Arne Duncan, Slayer of Irony

Year after his stint as secretary of education, Arne Duncan can still push irony so far that it collapses and implodes under its own weight,

Duncan appears in a recent EdWeek piece, one more asking the question, "What can Trump actually do to education?" This particular piece by Alyson Klein was considering how extensively Trump could rewrite curriculum. Klein notes that there are rules against that sort of thing, and that's when Duncan pops up with this- 

But Arne Duncan, who served as education secretary for seven years under President Barack Obama, doesn’t think wonky legalese will matter much to a chief executive who was found guilty of multiple felonies and was impeached twice by the House of Representatives—including for inciting a mob to disrupt the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.

“They could trample those. They could run roughshod over those,” Duncan said of ESSA’s prohibitions. “There are literally zero schools in America teaching CRT right now. That’s not a thing. It’s not reality.

“But he doesn’t live in reality. He creates his own reality,” Duncan continued. “And so, they can take money from schools and say they are teaching critical race theory. They can just make it up and move it to a state where people support him politically.”

 As I've noted elsewhere, we know that Trump could hang on to Title I funding and use it as leverage to extort compliance from the states. We know he could do this because we have seen that trick before. It was a feature of No Child Left Behind, with its "gate all your test scores above or else," and was doubled down by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan who declared that states would adopt acceptable standards (with the hint that Common Core would be acceptable) and acceptable standardized tests or else. "Or else" means "or else no money for you." He used Title I funds to threaten California and any states thinking of following them into not adopting his preferred tests. 

Why does ESSA have provisions aimed at reining in the Department of Education? Because the one bipartisan agreement that Congress could reach was that Arne Duncan had overreached his authority way too much. And what was his reaction at the time? He told Politico that the department had lawyers smart enough to circumvent any guardrails that Congress erected.

And when it comes to disconnection from reality, we could turn to the part where Duncan wanted to shift special education oversight because "We know that when students with disabilities are held to high expectations and have access to robust curriculum, they excel." In this construction, "excel" is doing a lot of work, but Duncan seemed to think that students with special needs only really specially needed encouragement and expectations.

Or we could discuss the reality of the policy notion that testing would fix everything, that, as we used to say till we were out of breath, weighing the pig will somehow make it grow.

Or we could discuss how, since leaving office, Duncan has repeatedly attempted to retcon his administration and create a new historical reality (here, here, here ).

Look, I don't want to stay mad at Duncan forever, and I have no doubt that the Trump administration is going to do many wrong things to education. But the unrepentant and devoid-of-self-awareness Duncan is not the guy to call him out. Linda McMahon isn't going to "trample" anything so much as just follow a trail that Duncan had a large hand in blazing (and DeVos followed) and if she responds by referencing pots and kettles, she’s not wrong. It's one more example of how some feckless Democrats abandoned public education and set the stage for the far right, and until they fess up and apologize, they aren't credible critics of the coming messes. 

ICYMI: Another Thanksgiving Edition (11/24)

It's coming around again. Here's hoping you are able to enjoy it. In the meantime, here's the readings from the week.

A Tiny Victory in the Battle against AI-generated Stupidity

Remember the story about the student who used AI to plagiarize a paper, then sued the school for catching him? Benjamin Riley has the story on how that ended up, with spicy commentary from the judge.

ChatGPT Has No Place in the Classroom

I don't know who Emily is, but her takedown of ChatGPT's guide for teachers is a thing of beauty.

Back to the Future

I don't often dip into Slate, but when I saw that Adam Laats had a piece there providing historical perspective on what Linda McMahon may have in mind for education, I gladly burned one of my free views, and I wasn't sorry. Nobody puts across "We already tried that and it sucked" like Laats.

Donald Trump Cabinet picks: What Linda McMahon wants to do with the Department of Education.

Judd Legum and Rebecca Crosby at Popular Information provide a rundown of the various attempts to cram right wing christianism into schools.

FOX 25 uncovers the Heritage Foundation's sweeping influence in Oklahoma education

In one of the less-surprising reveals of the season, it turns out that Ryan Walters has been hand in glove with the Heritage Foundation, and Fox 25 has more receipts than you have time to read.

Segregation Academies

ProPublica has created a whole batch of stories about the segregation academies still operating in the South, including one that focuses on how many are soaking up taxpayer dollars via vouchers.

Google's AI Chatbot Tells Student Seeking Help with Homework 'Please Die'

Newsweek reports on one more example of an AI going off the rails.

New Board of Education member thanks God, DeSantis for fourth appointment

Welcome to the free state of Florida, where voters can resoundingly reject your campaign for board membership, and Ron DeSantis will just appoint you anyway.

