Segregation, Privatization, and Taxation

The New York Times ran a piece yesterday about a school board voting mess in Sumter County, Georgia (that's the county of Plains, home of Jimmy Carter's peanut farm). The story itself is an instructional look at how yet another white minority is trying to keep their hands on the levers of power, resulting in a district that is 70% Black run by a board that is 70% white. But Nicholas Casey has down a great job with that story, and you should go read it. 

At one point in the story, Casey talks about the creation of Southland Academy in 1966, yet another segregation academy opened in response to integration requirements:

Among Southland’s biggest boosters were the county school board and city officials, who transferred a public school building to the private upstart, then sold buses and furniture to it at a discount, according to Bobby L. Fuse, a local community leader. Officials lowered rates on taxes — which were used to fund the public schools — so white residents could more easily pay for private tuition, he said.

We often forget that segregation academies and their ilk were not just about separating white children from Black children; they were also about separating white money from Black schools. Set up a separate private school system, leave Those People's Children in the public school, and then chop the taxes that are going to the public system. 

As Steve Suitts points out in his book Overturning Brown, while the modern school choice movement may not be driven by racists, they still use some of the old racist tricks. 

Let's consider, in particular, Betsy DeVos's beloved tax credit scholarships-- the Education Freedom plan. It's not just that this is a voucher plan that avoids using the unpopular never-been-chosen-by-voters V word. It has other features.

Because every contribution to a private school "scholarship" counts against tax liability-- put $50K into the scholarship, pay $50K less in taxes-- it simultaneously funds private schools and blows a giant hole in tax revenues for the state or federal government that's allowing the program. For folks in the DeVosian corner of the ed disruption biz, it's a tasty trifecta-- more money to private schools, tax breaks for rich folks, and defunding the public school system.

In this respect, it suits their purposes far better than charter schools, which have their funding tied to public school funding (which may be why many keep calling for higher funding levels). 

Only a handful of states use the tax credit scholarship approach. In fact, in one state, the tax credit scholarship contributions could actually turn a profit for rich folks. That state would be Georgia. 

Ed Department Produces Advertisement For Computer-Based Education

Even as Betsy DeVos has been demanding that public schools get their doors opened and their teachers back in the bricks and mortar classrooms, the department has announced its release of a slick "guide" to computer-based edu-flavored products. It's a nice package of marketing materials for the folks working the digitized street corner of the education privatization neighborhood.

From the Office of Educational Technology, we get the Parent and Family Digital Learning Guide. The 23-page promo opens with an introduction that suggests that this is to help those families that find themselves thrust into the world of digital learning (that's the department's preferred phrase, though I keep thinking of doing math by counting on your fingers). The intro also includes the usual disclaimer that "of course" technology is only a tool. This guide "focuses on empowering you with information and resources." 

So let's leap in. It's only 23 pages, but I've read it so that you don't have to.

Part One: Benefits of Digital Learning

Yes, we drop the pretense of "empowerment" pretty quickly, and move directly on to the sales pitch. Let's look at all the ways that digital learning is better.

See, "most American classrooms have taken a 'one size fits al' approach to instruction, a claim that will come as news to all the teachers who bust their humps designing differentiated instruction. But learning, the writers say, should be flexible and adapt, and just in case you might forget that this is Betsy DeVos's department, a reminder that "you know your child best." 

So computer-centered ed is better because you can do Personalized [sic] Learning! There are factors that influence your child's learning, like relevance, interest, culture, language, background knowledge, and "differences in how they process information." The writers are trying like crazy to hint that Personalized [sic] Learning will build itself around these factors, but they are careful enough not to actual say so, because that would be bunk. Computer-based algorithm-driven education is only as flexible as the software allows it to be, and what we've seen so far says that "not very Flexible" is the norm. 

The writers will list how digital tools can help "accommodate" you child's needs and preferences. "Here are four ways that technology can be used to customize learning."

1) Choose your environment. You can be synchronous or asynchronous. Small groups, or large, or individual.

2) Uncover new learning opportunities. You can find stuff on line, like museums with virtual tools. Or software. Digital books. Games. Interactive content! 

