Banning T-Birds: Your Tax Dollars At Work

If you've been worried that the federal Department of Education Office of Civil Rights has been napping-- fear not. Yesterday they announced that after an investigation, they have determined that Connetquot Central School District in Long Island, NY, has been Very Naughty.

Specifically, they changed their mascot's name from "Thunderbirds" to "T-birds." This was the end result of a lawsuit against the state over the state's rule that schools had to get rid of their Native American mascots. CCSD was one of the districts that sued the state, and the mascot change was part of the eventual settlement of that suit. It was a contentious decision, made just last fall, which Native Americans argued didn't change nearly enough to comply with the state order to drop school mascots based on Native American images, possibly because, as near as I can tell, the change seemed to involve going from a bird to, apparently, a bird with a slightly different name (a name that the school had often used in places where the full name wouldn't fit). It raised enough noise to attract coverage by Sports Illustrated. (This, mind you, is a district that has banned Pride flags.) 

But the feds have declared that this mascot change shall not stand. 

See, New York was already in trouble because the state education department had banned Native American mascots, which touched off a kerfluffle in Massapequa over the school's traditional "Chief" mascot. That earned them a visit from Education Secretary Linda McMahon, some noises of support from Trump, and a so-speedy-one-might-suspect-no-investigating-was-done investigation that determined that the state was violating the Trumpian interpretation of Title VI. Why could some schools call themselves, say, "Dutchmen," but not some kind of Native American (hint: some communities actually include people of Dutch descent). It's a complicated issue, but I suspect that for the Trump regime, it's no more complicated than "White people should get to use Native American imagery as mascots if they want to."

At any rate, CCSD was under "investigation" by the department months before they made a final decision. Almost as if the department was using the threat of an investigation to intimidate the district into a particular decision, a sort of agency level use of Dear Leader's fondness for lawfare and threats of lawsuits to bend opponents to his will.

But the department has now reached their conclusion. The announcement came from Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey:

Today, we found Connetquot Central School District in violation of Title VI for erasing its Native American heritage to comply with a discriminatory New York state regulation. We will not allow ideologues to decide that some mascots based on national origin are acceptable while others are banned. Equal treatment under the law is non-negotiable. We expect the District to do the right thing and comply with our resolution agreement to voluntarily resolve its civil rights violation and restore the Thunderbirds’ rightful name. The Trump Administration will not relent in ensuring that every community is treated equally under the law.

Richey's background as announced by the department on her confirmation mentions that she "has consulted for various organizations, including Parents Defending Education, and previously served at the U.S. Department of Education from 2004-2009 under the George W. Bush Administration and more recently under the Trump Administration from 2017-2021." It also calls her a "certified teacher and attorney," though her LinkedIn account shows no signs of an actual teaching job. She has lawyered for the Oklahoma department of education, worked as managing director for federal advocacy and public policy for the National School Boards Association, deputy secretaried for Virginia's department of ed, and served as senior chancellor for Florida's department of education. 

OCR has "offered" the district the chance to sign off on a resolution agreement that would require them to "reverse its discriminatory erasure of Native American imagery by readopting the name 'Thunderbirds' for its sports teams," logos, mascots, etc.

This call to reverse this dreadful "erasure" comes the same week that the Trump administration removed the informational signs about slaves at the President's House in Philadelphia, attempting to erase the memory of Washington's slaves. It is also the week that, of course, the Department of Homeland Security continued its efforts to erase immigrants. So I'm not sure the high dudgeon over erased Native American sports mascots rings very authentically. 

The district has told news media that it is looking at its options. And while some community members think the old Thunderbirds mascot is just fine, Carolyn Gusoff of CBS in New York though to ask an actual Native American.

Chief Harry Wallace of Long Island's Unkechaug Nation disagrees. "It's a total fallacy to say that it honors the Native American people," he said.

He said the imagery is a desecration of their symbols and harms students.

