"Evidence Based" Does Not Mean What You Think It Does

Your district is out there looking for a program for your school, but you want one that will actually work. So you go to a education clearinghouse to sort through what's out there, to look for one that's effective, that is "evidence-based." This turns out to be a challenge.

Sarah Sparks, writing for Education Week, asked the question: "What Does 'Evidence-Based' Mean?" She had a particular reason for asking, and we'll get to that in a second, but first...

The federal government has an actual answer to that question, and as one might expect when it comes to the feds, the definition turns out to be not very useful.

We can find it buried in Title VIII (General Provisions) under Sec. 8101, bottom of page 129, we find a definition:

Evidence-based.--
                    ``(A) In general.--Except as provided in 
                subparagraph (B), the term `evidence-based', when used 
                with respect to a State, local educational agency, or 
                school activity, means an activity, strategy, or 
                intervention that--
                          ``(i) demonstrates a statistically significant 
                      effect on improving student outcomes or other 
                      relevant outcomes based on--
                                    ``(I) strong evidence from at least 
                                1 well-designed and well-implemented 
                                experimental study;
                                    ``(II) moderate evidence from at 
                                least 1 well-designed and well-
                                implemented quasi-experimental study; or
                                    ``(III) promising evidence from at 
                                least 1 well-designed and well-
                                implemented correlational study with 
                                statistical controls for selection bias; 
                                or
                          ``(ii)(I) demonstrates a rationale based on 
                      high-quality research findings or positive 
                      evaluation that such activity, strategy, or 
                      intervention is likely to improve student outcomes 
                      or other relevant outcomes; and
                                    ``(II) includes ongoing efforts to 
                                examine the effects of such activity, 
                                strategy, or intervention.
                    ``(B) Definition for specific activities funded 
                under this act.--When used with respect to interventions 
                or improvement activities or strategies funded under 
                section 1003, the term `evidence-based' means a State, 
                local educational agency, or school activity, strategy, 
                or intervention that meets the requirements of subclause 
                (I), (II), or (III) of subparagraph (A)(i).

To break that down and render it in plain English, there are three definitions that are good for federal funding, and two more that... just exist?

Evidence-based means:

1) Shows a statistically significant effect on student outcomes via strong evidence from at least one well-designed and well-done study. You've got at least one study, and it seems like a decent study, and it gives solid evidence.

2) Shows a statistically significant effect on student outcomes via moderate evidence from at least one well-designed and well-done study. Your decent study shows some meh evidence.

3)  Shows a statistically significant effect on student outcomes via promising evidence from at least one well-designed and well-done study. Your study evidence is not great, but it can be massaged into looking like maybe better things are coming.

It can also mean (ii) something you kind of think probably could work. Maybe a shade better than an educated guess.

So if you were thinking that "evidence-based" means "we have some solid proof that this actually works," well, no. Just one study that provides any sort of results that don't actually clearly disprove your idea--that's close enough for government work.

Which may be why we end up with the study that gave Sparks her question-- a paper from February of 2023 by Mansi Wadhwa, Jingwen Zheng, and Thomas D Cook entitled "How Consistent Are Meanings of “Evidence-Based”? A Comparative Review of 12 Clearinghouses that Rate the Effectiveness of Educational Programs." 

I can't access the paper (well, I could, if I wanted to spend $37.50 to peruse it for 24 hours--one more clue to the Mystery of Why Educators Don't Spend More Time Studying Education Research). But the abstract tells us plenty. The researchers looked at 12 education clearinghouses to see how they measured effectiveness and to see how consistently the measures were applied.

They looked at 1359 programs. Of the programs rated by more than one clearinghouse, only about 30% got similar ratings. In other words, the answer to "Is this program effective," depends pretty much on who you're asking.

As Bill Dagget, founder of the clearinghouse Successful Practices Network, told Sparks:

“If you’re trying to define ‘evidence-based,’ it’s very difficult to incorporate any of the skills that are harder to measure,” like critical thinking, collaboration, or social-emotional development, Dagget said.

Right. You need one good study. And many, many, many, many, many aspects of education are very hard to design decent research for. Particularly when your measure of "success" is nothing more than "did it raise student test scores." 

"Student outcomes" is, as always, doing a lot of work. What outcomes? Test scores? Employment? Deeper understanding and comprehension? Happy life? Spoiler alert: way too many researchers go with "test scores" because that's a simple, easy measure. 

