When the top officials in our country announce that there is no uniting with the Left, that groups that promote any improper language or politics must be rooted out and destroyed--what do you think that means for schools, public, charter or private?

Daniel Buck, designated Young Conservative Face previously at Fordham and now at AEI, laid it out pretty clearly in a tweet a year ago: "Conservatives need to start thinking about, building, and regaining control of our education institutions after school choice becomes the law of the land. Won't do much good if all charter and private schools are stocked with teachers, curriculum, and policies out of ed schools." In other words, choice isn't about, you know, choice so much as its about making schools vulnerable to takeover.

What happened to the old champions of choice? Old school reformsters like Chester Finn have been trying to push back a tad, suggesting that maybe the culture wars and even free market affection are obscuring the goal of providing American children with a good education, and that some accountability and oversight might be useful, Rick Hess just, politely, called out Oklahoma's education dudebro-in-chief Ryan Walters for his creation of an ideological litmus test for teachers, but Walters has been clear all along that his only interest in "school choice" is as a fig leaf to cover his aggressive imposition of his own brand of christianism on schools, complete with state-selected Bibles. Mike Petrilli, Finn's successor at the Fordham Institute, just started a substack with this goal--

My hope is that this newsletter will re-start the ed reform conversation. I say “re-start” because I’m old enough to remember a time when there was a real conversation among those of us involved in reform—from the left, right, and center—about what was working, what wasn’t, where to go next, and what the whole point of our movement was really about.

That wistful nostalgia sure reads, to me, like an acknowledgement that the new crowd of culture raptors have no interest in school choice, quality, or conversation. 

Meanwhile, Robert Pondiscio is writing a substack about bridging "the gaps between education practice, policy, and research" and generally making schools work better. Democrats [sic] For Education Reform have dwindled in size and influence and are still trying to coax Democrats to come to the choice table, using old arguments currently gathering dust at that empty table. Even Neal McClusky, the CATO ed guy whose support for choice has always remained consistent, spends plenty of his social media time pointing to Trump education activities and saying, "Yeah, you shouldn't do that."

I'm not suggesting that any of these folks are any less interested in school choice than they ever were. But they do seem to have noticed that in MAGA world, school choice is a dead issue. The term has been co-opted just as effectively as Rufo co-opted "critical race theory," and now "school choice" means that everyone gets a choice of schools that push a particular brand of Christianity. When the Greg Abbott , the Texas legislature, and the state's attorney general declare that every classroom must display the government-approved version of the Ten Commandments, but not any other religion's texts, what kind of "choice" is available. 

Parents Defending Education, the activist astro-turf group, has published viewpoints like an "investigative report" complaining that LGBTQ charters are "indoctrinating: kids at taxpayer expense. There's an absolutely ridiculous piece of "scholarship" from the Heritage Foundation trying to discredit charter schools for being woker than public schools, because choice is supposed to provide a variety of educational viewpoints, except not Those Viewpoints. Governor Ron DeSantis was delighted that Florida was allowing chaplains in schools, but that was immediately followed by "clarification" because DeSantis has definite ideas about which religions should be allowed. Idaho loves choice, but won't allow Certain Ideas to be included in classrooms. And the editor-in-chief of The Federalist goes on Twitter to demand that universities be required to have a minimum 50% of their staff be conservative (but, hey, that's not a DEI affirmative action quota).

Look, I'm not opposed to the general idea of school choice. I've even explained many times how I think we could do it. I don't think school choice works as a free market-based idea, but right now, the "school choice" culture raptors are talking about a whole other thing-- you can have your choice of a public school that features their preferred ideology, a charter school that features their preferred ideology, or a private school that features their preferred ideology. That ideology would include the state-approved religion. The new system would also recognize that people do not all have the same value, so those who are entitled to power and privilege get a "better" school, and future meat widgets get the training they deserve (and women get ready to make some babies). 

None of the culture raptor discussion of school choice has anything to do with school choice. The conversation is now about the ideological capture of schools, universities, and a variety of other institutions. If the actual school choice movement isn't dead, it's at least hiding in a cave, a victim of identity theft, waiting for the day it will be safe to come out again. 

