After The Grieving

The first student death I ever experienced was when I was in fifth grade. Betsy was a kind sweetheart of a girl, but suffered from a cruel variety of health issues. One Monday we came back to school, and she wasn't there. Through the day, the word spread that she had died over the weekend. It was a rough day.

Over the years of teaching, there were several student deaths. Suicide. Auto accident. Substance abuse. Illness. Over thirty-nine years, way too many examples.

There's a pattern that these shocks to the system usually follow within the school itself, ways that the school community collectively reacts that is both part of and somehow beyond the individual reactions.

There is the initial, brutal shock, particularly if word does not, as is sometimes the case, get out until the school day is under way. For the adults, the gutting knowledge that this was just too soon, that this person was just too young. For the students, the personal loss-- this person is not going to be in my world any more.

It does not hit evenly. We are not all in it together. For some, the person who's gone was in the close circle, for some, a school acquaintance, and for some, just a name, a face in the hall. Teens, being teens, struggle with their own reactions. Should I feel more? Am I too sad? Not sad enough? Should I cry? Should I stop crying?

And with all of that, the realization that lies beyond any feelings they can explain-- holy shit, but death is a real thing, and I thought it would happen a million years from now, but it could happen today.

The hard edges of everything soften. Every interaction between the students is laced with a new kindness. This could be the last time we ever talk to each other; it should be something not stupid, not something I'll painfully replay in my head for years if you die tonight. The institution itself loosens up; the most stringent classroom and hallway rules somehow seem less important than caring for the young human's whose hearts and guts are hanging out, bleeding all over the place. The emotional health and well-being of the students takes precedence over everything.

For many staff, and some students, at some point, a door in your head opens up and you start asking harder questions, existential level questions. These kids are worried about death; why am I trying to teach them about prepositional phrases? I'm going to die some day; why am I worried about who sits with me at lunch? As a teacher, you try to go through the motions to keep things as normal as possible, but that just heightens your sense that these are just motions to go through. Maybe one day something about how the stars aligns just stops you, and there are no motions and you open the floor in class for raw discussion of the heavier things that are weighing on minds and hearts (even though you know, and can see, that some students find that discussion really uncomfortable and will prompt them to wonder, again, if they aren't feeling too little moved by events).

Sooner or later, in those first ten days or so, you land on the big questions-- What the hell are we even doing here? What's the point?

Everything that ever seemed wrong about the job, about the way you personally do it, seems to loom larger. You resolve to change those things, resolve to change all the things, resolve to recreate yourself as a new, better teacher. Depending on the kind of leadership you have, officially or unofficially, the institution also resolves to change, to do a better job responding to certain student needs, to do a better job at addressing the kinds of problems laid bare by the event. Committees are formed, officially and unofficially. Resolutions are drafted. Policies are implemented; old habits are broken.

But humans are resilient, and schools are particularly resilient, institutionally made to watch people come and go, but like a human body sloughing off skin cells, to keep their shape. And being thoughtful, mindful, a little bit sad and scared all the time-- that's exhausting and hard to maintain. We buy plaques, establish awards, set up memorial objects precisely because we know that we can't be trusted to keep these memories alive on our own, that we need an object or an event to jar our own memories.

And sure enough; days pass and then time and sunny days and rainy days 'n snow. People laugh again and it's okay. Look at the locker or the empty seat and not feel the icy fist pull at your gut. Someone laughs, and it's okay.

Schools do not grieve like individual humans or like families. Schools do find a new normal, but then, schools are always finding a new normal, hitting reset every fall.

Some of those trauma-fueled changes stick. Some students never lose the closer knowledge of death. Some of it is superficial but important; there's a traffic light at the end of the road where my old high school sits, and the light is named after a student who died in a traffic accident back in the days when there was no signal there, and even though I'm sure no students and few students know who he was, the light itself has saved other lives in the years since. Some programs to help students in trouble persist; some are dropped. Some staff members try to go back to work without thinking to much about it; someone on staff takes up a life of advocacy that would surprise anyone who knew them before the event.

In the moments when the new broke, when the grief first hit with the shock of a tub of ice water, you would have sworn that this would change everything, that nothing would be the same. That turns out to be untrue; after time passes, things at school are, in fact, mostly the same. There are pockets of New Things, some of them powerful and important. But in the first few days after the event, you could not have successfully predicted what the lasting changes would be.

I've been thinking about all this lately as I read the many, many attempts to predict (or market) how completely new and different and transformed post-pandemic education will be. In suspect that, in fact, schools will not look all that radically different after the worst of COVID-19 has passed (no, everyone will not have decided to mothball school buildings and just get their education over the interwebz). There will be changes, and some of them will be significant and lasting, and anybody who thinks they can right now predict what those changes will be is either fooling himself or trying to fool the rest of us, or is just trying to sell something.

That's that other feeling, that sensation that often comes mixed up with grief, the sensation that happens when your foot reaches out or back, expecting to hit a solid step and instead meeting air and for that split second your gut clenches and your heart drops and your nerves fire with the shock of not knowing what will come next-- are you somehow plunging out into an endless dark nothing? But then your foot hits something-- maybe hits it wrong or hard or with an ugly twist, but still, you have hit the same solid planet that has always been there, and now you'll figure out how to walk away.

