"I Didn't Learn Anything"

Two stories for Teacher Appreciation Week.

Story One:

At the very beginning of my career, I taught middle school students. Then one year I finally moved down to the high school and, to make the transition a bit easier, I taught many of the students as ninth graders that I had also taught as middle schoolers.

At the beginning of units, I often did a quick-and-dirty check for understanding. I'd mention the topic and then ask for a show of hands-- who thinks they already know a bunch about this stuff? who remembers going over it in class, but doesn't really remember much? who's never heard of this stuff before?

Time after time, I would get, "Mr. Greene, we never covered this stuff in middle school at all."

"Of course you did," I replied, crankily. "I'm the one who taught it to you." Thirty seconds of review, a practice sheet later-- "Oh, yeah. This stuff. I guess I did know something about this."

Story Two:

Later in my career, I taught downstream (the next graded after) from a newer hire. Her students would always insist that she had never taught them a thing. Then they would laugh and reminisce about how easily they could get her off track, or how they'd spend days of class just doing goofy stuff.

Then I would do some quick introductory quizzes about the material. Grammar, elements of short stories, basic writing stuff-- and they' know it, all of it. And I'd ask them "Where did you learn that, anyway" and they would get these expressions that were a mixture of puzzlement and amusement as they realized that they had learned all this material in that class in which they had never been taught a  thing.

Morals of the Stories:

Students are often really terrible judges of what they have and haven't been taught in a class. In fact, one of the things they should be learning is how to honestly self-evaluate. This is also how an assessment should work-- at the end of a really good final exam or project, that student should be sitting there thinking, "Damn, I'm smart!" (This, I suspect, was the missing link in my colleague's classroom.)

Other lesson? Some teachers are getting far more done than anybody knows. I've seen a couple of "My kid says he never learned anything in that class," and with all due respect, your kid may not have a clue. Do not write of a teacher (especially if that teacher is yourself) just because a student never noticed that learning was happening.

Some of the best teachers are, in fact, stealth teachers. Suddenly (at least, it feels sudden) you realize that you know stuff and can do stuff and you can't even remember how it got in your head. This is often a missing link for beginning teachers, who remember their favorite classes with their favorite teachers, but have no idea how that teacher made magic happen and consequently start out thinking that all you have to do is stand up in class and talk about some stuff and somehow learning erupts.

We compare good teachers to technicians and artists, but often they are magicians who somehow pull a lesson out of a hat without ever letting you see how it was done. The irony is that, like a good athlete or musician, they make it seem so effortless that the casual observer never gives them credit for their hard work and polished skill.

Like a great performer or athlete, a teacher experiences those moments when you feel as if the Thing is just moving through you, you're just a conduit, and a transparent one at that (like Emerson's transparent eyeball) as if all of your "me" has vanished.

That's why Teacher Appreciation Day is worth having, so that we take a moment and look at those stealth teachers to say, "I see you. I see what you're doing. And it is a damned fine trick. Thank you for sharing it with us"

High Stakes Testing Is A Huge Threat To Post-Covid Education

High stakes testing and the relentless use of Big Standardized Test score as a proxy for everything we want from an education system--well, it has always caused problems.

It has led to a terrible narrowing of education (if that class isn't On The Test, then why bother supporting it or even offering it). It has provided a large-scale demonstration of Campbell's Law, in which a measurement is mistaken for the thing itself, thereby distorting the thing itself and the measurement. It has allowed all manner of education amateur to speak with authority about education because, after all, they have "hard data" and a bunch of numbers . And so important people have been able to act as if they really know things, when in fact they haven't had a clue. It has allowed folks to pretend they Know Things, when in fact they don't know anything at all. And for certain folks intent on privatizing education, high stakes testing has provided a way to "prove" that public schools are failing and should be replaced with privately owned and operated education flavored businesses.

Yeah, gonna need a better foundation than that

The widespread test fetish has drawn time and attention and resources from aspects of education that actually matter. Journalists and fonts of education wisdom keep talking about "student achievement" and "teacher effectiveness" and what they actually mean is "the scores on a single not-very-well-designed math and reading test." The disruptors and edu-wonks and self-appointed edu-leaders have honed an educational focus that is all hat, while ignoring the cattle completely.

