You Too Can Be A Wealthy Education Consultant

I know this because I have been subjected to repeated Facebook advertising from Erica Jordan-Thomas and her virtual seminar Six-Figure Educator Live: Build Your Education Consulting Business Blueprint. So I just had to look.

She leads with her story:

In 2008, I sold everything I owned and moved to Charlotte, NC to become a teacher making $33k/year.

In 2012, I became an assistant principal making $62k/year. My salary had increased but I was still drowning in debt. While I was slaying at work, I was ignoring calls from bill collectors and living paycheck to paycheck.

By 2015, I was slaying as a principal and hit my ultimate financial low. I had less than $50 in my bank account and had more than a week until I got paid...so I got a loan. After picking up the loan check, I was on my way to the bank and ran out of MFin gas. So here I was on the side of the road, with a check I didn’t even have enough gas to deposit.

And let me tell you, it had nothing to do with “poor money habits”. I created a budget and followed it religiously. But even with the strictest of budgets, I was only able to save a couple of hundred bucks a month. The progress to paying off my debt was slllooooowwwww.

That’s the point where it hit me: all the budgeting, all the “working my way up” in the school system, all of the love and care I was pouring into my students was not going to get me to a place where I could feel comfort and safety in my financial situation. I started my education consulting business in 2017. Within 8 months, I paid off all my credit card debt and established 3 months of savings.

From there she moves to the pitch, which boils down to "You deserve more," which, like all good pitches, carries some weight because it's somewhat true. You won't make six figures teaching, she says, and you won't get financially fit by skipping Starbucks. This isn't the Peace Corps, she says-- teaching isn't charity work. You shouldn't be heating up Ramen noodles for lunch. "You didn't become an educator to live paycheck to paycheck." And "if anybody deserves wealth, it's you. And "if you have the power to transform the life of a student, you have the power to transform your own." This is a powerful pitch.

Dr. EJT wants you to know she has a decade of experience in education. Also, she's the founder and CEO of EJT Consulting, as well as Get Launched Consulting, a Doctoral Candidate in Education Leadership at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has helped 200 clients grow their education consulting business.

There are a few other items on her cv. She got a Masters of Education in Instructional School Leadership from Relay Graduate School of Education, a "graduate school" created by three not-really teachers. She was a Doctoral Resident and Harvard Education Fellow at the Aspen Institute. Her undergrad degree in 2008 was from Ohio State; she earned a BS in Textiles and Clothing (and, if you recall, 2008 was not a great year for that kind of work). So you know what comes next-- when she headed off to Charlotte-Mecklenberg Schools in 2008, it was as a Teach for America newbie. After one year in the classroom, she spent a year as a TFA program director, then went into the New Leaders program for growing principals with a particular emphasis on diversity. As a principal, she got attention for implementing a version of the "have great teachers teach more kids." Use the data and we can find the Beyonce educators and give them a bigger venue. She tells the story of how she took one teacher and put him in charge of 950 "scholars" by having him design the lessons, coach the classroom teachers, and sit with "his teachers" to analyze data. She has a TEDxCharlotte talk where she talks about her career as a high school math teacher; she does not mention that it was just one year long.

Dr. EJT's alma mater is proud of her. She's gotten lots of positive attention before even turning thirty. But she is also a fine example of another person who branded herself as an education expert with no real experience in the field, pushing the reformy ideas favored by other people with no real experience in the field, even as she moves on swiftly to her next gig, and whose pitch is now "if it weren't for the tools, strategies, and resources I reveal inside Six-Figure Educator Live...I'd still be in debt...and living paycheck to paycheck as a principal." She seems positive, strong, and smart as hell--but in her larger career trajectory, the classroom is just a blip and the school building a slightly larger blip. Education could do with not so many shooting star passing-through "experts" these days.

The seminar is in two weeks, so if this seems like you're dream, by all means, sign up--it's only $49 non-refundable dollars. Or if you'd like to invite me to come talk to your group, I'm available for far less than six figures. 

Teach For America's Decline In Applicants (Good)

At Chalkbeat, Kalyn Belsha reports that Teach for America is hitting a fifteen-year low in applications. For my money, the number of applications to the teacher temp program can't get too low.

TFA launched in 1990, and became a darling of reformsters, and they have morphed through a variety of missions in the years since, changing from "the best and the brightest will come save urban children, kind of like the Peace Corps" to "we want to bring diversity to the teacher workforce," always with a side helping of things like "if you want to staff your charter school cheaply, we can help." And one other mission that we'll get to.

