Pandemic Testophilia

For one brief, shining moment, even Betsy DeVos almost got it. In the spring of 2020, as the nation grappled with the realization that a couple weeks of lockdown were not going to get us past COVID-19, DeVos made one of her rare uses of the Us Department of Education's authority to offer a blanket waiver for states to skip the Big Standardized Test mandate. 

“Neither students nor teachers need to be focused on high-stakes tests during this difficult time. Students are simply too unlikely to be able to perform their best in this environment,” she said. Which was close to the truth that students and teachers simply had more important stuff to worry about. 

For a few moments, back before the pandemic became a political football, most of the country grasped that there were more important things for schools to be focused on than the annual Rite of Testage. 

But by the fall of 2020, the moment had passed. The BS Test would be required, DeVos declared, And the entire world of testophiles was poised to make sure that the pandemic interruption would be brief. Within a year, Learning Loss had been weaponized to help drive a sense of urgency that we had better get back to full on testing Right Now, and somehow this was all taken seriously despite the fact that it was all based on data from folks who make their living selling test materials. It was as if a blue ribbon panel of heroin addicts and dealers announced that the nation has a terrible heroin shortage.

Testophiles in the media have helped to feed the manufactured sense of urgency. The New York Times has always loved it some BS Test mandates. It's a leading manufacturer of NAEP panic, with absurd declarations that "the pandemic erased two decades of progress in math and reading." It's a foolish claim for a variety of reasons, but it fully captures the notion that schools exist not to provide an education for students, but to crank out annual scores, like some sort of BS Test stock market. 

They are still at it, with a new article about a "surprising" rebound for students (who is surprised, other than people like the Times that tried to rouse test support by screaming about a "crisis"), an article that does not actually look at students at all, but focuses on test scores, using charts that absurdly render test scores as years "behind" and talking to corporate testocrats like Thomas Kane and Margaret Spellings. 

Nothing has changed about testophilia in the last twenty-some years. It still assumes that the most important focus of education is the cranking out of Big Standardized Test scores. It is still a narrow, cramped, meager view of education. It is still the greatest toxic force in the country's public schools. 

Testophilia reduces everything not-on-the-test to secondary importance in schools, organizing priorities not around educational richness or variety or depth, but around what is on the BS Test.

Testophilia has reconfigured and gutted the teaching of English, producing a generation of students who haven't read entire works of literature because they've been too busy reading short context-free excerpts and answering sets of reading "skills" multiple choice questions.

BS Testing gets us scripting and lockstep instruction and teacher-proof canned curriculum which are all not so much about education as they are about training students to get better scores on the tests.

And in the post-pandemic world, we face a generation of children who have been through a variety of disruptive events and displayed a variety of results including rampant absenteeism and in-school misbehavior, and testophilia insists that of all the challenges faces students, the one we should be focusing on is their test scores. 

And none of this is what parents want for their children or students want for themselves. Former students talk to me often; none of them say, "Boy, what I really treasure from my time in your class is that work we did to get ready for the state test." No parent says, "I hope that my child can learn to be happy and productive and feel smart and brave and just generally become their best self, but none of that is as important to me as making sure that they do well on that state test."

If it seems as if I'm saying the same things about the Big Standardized Test that I've been saying for years--well, I am, and so are others. Dammit, Daniel Koretz's 2018 book The Testing Charade ought to be out of date and it's not. But testocrats and testophiles are pumping out the same old baloney, still insisting that we can't possibly know how students are doing without test results (except that one, tests don't tell us what they claim to, and two, they don't tell us anything we can't learn other, better ways). Gosh, they still say, test results help us focus resources where they're needed (except that one, they mostly don't and two, the resources they do focus are aimed at test scores). 

Test results will help teachers teach, and tell parents the Truth about how their students are really doing. Except that the data generated in vague and minimall and, in most cases, way too late to be useful. 

We get the same bullshit about how lower test scores mean lower life earnings and the education that the BS Test allegedly measures will somehow fix economic inequality (it won't). Or we get new bullshit about how we will reduce testing by doing more testing (a variation on the old "sure, we'll deprioritize this but not really").

Yes, sure, the BS Test has its place, perhaps, as one more measure in a robust and balanced multi-pronged assessment system, one data point among others. But we are so far from that, so very very far from that, like someone siting in Capetown arguing, "Yeah, under certain circumstances this could be a stop on the road from Cleveland to Seattle." 

