Advocacy, Journalism, and the Science of Reading

My position in the reading wars is pretty simple:

The person who claims that one particular approach to reading instruction, codified in law and disseminated through teacher-proof scripted program-in-a-box instruction, will successfully turn every single child into a reader--that person either doesn't understand reading and literacy, or they are selling something.

As states line up to make the Science of Reading the law of their land (even if legislators have no idea what the hell it is), a pair of journalists offer some useful perspective (spoiler alert: neither one is Emily Hanford, but she offers something, too). 

One is this piece by Matt Barnum, long my favorite Chalkbeat reporter and now their interim national editor. The piece makes a solid dig into a basic truth about reading and literacy-- being able to decode is not literacy. You can decode phonemes all day, but if you don't know what the hell any of it means, you are no more literate than the software that "reads" articles aloud. For another example-- I can learn to pronounce Latin pretty easily. Phonetically it's a far more tidy language than English. But the fact that I can pronounce Latin words aloud accurately doesn't mean I can read Latin.

I also highly recommend this piece by Rachel Cohen for Vox, which presents a nuanced view of the whole SOR wrangle and a well-balanced picture, including some pointed comments from Mark Seidenberg, whose cognitive neuroscience work has been the basis of some SOR advocacy.

In an interview with Vox, Seidenberg expounded on his criticism: “It’s a difficult situation because people want to adopt better practices, they understand the idea that what was done before was not really based on solid ideas … but now you have a huge demand for science-based practices pursued by advocacy groups and people who don’t have a great understanding of the science.”

Seidenberg believes that moving away from strategies like three-cueing is important. But he warned that a simplistic reliance on some of the foundational reading science research can lead to some misinformed instructional conclusions, like the idea that children should learn units of sound (or “phonemes” ) before letters, and letters before syllables and words.

“That’s a basic misunderstanding,” said Seidenberg. “Phonemes are abstract units that are results of being exposed to an alphabet, they’re not a precursor.” He also lamented that some leaders have incorrectly cited his research to suggest there’s no downside to teaching kids phonics in the early grades for too long. “There are big opportunity costs and the clock to fourth grade is ticking,” he said. “You only want to do a lot of instruction on these components enough to get off the ground.”

All of education is about balancing different, even conflicting, ideas and approaches and interests, while the reading wars run on absolutes. At its worst, the SOR push has been a simple "everything schools do now is wrong and only this is right," which is bunk no matter how you fill in the specifics. So yes, phonics are crucial, and yes, they aren't the only crucial thing. And yes, the love of reading is a crucial thing to fosters, and yes, nobody loves doing a thing they don't do very well. It's a complex, unending discussion.

Stories like the two above are special precisely because journalists have done a pretty lousy job of covering the reading wars. Largely lacking any reading instruction expertise themselves, journalists have done a poor job of distinguishing between people who know what they're talking about and those who don't, as well as distinguishing between anecdote and data.

Education writers association (a group that does not allow full membership for those of us who don't make our primary living writing about education, but I swear I'm not bitter) hosted a panel about covering literacy with Rupen Fofaria (EdNC), Mandy McClaren (Boston Globe) and Emily Hanford. It's not encouraging.

The article about the panel doesn't really distinguish between reading and literacy, for starters.

McClaren notes that "each side" has research, and that the subject is complex and complicated, but it's important, but that it's important not to take a "both sides" approach to writing about  reading. I'm not sure which each or both sides she means. Is there a side in the reading wars that is against teaching children to read? The implication is, at a minimum, that there's one side that is right and one side that is wrong, and the wrong side has to be shut down. And the journalist will figure out which is which. But at worst, the implication is that there are a bunch of people out there actively trying to thwart the Real teaching of reading (that implication is how SOR people were an attractive target for co-opting by Moms for Liberty types).

But for all the people on Twitter who have told me repeatedly that Hanford is a journalist and not an advocate--please read this piece. 

Hanford asserts that the research on how students learn to read is settled--which is an astonishing thing to assert about any research at all. Hanford acknowledges that criticism of her work exists:

There are those who don’t believe the research or don’t understand it, she said. Others agree with the research but didn’t like that the “Sold a Story” podcast focused so heavily on phonics, and less on the other parts of learning to read, such as fluency and comprehension, that are also important.