The focus on high stakes testing has done considerable damage to education in this country. It is poised to do even more.

Andrew Cuomo is assembling a panel of well-connected education amateurs like Bill Gates and Eric Schmidt. Cuomo long argued for teacher evaluation to be based on test scores, while Gates promoted and boosted the Common Core, with its emphasis on high-stakes testing as a means of measuring which standards students had achieved. This collection of test fetishests is going to reimagine education for New York.

And here are some academic edu-wonks in EdWeek explaining how to shed a few hundred-thousand veteran teachers, recycling the popular disruptor argument that old teachers are dead weight on the system (and they're the most expensive, but they try not to say that part out loud). Their "bad news" is that layoffs can lower test scores, which they treat as a synonym for "negatively affect students." And their plan is to revive the argument for finding ways to hang on to the "most effective" teachers, which means "teachers whose students get the highest scores on the high stakes test." (See everyone who ever cited a faux paper called "The Widget Effect" for more examples of this argument.)

These days, everyone and his rich dilettante aunt wants to "redesign education." And I am actually 100% okay with the idea of revisiting our institutions on a regular basis (like, even more often than "every time a pandemic makes us hit pause"). 

But if you want to redesign education, then you need to start with a discussion about what you think public education is for. And the disruptors are hustling us right past that question, having already plugged in their answer--

It's for generating high scores on the Big Standardized Test.

Now, some of them may be so ignorant about education that they sincerely  believe that the BS Test is a good target to aim for. Others unquestionably subscribe to this idea because it suits their other purposes. But either way, it's a terrible foundation for a nation's education system.

No need for courses that don't affect test scores. Hire and fire and pay teachers based on their test score results, no matter how that disrupts the system and the lives of the students. Should we gather students together in a building with live human teachers, or do we just need to plunk them down in front of a screen-- well, which one gets the best test scores. And if it's a mix, just how far can we cut back on those (expensive) human teachers without hurting test scores? Can we standardize all the "high quality curriculum"  as a way of getting better test scores? And let's consider all the social-emotional stuff only insofar as "research" shows it affects test scores.

Funny thing. The pandemic pause is offering some reformsters a chance to strip everything away from education that isn't directly tied to testing, even as sheltering at home is convincing millions of families that what they miss and value most from school is every that isn't directly tied to testing. Reformsters are salivating at the chance to drastically reduce the role of teachers in education even as, in the real world, Jimmy Fallon is going viral with a song that opens "Teachers should be paid a billion dollars."

If we reimagine education as an institution built on a foundation of Getting High Scores On High Stakes Tests, we'll end up with a tiny, cramped, meagre, sad shadow of the actual education system that would serve students and society. Of course, when I say "we," that's not quite accurate, because the wealthy will never settle for a system like that.

Every time the idea of reimagining education comes up, we need to ask the same question-- what will the point, the goal, the mission of public education be? It can't be "to get high test scores." That shouldn't even make the list. It's not good enough. It has never been good enough.

And now, for your Teacher Appreciation Week enjoyment...

PA: The House Speaker Wants Schools Open

Pennsylvania House Speaker Mike Turzai has never been a friend of public education in the Keystone State, and he has generally been pretty clear about it. But Monday he got extra Mike Turzai-ish when posting a six minute video attacking the state education head, teachers, schools, and teachers.

Just for context, let me mention two things-- Turzai is not running for re-election to the House, and he might like to run for governor of the state.

The prompt for his little videoutburst was a statement from the state education secretary Pedro Rivera that, given current info, PA schools might not open in the fall. "We're preparing for the best, but we're planning for the worst," he said. Need to put health and safety of students first, he said. This so enraged Turzai that he immediately a week later put up a Facebook video.

