Education Law Center: States Are Using Fed Grants To Cut Education Spending

According to the folks at the Education Law Center, states are repeating the sins of a decade ago. Let me explain.

Pity Tom Corbett. He became one of the few Pennsylvania one term governors, and he lost in no small part because he was accused of cutting education spending by a billion dollars. And he sort of did, but he was also sort of set up by the previous governor, Ed Rendell, who collected some Great Recession relief and used it to replace state tax money rather than adding to it. When that short term federal grant ended, there was suddenly a big hole in PA education spending (which Corbett tried to hide by deciding to start counting pension costs as "educational spending"). Here's the graph:

You may recall that as the Great Recession ended, many states found themselves spending less for education than they had pre-2008. There were many reason for that, but using federal funds to replace state funds and then doing nothing as the federal money ended was in many cases a contributing factor.

And now ELC says some states are doing it again.

ELC cites New York, Texas and Michigan as three states that are following "a playbook from the 2009 Great Recession by cutting over $1 billion in states aid."New York calls this a "pandemic adjustment."

That 209 playbook looks like this:

In the Great Recession, states responded to revenue declines by making significant, recurring cuts in state school aid. Then they offset those cuts with non-recurring federal stimulus relief. This caused deep structural deficits in state support for K-12 education that continued long after the Recession ended.

So, for instance, Michigan cut aid by $175 per pupil, or $256 million total. The state then plugged that hole with an additional $350 per pupil from the Coronavirus Relief Fund along with another $351 million from the CARES act, all of which is going to look like a short term win. But the day that all the federal coronavirus money runs out, the state will suddenly suffer a huge spending "cut."

The effects are particularly brutal for districts in low-income communities, aka districts that have less ability to make up a state shortfall with local tax increases. This model creates a ticking time bomb for the poorest districts.

And it's not just bad news in the long term. This approach also means blunts the effect of federal relief. This is Extra Bad News during a pandemic because schools are suddenly facing new, large expenses (PPE, substitutes, distance learning supplies, etc etc etc). It's like this-- you tell your folks that you're going to have to pay extra for school lunch this month and your usual allowance won't cut it. "Will ten dollars a week extra be enough," they ask, and you answer that you can probably make that work. "Great," they reply. "Also, we're cutting your weekly allowance by seven dollars.:"

In other words, we're in danger of the same mess we had with education spending during and after the Great Recession, only worse. It's the kind of thing that requires keeping a careful watchdoggy number-crunchy policy-wonky eye on your legislature, but it has to be done because otherwise it's far too easy for state politicians to kick the can down the road and leave it for some other poor slob to clean up.

How Bad Is This Gates-Funded Essay Cyber-Scorer? This Bad.

Software that can grade an essay is the great white whale of automating education. If software could actually score an essay effectively, data-mining personalized [sic] algorithm-delivered edu-product could work with more than just multiple choice and true or false questions. I've written a plenty about why this great white whale is not going to be landed any time soon. But let me give you a specific example of how bad one product really is, even though it's getting funding from the Gates Foundation.

Ecree was founded in 2014 and promises to use "artificial intelligence to replicate teacher-quality feedback on written assignments." It was founded by Jamey Holt and Robin Donaldson. Holt used to do a little college teaching, then became COO of Phronesis Health, Inc, a healthcare data mulching outfit. Donaldson is the computer guy.

The Gates Foundation is a big fan of this kind of software-driven edu-product, and have given  something like $3 million to companies working on the problem, including ETS, Vantage Learning, Measurement Incorporated, and the University of Michigan. Plus our new friends at Ecree. All five grants are "to validate the efficacy of Automated Essay Scoring software in improving the student outcomes in argumentative writing for students who are Black, Latino, and/or experiencing poverty."

First, I'm looking askance at the word "validate," which is a lot like "prove that this works" when it should be "see if this works or not" (spoiler alert-- not).