But phonics is the piece that’s been missing, she said, and the goal was to combat “this idea” that students could largely learn to read without it, without being given explicit, direct, cumulative instruction.

As soon as you declare that your goal is combat a particular view, you're an advocate, not a journalist. And Hanford has other thoughts-- Journalists, she said, have control over the narrative. "We get to be the watchdogs. We get to be the ones who can contribute to what happens." Again, this is advocacy. 

I have nothing against advocacy (obviously). But if you're going to be a journalist, that involves things like trying to understand the various viewpoints, educating yourself to the nuances of the topic, and certainly not declaring that the whole question is settled and all that's left is to push strongly for the side you've decided is the correct one (based on your months of study). 

Coverage of the teaching of reading is hard. It would have to be, because the actual work is hard and complicated and complex and has always been at the mercy of wars between various people with partials understandings of the issues involved. A few journalists are helping. A bunch of other sort-of-journalists are not.

Gates: AI Like Great High School Teacher

Bill Gates, the wealthy education amateur, just won't stop talking about his genius ideas for education. He remains a pioneer in selling the idea that to be an expert in a field, you can either actually study and work in that field, or you can just be a rich guy.

Combine that limited understanding of teaching with aspirational fantasies about technology, and you get his latest wacky ideas.

Gates predicts that AI chatbots will be able to be just "like a great high school teacher" when it comes to teaching writing. Gates acknowledges that they can't do it now, that current software is "not that great" at teaching reading or writing skills, which is a statement on par with saying that McDonalds is "not that great" at creating fine dining experiences.

But Gates is sure that soon the algorithms will be able to provide useful feedback, like getting more clarity or making arguments more solidly reasoned and supported. 

Very few students get feedback [from software programs] on an essay that this could be clearer, you really skipped this piece and the reasoning. I do think the AI will be like a great high school teacher who really marks your essay, and you go back and think, "OK, I need to step up there."

Note the "soon." Software that can do a good job of assessing writing has been coming "soon" for decades. It has not arrived (as we have chronicled repeatedly here at this blog: see here, here, here, here, here and here for starters). Not only has it not arrived, but it has shown no signs of arriving any time soon. "I put your Big Mac on a doily," says Ronald. "Are you feeling the fine dining yet?"

There's a fundamental problem with both robo-grading and robo-writing--the software does not "read" or "understand" language in any meaningful sense of the words. What the algorithm does is say, "Based on my library of samples, the most likely word to come next in this string of words is X." The notion that algorithms could assess how clear or well-reasoned a piece of writing is is absurd (note: the algorithm in my desktop is certain that the repeated "is" is a mistake). 

The algorithms' predictive power, fed by a gazillion language "samples" stripped and/or plagiarized from a variety of sources, is getting greater all the time, but that growth is not getting us any closer to actual reading and understanding of text. The algorithm doesn't know what it's saying, and it doesn't know what you're saying. It's just increasingly adept at determining whether or not you have fallen within the parameters of linguistic probability.

Gates acknowledges that it would be a huge step. And he also didn't quite say that this "like a great teacher" software should replace human teachers. But it would help "overworked" teachers and provide better educational stuff for poor kids (without, of course, having to bother the world's jillionaires by having them pay more taxes or operate their corporations in such a way that they put more resources back into the community instead of just draining them, because one way to help "overworked" teachers is to hire more teachers and one way to get "low-income" students better schools is to spend the money to get them the resources, but hey, let's not talk crazy, because Gates would like to help the world, but only in ways that don't actually address his role in creating the current state of the world--read Winners Take All).

What the software would need, Gates suggests, is for actual teachers to offer AI tutoring programs feedback about how tech could help them do their jobs, and he is just SO CLOSE to a useful idea here, because for thirty years what ed tech executives needed to do was ask that same question of those same people rather than what we've been getting, which is ed tech guys saying, "I've come up with this really cool tool which will really help you if you just change what you do to fit what the software does." Instead, Gates offers "Could you give us a hand in training your replacement?"

Meanwhile, various districts are playing with bot applications, like Los Angeles schools, where a chatbot named Ed will be doing... something? Answering parent phone calls about basic data that any bot could be programmed to look up and report? Or maybe writing IEPs, which would be scarier. 