Turzai starts out by quoting the "schools might not be able to open in the fall" part and then, just twenty seconds or so in, he let's loose with a rage and disgust face and asks "Who are you, Secretary Rivera, to be the dictator of whether our kids are getting educated or not?" while his face adds "when you are clearly some sort of loathsome slug." It's an ugly moment, made even uglier because Turzai's eyes shift to the side so he can read this line. But it's also ugly because it sets a tone. Because Turzai could have said something like, "I think this is a bad idea and I disagree with it" or "I thiunk we need to take another look at this conclusion" or even "I respect Secretary Rivera's professional opinion, but I think he's wrong here." There's no reason to go full ugly on this unless, say, you believe that attacking the governor and his administration for being dictators and freedom-haters is a winning political issue and you would rather grab a winning political issue than look for an actual solution to problems. Especially if you want to run for governor.

Thirty seconds in we've got the general gist here, but there's more. And most of it is insulting.

"For goodness sake-- are kids even being educated right now?" This will not be the first time that Turzai, who once suggested that teachers are a special interest who work in a monopoly and  don't care about kids, will suggest that teachers aren't doing jack.

"Are you going to turn everybody into a cyber-school?" This is the moment that most suggests to me that Turzai is not being entirely honest in this video, because  he has spent most of his career pushing charters and cyber-charters. I find it hard to believe that he wouldn't cheer if every student was cyberschooling.

He wants you to know that every public school worker is being paid, and he's prepared a graphic with the number. He also wants you to know that the PA pension fund for public school employees is really expensive (got a graphic for that, too). He mentions that the pension costs are huge; he doesn't mention that it's largely because the legislature got te fund hammered in the 2008 crash.

"The fact of the matter is, Secretary Rivera, kids. have. dreams." Again, more effective without the reading side-eye. He will now read off a list of the many things students like to do, like act and sing and perform in real concerts and dance and do welding and-- it's a good list, but now hold on--0

Hard right turn into doctor and science territory because all of those things can be done safely by kids if they don't have an underlying condition! This is not exactly true, though what always strikes me as bizarre about this argument is that it assumes that children do not have adult family members. In the "children aren't hurt by corona" universe, do we imagine children are quarantined away from adults?

"The fact of the matter is, kids can develop herd immunity." I have no idea what is supposed to mean.  Herd immunity has to involve the whole herd, right? And some of the herd will become immune and some of it will become dead-- correct? If you have a medical degree, feel free to correct my wofrk in the comments.

Now Turzai warns that if Rivera hasn't developed a plan "then we will have to rethink education fully." The "rethink education" part is another sign that we're reading out of te education disruptor playbook here.

Teacher salaries. Turzai wants to mention that we have the second highest average teacher salary and the third highest average starting salary. Also, the average member of my household is four feet tall. Whatever-- Turzai just wants you to know that teachers get paid too much. Fun fact: PA state legislators are third highest paid in the country; our legislature is one of the most expensive. I'm mnot being cheap and petty (okay, not JUST cheap and petty)-- throwing these kinds of numbers around without context or a point other than "Look at this and be mad!" is not helpful or useful. Also, happy Teacher Appreciation Week.

Also, he's not correct.

Next, Turzai declares that the department should have a plan so that schools just "flip a switch" and go instantly from full day in school to full day distance school, then "what are you doing over at PDE? Issuing edicts?" For the record, a full day of distance learning is a lousy idea. The flip a switch idea just shows a profound lack of understanding of what is involved in education and school.

Now we're back to "is anybody doing anything" rant materials. Summed up wit "is value being added" which is just ridiculous. You add value to manufacturing goods, not human beings. But Turzai is going to lean on the idea of measurables. He wants numbers, dammit.

He wa ts to see an analysis across the stater. He wants teachers to call students with IEPs every day, which I'm guessing would be hugely annoying to the families of those students. But he really wants that-- "Please tell me someone is calling those students every day" They have dreams, too. Also, personal contact. Phone calls. "And you act so cavalier..." and again, I didn't see video, just the writeup, but I didn't see cavalier in Rivera's comments. "Do you understand the pressures and burdens you're putting on working families?" It's a hard thing to do all this cooping up and hemming in and running school at home and he's not wrong but then we're back to the "who are you" and I guess "a public servant trying to make the best calls he can with the same limited info that everyone else has" is not the correct answer for Turzai. No, he's the education dictator, and he did this without input from legislators or publicly elected officials (or teachers, ether, but who's counting)

"You're going to wear it, if you take away the dreams from those kids" And this line is delivered with so much feeling that you would think Turzai was reacting to something that just happened.

