ICYMI: Big Fat Eclipse Edition (4/7)

The Curmudgucation Institute is located just about 10ish miles from the path of totality, which is close enough for me. Many local schools are dismissing early tomorrow so that children can enjoy the whole shebang from home. Should be a good time. We've got our glasses and everything. 

In the meantime, read up on some stuff.

My Letter to the Boston Globe re K-12 Political Coverage

Dark money expert Maurice Cunningham continues to try explaining to the Boston Globe how their education coverage seems to neglect mentioning some of the big money players behind the push for reform in Massachusetts. Also, this piece about the activities of the Barr Foundation. 

Oklahoma voters recall white supremacist, reject supporters of Ryan Walters

Some good news from Oklahoma for a change. Turns out plenty of voters still have some sense.

Kanye West admitted to ‘blowing Donda school funds’ on $2m Paris trip as Yeezy staffers ‘weren’t paid,’ lawsuit claims

Kanye's attempt to get into the education biz has not turned out so well. Who woulda thought it.

Students across Alaska walk out in protest of governor’s education veto

Alaska's governor has been trying to go the "bribe teachers to go along" route, but the legislature wouldn't go along, so he vetoed funding and now everyone is upset about something, including students. 

Civil Disobedience and Uncivilized Diatribes

Jess Piper reminds us that there are great and not-so-great ways to express your disagreement.

Rethinking Information Literacy in an Age of AI

John Spencer shares some thoughts about what information literacy really means these days. 

NC teacher turnover hits highest mark in decades.

WRAL takes a look at North Carolina's continuing inability to hold onto teachers. No surprises here.

Naught for Teacher

Jennifer Berkshire at The Baffler with the story of how Democrats lost the plot and joined the opposition to public education and the search for Bad Teachers. Thorough and informative historical look that's well worth your attention.

A Tale of Two (or Three) Pensions

You may be retired, but are you "Have To Prove To The State You're Not Dead" retired? The indispensable Mercedes Schneider has a couple of tales to tell. Plus a follow-up piece here.

DIS-Information in Schools

Nancy Flanagan writes about battling dis-information (as distinct from misinformation). Also, because we have a bunch of twofers this week, catch her post Trust (Pandemic, Day #1475)

Fan of Standards-Based Grading?

Thomas Ultican breaks down standards-based grading, and why he is not a fan.

Critical Race Theory Is About You, And All Of Us

Jose Luis Vilson writes about the many tools used to target teachers of color and programs that respond to a diverse nation. Come for this line: "It’s about time for us to learn how to fight the bull. Or at least call out its excrements."

Billionaire Jeff Yass Avoids Taxes and Buys School Voucher Policies

Pennsylvania's big rich guy loves vouchers, and he's not shy about spending money to promote them, and he's not sticking to his home state. Steve Nuzum lays out some history.

Oklahoma Supreme Court Justices Appear to Question Constitutionality of Religious Charter School

This was the week that the Oklahoma supreme court started to hear arguments about the state's proposed and nation's first religious charter school. Jan Resseger has a good wrap up of the arguments being made and the importance of the case.

Why Does Florida Continue To Administer State-Mandated Writing Assessments?

Florida still makes students take a state writing assessment. Nobody really knows why, but Sue Kingery Woltanski can explain why they shouldn't.

The US is experiencing a boom in microschools. What are they?

Alejandra O'Connor writes an explainer for The Hill about microschools, and while she misses their importance in the drive for privatized voucherized schools, it's still a pretty good summation of how things stand currently.

Humans are not perfectly vigilant

Cory Doctorow remains one of the most on-target critics of AI. In this piece, he addresses the use of humans "in the loop" and why that sucks.

Majority Of Americans Never Use Physical Education After High School

This real oldie from The Onion surfaced this week, but it's still an evergreen classic. For every teacher who ever had to listen to "I'll never use this again..." (aka all teachers).

At Forbes.com this week I looked at the possible (and welcome) demise of Tennessee's achievement school district and the highlights of Pew's newest survey of teachers. 