But if we're going to try to find programs that are evidence based--well, what kind of evidence? Evidence of deeper learning? Evidence of long-lasting comprehension? Evidence of improved skills? Or are we just going to go with test scores again because they make nice numbery data? Do we just end up in the educational version of this conversation?

District attorney: You've been on this case for a while. Do you have anything for me?

Detective: You betcha. I have evidence. Boxes full of evidence.

DA: Great! Evidence of what?

Detective: You know! Evidence! A whole bunch! Loads of it!

DA: Of what?! Of what??!!

Detective: Soooooo muuchhhh evidence!

"Evidence-based" as defined by the law is so broad that it could mean almost anything. But then when we start looking closer, it becomes clear that sometimes it means nothing at all. 

Does The New Mean Girls Get High School Right?

Watching tv and movie teachers at work is always a fraught exercise, because so many movies and tv shows get so much so very wrong. So how'd the new Mean Girls do?

The Chief Marital Officer and I went to see the film last weekend. I have never seen the original. I was already familiar with the score of the Broadway version (courtesy of the CMO--we were among the fifteen people who knew it was a musical going in). So I'm going to skip over questions about the quality of the film itself (weirdly uncomfortable with just being a musical) or the performances (all quite fine) or comparisons to the original (no idea). 

We'll just deal with one question--how much effort will actual high school teachers have to muster in order to suspend disbelief while watching this? And there may be spoilers, though how one spoils a twenty year old story, I don't know.

The film captures much of the tense anger of intra-teen battling. If anything, these mean girls are not as brutal as many mean girls I've seen in action. And this is where the musical helps (and could have helped more), by elevating the drama as it seems to the characters themselves. It's all the kind of low-stakes stuff-- potential boyfriends, alliances, seats at cafeteria tables--that looms large to the teens themselves. 

There's a through-the-day montage that introduces the teachers, most of whom are cartoons, but their time is mercifully brief. However, Tina Fey as the math teacher and especially Tim Meadows as the principal do a good job of capturing the resigned exasperation of adults dealing with This Stuff. They aren't clueless, and they aren't as heavily invested in the drama as the students, but they recognize that it's their job to deal with all this.

The film also gets some things right that I'm not sure it means to get right. Janis, one of main character Cady's first friends, is an angry outsider who is just as judgy and mean. She reminds me of a conversation I had with an arts-oriented student that stuck with me for years ("All of those jocks treat us like we're all big wimps. They can't even tell us apart." All of them? "All of them. They're all the same." Never teach high school if you are allergic to irony). She does some awful stuff, and the movie doesn't hold her accountable for any of it. 

There are some odd notes. Are we following Cady on the first day of the year? Is she the only new student in the building? That seems... unlikely.

And for a story focused on the social ins and outs of high school, the film has little or nothing to say about grades. In high school, the distinctions between grade levels matter socially. Seniors and freshmen are a lifetime apart (In any high school, you can find seniors complaining that Freshmen these days are so disrespectful and do things "we never would have done back in my day," just like a bunch of old guys getting the morning coffee at McDonalds and complaining about Kids These Days). And after decades of teaching juniors, I became familiar with the Great Friend Shift, that thing that happens around 10 or 11 grade when folks look around and decide that the people they've been hanging out with since sixth grade actually kind of annoy them.

Cady is definitely a junior (so why is she on the Spring Fling court), but the rest are a bit fuzzy. But if she were hanging out with seniors, that would be noticed. And where are the seniors who are freaking out over next year. Is Regina a junior who somehow dominates seniors? 

The film had me reflecting on how cliques work in a small school (which the school in the film apparently is). Very often, the rulers of the school are not the leaders of a particular clique, but the students who are floaters, who move between several different groups. Most of my students were multitaskers, because in a small school, people running sports and activities are all drawing from the same tiny pool. Confidence is the currency of power in the teen social economy, and the best way to build confidence is to be good at something. Maybe Fey wrote the story in a way that deliberately avoided making Regina a particular type (cheerleader, athlete, etc), but it's hard to believe she could be a queen bee if she doesn't actually do anything at the school. 

These are all quibbles, not noticeable to people whose picture of high school is memory based.

The real missed opportunity of the film is social media. In a story all about social ups and downs and infighting and drama, there is no greater factor in 2024 than social media. These days, teens are cast out and torn down not with snarky comments in the cafeteria, but by brutal social media campaigns. I'm betting every school in this country has regularly dealt with a physical fight in school that started on line. 

