Another Attempt To Let Software Write

John Warner, whose book Why They Can't Write should be required reading for all teachers of writing, just took a look at GPT-3, one of the new generation of algorithms that is being sold as an artificial intelligence capable of writing. GPT-3's capabilities are perhaps being oversold, and it has exhibited some of the usual problems with generating gibberish and "learning" to say terrible things, plus a tendency, like many such algorithms, to get stranded in a linguistic uncanny valley.

Warner was surprised by the discovery that GPT-3 does not know grammar, or any of the rules about how words can be put together meaningfully. I suspect many people would be surprised to learn this. But it's really really important when talking about computer algorithms for handling language to grasp that computers do not "understand" language in any regular sense of the world.

The best metaphor I've seen for this kind of program is a weather forecasting model (I'm going to grossly oversimplify here--people who are knowledgeable about weather forecasting can take me to task in the comments). Think of weather forecasting as data crunching. When your infallible weather app tells you that there's a 50% chance of rain, what it means is that in all the times that the same weather conditions have been in place, half of them produced rain. To do this kind of predicting, you need two things-- a big bank of data of all the weather conditions from the past, and a good model for picking out which pieces of the data are important.

That's what language generating algorithms do. The algorithm crunches a whole lot of language "conditions" in the past--examples (sentences) scraped from a variety of sources-- and uses them to make predictions about what words could go together now. Or, as Warner aptly sums it up

As GPT-3 is “composing,” it is not referencing a vast knowledge of rules for grammatical expression. It’s simply asking, based on the word that it just used, what’s a good word to use next.

As Warner also notes, this has some parallels to how human beings write (raise your hand if you start composing a piece of writing by thinking about grammar rules). We do compose by stringing words or phrases together. But while computer algorithms compile their data, they are missing one major data point that humans include--the meaning or sense-making component of the language. These algorithms are being "taught" to write indifferent styles, a feat accomplished by simply tweaking the bank of data examples that are used. 

Warner finishes his piece with a question:

I’m thinking it might be fun to ask GPT-3 to write on a prompt to compare and contrast how GPT-3 and Joan Didion employ grammar in their writing, based in Didion’s famous quote, “Grammar is a piano I play be ear, since I seem to have been out of school the year the rules were mentioned. All I know about grammar is its infinite power. To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning of the object photographed.”

I wonder what it would say?

I thought that sounded kind of fun, too. So I turned to my old buddy Jarvis.

Jarvis is a commercial program for churning out ad copy, blog posts, essays, but mostly ad copy. Jarvis (via a marketing email that it probably wrote itself) claims 50,000 clients, which would make the program pretty profitable, because the economy version is $49/month. Jarvis has only been on the market for about a year; you can read more about it here.

Jarvis offers free five-day trials, and unlike many such dodges, it's not hard to unsubscribe from the service, so I hopped on and gave Jarvis a shot at Warner's topic.

The basic version of Jarvis lets you write a topic and then let Jarvis go to town, though it requires you to chime in with a contribution here and there. In the following examples, my contributions will be in bold. 

To start with, I swapped GPT-3 out for Jarvis and asked

Compare and contrast how Jarvis and Joan Didion employ grammar in their writing.

Here's what I got back:

Joan Didion and James Jarvis both use grammar in their writing, but they employ it differently. Joan Didion uses grammar to create short, declarative sentences that pack a lot of meaning into a small amount of space. On the other hand, James Jarvis uses grammar to create long, complex sentences that often meander and take a long time to end. Didion uses grammar as a piano she plays by ear ; Jarvis uses grammar as sheet music he meticulously follows.

Both writers use grammar to create their own unique effects in their writing. Joan Didion's short, declarative sentences often have a staccato quality that creates a sense of unease or tension. This can be seen in her essay "Slouching Towards Bethlehem," where she actually wrote a book, not an essay. The effect is achieved by the choppy, staccato quality of her sentences:

In Eureka, California, in the late fifties, I worked for a while as a waitress in a coffee shop called Roy's. It was on Fourth Street then; it is now on Broad- way and is called Roy's Restaurant.

First, as near as I can tell, James Jarvis is not some obscure author that had slipped my memory. I guess the algorithm found that Jarvis is mostly likely to be a last name, and James is most likely the first name to go with it. This highlights one of the problems with these algorithms--when you don't grok meaning, it's very hard to maintain any level of accuracy. Is Didion known for her "short, declarative sentences"? I'm not so sure. "Slouching Toward Bethlehem" is the title of an essay by Didion, but bit's also the title of a book collection of essays, so I tried nudging Jarvis, but it was unmoved. That last graph is supposed to be a Didion quote; I cannot find it anywhere on the interwebz at all and I'm not enough of a Didion scholar to know.

So next I returned the prompt to its original form:

Compare and contrast how GPT-3 and Joan Didion employ grammar in their writing.

