What The Free Market Does For Education and Equality

"Unleash market forces" has been a rallying cry of both the right and some nominally on the left for the past twenty-some years. The free market and private operators do everything better! Competition drives improvement! 

It's an okay argument for toasters. It's a terrible argument for education.

The free market does not foster superior quality; the free market fosters superior marketing. And as we've learned in the more recent past, the free market also fosters enshittification-- the business of trying to make more money by actively making the product worse (see: Google, Facebook, and any new product that requires you to subscribe to get the use of basic features). 

We know what competition drives in an education market-- a competition to capture the students who give you the most marketable "success" for the lowest cost. The most successful school is not one that has some great new pedagogical miracle, but the one that does the best job of keeping high-testing students ("Look at our numbers! We must be great!") and getting rid of the high-cost, low-scoring students. Or, if that's your jam, the success is the one that keeps away all those terrible LGBTQ and heathen non-believer students. The kind of school that lets parents select a school in tune with their 19th century values.

The market, we are repeatedly told, distinguishes between good schools and bad ones. But what does the free market do really, really well?

The free market distinguished between people who have money and people who don't.

This is what school choice is about, particularly the brand being pushed by the current regime.

"You know what I like about the free market," says Pat Gotbucks. "I can buy a Lexus. In fact, not only can I buy a Lexus, but if you can't, that's not my problem. I can buy really nice clothes, and if you can't, that's not my problem. Why can't everything work like that? Including health care and education?"

It's an ideology that believes in a layered society, in a world in which some people are better and some people are lesser. Betters are supposed to be in charge and enjoy wealth and the fruits of society's labor. Lessers are supposed to serve, make do with society's crumbs, and be happy about it. To try to mess with that by making the Betters give the Lessers help, by trying to elevate the Lessers with social safety nets or DEI programs-- that's an offense against God and man.

Why do so many voters ignore major issues in favor of tiny issues that barely affect anyone? Because the rich getting richer is part of the natural order of things, and trans girls playing girls sports is not.

What will the free market do for education? It will restore the natural order. It will mean that Pat Gotbucks can put their own kids in the very best schools and assert that what happens to poor kids or brown kids of Black kids or anybody else's kids is not Pat's problem. If Pat wants a benevolent tax dodge, Pat can contribute to a voucher program, confident that thanks to restrictive and discriminatory private school policies, Pat's dollars will not help educate Those People's Children. 

Pat's kids get to sit around a Harkness table at Philips Exeter, and the children of meat widgets get a micro-school, or some half-bakes AI tutor, and that's as it should be, because after all, it's their destiny to do society's grunt work and support their Betters. 

One of the huge challenges in this country has always been, since the first day a European set foot on the North American continent, that many folks simply don't believe that it is self-evident that all people are created equal. They believe that some people are better than others--more valuable, more important, more deserving of wealth, more entitled to rule. Consequently, they don't particularly believe in democracy, either, (and if they do, it's in some modified form in which only certain Real Americans should have a vote).

The argument for the many layers of status may be "merit" or achievement or race or "culture" or, God help us, genetics. But the bottom line is that some folks really are better than others, and that's an important and real part of life and trying to fix it or compensate for it is just wrong. For these folks, an education system designed to elevate certain people is just wrong, and a system that gives lots of educational opportunities to people whose proper destiny is flipping burgers or tightening bolts is just wasteful. 

For these folks, what the free market in education means is that people get the kind of education that is appropriate for their place in life, and that the system should be a multi-tiered system in which families get the education appropriate to their status in society. And it is not an incidental feature of such a system that the wealthy do not have to help finance education for Other Peoples' Children.  

It's an ideology that exists in opposition to what we say we are about as a nation and in fact announces itself with convoluted attempts to explain away the foundational ideas of this country. Public education is just one piece of the foundation, but it's an important one. 

Trump's Ed Department Stiffs Schools Billions of Dollars

This week, schools across the country were supposed to receive billions of dollars in aid. It was approved and designated by Congress. 