I don't want to give the impression that the movie gets more wrong than it gets right. Held up against some other movies set in high schools (looking at you, Twilight), it's practically a damned documentary. And it's a comedy (though it can't decide exactly how cartoonish it is). And it probably won't give a teacher a Nobody Understands My World headache.

A Rockwell Anniversary

From Facebook, this morning.

The Problem We All Live With was originally published as a centerfold in the January 14, 1964 issue of Look. It was Rockwell's first year after ending his long partnership with the Saturday Evening Post. 

He was 70 years old at the time, and after being a "moderate Republican: his whole life, the widowed artist had been slowly waking up. He had voted for JFK in 1960. His parting from the Post not just over the issue of political views, but because of other restrictions as well--he was not allowed to depict Blacks in anything other than menial roles. Rockwell pushed the limits with The Golden Rule in 1961, which depicted a group of people of all races, including a Black man in a middle class shirt and a Black girl holding school books. He got his first hate mail for that. 

It took Rockwell a couple of years to conclude that "the work I now want to do no longer fits into the Post scheme."

His audience was not ready for something as direct and blunt as this illustration, right down to the title which clearly stated that segregation and racism were not simply a Southern problem. Rockwell got tons of hate mail over this painting calling him, among other things, a race traitor. 

There is a fascinating article about Rockwell's "awakening" and this painting from Vox a few years ago. I recommend it. 

The painting was hung in the White House by Barrack Obama from July to October of 2011 at the suggestion of Ruby Bridges. He told her, "I think it's fair to say that if it hadn't been for you guys, I might not be here and we wouldn't be looking at this together."

Well, sitting here in 2024, I have to wonder who can actually look at this together. In many classrooms in many states, this would simply be too "divisive" to be allowed, to "controversial" to expose children to. Sixty years on and some of the audience still isn't ready to see this image, to face a historic truth that even America's most folksy, homespun artist was unwilling to look away from. How weird to find that 60 years later this image would not just be controversial, but actually illegal to show in classrooms. "poignant and relevant to this day" indeed.

ICYMI: All The Weather Edition (1/14)

Let this weekend be remembered for starting off with a weather alert in every single contiguous state. Hope you were safe from whatever calamity was visiting your neck of the woods. 

We've got plenty to look at this week. I'll remind you that sharing is caring, and if you find something here that speaks to you, do the original writer a solid and push that piece out on your networks. It's hard to penetrate the interwebs these days, and if we want the message to get out, we have to do our part to boost the signal (which is exactly why I put up this digest of worthwhile reads every Sunday). 

Some weeks I try to subtly organize the readings on the list, but this week the list is big, so I'm just going to turn on the firehose and let it rip.

Do Arizona school vouchers save taxpayer dollars?

Short answer: no. The longer answer can be found in this coverage of the research by 12News.

Arizona’s school vouchers are helping the wealthy and are widening educational opportunity gaps

Jennifer Jennings, a Princeton professor and Director of Education Research Section, lays out how the Arizona vouchers are making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

MCPS made him reverse Beidleman sex harassment finding—and then retaliated, he alleges

Alexandra Robbins is an award-winning reporter who last year published an awesome book about teaching. She's also a substitute teacher in Montgomery County VA, and she turned her reporting skills to a local story of administrative harassment and how the district handled it. 

Moms for Liberty wants funds cut to Alabama libraries that let kids check out ‘pornographic material’

AL.com reporter Williesha covers one more variation on the recurring theme. Note this is not just school libraries, but all libraries under attack.

NC may raise requirements for charter school renewals. Critics say it’s ‘draconian.’

North Carolina is one more state where authorities are questioning the low accountability of charters and proposing tighter rules. Cue the squawks of outrage. By T. Keung Hui at the News Observer (waring--it has one of those "answer a question and give us your email" walls).

South Western seeks out legal advice as it pursues anti-LGBTQ+ policies

Far right school board candidates didn't lose everywhere, and this rural PA district is getting ready to implement some anti-LGBTQ policies, and they're giving the Independence Law Center another chance to pull the same old song and dance.

Looking Ahead in 2024: Scanning the Predictions for Education in the New Year

If you are a huge fan of pieces predicting stories for the upcoming year, International Education News has collected a ton of links to all the best ones for 2024.