That yielded this:

Joan Didion employs grammar in a very straightforward way. She uses simple, declarative sentences and her syntax is usually very clear and easy to follow. In contrast, GPT-3 often employs more complex sentence structures and its grammar can be more difficult to parse. However, both writers use grammar to effectively communicate their ideas. Even though GPT-3 is computer software and not actually a writer. It is still able to generate writing that is clear and concise. This demonstrates the power of grammar in conveying meaning.

didion's Joan Didion employs grammar in a very straightforward way. She uses simple, declarative sentences and her syntax is usually very clear and easy to follow. In contrast, GPT-3 often employs more

At that point I was supposed to take over. Jarvis often leaves you hanging mid-sentence (curiously, it also has definite ideas about where it is willing to take over or not). The random possessive at the beginning of the second graph is a mystery. 

As Warner and others have noted elsewhere, these algorithms have become able to produce work that sounds like it came from a human, but that human is one who is bored, uninspired, and focused on cranking out enough topic-adjacent word salad to fulfill the assignment.

Next, I offered Jarvis the full version of Warner's prompt:

Compare and contrast how GPT-3 and Joan Didion employ grammar in their writing, based in Didion’s famous quote, “Grammar is a piano I play be ear, since I seem to have been out of school the year the rules were mentioned. All I know about grammar is its infinite power. To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning of the object photographed.”

Here we go:

Joan Didion says, "Grammar is a piano I play by ear, since I seem to have been out of school the year the rules were mentioned. All I know about grammar is its infinite power. To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning of the object photographed."

GPT-3, on the other hand, says: "The rules of grammar are there for a reason: to ensure that communication is clear and unambiguous. To break those rules is to invite confusion and misunderstanding."

So, we can see that Joan Didion has a more relaxed attitude towards grammar, whereas GPT-3 is less relaxed, probably because it is a machine. However, both recognise the importance of grammar in communication. Playing a piano by ear, however, is something that only humans can do; GPT-3 may be able to follow the rules of grammar perfectly, but it lacks the creativity that Joan Didion has. Playing trombone by ear, however, would be harder for GPT-3. Even if it could follow the rules of grammar perfectly, the nuances of music are something that machines struggle with.

So, in conclusion, we can see that while GPT-3 is very good at following the rules of grammar, Joan Didion is better at playing by ear and picking up on the nuances of

Finally, just for giggles, I asked it to write about John Warner and computerized writing.   

John Warner's approach to computerized writing is all about making the process as simple and streamlined as possible. He believes that the best way to do this is to focus on the content, rather than the form. This means that he pays attention to things like structure, organization, and clarity, rather than worrying about things like grammar and style.

His work focuses on certain critical aspects of the writing process, such as understanding your audience, developing a clear purpose, and organizing your thoughts. By taking these things into account, he believes that you can produce much better writing, regardless of the medium.

One of the main goals of Warner's approach is to help users write more effectively for their specific audiences. To do this he recommends that writers should do the following steps, as outlined in his book "The Elements of Effective Writing":

1. Know your audience

2. Develop a clear purpose

3. Organize your thoughts

4. Support your ideas with evidence

5. Use appropriate language

6. Edit and proofread your work

While all of these steps are important, Warner emphasizes the

To all the attributes listed for the imaginary human student who could have written this, we should add ballsiness. I'm not aware that Warner ever wrote a book entitled "The Elements of Effective Writing," or that it would have included these highly generic instructions. This is uncanny valley stuff, where it seems to be meaning until you start looking. He doesn't pay attention to form, so he values structure? Those six steps are about writing for a specific audience? 

GPT-3 likely has a much huger sample base than Jarvis's, and perhaps a more sophisticated model for crunching them, so perhaps it would do a better job with these assignments. 

The Future of Vouchers

If you listen very carefully, you can hear what one likely future for school vouchers will be.

New Hampshire, in particular, seems to have leapfrogged over other voucher states to come that much closer to the end game. Nationally, Libertarian-leaning folks make the case that choice is good for its own sake, that the moral imperative to give people school choice outweighs any potential down side. But in New Hampshire,  in a Libertarian Institute podcast, Free State board member Jeremy Kaufman explained that school choice and vouchers are just "a stepping stone towards reducing or eliminating state involvement in schools." But that's only a part of the picture.

The flap over public education in Croydon, NH, is also instructive. Croydon had a choice program--in fact, a voucher program far more expansive and reaching than virtually any other in the nation. The deal was simple--the town would pay every students' full tuition to the school of their parents' choice. Private, public, even religious. It was exactly what school choice fans ought to love. Instead, the Free Staters and friends in Croydon took an axe to it, cutting the district budget so severely that parents faced the prospect of no choice at all except for low-cost "microschools"-- basically computerized homeschooling. That company (Prenda) is being pushed on the whole state. 

The "problem" was that the program was too expensive; the cut-in-half budget was based on the idea that it should cost about $10K for each kid to get an education.

Take this quote from a piece by Jody Underwood, one of the Free Staters who was wielding the ax in Croydon (Underwood told me that this piece is not her speaking, but her adopting the voice of a hypothetical taxpayer--for our purposes it doesn't make any difference.)

But I think the proponents of ‘school choice’ programs don’t understand (or take seriously) one of my major concerns. If they can use my money to send their children to private schools, then I can demand that it not be wasted on ‘schools’ that might be no more than glorified day care centers. That requires some kind of oversight — although not necessarily by bureaucrats who benefit when prices go up and quality goes down.

