GA: Voucher Program Blowing Up Real Fast

Boom! Georgia's taxpayer-funded school voucher program turns out to be not so much "generous" as "huge." And all because reading is hard.

Georgia passed a law to create vouchers and a whole government agency to watch over them. Rural Republicans fought back hard, but in the end it was signed into law last March. 

It turns out that a whole lot of people either didn't read the words in the law, or they just misrepresented them to other folks. The widespread belief was that, as many news reports put it, the education savings account style vouchers were for "students at low-performing schools who want to transfer to private schools." 

Any student who attended a school in the lowest 25% of schools were going to get an ESA taxpayer-funded stack of money that they could spend on whatever edu-thing they wished. 

Only it turns out that when the Georgia Education Savings Authority went to set up the rules for the Georgia Promise voucher, they read the actual language of the bill, and what it says right there in line 
344 in the eligibility requirements is:

The student resides in the attendance zone of a public school that is included on the list of public schools provided for in Code Section 20-2B-29

See the difference? Not just attending the low-achieving school, but in the attendance zone for that school. So if an elementary school is on the naughty list, every middle and high school student who lives in that attendance zone is also eligible for a taxpayer-funded voucher.

The Associated Press is reporting this as if the GESA changed something. "Georgia makes many more students than expected eligible for school vouchers" says the headline. Like GESA pulled a fast one, or something was "changed." But the only fast one pulled here is by the people who knew exactly what the law said and let stand (or promoted) the idea that only those at low-scoring schools were eligible.

But here's House GOP Speaker Pro Temp Jan Jones saying that the "authority's interpretation" needs to be reined in. This, she says, is not what she advocated for. "That wasn't my understanding," she told the AP.

The House Education Committee chair, Republican Representative Chris Erwin has also announced that this needs to be fixed. “The scholarships are specifically designed for children in an individual school that meets the eligibility requirements, and are not intended to be provided to every student in a district where the qualifying school is located,” Erwin wrote in a text to the AP.

Look, I agree with the goal of reducing voucher damage to the school system of the state, and I'm even inclined to believe their current statements of protest, but come on, lawmakers-- the language is right there in the bill in plain English. Did nobody read it? Did everyone just accept the word of whatever lobbyist pushed the bill? 

The law is set up to fund about 22,000 vouchers. The AP figures that about 400,000 students are eligible.

I retired after 39 years in the classroom as an English teacher, so it always saddens when people just don't bother to read (it has been a long year), and heaven knows that legislative bills are especially hard to wade through, but that's part of a legislator's job (or at least that of their staff). Georgia is now facing the result of some combination of ineptitude and turpitude. We'll see if they get anything changed in the next session. 

AI in Ed: The Unanswered Question

It is just absolutely positively necessary to get AI into education. I know this because on social media and in my email, people tell me this dozens of times every day. 

Just two examples. UCLA is excited to announce that a comparative literature course next semester will be "built around" UCLA's Kudu artificial intelligence platform. Meanwhile, Philadelphia schools and the University of Pennsylvania are teaming up to make Philadelphia a national AI in education model. The AI-in-education list goes on and on, and there are soooo many questions. Ethical questions. Questions about the actual capabilities of AI? Questions of resource use?

But here's the question I wish more --well, all, actually-- of these folks would ask.

What problem does it solve?

This is the oldest ed tech problem of them all, an issue that every teacher has encountered-- someone introduces a new piece of tech starting from the premise, "We must use this. Now let's figure out how." This often leads to the next step of, "If you just change your whole conception of your job, then this tech will be really useful. Will it get the job done better? Hey, shut up." 

This whole process is why so many, many, many, many pieces of ed tech ended up gathering dust, as well as birthing painfully useless sales pitchery masquerading as professional development. And when it comes to terrible PD, AI is right on top of things (see this excellent taxonomy of AI educourses, courtesy of Benjamin Riley)

So all AI adoption should start with that question.

What problem is this supposed to solve? 