It's good to talk about what can come next, to talk about what we wish we could see in the post-pandemic world, to examine the errors we don't want to perpetuate, and to be particularly mindful of all that when the rush to get back to the old normal because so many folks are desperate for any kind of mental comfort food. I recommend you write it all down, along with a stern cover letter to your future self explaining, "No, you really, really mean all of this."  Because much of what we're feeling now is going to pass, and what will come after will probably not be as strange and unfamiliar as we imagine it will be.

ICYMI: Mothers Day Edition (5/10)

We got some take-out brunch at our house, so my wife is having what appears to be a delicious quiche (I'm not a good judge of egg-based foods) and we're going to try to ignore the return of winter. In the meantime, here's some reading for you. It's a pretty rich week-- enjoy.

Appeals Court Decision Guarantees Basic Literacy as a Right

Jan Resseger looks at the recent court decision that could change everything (if SCOTUS doesn't reverse it first).

Play, Playishness, and STEM in Preschool  

Teacher Tom has some thoughts about the unquenchable adult desire to use faux play as a cover for teaching stuff.

Let's Teach in Pajamas Forever  

Jose Vilson has seen the light. Never mind those school buildings-- let's all stay home forever.

Eva Mosckowitz's Success Academies Still Churning  

The indispensable Mercedes Schneider notes that Success hasn't stop firing and hiring, because they have to have that fresh meat, COVID be damned.

More Coronavirus Relief for Private Schools  

Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat explains how Betsy DeVos has used some creative reading of the rules to steer even more relief money to private operators.

TN governor still moving ahead on school vouchers  

Also Chalkbeat. The court may have struck down Bill Lee's voucher plan, but he doesn't much care. He's pushing ahead anyway.

Punching Down on Veteran Teachers  

Nancy Flanagan looks at some of the folks who were not operating in the spirit of Teacher Appreciation Week. Not a fun list.

Fewer people pursuing teaching in New Jersey  

There's a new report out looking at the health of the teaching profession in NJ. The report is from Mark Weber, so you know it's rigorous yet in clear English, but this piece gives you the simple, sad basics.

Educational Crises and Ed-Tech: A History  

Audrey Watters delivered a look back at how various crises have driven ed tech attempts to Change Everything. Yeah, the current attempt is not the first.

Fuck The Bread. The Bread Is Over.  

Don't freak over the title. This piece from Sabrina Orah Mark in the Paris Review is just beautifully written, about worth and worthiness and function and-- just read it.

Screen New Deal  

Naomi Klein (Shock Doctrine) was watching with considerable alarm when Andrew Cuomo announced that he was asking the billionaire technocrats to "build a high-tech dystopia." This is not a short read, but if you're only going to read one thing on the list this week, this should be your pick.

The Four Horsemen   

Greg Sampson blogs about the horsemen of Florida's education apocalypse. Yes, only four--well, five, actually.

The real Lord of the Flies   

Not directly related to education, but what a great albeit long forgotten story. In 1965 a group of six school boys were stranded on an island, for about fifteen months. Encouraging.

Backpack Full of Misdirection

Jeanne Allen called it a backpack full of cash, strapped to the back of each student, who would carry it from school to school like a young mule.

It's the child's money. It's the family's money. The money should follow the child.

It has been the reformster mantra for years, and it is enjoying a comeback as we discuss very particular dollars, i.e. the stimulus dollars being thrown at the country to fix everything. Betsy DeVos has been reminding us that she has always believed that money should be tied to "students, not systems" as she does her level best to turn education stimulus money into a windfall for private and charter schools.

So it's worth remembering that the whole rhetorical device of money following children is a kind of genius bit of misdirection. Two points.

First, "the money follows the child" one ups the old passive voice trick of who's actually performing the action here. What's that money there behind you, Pat? I don't know, Mom. It just sort of followed me home.

The money follows the child. It's tied to the child. Something something empowered family. It's money that has just sort of appeared rather than having been collected from taxpayers for a specified purpose and destination. And somehow it is magically divided up into shares-per-student, something that doesn't happen with any other pile of taxpayer money (Where is my share of the highway funding? What's my cut of military spending?) The rhetoric creates the impression that this is all just a natural process that can be tweaked a bit, by someone. It all absolves folks like DeVos of having to say anything like, "I want to give a bunch of taxpayer dollars to that private school."

Which is the second point. It's not about the relationship between the money and the child. It never has been. If that were the reformsters' actual concern, we could have been talking about some method of letting students move from public school district to public school district. We could have proposed some plan that erases the school district lines between East Egg and West Egg school systems and let's enrollment sort itself out with finances to follow. And there are places here and there where such ideas have brought up by folks.

But mostly "money follows the child" is not at all about who or what the money follows-- it's about where the money ends up. Reformsters don't want to make sure that every child gets a nice backpack filled with cash; they want to make sure that they can give taxpayer dollars to privately owned and operated schools.

The argument has never really been that school funding should have some connection to school enrollment. It's about a fig leaf to cover a different idea-- "We want to give public tax dollars to privately owned and operated edu-businesses. We want to give public tax dollars to church schools."

It's about where the money ends up, not how it gets there. It's not about empowering families to carry backpacks full of money around; it's about empowering private and religious entities to collect taxpayer dollars. Don't keep your eye on the backpack. That's just a bit of misdirection--the real trick is happening elsewhere.

"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.