Come join me on substack, where everything I write turns up in your email inbox, and you never have to pay a cent for it. 

A Useful Public School Support Resource

"I know I read something about that somewhere." 

It's a pain (believe me--one that we at the Institute are all too familiar with) to know that you know something, but can't locate the source. Or wish you knew more, but can't find a handy clearing house for the information you need. Particularly if yours is one of those states where some legislators are whipping up some speedy back door voucher bill.

So here's one useful answer. The Partnership for the Future of Learning has created a website at TruthinEdFunding.org that provides a wide assortment of resources in a library organized by topics. History Rooted in Segregation. Types of Vouchers. Discrimination. Accountability. Drain Funds from Public Education. And more. 

There are links to studies and data as well as graphics and personal stories. You can also filter through the resource library by a set of more specific tags. 

The website is the result of a partnership between about 25 organizations that are all in support of public education-- Network for Public Education, Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy, Florida Policy Institute, In The Public Interest. 

So if you are looking for a place to find a bunch of useful resources to use in defending public education in your state against vouchers, or just some tools for educating friends and neighbors and journalists (and legislators) who haven't quite caught on to what's happening, this resource is for you.  Stop and browse, and return from time to time because new stuff is being added regularly. One of the most useful websites I have come across (and putting up this post insures that I'll always be able to find it).

SAT Scam Alert

This time, it's not the College Board perpetrating the scam.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Michelle Henry sent out an alarm on Monday warning that scammers are contacting parents of students who are getting ready to take the PSAT, SAT, and ACT. The pitch is for some non-existent test prep materials. And it's not just Pennsylvania. 

"Just give us a deposit, and the materials will be on their way," say the scammers, who also promise that the deposit will be refunded after the materials are used and returned. Just use your credit card to put down the deposit.

The parents get no test prep materials. The scammers have their credit card numbers and a chunk of their money.  

What really sells the scam is the information the scammers have. Folks reporting the scam to the Better Business Bureau say that the caller claims to from the College Board, just calling to confirm the student's information, and the scammers know the name, address, school information, and the date and location for the student's test. 

Caller, Carson, stated my son had requested SAT prep materials through College Board student services. He had my address, my son’s name, date and location of the SAT test my son is scheduled to take. Caller stated they needed parental permission prior to sending documents and that I needed to give him a credit card number for collateral.

We would be sent the college SAT prep materials; the materials would be free of charge for 30 days and we would need to return the materials in the envelope provided and my card wouldn’t be charged. The caller stated they send email reminders prior to the return deadline and will send shipping confirmation once the material package is mailed out. My card was charged $249.95 instantly.

Authorities remind you not to give out financial information to strangers, and the College Board won't call you up to ask for your credit card number.

This is not a new scam; it was being run back in at least 2022. It's just one more sad side effect of the fear and anxiety that have been attached to these Big Scary Tests that students are repeatedly told will Affect Their Entire Future! But it does raise one question--whose data has been hacked in order to provide scammers with all that info about the student? 

Teaching Flow State

As I noted a month ago, we have research out there that shows a parallel between playing jazz and teaching a class, mostly related to the gazillion microdecisions that are made in the process. For the subset of teachers who both teach and play jazz, or basketball, or any number of similarly dense and intense activities, this was not exactly news-- we'd already sensed the connection.

We can particularly sense the connection when we are in the zone, what the grown-ups who study this kind of thing call "flow state." If you've been there, you know it--the Something just flows through you, and you are just a conduit functioning so well and so clearly that you feel pretty awesome all the way to your bones. You make those gazillion microdecisions instantly in what the science folks call "effortless attention to a task."

But how do we get there? What makes flow state happen? Which way to the zone?

There are a variety of theories. New research suggests there is a particular explanation of what is going on in the flowing brain, and for me that suggests a few things about learning and teaching.