Second, it's silly to talk about validating the efficacy of these products for Black, Latino or poor students, because these products have no efficacy for any students at all (which is why I'm going to skip over the ethical and educational issues of having someone/something sit beside you and help you write a paper).

But don't take my word for it. Let's see just how well Ecree works.

Ecree offers a free trial, which I used, with help from BABEL, the nonsense essay generator created by the long-time scourge of automated essay scoring baloney, Les Perelman. Ecree asks you what your prompt was and then lets you either write the essay on their site, or simply upload it.

My prompt was "What was the role of isolationism in World War I?" BABEL builds an essay out of three words-- I gave it "isolationism," "Europe" and "war," and this is the essay it kicked out.

Warfare has not, and no doubt never will be expedited. Human society will always oust isolationism; some of appetites and others for an exposition. a lack of war lies in the field of literature but also the field of philosophy. War is the most inappropriately eventual trope of mankind.

Gluttony, especially for howl, authorizes an advancement on positively but magnificently blustering speculations by Europe. If allocations inquire or intensify admiration, consistency that is mournfully contemporary but is puissant, gregarious, and manifest with warfare can be more naturally reprimanded. Additionally, europe, often at an adjuration, can be the scrutinization. In my experience, all of the ligations to our personal precinct of the arrangement we attenuate concede the inquisitions in question. Even so, armed with the knowledge that the contrived anesthetic expedites pulchritude, most of the comments for my utterance relent. Our personal convulsion to the proclamation we lament sermonizes. Europe which precludes all of the performances might dubiously be an allegation on our personal authorization with the thermostat we assimilate as well. The assembly of celebrations may be decency but is incensed yet somehow inappropriate, not paganism that undertakes admixture and circumscribes concurrences. In my theory of knowledge class, none of the axioms at our personal sanction by the apprentice we inspect advocate and allocate amplifications which compensate the altruist. The more a probe that collapses should be disruption, the less contretemps can gratuitously be a Gaussian multitude.

As I have learned in my semiotics class, isolationism is the most fundamental casuistry of humankind. Though interference for obloquy inverts, information processes brains. The same pendulum may process two different orbitals to process an orbital. The plasma is not the only thing the brain reacts; it also receives neutrinoes for irascibility with war. Due to interceding, petulantly but extraneously petulant expositions protrude also on Europe. a contemptuous isolationism changes the injunction at warfare.

The organism, frequently to a respondent, diagnoses war. The sooner the people involved yield, the sooner admiration dislocates drones. Furthermore, as I have learned in my literature class, society will always belie isolationism. Our personal intercession of the assumption we accede will be appreciation with circumspections and may diligently be rectitude. The amanuensis might, still yet, be coruscating in the way we incline or belittle the indispensably and posthumously philanthropic recount but preach appetites. In my semantics class, almost all of the affronts at my agreement bluster or inaugurate the exposure. a quantity of isolationism is consummate for our personal orator on the response we propagate as well. The inspection delineates excess, not a scrutinization. In my experience, many of the interlopers by our personal civilization at the prison we feign complete agriculturalists. The less profession that whines is prelapsarian in the extent to which we excommunicate most of the ateliers for the realm of reality and confide or should completely be a conveyance, the more ligations authorize the conveyance of augmentation.

Warfare with concessions will always be an experience of human society. In any case, armed with the knowledge that presumption may confrontationally be whiner, most of the accumulations at my proclamation scrutinize tropes but commence and allure assassinations which provision an assembly. If joyous reprobates speculate and assassinate demarcations to the aborigine, war which corroborates authorizations can be more squalidly unsubstantiated. War has not, and undoubtedly never will be countercultural but not vied. Europe is countlessly but precariously contentious as a result of its those in question.

You'll notice that, in addition to being gibberish, the BABEL essay never actually mentions World War I at all. 

On upload, the program, for no apparent reason, plugged my paragraphs into the every other graph spot. You'll notice that it has decided on its own where the topic sentences are in these topic-free paragraphs. Each of the little comments on the right margin offers more detail when you hover. In Body Paragraph 2, Ecree says that the "topic sentence for this paragraph clearly connects to your thesis." Also, "you do a good job of explaining how the information in your paragraph supports your point." 