I hate that we're still here, hate that we've now been at it so long that a generation of students have grown up and gone to teacher school thinking that test-centered schools are normal, hate that folks who want to dismantle public education can point to what the BS Test has done to public schools as a selling point for vouchers. I hate that testophilia has empowered bad school administrators and made it some kind of radical stance in some schools to want to offer students a full rich education. I hate most of all how testophiles and testocrats have dehumanized education, treating what is most rich and rewarding and joyful and humane about education as some sort of irrelevant and distracting because it's not On The Test, hate that at this moment of crisis and opportunity when students need a more humane educational system, the testophiles are out there screaming, "no, no, don't do that! Get back over to that testing stuff!" I hate that it has changed--for the worse-- the whole idea of what school is for.

Schools and students and teachers have more important things to be focused on than the Big Standardized Test. If only policymakers could realize that. 

Inquiry Vs. Direct Instruction

It's the fight that doesn't need to be a fight, the debate that is solved in the classroom (as so many classroom strategies are) by finding balance between various techniques rather than an absolute victory by any one.

Are we supposed to use direct instruction, with teachers dispending and explaining to students, or should we use inquiry, letting the students search and find and assemble meaning for themselves? 

In the seventies, in teacher school, we were taught about being the guide on the side rather than the sage on the stage. Which was fine, except...

Have you ever been in a meeting or professional development session, and the leader asks a question as if this is an open-ended inquiry moment, except that it clearly isn't. The presenter either wants you to provide the One Correct Answer so they can move on, or they're expecting another answer only so they can pounce on it with a big gotcha to set up the answer they really want to present.

Or maybe it's one of those staff meetings at which the administrator sets it up as a chance for the group to pick a direction and answer (because then you'll be buy in and be invested) only after some preliminary discussion, it becomes clear that administration is only going to accept one particular answer that they've already decided upon.

Don't you hate that? Guess what. So do students.

If you know what answer you want to hear, just say it. If you aren't really open to students inquiring and discovering their own answer, don't waste their time pretending otherwise.

If you don't know more than the students, why are the taxpayers paying you (I am not a fan of "You know, I learn just as much from the students as they do from me"). Do not leave students wandering in the dark in hopes that they will trip over some insight at some point.

On the other hand, if your classroom involves students sitting like potted plants day after day, like receptacles waiting you to pour forth smartitude, God help you and your students both. If every class is 45 minutes of your voice or copying notes from the board, that's a dry, empty, uninspiring, and ultimately not very fruitful method. 

Trying to discover learning without a foundation of basic facts and knowledge is hopeless, even frustrating. But trying to convey that foundational material through discovery can be tedious and painful.

The answer, as is so often the case in educational X vs. Y debates, is either or both, depending.

Jill Barshay published a great piece in Hechinger looking at a big meta-study of inquiry vs. direct instruction, and I recommend that you read it. Here are some critical points from the piece.

The debate is often marked by people talking past each other. When fans of inquiry and direct instruction argue about which is more effective, they're really arguing about what "effective" means. Barshay also notes that for all the noise, everyone essentially agrees that both are necessary. I also like the caveats she pulled from inquiry defenders about when it works best (nobody thinks fumbling in the dark in an unstructured discovery lesson is a good idea).

Caveat 1: Students need a strong foundation of knowledge and skills before inquiry will work. Soi maybe some direct instruction before launching the inquiry.

Caveat 2: Inquiry works best with lots of feedback and guidance from teachers. I agree completely. Research projects were a regular feature of my classes, and they always worked best when I backed students up with feedback; just a simple "you're on the right track" or not was helpful, and you can do it without trying to force the student to a particular conclusion. This is admittedly a tricky area (Barshay confessed to getting a headache) that can lapse into direct instruction, and lord knows it's hard sometimes to resist the urge to wrest the steering wheel out of the student's hand and declare "Just do THIS!" The right amount of guidance will vary from student to student. 

Barshay points out that low-achieving students need more guidance. I'm not sure how true that is (for most of my career, I taught the top and bottom level courses). Low achieving students have often been subjected to more direct instruction and so have been conditioned to think that's what school is--people tell you what you're supposed to say and do and then you get graded on how well you regurgitate it. Therefor, doing discovery lessons may require more teacher creation of an environment where the students can believe that this is really what they're being asked to do. Conversely, top achieving students are often very good at regurgitating and may get frustrated with inquiry lessons ("Just tell me exactly which hoop to jump through to get my A").