One theory flow is a version of hyperfocus, that executive function portion of the brain get cranked up and organize everything around the task (I am not a brain scientist, and you probably aren't either, so I'm going to do some oversimplification here). If that were the accurate explanation, then we'd expect people to get good at stuff through concentration, focus, executive function type stuff. Think back to that teacher who taught by way of intense demands to focus attention on the task at hand.

But the other theory says that executive function actually steps back, and in a flow state operation is taken over by an entire other neural processing network that doesn't need the executive function network and basically tells it to go sit quietly while the flow gets going. This would fit with details such as the fact that it's harder to get in the zone when you're just learning the task, or that middle-ground area that you might describe as thinking too much and getting in your own way.

The new study, "Creative flow as optimized processing: Evidence from brain oscillations during jazz improvisations by expert and non-expert musicians," comes down on the side of that second theory.

The study hooked up a bunch of jazz musicians (guitarists) of varied experience and had them do some soloing while scientists watched their brains. Interestingly, they also had some jazz experts judge the quality of the solos (all 192 of them). 

Things they concluded. More experience made higher flow scores. Self-rated quality ("Yeah, I nailed that") predicted flow for all players, but judged quality only predicted flow for low-experience players. In other words, if low-experience players had a good solo, it was probably flow, but for high-experience players, not necessarily. That makes sense to me; with enough experience, you can do a perfectly fine job on "autopilot," which is not at all like flow.

The paper also rules out the default mode network (the daydreamy, reflective part of the brain) as a player in flow.

The paper also includes a whole lot of information about pieces of the brain that light up and statistics stuff (the paper is here, and a plain English explanation is here). 

But the bottom line here seems to be that only through experience over time do you grow the capacity to flow, that mastering the task or task set is the business of building a new neural network in your brain to manage the task.

This would fit nicely with, for instance, the conventional wisdom that it takes a teacher five to seven years to really get good at the work. 

It would also suggest that the teaching model that says we just explain the content and make students focus on it real hard is not necessarily the best path, that a certain amount of repetition is useful, because we're not trying to get them to focus real hard and acquire a particular bit of knowledge, but we are trying to build a neural network through repeated experience. 

It's certainly not a radical new idea to suggest that practicing something a whole lot makes you better at it (though, before someone brings up the 10,000 hour rule, that thing is debunked). Still, "Build a neural network" is certainly a way to think about teaching and learning, perhaps most at odds with some of our traditional approached because it requires one major ingredient-- time. Think of how often we insist that students learn something, Right Now, because if they would just Apply Themselves and Focus, they could get it. As always, some balance might be good.

It also suggests that pressuring students to substitute intensely focused attention in place of time is perhaps not useful. In fact, it strikes me that repeated experiences of frustration, pressure and failure are also building a neural network that's not helpful, another version of the injunction for performers to avoid practicing something the wrong way.

Of course, not all learning needs to aspire to creating a flow state, and I'm sure there's more studying to be done. Always fun to think about building a brain, though. 

NC: A Truly Terrible Candidate For Education Chief

Catherine Truitt was no prize, a stalwart friend of the school privatization movement who served as a senior education advisor to Governor Pat McCrory, a chancellor of an online college, and most recently as North Carolina's superintendent of public instruction. In that role she was a friend to the wealthy, the privatizers, and the Trump crowd.

And yet, she apparently wasn't friendly enough, because in the primary she got her incumbent butt handed to her by a spectacularly unqualified opponent, who is now the GOP candidate for the state superintendent post.

That's bad news for North Carolina, because Michelle Morrow could easily be one of the worst state education leaders in the nation.

Morrow couldn't even win a school board election just two years ago.

Morrow has no background in education. She was a nurse. She's homeschools her own children and is virulently opposed to public schools, calling them "indoctrination centers" and "socialism centers" and urged parents not to send their children there. When running for school board, she said, “I think the whole plan of the education system from day one has actually been to kind of control the thinking of our young people.” She argued for more money for tutoring which could be paid for by cutting spending on "nonessentials items" such as "social activism," though she couldn't provide examples of such activity, but she'd, you know, heard stuff.