Children experiencing homelessness have rights to a public education

Andru Volinsky is a New England lawyer who knows a thing or two about education law, and what some children are legally entitled to..

Special education staffing shortages put students’ futures at risk. How to solve that is tricky.

Kalyn Belsha reports for Chalkbeat on the big time shortage of special ed teachers. I'm sure the Trump administration is going to get right on that.

Trump’s and Project 2025’s Education Policies Would Dangerously Roll Back Civil Rights Protections

Jan Resseger looks at the outcomes for Trump education policies.

Is Liberty University Coming to A Florida School District Near you?

Sue Kingery Woltanski warns that some Florida districts could be getting a big helping of Liberty University baloney

Weaponizing Empathy and other Heritage Foundation Rhetoric for School Reform

Nancy Flanagan with the latest in creepy Heritage Foundation rhetoric. 

This week at the Bucks County Beacon, I looked at some bright spots in a dark election season. And at Forbes.com, looking at the current state of test-optional colleges (for all you parents of high school juniors). 

Bluesky is taking off. Personally, I've gains about 900 followers in 10 days. If you're over there, look me up at @palan57.bsky.social

As always, I invite you to subscribe on substack. It will always be free and it makes it easy to get all my stuff in your inbox.

To Build The Wall

It's just the latest brick. Florida has moved past banning courses that are expressly about that woke stuff, and has moved on to removing subjects like sociology from course requirements. As the NY Times line on the post says, "conservatives in Florida have moved from explosive politics to subtler tactics to uproot liberal 'indoctrination' in higher education." The headline (at least right now) is more blunt-- "Republicans Target Social Sciences to Curb Ideas They Don't Like."

The idea of building a wall to keep out Those Others at the border is not just its own policy goal, but a ready-made metaphor for most of MAGA's culture panic reaction. 

Build a wall around the minds of people (especially young people), because if we can insure that they never see, hear, read about, or are touched by Certain Ideas then they will grow to be clean and pure and just the way we want them to be. 

The wall is built for brute force and fear. We must not allow them to see a certain view of the world, but we do not fight it with reason or argument, with persuasion or discussion. We don't meet that Other View and grapple with it. No, we must build a wall to hold it back, to block it out, to anticipate and search for every little crack through which it might creep. They use the wall because they rely on brute force to suppress those other views, and they do it because of fear. Just a taste, a touch, a look would somehow pollute the young, pollute the culture, seduce generations away from the One True View of the world and our country.

I've known MAGA types my whole life. In religious circles I call the followers of the Tiny God, a God so weak and helpless that He must be protected from disbelievers, from people who do not worship Him properly. He needs the support of human laws, human government, because if He were not soi protected and wreathed in human-made bubble wrap, he would be blown away on the wind. These are the folks who believe the Creator of all that is, the great I Am, the Being who made all and sees from end to end of the great sweep of time and eternity and the universe itself, vast and unknowable-- that God will be seriously threatened if Americans in 2024 vote for the wrong person to occupy a seat in the House of Representatives. That God waits to see if the right person will be elected to an office of secular, earthly government. 

That's the kind of fragility we're talking about. Is their Truth so weak that nobody must be allowed to challenge it, that they have no way to answer opponents except to shut them up. Their view of what is Right and True is absolutely and unassailable, except they live in constant fear of having it assailed. And so, a wall. To keep out people with the wrong beliefs, the wrong culture, the wrong background, the wrong ideas about gender, and if not keep them out, at least force them to keep their wrongness to themselves.

This is not an automatic feature of conservatism. Conservatives can absolutely be those folks who watch what appears to them to be dumbassery, call it dumbassery, and stand in opposition to it, patiently waiting to watch it play out, secure in the knowledge that dumbassery always falls apart, always fails to hold up against actual truth and facts and reality. Even when it builds a wall to keep all those things out. 

Unfortunately, building the wall comes with extra problems, extra destruction, anguish from grinding human bones to make mortar. And the terrible strain of denying what's out there, of maintaining your view of reality in defiance of the evidence. 

Yes, it all goes hand in hand with grasping for power, but power for what? Power to silence the banging of time and tide and reality and the growling beast reminding you that you are dust, that in another blink or two you will be dust again, with nothing left behind but the pieces of a wall and the imprint of your boots on too many necks. It's not wealth and power for joy-- do any of these MAGA wall builders look joyful? How can they be when they are exhausted by the daily efforts to maintain the wall? How can they rest when that hammering rings in their ears every hour of the day and night?

