Grade Retention Sleight of Hand

There's some new research out, and for whatever reason, folks like Jay Mathews insist on framing it as a victory for grade retention. Instead, it tells us mostly what we already knew.

The study comes courtesy of the folks at Fordham Institute and was carried out by two researchers (an economist and a statistician) from RAND. Here's the key couple of sentences:

For example, recent studies from Florida, Indiana, Mississippi, Chicago, and New York City provide evidence that grade retention in elementary school (generally in grades 3–5), when implemented as part of a broader remediation effort, can increase test scores through middle school and reduce the need for future remediation. 

I'm not going to try to dissect the research itself, though it carries an air redolent of the confusion between correlation and causation, and its major data sampling comes from Florida, where testocratic baloney runs rampant. What I am going to do is to drop back into English teacher mode, because there's an important lesson here in the difference between independent and dependent clauses and how these are useful tools in framing.

In this case, we've buried the whole business in a larger dependent clause, but within that clause, the relationships still hold. Here's the main clause:

grade retention in elementary school (generally in grades 3–5)...can increase test scores through middle school and reduce the need for future remediation

And the subordinate clause

when implemented as part of a broader remediation effort

That placement allows Mathews and Fordham and others to frame this research as a vindication of grade retention policy, while downplaying the critical piece of policy. the piece that, in fact, teachers regular complain is missing from retention policies. 

The researchers and everyone writing about them could just have easily written this sentence:

Broad remediation efforts, which may include grade retention, can increase test scores through middle school and reduce the need for future remediation.

That would arguably be a more honest framing, since it's the broad remediation efforts and not the actual retention that matter. They are absolutely critical, because otherwise you're just separating students from their friends, subjecting them to the embarrassment of Being Held Back, and just parking them in the same desk in hopes that something clicks this time. In more devious states, leaders aren't even hoping something clicks; they just want to hold the student in place for a year and then jump the student two years, conveniently skipping over the year in which this low-achieving student would have taken the state's Big Standardized Test (the secret of "miracles" in more than one state).

The study does note that trying the retention trick in middle school correlates with poor results all around. They don't really have a theory of why, but I'd guess that by then the same trajectory that results in failing middle school classes is the trajectory that doesn't lead one to other school-flavored successes. 

So why frame this research around the retention and not the support? It could be that retention (particularly in third grade) is a popular policy among non-education policy makers. It's simple, and it's way cheaper than sending schools the resources they need for broad support. It also appeals to the rising tide of competency based learning advocates, who can say, as Daniel Domenech does to Mathews, “if students were taught at the level that they are at and allowed to progress as they achieve mastery, there would be no need to retain them.”

Flunking 8 and 9 year olds because they didn't pass a Big Standardized Test is easy; giving additional supports and resources to students in poor and under-resourced schools is hard. "Flunk everyone who didn't make the cut score," is quick and simple. Broad support systems require investments of time, money, and staffing. And, of course, the retention is a hot new reform idea, while the broad support for students who need it has been the request of teachers since the invention of dirt.

Maybe this research is solid, or maybe it's just well-packed baloney. I'm not going to get into that now (though my suspicions have a first name). But even if this is legit, the framing of it is irresponsible; it's a sleight of hand trick aimed at getting you to pick the card they want you to pick. Whenever someone brings up this report, ask them why they didn't write the sentence the other way. 

ICYMI: Nice Spring Day Edition (12/10)

High in the upper fifties, cloudy and overcast--this is my idea of a perfect spring day, so it's unexpected for a weekend in December, but here we are. You're probably busy, but here's some reading from the week. Remember--if you think it's good, share it, because it's harder than ever to get stuff out through the cluttered channels of social media these days.


The Year in Review: Dark Money Vouchers Are Having a Moment

At the Washington Examiner, Josh Cowen provides an excellent summary of where we are, how we got here, and where the privatizers are aiming to take us next. If you only read one item on the list, this should be it.

For Republican Governors, Civics Is the Latest Education Battleground

At the New York Times, Dana Goldstein looks at red state attempts to redefine civics education into something a lot more indoctrinatey.