Texas' Greg Abbott goes after fellow Republicans

Greg Abbott's voucher love is a deep and wide thing, and he is willing to finance election attacks on the fellow Republicans who thwarted his voucher dreams. Asher Price at Axios Austin.

Librarian faced spate of insults. Thousands of people came to his defense.

At the Washington Post, Sydney Page offers an encouraging profile of Mychal Threets, super-library fan and internet-famous librarian.

County Teachers To Submit Nicknames For Parental Permission Following Board Passage Of Model Policies

Just one on-the-ground example of what dumb policies look like. Ashlyn Campbell at the Daily News Record looks at what the policies adopted in the Rockingham County School District (Virginia) look like for teachers and students. Mostly they look like a mountain of paper. 

Connecticut Board of Education Adopts ‘Bill of Rights’ for Non-English Speakers

Jessika Harkay at the CT Mirror reports on a new parental rights bill that could actually do some good.

Star Tech: The Next Generation of Record-Keeping

Nancy Flanagan on the illusory efficiency of high tech classroom tools.

Florida school district removes dictionaries from libraries, citing law championed by DeSantis

Escambia County in Florida has been leading the state in Dumb Things, and they just made more news by purging all sorts of Naughty Books, like the dictionary. Judd Legum at Popular Information has the story.

A 'major win' for PEN America, publishers, and parents in book ban lawsuit

Speaking od Escambia County, some good news in the lawsuit filed against them for First Amendment violations. Jennie McKeon reports for WUWF.

The Mass. teacher who had the cops called on her over ‘Gender Queer’ has an attorney and wants answers

Remember that teacher in Massachusetts who was visited by police looking for a Naughty Book? She's still pissed, and she'd still like some answers. Abby Patkin at Boston.com with the story.

Science of Reading and EL Education: What is It?

How exactly does a specific program deliver Science of Reading swellness? Nancy Bailey looks at one particular program to try to find the answer.

Support Black IL Teacher Targeted By Moms4Liberty

I don't generally link to GoFundMe pages, but this one comes with a good summary of the story involved, and a chance to do something about it. 

The anti-DEI movement has gone from fringe to mainstream. Here’s what that means for corporate America

Joelle Emerson writing at Fortune. This focuses on the corporate world rather than education, but it's all the same debate.

LSU’s “Diversity and Inclusion” Language Erasure on *New Gov Eve*

Apparently Louisiana State University has scrubbed away its DEI. The indispensable Mercedes Schneider has the story.

How a true believer’s flawed research helped legitimize home schooling

Laura Meckler ran this story in the Washington Post a month ago, and I missed it then, But it's an important one. All that stuff you hear about how homeschoolers do better academically than public school kids? That's one guy's research, and it's rather iffy stuff.

How one north Minneapolis elementary school cut disruptive behavior calls by 75%

Mara Klecker at the Star Tribune reports on how they did it--and it wasn't one weird trick. Turns out it helps to let the littles have some active time, among other things.

Pitch AI Education

Thomas Ultican looks at the folks trying to sell AI to education, and look-- it's many of the usual suspects.

Scholars Aren’t Studying the Questions Education Leaders Care About Most

Rick Hess at Education Week talks about why there can be such a disconnect between education research and actual classrooms.

Why I Changed My Mind about Tecachers and Education Research

Can education research actually be useful in the classroom? Jose Luis Vilson has some thoughts about how and why that can work out.

"How Can I Know What I Think Till I See What I Say?"

I'm including this Teacher Tom piece strictly on the weight of the title, because that is a process I recognize from many many of my students.

Playing Jazz, Rebounding Basketball Shots, and Teaching Lessons: Instant Decision-Making

I've played traditional jazz trombone most of my life, and I can't begin to explain just how much teaching in a classroom and playing jazz feel, on some gut level, exactly alike. This piece gets at it. Great insights from Larry Cuban.

Cutting Through the Culture War Distractions to Preserve Public Education

Jan Resseger looks at the important stuff being hidden behind the culture wars.

The better off in Florida are homophobic, racist adults, Gov. DeSantis, not kids

Ron DeSantis has taken to claiming that kids are so much better off in Florida now that he has fixed education. At the Miami Herald, Fabiola Santiago begs to differ.

