Ed Department: Worst of All Worlds

For a while this morning, CNN was running a curious quote from Neal McClusky, Education Guy at Cato Institute. 

If [Trump] says, 'We're going to have a 50% reduction in staff,' there is reason to be concerned about how the system will work: Is that enough people? We're going to learn whether or not they can do the job with fewer of them.

Some folks pounced on that quote (which seems to have since disappeared from the story) as "proof" that Cato wanted government to work after all, but as McClusky reassured his Twitter followers, he was as adamantly against the department as always (true that--say what you like, but McClusky is nothing if not consistent). 

But his comments on the halving of the department shows how MAGA can have the worst of all possible worlds.

McMahon has reiterated that her intent is to dismantle the department entirely, and I have argued that this would get in the way of the Truskian goal of using funding as leverage to force school districts to comply. Except that I may have given them too much credit, because one of the big piles of money that they have to use as leverage is IDEA funding, and it turns out that McMahon isn't even sure what IDEA is, as she revealed to Laura Ingraham. “Well, do you know what? I’m not sure I can tell you exactly what it stands for, except that it’s the programs for disabled and needs [students].”

So I suppose asking for a detailed list of which positions were cut and how it was determined that they were excess-- yeah, never mind. What we've seen at this point is "a bunch of everything."

But if they can cut the department to the point that it can't do its jobs, that's nearly as good as dismantling it. Especially since it sets up an argument before Congress of "Look, the thing isn't working anyway, so you might as well dissolve it."

I have spent plenty of time bitching about the department, which has birthed one dumb idea after another while simultaneously failing to aggressively pursue the objective of making sure all children get the equitable chance for education they're entitled to. But this is not a move that can even pretend to be about doing a better job (nor, to be fair, has anybody pretended that's what this is about). The Department put many education-related grants under one roof rather than requiring districts and states to go paper chasing different pieces of the government for their pile of money. And the department offered protection to students whose rights to a non-sucky education were threatened. Plus bonuses like teacher training assistance, which is also axed.

So now we move to keeping those functions in the department, but requiring the department to do it badly, a sort of enforced inefficiency. 

McMahon represents a different brand of uninformed incompetence from Betsy DeVos. DeVos was so bad at her job, she couldn't get much of anything done. McMahon doesn't know what she's doing--but to just smash stuff up, she doesn't have to know much. "I want a new computer," says your child, and you reply that they already have a perfectly good one, even if it's a little slow and doesn't work exactly the way they want it to. So they smash it with a rock. "Can I have a new computer now?"

Presidents Musk and Trump have gone after any piece of government that is about taking care of others, especially if it's got plenty of money lying around that could be used to prop up private corporations. It seems unlikely that anyone is going to rescue the department of education any time soon.

Money, Lies, God, and Education

Want a guide that helps make sense of our Christian [sic] nationalist moment, including education. Katherine Stewart has published it.

Katherine Stewart's The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism came out in 2019, but it is still essential reading for our current moment. One line that really hit me when I read it was this one:

It [Christian nationalism] asserts that legitimate government rests not on the consent of the governed but adherence to the doctrines of a specific religious, ethnic, and cultural heritage.

In other words, it rejects democracy. And as I read her new book, Money, Lies, and God as the current regime started tromping through government, it occurred to me that it's not just the legitimacy of government that depends on alignment with a particular set of values-- 

It's the legitimacy, value, rights, and humanity of individual persons that depends on adherence to the right doctrines.  When President Musk says that empathy can destroy civilization, when MAGA trot out dehumanizing language like the R word, it's one more sign that some people don't matter. 

Ideas like universal civil rights, the kind of thing we're in the habit of assuming as given, are not accepted by these folks. Bizarre ideas like the Trumpian inversion of civil rights and discrimination make sense if you assume that only some people have rights and only some people can be discriminated against because only some people are aligned with proper values and only those people are entitled to civil rights. Of course, only those people deserve to be in charge, to rule over those others who, because of their spiritual and ideological failings aren't fully real humans.

Remember this, and everything else makes sense.

In the new book, Stewart lays out four elements of the Christian [sic] nationalist mindset. (She also spends a couple of chapters on education-- I'll get there). Stewart argues that it's not so much an ideological checklist, but this set of views that characterizes the movement.