TFA recruitment peaked at 6,000 in 2013, and they've been declining ever since. Here's a piece looking at their recruiting troubles from all the way back in 2015. That's unsurprising--the entire teaching professional pipeline has been drying up. It would be a minor miracle if TFA weren't also feeling the effects.

TFA officials also blame the pandemic (though their decline pre-dates that)

“People are feeling like with what they’re seeing in teaching, they’re not sure they can do it,” Tracy St. Dic, TFA’s senior vice president of recruitment, said of the organization’s teacher prospects. “They care about social impact, they care about social issues,” she said, “but they also really want to have the security, and the safety, and the stability.”

TFA has too many wealthy friends in high places to ever die. Which is unfortunate. I'll add the usual disclaimer that TFA has produced some people who went on to become high quality career teachers. But those folks could have come out of a full-blown teacher program. 

TFA has long been mocked for putting their people in classrooms with little training or support, but the damage done by unqualified rookies in the classroom has been dwarfed by the damage done by their products after they leave the classroom. TFA has unleashed a small army of "former teachers" and "education experts" who spent two whole years in the classroom (knowing full well that they weren't going to stay, and therefor had no real reason to try to learn and develop professional understanding) but now feel qualified to tell actual teachers what to do. It has become predictably cliche--scratch almost every clueless edupreneur and amateur hour policy leader who claims to have started out as a teacher, and you find a TFA product. 

Worse, for the past few years they've been leaning into that part of their mission, that "spend a couple of years in a classroom as a way to launch your career as a policy leader and education thought leader who can spread the gospel of reformsterism." This has turned out to be the most damaging legacy of TFA, and the fewer people they recruit to carry it on, the better of the world of US education will be. 

FL: "Don't Say Gay" Really Is That Bad

Well, now the legislature in Florida (State motto: "There Is No Bottom") has passed HB 1557, the Don't Say Gay bill. There have been many attempts to defend the bill as being not so bad as its detractors say, but these attempts are at worst disingenuous and at best reveal a lack of understanding of how classrooms work. Let me explain why you can safely ignore the people saying critics of the bill have overblown the threat level of the bill.

First, there is the Outing Students language. Under 1001.42, section 8, subsection c1 and c2, we get the language saying in broad terms that any sort of change in the student's mental, emotional or physical health, parents must be notified. This is very broad, but in the context of the bill it seems most clearly aimed at students who come out as any sort of LGBTQ human. 

Language underlines that school procedures must "reinforce the fundamental right of parents to make decisions regarding the upbringing and control of their children" and that school personnel should encourage the student to discuss the "issue" with their parents--maybe even facilitate a discussion. This is an echo of a proposed amendment that was going to mandate that the school out students to their families. The bill now retains language that the school can choose to hold back the information if a "reasonable person" would determine that such an outing would put the child at risk of "abuse, abandonment or neglect." 

There's still more than enough left of this part to convince an LGBTQ student that they are not safe coming out to a trusted or asking for help at school; under this section, parents are entitled to see any and all records about their child, meaning that any counseling session that leaves a paper trail would be a risk for students not yet ready to come out to their family. 

Second is the meat of the restriction:

Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.

This is the part that Governor DeSantis points at to say, "Look, the word gay isn't actually there" and also "we're just restricting lesson materials for K-3." But the "or age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate" would seem to open up a larger, vaguer restriction for all students. And the "it doesn't use the word gay" defense is just dumb, because of course it is--just in fancier language. (Surely the guy who coined the "Stop WOKE Act" understands the power of boiling a legislative idea down to a short, pithy phrase.)

The guy who introduced the bill, Rep. Joe Harding, is among the many saying, "Look, you can still talk about this stuff--you just can't have lessons or curriculum about it." This is an argument made by someone who is either shoveling fertilizer or who just doesn't understand how a classroom works. If my lesson is about families, and we're all going to draw pictures of our family at home, and I know that Pat has two Mommies--have I designed a lesson that is "about" LGBTQ content? If I design any lesson that is likely to prompt a bunch of personal sharing (which, for primary grade students, is all lessons, all the time), have I violated this law? If I have a picture of my same-gender, legally-married spouse on my desk, am I violating the law (and heaven help me if my same-gender romantic partner decides it would be romantic to propose to me at school, as hetero couples are known to do)

Supporters of the bill can say, "Well, no, not really" or "I'd have to see your lesson plans," and I can believe that some of these panicked folks really think they're only stemming a tide of teachers whose lesson plans say, "Tuesday: Convince first grade class that they might all be gay." There are clearly some folks hanging on to the old, odious notion that all LGBTQ folks are pedophiles, and that LGBTQ people are only That Way because some other LGBTQ person talked them into it, and if nobody ever brought up the idea of gayness, nobody would ever be gay, in which case they may imagine that this bill is really holding back something real, and not addressing imaginary panics.