Florida says the purpose of school libraries is to "convey the government's message"

Yikes! Judd Legum at Popular Information unpacks some of the wacky things being used as a courtroom defense in lawsuits against the state's various bans.

Will Moms For Liberty Co-Founder’s Sex Scandal And The Rape Allegation Against Her Husband Be The Last Act For This Extremist Group?

The down side of making sure you're known everywhere is that when you have a sex scandal, that gets spread everywhere, too. Particularly if you've been trying to crack down on everyone else's sex. Lots of mainstream journalists jumped on this but Maurice Cunningham has been following the Moms longer than anyone, and he has one of the better summations of the week's developments.

North'd Co. chapter of Moms for Liberty splits from national organization

This may or may not turn out to be a trend, but one Pennsylvania chapter is heading out on its own.

Iowa mom says school vouchers don’t offset tuition increases

Iowa continues to demonstrate that universal vouchers mostly help private schools cash in. Parents? Not so much.

Report: Indiana short-changes rural schools

Steve Hinnefeld highlights a report about Indiana rural schools. They're having a rough time, because money matters and states like Indiana don't want to spend it.

What Happens When “Choice” Schemes Mature

Michigan has had choice for a while. Nancy Flanagan looks at the damage being done, and the benefits that have not appeared.

Why segregation and racial gaps in education persist 70 years after the end of legal segregation

Alexandra Filindra at Hechinger Report looks at the big question. The answer is discouraging, but not unexpected. We still have segregation because a whole lot of people prefer it.

“Someone tell me what to do”

The Texas Tribune, ProPublica, and a bunch of journalists do a deep dive into what happened at the Uvalde school shooting. It's discouraging, in particular because what they find is that while schools and students are now well trained in what to do, lots of police don't have a clue.

New Central Bucks school board has authorized a legal challenge of the former superintendent’s $700,000 payout

Behind the paywall at the Philadelphia Inquirer, but Maddie Hanna captures the new majority at CBSD, formerly the leading edge of right wing shenanigans, rolling back the previous board's repressive policies.

Carnegie vs Carnegie Unit

Thomas Ultican looks at the most recent drive to replace Carnegie units with competency based education.

How did this charter school get a nearly $2 million federal grant?

Carol Burris guest posts at Valerie Strauss's Washington Post blog with the tale of a charter school that scored $2 million by just making stuff up.

If You Give a State a Hammer…

Sue Kingery Woltanski looks at Florida's high stakes testing fetish and its many negative effects.

How To Reverse Declining History Major Enrollment Numbers, Which Are All The Faculty's Fault

Ryan Weber at McSweeney's is pretty spot on and darkly hilarious. 

At the Bucks County Beacon, I looked at a new report from Ed Voters PA that shows how our current voucher system subsidizes discrimination.  

At Forbes, I looked at a civics education website (the one co-founded by MCU star Chris Evans) that plans to expand to cover state stuff. 

Feel free to join me over on substack, where all of my output arrives in your inbox, for free!

PA: Penncrest School District Has Such Legal Issues

While the blue wave may have swept plenty of conservative majorities out of school boards across the country, it didn't touch the Penncrest School District here in Northwest PA, and the new-old board kicked off the new year by finessing themselves out of a solicitor. Whoopsies.

Penncrest's board has been slapping reading restrictions on its schools, and CRT, and anti-trans in sports, and generally trying to follow in the footsteps of Central Bucks and they haven't been particularly subtle about it.

Penncrest has been trying to wield a tiny tattered fig leaf over its motivations for a new set of rules aimed at getting LGBTQ+ books out of its libraries, even as some board members have been quite clear about what they mean by "sexualized content," and while we're at it, all that racism stuff, too.

Board member David Valesky on LGBTQ books in the library: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'.

Board member David Valesky on books about race in American history:

"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.

Board member David Valesky on the possibility of legal challenges to the board's new rules:

If we go to court over it, so be it, 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.

The board set up a citizen's committee to review naughty books. And in discussing that, board members ended up talking about what was revealed in some emails unearthed by a Right To Know request. 