First, the belief that America is going straight to hell. We are surrounded by evil powers that threaten everything we care about. Every election is apocalyptic, every opponent an existential threat. I recognize this from the many loud complaints about Joe Biden. I would characterize the Biden presidency as a return to the tradition of mediocre white guys in charge, but for folks in the movement he was such a huge agent of satan, and he is still invoke to fuel that fearful reaction.

See it to in the narrative that education has been "captured" by Godless socialist lefties who have installed pedophiles and groomers in every classroom, waiting for the chance to de-penisify your sons. 

Second is the persecution complex. White Christian (particularly men) are under attack, besieged and put upon. Stewart cites a survey in which the vast majority of Christian nationalists say that white folks experience just as much or more discrimination as minority groups. She also argues that it's not so much economic anxiety as status or culture anxiety that drives the movement (though I can see how money serves as a stand-in for status).

Third is the notion that Christian [sic] nationalists have a "unique and privileged connection to this land." The insistence that this is a Christian nation, and therefor tied to Christian roots, means that it makes sense to them to insist that the Bible be in classrooms and prayer in schools. People who are aligned to the correct set of values and beliefs are entitled to rights and privileges that other people are not.

The fourth piece of the mindset that "Jesus may have great plans for us, but the reality is that this is a cruel place in which only the cruel survive." So what others may seem as punitive policies of unnecessary and deliberate cruelty ("the cruelty is the point") are not so much an expression of anger and hatred as a desire to force people to see the world as it really is. What some see as a deliberate attempt to make life shitty for others can be, from the Christian [sic] nationalist mindset, an almost-kind attempt to tear peoples' blinders off so they can see and deal with the world as it really is-- shitty.

Put those four together and you get the look at how these folks tick, and once again, it's not because they are stupid and/or evil. It's not a new set of views-- the Puritans would nod along with most of this and, as I would tell my 11th grade students, if you wanted a mindset that would equip a group of people to survive and persevere the nightmarish conditions that those first pilgrims faced, you couldn't do much better. Southern colonists might have been sustained by the promise of wealth and independence, but the Massachusetts crowd could rest secure in knowing that live is always a cruel struggle, but as people with a special connection to God, they would take their place at the top of this particular mountain. Now their descendants are pissed off that a bunch of people who don't even have that special connection to the Correct God are being carried up to the top of the mountain via an easy trip that they haven't even earned by being Right People.

Stewart looks at education. She gives a section to a pretty thorough look at how Moms for Liberty leverage the idea that Moms have "special moral authority" (even if the Moms are seasoned political activists). She also takes a look at the crowd that argues that since school prayer was abolished, schools have become "temples of secular humanism" that teach, as Oklahoma's education dudebro-in-chief Ryan Walters, atheism as a secular religion. Stewart attended a M4L gathering, and those pictures are stunning. Stewart has a sharp eye, an ability to spot the moments that really capture and illuminate the larger picture.

Stewart says there are two basic types of groups undermining public education-- the Proselytizers and the Privatizers. Both have powerful backers, and Stewart has done an exhaustive job of locating and naming names. They share a desire to dismantle public education as it is and repurpose the funding for religious organizations and private schools, all intended to bring up students who believe their preferred brand of religion and/or their preferred brand of conservative politics (because part of the persecution they suffer under is a society that indoctrinates children into Wrong Thinking, so if they can just capture institutions, they can properly indoctrinate children in Right Thinking. to which millions of teachers say, "Good luck with that").

Again, not new. Stewart quotes Jerry Falwell from 1979, dreaming of "a day when there are no more public schools; churches will have taken them over and Christians will be running them." She also nods back To Milton Friedman's 1955 paper that laid the groundwork for the idea of education not as a public good, but as a consumer item that gets bought and sold on the open market where consumers get what they can afford. If they can't afford much, well, life is cruel and human beings aren't equal and if you got the short end of the stick, that's your problem.

As one member of the Ziklag group explains, the goal is not to "just throw stones," but to "take down the education system as we know it today."

In Mr. Lancaster's System, Adam Laats talks about how early 19th century reformers wanted a school system to help deal with all those naughty children out on the streets. I wonder if the future imagined by some of these folks would take us back around to that concern, or if the wealthy this time would just build higher walls for their gated communities.

