OK: Stripping License of Teacher Who Posted LInk to Library

We have an update on the saga of Summer Boismier, and it's not a good one. Not for her, and not for the teachers of Oklahoma. I'm going to quote extensively from a previous post to refresh your memory.

Our story so far

Back in September of 2022, after Oklahoma had unveiled its own version of a Florida-style reading restriction law, Norma High School English teacher Boismier drew flak for covering some books in her classroom with the message "Books the state doesn't want you to read." Apparently even worse, she posted the QR code for the Brooklyn Public Libraries new eCard for teens program, which allows teens from all over the country to check out books, no matter how repressive or restrictive state or local rules they may live under.

She was suspended by the district, which said that this was about her "personal political statements" and a "political display" in the classroom. Boismier told The Gothamist

I saw this as an opportunity for my kids who were seeing their stories hidden to skirt that directive. Nowhere in my directives did it say we can't put a QR code on a wall

The suspension was brief, but Boismier decided this was not the kind of atmosphere in which she wanted to work, so she resigned, citing a culture of fear, confusion and uncertainty in schools, fomented by Oklahoma Republicans.

That wasn't enough to satisfy Walters, at the time campaigning for office. The whole business had been a high-profile brouhaha, so Candidate Walters popped up to put his two cents in via a letter that he posted on Twitter.

Saying that "providing access to banned and pornographic material is unacceptable" and "There is no place for a teacher with a liberal political agenda in the classroom," Walters called for Boismier's license to be revoked. And he called her out by name, arguing that the public do not want "activist teachers in classrooms" and that it's super important that "we continue to protect our kids from indoctrination." Yes, this the same who mandated that every teacher must use the Bible as a teaching tool in their classroom. 

That, of course, led in true MAGA fashion to a flood of vulgarity and death threats directed at Boismier as reported by KFOR:

“These teachers need to be taken out and shot,” “teachers like this should not only be fired but also should be swinging from a tree,” “If Summer tried this in Afghanistan, they’d cut out her tongue for starters,” are just a minuscule fraction of the threats pouring into Summer Boismier’s inbox.

Boismier was unwilling to put up with all of this. When Walters continued to try to strip her teaching license (even though in December of 2022 she took a job at the Brooklyn Library), Boismier used a quirk of Oklahoma law to demand a trial-like hearing to dispute the department of education decision. 

At that hearing in June of 2023, Assistant Attorney General Liz Stephens recommended against taking Boismier's license, saying the state failed to prove that Boismier had broken the law. Let me repeat: the Assistant AG of the state said that Walters had no case.

Boismier wasn't done. In August of 2023, she filed a defamation lawsuit against Walters. Walters filed a motion to dismiss in January of this year, and U.S. District Court Judge Bernard Jones (Oklahoma's first Black magistrate and elevated to the district court by Donald Trump) denied the motion to dismiss. Walters had alleged that Boismier was a sort of public figure, and that malice on his part couldn't be shown. The judge disagreed, saying her case looks solid enough to proceed. So that lawsuit will continue winding through the court.

Meanwhile, the state board and Walters have continued to move forward to take Boismier's license. As reported by Murray Evans at The Oklahoman, they decided hold yet another hearing to "finalize the revocation" in March. Only there's a problem with that plan. In March, all of the department's attorneys quit, so they had no lawyers with which to hold a legal-type proceeding. They've postponed action until May. Once again, Walters had shot himself in the foot by just being lousy at his job.

So what's happened now?  

Last week, the Oklahoma State Board of Education voted to strip Boismier of her license. Reported M. Scott Cart and Murray Evans for The Oklahoman:

“She (Boismier) broke the law,” Walters said [speaking to reporters after the meeting]. “And I said from the beginning, when you have a teacher that breaks the law, said she broke the law, (and) said she will continue to break the law — that can’t stand.”

Walters said he wanted Oklahomans to be very clear that Oklahoma State Department of Education would hold teachers accountable. “The Legislature passes laws, we have rules, teacher code of conduct that goes along with those things ― those will be enforced. I wanted every parent to know they have the best teacher possible in their kid’s classroom.”

