Corporate Advice For Teacher Retention

TNTP started out life as The New Teacher Project, a Michelle Rhee cousin organization of Teach For America, aimed at providing a path to the classroom for people considering teaching as their second career. They've continued with that mission, with an emphasis on diversity, but along the way, they morphed into a purveyor of slick "reports" that policy makers could wave around as shiny proof of whatever reformster policy idea they were peddling. TNTP has had two big hits--the odious "Widget Effect" and the feebly-researched "Opportunity Myth," but they have also offered their advice regarding tenure, teacher pay, teacher evaluation, and professional development.

TNTP's site reflects a very corporate human resources approach to teaching (you will be unsurprised to learn that the closest its current leadership comes to teaching experience is a few Teach For America products). That corporate focus and style  shines through in a recent offering "Addressing Teacher Shortages: Practical Ideas for the Pandemic and Beyond."

Through my college years, I had a summer/winter job in the private sector, where I saw lots of management training pitches. One thing that often struck me was that the trainings were about 75% obvious and 25% just wrong. My co-workers and I would complain, "Who is this for? Some space alien who just arrived? Who could be so completely dumb that they needed to be told this?" Then would come the second wave of horror, in realizing that there were people who were dumb enough to need to be told this, and they would never be able to apply it in any sort of believable way, like the boss who artificially injects your first name, Kevin, into every sentence because he went to a seminar where they told him that was a good way to make the human capital in your office feel appreciated.

I thought about those days a lot as I read this guide.

The guide is broken into three sections, beginning with "Diagnosing Your Staffing Challenges." This is tied to three Goals For Your Talent Strategy, and not for the last time, I'm going to point out that teachers mostly don't want to work for people who talk like this unironically. I'll just flag some of the more egregious language as we go along.

The three goals are, first, to give students "access" to "diverse, highly effective educators who provide access to high-quality academic experience every day, in every class." Second, the staff should reflect the demographics of the students. And the school should retain strong and promising educators. Not a bad set of goals.

The guide offers a battery of questions to ask about recruitment, staffing and retention. Most of these are pretty obvious. Where do our applicants come from. When do we post openings. What's our screening process. How are teachers "staffed" to positions, and is it an efficient method. What's our yearly retention rate. Do particular leaders or schools have high turnover. There are plenty more, virtually all asking about things that administration should already know, and if any of these questions made them think, "Yeah, that would probably be a good thing to know," we're talking about that level of ineptitude that will make it hard for them to follow the advice. I mean, any administrator who is told to ask "Are we hiring the most effective candidates" and slaps their forehead, hollering, "Hey--that would be a great idea, wouldn't it!" has problems deeper than this guide will solve.

Language alert: Staffing and Instructional Delivery Models. Teachers do not deliver instructional units; they teach.

Short Term Strategies

Several ideas here, starting with a plan for vacancies.

Some interesting ideas here, like deciding which vacancies--both long term and day-to-day subbing, are your priorities. Won't work for the subbing, of course--even in my small town regions, it's the substitutes and not the districts that decide what classes the sub will cover. TNTP wants districts to have a policy that prioritizes "learning acceleration for historically marginalized students" which is a well-intentioned thought (even if "learning acceleration" is not actually a thing). Plus have a person in charge of handling overseeing vacancy policy implementation, which again-- if a district is too dumb to already do this, getting this advice won't help.

Also, make non-teaching personnel rotate into classroom absence coverage, an idea I totally support. Also, reach out to family and community members to volunteer to cover non-teaching stuff, or community or faith-based organizations. Not a bad idea, but fraught with a few issues (check all those many clearances). Then we pivot back to the painfully obvious-- strengthen your sub pool by paying more and giving them a shot a full-time jobs. 

The guide also offers some bad ideas here. Redesign your school day. Have a grade level Whatsapp. Have teachers keep a sub folder--okay, that's an obvious idea, not a bad one. And the ever-popular "expand the reach" of "your most effective teachers." More on that in a bit.