Stewart's book is well-sourced and pulls apart the many layers and differences within the many parts of the movement. She has done a ton of leg work and interviews, resulting in a book that is illuminating and instructive, if not particularly encouraging. But these days there's a lot of noise and smoke and not-particularly-useful theories about what is happening and why; this book brings some much-needed clarity to our difficult moment in US history. For folks whose focus has been mostly on education, this helps put the education debates in a wider context. I strongly recommend this one. 

ICYMI: Sleepy Morning Edition (3/9)

Did you reset your clock? You know--that one clock in your house that doesn't reset itself? Go ahead. I'll wait.

I finally joined the Washington Post exodus. I have a sentimental attachment to the paper; Valerie Strauss championed and occasionally printed my work, and that didn't just widen my audience, but was one of the few things that caused my co-workers to notice that I was Up To Something. But Strauss has moved on and Jeff Bezos has decried that the paper will espouse no opinions other than his, and while I know enough journalism history to know that this is not a new and unheard of feature in the newspaper biz, I don't have to pay for the privilege.  

I have been doing this weekly digest post for almost ten years now, and it feels more necessary than ever, as the media landscape becomes increasingly unreliable. Amplification of important ideas is a critical responsibility of folks in the social media world so do share. Also, a side note-- I do not include in this digest pieces that I addressed in a regular post, but share those, too. 

Okay, here we go.

Diversity, Political Culture and Middle School Band

I do love it when Nancy Flanagan gets a little salty. Here she looks at the anti-diversity directive from the Department of Education and finds the fingerprints of Big Brother.

What Now for Democrats for Education Reform?

DFER, the privatizers in Democrat's clothing, are having some trouble. Good. They've earned it. Maurice Cunningham has the story for The Progressive.

Introducing the Juicero, Only for Reading

It's the dumbest product ever, only this time for reading. John Warner offers a reality-based response.

A Rural Alaska School Asked the State to Fund a Repair. Nearly Two Decades Later, the Building Is About to Collapse.

On the ground, it is not always about high-falutin' policy issues. Sometimes it's just about providing a safe building. For ProPublica and KYUK, Emily Schwing has the story.

"Educational Pluralism" as Another Name for Privatization

Thomas Ultican looks at a recent The 74 article that asks, why can't we just be more like Europe. 

When America Persecutes Its Teachers

Clay Risen at The Atlantic walks us through some history as a reminder that going after teachers for having ideas of which the government does not approve--that's not a new thing. In particular, a look at when the red scare came to the schoolhouse.

The GOP is Cracking Up Over School Vouchers

Jennifer Berkshire looks at the voucher-related cracks in the MAGA coalition. If only there were an opposing political party that could take advantage of them.

AI Chatbots have telltale quirks. Researchers can spot them with 97% accuracy

Well, perhaps. But it's still something.

"Do It Yourself" - a Poem

David Lee Finkle heard rumors that his students were using online summaries to "read" the assignment. So he wrote a poem.

TN Lawmakers Seek To Deny Education To Some Kids

Andy Spears reports on a Tennessee bill aimed at challenging the SCOTUS decision that ruled that undocumented children still get an education.

Influencers and Expertise

Audrey Watters shares more important connections about ed tech. Also, a mildly disturbing picture of a goose.

I, Human

It's behind the New York Times paywall, but this guest essay by Margaret Renkl is a beautiful statement of support for the human touch over the AI assistants plaguing us.(H/T Larry Cuban)

Media Manufactures Mississippi "Miracle" (Again)

Paul Thomas again debunks the "miraculous" reading achievements of Mississippi.

NCLB’s Curse: 12 Reasons Reading Scores are STILL Poor

Nancy Bailey breaks down a dozen ways that the curse of NCLB is still with us and our students.

A Two-Legged Stool

Steve Nuzum reports from South Carolina, where a school voucher bill was struck down by the state court, so legislators decided to just try passing the same thing again.

DeWine’s Budget Includes Full Phase-In of OH Fair School Funding Plan. Why Will Majority of School Districts Lose Funding?

Jan Resseger tries to sort out the new Ohio mystery-- how can a boost in school funding be turned into a cut? 