Whether their teacher school taught you to be a guide or a sage, most teachers learn pretty quickly that they have to be a mixture of both, and that the mixture depends on the students, the teacher, the material, and the conditions on any given day (every teacher has had that special day when a roomful of students broadcast the clear message "we are not in the mood to discover anything today"). Meanwhile, I guess the academics can continue to debate. 

OK: New Senator Deevers All In On Christian Nationalism

In my in box is an evangelical newsletter headlined "We have been silent for too long." Really? Have Christians in this nation been silenced ever?

They are particularly not silenced in Oklahoma, where we find (among others) State Senator Dusty Deevers. Pastor Deevers took to the pulpit after a career running a pharmacy. In 2023, he ran for vice-president of the Southern Baptist Convention (this was the year after their big ball o'scandals blew wide open), though Deever was critical of SBC president Bart Barber. 

Deevers has taken some strong positions. He's anti-porn, anti-abortion, anti-divorce, anti-vax, and now that he's a brand new Oklahoma senator courtesy of a special election, he's ready to make it all come true. He's been busy. There's a bill to make watching porn a felony and sexting someone other than your spouse good for time in jail. Also, he's filed a bill to end no-fault divorce. 

Deevers is not shy about what he's about. He ran on the promise to appeal to "the word of God on every issue." The folks at Right Wing Watch caught Deevers on the "Conversations That Matter" where he was exceptionally clear:

“Governing is about the use of authority and what is the standard for the use of authority,” Deevers declared. “God prescribes servants of his to govern as his mediators on this Earth. So, he has prescribed governing and then he has also prescribed the means for our governing and that means is in accordance with his word. If we do otherwise, then we are essentially usurping the sovereign role of God through Christ, who has been seated above every power in Heaven and on Earth and under the Earth.”

If you've always wondered what the Christian Nationalist answer is to the issue of a diverse and pluralistic nation being ruled by Christians, Deevers offers an explanation that I've seen pop up several places lately. What happens, the host asks, if you force laws on people who might be atheists or even pagans and you require them to live under God's law? Deever's responds

What they're getting is a measure of grace from being in proximity to the true Christianity. So whenever Christians are voted into office, it's not just good for Christians, it's good for the wicked as well. It's good for those who maybe are yet to come to Christ. There are several proverbs and several scriptures that talk about when the righteous increase, the people flourish.

Note that all of this aligns with what Katherine Stewart pointed out in The Power Brokers-- for these folks, legitimacy of government does not come from the consent of the governed, but from alignment with the Right Values. 

Deevers doesn't talk about education directly, but folks like Deevers are surfacing all through the school privatization movement, certain that they have not only a right, but a mandate from God, to impose their views on students. This is a guy who ran on the idea of "the proper role of government and the proper Christian response to tyranny," the assumption being that anything less than Christian domination of the government is tyranny by the wicked. These are folks who believe that they've been "silenced" because they have not been the voice commanding and silencing all others. 

Deevers at least doesn't try to pretend. But he's a fine example of what is scary about these folks and the kind of education they have in mind for not only their own children, but everyone else's as well. There's nothing quite like someone who believes he knows exactly what God wants. 

We Need Public Education, Media Literacy, and Real History (Reminder #423,997)

There's a lot to be alarmed by in the recent news about sentencing of Aimenn Penny, a member of the White Lives Matter group who was convicted of trying to burn down the Community Church of Chesterfield in Chesterfield, Ohio almost a year ago.

The church was going to host a couple of drag events. Penny had a ton of armament in his car and residence. Ina manifesto, he explained how proud he was of the attack. He believed he was doing "God's work." He told the FBI that he would have felt better if the Molotov cocktails he used had burned the entire church to the ground. Prosecutors said that Penny's manifesto was "full of twisted and false historical narratives, calls for war and violence, justifications for his actions, and the spewing of transphobic and anti-Semitic hatred."

Here's what I find chilling. Penny is twenty years old. Authorities say that Penny appeared to have been "increasingly radicalized via online actions since at least 2017."

So, he's been working toward this since he was 13 or 14 years old. Online.