"You better come up with a plan, or we'll come up with one." He wats to know how many kids are not learning. He wants to know how many can't find an outlet for their songs and again a very specific and inclusive list. He wants a measurable.

"You have a lot of answering to do." I think he's reading this off paper rather than a screen.

Now we're on to the idea that in some counties, we should be talking about getting kids back to school. I'm in one of those counties and I'd respectfully point out that opening the schools wouldn't mean that people would go back. Turzai has a thought-- go back for just half-days so that social distancing could occur, which is the kind of thinking we get from lots of folks who don't actually send time in schools.

"Or are you telling us that school buildings are now obsolete?" If so, we need a new plan. But I bet that's not what he's telling us.

He wants-- or rather "we want"-- a thought out plan that respects parents and kids. and respec ts their dreams and hopes, and has measurables. And his closing line--

"I haven't seen any leadership from your office at all."

And all sooooooo angry. Well, I get that, sort of. We're mostly on edge and tense. But Turzai either needs to take a step back and assume that just maybe there are people who disagree with him honestly and with good intent for the best outcome, or he needs to stop trying to milk conservative anger at the governor for his own political benefit. I'm increasingly concerned that the "You want to be a dictator" versus "You want to kill grandma" rhetoric isn't helping and that some folks are getting more invested in scoring political points than getting us through this.

When I started writing this, I was really angry. Now I'm just sad. Turzai has never been a friend of public ed, nor do I remember any of his crusades to cut public ed funding being accompanied by any concerns about children's hopes and dreams. It'll be interesting to see how he adapts all of that to a governor's race.

Oh, Jeb! Give It A Rest.

The vultures are out in force at this point, jostling for the chance to make big bucks by picking at what they hope is the corpse of traditional public education. Education? There's an app for that, and we've got it!

So it makes perfect sense that one of the grandaddies of the drive to disrupt and dismantle education would be in the Washington Post yesterday, making his pitch for "the education of the future." It must be frustrating to be Jeb. He was the smart one, and he was going to ride the noble steed of Common Core and education privatization right into the White House; now he's just stuck beating the same old dead horse.

Jeb! has a couple of points to make here, all of them baloney.

First, he is frustrated that every school district is not on the virtual learning train right now. He agrees that the digital divide is real, but he doesn't really understand what it means. His solution: "Every district should make available a device and WiFi so every child can participate in online learning."

If your internet memory goes back to the nineties, you remember the people (your mom might have been one) who thought that the CD-ROM from AOL had the internet on it. Jeb! reminds me of those days. If he wants to stop by, I'll drive him out to the places where you could give folks whole stacks of devices and WiFi hot-spot devices and it wouldn't make a bit of difference, because there is no signal there. Nor is internet connection an yes-no proposition; as many many many many folks are learning with considerable frustration, a bad connection is not much more help than no connection at all.

Nor does Jeb! have suggestions about how to finance what, for some districts, would be a massive bunch of purchasing. And (another thing that isn't discussed nearly enough) that big-money purchasing never ends. Licenses-- every year-- for the materials. Whatever devices you select for your school will be obsolete in, at most, two years. What Jeb! proposes is really, really expensive. Of course, for some folks, that's why its appealing-- it turns on a big money faucet at the district level that just never stops gushing (except when the taxpayers run out of money). Jeb! cites the e-rate program, but that is already pretty fully tapped-- how does he propose to get more money out of it. And, of course, Jeb! smells that sweet, sweet pandemic stimulus money, the aroma of which has drawn all these vultures out in the open .

Plus, the adaptations. Students with special needs may require more than just a chromebook connected to the interwebz. "Just hand them a device" doesn't really capture all the work that has to be done to properly meet their needs. Jeb! admits "this will be challenging" but offers little concrete other than, hey, you could have a virtual dyslexia expert virtually help the students across the district. Why would this be better than helping in person? Jeb! doesn't say.

But, Jeb! insists, schools must adapt to a future of learning without classrooms "because that's the future of learning."

Would you like some evidence that this is so? Too bad. Jeb! offers none. But he can assert with the best of them.

Learning is no longer modeled on the traditional classroom but has become digital, individualized and delivered on smartphones or laptops.