Also, I don’t think the people on either side of this debate appreciate how frustrating it is for someone like me, who is on a fixed income, to have to pay to school the children of people who can afford to pay for it on their own. To have poorer people providing a discount to richer people is perverse. There’s just no other word for it.

When and/or if we get a fully voucherized state, and once that battle is in the rear view mirror, we'll see language shift. At some point, vouchers will be called an entitlement. And once we've been conditioned to think of the money following the child rather than funding a school, we'll hear more of Underwood's rhetoric: "Why am I paying tax dollars to send Those Peoples' Children to school? Why is MY money following YOUR child?"

We'll start cutting the entitlement, or if the political winds aren't right, simply letting inflation whittle it away. Parents will complain, "I can't get my child a decent education with this paltry voucher," but voucher-cutters will protest, "Sure you can. Just look at Bob's Mini-Microschools and Ed-R-Us School In A Box! Perfectly fine. If you want something better, pay for it yourself."

Maybe there will be some sort of Poverty Bonus Voucher so that it's not obvious that the poors are being abandoned. Maybe "public schools" will exist as underfunded holding pens for students that can't be accepted anywhere else. Maybe someone will come up with a clever way to funnel block grants to select private (religious) schools. Local districts would, in many cases, follow the Croydon plan and cut any remaining public school system's taxpayer support to the bone, or just shut it down.

But once we are in voucherland, it is likely to look like this::

Parents will be on their own.

Anti-tax forces will be empowered to shrink the voucher.

Private schools will retain their ability to discriminate against students and staff as they see fit.

Students who are poor and/or require extra supports for their education will get sub-optimal education.

Well-to-do families will have fine choices.

Taxes will go down, which would be an insidious side effect because any attempt to restore an actual public education system would involve a huge bump in taxes to fund any such system. 

Remember, privatization is not just about privatizing schooling and making private individuals and corporations the owners and operators of the education system; it's also about privatizing the responsibility for providing an education and making it the private problem of parents instead of the shared responsibility of the community.

I have no doubt that there are voucher advocates who sincerely believe in the power of choice and who think that it would give us a richer, stronger, more robust education system. But for far too many voucher fans, it's a tool for gutting the public education system, getting government (and its taxing powers) out of education,  and restoring a world in which people know their proper places--and stay there. For some the dream really is that each person is an island, and everyone else better stay the hell off mine!

Let's Blame The Targets

Damn it. Damn it to hell. 

I include the link not because I think you aren't aware of the latest mass murder in a school, but because when I come back to this post some time in the future, the link will help me remember which mass murder I was raging about.

Like plenty of other folks, I have run out of things to say about school shootings in this country. Well, almost. There's one more thing to add.

Things I've said before:

We have a new standard for coverage of school shootings in this country-- it's only news if it sets a new record of some sort. Usually that means highest body count. That's grim news indeed-- if your goal is to become famous as a school shooter, and you're paying attention, then you have to know that you'll only get there with a super-high body count. This may qualify as the most perverse incentive ever.

And this:

Sandy Hook stands out among all our many various mass murders in this country, all our long parade of school shootings, because Sandy Hook was the moment when it finally became clear that we are not going to do anything about this, ever. "If this is not enough to finally do something," we thought, "then nothing ever will be."

And it wasn't.

"No way to prevent this," says only Nation Where This Regularly Happens is the most bitter, repeated headline The Onion has ever published. We're just "helpless."

There's always the hypocrisy to point out. Friday is supposed to be a big NRA celebration of the 2nd Amendment in Houston, headlined by Beloved Leader, plus Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Sen. John Cornyn, Sen. Ted Cruz, Rep. Dan Crenshaw, North Carolina Lt. Governor Mark Robinson, and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem. All of those luminaries are, of course, busily sending thoughts and prayers and "lifting up the families" on social media. 

In the last decade it has become a blindingly obvious statement to say that we have done nothing since Sandy Hook or Columbine or any of the rest, but that's not entirely true.

We have been busy blaming the targets.

We have developed entire industries that are all about hardening the targets, about making schools (and churches and a whole host of public places) harder to get into. We subject students to regular "active shooter" drills, and we make sure that staff are up on the latest approved technique for "coping" with an "active shooter situation." Or shit like this--one poster reported that at his wife's school, kindergartners closest to the door are taught to "throw things in the air and wave their arms" to buy time for their classmates (read the whole thread if you dare). 

There's an ugly damn implication in all of this--kids and teachers are dying because they are just too easy to kill. They have to make harder targets out of themselves. They have to learn to duck and cover and fight and flee.

But the responsibility for not getting dead is all on them. Because even though this is the only damn country in the world where this regularly happens, there just isn't a thing legislators can do about it except thoughts and prayers and banning race stuff and naughty books and making sure that abortion is illegal in all cases because they are so damned pro-fricking-life. 

They're already out there on social media, explaining that if all the teachers were armed this would never have happened. If the schools had spotted the signs this time (or ten days--TEN DAYS--ago in Buffalo) then they could have stopped this. 