Sure, we've always had a certain amount of this. I've taught more than a few people who grew up to commit felonies, including murders, and I'm not sure what could have aimed their lives in a better direction.

But the seduction of young men by radical violent bullshit on line is one of our growing plagues. The automated downward spiral of the YouTube algorithm is well-documented. "What to do if you think your child is becoming radicalized online" is now a whole genre or writing (see here and here). This is a thing that scares me now as the parent of two young boys in ways it didn't when I was the parent of young children thirty years ago. 

There are so many directions to point fingers. Techno corporations that take no responsibility for spewing crap into the cultural atmosphere. Grown-ups who crank up all this rage and paranoia and racist sexist violent rhetoric as a cynical tool for gathering power with no regard for the effects on young people who take it seriously. People who are incapable of grasping that diversity is part of what makes humanity robust and strong. 

As I said, we could point fingers all day. But maybe while doing so, we can just remember that teaching media literacy is important, because thirty years in, we've still got human beings who believe "I saw it on the internet so it must be true" is a legitimate thought. It's not just that we have a culture steeped in lying and bullshit for matters large and small, but that we keep that a secret from our children instead of teaching useful lessons like "Much of what you will see from the adult world is a lie, so we need to equip you to sort out the bullshit from the truth."

It is not particularly useful to suggest, as some choicers do, that the solution to all of this is to simply separate everyone into their own silos, where they never meet any of those Others and never hear anything to contradict what they hear in their special hermetically sealed snowflake cage. The solution to conflict and disagreement is not to make everyone who disagrees with you shut up, go away, or die.

And history. History is complicated and hard, and we really need to teach that. Teaching the conversation is good preparation for weighing the many voices, including the ones that are not participating in good faith or who are just ignoring parts they don't like or who are just making shit up. The folks who insist that there is just one true answer for questions of history and only that one true answer should be taught--these are people who, out of fear or anger or desire for power, are trying to sell a lie that is toxic and corrosive. It damages society, it damages the culture, and men like Penny are just the curdled rotting edge of that blight.

History, real history, needs to be taught not just because of some philosophical stance or moral imperative, but because a society riddled with these pockets of toxic lies is a more dangerous society, more dangerous to its own people and to the world that surrounds it. Penny's sad, wasted youth is just one more reminder.

Pennsylvania Needs Another Cyber Charter Like A Hole In The Head. Shapiro Administration Approves One Anyway.

This was just dumb.

Pennsylvania has a massive cyber charter sector, massive at least in part because the state's cyber charter funding system is like a opium dispenser in an unguarded gerbil cage. 

Pennsylvania taxpayers pay a ton of money to cybers in ways that make little sense, and in return, they get largely terrible results (particularly in the poorest districts). Cyber charters have generally been found to have terrible results. Even in Florida. Even when being examined by people who love charter schools. And especially in Pennsylvania, where the results from our existing cyber charters has been consistently terrible. We're talking "5% of students achieved proficient or advanced on Big Standardized Test" terrible. Not that I like using BS Tests as a measure, but if you've picked a particularly flawed measure for success and then you can't even win at your own game, that tells us something.

As always, I will stipulate that there are some students for whom cyber schooling is a useful and appropriate choice. But that is not the majority among the thousands and thousands of cyber-students in PA.

PA cybers have ongoing problems not just with doing their jobs, but with fraud and misbehavior. But they are mega-profitable, because Pennsylvania insists on funding based on sending district and not the actual cost of educating students. A huge amount of that money funds lobbying, and another bunch funds marketing and some just makes people rich and funds a real estate empire. In the meantime, there is virtually no oversight or accountability for the cybers.

Various policy leaders have tried and tried and tried to reform Pennsylvania's charter funding and accountability system so that maybe cyber charters might occasionally be audited and that we might give up the leading spot for "worst charter laws in the nation."

Previous Governor Tom Wolf pushed hard for some simple reforms-- pay cybers based on common sense amounts, actually hold them accountable for how the money is spent-- and cyber supporters squealed loudly until his term was up and it didn't get done again. 468 school districts (that's almost all of them) have signed resolutions asking Harrisburg to fix this. 

Meanwhile, the state's top court declared that the state's whole education funding system was unconstitutional, so rotten that it had to be repaired immediately. Plug the hole where cybers are being grossly overpaid seems like a common sense choice, but no, we're still dithering.

