PA: Penncrest Passes Reading Restrictions

"If we go to court over it, so be it,” he said, “because at the end of the day we’re standing up for what’s right and for what God has said is right and true.”

That's David Valesky of the Penncrest school board, responding to the board's passage of new restrictive rules on what sorts of books can be placed in the school library. 

The rules change has been brewing for almost two years, starting in May of 2021 when the library set up a display of LGBTQ+ books and Valesky posted:

Besides the point of being totally evil, this is not what we need to be teaching kids. They aren't at school to be brainwashed into thinking homosexuality is okay. Its [sic] actually being promoted to the point where it's even 'cool'.

Valesky later told the local newspaper that "he was against the school 'pushing' such topics onto the students," and that schools shouldn't have anything to do with "kids determining their sex or who they should be interested in."

Valesky's concerns continued. Back in May 2022, Valesky held up the purchase of books for the library. In particular he singled out the books "Global Citizenship: Engage in Politics of a Changing World" and "Nevertheless We Persisted: 48 Voices of Defiance, Strength, and Courage" as promoting Black Lives Matter. Other books on the list pertaining to racism that Valesky did not approve of include "Finding Junie Kim," "Genesis Begins Again," "Apple Skin to the Core," "Downstairs Girl" and "Fat Chance."

Valesky explained at the board meeting, as reported by the Meadville Tribune: 

"I don't have an issue if we're giving books that's targeting education of the Civil War and slavery and there is racism even today, but this is obviously like shoving it down every corner," he said.

Valesky said there were four books on the list that "openly promote the hate group Black Lives Matter."

"That's a group that is for destroying," he said. "They aren't protecting Black lives."

Valesky said the resource list needed to be "well-founded" and said the current version was "definitely far from it."

So in July, the board adopted new policies about library materials, but within a few months (including the month with elections in it), Valesky was back calling for tighter restrictions on what people can read.

Valesky has been the point man on this moral panic, but he's certainly not alone. Folks have been vocal in support of the restrictions at board meetings, and in the comments for my previous post about this (and that's not including the comments I didn't put up--pro tip: if you want to accuse people of an actual crime, the take your evidence to the police, and if you don't have any, then just shut up). And supporters were there at the January 12 voting meeting (you can watch it here-- don't miss the student who opens with "Hi, I’m Ezra. And I’m a radical left wing activist.”). 

These are clearly people who believe they are doing God's Work by stamping out evil books that promote evil things, though they see an awful lot of evil in an awful lot of things. To listen to the discussion you would think that the school wanted to place hard core porn films in the library and not, say, mass market novels like Water for Elephants and Looking for Alaska. 

And there is the usual disconnect. A student in the previous comments notes that with cuts and schedules, most students have no access to the library, anyway. Meanwhile, research tells us that students are turning to the internet--even in school--to look at actual porn. 

One board member noted that there was no worries about unintended consequences because the policy only forbids "explicit" stuff, so her beloved Les Miserables will be safe. I wish her luck. Since supporters claim that those opposing the policy were defending "pornography being read by minors," my sense is that the folks on this reading rampage are not interested in making very fine distinctions. Especially when it comes to LGBTQ+ depiction, where they have been clear that any depiction at all is evil and not to be tolerated. 

The broadest term in the rules is "sexualized content," which can mean almost anything. Valesky and his supporters have been pretty clear about what they think it means. For Penncrest students, it means they're about to learn some lessons about censorship in the US. 

Porn on the School Computers

I realize that the big concern right now is illicit books in the library (even if the library is unstaffed and rarely open and generally avoided by students). But a report this week does raise another concern about Dirty Stuff in school.

The report from Common Sense Media, entitled Teens and Pornography, includes a bevy of factoids. Some are not surprising (cis boys are more likely to view pornography on purpose). 44% of teens have viewed pornography on line on purpose. Some are not encouraging: 45% felt that porn gives "helpful information about sex" while 27% think porn "accurately shows sex." 

But the information about online porn accessed at school. They break down the numbers.

30% of students have seen online porn in school during the day. Way more have done so in in-person school (23%) than while attending school remotely (12%). 

For people who propose that charter schools will keep their children better bubbled. well-- plenty of traditional public school students have looked at online porn at school (23%), but charter/magnet students clock in at 41%. And private/religious schools? 50% of their students have looked at online porn during the school day. 

Two in five of the students who had looked at online porn at school during the day reported they did so on a school-issued device.

Education Week talked to assistant principal Scott Wisniewski, who pretty well captured where we are:

Twenty years ago, it was more of a process to acquire that type of materials. And now it’s not hard at all.

My district went to one-to-one computing over a decade ago. The grant money for such computing endeavors comes with a requirement for filtering, but filtering is a fine art. Too tight, and it gets in the way (so much for that report on breast cancer). Too loose and all sorts of garbage comes spilling over the parapets. 