I believe the terms in the policy we presented are clear. I honestly don’t care what the law says, as long as what I said is right before God. They can change the word at any time in state and federal laws. I’m just concerned that if this policy is pulled, then we have a minimum of 3 months until we can vote on it again. The remainder of my time on the board is uncertain at this point.

Yes, that's member David Valesky again (emphasis mine). Member Jeff Brooks brought it up with the suggestion that maybe the committee should include people who actually care about the law. Valesky said that it was taken out of context, but it's hard to imagine a context in which "I don't care what the law says" doesn't mean "I don't care what the law says." And given the context of Valesky's previous comments, it's hard not to think that he means that he doesn't care what the law says.

Valesky is not some loose cannon; he's just the one that keeps ending up in the paper. And he was re-elected last month. There are plenty of folks, on and off the board, who agree with him. The district was the subject of a Judy Woodruff section on PBS Newshour, and they were generally cranky about the attention they were getting. USA Today's legal department is filing Right To Know law requests (because, see, you can do that with a public school), and that turned up emails from board president Luigi DeFrancesco to the Independence Law Center, the legal arm of the Pennsylvania Family Institute, a right wing religious advocacy group. The board president reached out to me to accuse me of being part of some vast media conspiracy, as if the only reason anyone would object to their policies was because some skullduggery was afoot.

Some of the fuss has come because these board members never took any class from me; if they had, they would have heard me explain repeatedly that what you post on line is not private. At one point Valesky and another board member got into a Facebook debate about a display of books in a high school library. David 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'.

That has led to a case that's been wandering through the legal system for two years. A Penncrest school district resident filed a Right To Know request for all Facebook posts and comments by two board members regarding "homosexuality and Penncrest School District," which the district's open records officer denied. The county court said, "Nope, just because you were using home computers to post things on private accounts doesn't mean that it's not a "record" under RTK law. Then the Commonwealth Court reversed that. Now it will go before the PA Supreme Court, which means this little dustup may have serious consequences for any school district board member employee who talks about official business anywhere on line (however, if you are doing so because you think any portion of the internet is "private," you need to get into the 21st century).

Defending the district in that case may be a challenge, because currently the district doesn't have a solicitor. For the second time this year.

The first came back in January, when the previous solicitor became, politely and diplomatically, fed up.

Attorney George Joseph, of the Quinn Law Firm, told the board that their new policy, plus their anti-trans in sports policy, could open them up to some legal trouble. At a meeting, two board members called the solicitor's opinion "a joke," "worthless," and "not even legal."

In his termination letter, Joseph wrote

Recent actions by the board have highlighted a fundamental disagreement by a majority of the Board with the legal analysis and opinions of our office and, in our analysis, significantly compromised our ability to provide legal ongoing services to the District and to the existing School Board.

He goes on to explain the specific advice that he gave which was ignored and to explain that this is not personal. It's his job to give advice; he knows they don't have to take it, as has been the case in "several such instances."

Nevertheless, I must take exception to the manner in which some individual Board members expressed their disagreement with the most recent legal opinion I rendered.

That expression was "unconscionable" to him. So the board needed a new solicitor.

This week, at the reorganization meeting, as tweeted by Meadville Tribune reporter Mike Crowley, they tabled the reappointment of their law firm, apparently not realizing that it left them without a solicitor, and couldn't just be undone. Said the lawyer at the meeting, before he left,

So what the board has effectively done, whether you knew what you were doing or not, is you're not going to have a solicitor at all until the next meeting.

I'm going to have to go back to my partners and see if we're going to submit an RFP, so you might be without a solicitor for some time -- but just so that's clear for the public's knowledge, you do not have a district solicitor,

There's really no point in me staying for the rest of the meeting. So what I'll do is say thank you to everybody and I also, like Mr. Joseph, will walk out and I'll see if I can catch the end of the Steelers game.

He also pointed out that his firm was the only firm that put in for the job last time it was open, so depending on how the partners feel about hitching their wagon to this out-of-control clown car, Penncrest could be lawyerless for a while. Which, given their propensity for repressive and actionable policies, could mean trouble for the district and its taxpayers. 