"As they grow up from children into adults, they carry with them that stereotypical image of hurt and harm and shame," he said.

Despite the mention of funding loss in some coverage, the Ed Department release mentions no actual financial threat. Perhaps that is because district leaders and the feds are on the same side, and this is mostly a swipe at the state government. It's a whole situation with no winners. 

Authors Sue NVIDIA Over AI Theft

AI companies are knowingly using pirated copies of published works to train their bots, according to a class action lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Northern California. Five authors have filed a copyright lawsuit against NVIDIA, a major tech company in Santa Clara, California. 

You may remember NVIDIA as the folks who made your computer video gaming run smoothly, but they are in the AI biz these days, including Large Language Models, more commonly known as chatbots. They're doing okay. In 2023, Larry Ellison and Elon Musk were among a group of tech overlords who met NVIDIA's chief for what Ellison described as "an hour of sushi and begging" to get a larger allocation of the company's H100 GPU. In March of 2024, they became the third company in U.S. history to reach market capitalization of $2 trillion-with-a-T.

Lined up against them are Abdi Nazemian (Like a Love Story), Brian Keene (Ghost Walk), Stewart O'Nan (Last Night at the Lobster), Andres Dubus III (The Garden of Last Days), and Susan Orlean (The Orchid Thief). I have no read any of their stuff, but it is apparent many people have, though I don't think they are collectively worth $2 trillion.

I have learned a lot reading this lawsuit. For one thing, there are things called "shadow libraries" aka "pirate libraries." (I didn't know about them, but Wikipedia does.) It should come as no surprise that just as the digital world makes pirated copies of music and movies available, it also provides free access to print media. Books, ebooks, and scholarly media (those journal articles that are behind a really expensive paywall). 

In particular, the lawsuit points to Anna's Archive, which is apparently the big name in pirated text these days. (I'm not going to link to it-- if you want to mess with that kind of theft, you'll have to find it on your own.) Pirate libraries are composed by violating the copyright of the various collected works. 

So here's the story the lawsuit tells. In August 2023, NVIDIA approached legitimate publishers in an attempt to license mountains of text in order to train their chatbot.

But on information and belief, NVIDIA could not secure this fast access to the huge quantity of books it needed through publishers. As one book publisher told NVIDIA, it was “ not in a position to engage directly just yet but will be in touch.” In 2023, NVIDIA had “chatted with multiple publishers . . . but none [] wanted to enter into data licensing deals.”

So they approached Anna's Archive hoping to acquire millions of pirated copies of books for "pre-training data for our LLMs." Anna's Archive offers high-speed access for a fee, and NVIDIA executives asked about that kind of access. What would it look like.

Anna's Archive replied, in effect, "You guys know that our entire library consists of pirated copies, right? Maybe you should figure out if you're okay with that." NVIDIA executives would (real quote coming) need to let Anna's Archive know "when you have decided internally that this is something that you can pursue. We have wasted too much time on people who could not get internal buy-in."

It took NVIDIA just a couple of days to decide that they were perfectly okay making a deal to use this vast library or pirated works-- all of Anna's Archive, plus works from Internet Archive (previously found to be copyright infringement). NVIDIA was promised 500 terrabytes of data. They also hit up other shadow libraries.

A few months later, they unveiled Nemotron-4 15B. As was usual, the training data used to raise up this AI beast was kept a super secret, but the plaintiffs believe that it could not have been done without using that vast library of pirated works (including their own). 

And since NVIDIA offered the NeMo Megatron framework for customers to build and train their own AI. "As part of this process, NVIDIA assisted and encouraged its customers" to go ahead and pirate those works some more by downloading and using that same dataset.

So the allegation is that NVIDIA used pirated works, knew it was using pirated works, and then offered to share those pirated works. With a few smoking emails to back it up.

NVIDIA says, who, us? We didn't violate copyright laws. Everything we did was legal, and also, fair use.