Morrow's board campaign also included complaints about books with sex acts in them. Just child porn she claimed, and was among some folks in Wake County who filed police reports against the board over naughty books in the library. 

Morrow was at DC on January 6, though she says she stayed out of the capital- just there for a homeschooling civics lesson for the kids. Except that her video, which starts out "Hey patriots" and announces that she's at the capital "because that's where I President asked us to come" pans her surroundings, and there are no kids in sight. Maybe the educational experience was going to be delivered second hand. "If you are going to commit treason, if you are going to participatre in fraud," she announces, "We are coming after you."

In March of 2021 she was still out on the streets for Trump and MAGA (here's some video) for Liberty First Grassroots PAC.

CNN dug into her social media activity and found, among other things, that she would "prefer a Pay Per View of him in front of the firing squad," in response to the notion of sending Barack Obama to prison at Guantanamo Bay. "Death to all traitors" she tweeted under a fake Time Magazine cover showing Obama in an electric chair. She also shared plenty of QAnon stuff. In one particularly thorough post, she wrote

Obama did it. Hillary did it. Schiff did it. Comey did it. Yates did it. Holder did it. Clapper did it. Gates did it. Fauci did it. Time for #WeThePeople to DO IT and #DrainTheSwamp!!!!! #NoJusticeNoCountry #DeathToTraitors #ProsecuteThemNow #TakeBackAmerica .@dbongino #KAG,

She has called Islam evil. She has ranted about Deep State Globalists. She has the backing of Moms for Liberty chapters in North Carolina. 

 Does she get the whole campaign as a public figure thing? In a video, she complains that CNN "stalked" her and tried to get her to answer questions after a gathering (questions like, Do you stand by your demand that Barack Obama be executed?) You can watch the video of what happened--it looks a lot like typical reporter asking a candidate questions that she would rather not answer.

Then she moves on to arguing that the CNN reporters don't really care about North Carolina students, or they'd be asking questions about the failing schools and the "74% of eighth graders that are not competent in reading, math, or science." So, more failure to understand what "proficient" means on the NAEP (it means above average, not competent). North Carolina voters are too smart to be fooled by "these people from other states and these left-wing media." She's a victim. Soon they will see how she returns the schools to awesomeness (though why it has failed terribly while the GOP has had control of everything in the state is not explained).

She's been on Steve Bannon's show. He asked why "they" are hating on her so much, and she explains that the Democrats know it's a swing state, and "the other thing is I've been speaking truth about how we want to get back to the basics of education and exposing what's been happening in our schools, the failures of the left in the radical agendas and the political and sexual and racially explicit stuff that's that's poisoning our children's minds and keeping them from getting a good education."  And I will remind you that Morrow home schools and that North Carolina Republicans have enjoyed a well-gerrymandered majority for years (and a super-majority since 2023). Also, they lied and smeared President Trump and she's just "next on the hit parade." 

Her own campaign video claims she is facing "the most radical extremists the Democrats have ever run" and accuses opponent Mo Green of spending six years "leading a progressive organization that funded efforts to destroy families, public schools, and everyone's safety in this state." She means, I think, the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, a philanthropic group that does grants aimed at improving communities in North Carolina. 

It goes on and on. There's the time she had a meltdown over being in a Dollar Tree with a bunch of people who didn't speak English. There's her desire to do away with the department she wants to run.

Or a week or so ago when her campaign spokesperson Sloan Rachmuch flipped out over a pride flag hanging on the wall in a school's administrative wing, posting, “Yet another example of the socialist indoctrination camps @MicheleMorrowNC talks about.” It's a diabolical plot. Rachmuch is the head of the Education First Alliance and Pen and Shield Media, a pair of right wing outfits that have their very own rabbit hole. 

It appears that North Carolina, between Mark Robinson and Michelle Morrow, is about to field test just how much juice is left in the far-right Trumpian victimhood culture panic approach to politics. If it has enough to elect this woman, that will be bad news for folks in North Carolina who care about education (and also for those who don't, but it will take them longer to realize it). Let's watch this race. 