FL: Higher Education Nightmare

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has issued a report from a special committee--Political Interference and Academic Freedom in Florida’s Public Higher Education System--and it is both thorough and alarming.

The report comes in several sections, opening with an introduction that marks the rise of Ron DeSantis and his anti-woke agenda, which in turn led to the creation of this special committee back at the beginning of 2023. It issued a preliminary report back in May, with four main findings: 

(1) the “hostile takeover” of New College is both a “test case” and a “blueprint for future encroachments on public colleges and universities across the country”; (2) academic administrators in Florida “not only have failed to contest” attacks on the system “but have too frequently been complicit in and, in some cases, explicitly supported them”; (3) legislation enacted by Governor DeSantis and the legislature, “taken collectively, constitutes a systematic effort to dictate and enforce conformity with a narrow and reactionary political and ideological agenda” and represents “a uniquely bold and dangerous program designed to reshape public higher education according to ideological and partisan political standards”; and (4) “the chilling effect on academic freedom of the governor’s and legislature’s efforts has already been felt by faculty and students.”

This final report says, "Yes, all that and more."

It's a long report, and I'm not going to dive deeply into all of it. But some lowlights are worth noting because, as always, Florida is in the front of the pack when it comes to repressive education policies.

The New College Saga

If you only sort of paid attention to this story as it unrolled, the report has it all collected into one coherent narrative. It matters because, as one resigning professor put it, "This is a test case for a conservative overhaul of higher education—and it isn’t going to stay isolated to New College or Florida."

DeSantis appointed new board members including Matthew Spalding (Hillsdale College), Charles Kesler (Claremont McKenna College), and Christopher Rufo (that guy). Chaos ensued. President was axed, tenure denied, DeSantis buddy Richard Corcoran installed as president. Faculty were fired, seemingly for being critical of the new board. More Faculty left, and Rufo et al chortled over the routing of "the old system of unfettered left-wing activism." Also, "New College will no longer be a jobs program for middling left-wing intellectuals."

One weird development-- New College began heavily recruiting athletes, even though it had never previously had intercollegiate athletics programs. Corcoran pushed a "classical" liberal arts focus, but also majors in finance, communications, and sports psychology. Course offerings became a messy hodgepodge fraught with gaps. 

And if the college isn't a jobs program for middling left-wing intellectuals, it does seem to be a jobs program for DeSantis loyalists. Deam Rancourt, new dean of student affairs, has been a GOP operative, a lobbyist, state director of elections, and deputy secretary of state, but he has experience in higher ed. Sydney Gruters is director of the New College of Florida Foundation; she's a former GOP aid and wife of state senator Joe Gruters (Florida loves its power couples). The newly minted athletics program has hired coaches only from Christian schools. And hostility to LGBTQ persons seems to be college policy as well.

This section of the report concludes

It may seem cynical, but the faculty leader who told the committee that the real goals of the New College takeover were but three—to reward Corcoran, provide a platform for Rufo, and fuel the culture war against the “woke”—may not have been all that far from the truth.

Academic Governance in Florida Higher Education

The state university system is overseen by a seventeen member board of governors; the governor gets to pick fourteen of them; this board in turn operates over individual boards for the universities. The report finds cronyism and pay to play a big piece of this picture. 

It is not simply that the entire board of governors (excluding the faculty and student representatives) and the great majority of trustees are now Republicans. What is most striking is that so many appointees are former political officeholders and professional political operatives. The board’s increasing tendency has been to follow the lead of the governor and his allies in the legislative supermajority. As one veteran faculty member at the University of Florida told the committee, previous board members, regardless of party, understood their role to be ensuring that the universities they led were thriving. Members of the current group, he continued, are concerned principally with their relationships with the governor.

Thern there's Senate Bill 520, signed into law by DeSantis in March of 2022, which creates sunshine law exemptions for candidates for state university presidencies. So that process, which has produced hires like Corcoran; and former senator Ben Sasse; and GOP legislator, DeSantis buddy and former rodeo clown Fred Hawkins

DeSantis doesn't much care for accrediting agencies ("The role that these accreditation agencies play, I don't even know where they come from.") He signed a bill requiring colleges to change accrediting agencies regularly. “Accreditation has become a target in red states and by right-wing politicians because they’ve learned that robust and well-regarded accreditation presents a barrier to their attempts to inject partisan politics into higher education,” AAUP president Irene Mulvey has stated. “They are dragging accreditors into this to dismantle that barrier.”