Only after we answer that question can we ask the next important question, which is, will it actually solve the problem? Followed closely by asking what other problems it will create.

Sometimes there's a real answer. It turns out that once you dig through the inflated verbiage of the UCLA piece, what's really happening is that AI is whipping up a textbook for the course, using the professors notes and materials from previous iterations of the course. So the problem being solved is "I wish I had a text for this course." Time will tell whether having to meticulously check all of the AI's work for accuracy is less time consuming than just writing the text herself.

[UPdate: Nope, it's more than the text. It's also the assignments and the TA work. What problem can this possibly solve other than "The professor does not know how to do their job" or "The professor thinks work is way too hard." Shame on UCLA.]

On the other hand, Philadelphia's AI solution seems to be aimed at no problem at all. Says dean of Penn's education grad school, Katherine O. Strunk:

Our goal is to leverage AI to foster creativity and critical thinking among students and develop policies to ensure this technology is used effectively and responsibly – while preparing both educators and students for a future where AI and technology will play increasingly central roles.

See, that's a pretty goal, but what's the problem we're solving here. Was it not possible to foster creativity and critical thinking prior to AI? Is the rest of the goal solving the problem of "We have a big fear of missing out"?

Assuaging FOMO is certainly one of the major problems that AI adoption is meant to address. The AI sector makes some huge and shiny predictions, including some that show a fundamental misunderstanding of how education works for real humans (looking at you, Sal Khan and your AI-simulated book characters). Some folks in education leadership are just deathly afraid of being left behind and so default to that old ed tech standard-- "Adopt it now and we'll figure out what we can do with it later."

So if someone in your organization is hollering that you need to pull in this AI large language model Right Now, keep asking that question--

What problem will it help solve?

Acceptable answers do not include: 

* Look at this thing an AI made! Isn't it cool! Shiny!

* I read about a school in West Egg that did some really cool AI thing.

* We could [insert things that you should already be doing].

* I figured once you got your hands on it, you could come up with some ideas.

* We're bringing in someone to do 90 minutes of training that will answer all your questions.

* Just shut up and do it.

The following answers are also not acceptable, but they probably won't be spoken aloud:

* We are going to replace humans and save money.

* It will make it easier to dump work on you that other people don't want to do.

Acceptable answers include:

* We could save time in Task X

* We could do a better job of teaching Content Q and/or Skill Y

Mind you, the proposed AI may still flunk when you move on to the "Can it actually do this, really," but if you don't really know what you want it to do, it's senseless to debate whether or not it can do that.

There's some debate raging currently in the world of AI stuff, and as usual Benjamin Riley has it laid out pretty clearly here. But much of it is set around the questions "Is AI fake" and "Does AI suck," and in the classroom, both of those questions are secondary importance to "What problem is AI supposed to help solve here?" If the person pushing AI can't answer that question, there really isn't any reason to continue the conversation. 

NH: Vouchers Subsidizing Religious Education

Tiny New Hampshire has been the poster child for just about every bad education reform idea to come down the pike.

An unqualified politician as head of education? Check. Far-out libertarian attempts to gut schools? Check. Unsupervised charter schools wasting money? Check. Shafting students with special needs? Check. Shady shenanigans to install vouchers by circumventing the actual taxpayers? Double check. That voucher program turning out to be wildly more expensive than originally promised? Triple check. 

And now Jeremy Margolis at the Concord Monitor reports that the state's Education Freedom Account school vouchers are servings as a huge windfall for religious schools-- specifically a small set of Christian schools.

Looking at the figures from 2022-23, researchers at the Monitor found that a quarter of the tuition dollars paid out went to just five schools-- all of them religious schools. The top ten recipient schools are all religious schools (either Christian academies or parochial schools).

In fact, 90% of the taxpayer dollars distributed by the voucher program went to religious schools.

The Monitor reports that the program currently spends $27.7 million on 5,321 students (about 3% of all NH students). They list 115 schools collect taxpayer dollars via voucher. 25 of those schools receive at least $100K. 