Simon says Focus on Students, Not Just Their Ability to Take a Test

It's a miracle. There's a legislator in Florida who is trying to help public schools. Sue Kingery Woltanski shares this improbably story.

Dismantling the U.S. Department of Education: A Direct Threat to America’s Schools

Julian Vasquez Heilig breaks down the issues raised by dismantling the Department of Education. Pretty comprehensive look.

Texas and Florida Are Canary in Coal Mine of Schools Run by Uncertified Teachers

Eleanor Bader reports for Truthout on the growing problem. Good look at the national issue.

First Black Graduate

Akil Bello has set out to collect a particular data point-- when did colleges have their first Black graduate? It's an interesting pile of information (and you might be able to help collect info). It's also kind of discouraging, but as he says, it feels like information we ought to have.

The government doesn't know that AGI is coming

Benjamin Riley contests the claims that computers with human-ish intelligence are right around the corner.

Feel free to sign up for my newsletter, which will freely pop whatever I've been writing into your email inbox for free.

More Big Brother Tech

This week Axios reported a scoop that takes us to another extension of the surveillance state. Big Brother wishes he could have pulled this off.

The State Department has set out to catch foreign students who support Hamas and eject them from the country, and they are going to do it by using AI to scan student social media accounts. 

I don't want to argue about Hamas vs Israel here. I do want to note the absolute terrifying level of surveillance being used here. AI will scan the internet, scrape up whatever, and flag anyone who has displayed a Double Plus Ungood idea so that the government can then take action against that person. 

Today it's foreign students who express too much sympathy for Hamas. But tomorrow? There are no limits, other than legal guardrails, a bureaucratic sense of decency, and a lack of imagination. So maybe tomorrow we scan teacher social media accounts to see who is doing forbidden diversity stuff. Maybe we search through government employee accounts to see who can be fired for insufficient loyalty to Dear Leader. 

And of course this would have to be done badly, by training the AI to work from the administration list of Forbidden Words, which gets us such genius moves as removing archival reference to the Enola Gay and various people whose last name was Gay, because, you know-- Don't Say Gay. 

Tying repressive, invasive, rights-violating surveillance to Artificial "Intelligence" is just the chef's kiss to bad policy. AI doesn't read, doesn't understand, doesn't interpret. It acts just as badly as it is trained to act. It does not know better. To use it as a means of tracking down Unapproved Ideas is irresponsible and just plain wrong.

It's an alarming first step, a whole new kind of cyber attack.  

Rural Education Myths

I was in the ruralish education biz for almost my entire teaching career, and one small thing that wears on you is that policy discussions almost always ignore rural needs and realities.

The current Trusk administration buzz saw looks to continue that tradition. Take the privatization of the United States Postal Service-- there are plenty of private delivery services right now, and they mostly won't deliver to our most rural areas (they hand those packages off to the USPS). 

School "choice" policies are built on assumption of a relatively large, dense market. Meanwhile, Catholic private schools in my county have closed because they couldn't get enough students to enroll, and there are no private options springing up in their place. Like rural delivery, it's a market private operators don't want to enter because it's too hard to make money serving it. \

If, for instance, Title I funds turn into block grants and those turn into vouchers, rural areas will take a double hit-- a loss of needed Title I funds for the public school and no options for any sort of private vouchery options (this is where folks pop up to chirp "Oh, but you could start a micro-school" because everyone enjoyed that so much during the pandemic and also it works great in places with sub-optimal wi-fi connections). 

So many people don't get small towns and rural areas (e.g. every movie and tv show depiction of a small town), and that includes people who create policy. 

There's a nice piece in The Conversation by Sheneka Williams, Darren DuBose, and Kimberly Clarida, three Michigan State University rural education researchers, in which they distill much of their research into three important but unrecognized truths about rural education.

Rural communities are becoming more diverse.

The three researchers are talking mostly about race, and that is on point-- rural areas are not all white any more. There are increasingly people of color in these communities.

From 2010 to 2020, over 2 million white people left rural communities, while more than 2 million people of color took their place. The number of rural people who identified as multiracial doubled to nearly 4 million over the same period, and all rural communities except those in Arizona saw an increase in their Latino population.