It's not? He offers the corporate learning market as proof, but that's not public education, at all. He mentions the many college courses on line. Evidence that these are effective? Nope.

And the assertion that education has become individualized because its digital is likewise laughable. In the vast majority of cases, it's the exact opposite; for instance, a Khan Academy video neither knows nor cares what student is watching it. It works exactly the same for everyone.

Jeb! says some schools have gone to online courses or even require them-- that would be Florida, of course, where the legislature helped make the state's virtual school "successful" by mandating that every student must take an online course to graduate. And then there's this--

Computer-assisted and personalized learning can be particularly effective in closing achievement gaps, especially in math.

Jeb! links "particularly effective" to a site that doesn't actually support that claim, but instead says

Initiatives that expand access to computers and internet alone generally do not improve kindergarten to 12th grade students’ grades and test scores,

Which matches most of the research that says that virtual schooling is disastrously bad.

His big plug is vintage edu-disruptor:

Some might push back against these measures, but the benefits are clear: Such changes would better enable students to learn. They would be better prepared for the learning platforms of college and the workforce. Teachers would be able to deploy more innovative and personalized instructional strategies. Distance learning has the capacity to help students go deeper where their interests take them and get more focused attention in areas where they’re struggling. And Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, dual-enrollment courses and other intensive offerings could be expanded in districts where they are not currently available.

Except that the benefits are NOT clear, or even visible. There is not a shred of evidence that internet education would "better enable students to learn" or be better prepared for college or workplace. Teachers are already innovative and personalized; there's no evidence that the internet would make them more so. What does "distance learning has the capacity to help students go deeper" even mean? The benefit is so tenuously detached from reality that we're going to stick with, "Well, it maybe could happen." Why? What about distance learning positions it for deeper learning? And why would distance learning be more helpful for providing "focused attention" than the "focused attention" of a live human teacher right there with you? The AP/IB baloney is classic ed tech sales pitch-- buy my product, and then you can figure out uses for it.

This is all pretty marketing talk, devoid of facts, distanced from reality. It starts not from a question of "How can we best help students" but "How can we best market our education flavored product."

I would suggest that Jeb! ride back out of town on the horse he rode in on, but, as previously noted, the horse is dead. So instead maybe he could just take a long walk and give the poor expired equine a rest. This is not ed tech's Katrina.

ICYMI: What? May?! Really??! Edition (5/3)

Well, here we still are, those of us who are fortunate enough to still be here. Let's read some things!

When teaching and parenting collide

I missed this when it landed at Chalkbeat a month ago-- Matt Barnum looks at teachers who have to balance virtual teaching and at-home parenting.

Teachers, parents and principals tell their story  

Over at The Answer Sheet on the Washington Post, Carol Burris runs down some of the results of the big Network for Public Education pandemic stay-st-home education survey.

No To Race To The Top: Covid-19  

It shouldn't come as a surprise, but Neal McClusky at the libertarian Cato Institute doesn't like the DeVosian competitive grant program (you know-- the one that looks eerily like Arne Duncan could have designed it) any more than I do, even if it is for different reason.

Coronavirus capitalism is coming for public schools  

At The Progressive, Dora Taylor takes a look at the vultures circling overhead right now.

Exam Anxiety  

The Verge looks at the increasingly super-creepy world of online exam proctoring. Because there's always one more way to advance the surveillance state.

Teaching US History in Michigan

At the blog A Walk Back in Time, a reflection on the crazy-pants demonstration in Michigan this week.

Betsy DeVos sued over garnished wages

DeVos once agains is dragging her feet on a policy that lets Those People get away with owing money, and so, onc again, she is being taken to court.

Betsy DeVos is the real civics failure

DeVos had some thoughts about the low NAEP history scores; Negin Owliaei is the Inside Sources with some thoughts about DeVos.

Where Are The Teachers?  

John Ewing at Forbes.com raising the issue of how folks in authority fai to actually listen to teachers. "It’s commonplace to say, “We don’t respect teachers,” but we seldom consider what that means. Respect isn’t merely the way you treat people—respect is the way you value their expertise. "

The Wild West of Unregulated Unacountable Virtual Voucher Schools  

The big push is on for virtual schooling. Why is that a lousy idea? Let Accountabaloney count te ways.