Portland teacher ‘Bob’ recounts finding Alaska Airlines door in yard

Sometimes you just have to pause your regular lesson plans to incorporate something you have to share--like the time a piece of a Boeing 373 fell into your back yard. Such a fun story from Maxine Bernstein at The Oregonian.

At Forbes this week, I looked at a report showing just what a hot mess Arizona's universal voucher program has turned out to be.

If you haven't already, please join me on substack. It's free (and always will be), and keeps you updated in the convenience of your email inbox.

Whose Religious Freedom?

Ryan Walters has drawn some more press in Oklahoma over a trip to DC to appear at the Family Research Council Summit in DC. Say one thing for Oklahoma's education dudebro-in-chief; while there may be plenty of officials out there who want to see the nation's education system christianized, Walters is plenty clear about what he wants.

There should be no separation of church and state. "We will bring God back to schools and prayer back to schools in Oklahoma and we will fight back against that radical myth," Walters said.

The Family Research Council was founded by James Dobson and is currently led by Tony Perkins, and they're an explicitly evangelical activist group. They've been designated an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Policy Law Center and a source of considerable misbehavior. FRC is an exemplar of that saying, "When you mix religion and politics you get politics."

These are the folks that are pushing for what they call religious freedom. These are the folks who are looking to smash the wall between church and state even as they argue that any such wall is a myth.

But if the wall is destroyed, exactly which religion is supposed to come strolling through the rubble. Religious freedom for whom, exactly?

Walters is one of those advocates who likes to pretend that "religion" and "Christianity" are synonyms. It's a rhetorical sloppiness with a purpose, a recognition that we are not, as a nation, quite ready to propose that the First Amendment is for Christians only (yet). And some conservatives understand that once that wall is gone, all manner of beliefs can waltz through. 

We don't even have to talk about Sharia Schools and Satanic Temple Academy to see how fraught this question is, how filled with danger for both state and church.

Consider this statistic from The Great De-Churching, a book by two evangelical pastors trying to understand why people are leaving the Christian church in record numbers; one quarter of the dechurched evangelicals in their survey believe that the United States should be declared a Christian nation—but they don’t attend church.

And they are a big part of this. Inside a New York Times article about Iowa pastor reactions to the "God made Trump" video, in which Trump is discussed in messiainic language, we find this line about the guy who created the video:

The group’s leader, Brenden Dilley, describes himself as Christian and a man of faith, but says he has never read the Bible and does not attend church.

What brand of Christianity is that, exactly, other than one that apparently leaves room for the literal worship of Trump and what Dilley calls his "God-tier genetics." Is that what Walters demands should be in the classroom?

Whose faith are the taxpayers supposed to finance? Which church should the government choose to support? When the United Methodist Church breaks apart over LGBTQ issues (sadly, the issue up for debate is "should the UMC discriminate against LGBTQ persons, or really really discriminate against LGBTQ persons), should the government side with both sides, or just one? And what happens when some evangelicals start to bristle at paying taxes to support the nation's primary provider of religious education, the Catholic Church, or, as some evangelicals like to call it, the Whore of Babylon?

"Well, they don't have to side with any of them," you may say. "Just leave them alone to freely worship as they will." Except that under the Supreme Court's current version of the First Amendment and the dreamed-of future of folks like Walts and FRC, they can't freely worship unless they are free to discriminate as they wish and be subsidized by taxpayers to do it. 

Walters is confident that once the wall is gone, only favored "Judeo-Christian" churches will stroll through. This is a silly thing to think (and former history teacher Walter should know better). "Church" means hundreds of different denominations in the United States, not counting guys like Dilley who, I guess, each represent a "church" of one. Oh, and also, all those other religions.

It would be hard enough to parse all this if it were just about faith. Trying to lump a boatload of faiths together by talking pretty about "Judeo-Christian tradition" may sound nice, but anyone who has worked in any kind of community ministerial forum knows, differences in faith traditions are not so easily papered over.

And it's not just about faith. The Catholic Church loves school choice because they need the money. For many others its about power, the power to impose their will on the education system. 

When churches are turned loose to scrabble over the power and money involved in schools and other parts of society, what can be the result except for more squabbling and fighting and maneuvering and--well, you know. Politics. And who is going to settle this other than the government. 

Walters and the folks at FRC may not see this as a problem, because they keep making the same mistake, which is imagining themselves and their allies holding the reins, thereby guaranteeing that when those difficult calls have to be made, they will end up on the winning side. This is a failure of imagination, a failure to learn the lessons of history. This is picking a fight based on an unrealistic belief that you will kick everyone else's collective keisters. 