A Voucher By Any Other Name

Voucher supporters have one major problem: school vouchers are unpopular.

The tern doesn't test well. Measure of public support is iffy-- if you ask people if they would like every student to have the chance to ride to a great school on their own pony, people say yes, but if you ask a more reality-based framing ("should we spend education dollars on public schools or subsidies for some private schools") the results look a bit different. 

But one clear measure of public support for vouchers is this; despite all the insistence that the public just loves the idea, no voucher measure has ever been passed by the voters in a state. All voucher laws have been passed by legislators, not voted in by the public. 

Voucher supporters have developed one clear strategy-- call them something else.

The basic school voucher idea is simple-- the state takes money that it was going to spend on public education (either after that money has been paid in taxes, or by having someone trade a "contribution" to a voucher fund in exchange for tax credit) and giving it to parents, who in turn can go out and buy education services on their own. 

They're not taxpayer-funded vouchers--they're "tax credit scholarships." They're not vouchers-- they're an Education Freedom Account. And if you want to get in a twitter battle, go ahead and call education savings accounts "vouchers," because part of the whole point of education savings account was to create an instrument that was both a super-voucher and not-something-we'll-call-a-voucher-at-all-so-stop-doing-that-dammit.

I expect that behind the curtain there have been folks fervently doing messaging testing on other names for vouchers, and from the results around the nation, we can deduce that words that tested well were "education" and "freedom" and "scholarship." Also, "empowerment" is coming on strong. States with education savings accounts have the chance to play with the initials ESA. 

So what pops out of the branding machine is Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (Arizona), Education Freedom Account (Arkansas, New Hampshire), Family Empowerment Scholarship Program (Florida), Choice Scholarship Program (Indiana), Opportunity Scholarship Program (North Carolina), Education Choice Scholarship (Ohio), and, of course, who could forget Betsy DeVos's national tax credit scholarship voucher program, the Education Freedom Plan. 

You can mad lib your way to a voucher program of your own. Education Freedom Scholarship Opportunity Program! Family Freedom Education Scholarships! Family Freedom Empowerment Education Scholarship Opportunity Choice Program Plan! Just don't call it a voucher.

Bonus credits to Louisianna, where someone took the trouble to write a bill pushing the Louisianna Giving All True Opportunity to Rise-- LA GATOR. And in California, legislature voucherfiles are trying "Education Flex Account" for their latest attempt to pass an ESA voucher.

But a voucher by any other name still smells the same. It's a payoff to parents so that they'll exit public education, a false promise of education choice, a redirection of public taxpayer dollars into private pockets, an outsourcing of discrimination, a public subsidy for private religious choices, a means of defunding and dismantling public education as we understand it in this country, a transformation of a public good into a market-based commodity. Call it what you like. There isn't enough air freshener in the world to make it smell like a rose.

ICYMI: Easter Knee Birthday Band Edition (3/31)

Happy Easter to those of you who observe the occasion. We're fans here at the Institute, though this year it caps off a busy time.

Today is the birthday of the Institute's West Coast Executive Vice President, and tomorrow kicks off the season for the town band to which the CMO and I belong (it celebrates its 168th anniversary this year). 

And earlier this week I had some arthroscopic surgery performed on a knee. I had pretty much the same meniscus-trimming exercise performed forty-some years ago. Back then the post-op protocol was to immobilize the leg in a hip-to-ankle cast. I had to trade cars with my brother (switching a 1979 Opel hatchback with standard shift for a 1954 Buick with an automatic). The after six weeks the cast came off to reveal a pale imitation of a functional leg. Nowadays, the Best Practices are to get up and humping around on the leg ASAP, which I'm doing with limited grace. But at least I won't need three months to fully recover from the whole business. Makes me wonder what would have happened if the state legislature had, forty-some years ago, passed a law mandating the protocol as the only legal treatment. Do you think they could have shifted as nimbly as the actual medical professionals. 