That tracks. So does a point made by rural Missouri blogger Jess Piper, who points out that most rural people are not farmers. Politicians often calculate that if they address some sort of farm policy, then you've done your bit for the rural vote. 

But the typical rural family is not some redneck farmer. Rural areas include a broad range of human beings engaged in a broad range of human endeavors. Though I will say there's one things that rural areas mostly don't have-- super-rich people. I've always maintained that's one of the many, many reasons that trickle down economics fails; there's nobody here in my region to trickle down on the rest of us. And my region provides a sort of laboratory of that, because 150-ish years ago we became the center of the oil industry. We were loaded with rich folks, and to this day we live amongst the many benefits that their wealth brought to town (though some of those gifts have become troublesome white elephants). Then that ended, and we're all quite aware of the money that isn't here and what we aren't able to get done. Sooner or later, if you want stuff, somebody with money has to invest it, spend it on your community. It's not strictly a rural problem-- read Andre Perry's Know Your Price to see how it happens for certain urban communities. 

But I digress. Point is, folks working from a stereotypical picture of who lives in rural communities and what the need (or don't) is working from the wrong script, so they'll get the wrong answers.

Rural educators know how to succeed.

Rural schools lack resources, but rural teachers are expert at working around that lack (which is not to say they couldn't be even better with the resources). The three writers also show this as essentially an extension of the previous point--because folks in high places don't really understand the nature of rural communities, the cultural capital of rural areas is ignored.

One glaring example is that rural communities are rarely represented in teaching materials and curricula, which frequently ignore their local knowledge, traditions and values. This creates a gap in students’ ability to see themselves in jobs and positions outside of their personal contexts. And it hampers teachers’ ability to leverage student strengths when teachers are unprepared to connect with their backgrounds.

There are teachers in rural schools who are prepared to connect--they are the teachers who grew up in those same communities. But they are very much in a Do It Yourself situation. 

The researchers also make the point that policy makers favor things like closure and consolidation of schools. Pennsylvania is a perfect example. In the 1960's, the state had a huge number of small borough and township school districts, and the state pushed consolidation (yes, our current 500 districts is considerably fewer than previously). That left many smaller communities with one school; that school often served as a community hub, and a major source of property value and tax base in that community. When the last fifteen years of further consolidation and closure came along, those single schools were closed, delivering a hammer blow both culturally and financially. There are plenty of factors that created the pressures behind these moves, but at no point did policy makers stand up for rural schools and communities and try to hold back this wave that has hollowed out many rural communities.

Rural educators know how to tap into local resources, knowing that little support is coming from the state or federal government. But policy makers rarely make an attempt to tap those resources.

Rural students are high achievers

The trio notes that students in rural schools score higher on math and reading tests than urban students, and rural students have a higher graduation rate. 

What rural students lack is the extras that non-rural students enjoy. From summer programs to enrichment programs to personal SAT coaches, nonrural students have opportunities that rural students do not. Rural students end up with lower going-to-college numbers. 

There's no earthly reason to imagine that rural students are any less capable than their nonrural counterparts. None. 

It is a myth that rural schools are filled with farm kids who aren't all that bright being taught by teachers who are less-than. It is not a myth that rural schools are under-represented and simply -- I can't say ignored, because to ignore something you have to see it and deliberately look past it. Rural education is more commonly invisible to folks in the policy world. 

I expect that problem is likely to be even worse under the current regime. Guttung funding as a prelude to privatization will be a double slam for rural districts. Those districts will see a loss of funding and will have limited ability to replace those funds by raising local taxes. At the same time, they are not attractive markets for any high quality education-flavored businesses; those communities are more likely to end up with a "school" aisle in their local Dollar General. Rural students deserve better. 

DeSantis: More Shootings, Please

This week in his State of the State speech, Ron DeSantis announced that it was time to get over the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School shooting--that would be the one in Parkland in which a 19-year-old killed 17 and injured 17 others in the deadliest mass shooting at a high school in US history. 

After that shooting, the state put in place a piddly excuse for an attempt to make such horrors less likely, but even that is too much for DeSantis, who specifically wants to get rid of language raising the age to purchase a shotgun or rifle from 18 to 21 and also the red flag law that lets family members or law enforcement petition the court to remove someone's firearms id they are risk to themselves of others. You know-- like maybe a 19 year old with a long history of racism and fascination with mass shootings. 