ICYMI: Fresh Apple Edition (9/14)

We have a curb market in town. Once a week in the fall, local farmers and some other folks bring their wares to town and you can buy some fresh produce. Yesterday I took the board of directors up town and we got a big bag of apples (among other things) which they then snack on for the rest of the--well, a bag usually lasts two days.

The boys don't have screens of their own, and they are not allowed to piggy back on their grownups' screens. The use chromebooks at school, which I'm not delighted about, but at least it's a closed system where they can't just roam. Their mother and I can live with that.

Among the lessons from the murders this week is a simple one-- pay attention to what your sons are doing on line. Both killers this week were apparently radicalized by hard-right nihilistic groyper crap on line. I taught teenagers for decades, and I'm plenty familiar with the teenaged male impulse to be transgressively shocking, but folks on the interwebs have taken this impulse and fed it into something more monstrous. If you're a parent, pay attention.

Okay, here's the reading list for the week. 

Voucher Push Is Reshaping Private School Education

Dana Goldstein at the New York Times looks at a newly released study that shows that vouchers are raising tuition, spurring growth in religious schools, and mostly benefitting families that were already private schooling. If I did it right, this should be a gift link.

These Charter Superintendents Are Some of the Highest Paid in Texas. Their Districts Are Among the Lowest Performing.

ProPublica and the Texas Tribune take a look at Texas charters, where the students aren't doing so well, but the administrators are making money hand over fist.

Ohio to allow Dolly Parton Imagination Library signups from hospital at birth

Lord knows that Ohio gets so much wrong, but I have to give them credit for getting this one thing right.

The school shooting industry is worth billions — and it keeps growing

Meg Anderson at NPR looks at how much the industry is making on the business of keeping children and parents scared out of their wits.

Ohio Charter Schools Prove Private Sector Less Efficient than Public Sector

Stephen Dyer examines that age-old claim that private sector (as in charter schools) is just so much more efficient than the public sector.

Portland Catholic school loses students over LGBTQ+ enrollment controversy

A Portland, OR, Catholic school threw a student out when they learned the parents were a same-gender couple. Now they are losing a bunch of other students as well. 

Everyone’s a Hypocrite

Rick Hess points out that many voices in the education debates abandon principles for any advantage for their team. He's got a point.

Records show Ryan Walters has a pattern of poor attendance at state boards

I don't really want to write more about Oklahoma's dudebro-in-chief of education, but I don't want this piece from Nuria Martinez-Keel at Oklahoma Voice go by, either, because as awful as Walters is when it comes to ideological baloney, it's worth noting that he's also awful at the basics of doing his job.

AI is More Con Than Reality

Thomas Ultican takes a look at The AI Con, a book you really ought to read.

How Emily Hanford’s "Sold a Story" Became a Conduit for the Public Dissemination of the Right-Wing "Project 2025" Agenda to Affect State Laws and Reshape Reading Instruction in Public Schools

Publisher Denny Taylor is writing an education newsletter these days; this is part 3 of a four-part series that looks at what some rightward folks are doing to influence reading instruction.

What Do Corporate Earnings Reports and Standardized Test Scores Have in Common?

Larry Cuban looks into the American obsession with making numbers get bigger all the time.

Public School Finance Is Fragile at Federal and State Levels

Jan Resseger breaks down some of the financial challenges and potential problems in the state and federal funding world of education.

Gutted

Meg White looks at some of the education funding that has been cut in the House version of a federal budget.

The sound of things falling apart

Paul Bowers on listening to William Basinski's The Disintegration Loop on September 11. I'd never heard about the work before, so I learned something from this thoughtful meditation. 

Killer Democracy: How a Corrupt Supreme Court Turned Debate Into Death

Thom Hartmann on gun laws, court rulings, and how they helped bring us here.

An old favorite here, and the theme for yearbook my senior year of high school. 

Sign up for my newsletter. It's free.

ICYMI: Fallish Edition (8/24)

Autumn is my favorite season, hands down, so I get excited when the tail end of summer even starts to hint at what is coming. Can I wear shorts and a sweatshirt today? Yes, please.