The current ditherer-in-chief is Governor Josh Shapiro, nominally a Democrat, who rather likes school choice and is still shopping for a voucher bill that he can sign. Shapiro also appointed new members to the charter appeals board, the group that decides if local elected school boards don't get a say in hosting charter schools.

Cyber charters can also get approval from the Department of Education, and that's who gave the go-ahead to this newest cyber-operation. The application had been denied previously, twice. 

In May, the department said that 1) Pennwood lacked the capability, both support and planning, to provide comprehensive learning experiences to students. The proposal was that Pearson would give the school $350K as a start-up grant, and then the school would hire Pearson to provide services. So the state had questions about Pennwood's independence. Also, 2) Pennwood couldn't explain how it would serve as a "model" for other public schools. Particularly since, as one witness testified, Pearson's previous two attempts to cyberschool in PA failed.

So yes-- it's a Pearson school. And it's not clear how either of those problems that sunk Pennwood in May are now fixed, even a little. But the application itself is huge, so maybe it's hiding in the thousands of pages, somehow.

This is the first new approval in eight years will be based in York. Pennwood will be Pearson's only school in PA, though they have had partnerships in the state before, with somewhat checkered results. But Donna Hutchison, vp of educational partnerships at Pearson, says it will be awesome. “Pearson-supported online schools are solutions for a very mobile student population with a significant percentage of students being new each year.” No kidding. Cyber students generally stay about two years.

Pennwood's webpage is actually a sub-page of the Connections Academy (Pearson's nom de cyberschool).  And Pearson is predicting a graduation rate of 85%--25% higher than the statewide cyber charter grad rate. They are also predicting enrollment of 1,800 in Year One and 8,200 in Year Five, fueled, I guess, by Pearson's marketing chops.

The charter's board will be headed up by Marc LeBlond, who's also the director of policy in Indiana for the privatization advocacy group EdChoice. He's also been a senior policy analyst for the right-wing Commonwealth Foundation, after a career in the financial sector. So, zero actual education experience, but lots of profiteering and privatization practice. Reports the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Pennwood is a necessary cyber school option because of its “unique offerings that are unlike any other cyber charter schools” in Pennsylvania, LeBlond, the charter board chair, said in a statement, noting its Drexel partnership. He also said there was “unmet demand” for cyber charters, citing 40% growth in the sector over the past decade.

Unmet demand? I suspect this translates roughly into "there are still plenty of taxpayer dollars to be harvested in this sector." Are the fourteen other cybers at capacity? The application promises a "career readiness and badging focus" and "exceptional teachers" and some super software for individualization. The application is loaded with footnotes--to inhouse "research" by Pearson.

The board of trustees, in addition to LeBlond, includes

Joyce A. Good, who has worked for Commonwealth Charter Academy, PA Leadership Charter, and once upon a time taught 4th grade in a public school.

Stephanie Haas Theony, whose career has been in the insurance biz, most recently as a Charter School Practice Leader.

David Hardy, a Commonwealth Foundation distinguished fellow and big time charter guy with Boys' Latin of Philadelphia Charter High School.

C. Tyler Havey, a Philadelphia lawyer. And Laura Potthoff, a banking and economic development person.

Pennwood will open up next fall, so expect the advertisements to start flowing as Pearson tries once again to cash in on Pennsylvania's generous cyber charter funding. It is still possible, some observers think, that the legislature could finally fix the charter funding system while they're trying to fix the whole school funding system itself. 

Pennsylvania needs one more cyber charter like it needs another batch of potholes on the Turnpike, but Shapiro's administration has delivered this instead. The department's spokesperson delivered the most milquetoasty statement, saying that the application "met the requirements of charter school law and thus must be approved." Nothing like teaming up passive voice and the old "well, it's not actually illegal" for a dodging of responsibility. Reported the Inquirer:

“The Department strives to ensure that all cyber charter schools are accountable to students, the Commonwealth, and its residents to the extent that the current charter school law allows,” spokesperson Taj Magruder said in a statement.

No report on whether Magruder managed to say that with a straight face.   

ICYMI: Halfway There Edition (1/28)

Depending on where you are, you're about halfway through the school year (we just crossed the line this week). I remember it as the point at which I started to deal with the mountain of material that I needed to fit into an ever-shrinking spot. File that under Feelings I'm Glad I Don't Have To Experience Any More. 