“We need to be a strong Second Amendment state. I know many of you agree, so let’s get some positive reform done for the people in this state of Florida,” DeSantis was quoted by the Florida Phoenix. 

Also, he'd like to have open carry in the state.

Because nothing is more important than an American's God-given right to shoot other people. Because we should go to any length to "protect" a fetus, but once it's a live child, its life is less important than someone's right to fire off a couple of rounds at anyone that bugs them. Because this is one more way politicians can show that for all their talk, they don't particular care about young humans. 

On the right column of the blogspot version of this blog, I have had one image parked for years. It's not complicated

I would say that it's the least we could do, but of course the least we can do is nothing, and Ron DeSantis would like us to get back to doing that. 

The only bright spot here is that the legislature doesn't seem to have his back on this. Good. DeSantis should be ashamed that he can't even produce a bad argument for his favored policies other than complaining that Florida has "lagged on this issue." What a bummer-- imagine all the people who are going to some other state because it's easier to shoot people there. 

Scary AI Teacher Coaching Tool

This seems like several kinds of bad ideas, and some schools are absolutely going to go for it.

What if teachers could have a sort of feedback and self-evaluation tool working with them every day, powered, of course, by AI? Well, dream no more.

Teachers get little feedback on classroom performance, nor is it possible to collect a ton of data while simultaneously doing the job. Kathleen Moore at the Times Union reports cheerfully:

Enter AI. The AI tool uses cameras and audio recordings to report on whether the teacher looked at or walked through each section of the classroom, how often they used group work, and many other techniques. Even the words the teacher and students use are tracked.

The AI works with the Mathematical Quality of Instruction, which comes to us from the Center for Education Policy Research. It is, they tell us, "a Common Core-aligned observational rubric that provides a framework for analyzing mathematics instruction in several domains." Ruh-roh.

It considers five domains-- common core-aligned student practices, working with students and mathematics, richness of mathematics, errors and imprecision, and classroom work is connected to mathematics. And I'm not going to dig any deeper because 1) I've got my doubts about how much of that an AI can actually measure and 2) common core. 

The fresh-faced assistant professor promoting this AI eval is Jonathan Foster, who started out teaching math (well, he really started out in South Carolina's Teacher Cadet program, a pretty nifty program aimed at getting high school students started on the path to teaching) at the Montessori Academy of Spartanburg. He was hired by SUNY at Albany in 2023. 

GT reports that Peter Youngs and Scott Acton of University of Virginia (education and computer engineering, respectively) are leading the project.

The money? Why, from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-- a cool $1.4 million. 

They are field testing the tool on some early career teachers, who "have been receptive" but also complain that the AI "isn't good at noticing everything." No kidding. AI cannot understand or interpret in any conventional sense of the words. It can only scan for particular words or positions in the room. Which means that this system will inevitably train teachers to incorporate an assortment of odd behaviors and vocabulary for no reason other than it will game the AI.

While all of that provides reason enough to give this coaching tool a big fat side eye, here's a sentence that just hints at bigger issues:

But the AI can give them daily feedback, without it going on performance reports.

Yet.

I'm trying to imagine a universe in which administrators and policymakers say something along the lines of, "Well, the computer is just sitting there chock full of performance data on the teachers, but we should definitely not use that at all."

No, this tool is just a half-step away from being your computerized teacher evaluator, counting every day of your work as part of your professional measure. Some administrators would love it because it would save them time. Policymakers would love it because it generates numbers, so you know it's reliable hard data and all scientific and stuff. And if that's not scary enough, let's imagine what happens when someone hacks into the system. 

"Oh, but it's just math teachers," I hear you say. I invite you to travel to that imaginary universe where there is definitely nobody saying, "Yeah, with just a few tweaks we could totally use this to evaluate reading or history or home ec or phys ed teachers."

Foster gamely tries to head off the idea that this AI could be used to substitute for teachers. "I see the act of teaching as a human endeavor," he tells Moore, and I agree, but how human is a human who is taking career advice from an AI coach? 

It could be worse. I expect that right now, someone is out there programming an AI to work with the Charlotte Danielson framework. In the meantime, it's one more sign that teachers should prepare to meet their new robot overlords.