But the day before the money was supposed to go out, the Education Department, in one of its special unsigned emails, told states, "Nah, we don't want to."

The five targeted programs:

Title I-C for migrant education ($375 million)
Title II-A for professional development ($2.2 billion)
Title III-A for English-learner services ($890 million)
Title IV-A for academic enrichment ($1.3 billion)
Title IV-B for before- and after-school programs ($1.4 billion)

Plus a last-minute addition of adult basic and literacy education

The six programs had been targeted for the axe in the department's 2026 budget request. The justifications for the cuts tells us where the regime's thinking lies. For example, migrant education should be cut, they say, because "This program has not been proven effective and encourages ineligible non citizens to access taxpayer dollars stripping resources from American students." Several were to be incorporated into the department's new "Do whatever the hell you want with this small pile of money" grants to the states, but of course that's not what's happening here.

This appears to be another use of "impoundment," an illegal means by which Congress uses its Constitutional power of the purse and the President just refuses to hand the money over. Russell Vought, the guy who helped write Project 2025 and now runs the Office of Management and Budget, has been pushing this technique for the regime. It's a perfect fit for Trump, who famously has a history of simply refusing to pay what he owes to contractors. 

States are working out the costs, which are huge. Kris Nordstrom, senior policy analyst at the Education and Law Project, has worked out the details for North Carolina, and they are huge. $154 million  for the state (enough to hire 1,960 new teachers). Or you can figure it as the hundreds of dollars per students. Nordstrom points out that the districts that will be hardest hit are the poor ones. Expect that to be true across the country.

I don't know that there's anything new to learn from this. The regime has been clear that it does not want to provide supports for public education or (certain shades of) immigrants or any programs run by the Department of Education. The callousness displayed toward the fate of actual human post-fetal children in this country is such an omnipresent feature of this regime that it's hard to take it all in. 

In many states, these cuts come right after the district budgeting cycle, meaning that some schools will be scrambling to figure out what their shortfall will be. Meanwhile, expect lawsuits over this funding cut to join all the other lawsuits over illegal funding cuts (e.g. the billion-dollar cut of school mental health services).

That could help. Of course, first they'd have to win, then someone would have to force the regime to honor the court's judgment. Good luck with all of that. 

ID: Attorney General Clarifies That Everyone Not Welcome There

Well, here's an ugly little coda to the story of Sarah Inama.

Quick recap. Sarah Inama is a 6th grade world civilizations teacher in West Ada School District (the largest district in the state). She had two posters in her classroom. Here they are.





She was told to take them down. She did. Then she went home, thought about it, and put the second one, the one with many skin tones hands, back up. She's been told to get rid of it by year's end. She took her story to a local reporter, and then all hell broke loose.

We know a lot more now thanks to some stellar reporting by Carly Flandro and the folks at Idaho Ed News, who FOIAed 1200 emails surrounding this. You should read the resulting stories (here and here).

The bill (House Bill 41) under which Inama was punished went into effect this week, Idaho Ed News got its hands on a copy of the guidance offered by the state Attorney General's office to the Idaho Ed Department, including some thoughts about whether Inama's "Everyone Is Welcome Here" sign broke the law. AG Raul Labrador offered opinions that were both alarming and rooted in falsehoods.

The signs are illegal because they are "part of an ideological/social movement which started in Twin Cities, Minnesota following the 2016 election of Donald Trump," says the AG, who links to a 2017 news story in which the founders of that movement explain that they were in response to racist graffiti that appeared on a school the day after Trump's first election. They told local tv "their movement was about combating hate and was nonpartisan and secular." He claims that Inama first displayed the sign in 2017 during the height of the movement.

Inama wasn't even a teacher in 2017. Labrador also argues that Democrats sell the signs for fundraising. Dems started selling the signs with no profit margin after Inama's story broke.

The AG guidance also includes directions about avoiding flags of nations "engaged in hostile action" with the US, a vague designation coming with vague explanation.