Those top 5 schools are Laconia Christian Academy ($372,496.62), Concord Christian Academy ($370,783.22), Portsmouth Christian Academy ($331,605.83), Mount Royal Academy ($322,463.29) and Trinity Christian School--Concord ($265,567.39).  Bringing up the rear are Capital Christian School ($1000), Salem Kid Start Kindergarten ($960) and Holderness, a prep school, with a measly $70.

Are these schools open to all students? Well, Concord Christian Academy student handbook notes that going against the sex God gave you, or premarital sex, or public displays of affection, or  engaging in LGBTQ-- this "sexual immorality" could result in suspension or expulsion. Mount Royal devotes the month of October to the virtue of "docility." Trinity elementary admissions include the requirement that parents "are willing to support our statement of faith and who share the mission and purpose of the school" and high schoolers require a pastoral recommendation.

So as is often the case, New Hampshire taxpayers are supporting not just religion, but religious discrimination.

One striking bit of info-- New Hampshire taxpayers are footing the bill for 29 students to attend school in another state ($310K total). But many of the schools receiving vouchers have grown with the new income. 

And so New Hampshire demonstrates as clearly as any state that the major purpose and function of modern school vouchers is to get taxpayers to subsidize religious schools. 

Student Surveillance Is Still A Scary Thing

Back in January of 2020, I predicted that one of the big stories of the coming year would be a growth in the student surveillance industry. I'd been following the story as it popped up, because it was everywhere. 

Florida (you know--the Freedom State) was implementing a huge student surveillance system. Colleges were using student phones for all manner of tracking. Public schools were experimenting with all sorts of creepy facial recognition and surveillance software. Audio surveillance was another great frontier. In 2019, California enacted the Cradle-to-Career Data Systems Act, intended to data mine the hell out of California's minor citizens. And that was on top of the old stuff like Pearson's crazy student surveillance to protect its tests (a story I can't fully relate because a piece about it was one of the few posts that Google ever took down on my blog).

So when I made that prediction in January of 2020, I felt I was making a pretty good prognostication. However, as you may recall, a few months later, education (and mush other) news was dominated by something else entirely. 

But the fact that we were all kind of distracted did not stop the march of ed tech's surveillance industry. How could they? It was like printing money, and it dovetailed perfectly with the longstanding interest in data mining children to get that womb-to-tomb pipeline up and running. No matter how creepy it seemed, it was a profitable way to fix it so that busy CEOs could log on and select meat widgets like picking out toasters on Amazon.

Ellen Barry just dropped a piece at the New York Times that, as the NYT is wont to do, accepts the framing of the folks who sell this stuff-- "Spying on Student Devices, Schools Aim to Intercept Self-Harm Before It Happens." 

This is always the pitch-- "Let us surveil your students during every possible moment of their day, and we will protect them from themselves and each other."

I don't mean to make light of this pitch. I have lost students and former students to suicide, and given the opportunity to prevent that, I'd be awfully inclined to take it. But at the moment, the "evidence" that this works is anecdotal at best. Here I am, forced to agree with Reason of all outlets, asking if this kind of spying on children is really doing any good?

And the cost of this kind of surveillance is pretty extreme. Barry tells a couple of the usual sorts of dramatic tales of a student who was headed off because of what they typed into their heavily monitored school-issued device. Much further down the page comes this paragraph--

Dramatic stories like that are unusual, though. Every day, Mr. Clubbs’s team sifts through and responds to the alerts, a task that occupies about a quarter of his work hours, and a third of his counselors’. He could not say how accurate the system was. “We’re not keeping any data like that,” he said. “We’re just responding to the alerts as they come in.”

Many students report being "caught" with false positives, or pranks. And some of these result in late night police visits to the home, which come with their own level of fraughtness. 

Barry calls identifying people at risk for suicide a "needle in a haystack" problem (linking to a 2022 article about using smartphones to spot suicide risks). There are about 7,000 deaths by suicide in people under 24 each year. A large number of those involved firearms; in 2022, there were 2,526 gun deaths in the 1-to-17 age group.