There 's a whole other section on "address your immediate vacancies" which falls into the "if you don't already do this, I don't know how to help you category." But it does include this

Language Alert: "Implement a robust cultivation strategy that includes a cadence for outreach" to possible candidates that includes "a strategic mix of high- and low-touch efforts." 

Next is "develop a differentiated retention strategy" which includes using a school climate survey. You should also "equip school leaders with evidence-based retention strategies" including "stay conversations." Also, recognize excellent instruction. Give top teachers leadership roles. And "help school leaders be more effective people managers," which, yes, sure-- I've had bosses who were terrible people managers, however all the training on God's green Earth wouldn't help them. Actually, you know what area is ripe for the Dunning-Krueger Effect? People management skills. See also "I don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other people."

Also, reduce the workload of non-teaching baloney, provide mental health services, and protect them from the fallout over current CRT-panic etc etc. All worthy goals.

The "expand the reach" idea gets its own subcategory. The people who aren't actually teachers but have lots of experiences managing meat widgets think these ideas are really great and have kept pushing them for years. They are still bad. 

Live stream and record lessons! Have we not just done widespread field testing of this idea and determined that 1) it vastly increases the work for the teacher and 2) generally doesn't work very well.

Or maybe just cram a whole lot of students into one teacher's class (maybe give the teacher a teaching assistant or aid or something). I've written before about this terrible idea. The short form is that, first, this really gets in the way of forming the relationships that are a critical factor in teaching. Can't feel that the teacher knows you and cares about you when you are just one more face in a huge crowd. Second, the workload would be huge. If I assign an essay, I need to read the essay to see how the students are doing. No, getting a score from my aid doesn't cut it, and no, the software that can assess an essay still isn't written. So, 600-700 essays to grade? No, giving me a huge workload does not make me feel like sticking around. Also, classroom management for a few hundred 7th graders? Yikes!

Next up-- develop and implement a data analytics strategy to project future vacancy needs.

I thought this would be some terrible data analytics foolishness, but no--they suggest you figure out your average retention , multiply it by the current number of teachers, add any positions you expect to add to the district (ha!), and that's the number of teachers you'll need to hire. They write this formula out for you in a graphic, just in case it's too esoteric for you. Oh, and ask your building admins what they think they'll need. I have no idea who they imagine their audience to be here, but I sure wouldn't want to work for the administration that actually found this page revelatory.

Finally, develop an early hiring strategy. They have actual research to show that the quality of the pool declines as the hiring season continues, which--you actually spent time and money to research that?? Along with a wordy version of "get off your ass and hire quickly and early," they also suggest just hiring teachers with an open "we haven't got an assignment for you yet" contract, which seems deeply dumb. You hired a chemistry teacher, but you have an English opening? You hired someone who really wants to work in primary grades, but you're going to stick her in a fifth grade classroom instead? You're going to promise to pay someone you may not even need? 

Long Term Strategies

I'm going to bring up the obvious problem here that the guide overlooks-- long term strategies are best pursued by people who have a long term commitment to the district. It is hard to get a good ten year plan out of an administrator whose ten year plan is to be long gone by the time a decade clicks off. Administrators, like Teach for America products who are just doing a quick two-year resume building exercise, mostly aren't around for a long term commitment. It's only actual teachers who do that.

The guide has three long-term planning ideas, and let's start right out with

Language alert: Improve and enhance your overall employee value proposition. Or, as we say on this planet, make it a good job that people want to stay with.

To their credit, they seemed to have examined the work of Dan Pink that I have link4ed to a zillion times, as they recommend looking at how well the job addresses mission, mastery, autonomy, and growth, as well as pay and a decent working environment. But then they just keep using the acronym EVP and it's hard to take them seriously when they're throwing around this corporate argle bargle. And to find out how your work environment is doing-- collect data and stakeholder focus groups. 