In Paragraph 4, where Ecree says that the analysis is weak, the explanation is that the analysis gets off to a good start, but I don't spend enough time explaining why the information helps make my point. 

Throughout the text, Ecree also offers style guidance, like to emphasize ideas, use clear nouns rather than verbs. Also, "describing actions takes focus away from a sentence's key ideas." Both of those turned up a lot. It also checked some spelling and punctuation. I moved some paragraphs around to get rid of the "blank" paragraphs; it did not notice when I had the same paragraph in the essay twice.

Ecree also grades the final product. My BABEL essay received a B, 83%. It does, in smaller print note "The grade given by your teacher may be different than the grade provided by Ecree." 

The great and terrible weakness of automated essay grading is that software always measures superficials. Big words? Sentence structure? Length of sentences and paragraphs? Scan for a couple of key words? That's it. There is about as much artificial intelligence involved as there is in my wireless mouse.

The complaint when a software is BABEL-tested is that the BABEL essay is not a good faith attempt to complete the assignment, that it's just trying to bullshit the scoring software. But if you think students writing essays never try to bullshit the teacher, I have a bridge over a swamp to sell you. More importantly, handing the essay over to software is not a good faith attempt to assess the writing, so what do you expect?

The feedback is instantaneous, much like the instantaneous feedback from a magic eight ball. And the pricing is modest-- $5.00 a paper, or a yearlong subscription for $200--okay, not really that modest for something that doesn't actually work. But this is the kind of thing Gates is spending money on. What a waste. 

Trump's Education Agenda

Trump has released his agenda for his second term, and it's special. Cut taxes. Add jobs. Eradicate Covid-19. End reliance on China. Cover pre-existing conditions. Congressional term limits. Bring violent extremist groups like ANTIFA to justice. Dismantle human trafficking. Build the world's greatest infrastructure system (so, more infrastructure week!) Stop endless wars.

It's all familiar hooey, in bullet point list form (so not a word about how or why, but education gets its own subheading, under which we find these two bullet points.

Provide School Choice To Every Child In America

Teach American Exceptionalism

That's it. That's the whole thing. Get some of that good old ahistorical jingoism back in the classroom, and dismantle the public education system and replace it with a privatized one. It's a fun pairing because if you're going to have a school choice system, how are you going to force every school to teach exceptionalism? For that matter, how will you force a free and open market to serve every single student (spoiler alert--you can't).

So not just crap, but sloppy, poorly thought out crap. Trump's listicle agenda is less an actual agen da and more a collection of catch-phrases that he's figuring will appeal to his base. Also, in the case of sc hool choice, it also lets him reassure folks like the Catholic Church that deal he made (voucher-delivered taxpayer dollars in return for votes) is still in place.

Note also that there is no GOP platform this time. The GOP has decided to skip having a platform and instead has simply declared that the press is mean, that whatever the Dems are for, the GOP is against it, and finally, that they pledge their loyalty to Dear Leader. So this bullet point list is all we get this time around.

Lots of public school teachers voted for Trump first time around. There may have been some question about how things would go that time, but this time out there can be no doubt-- a vote for Trump is a vote against public education.

Addendum: For those sputtering "But but but what about Biden," here's the post I already ran about Biden's "unity" platform.

More Pandemic Privatization

"This New Nonprofit Is Training Better Online Teachers This Fall" gushes the EdSurge article that is barely disguised PR for yet another reformy initiative.

This summer a group of education leaders, many from the world of charter schools and education reform, sought to change that by launching the nonprofit National Summer School Initiative, or NSSI for short. Its solution was both a crash course in effective online teaching—and figuring out what good online teaching looked like—and a summer enrichment program for students across the country.