It is one thing to try to build a society up, to try to build the edifices and structures and supports that cause it to more closely resemble the ideal you envision by harnessing the heart and passion and love and bright rising humanity and, yes, even holiness that can lift it up into something a little more shining. It is another thing to try to mold that society by trying to keep all those human and divine forces from being able to act on it. It is one thing to try to bring all the pieces of a society together to create something awesome, and quite another thing to try to subjugate them and wall them up, to say "Only I can create here, and the first thing I will create is a wall that blocks all ideas and wills but my own."

There is no human system of government that cannot be twisted into an ugly and dehumanizing state, and none that cannot be turned to foster all the great beauty that humans are capable of, but certainly some systems tend more naturally one way or another. 

We can talk and argue at great length about values and morals and ethics, but some days I can see it simplified to a two-part question-- what are you trying to build, and how are you trying to build it?

Are you trying to build a garden that flourishes and grows and delights in all manner of living things that also grow and flourish, doing it by cultivating and nourishing and lifting up, or are you intent on building a wall to keep out all the parts of the world you don't like so that some sad, meagre little creature can gather power without ever being challenged by anything scary from outside that wall.

That wall-free garden is never going to be all fluffy bunnies and kum-bay-yah circles. Life is rich and complicated and sometimes hard and often contentious. But building a wall to keep away everything that bothers you is never a solution; it's anti-life and anti-human. It's destined to fail, and to sow chaos and destruction as it collapses. 

We are in an age of wall-builders, which makes it both harder and imperative that we not build our schools according to their specifications. It's a lousy way to educate young humans. We have to do better. Poke holes in the wall, and bring the world in through every tiny crack. 

Trans Panic Abuse

I first encountered trans folks in the 1970s, trans women who I was in high school with when they were guys. I've had trans students over the years. And if I'm honest, I still struggle with the issue. If one of my own children came to me to say they were trans, I would have all the misgivings-- how do I bless that kind of transition for someone who can't even decide which shirt to wear, who has a different plan for their toys every single day. I hope that I would get to a good place with my child, and throwing them out would not be on the table, but it would not be an easy journey to some form of acceptance. Sitting here right now, I can't say that I know what that would look or feel like. 

But I do know this--as difficult as it would be, I can't imagine how an edict from the government or my local school board would make any part of it easier.

Right now we are awash in trans panic. Project 2025 is riddled with it, in every single chapter. Writers of the conservative battle plan will be droning along in boring wonkese and suddenly erupt into lurid purple prose over the threat of trans persons. The GOP spent $215 million on ads attacking trans rights (that, says a civil rights attorney, is $134 per trans person). Moms for Liberty are recruiting heavily on the Title IX loophole that says your district doesn't have to adopt the federal rules if there's a M4L member parent in the district. Everywhere, at all levels of government, folks are passing rules to restrict trans persons' rights.

All policies that attempt to restrict trans persons are inherently cruel and abusive, and not just of trans persons. In response to Nancy Mace's ugly, personal bathroom attack on trans Rep-elect Sarah McBride, Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez gets it exactly right:

“What Nancy Mace and what Speaker Johnson are doing are endangering all women and girls,” Ocasio-Cortez told reporters late Wednesday. “Because if you ask them, ‘What is your plan on how to enforce this?’ they won’t come up with an answer. And what it inevitably results in are women and girls who are primed for assault because people are gonna want to check their private parts in suspecting who is trans and who is cis and who’s doing what.”

“The idea that Nancy Mace wants little girls and women to drop trou in front of who — an investigator? Who would that be? — because she wants to suspect and point fingers at who she thinks is trans is disgusting. It is disgusting,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

This trans panic has been aimed disproportionately at high school athletes, because any attempt to push repressive policy works better if you attach "for the children" to it. But anti-trans rules open the door to all sorts of abuse. Like the time some disgruntled parents of second and third place winners filed a protest that they wanted the first place winner's gender checked. Or the various times that states have proposed bills that required winning athletes (female, because for some reason there is never concern about trans men) to submit to a barrage of tests to "prove" their gender. Or the nice folks in New Hampshire suing for the right to harass transgender teenagers.

You can ban trans women from sports all day, but in the end, enforcement comes down to demanding that some teenaged girl prove she's a "real" girl by submitting to physical and/or genetic inspection. 

I get that there are some concerns that reasonable people can share. Does having trans women with bigger, stronger frames pose a threat to other athletes? I don't know. But does that concern mean that schools should also institute rules delineating maximum allowable strength for athletes? And what does it say about sports like football, in which we know that students are absolutely in danger of serious injuries with long-term effects?