When someone starts making noise about getting rid of the wall so that there can be religious freedom, ask these questions:

Will that be freedom for all faiths? And if not, who will decide who wins and who loses? And if yes, how do you plan to make taxpayers pay for it?

Denver Archdiocese Sues For Right To Discriminate On Public Dime

If you're tracking the various lawsuits trying to remove the last few bricks from the wall between church and state, here's one more that should be on your radar.

Colorado launch a universal Pre-K, allowing eligible parents to send their littles to any preschool program they choose. Except that to participate, schools are required “to accept any applicant without regard to a student or family’s religion, sexual orientation, or gender identity.”

"Wait a second!" declared the Catholic Church. "That's discrimination against us!" So they sued for the right to collect taxpayer dollars while refusing admission to any children from LGBTQ families. 

This argument is a rehash of the same one being made in other cases. It argues that in order to exercise their First Amendment right to discriminate against certain groups, the Catholic Church preschools must be given taxpayer dollars to help fund their discriminatory practices. 

You might have thought that infringing on the First Amendment rights of these schools would involve, say, forcing them to close down entirely, telling the church that it may not operate discriminatory pre-schools, and that the First Amendment would be satisfied by simply leaving them alone and allowing them to practice discrimination privately. But no--the argument of the Carson decision is that if the state gives taxpayer money to other secular schools that are following the rules, they can't rule out religious schools just because they won't follow the same set of rules.

Justice Breyer called this one in his dissent on Carson,

What happens once ‘may’ becomes ‘must’? Does that transformation mean that a school district that pays for public schools must pay equivalent funds to parents who wish to send their children to religious schools? Does it mean that school districts that give vouchers for use at charter schools must pay equivalent funds to parents who wish to give their children a religious education? What other social benefits are there the State’s provision of which means—under the majority’s interpretation of the Free Exercise Clause—that the State must pay parents for the religious equivalent of the secular benefit provided?

Some folks have been clear about this goal for years-- a Christian school system funded by taxpayers, either by demolishing the public system and replacing it with Christian schools, or by injecting Christianity into the public system, or some combination of the two.

The lawsuit was filed last August and the trial began last week in U.S. District court, one of several similar suits in the state. One principal of one of the schools involved in the suit described turning away a student from a same-sex couple because "school officials worried Catholic teachings would cause confusion and conflict in the family." It's language that reminds me of my friend who was turned away from enrolling her children in a Catholic elementary school because the officials thought that, as children from a "broken" home, they might not be a good fit.

Mr. Shearer, my Fourth Grade Sunday School teacher, had us all memorize the Great Commission. I keep looking at these Christian schools demanding the right to keep children out and collect taxpayer dollars for it and waiting for just one of them to realize that they've lost the plot. 

Oh, well. The case is being handled by senior judge John Kane, who was originally appointed by Jimmy Carter. We'll see what he comes up with.

More Child Labor

One of the big under-covered stories of 2023 was the rolling back of child labor laws. 

The major restrictions on child labor were part of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, and from there the states passed their own versions of protections for children. Many of these laws distinguish between agricultural labor and other sorts, in part so that junior could work on the family farm without getting Ma and Pa fined or arrested. But the idea was that maybe putting children in harm's way or depriving them of the chance to get an education was a Bad Thing and maybe as a nation we should knock it off. 

We didn't get those laws easily. Lots of folks thought that child labor was double plus good. Opponents of the laws denied the existence of a problem, argued that work was good for the young 'uns. "I am really tired of seeing so many big children ten years old playing in the streets," was a real thing that a real "prominent lady citizen" said in opposition to child labor laws. And of course the ever-popular complaint-- "How can we stay in business and remain profitable if you pass these rules?"

The Camella Teoli Story

I'm going to digress for a second to tell a lesser-known story that illustrates what the need was.

Camella Teoli went to work in a Lawrence, MA mill at the age of 11. Early on in her career, a machine used to twist cotton into thread caught her hair and ripped off part of her scalp. At the age of 14, she was standing in front of Congress in March 1912. The conditions in the mill were famously horrific; low wages and a life expectancy of 39.6 years, with one third of workers dying before age 25. If your workforce is going to die off in their twenties, of course you need to start them young. 