Reduce barriers to entry for teachers. Well, that's TNTP's whole shtick, so I would expect this to come up. Make it easier to get a license to teach, they say. There are a lot of details to bedevil here, though I'm inclined to start pushing back when they bring up "hybrid bachelor's degrees." They'd also like to lean less on test scores(praxis, I guess) which is a fine idea, but instead lean on--well, "states should set clear expectations for what great teaching looks like" and boy there's no way that could end badly, and then use observation and "evidence of student learning" (aka test scores, so I guess those are okay) to decide. That's a lot to load on a teaching newbie.

Develop and expand teacher pathways, which is more of the same. Can you set up an alternate certification program?  Can you find a way to certify uncertified staff--even those without a bachelor's degree? Can you find a way to do it really quickly? And so on--there are, again, two layers of questions here. First, are these ideas any good (some are, some aren't) and second, what competent district leaders aren't aware of them?

Finally, reimagine the teacher role. Can't find "teachers"? Then just change what the word "teachers" means.

Language alert: Systems should examine each aspect of their vision for student experience and identify the necessary talent supports. Swap out the word "student" and we are once again treated to language that would be applicable in any corporate setting, complete with corporate jargon, the kind of language that obscures meaning rather than illuminating it.

So how to change the teacher role? Well, for one, there's the McDonaldization of teaching--break the work down into different pieces and hire (cheaper) workers to do the different pieces. Hide what you're doing by calling it "support" for teachers. And get some technology in there. "Current technology and workforce innovations can--and should--plan to use fewer staff members more efficiently." For example, they suggest the "lead" math teacher could create all the lesson materials and "a small team of novice or student teachers primarily deliver lessons." Or a lead teacher could be responsible for all of one elementary grade, while the novice/student teachers teach lessons and reinforce key concepts. Because education is, you know, just a product to be "delivered,"  and not an interaction between actual carbon-based life forms for whom relationship is an important part of the process.

They're loaded with ideas. Maybe teachers could serve multiple campuses. A team model for "efficiently reallocating the traditional responsibilities of classroom teachers across a cadre of professionals" that would include "community educators, paraeducators, certified and student educators." This would "leverage each group's expertise and skills." I can't make the numbers for this work in my head. On the one hand we currently have way many mid-career teachers, but on the other hand, this would require a huge number of novices and student teachers- a real challenge given how the pipeline has dried up.

The guide likes all this because they believe it gives teachers a chance to climb the ladder of success (a thing that business types love and imagine everyone must also desire) except that whenever someone wants to let teachers do more climbing the ladder, they do it by digging a big hole and putting the bottom of the ladder there--in other words, teachers get to start lower, not climb higher.

TNTP also addresses a new model for compensation, and that doesn't add up, either. Starting teachers should get a "competitive salary commensurate with the demands of their role," which is a real stack of weasel words, particularly when you consider that in their team model, novice teachers have far fewer responsibilities than they do now. Meanwhile, teachers should get more pay as they demonstrate "a positive influence on student learning" (which sounds like "test scores" again), but if I'm just designing lessons and various other team members are "delivering" them, exactly who gets credit for the positive influence? 

Much of this "reimagination" of the profession is what TNTP and other corporate reformsters have always argued for, and it's hard not to see in this guide a subtext of "Look, we always told you to get rid of a bunch of teachers and redesign the profession along technocorporate lines. Now that you are losing teachers anyway, we think you really ought to listen to us." 

As always with a TNTP "report," I'm not really sure who the audience is, though it usually turns out to be policymakers who want a slick professional looking report to wave around as they advocate for imposing some shiny reformy idea on education. Every time I hope that it won't happen again, but so far my value proposition for deliverable units of human capital positive uplift outlook have been smooshed.