An algorithm that can teach and assess writing is a longtime ed tech dream, presumably because it seems like such an open market. Grading essays and papers is time-consuming, hard, and fuzzily subjective, and so an endless parade of ed tech gurus and edu-prenuers have pitched their algorithm or hawked a product that is Just Around The Corner because either A) it would streamline and standardized a fuzzy subject area or B) the person who gets it right will make sooooo much money.

But wishes are neither horses nor English teachers, and the dreams of one of the world's richest men are still just dreams. 

ICYMI: Last Hurrah Edition (8/19)

I'm typing this on the mobile office in a hotel in downtown Cleveland, where the CMO (Chief Marital Officer) and I have come to wrap up her summer and use the theater tickets that were her Christmas present. Next week she'll be back at that delightful mix of room prep work and soul-crushing PD that kicks off a teacher's year. 

Here's this week's list, including a couple of If You Only Read One Thing selections. 

The new “science of reading” movement, explained

Here's one must-read for the week. For Vox, Rachel Cohen provides one of the best explainers written about the science of reading flap, done with nuance and thoughtfulness. Read this.

What happened when an Ohio school district rushed to integrate classrooms

Laura Meckler in the Washington Post. Shaker Heights school district wanted to fix some equity problems. Things could have gone a little better.

Research on school vouchers suggests concerns ahead for education savings accounts

Researcher Josh Cowen once again lays out the research that shows how vouchers fail to live up to their promises, and fail to serve students and taxpayers.

Top 5 myths of separation of church and state

If you only read a couple of things on the list this week... This comes from the head of the Baptist Joint Committee, and it makes a forceful (and useful) argument for the separation of church and state (including schools). You can even view it as a pdf, making it easier to print out and send to people who really need to read it.

New Jersey Supreme Court rules in favor of Catholic school that fired a teacher for having premarital sex

One can question whether this is right or not, but don't forget to ask if schools like this should be propped up by taxpayer dollars.

Texas: BASIS Charter School Sells “VIP Car Line” for $2500+ a Pop

Does it seem exclusionary that some charters don't provide transportation? You don't know the half of it. The indispensable Mercedes Schneider has the tale of one Texas charter's clever fundraising idea.

Ron DeSantis Wants To Win Over Parents — But He's Focusing On The Wrong Issues

Horsey race coverage from FiveThirtyEight, with some interesting survey results included.

Idaho law hands parents more power in choosing school curriculums. It’s led to major changes

In the Guardian, a well-rounded piece about the effects of Idaho's law forcing school-parent collaboration. In some places, it's actually going pretty okayish. In others, not so much.

Banned: 19 books pulled from Mason City School Libraries

The story here is not that schools in Iowa are pulling books from shelves--that's not news. What's new is how they're using AI to facilitate the process and banning books that nobody has objected to.

Book banning, reshelving has reached ridiculous heights

Niki Kelly is mostly a political reporter in Indiana, but she sees the moves to restrict reading materials becoming increasingly absurd and overly repressive.

From ‘crisis’ to ‘catastrophe,’ schools scramble once again to find teachers

NBC  news on the story.

Are We Failing Our Teachers?

How do we know that the story of the teacher exodus is really starting to penetrate the mediasphere? Well, this story ran in Readers' Digest, not exactly known for their heavy hitting education coverage. Yet here they are.

Idaho’s Teacher of the Year Winner Leaving State Following Right-Wing Harassment

And if you'd like your coverage of the teacher exodus more personal and specific, here's a depressing case study for you.

Wisconsin’s public schools and the war on democracy

Always happy to see Ruth Conniff write about education. Here's a deep dive into the issues facing public schools in Wisconsin, including under-funding and attempts to undercut democratic institutions.

Chaos at New College of Florida

The DeSantis attempt to replace a liberal college with a hard right one is not going all that well. Johanna Alonso covers it for Inside Higher Education.

Recall language approved for school board member charged with being fake elector for Trump

Those fake electors in Michigan who are now in trouble for trying to help steal the 2020 election? One of them is a school board member.