So why invest so much money in surveillance software rather than, say, tighter gun controls or more mental health services?

We can point at a couple of possible factors. One is that young humans don't have the same kind of lobbying and political power as gun fans. Children's lack of political clout makes them the path of least resistance for all sorts of policy ideas. We've seen this too many times in education--poverty is bad, so let's fix it by making children take standardized tests every year so that they'll get better scores and thereby end poverty.

And as mentioned above, this kind of data collection dovetails nicely with the goals of folks who dream of massive data collection (the kind of all-encompassing data collection that adults would be more reluctant to put up with, but if we can just get kids to accept that "sharing your data" is a fact of life...). 

That, of course, points to the big problem with this sort of operation. Data is the new gold, and what we get are a whole bunch of companies saying, "I would like to collect a bunch of your gold, but don't worry, I'll keep it safely stored in this unlocked desk drawer." Then before you know it, you're reading about how huge investment firm Blackstone has bought Ancestry.com and its vast stores of genetic information. Probably just because they have a keen interest in genealogy.

The surveillance industry didn't take a nap when Covid hit-- in fact, they had a golden opportunity to pitch "Now that all your students are on devices for school, this is the perfect time to install our creepy safety surveillance software." And I'm not even touching on the data-sucking maw that is the product of various outfits like Google that are oh-so-eager to help out with education.

When they get access to computer tech, students need to understand that nothing is private and everything is forever. It would be nice if their responsible adults understood that as well. It's no small thing to sign away the privacy rights of an entire generation, even if it is "for their own good."

For Book Banners, It's Never Enough

Fans of reading restrictions like to point at the most extreme cases, books with graphic depictions of sex acts. And there's no doubt that there are some works out there that even I would be inclined to keep away from younger eyes. 

But the thing to remember is that reading restrictions don't work the extremes of what's out there. There's no instance where folks calling for book bans announce, "Okay, now that this list of ten really objectionable books has been pulled from the library, we're satisfied and you'll never hear from us again."

Getting stuff banned is like some sort of crack-laced super-Pringles, and calls for reasonable restraint always escalate to ridiculous levels.

Take this case in Ohio, where a teacher was suspended because she had four books with LGBTQ characters in her classroom. The books have no sexual actions depicted. They were not required reading, or even prominently displayed. They were just in the classroom. The teacher is suing the district. Good for her. 

Or in Tennessee, where Knox County Schools has its new list of 48 books banned from all district buildings. The list contains the usuals like 13 Reasons Why and Perks of Being a Wallflower, plus works by Ellen Hopkins, there are some others as well. Like Draw Me A Star by Eric Carle, the collage artist who brought us the hungry, hungry caterpillar. But Draw Me A Star includes a pair of rough collage depictions of a nude man and woman (who look way less like a man and women than the hungry caterpillar looks like a caterpillar). If you know the work of architectural artists David McCauley, you may be aware that he did the same thing for the human body. Can't have that. In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak is another frequent target because it shows a boy with a penis. Shel Silverstein's A Light In The Attic doesn't have any sex of LGBTQ content, but it's frequently targeted because it promotes disobedience. And there's Slaughterhouse Five, a longstanding feature on ban lists because there is a picture that uses a couple of rough circles to represent breasts (well, that and it's anti-war, but I'm sure that's not a problem). And something by Toni Morrison, because what's a ban list without something from one of our greatest authors.

Or in North Carolina, where the popular children's manga Unico has been yanked, not because of any sexual content at all, but because one mom objects to a scene where a man attacks a cat and where a character uses a gun. Her first grader purchased the book, recommended for grades 3-7, at a Scholastic Book fair. Scholastic Book Fairs are a frequent target of Moms for Liberty and other far right groups pushing a conservative alternative.