"Many" from charter/reform world is not really correct-- "entirely" would be more accurate. Crash course is right--the training "institute" lasted a whole week. And the company, which has already rebranded itself as Cadence Learning, is selling one more screen-delivered education program. This rebranding is a bit of an unforced rookie error, as Cadence Education is already a company in the early childhood ed biz, and the Cadence Learning Company is a Canadian pharmaceuticals firm. Boys and girls, first rule of 21st century business--before you choose a name, google it.

Poster boy for endlessly failing upwards

You can get a good sense of where this business is coming from just by looking at the priors of the folks running it. The spokesguy that EdSurge talked to was Chris Cerf, a lawyer who became part of the Joel Klein edu-team in NYC, then became Chris Christie's education chief for New Jersey. He left that job to work with Klein at the fiasco that was Amplify (it was totally going to change the face of education). Oh, and Edison Schools, too. After that, he became Cami Anderson's replacement as head of Newark schools. Now he's part of the leadership team at Cadence.

Also on the team are Kevin Anderle, from Achievement First and Teach for America; Savita Bharadwa, former chief of staff at Newark schools, as well as a consultant. Her degrees in electrical engineering, but she got a fake degree from the Broad Academy. so there's that. Then there's Rochelle Dalton, senior fellow at Bellwether, also formerly KIPP Foundation, and Teach for America. Aquan Grant, PrepNet--but she has a real education degree and spent two whole years in the classroom before her career as a charter school principal. Monnikue Marie McCall founded a business solutions service. Doug McCurry is co-CEO of Achievement First. Katie Rouse is from Bellwether, and has a fake degree from Broad. Ian Rowe is CEO of Public Prep, and previously at the Gates Foundation and before that, MTV. Betsey Schmidt, Mesh Ed Collective CEO, after doing R&D for Whittle Schools and Studios, and a stint at Ascend Learning. Saya Taniguchi is an "independent education consultant" who started out in TFA. Mary K. Wells, Bellwether, formerly Bain. Steven Wilson, CRPE, Ascend Learning, special assistant under Mass Gov William Weld. Lakisha Young, cofounder of Oakland REACH, a parent advocacy group.

There are also an "award-winning" team of mentor teachers. There are 21 of them. 7 are "enrichment" teachers. Of the remaining 17, at least 8 are TFA products; the rest are charter school teachers.

So, in this big ole company, this company that is designed all around the idea of helping deliver classroom teaching, there is nobody in sight with any meaningful experience in classroom teaching (or, for that matter, distance learning--unless you want to count Cerf's time wit the disastrous failure of Amplify, and why would you).

The model is simple enough. The "mentor" teacher starts the virtual class, along with a couple of "showcase" students, and then kicks it over to the "partner" teacher. Let me point out that odds are good that the "mentor" teacher will actually have far less teaching experience than the "partner" teacher. Cadence also offers lesson plans and a daily schedule, just in case your student needs to spend (checks chart) almost six hours in front of a screen.

Right now the program is free to smaller schools, fueled with big time grants. Cerf says the point here is to put a focus on quality cyber-schooling, but it's not clear what this slick well-funded band of edu-amateurs has to bring to the table. But it is one more handy way to A) get public schools to hand over the driver's seat to a private company and B) prop up charter schools that are struggling. It's one more variation on the Rocketship/Summit model, wit the twist of a live synchronous body involved in sort of teaching the class, kind of.

These are difficult times, and the last thing schools need is more amateur hour shenanigans from people who come from the world of "if it's really important, you should be able to make a buck at it." If you see your district considering these guys, speak up loudly.

ICYMI: My Wife's Summer Vacation Ends Edition (8/23)

Teachers get back to it this week, with students returning in a week. We're holding our breaths here-- my county has a 2020 total of 69 cases and 1 death (yes, that's for the whole year so far), so local folks have not been feeling the whole pandemic as much as they've been feeling the various shutdowns. So we'll see what happens. In the meantime, here's some stuff to read from the week.

Biden, Harris, and Dr. Biden Will Send DeVos Yachting!

Come for Nancy bailey's headline, and stay for the comprehensive list of DeVosian misbehavior.