Philadelphia’s school board must take charter school standards seriously — and act when they’re not met

Lisa Haver looks at the condition of Philly charters, the super-well-paid leadership that is failing students and taxpayers, and the folks failing to hold the charters accountable.

Florence 1 Schools: Palmetto Youth Academy still using taxpayer money despite being closed

Their authorizers shut them down in June, but this South Carolina charter is apparently still open, and still spending taxpayer dollars.

The Claremont Institute: The Anti-Democracy Think Tank

There was a time when folks thought of the Claremont Institute as conservative, but not wing nuts. That time has passed. In more recent years, they've gone off the deep end-- and they're very well connected. Katherine Stewart writes about it in the New Republic.

A National Warning

Thomas Ultican has spotted some shenanigans in Delaware surrounding charter school regulations and a new model to make charters less accountable. Watch out and make sure it's not coming to your state.

Black teachers are burning out of classrooms. Meet the people fighting to keep them there

From Reckon, an encouraging piece about some of the groups trying to get actual support to Black teachers. 

Houston ISD student regrets performing in ‘propaganda play’ starring Mike Miles

This is crazypants. Mike Miles, to help whip up the troops coming back to work in the Houston school district that the underqualified takeover artist now runs, decided what they needed was a musical about Mike Miles. The show included students, one of whom now says they were tricked into helping with this sad propaganda ploy.

School districts call state ed department’s bluff, keep AP African American Studies on the books

Governor Huckabee Sanders' Arkansas said, "You can't teach that stuff here because it's indoctrination." Now school districts are saying, "Yeah? Try and stop us." Give a cheer, and pass the popcorn.

Inside the campaign to cancel sex ed

Sarah Crosby at Popular Information looks at how Moms For Liberty and their friends would now like to cancel sex ed, courtesy a bootleg tape of an M4L planning session.

Universal ESA vouchers: Arizona’s $1 billion failed experiment

How's that whole vouchers for everyone thing going in Arizona. Not great, if you're a taxpayer.

New ACLU Complaint Reveals Central Bucks School District Lied To The Community, Illegally Retaliated Against Teacher

But hey--at least the fake report was really expensive. Bucks County Beacon continues to keep an eye on one of the worst school boards in the country.

Using Frederick Douglass to Rationalize Slavery? In Florida, Yes!

PragerU videos are all pretty bad, but Charles Blow at the New York Times writes about one of the worst, in which Frederick Douglass explains why slavery wasn't all that bad.

Is PA’s Richest Billionaire Trying to Buy a State Supreme Court Seat?

You know, who among us has not tried to buy a judgeship? But if you're in Pennsylvania, be aware that the anti-abortion GOP candidate for state supreme court has been heavily financed by Rich Guy Jeffrey Yass.

Join me on substack. It's free, it waits patiently for you in your email inbox, and it doesn't require you to submit to the whims of techbro billionaires.

The Koch Wish List (Spoiler: Microschools)

Remember when Charles Koch wrote that he had done an oopsie by being so partisan and dividing the country? That was back in late 2020, and it was followed by the rise of a new Koch Brand--Stand Together aka the Charles Koch Institute's new branding exercise.

So, Charles Koch Institute is now Stand Together Trust, an organization that now has a hip young vibe. Check out the website-- "We help you tackle the roots of America's biggest problems" in bold print over dynamic videos. Hugging! Clapping! Black people! "Everyone is tired of all the fighting over problems with very little focus on real solutions."

Stand Together has mounted a steady PR campaign that may have popped up on your social media feed, highlighting plucky individuals who are making the world a better place and could accomplish even more if there weren't government regulations in their way. Stand Together also maintains the Koch interest in education, and we can see what they're looking for by examining publications like Stand Together's "How Education is Transforming in America."

Like many such publications, this is less interested in predicting the likely future and more interested in pushing their particular vision. "One can't help but notice," it opens, "that education is transforming in America." And so it is instructive. What is it that "one" is supposed to notice? What is it that the Koch folks want?

People want individualized education

People really want this. Koch knows this because a survey they paid for from Tyton Partners says so. Are Tyton Partners pollsters? Nah-- they're "an investment banking and strategic consulting firm that specializes in, and has significantly shaped, the education technology industry." So their report (which you can only download if you have a business address) carries the same weight as a Ford Motor Company survey about transportation or a restaurant industry organization survey about food regulations or just generally time that you ask someone who has something to sell if they think you need the something that they are selling.