It all goes way, way beyond trying to remove a handful of sexually explicit books. For many of the book ban crowd, it's about hiding any aspects of human existence that they don't want to have acknowledged in front of the children and, in some cases, going a step further by trying to create an image of reality that only allows for what they believe should be real. And when you are trying to curate and dictate reality according to your own narrow vision of what reality should be, your work is never done. 

ICYMI: Blizzard Edition (12/8)

We finally got hit this week, resulting in two snow days to start the weekend. The board of directors here at the institute have enjoyed honing their sidewalk shoveling technique, and my town looks plenty picturesque. But God bless the teachers who will have to get school running again after a four day weekend coming after a five day weekend two weeks before winter break. 

In the meantime, here's some stuff to read from the week.

Dane County judge strikes down Act 10, restoring public employee union bargaining rights

I don't want you to miss this news-- a judge in Wisconsin has thrown out Act 10, Scott Walker's attempt to strip unions of power. It was bad news. This is better news.

The Religious Right Is Plotting How To Get Christianity Into Schools

I can see we're going to have a hard time talking about this without overheated rhetoric from all sides, but we can't ignore the increased push to put a particular brand of Christianity in schools. Here's Nathalie Baptiste at Huffington Post addressing the issue.

Is Separate Still Unequal? New Evidence on School Segregation and Racial Academic Achievement Gaps

The abstract to a paper that's behind a paywall. If you can get behind that wall, great-- this link is for you. The research asks if segregation is still feeding an achievement gap. Three guesses.

Stop using generative AI as a search engine

A whole bunch of folks, including writers who should know better, asked AI if other Presidents had pardoned family members, and the answers were... not correct. Although the emergence of Hunter deButts as Woodrow Wilson's brother-in-law at least provides entertainment value. Elizabeth Lopatto reports on one more example that AI is not worth the cost.

Pedagogy of the Depressed

Oh, this is one of those hilarious-yet-depressing posts that education is prone to. Benjamin Riley takes us through the features of some on-line "AI for educators" courses. Which one should you take? (Spoiler alert: they are all tragic).

Colorado-Based Christian Nationalists are Rewriting Recent History

Speaking of unreliable scholarship, Logan Davis reports on some of the historical baloney from christianists attempting to rewrite history so that they can be simultaneously the winners and the oppressed. Coming soon to a classroom near you.

Frank the Dissembler

The Frank here is Frank Edelblut, New Hampshire's completely unqualified education chief, who is providing a master class in how to cut funding for special ed. From Andru Volinsky.

The looming GOP divide over school vouchers

Writing for the Olean Times Herald, Mary Ellen Klas points out that the recent defeat of voucher measures in some very red states may spell trouble for GOP leaders who want to push vouchers.

What Trump 2.0 Could Mean For Public Education

Josephine Lee at Texas Observer talks to Diane Ravich about what the next administration may hold for education.

Children illegally worked dangerous overnight shifts at pork processing plant, feds find

Reported by Kate Gibson at CBS, one more example of why so many states want to roll back child labor protections--because certain industries really love their child labor.

When the Robots Have Brain Rot

Audrey Watters is back on the education beat, which means you should go subscribe to her newsletter Second Breakfast right now. In the meantime, here's a post that, among other things, looks at AI and its many problems.

Pennridge School District Repeals Independence Law Center-Written Anti-Advocacy Policy That Banned Pride Flags

How about some good news. Cyril Mychalejko reports that one Bucks County school district has actually rolled back some of its repressive policies.

How Boston Globe’s Education Coverage Educates Us About the Capital v. Labor Divide

Maurice Cunningham shows how Boston Globe coverage reflects capital's desire not for education, but for meat widget vocational training.

Accountability goes with voucher

In Ohio, voucher boosters are fighting hard to make sure that there is no accountability or oversight attached to them. The editorial board of the Toledo Blade thinks that the wrong way to go.

The usual cast of characters have lined up to oppose even a modicum of transparency and accountability for private schools (HB407)

More details for that struggle over simple accountability

Billionaire Sponsored Malarkey from Education Trust

Thomas Ultican looks at some of the propaganda being cranked out by one group of well-heeled reformsters.