The Department asks, "Are there legal definitions for political expression, religious expression, or ideological expression? If not, do you have any suggestions for our guidance as to how to determine whether a display is representing such an expression?" The AG responds with some dictionary definitions of some of those terms, but has no actual legal guidance to offer.

Idaho Ed News and reporter Emma Epperly have more details, but the implications are clear enough. In Trump's America, any message of inclusivity is political (as is, I guess, anything at all that disagrees with Dear Leader) and therefor illegal.

Not only that, but the chief law enforcement officer of the state of Idaho has declared that posting "Everyone Is Welcome Here" in a school is illegal, from which we must conclude that in Idaho, official policy says that everyone is NOT welcome in their schools, and children are certainly not be given the idea that everyone is welcome. It's a spectacular level of officially-mandated racism. I don't know how many Idaho residents are embarrassed, but I'm embarrassed for them. 

Lewis Black on AI in Education

Just in case you missed this bit from the Daily Show. As always with Black, language my mother would not appreciate. 

ICYMI: Call Your Senator Edition (6/29)

The Board of Directors here at the Curmudgucation Institute is excited because tonight summer cross country sessions start up, and they would like very much to start running endlessly through rugged terrain again. Cross Country was their first (sort of) organized sport, and it was a hit. 

Meanwhile, however, the Senate GOP rolled their new version of the Giant Bloodsucking Bill Friday after midnight and apparently plan to vote on it tomorrow, because when you're going to pass a bill that screws over everyone (including future national debt-bearing generations) except some rich guys, you don't want to do more in the light of day than you can avoid. 

Contact your senator today. I know it's unlikely to stem this wretched tide (hell, my GOP senator doesn't even live in my state), but if they are going to do this, they need to feel the heat. Put it on your to-do list for today.

Thanks, Supreme Court! It's now my right to prevent my kid from learning about Trump. 

I'm finishing up a piece about the Mahmoud court decision for the Bucks County Beacon, but this piece from Rex Huppke at USA Today nails it pretty well.

School choice, religious school tax carveouts run afoul of Senate’s Byrd rule

Federal vouchers are now out of the Giant Bloodsucking Bill. This piece from Juan Perez, Jr., explains why and how that happened (spoiler alert: not because Congress decided to make better choices).

Updated: Senate Parliamentarian Rejects School Vouchers in Big Beautiful Bill as Violation of Byrd Rule

Jan Resseger can take you through the federal voucher uproar in more detail here.

The Education Reform Zombie Loses (Again)

The school reform wing of the Democratic party has learned absolutely nothing over the years, and Jennifer Berkshire is tracking their latest attempt at a comeback.

Against Optimization

John Warner examines some of the strange assumptions our tech overlords make about an excellent life.

Schools Need to Prepare for Those Masked ICE Agents

The indispensable Mercedes Schneider addresses one of the great challenges of our day-- federal agent attacks on schools.

NC made vouchers open to any family, then many private schools raised tuition

Liz Schlemmer at WUNC reports on the completely unsurprising news that North Carolina schools taking taxpayer-funded vouchers are raising tuition.

Public Comment Opened on Bishop's Education Funding Ambush

Even in Alaska, there are legislators who would like to gut public education. Matthew Beck at Blue Alaskan looks at the latest play to gut funding.

Privatization Parallels for National Parks and Public Schools

Nancy Bailey on how school privatization is much like the attempts to undercut our national park system.

Bugs, Brains, and Book Pirates\

Benjamin Riley with not one, but three stories from the AI skepticism beat. A naturalist group stands up to AI, that anti-AI study you keep reading about is bunk, and a court rules on stealing books for training.

Florida’s “School Choice” Boom? Most Families Still Choose Public Schools

No state has worked harder to kneecap public education than Florida. And yet, as Sue Kingery Woltanski reports, that's still the leading choice of Florida families. 

Voucher Judge Recognizes Reality

Policy expert Stephen Dyer has been all over the recent court victory over Ohio's EdChoice voucher program. He has several excellent posts on the subject, but this one is a fine place to start. Also, this one about voucher lies. 