Tyton's finely tuned research turns up some stuff, like the majority of parents want learning in small groups and a flexible daily schedule. Also, parents think learning can happen anywhere. There is nothing particularly shocking in any of those findings (is there any parent who would argue their child should stop learning when they leave school). You can read these answers to depict support for smaller class sizes, but that's not where the Kochs are headed.

They will invoke the privatizer trope of the 100-year-unchanged school system and say that people want something new and different? What could that be? For that, they turn to Transcend, an outfit that is funded by Koch money and which has for its board of directors a batch of investment capitalists and entrepreneurs who make bank running education-flavored businesses. 

Transcend has its own "study" of educational alternative approaches that say that parents want flexibility and connection "to the assets, knowledge, needs and opportunities in their communities."

There are loads of policy ideas "for creating an environment conducive to individualized education."

Cut to the chase. They like microschools.

They toss up the far right Reason Foundation report on open enrollment policies and "best practices." They also bring up Assembly, a policy push project that is under the Bellwether umbrella but has a big list of reformster partners, including plenty of the Koch gang. Koch themselves tell us that Adam Peshek, who works for Stand Together, is an advisor. 

Lots of entrepreneurs are working on this.

Well, yes. That's part of the point, isn't it. Eliminate public education and replace it with the free market and voila!- you have money-making opportunities for all sorts of entrepreneurs.

Peshel pops up again to offer the usual baloney about the K-12 system being out of date and "designed for a time that no longer exists": and yes, he invokes the factory model. 

The report goes on to offer an exemplar of individualized education from among the operations supported by VELA. Headed up by Meredith Olson (a VP at Koch's Stand Together) and Beth Seling (with background in the charter school biz), the board of VELA is rounded out by reps from Stand Together and the Walton Foundation. VELA "invests in family-focused education innovations." One of their big successes is the microschooling operation Prenda, which landed itself a big fat contract in New Hampshire.

Microschooling is the hot new thing in "individualized education." A computer or two, a willing adult, a company to provide you with learnin' stuff, and you're good to go. The movement is marked with a remarkable level of amateur hour confidence, a repeated "discovery" of things that are news only if you've never spent fifteen minutes reading or thinking about education in your life. Here's a paragraph from the Stand Together report regarding microschooling:

Sarah and Yamila point out that kids learn how to walk and to talk by observing and experiencing the world around them--why can't they continue to learn that way throughout their school years, too?

Oh, honey.

So why do the Kochs and their assorted libertarian billionaire friends like individualized education in general and microschools in particular?

What are we individualizing?

Vouchers. Microschools. Individualized education. Permissionless education. It's all having a moment.

What they all have in common is an expression of the belief that government should not do things, that government that just leaves people alone and doesn't regulate them or tax them--that's good government. In fairness to these folks, they are consistent--Koch money opposed the authoritarian Trump and CRT bans. But when they talk about individualizing education, they don't just mean individualizing the education that your student gets.

What all of these have in common is removing government from the education sector and making parents responsible for getting their kid an education. 

Vouchers are not about providing choice; they're about making your child's education your problem. The voucher is just a little payoff to lessen the sting (at least until the amount is reduced some day). Private schools can still decide whether to accept your child or not, and voucher payments may or may not be sufficient to get your child the education you want for them--but that will be your problem. Yours and yours alone. 

Microschools are appealing because they plug one of the holes in this scenario. Are you still too poor to get your kid into a great school, even with a voucher? Does your child have special requirements that no private school wants to meet? Has your kids been rejected from all the private schools because your family is the wrong religion? Is the public school in your area not able to help with any of this because their funding has been gutted?

Well, then-- a microschool is the answer for you. Just get together with a couple of similarly-struggling neighbors, clear off the kitchen table, pool your voucher funds, and hire some service to provide a sort of modified homeschooling combined with some distance learning tools (because we all loved those back in 2020). 