Here's your list for the week.

The Double Burden of School Choice

This paper looks at the burdens that fall on parents when they are assigned the responsibility for finding an education for their own children. Honestly, the research here involves a sample of 39 whole parental units, which doesn't strike me as compelling. But I'm saving this link here because the paper includes a host of clickable links to all sorts of research in the field, and that alone makes this valuable.

“The Play’s the Thing….”

John Merrow was one of the nation's top education reporters. This post is a masterful connec tion between theater, student producers, and cell phone bans.

Uncritical Promotion of AI: Educators Should Know Better

John Robinson, the 21st Century principal, reminds educators to think before being pushed into AI adoption.

Rows and Aisles

Jose Luis Vilson explores the connections between our classrooms and the societies we wish to live in.

Selling Florida’s Public Schools, Piece by Piece

Florida continues to lead the nation in the dismantling of public education. Sue Kingery Woltanski observes that when public schools and the people who choose them won't get with the free market program, Florida's politicians find ways to make them.

KIPP NYC College Prep Cheats (again!) On US News & World Report Rankings

Gary Rubinstein explains how KIPP in NYC cheats its way into a high ranking on the silly US News list of schools. It's actually pretty clever, as cheating goes.

Prescriptive Practices

Audrey Watters, as always, covers a ton of stuff. But the headliner this time is Michael Pershan, a math teacher who demonstrates the value of seeing learning as a social activity, not a solitary one.

Something wicked this way comes

Ben Riley has some thoughts about the many institutions trying to sell AI in education, especially that op-ed writing former Google CEO.

Trump-appointed judge rebukes Oklahoma’s Ryan Walters

Ryan Walters, America's worst state education chief, tried to sue a religious freedom group into submission because of course he did. A Trump judge told him he was way full of it.

Important New Court Ruling Protects Equity and Inclusion in Public Schools and Students’ Civil Rights

This week a judge ruled against the Department of Education's threat to defund any school caught doing DEI things. This is kind of a big deal, and Jan Resseger has a guide to some of the coverage of this decision.

Trump’s Anti-DEI Guidance Crusade Just Got Struck Down

Julian Vasquez Heilig looks at the decision and its implications. 

DOJ Deems Definition of Hispanic-Serving Institutions Unconstitutional

Once again employing their legal theory that the only discrimination that happens in this country is discrimination against melanin-deprived penis owners, the regime has decided to cut all aid aimed at colleges with large Hispanic enrollment. Ryan Quin at Inside Higher Ed explains.

Persistent Straw Man Claims About Literary Skills: Grammar Division

Paul Thomas takes us down another rabbit hole involving a Science Of person taking a bold stand against things that nobody actually does.

Education Department quietly removes rules for teaching English learners

The Washington Post noticed that the Ed Department is just backing away from English Language Learner as a thing, in keeping with Dear Leader's "Speak English because Murica!" policy, and Laura Meckler and Justine McDaniel report on it. This is a move so dumb that even the increasingly dim-witted WaPo editrial board criticized it.

Florida will phase out certificates of completion for students with disabilities

Florida will stop giving certificates to students with special needs showing that they had diligently done their level best in school. Watch for erosion of special needs services to follow.

More than 1,000 SC voucher recipients were improperly enrolled in public schools

A whole lot of South Carolina's voucher students are apparently taking the money wbhile staying in public school.

Why America still needs public schools

Sidney Shapiro and Joseph Tomain at The Conversation explain, again, why public schools arew important and valuable and shouldn't just be trashed.

Tennessee to give more average per-pupil funding to voucher participants than public school students

Yup-- the state will give more money to educate a private school student than a public school one. Melissa Brown reports for Chalkbeat.

New Illinois Law Aims To Protect Access To Public Education For Immigrant Students

Chalkbeat coverage of legislators getting it right in Illinois.

AI Is A Mass Delusion Event

Charlie Warzel at the Atlantic, and some help in realizing you're not crazy for thinking that much of the AI stuff is crazy.

A teen band needed a pianist. They called Donald Fagen.