 

National Politics Vs. Education

You may not read anything from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, that right-tilted, Common Core pushing, privatization-loving thinky tank, but I'm going to direct your attention there for a moment and a piece by Dale Chu. Chu and I disagree on a great deal, but in this recent piece, while talking about Rick Scott's crazy-pants (my word) plan to save America, he makes some worthwhile points, starting with this one:

What we have today is a smash-and-grab version of education reform that features a maximalist approach to securing legislative victories. The ethos seems to be: Throw the current bums out of office and get as much as we can until we eventually get tossed to the curb ourselves. Lather, rinse, repeat. Neither side has a common-ground agenda. Each tries to burn the other down. All of the incentives are organized around fealty to the “national brand,” which in the case of Scott and his role as head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee is to use an uncharacteristically inflammatory and hardline rhetoric when it comes to talking about schools.

I could quibble. I am not sure, for instance, that Democrats have an education agenda at all, having spent a couple of decades simply adapting the conservative reform agenda and now lacking any sense of how to find their way back. But the larger point is a good one--blast into power, grab what you can without any concern about whether or not it's sustainable, and gather up the political spoils while you can. It's an apt description of the politically-driven CRT panic, which contains 0% "Let's find a good and universally acceptable way to talk about our difficult history with race" and 100% "Vote for me because I helped chase away that scary Black People Stuff from the evil indoctrinatin' schools." 

Building education policy for the long run matters, because the long run is what teachers and schools are here for. Every teacher who's been in a classroom for more than five years has mastered the New Policy Eyeroll--some administrator breezes in and brandishes a shiny new game-changing program, and teachers deploy the eye roll because they know with a year or three, both the administrator and the policy will be gone, shoved aside by the newest shiny thing.

Remember when you were learning to drive? You learned that if you focused on the road a few feet in front of the car, you'd wander all over the pavement. To keep the car steady and the journey safe, you focused far ahead on your destination. That's what teachers have to learn to do.

Schools and teachers have to play a long game; when politicians start playing a short game, a smash and grab game, that works directly against the health of schools and education. But as Chu points out

...neither national Republicans nor national Democrats seem to show any interest in being a majority party when it comes to getting our kids back on track. Instead, both sides have cynically employed conflict engineers to dictate the strength and direction of our education fights, resulting in today’s zero-sum playing field.

Chu thinks the answer is in state and local leadership. Well, maybe. He's looking at ways to forward the reformster cause, and I suppose a state like Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis and his administration have just about finished burning public education to the ground, looks like a fine example. It looks to me as if smash-and-grab politics are fully installed in many state capitals which are, in fact, where the CRT panic is playing out. Meanwhile, the GOP has been working hard to install that same philosophy on the local school board level. 

Chu thinks the "silent majority" should speak up about "the need for schools to focus their limited bandwidth on education recovery," but that ship has sailed in many communities, where Moms for Liberty, Parents Defending Education, and a host of other conservative astro-turf groups have screamed their way to the front of the conversation; in some cases, the silent majority has been chased right off the board.

Chu wants to see intra-party coalitions motivated by the "calamity" of low test scores for BlPOC students, but I'm not sure low scores on the Big Standardized Test is anybody's idea of a Top Ten crisis in education. And the intra-party coalition was largely the result of Democrats embracing a version of the right-tilted reform ideas; that coalition broke down under Trump, and the right has since concluded that it doesn't need Dems for anything. 

But Chu is right in a larger sense-- if anybody in the political world would stop asking "How can education be used as an issue to create political advantage" and start asking "How can we help schools with the mission of educating children," we'd get better education policy. As it is, one of the things that makes teaching a dispiriting activity in the 21st century is realizing that public education has no champions among either party, and whenever a politician looks at education, it's not to see how they can help, but how they can smash-and-grab something for their own benefit. 

Moms For America Has A Truck

First of all, don't confuse Moms For America with Moms For Liberty.

MFA claims roots back to 2004 as a "trusted source for moms looking to promote a love of liberty in their homes and communities." It was founded (and its name apparently registered as a trademark) by Kimberly Fletcher, an "unabashed American-loving mom." Also, author, columnist, retired Air Force officer, mother of eight children, resident of Omaha, and regular contributor to Fox, Breitbart, Sinclair, the Blaze. She's also an organizer for Stop the Steal.