A microschool is not anything that a wealthy family with other options would choose. But when someone asks, "Hey, what are all the families that lack resources and opportunities in yhe brave new world of privatized responsibility for education--what are they supposed to do?" Microschools will make a swell answer. In other words, the push for individualized learning doesn't solve education problems so much as it solves the problem of how to sell the policy goal of dismantling public education.

GA: Teacher Fired, Book Suppressed, And It's Just Bullshit

The story of  Katherine Rinderle has dragged out over the summer and has now come to a predictable and yet unjustifiable conclusion. This is just wrong.

The short version of the story is that Rinderle read Scott Stuart's "My Shadow Is Purple" to her fifth graders, after they selected it for their March book. A parent complained. The Cobb County School District suspended her and the superintendent announced a recommendation to terminate her. A tribunal appointed by the board recommended that she not be fired. The board just fired her anyway.  

This is a bullshit decision.

Was this one of those graphic books with blatant displays of sex stuff? No. This is the most bland damn thing you could hand a kid. I would read it to my six year olds without hesitation. 

A child plays with action figures and dolls, likes dancing and sports and ponies and planes and trains and glitter, and, in the climactic event, wants to go to the school dance in an outfit that has a suit-ish top and a skirt-ish bottom. Discouraged by the insistence that they must choose either blue or pink at the dance, the purple-shadowed child decidesd to leave, but then an assortment of friends declare their shadows are a wide variety of colors, and a happy ending ensues. "No color's stronger and no color's weak."

That's it. That's the book. (I've attached a read-aloud video at the bottom so you can see for yourself.) There's nothing about sex, barely a mention of gender, and the message is simply that there are other ways to be beyond stereotypical male or female roles. 

That's the book that this woman lost her job over. 

Georgia has, of course, a "divisive concepts" law with appropriately vague language so that teachers can live in fear that they could lose their jobs over anything that some parent thinks is divisive and disturbing. Meanwhile, the boardwas trying to argue its bullshit decision, by hinting that Rinderle is a big old troublemaker:

Without getting into specifics of the personnel investigation, the District is confident that this action is appropriate considering the entirety of the teacher’s behavior and history. However, as this matter is ongoing, further comment is unavailable. The District remains committed to strictly enforcing all Board policy, and the law.

Sure. Pro tip: if you're going to fire someone over This One Thing because they've also done a bunch of Other Bad Things, then fire them over the Other Bad Things. Otherwise, it looks pretty much like you've got a petty grudge bug up your butt and the current firing is just bullshit.

So Georgia's teachers have been sent a clear message about staying in line and not bringing up anything remotel;y controversial ever.

And now the children of Cobb County in particular and Georgia in general have been sent an important message-- if you're different, that's not okay, and if someone suggests that it's okay, well, that's illegal. Shame on Cobb County's school board. Shame on the state of Georgia. And if you're so sure that these kind of reading restrictions are only about protecting children from graphic pornography, take a look at this and think again.

PA: In Central Bucks, Students May Have To Certify Gender

The Central Bucks School District board keeps looking for the bottom.

The wealthy, white, Philly suburban district has been an example of how far off the rails a right wing batch of culture warriors can drag a district. By December of 2021 they were already the subject of a New York Times story demonstrating how a board could get wrapped up in arguments about masks and culture war issues while the day to day needs of the district went unaddressed.

They instituted a book banning policy, aided by the Independence Law Firm, the legal arm of the christianist nationalist Pennsylvania Family Institute ("Our goal is for Pennsylvania to be a place where God is honored, religious freedom flourishes, families thrive, and life is cherished.") Both the ACLU and the U.S. Department of Education came after the district for creating a hostile environment for LGBTQ students-- so they hired a noted anti-LGBTQ lawyer to do an internal investigation; the resulting report might not have been entirely forthcoming (but it was expensive).

They banned pride flags. They suspended a teacher who defended LGBTQ students. They implemented a policy that required the school to out LGBTQ students with a "gender identification procedure". No name changes without a note from home. 

They created such an atmosphere of hostility distrust that last June, some graduating seniors requested that the superintendent and board president not give them their diplomas, asking instead to receive their sheepskin from a board member who actually values equality, diversity and inclusion. This summer, the board rewarded its superintendent's loyalty to their right wing agenda by making him the second-highest paid superintendent in the state (the district has 17,000 students). 