Cool story. Yes, it has a whiff of nepo baby about it, but it's also about how music gets passed down the generations.

James Taylor is delightful, and the kids are so full of joy, but I am also here for Howard Johnson, the great jazz tuba player, who just makes this sing.

Sign up for my newsletter and get all the usual stuff for free!

PA: School Choice Lobby (And Jeff Yass) Spends Big

Stephen Caruso and the crew at Spotlight PA did some trememndous work on Pensylvania campaign contributions back in March and it deserved more attention than it got at the time. But it has a lot to tell us about who some Pennsylvania politicians are deeply indebted to when it comes to education.

The big industries playing in PA politics are energy, gaming, transportation and, surprise, K-12 education-- more specifically, the charter school industry (health care and real estate get a separate article). The researchers at Spotlight PA looked at contributions from January 1, 2023 through December 31, 2024. Over those two years, lawmakers raised over $42 million-- $17 million by Shapiro, and $25 by the other lawmakers.

Of that $42 million, over $10 million came from those four industries. Add to that another $7.6 million that those industries contributed to party caucus political committees.

Of that almost $17 mill, just under $9 million came from teachers’ unions, charter school operators, and private school backers.

"Yeah," I hear someone complain. "That teachers' union spends a lot of political money, and the privatizers have to try to keep up."

Sure. Spotlight PA found that of the almost $9 million, under $1.2 million came from the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA) through their politicazl action wing (PACE-- which is funded by teacher contributions but cannot, by law, be funded with dues money).

The bulk of the rest of that money comes from two sources-- the Commonwealth Children's Choice Fund and Students First PAC.

Students First PAC emerged in 2010, and it is very simply, Pennsylvania gazillionaire Jeffrey Yass dressed up in a PAC suit. He is their sole contributor. It appears they haven't even bothered to maintain a website since shortly after their founding. Yass is the richest man in the state, a guy who won his initial stake playing poker, then moved into the investment biz.

Who does Students First PAC mostly give money to these days? Mainly the Commonwealth Children's Choice Fund. The website Transparency USA shows CCCF taking in $31,763,400. Of that, $31,505,000 came from Students First PAC. The #2 contributor is Clay Hamlin with a measley $100K. The Commonwealth Children's Choice Fund turned around and spent $33,579,570. Of that (take a deep breath), $27,234,761.63 was handed off to the Commonwealth Leaders Fund; that group and CCCF are the two Political Action Committees of Commonwealth Partners, a group that says it "engages entrepreneurs to lead free-market change in Pennsylvania," and they do appear to involve more than just Jeff Yass.

So Yass through Students Firsts PAC and Commonwealth Children's Fund is spending millions and millions of dollars to elect and support the GOP, especially the part of it that wants to privatize education. Some of the money coming into the races is astonishing. Spotlight PA found $1.4 million from privatizers to help PA State Senate President Pro Tem Kim Ward-- far more than came in from other sectors and far more than raised by Dem candidates. And that pile of money came in despite the fact that Ward ran unopposed in 2024! What the heck did she need over a million dollars for? 

The House GOP Campaign Committee pulled in $3.5 million from the K-12 privatizer crowd; the Senate GOP committee drew $1.9 million. Meanwhile the corresponding Dem committees together pulled in barely $600K.

So yeah-- a million dollars plus being put into campaigns by a union that is bundling the contributions of a tens of thousands of working teachers is totally as significant as a few million dollars being pumped in basically from one individual. Absolutely the same thing. But how wild to imagine that Pennsylvania politics for the past decade or two might have unfolded completely differently if one man hadn't hit a winning streak playing poker. How wild to imagine that if just one guy suddenly cvhanged his mind, state politics would suddenly lurch in a whole new direction. Interesting times we live in.

CO: Failed Charter Accountability

“Where’s my kid going to go to school?”

That's a quote from one of the parents whose child was supposed to be going to going to Colorado Skies Academy, an aviation-centered charter school that turned out to be the 1,472.334th (estimated) charter school operated by educational amateurs who couldn't hold things together. They anounced their closing about two weeks before the school year was supposed to start.