Shortish list this week, but good stuff all around. Remember to share.

Legislation could lead to more public schools to becoming charters

Florida's leaders keep trying to answer the question, "How can we make it easier to privatize public schools?"

Transcript: Joy Reid Interviews M4L’s Tiffany Justice

The indispensable Mercedes Schneider transcribed this interview, and it's exhausting just to read how hard M4L co-founder and comms professional Tiffany Justice works to not answer the questions she's asked.

Rep. Jordan Harris: Before Pa. revisits voucher proposals it must address education inequality

Peter Happ writes about a call for PA to put first things first for Penn Capital Star. We can hope.

The tide turns on Florida book bans

At Popular Information, Juss Legum finds some spots in Florida where folks seem to have decided that enough is enough with the book banning. Congrats to the people on the ground doing the work.

Want to fix inequality, Democrats? The answer is wages, not education

From Salon, via MSN, one more explanation of why trying to fix the economy via education is not a viable plan.

Virginia Legislation Would Require School Bathroom Checks Every 30 Minutes

Speaking of dumb ideas from people who don't understand schools. 

Father of Progressive School Movement

Thomas Ultican with another historical profile of an important education figure. 

Are You More Savvy Than a Third Grader

In which Jose Luis Vilson does a Zoom interview with a room full of third and fourth graders on his birthday. 

18 Issues for Ed. Secretary Cardona to Better Drive the School Bus

If the secretary is really looking for some projects, Nancy Bailey has some suggestions.

NY Times Exposes More Culture Warriors Attacking Social Justice in Education

If you're not familiar with the Claremont Institute, Jan Resseger can bring you up to speed on this crew of right-wing culture snipes.

Jockey Shorts: NIL for Your Teen Athlete

Gregory Sampson looks at a great new trend-- licensing the name, image, and likeness of young athletes. What could possibly go wrong?

Requiring the Disruption of the School Day to Allow Recruitment to Certain Patriotic Organizations is Not Small Government.

Nothing in Florida gets past Sue Kingery Woltanski, including this wackadoo bill to require schools to open their doors to "patriotic organizations" for recruitment purposes.

For Choice Week, I wrote a Forbes.com piece about the real obstacles to school choice. 

Mystery Coalition Pushing National School Choice

Rabbit hole warning. We're going to look at a group that's pushing national vouchers, and it will be a long trip. You've been warned.

The Educational Choice for Children Act is one more attempt to create a national program that allows wealthy folks to dodge taxes and privatize education all at the same time. Betsy DeVos tried to sell her version of Educational Freedom while she was in office. Unsuccessfully.

The idea is a tax credit scholarship voucher. In this case, an individual could write off 10% of their gross income by giving it to a "scholarship granting organization" aka "voucher management group" aka "extra set of hands so that it doesn't look like the government is giving tax dollars to private religious organizations." 

The bill was submitted (who knows who actually wrote it) by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA),a gastroenterologist who at least deserves credit for being one of the seven GOP senators to vote to impeach Trump for the insurrection. He's also the guy who promised that he would only support health care legislation that passed the Jimmy Kimmel Test (and then didn't when he went in with Lindsey Graham to propose an alternative to Obamacare). The bill arrived with 14 co-sponsors and picked up 15 more--the usual GOP crew, from Tuberville to Vance to Blackburn to both Scotts. There's a corresponding House bill filed by Rep. Adrian Smith (R-NE-3). 

Cassidy tried this last year, too. And the year before that. This year's version dropped during National School Choice Week, and there's supposed to be a PR push to help support it.

That push is supposed to be coming courtesy of the Invest In Education Coalition. So who are they?

Their own explanation is that they are a "501(c)(4) organization that advocates at the federal level for legislation that will directly empower K-12 parents throughout the nation to choose the best school or education service for their children."

The board of directors is just three guys--

Anthony J. de Nicola is the chair. He's also chairman of Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, a New York private equity form that specializes in tech and healthcare. He and his wife are big on philanthropic giving, including supporting the Catholic church.

Thomas E. McInerny is the secretary of the board. He's CEO at Bluff Point Associates, a private equity firm. He used to be a general partner at Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe.