Pod Save Us: How Learning Pods are Going to Destroy Public Education. Or Not.

Nancy Flanagan takes a look at pods without hyperventilating. A good look at this current phenom.

Charles Koch Buys Into National Parents Union

Maurice Cunningham has been tracking the NPU since they first tossed their heavily astroturfed hat into the education ring. Here's the latest fun new development.

The Problems with "Show Me the Research" in Teaching Reading

Paul Thomas has been a strong, thoughtful voice in the reading wars. Here's another clear explanation of why you don't need to feel steamrolled by the Science of Reading crowd.

NC Awards Grant to Charter Schools to Increase Access

For some reason, the state has decided it needs to bribe charter schools in order to get them to do the job that public education is supposed to do by accepting all students.

Cami Anderson: ‘Police-Free Schools’ Vs. ‘Chaos’ Is a False Choice. Here’s What Districts Must Do to Implement Real Discipline Reform

Reformy Cami Anderson in the reformy the74 actually has some thoughtful ideas here about how to get police out of school and, better yet, how to reframe the debate. I'm not agreeing with all of it, and yes, she's here to plug her newest edu-business, but this is still a good conversation starter.

How white progressives undermine school integration

Eliza Shapiro at the New York Times looks at some research and hosts a panel discussion about why places like New York City can talk the talk, but adamantly refuse to walk the walk.

British Grading Debacle Shows Pitfalls of Automating Government

Also in the NYT. Britain tried some computerized grading of students. It hasn't gone well.

The Woeful Inadequacy of School Reopening Plans

Amy Davidson Sorkin says we've pretty much wasted the summer. A not-very-uplifting read from the New Yorker.

What if the NBA ran the Department of Education?

McSweeney's, but not entirely a joke.

Grammar Police, Go Home

Grammar and usage are two different things, and understanding the difference can be a huge help in untying some linguistic knots and navigating some linguistic swamps of the English kind. Because the "grammar police" are almost never policing grammar; they're enforcing something else entirely. And yes-- if you stick around for this, you'll get some of the same stuff my students did for years.

Grammar

Grammar is the mechanics of language. Or at least, the best model we can come up with. Because here's the thing-- we don't really know how the brain does language. We know that there's a readiness factor (that would be why you learn your first language when you can't even dress yourself, but trying to learn a second language in your teens is twelve kinds of torture). Language is a big black box in the brain, and we don't know what's going on inside it.

But we can reverse engineer it. If you played Pacman, you learned a bunch of rules to the game--which way to turn, when to turn, where to pause, etc. You did not learn those by printing out and studying the program for the game. You learn by carefully observing what works and what doesn't. There are plenty of other examples-- we don't actually know how/why gravity works, but we can accurately describe how it will behave.

So to for grammar. Grammar rules are descriptive, like Newton's Laws of Motion. When we say that every sentence must contain a subject and a verb, that's not because somebody decided it would be a good idea, but because we can observe that when a sentence lacks either a subject or a verb, it doesn't work. Traditional grammar, like Newtonian physics, mostly describes things pretty well, but has some real holes in it. There are other grammars out there, but none have ever really caught on.

Grammar is all about the mechanics of how language works, what it parts are, how they function. Traditional grammar is pretty mechanical and not too pre-occupied with meaning (which is a problem that kind of seeps into language instruction in general from there, but let's save that topic for another day).

Mostly, when you break grammar rules, people look at you funny because you don't make sense. Sometimes, they look surprised because you make sense in new and interesting ways (lookin' at you, Will Shakespeare).

But the people you meet online who are called "grammar police"? They aren't really grammar police at all.

Usage

They're usage police.

Usage is about the "right" way to say something. It's what word is the "proper" word to use. It's what people judge you for, what they want to correct, what let's the words "right" and "wrong" into the conversation. All its rules are prescriptive, like a school dress code.