3) Support creative expression. Oh, we are reaching so hard. Tools can be used for organizing, researching, writing and publishing. Multi-media! Digital tools can help your child think creatively! Your student can blog! Do I have to point out the vast sea of material online that demonstrates conclusively that one can use digital tools to be super-not-creative.

4) Provide fast feedback. Tech can do real time assessment, provided of course that your child is answering multiple choice questions or questions that have a one-size-fits-all answer. 

5) Provide multiple means of interacting with content.

Yes, that's five, not four. On the one hand, I can't quibble because I am the king of the typo. On the other hand, my budget here at the institute is a whopping $0.00.

More to the point, this description of Personalized [sic] Learning doesn't offer anything not found in an actual meatworld classroom. There's a bank of questions to ask yourself, your child, the teacher, the school leaders; they are ostensibly about personalized learning, but they're mostly just about education, period. And then there's a list of some handy websites. 

But wait--there's more. Digital learning is also better because Competency-Based Learning!

The writer notes that CBL travels under numerous other pseudonyms, and reduces the approach to basically personalized pacing, with the student not proceeding until "mastery" of a particular goal is demonstrated. Some of the info is on point, and some is baloney  ("assessment is a positive experience for your child," well, unless they get stuck on one mastery goal and feel as if they're beating their head against a brick wall), but the most important point for our purposes is that absolutely none of this requires digital learning tools. 

The final benefit is supposed to be that digital tools provide "new opportunities for your family to develop a strong partnership with your school or education  provider." That phrase "education provider" is just one more annoying sign of the mindset that education is a commodity that can be provided, like tofu or pork bellies. But otherwise the pitch here is that you can have video conferences or "virtual playdates" or video chats with family members or (and I'm not making this up) "practice writing by sending letters and e-mails to friends and relatives." 

Aside from the general tone of someone's grandmother discovering the interwebs because she hears all the young people are using the tweeters these days, this "guide" is notable for avoiding any discussion of any of the complicated and tricky issues surrounding all of these "benefits." I give them points for doing a fun reverse move here-- usually reformers pitch the CBL or the Personalized [sic] Learning up front and sneak the computerization in the back door. But people have unspooled miles of sentences explaining all the potential problems and issues of both computer-operated education and the "benefits" offered here. A real guide for parents would address the problems parents might confront rather than simply pitching this stuff as a shiny set of solutions.

Part Two: Enabling Digital Learning

This portion is addressing sort of the hardware side of the biz, kind of. It is hard to pinpoint the audience here; the section seems aimed at people who have absolutely no idea about how to connect their child to the interwebs, but it also fails to give them any specific information that would help them address the issues.

This section, considerably briefer than the first, hits three basic points.

First, your child will need a "personal learning device." You may have "multiple options" to "access a personal learning device." And then we get to the specifics:

There are multiple makes, models, and configurations of laptops, tablets, cameras, and software that can support digital learning.

'Kay. It's mostly in that vein. Your school may have certain technical requirements. The school might provide the device, or you might get it elsewhere, somehow. Find out what your school is doing. Also, you'll need some technical support. Also, there might be learning opportunities for students without a personal learning device. There are no more details than that. I'm truly stumped on which audience would find any of this helpful.

Second, your child will need internet access. Again, the details here are that doing stuff online requires a good online connection. See if you have one. See if somebody in the community has one you can use. Again, not even the basic help of saying what sort of specs you'd be looking for to sort this out or different types of hookups you might encounter. Just, "connections-- you'll need 'em."

Third, ensuring your child's safety, privacy and responsible technology use. This one is marginally better because it at least comes with a link to a more detailed article. And some actual advice, like keep track of passwords. But then, it also devotes a three-sentence paragraph to "digital citizenship." Also, FERPA exists, but we're not going to talk about the gaping holes in it.

And there's a page on how to report a discrimination complaint to the department. So there's that.

And an endnotes page for the 12 notes within the work, citing folks like the Aurora Institute, which is the new name of iNacol, the on-line learning advocacy group, and like the Be A Learning Hero website, another reformy collaborative. Understood.org is cited twice; they specialize in ed ideas for students who perceive differently, and they partnmer with folks like Relay/GSE, TNTP, and New Visions for Public Schools.