It's Time To Fix Standardized Testing    

Testing expert Akil Bello has a blog, and right now, you can read about some ideas for fixing standardized testing. It's a little wonky, but therefor solid on details.

98 Success Academy Students Accepted to College  

The always-charter-loving NY Post made a big fuss this week about SA getting 100% of its graduating class accepted to college. Gary Rubinstein would like to provide a little context-- like noting that that doesn't count all the students who left SA before this swell milestone. And he has the numbers, going back to kindergarten.

And this... Since this mess started, DeVos has repeatedly asserted that many schools have just quit. Here's another view, courtesy of Bald Piano Guy

Another Voucher Angle: Child Safety Accounts

It's one of the less common buttons pushed by reformsters intent on pushing school choice, and it might be one of the most backwards pitches out there.

Child Safety Accounts seem to be particular baby of the Heartland Institute, a thinky tank that leans way right. Their mission: "to discover, develop and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems." They are big advocates for the "What global warming?" school, and believe that the left is using the coronavirus lockdown is "a dress rehearsal for the Green New Deal." These are the guys who put up a billboard linking global warming belief to the Unabomber. They no longer list their sponsors, but Media Bias Fact Check says that Exon-Mobil, Charles Koch, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation were among the money sources in the past.

So, zero surprise that their Center for Education Opportunities advocates heavily for choice in many forms. What might make them stand out is their rather loose interest in facts. Take this scare-sentence from their education pages:

Today about nine of every 10 students attend schools that are owned, operated, and staffed by government employees.

It will come as a big shock and surprise to teachers and administrators to discover that they own the public schools in which they work, and that those schools are not owned by, say, the district itself operating as an arm of the taxpayers and controlled by an elected group of citizens. The fact that Heartland hopes to strike fear by invoking "government" tells you plenty about these guys. Their three big ideas are to get rid of Common Core, more school choice, and removing the Blaine Amendments (aka making it okay to give public tax dollars to religious organizations). Their policy experts come from all the usual organizations-- EdChoice, Cato Institute, Tea Party Patriots, Center for Education Reform.

Like most thinky tanks, Heartland cranks out "policy briefs" and "research reports" and other pieces of writing which are attempts to dress up what are simply impassioned arguments for their preferred ideas. Which is cool-- here at the Curmudgucation Institute I am cranking out policy briefs all the time.

Which brings us to Child Safety Accounts. They floated this "policy brief" in 2018, then spruced it up in November of 2019 (which now just seems like eons ago, doesn't it). Periodically they'll also push an op-ed about it out into the world. There is even a book.

The pitch is simple. A lot of public schools are unsafe. Violent crimes happen there. A lot of students are bullied. To solve the problems of school violence, families should get education savings accounts to get away from such situations.

There are a variety of problems here.

One is the assumption that all of the issues being discussed-- bullying, assault, sexual misconduct, suicide, fights, school shootings, food allergies-- are centered in public schools, and a child need only get out of public schools to escape these problems. That seems unlikely. For example, if a child is being cyber-bullied, changing schools will in all likelihood do absolutely no good. Nor do I imagine that private schools are bully-free zones.

The actual operation of the program seems problematic. Parents can get their CSA account if they have a "reasonable apprehension for their child's safety" based on either the child's experience or data that schools would be required to report. In other words, any parent can get one of these vouchers just by saying they think they need one. That leaves two options-- people entering the program not-entirely-honestly, or some horrifying oversight agency that rules on whether your child is really in a trouble spot.

That fits with the format for CSAs--Heartland proposes a debit card which the parents can then spend on whatever educationy thing they feel they need. This is one of the big problems with ESAs-- exactly who is going to keep an eye on all these parents and make sure the taxpayers' money isn't being spent on cosmetics and clothes? Where's accountability in this scheme?

I also have questions about mobility under the plan. For instance, LGBTQ students are among the more likely students to experience bullying-- but what good with CSAs do them if they live in an area (say, Florida) where private schools have explicit anti-LGBTQ policies?