We won't pass laws, we won't support even the most rudimentary checks on firearms, but we'll by God send you consultants and trainers and other folks to help you make yourselves harder targets (most of whom also think that gun control not only can't, but shouldn't happen) because if you end up dead it's really your own damn fault.

I am so sick and angry at all this stupid wasteful death, at the idea that my teacher wife and my soon-to-be-kindergarten children and my school and soon-to-school grandchildren are considered acceptable losses in the Noble Frickin' Fight to preserve the 2nd Amendment right to own guns that have no purpose except to blast lumps of metal through human flesh. 

We will now proceed with the routine and ritual. Thoughts and prayers. The proposal of stupid ideas: Arm teachers, custodians, administrators, bus drivers, because clearly more guns equals more safety and since we have the most guns on Earth we are clearly the safest nation and not one where shooting deaths and mass murders are ordinary (Yup--there's the Texas AF, right on schedule, advocating arming teachers--you know, those evil indoctrinatin' teachers who can't be trusted with students). Statistics to prove that the situation isn't really that bad. Whackburgers claiming this is a false flag meant to spur gun control--as if THAT has ever happened after a mass shooting before. Someone will blame it on mental health issues (spoiler: this will not lead to more government support for mental health treatment).

And then nothing, except the usual background noise right up until it happens the next time. 

I don't want the moon. I don't imagine there's a way to completely end gun violence and murder and awful scenes like we have today in Texas, but can't we try to be better? Can't we just try? And why wouldn't we want to? And if you don't want to at least try something other than saddling the targets with the responsibility for not dying, then by God do not come at me with any education reform fix the schools because it's For The Children bullshit. You tell me what policy changes you want to implement to help keep these children alive and then I'll listen to your yammering about phonics and saying gay. 

Damn it. Just damn it.

What Schools Still Need To Learn About Recruiting And Retaining Teachers

The stories have graduated from a steady drip drip drip to an ongoing drizzle. Across the country, states are confronting a huge number of unfilled teaching positions as the teacher exodus, well under way long before the spread of COVID and the conservative attacks on public education, continues unabated.

And yet many school districts, particularly medium-sized and small districts, have failed to adjust.

Many are still using the old recruitment model, which consists of posting a job opening and then waiting for a bunch of applications to come in. This is not working any more, and I am seeing districts where administration literally does not know what else to do. 

Contrast that with schools like Haines City Senior High School, in Florida of all places, or Lamberton High school in West Philly. In these schools, the principal has recruited teachers by building relationships with future teachers while they are still students in the school, and then grow those relationships with support. Consequently, these two schools, located in hard to staff areas, somehow have staff.

As has been noted at great length, the teacher pipeline is busticated. Here in PA, a decade ago the pipeline produced 45,000 newly certified teachers. Now the number is closer to 15,000. Just sitting in your district office dangling a posting while singing, "I have a job here...." will not cut it. 

Districts need to build, starting with their own students. They need to do outreach to college teacher prep programs. And they need to develop a pitch. When prospective hires ask, "Why should I want to work here?" the answer "We have a job" is not sufficient. Administrators, do you know why a teacher should want to work in your district and not at some other district, because if you can't answer that question, you are a step behind. 

The other piece that schools are missing is the retention piece. Much has already been written about what should be obvious-- pay and respect. But for new teachers to be successful, support is essential.

And yet new teacher support often depends on crazy strokes of luck. Which teachers do you share lunch period with? Who do you meet regularly at the copier because you have the same work period? Who teaches in the room next door? Who feels inclined to occasionally check in with the new teacher?

Some states, like PA, require new teachers to have "mentors," but that job can end up being another matter of scheduling convenience. In other words, nobody in the office is asking, "Which teacher would make a good pairing of style and technique with this new person?" Instead, they're just checking to see whose work period lines up. 

But that initial support is critical. I was fortunate enough to be in a grad program. The same prof who saw me almost weekly through student teaching came to observe monthly in my first teaching year. I took education courses with a dozen other first year teachers in my program. I had a whole support system for that first year (and I was lucky to have useful supportive colleagues who ate lunch the same shift). Schools should be thoughtful and deliberate in providing support for those beginning teachers and pick a mentor who's a good fit (which means, of course, that administration has to know their people well) for the newbie--even if it makes scheduling inconvenient for the front office.

Many districts don't offer that kind of support, but just hand teachers a key and directions to where their textbooks are stored, leaving first year teachers to fend for themselves. This leads to a great deal of frustration and failure-- and not just failure, but failure that's hard to process and learn from. It leads to lots of first year teachers asking, "Did I make a terrible mistake by going into this profession? Do I just suck?" Because teaching, no matter how good your prep was, is hard for most people to get good at. In all my years of teaching and having student teachers, I've met two "naturals" who were great teachers right out of the box. Everyone else had to ride the struggle bus, or as I have consoled more than a few sobbing student teachers, "If you don't cry at least once during student teaching, you don't understand the situation."

And yet in those first few critical years, what most districts offer as support is... nothing. There are dozens of ways to put a support program in place. And as a bonus, such a program would make a great recruiting tool ("We are going to work with you every step of the way to make sure you succeed!" would be such a powerful pitch). 