Brady Henderson, Boismier's attorney, said she would keep fighting, but first they'd need to see what made-up set of facts the board used to justify their decision.  

On Twitter, Boismier reacted to the decision:

While temporarily losing that teaching certificate feels a bit like losing a fundamental part of myself my Ss--especially those from LGBTQ+ &/or BIPOC communities--were (and still are) faced w/ a much greater loss, the loss of stories that tell their stories, stories that speak to the fundamental parts of themselves & the lives they recognize as similar to their own. I accept the consequences of my actions, though I will also fight those consequences w/ everything I have. But what I'll never accept are the consequences for young people whose stories are required by bigotry to be hidden behind butcher paper.

The Oklahoma State Board of Education (OSBE), the entity that enforces these draconian consequences, is currently composed mostly of members who have never held teaching certificates or taught in public schools or even taught professionally at all. Considering OSBE's proclivity for weaponizing teaching certificates@ the behest of OSDE, here's what #OklaEd Ts, your friends & family, could face for educating responsibly, possessing [books], affirming Ss, expressing opinions, or even just existing the "wrong" way.

At that same OKSBE meeting, two either teachers were under investigation. One for an ill-advised social media post after the Trump assassination attempt, and another for an "inappropriate" post including a photo of his children, one in a Trump mask and the others holding fake swords. 

That photo was posted in 2019; the teacher, Regan Killackey, is one of several plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit challenging HB 1775, the 2021 culture panic gag law. Probably just an incredible coincidence. Have I mentioned that Walters also brought on Chaya Raichik, the woman behind Libs of TikTok, who specializes in digging up social media of left-leaning persons spun to make them look as bad as possible.

So if you're a teacher in Oklahoma, best watch your back and make sure you haven't ever done anything that might hint of a "liberal political agenda" (other political agendas are, apparently, okee dokee), because education dudebro-in-chief is going to root out any ideological impurity in classrooms. Don't think of it as culture panic or a culture war; more like a cultural revolution.

When The State Takes Over The Church

When you mix religion and politics, you get politics.

Florida passed a law just before Christmas last year aimed at allowing schools to hire chaplains. It was carefully worded to avoid seeming as if it were promoting one particular religion to provide chaplains. The mere 26 lines of text include this sentence:

Parents must be permitted to select a volunteer school chaplain from the list provided by the school district, which must include the chaplain’s religious affiliation, if any.

Emphasis mine. That would certainly seem to indicate that a chaplain could have any religious affiliation, or none at all. 

Not so fast. In a completely predictable move, one of the groups that expressed interest in chaplaincy was the Satanic Temple. And Governor Ron DeSantis was not having it, never mind what the English language words in the law say. Only real, legit religions need apply.

So now we take the next logical step, in which the Florida Department of Education issues some "clarification" on what a chaplain should really be (never mind the law) in the form of a model policy for schools to imitate. Commissioner Manny Diaz announced that "Florida welcomes only legitimate and officially authorized chaplains to become volunteers at their local schools and to provide students with morally sound guidance." Sound moral guidance--there goes the original claim that chaplains would just be like counseling helpers.

The actual model (it's right here--at least for the moment) is just a two-pager, but it sets out to do so much.

It lays out some of the specific requirements for communication with parents. It layers on six more requirements for the chaplain job. The law only mentions one--pass a background check. But this adds on several other professional requirements, very much reminiscent of the job description highlighted by actual professional chaplains when objecting to the Texas version of this law. So things like an actual degree, and experience, and counseling training. And also, a "sincere desire" to do the job; the principal will have to desire how sincere the applicant is. It's unclear if an expressed desire to treat the school as a mission field would count here or not.

But beyond all of that, the model policy includes an official government definition of "religion."

Really. The policy offers definitions for three terms-- "chaplain," "local religious affiliation," and "religion." Here it is:

“Religion” means an organized group led, supervised, or counseled by a hierarchy of teachers, clergy, sages, or priests that (1) acknowledges the existence of and worships a supernatural entity or entities that possesses power over the natural world, (2) regularly engages in some form of ceremony, ritual, or protocol, and (3) whose religious beliefs impose moral duties independent of the believer’s self-interest.