The authors of the "brief" are Tim Benson and Vicki Alger. Benson joined Heartland as a policy analyst in the Government Relations Department, with responsibilities that appear to include lobbying and cranking out "talking points, news releases and op-ed pieces." He's written a whole string of "Bullying statistics show that [insert state name] need Children Safety Accounts" articles. He's got a BA in History. Alger is a senior fellow at the Independent Women's Forum, an organization offering an alternative to feminism and backed by Koch money; they started out as "Women for Clarence Thomas." The IWF gave Betsy DeVos an award last year. Alger is a school choice advocate who travels about trying to sell education disruption. She's got her own LLC which is "committed to helping your organization translate limited-government free-market principles into effective education policy and practice."

And this is where we get to the backwards part.

First, let me be extra super clear-- every one of the problems that they address in the "brief" is an absolutely real issue. The numbers and "research" they've used is debatable when it comes to the specifics, but I'm not going to make any attempt at all to argue that there aren't real human children suffering real consequences of these real issues.

However, what we have here is the classic reformster argument. Construct a strong compelling portrayal of the problem, and then propose your solution without ever making a connection between the two. Here in this paper the authors dump all the problems facing students into a single bucket (suicide, school shootings, food allergies) with no thoughtful distinctions between them. The "paper" then moves to the solution (in fact, it lays out the solution first) without taking a single moment to consider A) any other possible solutions to the problem or B) explain why CSAs would be the most effective solution available.

This is literally a solution (education savings accounts) in search of a problem. Neither Benson nor Alger offers anything by way of showing the time and effort they've previously invested in trying to solve school bullying and while I can't possibly know their hearts or their entire lived experience, if that includes something relevant to solving these problems, wouldn't this be the time to bring it up. For that matter, a search through the Heartland education experts doesn't show anyone with a background focusing on these issues, or student mental health issues in general. This whole argument appears to have been constructed backwards-- we want to give parents ESAs, so what problem can we say that will solve?

Student suicide is a horrific problem and health care and education professionals have devoted entire lifetimes to searching for solutions. Bullying is a miserable issue, now exacerbated by computer technology, and counseling and education professionals spend lifetimes trying to come up with strategies that work. Fighting, assaults, gang violence-- ditto. School shootings? Yes, I believe a few people have spent some time trying to sort that issue out.

None of that work is reflected here. Nor is there any rigorous evidence-based examination of how the CSAs would solve this menu of problems. The authors just drop all the problems in that bucket and say, "Look, this would totally justify ESA policies. Let's use this." The driving question behind this "paper" is not "How can we best address the problems of school bullying?" It's "Has anyone got any new ideas about how to argue for ESAs?"

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they are just deeply concerned about these things and they've spent so much time looking at school issues through the lens of choice that they can't see it any other way. But for parents struggling to help a child struggling with any of these issues, getting a debit card and a "Good luck searching the free market for a school that will help" seems like not enough. These are serious problems that scream for serious solutions. That does not seem to be what the Heartland Institute is offering here.

If you want to solve school bullying, focus on school bullying (not ESAs). If you want to solve youth suicide, focus on suicide (not ESAs). If you want to end school shootings, focus on school shootings (not ESAs). But it seems a little tacky to co-opt these serious issues as part of a sales pitch for your favored policy.

Trump Teams Up With Catholic Church For School Vouchers

The Tablet is a magazine of Catholic news and opinion; they got their hands on a recording of the April 26 conference call phone meeting between some 600 prominent American Catholics and the "best [president] in the history of the Catholic Church."

According to Christopher White, reporting for The Tablet, the call included Cardinal Timothy Dolan (New York), Cardinal Sean O'Malley (Boston), Archbishop Jose Gomez (Los Angeles), Bishop Michael Barber (Oakland, and chair of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops committee of Catholic Education) and superintendents of Catholic schools in several major cities. On the administration side, the call reportedly included Betsy DeVos and Ben Carson.

Well, those were some good times

Trump, who somehow worked in his childhood growing up next to a Catholic school in Queens, wanted his audience to know that he is their guy, that he wouldn't even allow the Paycheck Protection Program to move forward unless it included the ability of churches to use tax dollars to pay the salaries of workers in religious institutions. He also touted his "greatest economy in the history of the world" until it was "unfairly hit" by the coronavirus (which, he noted, could have been stopped a lot earlier "at the source, and everyone knows what I mean when I say that."