At any rate, here's some reading from the week to go along with your tasty chocolate treats.

The false promise — and hidden costs — of school vouchers

Voucher expert Josh Cowen explains what's really happening and why Pennsylvania in particular should not get on the voucher train. It's at the Philadelphia Inquirer, so my apologies if you can't get to it, but if you can, you should.

School voucher proponents spend big to overcome rural resistance

The Arkansas Advocate reports on the big push in Texas and elsewhere by deep pocketed fans of dismantling public education, including DeVos's AFC Victory Fund.

Success Academy eyes Florida expansion as Schools of Hope operator

Eva Moskowitz can small Florida dollars all the way from New York City. You'll have to hold your nose a bit for this news, which reports without examination the charters claims of high test scores and full college placement (but not its hard work in getting rid of students who might mess up its numbers). 

Research from pro-charter school group makes case for halting the approval of new charters

Kris Nordstrom explains how the Fordham Institute inadvertently made the case against more charter schools in North Carolina.

Colleges Are Facing an Enrollment Nightmare

MSN pulls up a Rose Horowitz article from the Atlantic that explains why the FAFSA is throwing a giant monkey-wrench into college application this year.

What My Professors Never Told Me About Teaching

Jherine Wilkerson at EdWeek with a listicle of items that teachers will recognize.

A Grim Anniversary, A Useless State Report Card, and New District Chiefs – Its Easter Time In Tennessee

More on the ground reporting from TC Weber

Will Untenable Voucher Expansion Threaten Public School Funding in Ohio?

Ohio has joined the ranks of states writing a choice check that its taxpayers can't cash. Who's going to end up paying? Jan Resseger looks into it.

Ohio school board may raise teacher license fees as budget shortfall looms

Of course, if they're really strapped for cash, they could always try to squeeze some more out of teachers.

Another Crusade Against "Diversity" in Education

Steve Nuzum tells the story of a bill that seeks to ban diversity, equity and inclusion without explaining what they mean.

West Virginia governor signs vague law allowing teachers to answer questions about origin of life

West Virginia tries one more way to get creationism into the classroom.

Secret recording shows pressure on Republican lawmakers to vote for school vouchers

In Tennessee, yet more recordings showing that lobbyist tactics on the school voucher issue are pretty direct and threatening.

Public school leaders slam bills to fund private schools 

Those same folks are in Louisianna trying to ram through yet another privatization bill. 

Many Houston charter schools are violating state transparency laws.

Texas is home to one of the biggest charter school scams in the nation. Yet, as this report by Miranda Dunlap for Houston Landing shows, there's still an awful lot of non-compliance when it comes to transparency.

Why I Am Not Going To Use a Chatbot to Do My Writing For Me

David Lee Finkle is the creator of Mr. Fitz, an outstanding comic strip about teaching. He also blogs occasionally, and this latest piece has lots worth reading to say about AI as a classroom tool. 

Fostering Authority in Student Writers

Paul Thomas with some excellent thoughts about how to teach writing. 

LGBTQ activist group 'Free Mom Hugs' delivers cease and desist to Moms for Liberty

Moms for Liberty called them groomers, then doubled down. So now they can deal with some lawyers. 

What the hell, Oklahoma?!

Oklahoma gets a whole section of ICYMI this week. Start with the Politico profile of education dudebro Ryan Walters, collecting all his sad and infuriating story in one place. Also, maybe his department is misusing federal money to plug a substitute teacher problem they helped create. Meanwhile, as lot so folks line up to grab the limited public comment spots in a OK Department of Education board meeting, the department locked itself in by tying doors shut with extension cords. And while his department now has a shiny new School Choice Department, it apparently no longer has any lawyers. Quite the operation out there.

Kids as young as 14 were found working at a Tennessee factory that makes lawn mower parts

More frontiers in child labor. Well, child immigrant labor. 

Also, at Forbes.com, I wrote about why the push to legislate Science of Reading would be a bad idea even if Science of Reading was a legit good idea. 

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