This definition, of course, covers Certain Religions that Florida approves of, and rules out a few others, depending on who's judging what exactly is a "ceremony, ritual, or protocol" as well as what constitutes imposing moral duties. That "independent of the believer's self-interest" is yet another in a long series of ill-considered phrases-- if I follow religious teachings because I don't want to go to hell, is that not a moral duty that is all about my self-interest and not at all independent of it?

The ACLU has already noted that the model policy is "extremely problematic and raises several constitutional concerns." But it ought to outrage and/or scare the heck out of people of faith as well.

Look, once you open the door to religion in the public school system, and you don't like some of what walks through that door, you have two choices.

1) You admit that you really only meant for your brand of Christianity to be in schools. 

2) You set up state oversight of religion, a state agency that will decide which religions are legitimate and which are not.

Choice 1 probably won't be a winner in court (at least not yet), so you end up with Choice 2, and here is Florida, right on schedule, deciding that the state will decide what is a real religion and what is not, with a vague definition that will inevitably require someone (looks like it'll be the Department of Education for now) to sit and hold hearings over any religion that thinks it has been unjustly rejected. 

This is a terrible law now buttressed by terrible policy. Nobody on any side of the issues should support this. This is state-controlled religion, and it's useful only as a dynamic civics demonstration of why the Founders wanted a wall between church and state in the first place.

Why, Jeff Yass?

I've read some Jeffrey Yass profiles, but it will be hard to beat the one just published by Robert Huber at Philadelphia's City Paper. It's not just an illuminating profile of Yass, but of the motivation behind many of the privatizers.

Huber traces Yass's devotion to school choice back to his time on the Cato Institute board and a conversation at a Cato event with Milton Friedman.

“‘If you had a lot of philanthropic money, what would you do with it?’ And Friedman said, ‘I would fight for school choice. That’s the fundamental problem with the country. Nothing is more valuable than school choice.’ So as a gambler, I was like, well, I got to ask the guy who has the best opinion. I want to bet with him. So it certainly made sense to me. … [It’s] pretty obvious that nothing could impact society as much as school choice.”

Which is a window into Yass’s way of thinking: He drills down into the most rational viewpoint held by the smartest people — ­of course, he’s the one deciding what’s most rational and who’s the smartest — ­and then runs with it.

Yass is a free market true believer. Competition will improve education. Education will reduce poverty. And he sees one other outcome that he likes:

“As students flee [to schools of their choice], those government schools would have to shut down,” he says, trotting out his favored term for public schools. “And that’s a good thing. If a school cannot fix itself, if it does not adequately educate its children, if it shortchanges the families it is supposed to serve, it doesn’t deserve to be open.”

Huber mentions, not for the last time, the complete self-assuredness with which Yass pitches his ideas. Schools are a big wasteful bureaucracy. Having the money follow the child will work. And all the rest because, as Huner writes, "Jeff Yass has absolutely no doubt that he is right."

Huner delves into Yass's technique of primarying anyone from his own party who doesn't back his choicer agenda (an old DeVos tactic). And while one of his PA partners, state senator Andy Williams, says that Yass just loves kids, Councilwoman Kendra Brooks argues that he does not give a damn "about education policy for the families and children in my community. He just doesn't want to pay taxes. Asked what she would say to Yass, she offers Huber this:

“I really would like to know the why,” she says. Why his focus is on Black and brown children and why he thinks he knows best what they need. “Why does it have to be grounded in pulling these children out of their communities and transforming them into something different?”

 Folks often rush to accuse privatizers of looking to make plenty of money, but one old friend of Yass's, when pressed, offers a motivation--

Power. Huber expands. "The power to upset the apple cart, to blow things up, to have his say."

Power and focus, perhaps. Huber pulls an example from a Texas race in which he backed David Covey, from the far right wingnut part of the GOP, simply because Greg Abbott told Yass that this guy would be their friend on choice. Telling Yass about Covey's extreme beliefs, Hubert mines the following:

Yass claims that he was unaware of that; Governor Abbott, he says, told him Covey was a sane human being, and if there were a really bad guy who was in favor of school choice, Yass says he wouldn’t support him.