Robert H. Neihaus is treasurer. He's founder of GCP Capital Partners, a private equity firm.  

None of their bios mention any sort of education background. But they have plenty of investment banking credentials.

The website is basically all about the ECCA. You can join the coalition, but it's not really clear who the members, if any, of the coalition are. There's a big list of groups and "leaders" that support the ECCA, and perhaps that makes them part of this group? The supporters list includes no surprises, from Betsy DeVos to Dr. Corey DeAngelis, plus national and state groups. There are links to "research" from DeVos's American Federation for Children and Milton Friedman's EdChoice. There are empty pages (like the /team page). Their LinkedIn page is just an auto-placeholder. We'll get back to their Facebook page in a minute.

The Wayback Machine internet archive shows a different picture of the team. The earliest capture of the team page is from May 21, 2022, and back then there were four more members of the leadership team and a slightly different name-- Invest in Education Foundation. 

The additional three board members are:  Robert Flanigan, co-founder of Educate, LLC (where he's  apparently just a "co-owner" since 2019) and former Merrill Lynch guy; Susan B. George of the Inner-City Scholarship Fund and the Catholic Education Advancement Office of the Archdiocese of New York; and Darla Romfo, president of the Children's Scholarship Fund, an outfit that provides "partial scholarships for low-income children in grades K-8 to go to private school," which sounds like voucher administration work. 

Back then, IIEF had a president-- Luke Messer. Messer was the CEO of School Choice Indiana. He was also elected a state legislator (2003-2006) then moved on to a US Rep from 2013-2019 (in the district Mike Pence vacated to become Governor), where he was founder and co-chair of the Congressional School Choice Caucus. He made plenty of choicer friends in the days after Trump's election and DeVos's appointment. 

By May of 2022, he was a partner at the law firm of Bose McKinney & Evans. At Invest in Education, he worked "every day to enact a $10 billion federal tax credit that would help give millions of children access to a high-quality school." By June of 2023, IIEF's address was the same as that of Bose McKinney & Evans, and the site was sporting logos for both a foundation and a coalition. One thing Messer doesn't list in his bio is his years as a registered lobbyist (2006-2012), right after he tried to privatize some Indiana highways. And he's been out there as the face of Invest in Education stumping for choice on all the usual fun places.

It sure looks like the whole business is Messer's show.

Then, by December of 2023, Messer is gone from the Team page, and Invest in Education has no address. And by today, Invest in Education has a new logo, and only three board members. 

Huh.

But there's another rabbit hole to dive down. Invest in Education has a Facebook page, and that page, with the exception of a slow period from late 2020-2021, has been active almost daily since it was set up. That set-up happened on September 11, 2017-- only it was started at the page for My Kids Future (a few weeks later, someone changed the name to My Kid's Future). 

My Kid's Future was yet another pro-choice website, a "special project of the #EdTaxCredit50 and Invest in Education coalitions." Weirdly enough, the English language version of the website is down, but the Spanish language one is up. Edtaxcredit50 has its own dormant Facebook page, launched on April 20, 2017. They set up a Twitter account at the same time and crumped out around late 2021. Invest in Education also had a Twitter account that started in October of 2013 as @OpportunityInEd, another account that joined in May 2009 and is still kicking, and there's also @Investined, which is a suspended account. All of their social media has followed the standard pandemic outrage-learning loss panic narrative.

Amidst all that, we learn that Invest In Ed had a previous president-- Tom Carroll. Thomas W. Carroll left IIE to get busy in the world of Catholic private schools; he just last summer announced he'll be stepping down as the superintendent of Boston archdiocesan schools at the end of this school year. He started there in April 2019. 

Carroll's LinkedIn says that he presided over Invest in Education Coalition and Foundation from March 2012 to March 2019, calling it "A think tank and advocacy organization focused on school choice in NY and nationally." He also says he founded #EdTaxCredit50 Coalition in January of 2017, which focused on pushing a 50-state tax credit and "the expansion of 529 college savings accounts in December 2017 to allow withdrawals for private K-12 tuition, the biggest federal school-choice initiative ever adopted."

Prior to his time at IIE, Carroll spent 2002-2012 as president of the Foundation for Education Reform and Accountability, a New York State choice advocacy group, and before that, founder and chairman of the Brighter Choice Foundation, a charter network in and around Albany. Though he doesn't mention it, a listing for Carroll at the Center for Education Reform also says that post-FERA, he headed up the Foundation for Opportunity in Education, which fits.