If your district does not have a plan for recruitment and retention, they are depending on dumb luck These days that's a bad bet.

OK: Buy Yourself A Secretary of Education

There's more than one way to privatize education.

Ryan Walters graduated from Harding University ("Faith, Learning, Living"), a private Christian university in Arkansas. The school was founded in 1924, and maintained advocacy of pacifism and political neutrality until the cold war, when it came out hard for free-market capitalism (they even produced some animated cartoons to help defend against Godless Communism). 

Harding's record on segregation is not great. Then President George Benson was a big crusader against communism, but he didn't much like integration, either (Black folks, he thought, were inferior because of that whole Curse of Ham thing). In 1957 a petition circulated on campus saying that Harding was ready to integrate; 75% of students, faculty and staff signed it, and Benson dismissed it as youthful idealism. They finally accepted three Black students in 1963. They hired their first Black faculty in 1980. By 2019, 4.7% of the student body was Black. To their credit, many students and alumni pushed the school to do better.

Benson also founded the college's National Education Program, which was based on three principles: belief in God, belief in the Constitution, and belief in the free enterprise system. In short, good old Christian nationalism. It gave Benson his fifteen minutes of national fame in forties, but NEP had to be spun off from the college (it got in the way of Harding's accreditation). Benson remained head of NEP long after he retired from the college in 1965.

So Ryan Walters graduated from Harding in 2010 with a Bachelor's degree in History. He returned to his home town of McAlester in 2011 to teach high school history, where he did well enough to be named McAlester Public Schools Teacher of the Year in 2015 and draw a finalist spot for Oklahoma's TOY award in 2016.

That put him in touch with folks at the state level. In 2018 he was appointed to the Oklahoma Community Service Commission, and the next year, newly elected Governor Kevin Stitt to the Commission for Educational Quality and Accountability. 

In 2019 he gave up his teaching gig to serve as the executive director of Oklahoma Achieves, the state Chamber of Commerce initiative that pulled big bucks from, among others, the Walton Family Foundation. Oklahoma Achieves would soon transform itself into Every Kid Counts Oklahoma, a "new education reform organization" that wants to give everyone "access to quality education." EKCO has been especially reluctant to provide their required IRS disclosure forms, but The Oklahoman did pry some info loose; donors include the Waltons, Yes Every Kid (a Charles Koch operation).

Walters was offered the top job for EKCO in March of 2020. In May of 2020 he went to work. March of 2020 was also the month in which President Biden Trump* signed the CARES Act, which included the Governor's Emergency Education Relief Fund (GEER). Oklahoma started pulling its money out in July of 2020, feeding a chunk of that money into a voucher program that would be handled by newly created Bridge the Gap, a program funded by GEER money but operated by Every Kid Counts Oklahoma, who in turn would hire ClassWallet, the Florida-based ed voucher management company. In August of 2020, Michael Rogers, who was serving as both Secretary of Education and Secretary of State, stepped down from the education post.

In September of 2020, Governor Stitt announced that Walters had been appointed to fill the spot of Secretary of Education, while also declaring that the post would be an individual cabinet position. In his mid-thirties, Walters is the youngest to ever serve in the post.

Walters hit the ground running. Already well-connected, he made an appearance at Jeb Bush's Edu-palooza in a presentation about how to launch a voucher program in just four weeks; the spot was sponsored by ClassWallet. It was such a hit that ClassWallet had him do it again for their Youtube channel in February of 2021.

And once Walters decided to run for state superintendent of public instruction ('proven record of winning the fight for our strong, conservative agenda"), he started singing from the culture warrior hymnal. He had previously dabbled in writing for The Federalist, but in 2022, candidate Walters really stepped it up.

He warned textbook publishers not to put any of that nasty CRT stuff in their books (and took flak for it). He "urged" a school district to prohibit students who were born "biological males" from using female bathrooms, claiming they had misinterpreted Title IX. As reported in the Stillwater News Press: "The US Department of Education’s rules, that your school board claims ordered this travesty, simply allowed school districts to choose their own path – and Stillwater has chosen poorly,” Walters wrote. “You have chosen radicals over your students, ideology over biology, and ‘wokeness’ over safety.” 

And he contributed a piece to Fox News: "Listen up, teachers: stop going woke." Walters, who is apparently still teaching at least one course, declared, "I will continue to teach my students the United States is the greatest nation in the world." Also, "The far-left's attempts to destroy our nation's history and indoctrinate our children must be stopped." And he has a busy Twitter page where he sometimes posts videos railing against any of the far-right shibboleths of the day. 

Walters has run into trouble for failure to disclose campaign finances. And that voucher program that he whipped together in just four weeks has turned out to be a mess. A federal audit gave the program lowest marks all across the board; digging by The Oklahoman revealed that federal GEER money ended up being spent on everything from Christmas trees to gaming consoles, with virtually no oversight by... well, anyone. ClassWallet, which had landed the contract for running the program without having to bid, quickly ducked responsibility (We were just following the rules we were given). Dems called for Walters' removal from office, to which Governor Stitt said, "Nope. He's swell."