Later, I press Yass on that: What of conservative candidates he supports who would try to cut spending on programs that help schoolchildren — Head Start-type programs, say, or school lunch programs — in the name of cutting taxes? Does that concern him at all?

“No, frankly,” Yass says. “Because the school choice issue is so much bigger than anything else that I don’t really consider those things.”

Perhaps whether Covey is a bad guy is debatable, but Yass not knowing exactly whom he supports — or considering the fallout from what policies they’ll pursue — is chilling. (In the end, Covey lost. Barely.)

Huber believes that Huber sincerely wants to fix US education, and agrees that we "desperately need to have an open debate on the state of our schools, our urban schools especially." Yass says he welcomes that debate.

But to many people, it looks like he leaped from debate to certainty long ago, and that he is dangerously gaming our politics with all the money he is throwing around in the name of education. That criticism doesn’t matter, not to Yass. Because he believes he is right.

Because he is utterly certain that he knows the answer:

We have seen this movie before. Bill Gates, because he successfully launched a technocratic empire. Betsy DeVos, because she has a direct line to God. Jeff Yass, because he's gotten incredibly rich beating the system. Countless other wealthy people, because they have been successfully in one business endeavor or because they are sure they know the mind of God.

Each certain that they know The True Answer, and each endowed with a mountain of money that they can use to appoint themselves the Boss of All Education. True Believers who don't feel the need to hear other opinions and able to use a juggernaut of money to roll over anyone who disagrees (aka "people who are wrong"). 

Folks like Yass aren't really interested in wealth, but money is how they keep score (literally true for the guy who made his stake playing poker). I reckon that Yass doesn't want to pay taxes not because he wants that actual money, but because how dare the government try to take something that belongs to him. How dare they try to exert power over him. Still, these rich privatizers attract a whole host of folks who are happy to follow in their wake and gather up the cash they shake loose. But for Yass et al, it's about exerting power in order to make the world conform to what they know is True. It's about winning. 

This is the legacy of Citizens United and every other SCOTUS decision allowing unrestricted spending by the rich in politics. Want to find a person with ideas about how education ought to work? You can find one on every street corner, but only a few have the financial might to inflict their view, no matter how ill-informed, on the rest of us. 

Read this full piece. It's a good window on how these folks think and operate. 

ICYMI: Batten The Hatches Edition (8/25)

The Board of Directors goes back to school tomorrow, while the Chief Marital Officer gets her students on Tuesday, so things are cranking into high gear here. Plus lots was going on in the world of education last week, so I've got a mountain of reading for you today. Let's dive right in.

The First Day of School

John Merrow, longtime distinguished education reporter, writes what he wished his grandchildren's teacher message would be on Day One. It's pretty good.

Ten Non-Standard Ideas for the Beginning of the School Year

Experienced educator Nancy Flanagan with some unusual but cool ideas for starting the year.

How About, First and Foremost, We Agree to Not Suck the Joy From Their Lives

Teacher Tom, a Seattle pre-school institution, also has some thoughts that are particularly important as school starts. About what we can and can't measure in education.

The fastest-growing college expense may not be what people think

Probably not news if you have college students in your family. Hechinger reports on one more side effect of the housing problems in this country.

Bible Teaching in Every Classroom? In Oklahoma, Few Signs It’s Happening.

Ruth Graham, behind the New York Times paywall, takes a look at Ryan Walters and his attempt to force the Bible into every classroom. 

The Joy of a Cell-Phone-Free School Day

The indispensable Mercedes Schneider reports on just how delightful it is to have a cellphone-free classroom. (Spoiler: very).

I'm a high school teacher, and my school banned cellphones in the classroom. Every school should do the same.

If you want more on that same theme, here's Emily Brisse in Business Insider of all places, explaining how a ban made her students' lives better. 

As School Year Starts, Pennridge School District Still Needs to Revise Shadow Banning Book Policy

Jenny Stephens continues to do great work for the Bucks County Beacon. This piece follows the Pennridge School District and its continued wrestling with shadow banning of books (and if you don't know how that works, you should study up).

Collateral Damage in Yet Another Reading War

Paul Thomas looks at how the alarm bells over US student reading ability have been rung over and over, falsely.