MFA has an advisory council packed with conservative all-stars, including Kevin Sorbo's wife Sam, president of The Strategic Alliance, Radio Host Rose Tennent, and--oh, look-- it's our old friend Rebecca Friedrichs. The 990 finder comes up very quiet for a 501c3 organization (one form from 2018). But they reportedly get plenty of financial support from Charles Herbster and Mike Lindell. MFA was also a "coalition partner" for the January 6 Save America rally--the day after they had a rally of their own. So not so much homey cookie-baking Moms but mostly of savvy media pros and seasoned political activists. 

MFA has been holding marches and rallies and general noisemaking for many years, but of course the past couple have been a real bonanza for them. But currently they are sponsoring a Big Purple Truck that is circling DC on the beltway as part of the Freedom Convoy. While at CPAC, Fletcher talked to Breibart about why a truck:

The truck was inspired by what is going on in classrooms, Fletcher explained, noting it is “not even just the mask or vaccine.”

“It’s what’s happening in our classrooms — this draconian mentality from the White House to the school board, and we’ve been facing this in our communities for several years, but now moms are starting to realize. As I’ve said for the last 16 years, the moment moms find out what’s going on in the classroom behind closed doors, there’s going to be a national revolt, and that’s what’s happening,” she said.

“And the message of our truck is, they are our kids. These are our freedoms. You serve us, we don’t serve you, and that’s a message that resonates with the American people,” she added.

Of course, the big issue for Fletcher is Critical Race Theory, or at least, something that she calls Critical Race Theory. And here's your proof that Christopher Rufo's objective of gathering everything that some people don't like under the CRT umbrella has borne fruit.

“Critical Race Theory is part of ‘social emotional learning’ that teacher unions are pushing, and the whole idea is to teach children to hate their country, hate their neighbors, hate themselves, and be disconnected from their parents,” she said, adding that it is “creating race problems” by dividing children. It also includes aspects of the LGBT movement and the transgender agenda, she continued.

So all of that--that's CRT, somehow.

So MFA has a truck out there, part of the massive convoy that hopes to achieve something freedomy by getting itself stuck in one of the major urban daily traffic snarls in the country, because that will totally.... do something. And when that something is done, Moms For America, yet another astro turf anti-public education group, will be there to also do something, too. 

Georgia GOP Meets The Real Betsy DeVos

Some Georgian GOP politicians recently had a run-in with school choice politics Betsy DeVos style. Or as the lede at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution put it:

A national advocacy group promoting school vouchers bombarded conservative Georgia voters with glossy mailers tying Republican state legislators from their districts to Stacey Abrams and other “radical left” figures. It backfired in spectacular fashion.

The group is American Federation for Children, an ALEC-tied school choice advocacy group heavily funded by the DeVos money machine that has long been part of DeVos's political machine. They were trying to push the Georgian proposal for vouchers gussied up as "Promise Scholarships," and so they sent out flyers warning "the radical left want to cancel your right to choose your child's school" and the phone number of the local GOP legislator to call to pressure not to "give in to the radical left." "Stand up to them" it says under pictures of Stacey Abrams, Kamala Harris, and Joe Biden.

House Speaker David Ralston (GOP) had a few thoughts.

I am livid. I’ve been around politics for a long time, but this is the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen in my career and one of the most deceitful. These are people we have tried to help over the years, and they turned to attack us very viciously.

Also

That voucher legislation will not move at all in the Georgia House of Representatives this year, period.

What's most surprising about all of this is Ralston's surprise. Ralston may be livid, but I'm betting a few Michigan politicians could have told him-- the DeVos method of political armtwisting is a combination of "I gave you a bunch of money--now do as your told" and "If you won't, we'll just primary you out of there." As she wrote all the way back in 1997:

I have decided … to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now I simply concede the point. They are right. We do expect some things in return.