Stitt has no reason to want Walters gone from the job, but now there's some question about Walters' real day job might be. Remember that executive director job that Every Kid Counts Oklahoma that Walters took months before his appointment to state education chief. He's stayed busy there; EKCO has advocated for education privatization, charter expansion, voucher growth-- all the usual. And Walters was well paid for the work.

Exactly how well paid has been fuzzy, largely because Stitt just vetoed a bill (passed by both sides of the legislature) that would have required state officials to disclose outside revenues and salaries. But according to The Oklahoman (Clifton Adcock, Reese Gorman, and Jennifer Palmer of Oklahoma Watch and The Frontier have been all over this story), Walters was hired for a $100,000 salary, with a requirement that he had to be paid at least 20% higher than the second-highest paid employee. His original contract called for an option of a minimum $20K raise after the first year.

So he's likely making at least $120,000 from EKCO.

His salary as secretary of education from the state of Oklahoma is $40,000.

Let me say that again. 

The Oklahoma state secretary of education has, as his primary source of income, at least $120,000 from a darkish money education reform group funded by, at least, Walton and Koch money. The state pays him a mere $40,000. 

So who is Ryan Walters' main employer? Not the state of Oklahoma. But his job with the state certainly puts him in charge of certain decisions about which his primary employers have a big interest.

Quoted in the Oklahoman piece is Delaney Marsco, senior attorney for ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit government watchdog group:

If you are responsible for making decisions in a certain area of the government and you are being paid by an outside organization that has an interest in that, that absolutely can be a conflict of interest. If you are a public servant, your duty is to the public, and anything that kind of calls that into question, even raises the appearance of a conflict of interest, is a problem.

That sounds about right. There are lots of ways to privatize education, but buying state education officials is certainly one of the more direct ones. Never mind sneaky money slid under the table; just put him on the payroll.

The Oklahoma primary will be on June 28; Walters is running against three other GOP candidates for the post. 

John Cox is a long-serving educator, most recently a school superintendent. His platform includes reduced class size, eliminating A-F school evaluations, and making public education a priority. Yes, he's really running as a Republican (but he ran in previous cycles as a Dem). April Grace is a long-time educator as well; she's running as anti-CRT, anti-bureaucratic red tape, and anti-school closures. William Crozier has run for state office before; way back in 2006 he ran for state superintendent with his campaign committee "Crozier for Superman" (that was four years before "Waiting for Superman" came out, so I'm not sure what he was thinking) and proposed bullet-proof textbooks (there is a video of him demonstrating his idea--really). I'm no Oklahoma political expert, but I have a feeling that Crozier is not a strong contender here.

Will Oklahoma stick with a chief official who actually works for someone else? And how much money will his employers put into the race to keep him somewhere that is handy for them? Stay tuned, folks. 

*Originally I mis-attributed the Presidency in 2020

ICYMI: Older And No Wiser Edition (5/22)

I was really hoping this would be the year in which I had a birthday and finally found substantially wiser as I entered a new era. Sadly, after a few days, the evidence suggests that my wisdom has not suddenly advanced with my age. Bummer.

I can, however, still pass on this reading list for the week.

Why a New Jersey teacher has kept an empty chair in his classroom for 52 years

Let's start with something encouraging. First, fifty two years. Second, this story about the chair.

The Long and Winding Road

Grumpy Old Teacher offers a stream of consciousness to float us on through testing season.

This Miami Dade teacher married a woman. Now she's not a teacher anymore.

From Yahoo News, one more story about how that whole Don't Say Gay thing is working out.

Senator demands parental blocking for gay/trans characters

How far do these folks plan to go? US Senators push for blocks for shows that so much as mention gay or (maybe) trans characters. 

When kids ask for books they're too young to read

Carolyn Hax operates a popular advice column, and she just took a question that prompted plenty of teacher response. Note: this is one of several Washington Post links this week.

School voucher bill has dire consequences for PA public schools

This op-ed at State College . com from a PA school board member lists just three of the ways that Pennsylvania's voucher bill is bad news.

Durham GOP's board slate soundly defeated

One of many positive stories from current elections, NC Policy Watch tells us about a failed conservative attempt to take over a school board.

State of Revolt

The Have You Heard podcast took a trip to Croydon, NH, where libertarians tried to defund education and got soundly spanked. Bonus: Jack Schneider debunks that infamous chart that shows cost increasing and test scores remaining flat.

What is the Koch-funded Buckeye Blueprint's education plan?

Jan Resseger takes at the latest plan to privatize public education in Ohio.

I'm a Black male educator. PA needs more people who look like me.

At the Penn Capital-Star, a guest op-ed bu Durrell Burns underlines the crazy huge lack of Black teachers in PA.

What Biden should say to charter school supporters now attacking him

Valerie Strauss imagines when a god response from this administration could be, pushing back against the charter supporters who are freaking out over proposed grant rule changes. This is thorough, and good. Also at Washington Post.