A New School Year Brings More Weapons

Steve Nuzum talks about how things are going with weapons in school in South Carolina these days. Could be better.

Several states, DOJ take interest in case where Cobb teacher was fired behind book read in class

This is the case of the teacher who was fired for reading "My Shadow Is Purple" to her Fifth Graders. All sorts of folks are interested in making sure the court doesn't uphold her termination. Erica Murphy covers it for 11Alive.

Resist the AI guidance you are being given

Earlier this week I lambasted the Chicago Public School administration for their bone-headed AI guidebook. Benjamin Riley also took them to task, and his task-taking is worth a read.

Parents can still pay for theme park passes using state scholarship money

Remember all those stories about how Florida voucher dollars were being spent for all sorts of iffy expenses? Well, once word got out, reports Jay Waagmeester for the Florida Phoenix, the state did not a thing about the issue, and so it continues.

Most Americans are leery of book bans — but they don’t oppose all restrictions, survey says

Erica Meltzer reports for Chalkbeat that Americans mostly think book bans are a bigger threat than children seeing naughty things in books. There's some more nuance to be found.

Politicians step up attacks on the teaching of scientific theories in US schools

From The Conversation, a look at how science education has been and continues to be challenged.

How People Vote. How People Choose a “Good” School. Is it Common Sense?

Nancy Flanagan looks at how the culture trickles down into school, and how common sense isn't always what we think it is.

The Girl Scouts sued wife of North Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson over nearly $3,000 in “money owed”–and won

North Carolina has two of the most bananas candidates for office in the nation, and Justin Parmenter continues to track their various misadventures.

Part 2: Parents’ Rights Activists, Privatizers, and Project 2025 Conspire Against Public Schooling

Jan Resseger has been looking at the people looking at Project 2025 for even more information about what it means.

Love of Teaching is Under Attack

David Finkle is known mostly as the man behind Mr. Fitz, a super comic about teaching. But every once in a while he does some blogging, too, and you should not miss this post about the erosion of the love of teaching.

Skyrocketing Test Gains in Oklahoma Are Largely Fiction, Experts Say

I don't really want to spend all this time with Oklahoma, but Ryan Walters is such a raging firehose of incompetence that he keeps coming up. 

Federal agency joins criticism of Oklahoma education department's financial controls

Meanwhile, the feds have been checking out his work and have found the education dudebro-in-chief is less than awesome when it comes to taking care of the financial side of things. Than there's the screw up with Title 1 funds. 

School choice and a history of segregation collide as one Florida county shutters its rural schools

Kate Payne for the Associated Press with the tale of a Florida district struggling with history and race.

Why Black Teachers Matter

A study shows that Black teachers matter for more than just Black students.

Florida school board pauses chaplain plans following interest from 'Ministers of Satan'

In a completely unsurprising development, Florida school discover the law allowing them to put a chaplain in schools is not working out exactly as they were hoping it would.

Naught for Teacher

I missed this when it ran in The Baffler back in April, but Jennifer Berkshire's look at the Democratic Party's work on conservative education dismantling is timely.

Cartoons on Parent/Teacher Conferences

Larry Cuban collected some cartoons. Just in case you could use a break

At Forbes.com this week I updated the continuing saga of Carson v. Makin, the case that required Maine to funs religious charters, and an overview of the whole cellphone ban thing. 

Join me on substack-- you get all my stuff straight to your in-box. It's free!

Call Them By Their Name

Names have power, so it makes sense that young humans, who are generally in search of both identity and some amount of power over their own lives, will often try to exert some control over their own names.

As a teacher, it's not a fight worth picking. I taught so many students--soooooo many-- who wanted to be called by another name. Sometimes it was perfectly understandable-- a common nickname for their full name, or going by a middle name. Sometimes it was a leap-- "Albert" would prefer to go by "Butch." I had some unusual cases, like the girl who had the same name as three other students in class, so told me she'd rather go by Andrea (pronounced Ahn-dray-uh). And a few times, I had a trans student who wanted to use a different name.