It's the fair use defense we'll want to watch. An earlier lawsuit by authors suing Anthropic over the training data used for its Claude AI was decided last summer, with the judge declaring that using the stolen works to train the AI was "exceedingly transformative" and therefor okey dokey fair use. Also last summer, a group of authors (including Sarah Silverman and Ta-Nehisi Coates) lost their similar lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg's Meta. The judge in that case said it “is generally illegal to copy protected works without permission,” but in this case, the plaintiffs failed to present a compelling argument that Meta’s use of books to train their chatbot Llama caused “market harm.”

I don't suppose it will be easy to ever show market harm. ChatGPT slurps up my horror novel and then spits out fifty bad horror novels-- is that competition that does me market harm? 

So it's not looking good for this newest lawsuit. Is it theft if someone takes my work without paying for it and uses it to power their trillion dollar company's newest product? It sure seems like it, but it seems that the law is having trouble keeping up with the new kinds of thievery that technology makes possible. Mind you, if I stole a copy of Microsoft office and didn't use it compete with Microsoft-- just use it to run my business-- I'm pretty sure my claim of fair use would not get past the courts.

 And the AI industry--which depends on this kind of theft as to keep costs down in their business model-- certainly can't be counted on to do the right thing. So we're stuck in this shitty place where a monster industry bases its product on the theft-without-pay of other peoples' work, and nobody can do anything about it.

What does any of this have to do with education?

Maybe nothing directly, but I want you to think about all of this the next time somebody wants to talk to you about "ethical" use of AI in schools. Then ask them how one ethically uses a fundamentally unethical product.

TX: State Mandated Canon

Back in 2023, a bill passed by the Texas legislature to spice up their education code required the State Board of Education to specify a list of required vocabulary and at least one literary work to be taught in each grade level. But the Texas Education Agency (the Texas version of a state department of education) has decided to go the extra mile. 

Rather than just one required work per level, TEA has decided that they will go ahead and lay down the canon for Texas K-12 students.

It's a hell of a bold move. English teachers regularly wrestle with the questions of 1) what is actually in the canon, 2) what ought to be in the canon, and 3) what part of the canon would best be used in my classroom?

TEA is just going to skip all of those. The proposal is here. On the high school level, there are five major works per grade, plus an assortment of supporting texts grouped by units. These works (around 20 per grade) are all required. 

Some of the supporting works are a pretty heavy lift all on their own ("Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," Federalist Paper #78, "The Open Boat"). The Bible is included at least in every grade level. The rightward tilt is not hard to spot (do sophomores really need to read Margaret Thatcher's eulogy for Ronald Reagan?) and even when Black authors are included, it's in forms that are comfy for conservatives. The one major Black work is Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery and Martin Luther King, Jr, is, of course, represented by "I Have a Dream" and not "Letter from Birmingham Jail." (And King appears only in the 8th grade list). Frederick Douglass's comments on the Fourth of July is about as feisty as Black folks are allowed to get on this list.

The major works are--well, see if you can spot a pattern here--

English I

Animal Farm - George Orwell

Antigone - Sophocles

Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

The Odyssey - Homer/Fagles

Night - Elie Weisel

English II

Beowulf - translation by Burton Raffel

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

A Separate Peace - John Knowles

Julius Caesar - Shakespeare

English III

The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

The Crucible - Arthur Miller

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne

English IV

Hamlet - Shakespeare

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

The Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri

Up From Slavery - Booker T. Washington

Walden - Henry David Thoreau

It's really white and really male, with only Coelho, a Brazilian, as any brown voice at all. Some of the supporting works are odd choices-- do we really need to get through Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter and the Minister's Black Veil? Why are all the supports for The Crucible focused on democratic institutions? Thomas Sowell's "Flattering Unction," a screed about elites, is supposed to support Fahrenheit 451. Teachers with advanced classes may find the time to squeeze in more works to balance the list, but most teachers will be hard pressed to "cover" all of this in the course of 180 days. And yet, at the same time, the list misses so much else.