Effective filtering comes with a variety of balances and trade-offs. Eventually the district allowed teachers to request exemptions for sites caught by the filter. Meanwhile, there isn't a filter built that your most gifted hacking students can't circumvent. 

The most effective technique that my district used (also mentioned in the EdWeek article) is also the most unsettling-- a system that not only blocks some material, but logs student keystrokes and notifies administration when students try to get to forbidden sites. It helps to officially inform the students of that level of surveillance, but whether you do or not, they'll find out. And in our district, you cannot connect your personal device to district wifi without opting into the district's filtering. (And in my district, your cell phone will use up its charge by 10 AM in a fruitless attempt to pull more than half a bar of LTE).

So along with their computer, they get an early lesson about life in the surveillance society. Troubling, but at the same time, it's the world they're headed for. As I told many complaining students, this is what's waiting for you. Your work computer won't be private. In fact, depending on your job, your emails and online communication may be subject to discovery. (And for God's sake, stop acting as if your social media stuff is private and confidential). 

All of this is going on while Moms for Liberty and others of that crowd demand that libraries be purged of books with sexy seahorses and descriptions of sex stuff. If students are going to go looking for prurient naughtiness, the school library will not be the first place they look and literature with a couple of naughty pages will not be the top of their search list. This, more than anything else, is why I have to conclude that these folks aren't really serious about their Naughty Materials Crusade.

There's an old notion that new technology is always first used to spread porn. If we're going to make it hard for students to look at actual porn and other objectionable material (and to be clear, I think we probably should), it's going to be part of working out the difficult and complicated new relationship between young humans and internet-linked technology. 

Tom Lehrer and Common Core

When Common Core pushed the idea that math students had to understand the theory behind the actual work, you may recall that many folks of a Certain Age said, "Hey, we've been here before." It was called New Math, and the inimitable Tom Lehrer wrote a song about in 1965. However, if you're current on math these days, you will recognize both the complaints and the operations described in this number. 

 

For you Lehrer fans-- if you haven't already heard, Lehrer has relinquished all rights to both his songs and his recordings thereof. At his website you can, as of this date, still download all of his recordings (he plans to shut the whole site down at some point "in the not too distant future"). 

Fun trivia: Lehrer and Stephen Sondheim went to summer camp together. 

FL: Moms For Liberty Want Expansion Of "Don't Say Gay"

You will recall that one of the defenses of Florida's Don't Say Gay law was that it was only for students in kindergarten through third grade, and surely nobody needed to talk to primary grade students about all that dreadful gender and sex stuff. 

Well, Moms for Liberty has some thoughts about that. As reported by Florida Phoenix:

“We are advocating to increase that as far as ages and grades to have it be K-8,” said Angela Dubach, the Pinellas County chapter chair of the organization, speaking to the members of the Pinellas County legislative delegation as they met as a group on Wednesday morning at the Clearwater branch campus of St. Petersburg College.

Brandon Wolf, press secretary for Equality Florida had some thoughts:

“At every step of the way, right-wing extremists have gaslit the community about its insatiable desire for censorship and erasure of LGBTQ people,” he told the Phoenix in an email.

“They insisted that the Don’t Say LGBTQ law would be narrow in scope and limited to K-3, despite knowing that the law’s impacts would be far broader and more sweeping. Already, we’ve seen books with LGBTQ characters banned, ‘Safe Space’ stickers peeled from classroom windows, the contributions of LGBTQ people in history censored, and LGBTQ History Month itself rejected in districts across Florida.”

Dubach also asked for an extension of the ban on masks and vaccine mandates, and said, “Myself and our organization supports partisan school board elections.” She also reported that she has spoken to teachers about the $140 million allocation for mental health, and they don't "anything to do with mental health." They just want to educate the children. Student mental health "is up to the parents, their doctors, and all of that stuff is at home." 

I'm sure if they get these requests, they'll be perfectly happy and that will be the end of it. 

Can AI Get A Date

Filteroff is a video speed-dating site that apparently lets you text for starters and then ramp up your activity with video. But the site apparently did something else intriguing.

The owners of the site noted a too-large number of the kinds of scammers that like to use dating sites to get themselves matched up with other people's money. And they decided to take a different approach:

When a user signs up for Filteroff, our sophisticated Scammer Detection System 🤖 kicks into full gear, doing complex boop-bop-beep math to determine if they are gonna be a problem.

When a scammer is detected, we snag them out of the Normal Dating Pool and place them in a separate Dark Dating Pool full of other scammers and… BOTS! Oh heck yeah. We built a bot army full of profiles with fake photos and some artificial intelligence that lets our bots talk like humans with the scammers.

What better field test for a language synthesizing algorithm? But this company's results are sporadically amusing.