Why Does Every Commercial for A.I. Think You’re a Moron?

This New York Times piece from Ismail Muhammad is pretty great. "Ads for consumer A.I. are struggling to imagine how the product could improve your day — unless you’re a barely functioning idiot."

ChatGPT Has Already Polluted the Internet So Badly That It's Hobbling Future AI Development

At Futurism, Frank Landymore considers the prospects of an endless AI slop loop

The Black Box Myth: What The Industry Pretends Not To Know About AI

Eryk Salvaggio at Tech Policy Press gets a little wonky about considering what is behind the curtain, and what is just the curtain itself.

This week at Forbes.com I wrapped up the Ohio voucher decision. 

There is a thing that happens with musicians when you've performed the same stuff a million times-- you can just add bits and pieces and stuff while preserving the main thread of the performance. And if you are comfortable with each other, it's extra cool. Louis Prima and Keeley Smith and Sam Butera's band were the epitome of this; in live performance you everything from the record, and so much more. 

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Mattel Promises AI Toys

Today in our latest episode of Things Nobody Asked For, we've got the announcement that Mattel has teamed up with the folks at OpenAI to bring you toys that absolutely nobody has asked for.

It's a "strategic collaboration," say the folks at Mattel corporate. The announcement comes with lots of corporate argle bargle bullshit:

Brad Lightcap, Chief Operating Officer at OpenAI, said: "We're pleased to work with Mattel as it moves to introduce thoughtful AI-powered experiences and products into its iconic brands, while also providing its employees the benefits of ChatGPT. With OpenAI, Mattel has access to an advanced set of AI capabilities alongside new tools to enable productivity, creativity, and company-wide transformation at scale." 

Josh Silverman, Chief Franchise Officer at Mattel, said: “Each of our products and experiences is designed to inspire fans, entertain audiences, and enrich lives through play. AI has the power to expand on that mission and broaden the reach of our brands in new and exciting ways. Our work with OpenAI will enable us to leverage new technologies to solidify our leadership in innovation and reimagine new forms of play.”

You'll note that the poor meat widgets who work for Mattel are going to have to deal with AI and the "new tools to enable productivity, creativity, and company-wide transformation at scale." 

As for play, well, who knows. Mattel's big sellers include Uno. If you don't have card-playing children in your home, you may be unaware that Uno now comes in roughly 647 different versions, including some that have new varieties of cards ("Draw 125, Esther!") and some that involve devices to augment game play, like a card cannon that fires cards at your face in an attempt to get you to drop out of the game before your face is sliced to ribbons. So maybe the AI will design new cards, or we'll have a new tower that requires you to eat a certain number of rocks based on whatever credit score it makes up for you.

Mattel is also the Hot Wheels company, so I suppose we could have chatting toy cars that trash talk each other. Maybe they could more efficiently make the "bbbrrrrrrrrrrrrrooom" motor noises quickly and efficiently, leaving children more free time to devote to other stuff. The AI could also design new cars; I'm holding out for the Datamobile that collects as much family surveillance data as possible and then drives itself to a Mattel station where it can download all that surveillance info to... well, whoever wants to pay for it.

But I think the real possibilities are with Mattel's big seller-- Barbie! Imagine a Barbie who can actually chat with little girls and have real simulated conversations so that the little girls don't have to have actual human friends. 

The possibilities of this going horribly wrong are as limitless as a teen's relationship questions. Which of course are being asked of chatbots, because they trained on the internet and the internet is nothing if not loaded with sexual material. So yes, chatbots are sexting with teens. Just one of the many reasons that some auth0orities suggest that kids under 18 should not be messing with AI "companions" at all. 

Maybe Mattel isn't going to do anything so rash. Maybe Barbie will just have a more 21st century means of spitting out one of several pre-recorded messages ("Math is fun!") Please, God, because an actual chatbot-powered Barbie would be deeply monstrous.