But here's the thing-- it doesn't matter what any of these people inside the legislature believes about what the bill does or doesn't restrict because--

Third, the bill farms out enforcement to the public. Any parent who thinks that a portion of this law has been violated and is unsatisfied with the district response can drag the district before a special magistrate, and then sue the district. Neither Joe Harding nor Ron DeSantis nor any other politicians in Tallahassee get to decide what the law actually prohibits--parents get to do that.

But, you say, parents who sue over something stupid will just lose and nonsense suits under the law will just burn themselves out. But even in nonsense suits, the school district will have to spend time and money to defend themselves; even a stupid lawsuit will be damaging to the district. 

As with the proliferating gag laws around the country, the effect here is to intimidate and chill, to get frightened administrators, boards, and teachers to do the dirty work and shut down every possible lesson plan, curricular item and classroom activity that might set off some litigious parents. Which means that regardless of how mild guys like Harding and DeSantis claim the bill is, the end effect will be that it will be as severe as the most severe parent in the local district decides it is. 

So do not be fooled by the defenders of this bill who claim that everyone is overreacting and Florida is just trying to block Choose Your Gender Day from Kindergarten. This is a bad bill, a bill designed to chill and intimidate and drive LGBTQ students and teachers back into the closet. 

One other thing-- you need to know that as bad as this bill is, there are worse ones out there, with more popping up, and if you are outraged at what Florida is up to, you may need to save some of that outrage for another state closer to home, because this wave has not even crested yet.

WA: Summit Charters Caught Using Uncertified Teachers

Washington state actually audits its charter schools; consequently, it discovered that three charter schools run by Summit Schools, employed a total of twenty-four uncertified teachers.

In Washington, teachers must have a valid license, or their school must pursue waivers and/or emergency certification. Summit didn't do any of that. Senator Lisa Wellman, in a press release, underlined that students enrolled in 50 courses were taught by teachers without credentials or oversight by Summit. Wellman underlines that Summit's board of directors is based in California, though their website lists a Washington board as well (though that board may just be appointed by the California board). The California board chairman is Robert J. Oster, a venture capitalist and board member at the right-tilted Hoover Institute at Stanford. Washington's chairman is Evan Smith, who boasts a background in business and education and--well, no. He's a VP at Starbucks, used to work at McKinsey, did some political press secretary work, and taught for a grand total of one year in New Orleans. If that smells like another Teach for America product, well, yes. 

Summit is very much from the corporate sector of charterdom. Started in 2003 by Diane Tavener, it was adopted and infused with cash and technology by Mark Zuckerberg, it has since spun into both a charter business and a digital school in a box business. 

But Washington state should not have been surprised to find Summit using uncertified teachers. The website says nice things like "Teachers are at the heart of every Summit classroom serving as content experts, mentors, and leaders," but notice that list of roles, because Summit's model has always been about using "mentors" in the classroom while students hunker down in front of a computer screen. 

The whole Summit business approach (and Summit is definitely a business, not some philanthropic school thingy) is to McDonaldsize the personnel role, thereby cutting out all the big human resource expense. At one point, they even had their own Facilitator Farm to grow some inexpensive meat widgets to stand in a classroom while students and computers did the work.

Given Summit's history and education-flavored business model, I would be shocked if their schools were staffed by 100% certified teachers. Washington State got exactly what they should have expected to get. Maybe they weren't paying attention, or maybe the people who should have been paying attention just didn't care. Also, the Summit boards meet once a quarter, rather than once a month as required by Washington law.

At any rate, it now appears that Summit may owe the state almost $4 million for an unprecedented, but entirely predictable, breach and disregard of the state's rules. The audit reports that the board did not take steps to "address concerns over uncertified teachers," though it's not clear if anyone expressed those concerns to the board. The board certainly wouldn't have had those concerns on their own, because these schools may have been violating state law, but they were following the company business model. We'll see what happens next. 

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.