Teoli was in front of Congress in March because in January, a new law had reduced the legal hours for women and children from 56 to 54 per week. The pissed off mill owners responded by speeding up the machines; so harder work, less pay. That kicked off the Great Lawrence Textile Strike, in which adults and children walked off the job.

The strike got ugly. Workers sent their children out of town, both for safety and as a publicity move, and the city officials decided to counter the bad publicity by deploying police and soldiers at the railroad station to keep children from getting in trains out of town, ultimately physically attacking the group of children. And Congress called a hearing, and Camella Teori, a 14 year old Italian immigrant testifying before First Lady Helen Taft, who invited Camella and other child laborers to lunch at the White House and contributed to the strike fund. Teoli became a national sensation, the face of our labor problem. 

Massachusetts passed some child labor laws that were aimed not so much at the inhumane conditions of the work, but at the fact that child workers were being deprived of any chance for education. But the states (particularly the southern ones) dragged their feet hard, because for a huge part of US history, lots of people have been okay--even more than okay--with child labor, as long as it's Those People's Children.

Teoli went back to work in the mill. She was never promoted. She never told her own children about her role in labor history, even as her daughter had learned to help her arrange her hair to cover a large bald spot.

So here we are again

My point? The desire to use young bodies as part of the industrial machinery of our country is not particularly new, nor has it always been obvious that children should not be required to work in dangerous conditions or to the detriment of their own education. 

In 2023, around a dozen states rolled their child labor protections back. 

Some, like Arkansas, teamed up the gutting of child labor protections with laws set to kneecap public schools. Iowa removed protections that kept young workers out of more physically dangerous jobs while expanding the hours they could be asked to work. Missouri similarly shot for increasing working hours for teens. Minnesota said yes to teens working in heavy construction. 

Many off these rollbacks have especially troubling features. Arkansas removed the requirement for age verification. Many of the states have eliminated the requirement for a work permit. The work permit is dismissed as a piece of troublesome paperwork, but it is also the checkpoint at which the school or some other responsible adult can say, "I'm not sure this is such a great idea for this particular teen." 

In some cases like Arkansas, the permits had a requirement for parents to sign off, but now Arkansas doesn't care to give parents a voice in this particular decision. Ohio's Senator Bill Reineke expressed a similar concern over child labor, arguing that kids who really want to work shouldn't be hampered because "they can't get their parents to cooperate with them." Parents--they only matter sometimes.

Also, "child labor" sounds so rough. When Indiana tried to pass a bill to roll back protections in 2020, it included a provision to rename the Bureau of Child Labor as the Bureau of Youth Employment. Arkansas called its law removing child labor protections the "Youth Hiring Act of 2023." See, the trouble with child labor is just bad branding. 

Who is pushing this stuff? Employers. In Iowa, a lobbyist for the Iowa Grocer Industry Association told the senate "Everyone has a worker need right now." And as for working later on a school night, Jessica Dunker, president of the Iowa Restaurant Association and the Iowa Hotel and Lodging  Association testified.

“Nine o’clock for a 15 year old sophomore in high school, you know, I’m sure they’re doing something already and probably it’s a school opportunity,” she said, “but if it isn’t, having kids get the opportunity to work is important.”

Covering a similar push in Tennessee, Stephen Elliot at USA Today noted in April, "The unemployment rate sits at 3.5% – a level last reached in 1969 – and businesses of all types, from factories to restaurants to retail stores, are struggling to find workers."

"C'mon, let the kids make some money and earn valuable experience," argue the usual suspects. When David Koch ran for Vice-President as a Libertarian in 1980, part of the platform included abolishing child labor laws. 

In 2014, Benjamin Powell wrote a piece for CATO arguing the case against child labor prohibitions with some really twisty reasoning. Looking internationally, he argued that although the "thought of children laboring in sweatshops is repulsive," that only happens because of poverty and the solution to poverty includes--well...

As countries become rich, child labor virtually disappears. The answer for how to cure child labor lies in the process of economic growth—a process in which sweatshops play an important role.

And yet, somehow, we have a wealthy nation and lots and lots of child poverty.

But if you really want to see cheerleading for child labor, check out a piece at the Foundation for Economic Education, the pioneer Libertarian thinky tank and advocacy group. A 2016 piece by Jeffrey Tucker argued that work would be so much better for children's inner lives than school, and some jobs might be dangerous, but kids love danger, and more...