Academic Freedom

You can guess where this is headed. You may recall the flap in 2021 when University of Florida administration tried to block faculty members from providing expert testimony against the proposed voter suppression law. The administration ultimately lost that one, though the judge noted that "preemptive subservience" was in play--maybe the state didn't directly order them to do it, but in Florida, everyone now understands that their job is to keep DeSantis happy. 

The report does note that Florida has a long history of this kind of trouble.

In a move familiar to those of us in the K-12 world, DeSantis and the GOP have worked hard to erode tenure, with DeSantis calling “unproductive” tenured professors the “most significant deadweight costs” at Florida universities. To that end, Florida's legislature has keep working on "post-tenure review" aka "ending tenure entirely." Various versions of such policies have included scary ideas like challenging tenure of someone who gets too many complaints from students.

And of course they've tried their best to weaken the unions.

Bias and Discrimination

The report opens this section with some historical background on Florida's treatment of minority and LGBTQ persons. It has not been good. Segregated community colleges weren't integrated until 1966. Courts found that Florida was not meeting its requirement to desegregate higher ed as recently as 1977.

Much has been written about the Stop WOKE Act and other attempts to suppress teaching about racism or tolerance in Florida; this report offers some of the details from higher ed. The complaint is the same old one, sincere or opportunistic-- diversity, equity and inclusion are used “as cover words for transforming institutions of higher education into activist arms of the American left.”

At New College, gender neutral signage is banned. There are bathroom rules, and-- well, yikes. The State Board approved a new rule in August requiring disciplinary action for employees who do not use the bathroom corresponding to the sex they were assigned at birth.

Colleges can under the rule “utilize a progressive discipline process” for first offenders, including “verbal warnings, written reprimands, suspension without pay, and termination.” However, “a second documented offense must result in a termination.”

The Human Toll

No job is worth selling out everyone below you.

—Dawn Rothe, professor of criminology and UFF-FAU president, Florida Atlantic University

My responsibilities to my students far outweigh Governor DeSantis’s presidential ambitions.

—Jeffrey Adler, professor of history and criminology, University of Florida

These governmental attacks from the State of Florida have made us unsafe.

—Carolyne Ali-Khan, associate professor of education, University of North Florida

The brain drain, both from red states in general and Florida in particular, is already the subject of news stories. This report captures more of that. New College lost 40% of its faculty, and other institutions are anticipating higher than usual turnover. An AAUP survey found that 95% of responding profs call Florida's political atmosphere "poor" or "very poor." 85% said they would not encourage grad students or professors in other states to come to Florida. 

For the folks pushing these policies, of course, the brain drain is a feature, not a bug. They are chasing away exactly the people they want to chase away.

Whether more restrictive bills can be passed or not is beside the point, as faculty members said that "the damage is done" and "they are already witnessing a culture of fear, censorship, and surveillance in their workplaces." And that carries over to students, too, especially LGBTQ students and students of color. Florida's universities have become a place where it hard for some people to live their lives, let alone pursue an education.

The Wrap-Up

The report wants to stress--really stress--that this is not just a Florida problem, but a soon-to-be-everyone-else's problem. It's worth noting that most of the new board members for New College are from out of state. 

The narrative that is driving this reactionary movement is not a local one. Rufo and others have articulated it before: the long-haired marxist radicals of the sixties decided they'd spend the seventies capturing universities and other institutions, thereby indoctrinating a generation of Americans in their evil socialist ways. That narrative dovetails with the one about how if young people are LGBTQ or voting against conservative policies, it must be because someone Got To Them, and we need to recapture those tools of indoctrination and have them indoctrinate youths the right way teach youths the true truth. Which also unfortunately dovetails well with the Dominionist cause.