Arguing what does or doesn't belong on the list is both beside the point and also directly on it, because here's two things we know about the canon.

One is that the discussion and debate about what should or should not be in the canon is never, ever over or settled. A variety of viewpoints fight for balance even as society's beliefs and priorities shift under the canon's feet. Tension between points of view, between generations, between teaching and reading goals-- all those tensions are ever-present and shifting. Trying to set a canon in cement, forcibly resolving all tensions and ending all discussion, as TEA tries to do here, is a fool's errand.

The other is that the canon is large. One of the few things that AP ever got right was its essays that told students "Here is a list of works. Pick one or a work of equivalent weight, and write a response to the following prompt." As a teacher, you pick and choose the works that best fit your students, your own strengths, and which create a balanced and varied year's worth of work. 

Should teachers just pick whatever-the-hell list of works they feel like? Absolutely not. But neither should they be locked into a list set by state officials (particularly when those officials seem at least if not more concerned about political concerns rather than literary or pedagogical ones). Set up some guardrails, create a broad a varied list, and give schools and local English departments the ability to choose from a set list. Let professional educators use some of the judgment that you hire them to use.

In other words, this is a bad idea, and I would still think it was a bad idea even if I could personally pick the works for the list.

It matters that this is happening in Texas, one of the giant textbook customers whose choices influence publishers. Because, of course, the foundation of the teaching "canon" in most schools is the basal text, and if TEA's required reading list was my basal text, I'd be thinking, "Well, this is a pretty lousy selection." 

But it hasn't happened in Texas yet. The lists are just proposed at this point, and if I were a Texan, I'd be contacting the state board and telling them that this mandatory incomplete and tilted reading list is a bad idea, that even the idea of having such a list is a bad idea. 

The 9-12 lists are below. You can see the lists for all other grade levels here.

The Fight For Cursive (Back In My Day)

New Jersey just joined the company of states requiring cursive to be taught in school. It's a reminder of one of the most powerful forces in education.

The New Jersey act was accompanied by the usual fraught language. Said Governor Murphy:

The return to including cursive instruction is especially meaningful as New Jersey celebrates the upcoming 250th anniversary of our country's founding – giving our students the skills they need to read our nation's founding documents and complete tasks like opening a bank account or signing a check, in addition to offering cognitive benefits.

 Or this from the bill's co-sponsor:

Not only does handwriting instruction encourage better retention and comprehension of information, but it also allows our students to build self-confidence and maintain a vital connection to written communication in the increasingly digital age.

Or State Senator Shirkey Turner, who just has feelings about cursive:

Cursive is a timeless and necessary skill that we must incorporate into our curriculum again

The arguments used in New Jersey are a little thin. Read old documents? As someone who has done historical research for decades, I can tell you that 250-year old cursive doesn't yield readily to modern cursive knowledge. Sign checks? Go find a Millennial and ask them when they last wrote a paper check. Cognitive benefits? Name two-- specifically two that aren't associated with any kind of writing on paper.

You can find websites arguing for a return to cursive. Popular arguments include developing fine motor skills, working with legal documents, helps students with dyslexia, and connects to the past.

This is really weak sauce as educational arguments go, and yet New Jersey brings us up to 25 states that now mandate cursive instruction.

Why? Because one of the most powerful forces in education debates starts with "Well, back in my day..." For many civilians, including legislators, Proper Education is defined roughly as How School Worked When I Was There. This calcified nostalgia sometimes turns up in the assertion that "Schools haven't changed in X number of years" which generally means "I have had no direct contact with a school since I graduated, and I imagine everything is exactly the same." But sometimes this bubbles up in the assertion "Schools need to get back to inflicting on students the same stuff they inflicted on me."