So who created this thing?

The team thanks a Technical Working Group that includes representative from CAST, GreatSchools, TNTP, Understood, Chiefs for Change, MIT, the International Society for Technology in Education, and Pine Springs Preparatory Academy (a charter school). They acknowledge contributions from Digital Promise and Learning Heroes. They acknowledge USED staffers that provided leadership and guidance, including Jim Blew. 

The report appears to be the product of the Office Of Educational Technology, but there are no names of actual human beings attached to the report as authors. The website lists seven staff in the office. Director Adam Safir and Senior Policy Advisor Bernadette Adams are named in the "under the leadership and guidance" portion of the acknowledgements. Thanks also go to Jake Steel, who was a deputy director in the department up until August of this year (he's a Teach for America product who's working on his PhD at Harvard's GSE now).

There's Sharon Leu, the senior policy advisor for higher education innovation, which seems like the wrong fit. Kevin Johnston, education program specialist, focuses on national education technology policy; he graduated from Brigham Young in 2015 with a philosophy degree and then put in his two years with Teach For America, then went back to BYU for a masters in educational/instructional technology, worked at BYU for a bit, then joined USED in October of 2019. Sara Trettin is a senior policy advisor for broadband and open education, plus libraries and librarians. She started in the department as a fellow in 2014. She has an actual education degree (Clemson), worked a couple of years at a charter school, and put in a year as Teacher in Residence in the Library of Congress, which has to be the coolest residency ever. The current department fellow is Jessica Tellez, where she "assists",,,somebody?... in developing "effective blockchain technology" for education.

That leaves Elizabeth Schultz, Deputy Director who's listed as an "education and public policy expert", which seems generous given her career contracts management (the site says 25 years, but if so, she's left a bunch off her LinkedIn profile). What she does have is a stint as an outspoken conservative voice on the Fairfax County School Board, a role she has not abandoned even after being voted off the board last year. As near as I can tell, she is a really, really recent addition to the office.

So of the possible writers of this report, there really isn't anyone in the department with the chops to do an insightful, balanced, well-researched job. That includes making sure you don't just take at face value the marketing blurbs you're handed by "advisors" with a vested interest. 

And I'll take just a moment to marvel once again how, when you drill all the way down to these sorts of things, there is not a single actual public school teacher in sight. 

So these are more tax dollars at work. A "guide" that is really a marketing brochure without enough depth or breadth to help much of anyone except the folks who are still hoping to cash in on computer-centered algorithm-driven software-based education-flavored products. Not the kind of leadership we need.

ICYMI: Fake Spring Edition (10/25)

 It was beautiful here most of the week, which served in part as a reminder that pandemic winter is going to suck so very much. Here are a few pieces to check out from the week.

The Perfect Trap  

Paul Thomas with some good insights about teaching writing and the power of redrafting.

Neoliberal Education Reformers Have Found A New Way To Scapegoat Teachers   

At Jacobin, Josh Mound talks about that awful MacGillis piece (don't worry if you haven't actually seen it or heard about it) and the ways that pandemic schooling has been used to point the finger at those damned lazy teachers yet again.

A Fourth Grader Walked To School To Use Its Wi-Fi   

At CNN Business, yet another variation on the story that teachers nationwide are hearing again and again and again (this time it's New Mexico).

The Cautionary Tale of Adam Neumann and WeWork   

Somebody actually wrote a book about this billion-dollar fiasco, which included yet one more rich visionary's idea about how to fix school. It's a cautionary tale about how somebody so absolutely full of baloney drew so much glowing press and piles of investor money. This is the New York Times review of the book--it's not strictly about education, but the visionary entrepreneurship on display is certainly familiar.

"The global pool of capital on which free-market societies float like inflatable rubber ducks is a virtually bottomless reservoir of folly, vanity, mania and caprice."