I won't lie-- I don't always relate to the concerns of college professors, who seem to enjoy a lot more power and prestige in their institutions than folks working in the K-12 world. But it would be foolish to pretend that this attempt to gut higher ed and restuff it with conservative fluff isn't directly related to the K-12 world. What the hell does "college and career ready" even mean in a country where The New New College is what's ahead? And what happens to K-12 in a country in which this brand of right-wing indoctrination is what "education" means? 

We'll see what happens when DeSantis must finally face his destiny as another Florida governor who tried to ride to the White House on education issues, and failed miserably. But even if he fades back into the woodwork, folks are taking notes on his revision of education, and the rest of the states had better pay attention.

Choice v. Social Justice and Equity

One more sign that the pre-Trump alliance between choicers and social justice folks has completely blown up.

Jason Bedrick is a school choice guy at the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, with a bit of EdChoice (The Friedman Foundation) in his past. I have a soft spot for him because he was once a New Hampshire legislator (so was my grandmother), and it's possible to have a civil exchange with him on line, but I'd bet we've never agreed on anything.

In this recent piece, he argues against DEI and wokeness, which is to be expected. He also rails against the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, which is a bit more interesting.

Charter school authorizers are the folks who decide whether a charter school gets to exist or not. When charter boosters of the pre-Trump era argued that the deal was that charters would get autonomy in return for accountability, part of the accountability picture was supposed to be authorizers, who would make sure that a charter school delivered on its promise and decide if they could open, expand, or get shut down.. 

In "Charter Schools Must Avoid the DEI Blunder," Bedrick suggests that NASCA is a bunch of bossy lefties. To set that up, he starts by going full MAGA

A key reason many parents are fleeing the traditional public system is the concern that schools are indoctrinating students in radical “woke” ideology. Parents are watching as the left-wing ideologies clothed in the mantra of diversity, equity, and inclusion spread like wildfire across America's schools.

That's doing a lot of work. Are many parents fleeing? Do we have some reason to believe that those fleeing parents are freaking out about wokey stuff? Is DEI both a sneaky costume for wokey stuff and also a wildfire? But all of that is just a stepping stone to his main point, which is that a "prominent organization is working overtime" to force public [sic] charter schools to get all wokey. 

That organization is NACSA, the "publicly subsidized kingmaker in the charter school world." "Publicly subsidized" is an odd elbow to throw, since charters and vouchers and all the school choice options out there are publicly subsidized, but it seems to be aimed at painting NACSA with the same MAGA red brush used on the public school system.

NACSA believes that it is the true “expert” in determining what’s best for children, so it favors a regulatory approach that prioritizes its own judgment over parents' in deciding when charters should be opened, expanded, or closed.

NACSA has a "technocratic agenda" and DEI is an "integral part." And in states where that technocratic approach holds sway, NACSA favors "stronger adherence to liberal politics." 

Compelling schools of choice to adopt DEI principles is a bad policy on its merits. Parents, rather than “experts,” should be entrusted to determine what is best for their children.

This again. Of course, parents should be involved, but becoming a parent does not make one virtuous and wise. And it's unfortunate that in picking apart DEI policies, Bedrick focuses on race-related items.

Bedrick argues that ESA-style vouchers are better because they have even less oversight and accountability and are, in a phrase popular in the movement, permissionless (aka with accountability to nobody). It's a tell that we are in the Very Libertarian wing of choicer thought. 

There's more, most of it familiar, but it was his finish that really caught my attention.

A NACSA director once tweeted , “School choice for school choice’s sake is completely misguided … social justice and equity are the GOAL not some political tactic.” NACSA’s insistence on technocracy and DEI demonstrate why choice for choice’s sake must, in fact, be the goal.

It's one more explicit display of the fault line along which the great bipartisan pre-Trumpian choicer partnership fell apart. The left-tilted side of that deal was convinced that choice was a good thing, or at least tolerable, because it could deliver better education to students "trapped" in struggling public schools. But for the right-tilted side, that was never the point, not even a consideration. Choice for choice sake. Freedom and liberty. And if the taxpayer's money and students' time was wasted on a marketplace full of crappy schools--oh, well. 