Scared yet? Just remember-- everything a bot "hears" and responds to it can also store, analyze and hand off to whoever is interested. Don't think if it as giving every kid a "smart" toy-- think of it as giving every kid a monitoring device to carry and be surveilled by every minute of the day. And yes, a whole bunch of young humans are already mostly there thanks to smartphones, but this would expand the market. Maybe you are smart enough to avoid giving your six year old a smartphone, but gosh, a doll or a car that can talk with them, like a Teddy Ruxpin with less creep and more vocabulary-- wouldn't that be sweet.

It's not clear to me how much AI capability can be chipped into a child's toy (do we disguise it by giving Barbie an ankle bracelet?) especially if the toymakers don't figure out how to get Barbie or the Datamobile logged into the nearest wi-fi. Best case scenario is that this mostly results in shittier working conditions for people at Mattel and toys that disappoint children by being faux AI. Worst case is a bunch of AI and child horror stories, plus a monstrous expansion of surveillances state (buy Big Brother Barbie today!). 

But I have a hard time imagining any universe in which we look back on this "team" and think, "Gosh, I'm really glad that happened."

PA: Cyber Charters as District Killers

The Wyoming Area School District is wedged in between Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. It's not a particularly affluent district-- 80% white and 100% free and reduced lunch. And they are in financial trouble. The district has raised taxes three years in a row, and they will run a deficit this year., per reports from the Citizens' Voice and the Times Leader.

The source of their woes? Well, around almost $3 million in cyber charter costs sure aren't helping.

The proposed solution? At their last meeting, the board's vice-president Peter Butera suggested it's time to look at a merger with a neighboring district.

Decreasing property values spurred by a 2011 flood and rising health care costs are part of the issue, but the district's business manager blamed that last tax hike on cyber charter tuition costs. They now represent about 6% of the district's budget. 

That last tax hike was hugely unpopular, with 100 taxpayers showing up to oppose a proposal that barely survived by a 5-4 vote. 

The district is among the vast number of Pennsylvania districts that has come out in favor of funding reform in the state. In Pennsylvania we still fund cyber charters by means laid out for bricks and mortar charters over twenty years ago. It's nonsensical, inconsistent, and highly profitable, which is probably why Pennsylvania is the cyber capital of the country.

Now, the legislature has dealt with many almost-annual attempts to fix the system so that taxpayers won't get hosed. Right now a bill has passed the House and is waiting for Senate action., As I asked in a Forbes piece, "Will Pennsylvania Finally Reform Its Cyber Charter School System?"

The answer is probably, "No, they won't." 

Here's the thing. Watch some hearings oi talk to legislators-- you'll see impassioned arguments from those who favor reform, and you'll see cyber supporters repeat the same mantra. One part of the mantra is along the lines of "Neener neener, public schools do the same thing" (they don't). The other part is that any kinds of reform will kill the cybers-- just kill them dead, despite the fact that somehow every other state with cybers has a stricter system and yet cybers survive. And what you won't see at the hearing is an actual representative of a cyber charter, because they have legislators all lined up. 

So maybe the Wyoming district gets absorbed by another district because taxpayers aren't willing to shoulder the extra expense of supporting a cyber-charter leach attached to the district. And maybe the taxpayers of the district will be really upset if they lose their independent district, and they'll bitch and moan and complain, like many taxpayers across the state (including plenty in my own county).

But here's the dynamic in PA. The taxpayers will bitch and moan about the effects of letting cyber charters bleed the local district dry. But what the voters in these very Republican districts won't do is make their elected representatives suffer any consequences for their cyber charter support. Wyoming is red territory (65% for Trump in 2024). 

District leaders, both administrators and boards across the state, are trying to ramp up pressure for a rational system for cyber funding, but as always, it is limited in effectiveness. Maybe it's the severe gerrymandering in the state, or maybe it's that GOP voters are more worried about a trans kid playing sports in their district than they are about keeping the district open.

We'll see if Wyoming is a fluke or a canary in the educational coal mine. But I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for Harrisburg to come to their rescue.