They have a plethora of these, including many that they've acted out on video. It is striking how hard scammers are willing to keep plugging away in the face of nonsense. It's also striking how close-but-no-cigar the bot responses are.

This was last year, pre-ChatGPT, but since ChatGPT became the hot new thing, at least one writer has let the chatbot enter the dating pool. Jordan Parker Erb let ChatGPT handle her Hinge responses, and, well, as she put it, "ChatGPT is not a smooth talker." Some of her highlighted responses:

As a funny reply to a person who shared their most irrational fear was flying: "No problem, I'm more than happy to hold your hand and provide moral support during turbulence. And if the plane goes down, at least we'll go out together in a romantic blaze of glory!"

As a short witty response to someone who works in finance: "Hey there finance person! I see you're good with numbers. Can you help me with my budget? I'm trying to save up for a lifetime supply of avocado toast and craft beer. Is that a good investment?"

Erb reports that ChatGPT was really fixated on avocado toast and beer. 

Maybe this falls outside the range of what chatbots are intended to handle, but it's more data points to respond to the question of how well the algorithm can do responding to carbon based life forms in the wild.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders Waves At Windmills

"As long as I am governor, our schools will focus on the skills our children need to get ahead in the modern world, not brainwashing our children with a left-wing political agenda," said newly minted Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders. The she slapped down one of the thinnest versions of a Critical Race Theory ban seen so far in this season of CRT panic.

I fear Governor Sanders this much

Sanders did this via executive order, the kind of decree that runs around the legislature and another one of those things that some conservatives hate when other people do it. The executive order opens up with a bunch of whereas clauses including standard cliches (WHEREAS: Teachers and school administrators should teach students how to think—not what to think) and standard misrepresentations of CRT (WHEREAS: Critical Race Theory (CRT) is antithetical to the traditional American values of neutrality, equality, and fairness. It emphasizes skin color as a person’s primary characteristic, thereby resurrecting segregationist values, which America has fought so hard to reject;). 

Then we get to the heart of the edict itself, which very much follows the boilerplate CRT gag laws we've seen, with some important differences. I'm going to include the whole thing here; you can skip down past it if you're low on patience:

1. The Secretary of the Department of Education (the “Secretary”) shall take the following steps to ensure that the Department of Education, its employees, contractors, guest speakers, and lecturers are in compliance with Title IV and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (P.L. 88-352, 78 Stat. 241):

1. Review the rules, regulations, policies, materials, and communications of the Department of Education to identify any items that may, purposely or otherwise, promote teaching that would indoctrinate students with ideologies, such as CRT, that conflict with the principle of equal protection under the law or encourage students to discriminate against someone based on the individual's color, creed, race, ethnicity, sex, age, marital status, familial status, disability, religion, national origin, or any other characteristic protected by federal or state law.

 
2. The Secretary is further instructed that if any items are found to conflict with the principle of equal protection under the law, then the Secretary is instructed to amend, annul, or alter those rules, regulations, policies, materials, or communications to remove the prohibited indoctrination.

3. Prohibited Indoctrination Defined: No communication by a public-school employee, public school representative, or guest speaker shall compel a person to adopt, affirm or profess an idea in violation of Title IV and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (P.L. 88-352, 78 Stat. 241), including that:

4. People of one color, creed, race, ethnicity, sex, age, marital status, familial status, disability, religion, national origin, or any other characteristic protected by federal or state law are inherently superior or inferior to people of another color, creed, race, ethnicity, sex, age, marital status, familial status, disability, religion, national origin, or any other characteristic protected by federal or state law

5. An individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of the individual’s color, creed, race, ethnicity, sex, age, marital status, familial status, disability, religion, national origin, or any other characteristic protected by federal or state law.

6. An individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of the individual’s color, creed, race, ethnicity, sex, age, marital status, familial status, disability, religion, national origin, or any other characteristic protected by federal or state law.

7. Nothing in this section shall be construed to prohibit the discussion of ideas and history of the concepts described in subsection (c) or shall be construed to prohibit the discussion of public policy issues of the day and related ideas that individuals may find unwelcome, disagreeable or offensive.

8. As it relates to employees, contractors, and guest speakers or lecturers of the Department of Education, the Secretary is directed to review and enhance the policies that prevent prohibited indoctrination, including CRT.

9. The Secretary shall ensure that no school employee or student shall be required to attend trainings or orientations based on prohibited indoctrination or CRT.

It's the usual pile of baloney, rooted, I think, in a belief that our nation totally wiped out any legitimate concerns about race and anyone who is still bringing it up is just doing it to game some kind of political advantage. Rooted, also, in the whole notion that talking about equity and diversity and inclusion is somehow picking on white folks. This is baloney, but it is also empty performative baloney. 

The power of the worst of these laws comes from three factors-- vagueness, enforcement, and penalties. 