Choice was--and is--the key value. Meaning an individual's choice. Meaning choice from among whatever few or many options that individual might have. Meaning your choices (or lack of them) are not my problem, and it's certainly not my responsibility to make more choices available to you. 

The most conventional explanation is that the alliance fell apart because, with Obama out and Trump in, an alliance with neoliberal Democrats was no longer necessary for folks on the right, and no longer tolerable for folks on the left who were not willing touch anything with MAGA smell on it (some on the right also balked, for about fifteen minutes. 

But nice direct, clear pieces like this one from Bedrick are a reminder of how far apart those two sides really were, and how much of a strain it was for them to ever team up in the first place.

 

 

Let's Do The PISA Panic Dance

Is there anything in education particularly useful or illuminating in the scores from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in this (or any) year?

Short answer: 

No. 

Long answer: 

Time for the PISA Panic Dance. You will hear, as always, that the US is woefully low in the rankings. We have always been low in these test scores gleaned from fifteen year olds. In fact, because everyone took some big hits this time, we actually climbed a bit. But we're still woefully low. 

Expect to hear from the usual suspects declaring that the woefully low ranking of the US is a monumental crisis of cosmic proportions and therefor we should rush to implement [insert name of the same policy that they push every other day of the week here]. 

Expect plenty of chicken littling. If you care to respond...

Long response to cries of "Our PISA rank is low! Our PISA rank is low!":

Do you have a research based context for your alarms? What can you tell me about the comparison-- is it between similar student populations, or do certain countries only test certain student populations? Additionally, can you cite any research that ties the PISA rankings to specific real-world outcomes for nations. For instance, Estonia routinely ranks high on these lists--in what areas do you believe Estonia is outpacing the US, and how would raising our PISA scores help counterbalance that?  

For instance, one authority says this: "Since a high ranking on PISA corresponds to economic success, researchers have concluded that PISA is one of the indicators of whether school systems are preparing students for the 21st-century global knowledge economy." Can you explain the difference between correlation and causation?

Short response to cries of "Our PISA rank is low! Our PISA rank is low!":

So what?

Okay, there are a couple of other pieces of data highlighted in the New York Times coverage that may shake up the usual PISA Panic Dance (despite the fact that NYT uses the "lost equivalent of three-quarters of a year" baloney). For instance, the US "lost less ground" aka "test score points" than some European nations that "prioritized opening schools more quickly." PISA also didn't find an increase in the gap between US highest and lowest students. 

But it's the final paragraph of Sarah Mervosh's article that is most concerning.

On other measures, the United States stood out for having more children living with food insecurity (13 percent, compared with an average of 8 percent in other O.E.C.D. countries), more students who are lonely at school (22 percent, versus 16 percent) and more students who do not feel safe at school (13 percent, versus 10 percent).

Here's hoping that someone in the education policy world chooses to stop the PISA Panic Dance long enough to look these data and declares that we should do something about them. Instead of worrying about our international bragging rights, maybe we could focus on the lives of the young human beings in our schools. That would be worth a real dance.

 

The Ziegler Story and the Trouble with Hypocrisy

Yes, we've heard the story. How could we not? It has been everywhere in the education space and the Florida news space and the people who are sick of culture warrior right wingers space. And I understand the impulse behind the social media memes, dark jokes, the general dance of schadenfreude.

But here's what we need to remember.

At the center of this story is a rape (alleged). In the aftermath, a woman so afraid that she wouldn't leave her home for two days. And while the police and media have dutifully withheld her name, there are enough details circulating that I expect every person in Sarasota County knows exactly who this woman is. 

They certainly know Christian Ziegler (Florida GOP chieftain) and his wife Bridget (Moms for Liberty co-founder, Leadership Institute director of school board program). They're supposed to be a rising power couple, with ties to lots of powerful Florida folks. Before Moms for Liberty, Bridget co-founded a conservative school board group with Erika Donalds, half of another big Florida power couple. 

For a simply layout of the facts, the police interviews, the pertinent documents, head over to the indispensable Mercedes Schneider, who has it all. It's all disturbing, right down to the detail that Christian Ziegler walked into the building at 2:29 and walked out at 3:07.