Now the board is considering, again, a gender id policy (apparently also written for them by the ILC). This transgender athlete policy restricts athletes to the sport designated for their gender at birth. Like most such policies it's really only aimed at trans women, and argues that it's "safer" this way. Parents/guardians can designate the student's sex for school records, but if "the Superintendent or Athletic Director has reasonable cause to believe that the student's sex is other than designated" then the parents will have to produce a birth certificate "certifying the student's sex to the Superintendent or Athletic Director."

Heaven only knows what "reasonable cause" is likely to mean in practice, but I have a hard time imagining any such circumstance that wouldn't be a hammer blow to a tween or teen girl's ego. "Sorry dear, but the superintendent of schools thinks you're too ugly and awkward to be a real girl, so we have to take some paperwork in." The most likely scenario is, of course, one we've already seen -- "That so-called girl just beat my daughter in the 500 meter again-- I want that kid's gender certified right now!"

There are other possible scenario, but I can't think of any good way to tell a teen that she has to prove she's really a female at a point in her life when she's naturally wrestling with identity and self. Teenagers already have a million issues that play out just in getting dressed for school; sure, let's just add "Does this make me look too much like another gender" to the list.

There are policies and laws like this popping up all over, and they are all bad, all oppressive to LGBTQ students and to straight ones as well. Governor DeWine of Ohio, of all people, had the right idea when he vetoed an anti-trans law a year ago:

The welfare of those young people needs to be absolutely most important to this issue, whether that young person is transgender or not.

But the Central Bucks board has been putting their own agenda ahead of students for a while now. Will they hit the bottom any time soon, or will the voters of Central Bucks finally start voting with children in mind?

TX: Intolerance and Classroom Politics

Your first reaction to this story is probably going to be that this is more dumb stuff from Texas. But there's another layer to examine.

Trustee (board member) Melissa Dungan in the Conroe school district expressed a desire to "crack down" on certain items, ostensibly because members of the public had contacted her because of their big big concern.

"I wish I was shocked by each of the examples that were shared with me, however, I am aware these trends have been happening for many years," Dungan said.

When pressed to share one of those examples, Dungan referred to a first grade student whose parent claimed they were so upset by a poster showing hands of people of different races, that they transferred classrooms.

"Just so I understand, you are seriously suggesting that you find objectionable, a poster indicating that all are included," Stacey Chase, another trustee, said.

This is pretty clearly a narrative of epic baloniosity, though I suppose the lack of clarity in pronoun usage leaves the door open for the possibility that it was the parents who were "upset" by the multiracial handholding. 

So there are a couple of things to note here.

The first is that, yes, there are people who are this crazypants racist in this country.

The second is the argument that Dungan makes for getting rid of the Scary Poster.

Citing "a number of parents reaching out to her about supposed displays of personal ideologies in classrooms,"

she wants to avoid "situations like that" by having the board adopt stricter standards and adhere to state policies already in place, prohibiting teachers from displaying political items not relevant to curriculum.

We've heard this argument before. Black Lives Matters shouldn't be brought up because it's a political statement. Any kind of pride flag or rainbow should be taken down because it's a political statement. We have allowed everything to become politicized, and so now, all statements are political statements.

People of different races should get along? Political statement. Vaccinations are good? Political statement. Posters with bland homilies like "be kind"? Political statement. All students should feel safe and accepted? Political statement.

The effect is that when something in school challenges someone's ignorance and intolerance, they don't have to try to defend their ignorance and intolerance--they can just call the challenge a political statement. "It's not that I want to promote a racist or intolerant idea," they declare. "It's just we don't want political statements in the classroom." And then all we have to do is label everything counter to ignorance and intolerance a political statement, creating a license to silence anything you disagree with.

Meanwhile, a classroom operates on a human scale, not a political one, and having the human being who is in charge make sure that all the human beings who are students can feel welcome, safe and supported. "It's okay that you exist, and because you exist you are entitled to respect and decent treatment," is not the sort of thing that should be banned from a classroom, nor can it be illegal to suggest that human beings of different backgrounds can and should get along and treat each other kindly. And if that's a statement that runs counter to your politics, what the hell do you stand for, anyway?