PA's richest person has spent $18 million on the 2022 primary

Jeff Yass is really rich, and he doesn't like paying taxes or public education. In fact, my sources tell me that the reason a voucher bill zipped out of the PA house is because he told a certain house leader that they'd better give him either a voucher bill or a tax cap bill, right now, or else. Oligarchy is so much fun. Some background info on the wealthy gambler (really-that's how he got rich) in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Why Gov. Youngkin is wrong about student NAEP stores

For the gazillionth time-- NAEP "proficiency: does not mean what your favorite public school basher says it means. Valerie Strauss gives space to James Harvey for an explanation (you might want to bookmark this one) in the Washington Post.

Six terms transforming public schools to the all-tech end game

Nancy Bailey offers a lesson in some ed tech jargon. Beware!

When we speak with children as people

Teacher Tom offers an insight that shouldn't come as a shock. And yet...

Social. Emotional. Learning.

Nancy Flanagan reflects on what SEL really looks like in a classroom.

Who will be tomorrow's public school teachers

At Live Long and Prosper, some good thoughts about the great teacher exodus.

Alligator on the sidewalk

The indispensable Mercedes Schneider was just having one of those days.

Meanwhile, this week I was also writing about Croydon, NH and the attack on education there for Forbes.com. Over at The Progressive, I wrote about the false promises of school choice and parent empowerment.

19 Rules for Life (2022 edition)

I first posted this list when I turned 60, and have made it an annual tradition to get it out every year and re-examine it, edit it, and remind myself why I thought such things in the first place (it is also a way to give myself the day off for my birthday). I will keep my original observation-- that this list does not represent any particular signs of wisdom on my part, because I discovered these rules much in the same way that a dim cow discovers an electric fence. Also, I'll note that it gets longer every year; if you think you see a book, feel free to contact me with a publishing offer. In the meantime, I exercise a blogger's privilege to be self-indulgent.

1. Don't be a dick.

There is no excuse for being mean on purpose. Life will provide ample occasions on which you will hurt other people, either through ignorance or just because sometimes life puts us on collision courses with others and people get hurt. Sometimes conflict and struggle appear, and there is no way out but through. There is enough hurt and trouble and disappointment and rejection naturally occurring in the world; there is no reason to deliberately go out of your way to add more. This is doubly true in a time like the present, when everyone is already feeling the stress. Be kind.

2. Do better.

You are not necessarily going to be great. But you can always be better. You can always do a better job today than you did yesterday. Make better choices. Do better. You can always do better.

3. Tell the truth.

Words matter. Do not use them as tools with which to attack the world or attempt to pry prizes out of your fellow humans (see Rule #1). Say what you understand to be true. Life is too short to put your name to a lie. This does not mean that every word out of your mouth is some sort of Pronouncement from God. Nor does it mean you must be unkind. But you simply can't speak words that you know to be untrue. I'll extend this to social media as well: if it's not the truth, don't post it.

4. Seek to understand.

The necessary companion to #3. Do not seek comfort or confirmation. Do not simply look for ways to prove what you already believe. Seek to understand, and always be open to the possibility that what you knew to be true yesterday must be rewritten today in the light of new, better understanding. Ignoring evidence you don't like because you want to protect your cherished beliefs is not helpful. Understand that this is a journey you will never complete, and it's not okay to quit.

5. Listen and pay attention.

Shut up, listen, watch, and pay attention. How else will you seek understanding? Watch carefully. Really see. Really hear. People in particular, even the ones who lie, will tell you who they are if you just pay attention. Your life is happening right now, and the idea of Special Moments just tricks us into ignoring a million other moments that are just as important. Also, love is not a thing you do at people-- to say that you care about someone even as you don't actually hear or see them is a lie.

Also, pay attention to things and people who contradict your cherished beliefs about yourself, because there may be something there that you really need to hear.

6. Be grateful.

You are the recipient of all sorts of bounty that you didn't earn. Call it the grace of God or good fortune, but be grateful for the gifts you have been given. You did not make yourself. Nobody owes you anything, but you owe God/the Universe/fate everything. I have been hugely fortunate/blessed/privileged; I would have to be some sort of huge dope to grab all that life has given me and say, "This is mine. I made this. It's all because I'm so richly deserving." I've been given gifts, and the only rational response I can think of is to be grateful. That's important because gratitude is the parent of generosity.

7. Mind the 5%

95% of life is silly foolishness that humans just made up and then pretended had some Great Significance. Only about 5% really matters, has real value. Don't spend energy, worry, fret, concern, time, stress on the other 95%. The trick is that every person has a different idea of what constitutes the 5%, and sometimes the path to honoring and loving that other person is to indulge their 5%.

8. Take care of the people around you.

"What difference can one person make" is a dumb question. It is impossible for any individual human to avoid making a difference. Every day you make a difference either for good or bad. People cross your path. You either makes their lives a little better or you don't. Choose to make them better. The opportunity to make the world a better place is right in front of your face every day; it just happens to look like other people (including the annoying ones). Nobody is in a better position than you are to take care of the people right in front of your face.

You are never too young for your first tin hat.

9. Commit.

If you're going to do it, do it. Commitment gets up and gets on with it on the days when love and passion are too tired to get off the couch. Also, commitment is like food. You don't eat on Monday and then say, "Well, that takes care of that. I don't need to think about eating for another week or so. " Commitment must be renewed regularly. 