Nobody really appears to have denied anything--not the three-way a year ago, not the events surrounding the alleged rape. The only point of dispute is whether the sex in October of this year was consensual or not. 

Many have noted that we're only paying attention because the Zieglers have appointed themselves the morality police for so many others, and that's partly true, but I really want to hope that no matter what the surrounding circumstances, "GOP party chief allegedly rapes longtime friend" would be considered newsworthy all by itself. 

But the thruple sex. The fact that the victim was "mostly in for her" meaning Bridget. The extramarital aspect. This is the stuff that would get filed in the "consenting adults will do their thing" file if not for Bridget Ziegler's entire political career of castigating consenting adults, her heavy-handed help in creating and supporting "Don't Say Gay." 

And as a board president--remember when member Tom Edwards finally walked out of a meeting after the gazzillionth time of being publicly attacked for being gay. The actual moment was when a woman was attacking Edwards, the crowd was booing her, and Ziegler shushed the crowd and told them to let her finish speaking. This was in March of 2023, so roughly five months after she had gotten naked with another woman and her husband. 

Moms For Liberty at first tweeted out an indignant "How dare people pick on another powerful conservative woman" but seem now to have shifted to "You know she wasn't a M4L officer when she was doing all this, right?" Some days I imagine that Moms for Liberty leaders have permanent facial creases from slapping their foreheads as they cry, "She did what??!!" This Ziegler news comes right alongside a breaking story of M4L boosting a racist Christmas event from a racist group. 

Adam Laats called this long ago--a group like M4L inevitably has trouble controlling its message, falling prey to everything from attracting really out there members to local leaders who forget not to say the quiet parts out loud. And the Zieglers join an uncountably long list of people who are eager to impose their morality on others who turn out to have trouble following it themselves.

But people who holler "Hypocrites" and point loudly will be disappointed as well. Hypocrisy never, ever carries the kind of punch some folks expect it to.

That's mostly because hypocrisy as we understand it-- believing something but violating that belief yourself--is really, really rare. Yeti riding a unicorn while pooping rainbows rare.

We diagnose hypocrisy by observing, "That person is condemning A and doing B, and A and B are the same thing! Hypocrite!" But what's really happening is that for the alleged hypocrite, A and B are not the same at all. They see a critical difference between the two, and if you want to understand them better, try to see what difference they think they see, even if you don't believe it's there. This phenomenon is not reserved for villains; it's a basic human mechanism, a way that we make peace with the times we don't quite live up to our own standards. 

At any rate, the Zieglers may pay a price for all this mess. Christian is facing down noise from his own party  (thought not all), and Bridget is getting some bad press. But dealing with this kind of storm is what Christian Ziegler does damage control for a living, and it's not hard to see a pathway out of this for the couple. Christian is already declaring the sex consensual, so no rape, no crime. And the three-way sex? Consenting adults and nobody else's business, which is true, and I'm going to make my prediction now that there will be an argument somewhere along the lines of Bridget Ziegler didn't do gay stuff because A) her husband was there and B) it just a one-time adventure, and so she is completely not like all those terrible LGBTQ people who still should not be mentioned anywhere around impressionable young people. 

Furthermore, Bridget isn't accused of raping anyone. And Moms for Liberty has already invoked "She wasn't with us at the time." 

In other words, if you think this whole mess is going to knock the Zieglers out of power, I suspect you are in for some disappointment. If you think some key folks are going to realize that there is something rotten at the heart of the values by which they operate--well, I'm betting not. 

There will be some jousting in the days ahead. Damage control comes in two types-- the type that's for limiting and minimizing damage from a crisis, and the type that's about maximizing and targeting damage form a crisis, and most of our modern political crises are battles between those two forces. And it would be a positive thing for Bridget Ziegler to lose power (and in so doing cut power of the Florida branch of MAGA-dom), but she has the easiest path out of this by simply disassociating herself from her husband. 

It would all be interesting in a sad, horse-racey, political gamesmanship kind of way, if it weren't that the central (alleged) crime is a rape, a violation of a long-time friendship so traumatizing that a woman was afraid to leave her home for two days.