Carroll's 2012 arrival at Invest in Education aligns with the group's certification by the IRS. The Foundation was granted tax exempt status in 2012, and the Coalition in 2013. Both list an Albany post office box as their address, both list Anthony De Nicola (the current chair) as the principal officer. 

The 990 for the foundation from 2022 gives us yet another name, the only guy besides Messer who is listed as putting in 40 hour weeks. That's Michael J. Strianese, who was the CFO and COO for Invest in Ed, according to his LinkedIn from 2012-2018, then moved on to be CFO and COO for Northeast Charter Schools Network in Albany from 2019 on, so why he's on this 990 is unclear. Messer made $115,000 for his presidential duties; Strianese, $60K. On 2020, Messer is not on the form, and Strianese made $38,000. 

And in 2021. we find Maureen Blum, in her single 990 appearance as Executive Director. Her LinkedIn page says she was ED with IIEC for six years (2016-2022), and she says that IIEC was a continuation of Coalition for Opportunity in Education "due to a name change of company." She started out with the Coalition for Opportunity in Education in 2012 and served as Director of Outreach till the apparent name change in January of 2016. And before that she was with Brighter Choice since 2003 as director of outreach. She was also the ED of #EdTaxCredit50/USA Workforce Coalition from April 2016 through January 2022. Also, from 2002 till the present, she has been CEO of Strategic Coalitions and Initiatives, LLC, specializing in the "development of grassroots and community infrastructure designed to support and implement--" you know what? She's a professional astroturfer. 

The 2022 Foundation 990 also answers "Yes" to "Did the organization make any significant changes to its governing documents since the prior Form 990 was filed?" That turns out to be changes to the bylaws to "limit and control the board selection and removal process, and also to modify the process for hiring and firing the CEO and direct reports of the CEO" which seems like a bit of a clue about what happened to Messer and half the board. 

The Foundation took in gifts, grants and contributions totaling almost $3 million over five years; about half of that came in 2018. The low point was 2020 with $179K, but in 2022 they brought in $746K. Digging back, we a measly $155K in 2016, but almost a million in 2017. 

The 2022 990 for the Coalition shows Strianese and the three remaining board members, but not Messer. The group spent money on Bose Public Affairs Group in DC ($253K for lobbying) and in Indianapolis ($147K for lobbying), plus Linden-Grove Strategies in Albany ($127K for media and advocacy). 2021 shows those four plus Blum. 2020 shows just the three. The coalition shows much more revenue, topping a million each year. 

So what have we got here? An organization that has been around in various forms for a decade or so, agitating for national vouchers, and since the pandemic, they've been hitting all the usual choicer notes on Facebook through an account that somebody is running for them. They cut loose a bunch of members (perhaps shedding the foundation and just downsizing to the coalition). They look kind of amateur hour, but somebody is feeding them a lot of money. 

We started this with an announcement about their intent to boost ECCA. So what have they done?

Well, they have a Youtube channel with four videos. Two are from last fall, arguing for the ECCA with the usual rhetoric about failing schools and Evil People leaving students behind (pictures of Weingarten and Fauci), calling for every GOP candidate to embrace the message (series of now-irrelevant images), and offering the not-quite-true talking point that this doesn't use federal dollars (no, it just uses dollars that leave a hole in the federal revenue). Another spot links school choice to Ronald Reagan. And two more tell the story of a young woman who was saved by school choice; it does not address the question of how many private schools would refuse to honor her voucher because of her learning struggles or lack of born-again parents. You can go watch them if you must, but there's not much traffic over there and that seems like a good thing.

So.

If somewhere in your neighborhood, advertisement about the Education Choice for Children Act being paid for by the Invest in Education Coalition, now you kind of know what that's about. I'm sorry this didn't end up being a more linear, straightforward tale, but that is rather the nature of these groups--twisty and inbred with ever-shifting names and connections, because they're just mechanisms created by rich people to work their will and sell their preferred policy. These are not "organizations" in a normal sense, but just tools created for a particular purpose. In this case, the purpose is to push national school choice, a policy that has failed and failed and failed again, but hey--these folks are patient and wealthy enough to wait and keep tap, tap, tapping on the obstacles until they crumble.