Federal Judge Rules Students Have No Constitutional Right To Civics Education  

Valerie Strauss at the Answer Sheet reports on a court decision that comes with big judicial warnings about the future of democracy in the US

The Future of Public Education Will Be Decided in the 2020 Election  

Here's your "if you read one thing" item for this week's list. Jennifer Berkshire, Jack Schneider, Derek Black and Diane Ravitch team up for a clear call about the election, just in case there was any doubt in your mind. At the Philly Inquirer.

Instead of funding public ed, Oklahoma bankrolled a for-profit virtual charter school

John Thompson at the Progressive looks at how the pandemic made a terrible idea even worse, and Oklahoma wasted a whole ton of money.

The Asshole Factory

Not about education, but Umair Haque's look behind the curtain at modern retail reveals the same sort of economist-driven baloney that threatens public education. Management by screen and coaching via earpiece are not just bad education ideas.

Judge calls DeVos student loan forgiveness process "disturbingly Kafkaesque"

The courts are still trying to make Betsy behave, and she still won't.

It's the right time to stop the overdose of standardized testing  

Nancy Flanagan offers a solid explanation of why right now is the perfect time to kick the test addiction.

101 of the best books to read to your kids before kindergarten   

For those of you who are also spending plenty of time reading to the littles, here's a handy collection of titles to consider. Because who doesn't need more books?

Did Covid-19 Destroy The Case Against School Choice?

Betsy DeVos repeatedly insists that the current pandemic A) shouldn't in any way interfere with the normal operation of public schools and B) makes it "more clear than ever" that school choice must be a thing, toot de suite. The two prongs of her argument belong to two entirely different pitchforks, but many folks with more coherent debate tools have picked up that second point. 

One of those is Rick Hess, who over at EdWeek argues that "Covid-19 Has Capsized the Case Against School Choice." To make his point, he calls back to a point he made back in the spring (you know--100 years ago):

The most effective argument made by opponents of school choice has long been the simple assertion that we can't trust choice to yield decent options for every child. And since every child has a right to be schooled, it's important to protect traditional public school systems in order to assure an acceptable default education for every child.

Hess's assertion is that "this line of argument is no longer operative." Covid has revealed that the public system "guarantees a lot less than we imagined." 

Hess points to a small list of public school pandemic failures-- missing students, dodgy methods of taking attendance, dumping home schooling requirements on harried parents, insisting that re-opening will require more money. These are all true things, and several are hard to excuse (except the "needs more money" part--the addition of PPE and the additional staff needed to handle daily school stuff in a socially distanced environment cost money). 

Hess, as is usual for him, is measured and careful in his criticism:

This isn't about the good intentions of district officials or teachers. And it isn't about bombastic claims that public schools are "failing" or that public systems should be blown up. The issue, rather, is that universalist "public" systems aren't delivering what was promised. This makes it harder for those who would denounce school choice's tapestry of options as an inadequate or immoral alternative to make their case.

It's a carefully calibrated point, and I appreciate the precision, but I still disagree. The thing is, for all the failings of pandemic public schooling, the fundamental criticism of charters hasn't changed. Public schools still have a mission to provide education for every single student; charters don't. 

I don't have any basis other than my best guess, but my best guess is that charters generally have managed better during the pandemic. A school like Success Academy (which did also close its doors for a few months) has already developed a well-connected monoculture that involves making sure its families stay on the same page as the school (if you haven't read Robert Pondiscio's How the Other Half Learns yet, do so). The broad and varied culture within a single public school is not necessarily so easily mustered.

Doing well with a creamed and curated collection of families is a fine thing, but it doesn't mean that choice schools are suddenly ready or willing to open their doors to everyone. Many charters still don't backfill, and plenty of private voucherized schools still insist on their right to reject students for whatever reasons they see fit. 

The only thing that has really changed about the choice landscape under pandemonium is that many families recognize that all available choices suck, and they would like others such as a school located in a magical land where there is no illness and students all go sit in desks in classrooms like they used to, with no extra procedures or general fear. School choice is no more prepared to offer that option than are public schools. 

The shortest form of my argument against school choice as it is currently conceived is that yes, there are some tremendous issues that the public school needs to handle better, but school choice doesn't solve any of them. While the pandemic has added to the list of issues for public schools, the outline of my argument hasn't changed a bit.