It is one of the most undiscussed features of the charter school world-- the vast amounts of money and opportunity and, worst of all, family resources and children's education that are wasted by charter schools that are so amateur hour they can't get the job done and/or manage to stay open. It has been six years-- six years!-- since the Network for Public Education released a study showing the vast amount of federal money going to charter fraud and waste. One out of every four dollars, to the tune of a billion!

Why are we still playing at this? The deal was supposed to be a simple trade-- charter schools would get autonomy in exchange for accountability. But in some states, it's just not happening.

The weak link in Colorado is the weak link in too many other states. A charter system is supposed to depend on authorizers. Authorizers have the job of checking that charter operators can deliver on the promises they make, and shut them down if they don't. A charter is supposed to be like a contract, a deal in which the school says "We will do A, B, and C. Also, we absolutely know how to handle the nuts and bolts of staffing and funding and, you know, educating. And if we can't deliver on all that, you can shut us down."

This sounds great in theory. In practice, not so much. 

One major problem is that authorizers often have a vested interest in saying, "Yes." Take Bay Mills Community College, a two-year school with 400ish students and a location on the Might As Well Be Canada portion of Michigan. Bay Mills made a ton of money by authorizing all manner of charter schools, most of them far, far away from the college. In Michigan, as in many states, authorizers get a cut of the charter school's funding, and that's a mighty appealing argument for saying yes.

In Colorado, there's a diffrerent incentive at play. Colorado has the Colorado Charter School Instittute. CSI was formed in 2004 as an arm of state government; several states have one of these boards, and their main purpose is to answer the question, "What if I want to start a charter school and authorizers keep telling me no?" CSI has a nine-member board, seven of whom are appointed by the governor, so if the governor's policy is "Gimme more of those charter schools," the board can help implement that policy.

In other words, CSI's purpose is not to provide accountability for charter schools, but to get lots of charter schools started. Or as Manuel Solano puts it at Colorado Times Recorder, 

The majority of the CSI Board of Directors are appointed by the governor and operate by advancing their goal of approving more charter schools. CSI’s existence creates fragmented oversight, undermines local governance, and enables schools to escape accountability by switching authorizers. The result is a system where financial collapse can go unnoticed until it’s too late.

Charter schools are too often businesses masquerading as public schools, and that word "public" helps them project an image of stabilty and competence that they don't deserve. According to Solano, 32 charters have collpased under CSI's watch in the last decade. The sudden collapse of 32 schools may not seem like much, but I guarantee that if you are among the families that were counting on those schools, it's a huge deal. And or taxpayers who are footing the bill, it should also be a big deal.

The really annoying thing about charter school accountability is that it doesn't have to be this way. But too much of the charter movement believes in the Visionary CEO model, where some Elon Musk looking whizbang dudebro is free to hire and fire and remake policy as he sees fit without rules or regulations (or unions) telling him how to run his business. Let him move fast and break things, and if one of the things he breaks is the school, oh well--that's genius for you. And if someone suggests that this guy is actually an education amateur who doesn't know what the hell he's doing--well, how dare you. 

The charer accountability sec tor also suffers from a problematic worship of the invisible hand of the market place. Every closure like Colorado Skies Academy comes with at least one market clown declaring, "Well, that's just the market working the way it's supposed to," as if the workings of the market are so sacred and wise that it would be folly to take measures to, you know, protect the young human beings who are trying to get an education (or to watch out for the taxpayers whose contributions fund all these market shenanigans).

There could be accountability for charter schools, actual accountability. Standards to be met, rigorous measures before they even open their doors. It could even be done without strangling the notion of innovation (though innovation is extraordinarily rare in the charter biz). It wouldnt be any harder than what we now do with magnet or CTE schools.

We could protect the interests of young humans and their families. We could provide accountability for the taxpayers. But we don't because in some states, charter fans think the most important thing is not protecting the interests of students or providing accountability to taxpayers, but in protecting the ability of entrepreneurs to operate with little oversight and accountability. And as long as that's the primary driving force in the charter biz, we will keep hearing parents ask,

“Where’s my kid going to go to school?”