Usage is fashion for language. And like fashion, it doesn't always make sense (at this point, I would always point out to my students that we could all tell I was the most dressed up person in the room, because in the morning I took a special piece of fabric and tied it around my neck in a special way, and why is that even a thing, and by the way, think about the phrase "dressed up"). And like fashion, it is set in ways that are a little bit beyond human control.

For instance. Lots of languages have plural forms of "you." English did, too, once upon a time, but then we just sort of dropped it, but because it was useful, we eventually kind of put it back-- y'all, you guys, or, in my neck of the woods, y'uns.

For instance. Look at the enormous amount of effort it's taking to sell the replacement of "he" or "she" with "they." "They" offers a real solution to a real problem--the old rule that "he" was always the default when you had a singular person of unknown identity--but it's really hard to get language to change just because you want it to.

Usage is also the part of language where we start talking about meaning, both text and subtext.

That difference 

So grammar is the attempt to describe what's happening in a part of our brains we cannot see or control. Usage is a social behavior, a linguistic fashion that responds to a variety of factors.

Classic example-- "ain't." "Ain't" is perfectly grammatical. Native speakers understand it, and they can recognize when it's used in a way that makes sense (That ain't it) and when it's not (Do you like my ain't hat). But ain't runs afoul of usage rules; it's not widely accepted as "proper" English, by which we mean--and here's an important part--the English used by people who have social status.

Another big difference is that usage changes, and grammar mostly doesn't. A sentence has required a subject and a verb for centuries. But like fashion, usage shifts. Sometimes we shift to something less formal (just like all the politicians who now campaign without a tie), and we are constantly experiencing usage "fads," where words or phrases erupt, spread, subside.

That shifting matters extra to English.

The trouble with English 

Our language suffers from history. Specifically, the history of Britain, specifically their unfortunate tendency to be invaded a lot.

It's fair, because the language starts with an invasion. Those Anglo-Saxons attack and take over the island nation, and at this point, we tag the start of Old English (Angle-ish), a language that a modern English speaker can't understand. Then along come the Danes, and the big language-buster, the Norman Conquest. After the conquest, most of England's upper class speak French-ish, and Anglo-Saxon is spoken mostly by the vulgar lower classes. It's a social fashion that affects us to this day (or did you think there was some good reason that "shit" is a naughty word but "defecate" is all sciency and smart). And then of course the language gets spread to the US, where we are just melting people into the pot right and left. End result is that while some languages tend to be kind of stiff and set in their ways, English is flexy and bendy.

When usage started to be codified, folks mostly just codified the same social status and fashion that had always been at the heart of it. Who says this "correctly"? Must be the rich upper-crust folks of London, and not those poor hicks from the hinterlands.

This process has never stopped, and it has never, ever been divorced from class and status. Have we grown a bunch of different languages? Probably not-- there's plenty of academic argument about this sort of thing, but the short layperson answer is that if someone is talking to you and you understand them, then the two of you speak the same language. But we're loaded with dialects and accents and versions of English, and there is absolutely no objective method for determining which is "better," just like there's no objective method for determining which pair of pants is "best."

"Correct" usage is always a social construct, and context always matters.

Deliberate language change is hard 

Is correct English a white thing? Sure. Also a classist thing. And knowing that is important. But changing it is tough. When you see a demanding statement like this NCTE group demanding linguistic justice, it's hard to imagine how to make it work.

For one thing, they question if white students are asked to code-switch and drop their native usage patterns, and as someone who taught many low-income white kids, the answer is yes. Shaking the language you grow up with is hard; your tribe tends to push out other usage patterns. A country boy from my region may be looked down on if he walks into a swanky country club in the Hamptons, but if those folks walk into an auto parts store in my town, they may well get the same treatment.

For another thing, making deliberate usage rule changes is as hard as making a particular fashion trend happen on purpose, or getting a video to go viral. Hell, it's so difficult that some of us made entire careers that were at least partly about trying to coach those transformations.

You can wear a floofy purple hat in public every day to try to make floofy purple hats happen, but at some point, you may decide that it will help you achieve some of your goals to leave the hat at home. The argument about non-standard English has raged forever--on one side is "It's insulting and oppressive to tell my child she speaks incorrectly" and on the other side "I expect you to give my child the tools she needs to have mobility and achieve her goals."