He touted his anti-abortion credentials, a position that is a new one for him, with his evolution on the issue corresponding with his decision to run for office. Makes sense-- raise your hand if you know someone, or ten someones, who supports Trump because anti-abortion. Trump also mentioned his pushback on the Johnson Amendment-- the one that says tax-exempt groups can't make political endorsements.

After this fifteen minute campaign stump speech, the floor was open to a combination of asking questions and kissing Dear Leader's ring.

Cardinal Dolan led off. Trump called him a "great gentleman" and "a great friend of mine" and Dolan said the feeling is mutual. Dolan has been pretty effusive about Trump, welcoming him to last Sunday's virtual mass and going on Fox to say he was "in admiration of his leadership." This is not a new thing. Dolan delivered the invocation before Trump's swearing in, and just a few months ago welcomed Attorney General Barr to Dolan's SiriusXM show to burble about what it's like to work for Trump.

Dolan's main thrust for the call was Catholic schooling. He called DeVos, Carson, and Kellyanne Conway "champions" and "cherished allies in our passion for our beloved schools." He thanked Trump for making sure that Catholic schools were included in the stimulus package, and identifying the main issues as "parental rights, educational justice, and civil rights of our kids." But he painted a grim picture for the long term, saying that "tuition assistance" for parents to keep sending their kids to parochial schools was needed.

“Never has the outlook financially looked more bleak, but perhaps never has the outlook looked more promising given the energetic commitment that your administration has to our schools,” Cardinal Dolan told the president. “We need you more than ever.”

Trump moved things right back to the point of the conversation-- vote for him in November. A defeat for him would mean "a very different Catholic Church," which means I don't know what, other than the usual play to the notion that somehow, in this country, Christians would be oppressed if Dear Leader were not there to lead them and I swear I will never fully grasp how the least Christian man to enter the White House somehow maintains Christian support. It's particularly striking because US evangelicals, the other wing of his religious support, historically are not big fans of the Catholic Church, at all.

The other big Catholic wigs were lined up for more of the same. Boston's Cardinal O'Malley said that Catholic schools have been unsurpassed in our country for moving people into the middle class. He also called for tuition support for parents."

To him, Trump said, "We'll be helping you out more than you even know."

Superintendents from LA and Denver called for school choice, with Escala of LA making the bold claim that Catholic schools in California "have saved the government over two billion dollars." Trump liked that savings figure and asked if they could come up with a national figure that he could use to argue with Congress. I'm guessing coming up with a national figure would be easy, unless you wanted it to be fact-based.

Bishop Barber called Betsy DeVos a great ally to Catholics, and said yay for Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, "whom he characterized as supporters of school choice."

At one point, Trump made a fairly straightforward pitch. “What a similarity we have and how the other side is the exact opposite of what you’re wanting so I guess it’s an important thing to remember.”

Not all Catholics have been loving this. The more liberal National Catholic Reporter said "the capitulation is complete," accused the Bishops of providing "campaign footage" and said this:

Without a whimper from any of his fellow bishops, the cardinal archbishop of New York has inextricably linked the Catholic Church in the United States to the Republican Party and, particularly, President Donald Trump.

US Catholic leadership appears to be all in for Trump, in particular looking to him to provide that all important parent tuition assistance. I suppose that could take the form of an actual taxpayer funded subsidy straight to Catholic school parents, but vouchers or education savings accounts would spread the wealth and better obscure the fact that taxpayers would be subsidizing private schools that are free to discriminate on whatever basis they feel compelled to use. The Catholic Church needs some financial backing for their schools, and they've done very, very well where vouchers are legal.

There's a lot of pretty language, but quid pro quo-- money for votes-- seems to cover it. Nobody here is talking about the value of or cost to public education, nor even about the notion that maybe the government and taxpayers (and not just Trump) might look for some give from the Catholic schools like, say, a little less discrimination. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church would do well to remember that when you mix religion and politics, you get politics. And the politics of Trump is solidly anti-public education.