What The Free Market Does For Education and Equality

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mattel Promises AI Toys

Today in our latest episode of Things Nobody Asked For, we've got the announcement that Mattel has teamed up with the folks at OpenAI to bring you toys that absolutely nobody has asked for.

It's a "strategic collaboration," say the folks at Mattel corporate. The announcement comes with lots of corporate argle bargle bullshit:

Brad Lightcap, Chief Operating Officer at OpenAI, said: "We're pleased to work with Mattel as it moves to introduce thoughtful AI-powered experiences and products into its iconic brands, while also providing its employees the benefits of ChatGPT. With OpenAI, Mattel has access to an advanced set of AI capabilities alongside new tools to enable productivity, creativity, and company-wide transformation at scale." 

Josh Silverman, Chief Franchise Officer at Mattel, said: “Each of our products and experiences is designed to inspire fans, entertain audiences, and enrich lives through play. AI has the power to expand on that mission and broaden the reach of our brands in new and exciting ways. Our work with OpenAI will enable us to leverage new technologies to solidify our leadership in innovation and reimagine new forms of play.”

You'll note that the poor meat widgets who work for Mattel are going to have to deal with AI and the "new tools to enable productivity, creativity, and company-wide transformation at scale." 

As for play, well, who knows. Mattel's big sellers include Uno. If you don't have card-playing children in your home, you may be unaware that Uno now comes in roughly 647 different versions, including some that have new varieties of cards ("Draw 125, Esther!") and some that involve devices to augment game play, like a card cannon that fires cards at your face in an attempt to get you to drop out of the game before your face is sliced to ribbons. So maybe the AI will design new cards, or we'll have a new tower that requires you to eat a certain number of rocks based on whatever credit score it makes up for you.

Mattel is also the Hot Wheels company, so I suppose we could have chatting toy cars that trash talk each other. Maybe they could more efficiently make the "bbbrrrrrrrrrrrrrooom" motor noises quickly and efficiently, leaving children more free time to devote to other stuff. The AI could also design new cars; I'm holding out for the Datamobile that collects as much family surveillance data as possible and then drives itself to a Mattel station where it can download all that surveillance info to... well, whoever wants to pay for it.

But I think the real possibilities are with Mattel's big seller-- Barbie! Imagine a Barbie who can actually chat with little girls and have real simulated conversations so that the little girls don't have to have actual human friends. 

The possibilities of this going horribly wrong are as limitless as a teen's relationship questions. Which of course are being asked of chatbots, because they trained on the internet and the internet is nothing if not loaded with sexual material. So yes, chatbots are sexting with teens. Just one of the many reasons that some auth0orities suggest that kids under 18 should not be messing with AI "companions" at all. 

Maybe Mattel isn't going to do anything so rash. Maybe Barbie will just have a more 21st century means of spitting out one of several pre-recorded messages ("Math is fun!") Please, God, because an actual chatbot-powered Barbie would be deeply monstrous.

Scared yet? Just remember-- everything a bot "hears" and responds to it can also store, analyze and hand off to whoever is interested. Don't think if it as giving every kid a "smart" toy-- think of it as giving every kid a monitoring device to carry and be surveilled by every minute of the day. And yes, a whole bunch of young humans are already mostly there thanks to smartphones, but this would expand the market. Maybe you are smart enough to avoid giving your six year old a smartphone, but gosh, a doll or a car that can talk with them, like a Teddy Ruxpin with less creep and more vocabulary-- wouldn't that be sweet.

It's not clear to me how much AI capability can be chipped into a child's toy (do we disguise it by giving Barbie an ankle bracelet?) especially if the toymakers don't figure out how to get Barbie or the Datamobile logged into the nearest wi-fi. Best case scenario is that this mostly results in shittier working conditions for people at Mattel and toys that disappoint children by being faux AI. Worst case is a bunch of AI and child horror stories, plus a monstrous expansion of surveillances state (buy Big Brother Barbie today!). 

But I have a hard time imagining any universe in which we look back on this "team" and think, "Gosh, I'm really glad that happened."