It is possible to do both. And what we can most definitely do is understand that usage rules are not sent down from the Mount on stone tablets. They are not inviolate and they are not a solid means to judging someone's intellect, value or ability. And for gatekeepers like teachers and professors, there is always a need to look in the mirror and ask, "Am I just putting a lot of weight on mechanics and usage because grading content and expression is wiggly and hard?" Because you can definitely stop that.

In the meantime, it's fair to respond to grammar police with statements like "On whose authority do you believe that's correct." If they actually call themselves grammar police, you ask them to explain what they think grammar is and where it comes from. And you can always just say, "I ain't got time for that shit." Which is totally grammatically correct.

"Essential" My Aunt Fanny

At this point, the adjective "Orwellian" has been absolutely beaten to death (with "Kafkaesque" right behind it). But this latest Orwellian bullshit just pokes my last nerve with a sharp stick.

You would think that an "essential" worker would be the one that you want to take the greatest steps to protect and preserve. That person guarding the door while a fire-laced sharknado rages outside? They're absolutely essential, and we'd better make sure they gets whatever they need.

But under pandemic pretzel logic, that "essential" person is the first one who gets thrown out the door.

During the pandemess, "essential" has two important meanings. First, it means that those workers can't refuse to work just because they are, you know, worried about their lives or health. Second, it means that nobody in charge can be held accountable for anything bad that happens to them while they're on the front lines.

When Trump declared meat packers "essential," that wasn't a recognition and reward for their important contribution to society. It was a declaration that Grampa wants his steak and he doesn't want to hear damned excuses, whether you're a worker (I'd rather not get sick and/or die) or a boss (I'd rather not get sued for forcing people into unsafe conditions). There was no "We're going to invest in the resources necessary to protect you while you're out there." Just "get back to work."

In fact, a quick scan of "essential" workers reveals a list of the same folks who are regularly told they should happily work under lousy conditions for low pay.

It has been a stark, ugly look at how our society devalues humans. The steak is valuable and important; the guy who butchers it, not so much. Amazon is essential, but not the workers who make it actually function. Meat widgets are a dime a dozen, but the consumer class does not want to spend another dime on another twelve-pack.

So of course it makes perfect sense that Trump would today declare that teachers are officially "essential."

It sounds like a compliment. It's not, and the tell is that none of these "essential" folks have ever been nor will ever be called essential in any other context. This is not "essential" as in "This work is so important we'd better look at how to offer greater compensation" or "These folks are so essential that we'd better muster all the resources we can beg, borrow or steal to make sure they're as protected as possible" or even "These people are so essential that we'd better ask them what they need and give them whatever they ask for."

Pence wants you to know that his wife is going to back to teach at the tiny exclusive private school where she works. The White House press secretary wants you to know that there's some money and magical guidelines and teachers are just like meat packers. And yes, everyone--well, almost everyone--is wrestling with lots of hard stuff, and many people are working under crappy, scary conditions. Lots of folks are paying some hard dues.

The administration desperately needs to get the economy back to normal, but nobody is going to admit that child care and K-12 education is an essential part of the economy's infrastructure, as surely as roads and telecommunications, because then we'd have to craft policy that reflected that reality.

Are teachers essential? Absolutely. That's why people making school re-opening plans should be listening to them. That's why they should be well paid, and supported, and given the kinds of protections that make sense in light of whatever the local picture might be. And on top of all that, one other thing--

Respect.

"Pandemic essential" seems to be the opposite of that. Not "Mad props for the important work you do" as much as "Shut up and get back in there, because it's inconvenient for me to have you not on the job." Place your bets now on whether the powers that will be are going to let the "essential" designation quietly lapse, or if someone will stand up some post-pandemic day to announce to meat cutters, nurses and teachers that they are not "essential" any more. What a bittersweet day that will be.