There are real issues to be discussed, but not everyone involved in the discussion is serious. When Nancy Mace says "any man who wants to force his genital into women's spaces" is waging a "war on women," I have to wonder what that means coming from a staunch supporter of President Pussy Grabber. 

Pushing trans-restrictive rules for schools may make boards feel good and righteous and play well to the culture panic crowd, but the ultimate result is the abuse and harassment of actual individual live human beings, and while I don't know exactly how I feel about transgender issues, I know exactly how I feel about harassing and abusing live human beings, especially young ones, so that you can score some political points. 

Department of Redundency Department

Teachers ought to know. Marketers certainly know. Politicians ignore it at their peril.

Repetition works.

There is a tendency among certain brands of humans (I am one of them) to believe that one shouldn't have to explain oneself over and over and over again. One clear and cogent explanation of the point, and that should do the trick. To keep hammering on it is boring, inefficient, and unnecessary. Redundancy is self-evidently Not Good.

But that's not how humans generally work.

Marketers understand this. You boil your campaign down to one simple message, and then you hammer that message over and over and over again until people can't have even a passing thought about thirst without an image of Coke popping into their brain. 

It's understandable that some teachers are resistant to this idea-- explaining this idea over and over "wastes" the valuable and scarce commodity of class time. There are many textbooks that are built entirely around the "explain it once then move on" principle of instruction. But it's repetition that gets things to stick. If you're trying to drive a nail into a block of wood (I would tell my student teachers), does it work better to try to drive it all the way on with one mighty thwack, or a whole series of moderate taps? 

We know that repetition is effective even in the absence of actual explanation. Does Coke pop into our head based on the extensive evidence the Coca-Cola company has published on the bubbly sugar water's thirst-quenching qualities? 

How did "America's schools are failing" become conventional wisdom? Not through any credible evidence. Some folks have just been repeating it for forty years, accompanied by simple illustrations that don't rise to the level of credible evidence but make the statement feel more true. We're far from the top of international test results, they warn, ignoring that we're right where we've already been and Estonia hasn't conquered us yet. SAT scores! NAEP scores! I found this one teacher who said something stupid! Arguing with these is fruitless, because they aren't actual evidence-- they're just illustrations to underline the point, and the point is hammered home by a steady top-tap-tap of repetition.

I don't pay a lot of attention to "science of learning" arguments, which often have as much real-world salience as would an argument about the "science of marriage." But the idea of repetition has recently been bandied about as if it's a hot new idea (these days we're attaching to "cognitive load theory" stuff), and even if someone is announcing they've just invented the wheel, that doesn't mean that wheels don't work. Repetition and redundancy in the classroom absolutely work, even spaced out over considerable time.

I've known people in the education blogoverse who worry about redundancy. "I don't want to write about that because this other person already did" or "I already wrote about this once." Even I, with my noted lack of writing restraint, will sometimes contemplate someone else's piece and think, "Well, I don't really have anything to add to that." I'd argue that this is a mistake, that anything worth saying is worth saying a few hundred times. 

There are, for instance, multiple pieces noting that school vouchers went down to defeat in three states even in the midst of a red wave. There should be a million of them. It's an opportunity to connect a clear message ("Voters don't like vouchers and always vote them down") with a clear illustration ("In the 2024 election, three states with strong MAGA support still voted vouchers down"). It's true, and it's important, first, because legislators are repeatedly conned into supporting vouchers because "they're so popular" and second, because the Trump administration is signaling that it wants to impose school vouchers on the entire country.  

Defenders of public education should be saying it over and over again-- vouchers are not popular with United States taxpayers and voters. It's not just that they're a bad idea (they are, and should be fought on that basis), but they are an unpopular idea. We have the receipts. 

NH: Defunding Special Ed

Is educating students with special needs getting expensive for your district? If you're in New Hampshire, Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut has a message for you-- "Too bad, Sucks to be you."

Frank Edelblut was a businessman, venture capitalist, and one-term NH state representative before he decided to run for the governor's seat. He was beaten in the primary by Chris Sununu, son of former NH governor and Bush I White House Chief of Staff John Sununu. Edelblut gracefully conceded and publicly supported Sununu, who then appointed Edelblut to the top education job, despite Edelblut's complete lack of anything remotely resembling education experience.

All of Edelblut's children were home schooled. As a legislator, he backed vouchers and as a candidate he backed personalized [sic] learning. As education high mucky muck, he has continued to back all manner of ed reformster nonsense, including the ramming through of vouchers over the objections of actual taxpayers. 