Vagueness involves prohibiting anything that involves race or gender or just making students uncomfortable. The worst of these laws (eg Florida) capitalize on that vagueness by using the Texas shuffle--making citizens the enforcement arm by giving any citizen the power to bring a lawsuit against teachers and/or districts just because that citizen (no matter how whackadoodle she may be) thinks Something Bad has been done. Therefor penalties for even getting close to the line include getting dragged into court. On top of that, some states have also played with loss of license for teachers and loss of money for districts.

As bad as Sanders's decree is, it lacks all of these weaponizing features. The secretary of education has to enforce this, and the penalties are... a scolding? And the prohibitions are specific enough to border on the dumb. Don't be explicitly racist or sexist. And I'm pretty sure #6 says "It is bad to break federal anti-discrimination laws." 

It's a technique that harkens back to conservative pushback against Common Core-- set up a straw man, wave at it, declare victory, lead the groundlings in a big cheer for you. It's a political cousin to loudly passing a law against allowing yetis to ride unicorns and then declaring, "See! You haven't seen any have you! Yay, me!"

Yes, it's bad, and yes, the MAGA folks understand that this only means the racism where white victims get racistly picked on, and yes, there's undoubtedly more baloney to come from this administration. But this edict mostly looks like a stunt, a piece of political posturing meant to whip up the base without actually doing anything. In other words, one more sign that Governor Sanders will govern as a grifter. Good luck, Arkansas.

NWEA Purchased To Become Marketing Tool

NWEA (the MAP test company) has been purchased by HMH, the education/learning/techno company. That's the headline. Let's take the occasion to consider one of the great corporate octopi of education, and what users of NWEA can expect in the future.

NWEA is best known as the company that sells the MAP test, a computer-delivered multiple choice test in the Common Core vein that many schools use for many purposes, some of them kind of ridiculous. Students don't much care about them, though NWEA has faced that head on by "developing" an algorithm that pretends to read students' minds based on how long they take to answer. Like many districts, my former district used MAP to pre-test students and predict how they were going to do on the states Big Standardized Test. I crunched the numbers once--MAP was a very lousy predictor of that. 

HMH is Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Once upon a time they were a bunch of textbook publishers, before glomming together into "a learning technology company committed to delivering connected solutions that engage learners, empower educators and improve student outcomes" as well as "a leading provider of K–12 core curriculum, supplemental and intervention solutions, and professional learning services." They include a whole world of curriculum materials (for good measure, they also own the ed publisher Heinemann.)

But HMH is not the center of this edu-octopus, because HMH is owned by Veritas Capital. We've met Veritas before, as they also own the giant mass that falls under the umbrella of the Cambium Learning Group. 

Veritas is a private equity company that's two whole decades old. Says their website, "We invest in companies that provide critical products and services, primarily technology or technology-enabled solutions, to government and commercial customers worldwide." But perhaps the scarier part, if you're a small tentacle they've decided to partner with, is this:

We seek to create value by strategically transforming the companies we acquire. Our sector focus and deep expertise are our competitive discriminators and allow us to identify and execute on multiple strategic levers that drive the performance of our investments.

They "employ an active approach to ownership and value creation," which has a pretty ominous Bond villainy sound to it. 

What role will the little sucker marked NWEA play in this undersea marauder. The announcement is pretty plain:

By combining NWEA’s assessments with HMH’s curriculum, HMH is expected to deliver a holistic solution for educators that helps them understand how students are growing academically and what areas need the most focus to maximize that growth. Most importantly, this solution will turn insights from assessments into content recommendations that help teachers address student-specific skill gaps and advance student learning.

In other words, your students take the NWEA MAP test, and along with a score, you get a recommendation of which HMH products you should buy to address whatever issues the test claims the student has. The MAP test will be a marketing tool. (Fun factoid: Goldman Sachs acted as the exclusive financial advisor to NWEA).

Am I being a party-pooper by casting a jaundiced eye at this "great alignment in mission and long-term vision"? I don't think so. I see some real problems.

First, what are the odds that the NWEA/HMH program will offer a recommendation along the lines of, "This student has everything under control and you definitely shouldn't waste any of your limited budget on any of our materials." 

Second, what are the odds that the NWEA/HMH program will say anything like, "The best materials and approach for this child's issues is one that is actually sold by a company that is not us."

All of this suffers from the fundamental problem of viewing educational materials as a means of generating revenue, with educational service to students a secondary concern. Diagnostic tests become marketing tools rather than educational tools. Their role is to target markets, not just by tailoring a sales pitch, but by helping to create the impression of a need, a crisis. 

I'm reminded of Mission Impossible II (that's the one with Thandiwe Newton plus Tom Cruise's crazy hair) in which the bad guys create a disease, a worldwide crisis, so that they can make a bundle selling the cure. HMH has just acquired an excellent means of pitching an educational crisis and selling solutions. It isn't going to help students very much but, hey--ka-ching!