Her tenure at the Department of Education displayed more of what she had shown throughout her political advocacy career-- you are either a useful tool or not, and it would be a mistake to think you have any other sort of relationship with her. Get that Georgia GOP some coffee to sniff. 

ICYMI: Spongebob Edition (3/6)

 I'm coming off a week of working as the pit conductor for a local high school production of Spongebob: The Musical, which turns out to be actually a great little show, hilarious and silly and yet with much to say about friendship, science denialism, and how folks react to a crisis. And the music is great. It's not for your average high school--the technical requirements are considerable--but my old friends are talented leaders and they have a well-developed network. It was all a reminder of how rich and complicated the whole business of developing student theater can be, and how it gives some students a fantastic growth experience that helps them bloom and become the talented humans they can be (and none of it is useful for raising scores on the Big Standardized Test). 

But that was my adventure. Here's your reading from the week.

New teacher certification exam Will hurt Texas education

You know what Texas doesn't need? It doesn't need to add edTPA to its teacher requirements.

Georgia mailer backfires

Betsy DeVos's American Federation for Children tried to boost vouchers in Georgia, using her time-honored technique of threatening the people on her own side. It didn't go well.

Why Public School Supporters Need to Keep On Pushing Back Against Laws Banning Discussion of “Divisive” Subjects at School

Jan Resseger looks at some of the news surrounding the wave of gag laws sweeping the nation.

Don’t Expect Your Students to Attend Your Funeral

At The Educator's Room, Jeremy Adams with a hard look at some of our romantic notions about teaching.

Why Teachers are Dropping Out

At The Nation, Jennifer Berkshire takes the unusual step of talking to actual teachers about the ongoing exodus from teaching.

Indiana Senate Kills CRT Panic Gag Law

Some good news; Indiana shot down its latest attempt at micro-managing teachers.

Lock and Load and Learning Loss

Nancy Flanagan looks at the rise of smack talk in society, and schools.

High School Newspapers are a thifty way to teach civics

Andrea Gabor at Bloomsburg looks at student journalism can become a doorway to civics education

Teaching the War in Ukraine is Fighting the War at Home

Steven Singer, current events in the classroom, and the Charge of the Light Brigade

Sad news from Florida

Scott McLeod reports on a student protest against the Don't Say Gay bill, and the administrative punishment that rained down on it. "Hand in that Pride flag, kid."

The One Where Pinky and the Brain Hire a Henchwoman

Tennessee continues to be a microcosm for all the worst parts of privatization, and TC Weber continues to bring the receipts for all the self-serving conflict of interest and profiteering. 

In Loco Parentis

Blue Cereal Education to parents-- I don't really want to raise your kid.

Detroit teachers have been through a lot. I’m still standing.

First person account at Chalkbeat from Dorothea Williams-Arnold

WV lawmakers push for larger control of education policy

West Virginia is poised to become one more state where the legislature wants to squash local control of schools.

College Board Vs. CRT Panic

The College Board is a for-profit company that makes a bundle selling products that make teenagers look smart as well as establishing itself as a gatekeeper for college entrance. It is amazing to me that some folks are still tricked by that name into thinking this is some sort of non-profit college entrance agency. Nope. The College Board has made some huge mistakes, including hiring Comon Core architect David "I'm no education expert" Coleman to be the Big Boss. They've gotten so many things wrong (here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, for starters) that it seems fairly newsworthy when they get something right.

You can be excused for scrolling past the page entitled What AP Stands For, assuming that the answer is "money" or "market share" or "branding," but in fact it's worth a look. Some of the seven items might cause you to hiccup (like #1-- AP stands for clarity and transparency), but let's skip down to three other items:

3) AP opposes censorship. AP is animated by a deep respect for the intellectual freedom of teachers and students alike. If a school bans required topics from their AP courses, the AP Program removes the AP designation from that course and its inclusion in the AP Course Ledger provided to colleges and universities. For example, the concepts of evolution are at the heart of college biology, and a course that neglects such concepts does not pass muster as AP Biology.