10. Shut up and do the work

While I recognize there are successful people who ignore this rule, this is my list, so these are my rules. And my rule is: Stop talking about how hard you're working or what a great job you're doing or what tremendous obstacles you're overcoming. In short, stop delivering variations on, "Hey, look at me do this work! Look at me!" Note, however, there is a difference between "Hey, lookit me do this work" and "Hey, look at this important work that needs to be done." Ask the ego check question-- if you could do the work under the condition that nobody would ever know that you did it, would you still sign up? If the answer isn't "yes," ask yourself why not.

I've thought a lot about this one this year. It has occurred to me that one of the side effects of social media is that not only do we curate and craft our lives, but we want lots of other people to participate in and confirm the narrative that we're creating. "You're canceling me," often means "You are refusing to corroborate my preferred narrative." We don't just want an audience; we want pliable co-stars. 

11. Assume good intent.

Do not assume that everyone who disagrees with you is either evil or stupid. They may well be either, or both-- but make them prove it. People mostly see themselves as following a set of rules that makes sense to them. If you can understand their set of rules, you can understand why they do what they do. Doesn't mean you'll like it any better, but you may have a basis for trying to talk to them about it. And as a bare minimum, you will see yourself operating in a world where people are trying to do the right thing, rather than a hostile universe filled with senseless evil idiots. It's a happier, more hopeful way to see the world. 

Also, this: when you paint all your opponents as monsters, you provide excellent cover for the actual monsters out there. 

12. Don't waste time on people who are not being serious.

Some people forget to be serious. They don't use words seriously. They don't have a serious understanding of other people or their actions or the consequences of those actions. They can be silly or careless or mean, but whatever batch of words they are tossing together, they are not serious about them. They are not guided by principle or empathy or anything substantial. Note: do not mistake grimness for seriousness and do not mistake joy and fun for the absence of seriousness. Beware: One of the great tricks of not-being-serious people is to get you to waste time on them, to spend time and energy thinking, fretting, arguing acting about shiny foolishness, leaving them free for larger abuses that go unchecked.

13. Don't forget the point.

Whatever it is you're doing, don't lose sight of the point. It's basic Drivers Ed 101. If you look a foot in front of the car, you'll wander all over the road. If you stare right at the tree you want to miss, you will drive right into it. Where you look is where you go. Keep your eye on the goal. Remember your purpose. And don't try to shorthand it; don't imagine that you know the path that guarantees the outcome you want. Focus on the point (even if it's a goal that you may never reach) because otherwise you will miss Really Good Stuff because you had too many fixed ideas about what the path to your destination is supposed to look like.

14. People are complicated (mostly)

People grow up. People learn things. People have a day on which their peculiar batch of quirks is just what the day needs. Awful people can have good moments, and good people can have awful moments-- it's a mistake to assume that someone is all one thing or another. Nobody can be safely written off and ignored completely. Corollary: nobody can be unquestioningly trusted and uncritically accepted all the time. People are a mixed mess of stuff. Trying to sort folks into good guys and bad guys is a fool's game.

And make sure you don't get things backwards. Don't decide that someone is a Good Person or Bad Person and then waste energy trying to fit all of their actions into your predetermined definition.

15. Don't be misled by your expectations.

Doors will appear on your path. Open them even if they are not exactly what you were expecting or looking for. Don't simply fight or flee everything that surprises or challenges you (but don't be a dope about it, either). Most of what I've screwed up in life came from reacting in fear-- not sensible evaluation of potential problems, but just visceral fear. Most of what is good about my life has come from saying "yes." And most of that is not at all what I would have expected or planned for.

16. Make something.

Music, art, refurbished furniture, machinery. Something.

17. Show up.

The first rule of all relationships is that you have to show up. And you have to fully show up. People cannot have a relationship with someone who isn't there, and that includes someone who looks kind of like they're there but who isn't really there. You have to show up. In the combination of retirement and parenting again, I'm reminded that this also means nor just being fully present, but remembering to show up at all. You put your head down, do the work, and then a week or two later you're suddenly remembering that it's been a while since you checked in with someone. Rule #2 applies.

Part B of this rule is that when you show up, you may suddenly find out that the place and time requires something of you. Showing up means answering that call.

18. Refine your core.

Know who you are. Strip the definition of yourself of references to situation and circumstance; don't make the definition about your car, your hair, your job, your house. The more compact your definition of self, the less it will be buffeted and beaten by changes in circumstance. Note: this is good work to do long before you, say, retire from a lifelong career that largely defined you. 

19. How you treat people is about you, not about them.

It's useful to understand this because it frees you from the need to be a great Agent of Justice in the world, meting out rewards and punishments based on what you think about what people have done or said. It keeps you from wasting time trying to decide what someone deserves, which is not your call anyway. It also gives you power back that you give up when your stance is that you have to wait to see what someone says or does before you react to it. Treat people well because that's how you should treat people, not because you have decided they deserve it. But don't be a dope; if someone shows you that they will always bite you in the hand, it's prudent to stop offering them your hand.