VA: Teacher Ejected From Board Meeting For Live Covid Demo

Henrico County Public School District is a Virginia school district that sits right beside Richmond. For the first part of the school year, they have been using distance learning, and finding it just as unsatisfactory as pretty much everyone else.

So the board has proposed a phased in return to a four-day week (with Wednesday off for cleaning). Students will have the option of remaining full virtual if they prefer. Like many districts Henrico has done some surveying of its stakeholders, and as in many districts, it hasn't clarified much. 50% of families want to stay on line. About 70% of the staff is willing to return to the classroom. 

The proposed phase in will start after Thanksgiving for elementary students, and secondary will be back in February. The "after Thanksgiving" part, given family holiday travel and gatherings, has some folks a bit nervous. 

One HCPS teacher decided to give the board a taste of that concern with the board by way of dramatic demonstration. Teacher Brent Halstead approached the board, stood about six feet away, took off his mask and opened up a bag of chips and some drink. This, he explained to the board, is what they are asking teachers to do with twenty kids in a classroom. 

The board, all masked, were not fans. They were reportedly "visibly uncomfortable," and then asked him to put on his mask before having security escort him out. You can watch the video here of Halstead being removed accompanied by applause from the crowd.

There is some evidence that Henrico's plan is not out of line with what we know, provided they're really prepared to support the undertaking and not just throw open the doors, and if it has support in the larger community (because if the community is loaded with maskless folks, the school is more vulnerable) and if your local luck holds out, maybe. And if you don't worry too much about teachers.  But what we know is not much, or even probably enough, and the whole incident is a reminder that in the absence of clear information and actual leadership from federal and state authorities, people are scared. But in Henrico, as in many districts across the country, school boards demanding that teachers face situations that they won't tolerate themselves--well, it's not a good look. 

Trump’s Patriot History Lessons Or Critical Thinking: You Can’t Have Both

Donald Trump wants to sweep away the “web of lies in our schools and classrooms” and replace them with the “magnificent truth” about the US, “the most exceptional nation in the history of the world.” This country, he asserts, is the “most fair, equal, and prosperous nation in human history.”

To further that goal, he signed an executive order to create a “1776 Commission,” to promote “patriotic education” in US schools. “The only path to national unity is through our shared identity as Americans. That is why it is so urgent that we finally restore patriotic education to our schools,” Trump said,

announcing a grant to support development of a “pro-American curriculum.”


Reactions to Trump’s proposed patriotic curriculum have been mixed, with some calling it an “overdue effort” and others indicating that with this notion, Trump “joins dictators and demagogues.” The whole issue is further complicated by Trump’s declared intent to punish schools that teach the New York Times 1619 Project, which some conservatives see as illegal. Meanwhile, Trump’s idea of soliciting a $5 billion “contribution” from the Tik-Tok/Oracle/Walmart deal raises the possibility of “patriotic American education” being funded in part by the Chinese.

Trump seems upset by the 1619 Project in particular and the handling of racism in US history in general. In raising these issues, he wades into a long-standing set of complaints from conservatives about how US history is taught. Critics have long argued, particularly in times of strife and discontent, that schools should do more to inculcate patriotism. But how to make this goal fit with other educational aims.

One of the long-standing holy grails of education is critical thinking. There are plenty of fancy definitions of critical thinking (”Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action”). But it generally involves a couple of features—clear, rational thinking, applied to analysis and evaluation to arrive at a judgment of the issue at hand.

In the classroom, it’s pretty easy to tell when you aren’t teaching critical thinking. If you are trying to herd your students toward a single acceptable answer to the question at hand, that is not critical thinking.

There are times when the single answer is appropriate (”How many branches are there in the U.S. government”). But history is a subject that includes broad vistas of materials that doesn’t yield one single correct answer (”What caused World War I”). As Leslie Harris and Karen Wulf put it in their excellent Politico essay, “History is always in the process of revision through new information and new perspectives.” Americans, when we think about history at all, like to think of it as settled and fixed, but that’s just not so.