Did I agree with all of them? No more than I agreed with some of my students' questionable fashion choices. But it cost me nothing to honor these preferences, to give students that small measure of control over their own identities. It was a small thing for me, but a thing that helped make my classroom a safe, welcoming space where we could get on with the work of learning to be better at reading, writing, speaking and listening.

So I don't get teachers like Vivian Geraghty, the middle school language arts teacher who found herself with two transgender students and a) refused to call them by their chosen names and b) asked to have them removed from their classrooms.

Geraghty is going to matter because she was told to resign, maybe, and then sued the district. Based on a U.S. District judge decision, this matter is going to trial (at least partly because there seems to be dispute about what actually happened). According to court documents, the students made their request on Day One and Geraghty knew these requests were “part of the student’s social transition” but disagreed because of her religious beliefs and “wanted those students out of her classroom."

Geraghty cites her religious convictions as the reason she would not honor the student request, and though this is a fashionable hill for christianists to die on these days, I don't really get it. Why is transgenderism the such a heinous crime against religion and conscience that they cannot even acknowledge such people exist is beyond me. 

Part of the dispute is over whether Geraghty jumped or was pushed. Her defense is from the Alliance Defending Freedom, the conservative culture panic law group that has made several trips before SCOTUS, including Dobbs. They say Geraghty could not put aside her beliefs to "affirm untruths that harm children."

And yet she was okay with treating two actual children like this.

I do not and probably never will grasp the current argument that one cannot practice one's faith unless one is fully free to discriminate against people of whom you disapprove, and yet that argument surfaces again and again. 

But I do believe this-- it is not a teacher's job (nor, really, that of any adult) to tell a student who he or she is. We can nudge, offer encouragement and support, and create a safe place for them to try to figure it out. But the most basic part of treating a human being like a human being is to call them by the name they have for themselves. If you can't do that and if you insist that you must have the God-given right to make your disapproval of their identities clear to them in every interaction, then you do not belong in front of a classroom. 

Mystery Choice Coalition Opposes Harris-Walz

So this ran under a Fox logo yesterday:

Who might this pro-privatization group be? Turns out that Fox picked up a press release from the murky Invest In Education Coalition that gave both Democratic hopefuls and F in education.

We've dug into these guys before, and it's a twisty story. Let me try to pare it down to the essentials.

IIEC is a group that exists primarily to promote the Educational Choice for Children Act, a federal act that would create federal tax credit scholarships-vouchers-- much like the Educational Freedom stuff that Betsy DeVos tried hard to sell when she was in DC. At least, that's what they're all about currently.

But they have existed in a variety of forms and have either absorbed, taken over, or just cannibalized various other groups and names, including My Kid's Future and Edtaxcredit50, along with ties to Brighter Choice, Foundation for Education Reform and Accountability, and Foundation for Opportunity in Education. 

The group and its sometimes partner group, the Invest in Education Foundation, have been run by a small assortment of people, none of them educators. Lots of finance guys, some lawyers, a former legislator and lobbyist, one professional astro-turfer, most of whom have come and gone, often quickly. They have a youtube channel, a twitter handle, and, oddly, a Facebook page that is pretty regularly updated. They have been pumping out endorsements for the likes of Lauren Boebert and Carol Miller. And they are fully on the MAGA wagon for Trump-Vance. 

Someone, somewhere, has been giving them large piles of money to play with. Per the 990 forms, 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.

If you want more, let try to tell some of their story in a more straightforward time than my previous attempt, with the caveat that this is all the result of a lot of playing with the wayback machine plus digging through Twitter and Facebook.

Digging into Twitter leads us to the original handle for the account, @OpportunityInEd, and there we learn that Invest In Ed had a president-- Tom Carroll.

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.

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.

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.

Digging through the wayback machine, the earliest IIEC website version is from  the team page is from May 21, 2022.

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.

By December of 2023, Messner was gone from the page and IIEC had no address. In January 2024, they had a new logo, and the board was down to three members. 

Anthony J. de Nicola is the chair. He's also chairman of private equity firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, a New York private equity firm 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.

In May of 2022, the board had three more members: 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.

Currently, those three, with de Nicola, are listed as the Foundation board. And IIEC finally has an address, now in Latham, NY.