If kids were allowed to work and compulsory school attendance was abolished, the jobs of choice would be at Chick-Fil-A and WalMart. And they would be fantastic jobs too, instilling in young people a work ethic, which is the inner drive to succeed, and an awareness of attitudes that make enterprise work for all. It would give them skills and discipline that build character, and help them become part of a professional network.

A century ago, children were "civic soldiers." We should be ashamed that we ever took the opportunity to work away from kids, suggests Tucker. That piece spawned another at the Acton Institute entitled "Work is a gift our kids can handle" by Joseph Sunde, which offers more of the same. Considering the question of household allowances:

What if we were to be more intentional about creating opportunities for work for our kids, or simply to more closely disciple our children toward a full understanding of the role of their work in honoring God and serving neighbor? In our schools and educational systems, what if we stopped prioritizing “intellectual” work to the detriment of practical knowledge and physical labor, paving new paths to a more holistic approach to character formation?

So where is this headed?

When rich folks like Betsy DeVos talk about letting children get education anywhere, including outside school, and  talk about children finding the place that best suits them in life, and also talk about how child labor laws should be ended, believe that those three things are related. When Pennsylvania attorneys argued that there was no need to bring equity to school funding because “What use would someone on the McDonald’s career track have for Algebra 1?” you're seeing another piece of the same puzzle.

Just look at Florida.

Florida, somehow, is bringing up the rear on this one. They have two interlocking bills poised this session to gut child labor protections. Some of the stipulations are standard for these laws-- lowering the age limits, increasing the work hours, removing work hour limits for non-school nights. But beyond these tweaks, there's one all-new provision. Among those now exempt from all limitations of the child labor laws are:

Minors 16 and 17 years of age who are in a home education program or are enrolled in an approved virtual instruction program in which the minor is separated from the teacher by time only.

Withdraw your child and homeschool them, and they can work as many hours as you wish.  Because if they're working on the "McDonald's career track," how much education do they really need? 

The other ugly piece of this is migrant children used as workers. Interviewing 100 migrant children in 20 states, New York Times reporter Hannah Dreier found

These workers are part of a new economy of exploitation: Migrant children, who have been coming into the United States without their parents in record numbers, are ending up in some of the most punishing jobs in the country, a New York Times investigation found. This shadow work force extends across industries in every state, flouting child labor laws that have been in place for nearly a century. Twelve-year-old roofers in Florida and Tennessee. Underage slaughterhouse workers in Delaware, Mississippi and North Carolina. Children sawing planks of wood on overnight shifts in South Dakota.

Are they being ennobled by this gift of work? I have my doubts. Much like the children working meatpacking jobs in Kansas and Nebraska, for whom a meatpacker paid a whopping $1.5 million fine. Boy, I bet that company wishes that, somehow, they didn't have to pay that fine.

Underneath all of this is an ugly set of assumptions. Companies need workers more than Certain People need an education, because after all, Certain People are really best suited to serving the Greater Good via a life as meat widgets. That's really all the education Certain People's Children ever really need, and besides, how else are we supposed to turn a profit. 

Meanwhile, agitators are far more concerned that a child will catch sight of an inappropriate book than get lost in an inappropriate job.

Look

I am a big fan of work. My perfect world is not one where someone just sits on their butt all day. Meaningful work is good for the soul. 

But robbing children of a chance to get an education and move up in the world so that some corporation doesn't have staffing problems (that they might have to address by offering better wages) is not okay. And putting them in dangerous situations just to make a buck is inexcusable. And justifying all of this by convincing yourself that these particular children are Less Than, so it's okay to use up their lives and bodies like this--that's inexcusable.

Grownups have a simple charge--to watch over, take care of, help, protect, and nurture young humans until they are old enough to go their own way. To strip away some basic protections and claim that you're doing the children a favor is just wrong. To argue that being a young meat widget is so ennobling that formal education is really not needed is silly. To argue that some young humans are to be pre-judged to be on a worker bee track for their lives, and so rob them of the opportunity to chart their own path is unAmerican.

We talk a big game in this country about how much we value Family and The Children, but the stripping of child labor protection, like the failure to seriously address school shootings, like the crusade to empower some parents to tell other parents how to raise their children, like our continued failure to provide paid parental leave-- all these things are a reminder that for some folks, children and family are not nearly as important as corporations.