4) AP opposes indoctrination. AP students are expected to analyze different perspectives from their own, and no points on an AP Exam are awarded for agreement with a viewpoint. AP students are not required to feel certain ways about themselves or the course content. AP courses instead develop students’ abilities to assess the credibility of sources, draw conclusions, and make up their own minds.

As the AP English Literature course description states: “AP students are not expected or asked to subscribe to any one specific set of cultural or political values, but are expected to have the maturity to analyze perspectives different from their own and to question the meaning, purpose, or effect of such content within the literary work as a whole.

5) AP courses foster an open-minded approach to the histories and cultures of different peoples. The study of different nationalities, cultures, religions, races, and ethnicities is essential within a variety of academic disciplines. AP courses ground such studies in primary sources so that students can evaluate experiences and evidence for themselves.

In particular, look at #3:

If a school bans required topics from their AP courses, the AP Program removes the AP designation from that course and its inclusion in the AP Course Ledger provided to colleges and universities. 

Yes, they include an item to insist that there's no indoctrinatin' going on in AP, but that's a restriction that cuts both ways, given that the CRT panic crowd has been legislating requirements such as one requiring that teachers say only nice things about the Founding Fathers. 

But that #3 is a tough stand--particularly when you realize that to enforce it, the College Board would have to cut into its own revenue stream. I especially look forward to some legislator during debate of one of these many gag laws pointing out "If we pass this, no school in the state will be able to offer AP history." 

Whether the College Board will actually back up its tough talk remains to be seen. But for a company that manages to get so many things wrong, this is a welcome change of pace. 

KY: The Panic Comes For Dolly Parton

Dolly Parton is a national damn treasure, but one Kentucky state senator had the guts, briefly, to express concern about Parton's signature philanthropic effort being a piece of the Great Indoctrinatin' going on in America.

Stephen Meredith was a hospital CEO before being elected to Kentucky's senate in 2017. Wednesday he was in committee discussing SB 164, a bill for creating a state partnership with Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, one of the best examples of thoughtful, useful, not-trying-to-take-over-a-government function philanthropy you'll find. The Imagination Library puts books in the hands of children 0-5. Once a month, a free book arrives addressed to your child. The Board of Directors has been signed up since birth; the books are wonderfully curated, selected for age appropriateness and an absolute model of blending classic and new and diverse books. It is literally one of the best things a wealthy person has ever done.

But Wednesday, Meredith had some concerns. Noting that the bill had "age appropriate" in the language, he wondered "if that shouldn't include subject appropriate as well"... "given today's environment."

Sigh. Okay, I don't know Meredith, so maybe what he meant to suggest is that they needed to head off crazy-pants CRT/LGBTQ protestors so they wouldn't descend upon the bill. But he did note that he's heard about "inappropriate literature" given to pre-schoolers. And he also notes that "players change over the course of time, and things get shifted," so I guess he's worried that Indoctrinators might somehow take over Parton's program.

Stella Parton, Dolly's sister, was having none of it, and on Thursday morning she was on Twitter calling him out:

I'm outraged this morning that anyone, let alone a GOP Sen. Meredith from the grat state of Ky. Would question my sister Doly or even insinuate something sinister about the "Imagination Library" for children. Appalachian people have been maligned as uneducated and to have a Senator from Appalachia state even think this much less say anything derogatory about this incredible program is an outrage!! I would like to see your IQ score Sen. Meredith along with at least a dozen more of you GOP nimrods. The next you know, you will be trying to burn children's books.

Most new outlets have edited her response down a bit. As you can see, she was pretty pissed. She also accused him of using the phrase "indoctrinate the children," which he didn't. The whole blow-up was enough to make Dolly Parton trend on Twitter Thursday.

Meredith told a news reporter, "I'm disappointed, but you know, that's social media today." In the end, he did vote for the bill.

If nothing else, the flap suggests that there are limits to what folks can say in their pursuit of anti-indoctrinatin'.