One other name turned up on the 2022 and2020 990-- 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, Strianese made $38,000.

There are lots of names of various backers and endorsers, but they are all backing and endorsing the federal voucher act, not the IIEC explicitly. There's no sign of actual staff (including whoever makes those Facebook posts almost every day and writes their press releases). 

I'm not saying that Fox could have easily googled their way to all of this before running with the IIEC press release, but a quick look at the website ought to make one suspicious that here's another organization that's not really an organization so much as a couple of folks with some contacts and deep pockets. 

It continues to amaze me how a couple of people can create an "organization" and with some slick web design and a good bank of email addresses that news organizations take seriously. But that is how the game is played these days, and so Harris and Walz get an F, from someone, for some reason. 

Chicago Schools' Terrible Awful No Good Very Bad AI Guide

It appears that Chicago Public Schools have tried to get ahead of the AI juggernaut with an AI guidebook, and it is... not good. It's an exemplar of the kind of wrong-headedness that is evident in so many educational leaders' thoughts about AI. 

I've read it so that you don't have to (unless you work for CPS, I guess-- sorry). But let's just sort of through, rather than hammer away at every of the twenty-some pages of silliness that sets out to provide 

"guidelines for ethical use, pedagogical strategies, and approved tools" for generative artificial intelligence and "integrating those tools ethically and responsibly."

There's a vision statement, jam packed with the sort of bureaucratic argle bargle that signals that we're a little fuzzy on what, exactly, the audience is supposed to be. Some of the radishes in this word salad:

pursuit of educational excellence and innovation, organizational operations, instructional core, drive community engagement, strategic adoption, enrich learning environments, success in a continually evolving technological world, steadfastly upholding, leveraging GenAI responsibly, enhance educational outcomes

Lordy.

We then jump into the AI portions of the guidebook, and things are looking bad right off the top.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) leverages computing power to mimic human cognitive functions such as problem-solving and decision-making.

Not really, no. Nor do we get a better explanation for generative AI in particular:

GenAI generates new content—including text, audio, code, images, or videos—based on vast amounts of “training” data, typically derived from the internet.

That's not really a useful answer, is it. Like saying "a piano is an instrument that produces notes"-- it's not wrong, but it completely omits the "how," and omitting the "how" from any discussion on GenAI is a terrible mistake, because if there's anything that is a) super important and b) widely misunderstood, it is how GenAI actually works. This is a link to three excellent explanations, but the very short answer regarding text is that GenAI strings together a series of probably next words. It does not "understand" anything in any human sense of the word. It is not magical, and it is not smart, and anyone who is going to mess with it must understand those things. Spoiler alert: at no point will this guide clarify any of that. Just "Magic box makes smarty content stuff! Wheee!"

Next is some guidance for staff in GenAI use. Start with what ought to already be a basic IT rule for staff--don't feed the AI any private information. 

Much of the guidance falls into one of two categories: 1) Can be done, but will be more time consuming than just generating materials your own damn self and 2) Cannot be done. 

For instance, CPS wants teachers to verify the tool's output. "These systems and their output require vigorous scrutiny and correction." Because the output might include "hallucinations" (aka wrong things the software just made up), the output "requires careful review." But if I'm going to have the computer kick out my lesson materials, and then I am going to spend a whole lot of time doing research and review of those materials, where am I saving time, and I wouldn't I be just as far ahead to put it together in the first place? 

Also, CPS wants teachers to "avoid using any GenAI outputs that might contain copyrighted material without clear ownership." You can do this, the guide says, by "examining the work for a copyright notice, considering the type of content and source (i.e. content issued by the US government is generally public), or referring to websites that store public domain works or the Copyright Database." This is bananas. You have no idea what the GenAI has trained on. GenAI companies have gone to great lengths (and increasing numbers of lawsuits) to avoid letting you know what the AI has trained on. The chance that any content generated by any AI is the result of training on or inclusion of copyrighted materials is somewhere around 99.999%, and the chances that you can confidently check an AI's output for copyrighted material is 00.0001%. 