Building Community and Uncertain Doom

Jose Luis Vilson writes about community and the future we're facing in the US.

Gifts of Christmas Past

Guess who's not allowed to get gifts in some states (Hint: the answer is not "Supreme Court Justices"). Nancy Flanagan breaks it down with her usual flare.

Trump’s Threatened Immigration Deportations Would Traumatize Students and Disrupt Public Schools

Jan Resseger has been on a serious roll lately, and if you don't already subscribe, you're missing out. This piece looks at the implications for schools of Trump's promised mass deportation. 

Who is at the Center of the Education Policy Conversation?

TC Weber on the importance recruitment AND retention for building strong teaching staffs. Pluss more Tennessee shenanigans.

A Response to Jeb’s Election ReCap Baloney

Jeb Bush had some "thoughts" about the election. Sue Kingery Woltanski has some thoughts about his "thoughts."

Human Interaction Is Now A Luxury Good

Jessica Grose talk to Allison Pugh about how fields that are supposed to provide human service are increasingly... not. This is at the New York Times, but if I did this right, this link should give you gift access.

Tips to Survive 2025

Jeanne Dietsch shares some thoughts about getting through next year.

Come join me (and a few million others) on Bluesky and find me at @palan57.bsky.social.

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Meet Florida's Top Book Banner (The Daily Show)

I remember the long-ago days when The Daily Show interviewed outlandish individuals who were blissfully unaware that they were being set up by a fake news show. Maybe Bruce Friedman was just unaware.

Friedman is Florida's top book banner. He's the president of Florida's No Left Turn chapter, an organization that is determined that children should not be indoctrinated with any beliefs except the correct ones. And he has feelings about public schools and his son. As reported by Kumal Dey for meaww.com

Friedman described his son as "bright," "gifted" and "a fine young man who is considerably smarter than I am," adding, "He makes me proud, but I am not going to stick him in a school with groomers and pedophiles and twisted sick people that think these… books and many like them are okay to present to a child. They are not okay. There's no literal literary value to any of this. It's poison."

That particular occasion was Friedman getting his mic cut off for reading naughty bits at a board meeting. He's most active in Clay County, where the Jewish father has agitated to have the graphic novel version of Diary of Anne Frank pulled from libraries. Sophie's Choice, too. Jewish Telegraph Agency profiled him, along with a list of just a few of his targeted books.

Under a picture of him in a t-shirt that says "My body. My Child. My choice." the article lists some of his greatest hits. 

In objecting to a children’s biography of Harriet Tubman, for example, he says, “Telling them that the Civil War was all about slavery is a lie.” The picture book “Arthur’s Birthday,” featuring the cartoon aardvark, was bad in his view because “it is not appropriate to discuss ‘spin the bottle’ with elementary school children.” To Friedman, “Americanah,” a prizewinning novel by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie about the immigrant experience, is “a horrible piece of garbage.” Reading from his own file on the book, he listed off its problems: “Attempted suicide, immigration fraud, promiscuity, infidelity, abortion, racism, sex, critical race theory.”

He reads the books. One of his challenges was against Slaughterhouse Five, a book he read when he was 12.  “When I read it I had no regard for my own innocence,” he told JTA. He keeps files on his laptop (you'll see it in the piece below) where he notes in which way the book violates his extremely broad list of all the things children should not be exposed to. "

Friedman is responsible for over a third of all book challenges in the state in 2023. "They're all porn," he says. 

This would be the guy that Ron DeSantis was talking about earlier this year when he announced that the reading suppression law needed to be "fixed," claiming that outlandish calls for banning classics and non-porny kiddie books was just someone trying to make the law look foolish. Except, of course, Friedman is delivering an authentic type of foolishness. 

But somehow, Friedman agreed to sit down with Michael Kosta for a Daily Show piece, and he is everything you might imagine he is. Give the segment a view.