Think about a couple that meets, marries, has children, and divorces within a decade. Imagine getting their story from them, their friends, their families immediately after the divorce, and then again every five years or so over the next six decades. The stories will vary based on relationships, new information, and understanding that changes with time. And yet all of the many stories will be at least a little true.

You could sit the children down and tell them, in effect, “This is the only true story about what happened with your parents, the only version of events and judgments about them that you are allowed to believe.” You might even successfully get that single story to stick, for a while. But it will be brittle, and as soon as those children find out that even one detail of it is not entirely true, the rest of the story will be shattered. They will not trust any of it.

History, whether the history of a nation or a family, requires critical thinking. It requires divergent views, re-evaluation of information, new perspectives, growing understanding. And most of all, it requires room for a multitude of judgments to be reached, not just by multiple viewers, but by the same viewer over years and years of their own growth.

If you sit students down and tell them, “This is the only true story of our country, and this is the only judgment you are allowed to reach about it,” you are demanding that they avoid critical thinking in favor of a cramped and meager understanding of their own history. It’s a disservice to the students.

If you are serious about raising students to be independent, critical thinkers, you can’t hit them with curriculum that herds them toward one single conclusion about 400 years of history. A nation’s history, a human life—they are more rich and complex and varied than can be captured by any single perspective. If you are studying history from just one source and just one point of view, you aren’t really studying history at all.

A generation of carefully indoctrinated “patriots” or actual thinkers—you can’t have both. That’s the bad news for the 1776 Commission. The good news is that if you show students the full, rich, varied, complex, sometimes appalling history of their country, and help foster the tools to reflect and think about it, they might reach a mature, deep, realistic affection for the place.

Originally posted at Forbes.com

The Big Engines That Wouldn't

 The Board of Directors has reacquainted me with a host of kid lit classics, including the 1930 classic, The Little Engine That Could, written by Watty Piper, which was a pseudonym for Arnold Munk, cofounder of the publishing company. There are also some newer abridged versions (Piper can be a little verbose and repetitive--always a problem when you're your own editor/publisher) which we like here at the Institute

You know the story, and you probably focus on the can-do attitude of the little engine that I-think-I-cans her way over the mountain. Hurray for grit. 

But there's another aspect of the story that is constant. Three other engines have the opportunity to help the train (loaded with toys and good food for the good children on the other side of the mountain) on its way after its original engine conks out. One is a powerful shiny new engine, the next is a big strong engine, and the third is a tired old engine (they are all presented as male). 

These three engines make their appearance to further the plot, underlining the helpless plight of the powerless train. But after reading this story a few hundred times. I get disappointed that the big engines that wouldn't are not part of the lesson. Taking food and toys to children is women's work, and nobody seems to question the refusal of the big engines to help out. There's no comeuppance, no moment when they look on in shame at what they've done, or refused to do. 

Maybe I have just seen too much inspiration porn. Look at this school's parents running a spectacular fundraiser (to provide services that should have ben provided in the first place). Look at the six zillionth touching Go Fund Me for necessary medical treatment (because we won't provide health care for the less-than-wealthy). Hooray for the computer company that, prompted to be part of a morning network tv stunt, donated equipment to a school (that shouldn't have had to beg in the first place). 

Yes, if you've got a problem right now, you solve it with the resources you have at hand right now. It's a waste of time to bitch about how you shouldn't be dealing with the problem in the first place. But at a minimum there should be a lesson learned about systemic issues that need to be addressed before the next crisis rolls around. How many patients didn't raise enough Go Fund Me money? How many schools still lack sufficient technology? How many other trains never got over the mountain at all? And how much did it cost the little engine that could to do the damn job all by herself?

Where's the part of the story where the station master tells the big engines, "Dammit boys--if you can't help out around here, then maybe we'll just have to redirect some of your supplies." Or "That job is just as important as any other, so we're making some assignment changes right now, and I'd better see some attitude changes to go with them."

We should celebrate the strength and determination of all the folks that marshal their resources and pull through in the clutch (and that includes most teachers on most days), but we should also be talking about the big engines that stand back and claim that their privilege is a shiled against any obligation to help pull the weight of making society work.