CPS warns us that "all models reflect the biases in their training data," but they only warn about this insofar as it might perpetuate stereotypes, discrimination, or DEI problems. All worth considering, but it's also worth mentioning that there are a zillion other biases in the world ("Lincoln was not a great President" "Certain types of data are more valid than others") and those can also work their way in. CPS suggests

Conduct thorough reviews to ensure outputs are not only accurate, but also free of unintended biases and align with our educational goals. Verify and assess the source information that GenAI outputs are relying upon.

Again, the first takes a whole lot of time, and the second cannot be done. 

Always document the use of AI tools. I'm not sure what this accomplishes, exactly. Are teachers going to hand out worksheets marked "Generated by ChatGPT"? CPS says to make sure that "all GenAI engagements are traceable and accountable," which raises sort of an interesting question-- can GenAI results be traceable when they are not replicable? But throughout the guide, CPS is clear that they want "detailed records of when and how GenAI tools are used." If I were cynical, I might think this was a bit of a CYA paper trail for the district. But hey--maybe you can just have GenAI generate that detailed record for you.

How about academic integrity. CPS says that "students should submit work that is fundamentally their own," whatever that means. But also, "students should clearly identify any AI-generated content they have used in their assignments." This should work as well as telling students they are obligated to show where they have cut and pasted paragraphs from Wikipedia into their paper. 

Don't use AI to "create inappropriate or harmful content." But CPS does have a whole page of "positive GenAI use for students."

Use GenAI as a brainstorming partner. Synthesize a variety of opinions and propose compromise solutions (I think this one is meant to handle your group work). Use GenAI image creators to bring ideas to life. Overcome writer's block by suggesting a variety of ideas and writing prompts. Ask GenAI to propose unconventional solutions to problems. Use GenAI as an interactive tutor. Generate immediate feedback on first drafts of written assignments (but not, I guess, if that makes it not fundamentally your own). Oh, and use generative search engines like Perplexity as a research assistant (that would be the AI that is in trouble for scraping data without permission, which would seem to conflict with some of the ethical concerns CPS has).

CPS also has guidance for educators and staff. There are some restrictions suggested; for instance, Gemini and Copilot, two GenAI programs that pretty much every student has access to, should not be used by students under 18. 

As with any new student-facing technology, the introduction of GenAI tools invites educators to consider how GenAI can further the underlying goals of their activities and assignments instead of impeding them.

This is wrong in the way that much ed tech introduction is wrong. Teachers should not be asking how the technology can help-- they should be asking IF the technology can help and whether or not it should be allowed to help.

But, Lord help us, CPS even has some specific suggestions of how certain assignments would go without and with GenAI. 

Not all of these are terrible. The elementary science assignment in which students let the AI try to depict an animal and then figure out what the AI got wrong? Not bad at all. Some of them are pointless. The elementary social studies assignment in which students role play as leaders and answer questions--why does the teacher need an AI to generate questions? And how much magical thinking is behind the notion that having AI design interventions for individual students is better than having the teacher do it?

Some are short-circuiting education itself. Like the science assignments that suggest that, instead of having students run experiments, just have the AI run "virtual" experiments and tell the students how they went. Not how to have students learn science (but it is how to justify cutting labs and lab supplies out of budgets). 

And some are just bananas. Have the AI role play a character in a book, or retell the story from that character's point of view? I have seen nothing to indicate that an AI is any way capable of faithfully doing that work (at best, it will steal from human-completed versions of that assignment). 

There is a link to a list of 851 CPS-approved GenAI products, and if someone at the office has extensively vetted each and every one of those, they deserve a huge raise. 

This is just a mess. The guidebook repeatedly insists that students and teachers use AI ethically, but there is little evidence that the folks behind this have wrestled with many of the deep and difficult ethical questions behind generative AI. How much is too much? How do we reckon AI programs' unauthorized and undisclosed use of people's work for "training"? And while CPS wants teachers to monitor how and how much students use AI, they have no more thoughts than anyone else about how teachers are supposed to do that.

Teachers do need some help dealing with the AI revolution. This is not that. Look online for some thoughtful and useful guides (like this one). The best thing I can say about it is that it smells like the sort of thing that arrives in teacher mailboxes from the front office which they then ignore. This should be one of the prettiest, slickest items in many circular files.