So it was on brand this week when Edelblut told districts that they would be getting even less support from the state for special ed students.

Several factors are in play here, including increased costs for special services and an increased number of students requiring those services-- all mandated and beyond the control of the districts. But the other huge factor is that the state budget for special ed hasn't been boosted since 2021. So the states special ed pie has stayed the same, meaning that school districts get smaller and smaller slices.

You'd think that the state education chief's response would be to ask for a bigger pie, but Edelblut says he just did that in 2017 and 2018. Sure, once a decade or so seems like plenty.

Edelblut does have other ideas, though. 

Instead, Edelblut wants the state to consider whether it can provide special education services more effectively and for less money. He said parents and educators frequently tell him they are unhappy with the services provided.

Yes, they would undoubtedly be happier is the district spent less money to educate their child. This is the undying reformster notion that education is somehow riddled with inefficient spending and surely there's a cheaper, better way to do things, as if the system isn't already depending on teachers donating their own money and contributing unpaid hours just to keep their schools afloat. 

Edelblut syas he doesn't have a solution (because he's physically unable to ask for more funding?) but he does believe that school vouchers could be the answer, which is just silly. A school voucher does not cover special ed kinds of costs, and it does not mean that the private school of your choice is going to choose to admit your high needs student. Of all the problems that vouchers don't solve, meeting needs of special ed students is one of the problems it doesn't solve the most.

I'm convinced this is the new privatizer game-- instead of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, you have to take any topic or problem and connect it to school vouchers. You don't have to connect it in a way that makes sense or offers evidence. Just tack "but this would be solved by school vouchers" on the end of whatever you're saying. It may be fun for guys like Edelblut to play, but it's the students and taxpayers who lose, every time.

So Linda McMahon Is New Ed Secretary

It's Linda McMahon, wife of Vince McMahon, co-founded WWE (the wrestling show biz outfit). 

She was head of the Small Business Administration in Trump's first go-round, has a failed Senate campaign behind her (2010), and has previously headed up the America First Policy Institute, a right wing thinky tank for Trump/MAGA policy to percolate while its members waited for the day that has now arrived. They were, of course, part of the Project 2025 team.

Yeah, she looks nice

She was supposed to be a leading contender for the top Department of Commerce spot, but she didn't get that one, so here she is leading the Department of Education.

Course, since few had her on their cabinet bingo cards for education, we're now all scrambling to figure out what this might mean. Here are some quick initial thoughts.

Unlike former secretary Betsy DeVos or some of the contenders like Tiffany Justice and Erika Donalds, McMahon has not spent most of her adult life trying to devise and implement ways to dismantle and privatize public education. (And at age 76,  she is a decade older than DeVos--one more aging boomer in this administration). I'm not saying that won't be part of her policy objectives. It's just that she won't enter office with a whole suitcase of explosives already packed.

However, that doesn't change the fact that she is completely and utterly unqualified to run the department. She may actually have an edge on DeVos, who had never worked at an actual job, led a large organization, or sold an idea with any technique other than throwing money at people. She spent some time on the Connecticut State Board of Education, so she knows a bit about the bureaucratic ins and outs. 

She may represent a hint about which way Trump will jump when it comes to choosing between his goals. He can pursue either 1) the culture panic goal of using federal funds as leverage to force schools to follow culture war edicts or 2) dismantling the department and sending the federal funds out to states as no-strings block grants. Well, #2 was always the less likely (it requires Congress to go along), and McMahon seems like a better fit for #1, though of course her long-time minimal interest in education may mean it's easier for her to walk away from the ruins of the department.

The fact that Trump gave her this position as a sort of consolation prize suggests that, as with his first go-round, he's not all the interested in education nor is it on the top of his to-do list. So McMahon may signal a sort of ill-intentioned neglect, like a toxin in the bloodstream that will get around to fatally poisoning you sometime soon, just as soon as it wraps up a few other things.

No, I don't see any way that this is not terrible. If you squint real hard through your rose colored glasses you might convince yourself that this isn't going to be quite as terrible as some of the alternate realities we can contemplate-- but it's still terrible. Like the rest of his cabinet picks, she will be there to make sure that her department of the government doesn't work and collapses into some configuration of smoking rubble. 

Though unlike other cabinet picks, she does not have an actual criminal background [Update--okay, maybe not actual criminal conviction, but some very shady and abusey stuff], an observation that reminds us that Trump has not just lowered the bar to the floor, but has dug a deep hole so that the bar can be buried. It also means she should have a less strenuous confirmation hearing than some of her fellow picks.

Now brace for a few days of wild speculation and bad professional wrestling gags.