Yes, like other folks of a Certain Age, I remember my cursive instruction in fourth and fifth grade. Miss Eakin handing out the practice books and those pens with the long thin top ends, like a plastic design meant to invoke the profile of a quill pen, the top end often nibbled off by nervous students. "Round, round, ready, write," she would direct and we'd do a couple of circles above the page before dropping down on "write" and making the circles-- "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight." And on through another batch of shapes. 

I was not particularly great at it. When I took shop class in eighth grade, we were taught the blocky all-caps printing of drafting, and I never went back. Maybe learning that cursive created some sorts of wiring paths in my brain that have helped me since, but I have my doubts, and I am perfectly happy for states that do not mandate cursive instruction for my sons or grandchildren.

I may be an old fart, but I have often rejected this kind of Back In My Day Bait. I taught English for thirty-nine years, and you will not get to argue in favor of sentence diagramming. Nor do I think schools suffer from a lack of Latin instruction. 

Does it hurt someone to learn cursive and Latin and sentence diagramming? Probably not. Don't these subjects have some utility and usefulness? Sure, some, but here's the thing-- every time you put one thing in a classroom, you keep something else out. If you tell me I musty teach Unit X, then be prepared to tell me what unity I should take out, and explain why Unit X has more utility and value than the unit you propose to remove. 

Students in New Jersey are now going to get less of something so that they can spend more time round round ready writing their way to signing checks and reading historical documents. Maybe it is easier to teach children cursive than to teach adults that the world continues to change and some of the stuff that was part of school Back In The Day doesn't need to be there any more. 

Setting an ExAImple

Micah Blachman is a twelve-year-old seventh grade tech blogger, and in a couple of posts he offered pocket-sized reviews of some of the tech products he encounters in school. The posts are worth a read, but I want to focus on one particular paragraph:

AI. This one is a bit of the odd one out. As students, we are forbidden from using AI for school-related purposes. However, I see my teachers using it to create assignments, mistake-filled example essays, lesson plans, and class discussion questions. some more than others. It makes me wonder: why am I spending so much time doing this assignment that was obviously created by ChatGPT or Claude (there’s literally a tab with a ChatGPT icon in the teacher’s browser!)? I wouldn’t say that AI is necessarily bad at creating assignments. But there’s sometimes factually incorrect things, or questions that don’t make sense, or analysis that feels far-fetched in a class discussion. If the students can’t use AI, why is there a double standard for the teachers?

If you are someone who spends time around young humans-- parent, teacher, camp counselor, etc-- I think it's good practice to ask yourself regularly, "What do I want them to see me doing?"  Because what they see you doing generally has at least as much influence as what you say, and often more. 

If you are in a classroom saying, "Don't use AI to do your work" to your students while simultaneously using AI to do your work, you are, to use an earlier age's terminology, setting a bad example. Or, if you prefer something more contemporary, you are full of it. I cannot think of any argument you can use to forbid student use that does not also apply to teacher use, or conversely, any argument in favor of teacher use that students could not also use. I suppose you could go with, "It's important for students to show their own individual work that comes from their own brain, but not the classroom teacher," but be aware that's also a good argument for replacing you with ChatGPT and a box of old lesson plans.

But beyond the hypocrisy problem, there's another bad message embedded in this kind of behavior. It says, "Using chatbots to do your work is what adults do in the real world, but you aren't an adult in the real world." In other words, students, what you do for class has nothing to do with the real world. It's just school stuff. In which case, why shouldn't they cheat by whatever means is handy?

If your argument against student use of AI is that it is cheating, then don't cheat. If your argument is that it's a grownup tool that requires certain knowledge and care, then teach them the necessary knowledge and care. I'd rather nobody in your classroom touched it ever, but I recognize that some folks are wrong disagree with me on this. 

But if you are in a classroom like Blachman's, do not kid yourself that the students haven't noticed there's an ethical problem here. Also, do not kid yourself that the students haven't noticed that your AI materials are not particularly great. 

Lord knows, I'm aware that teaching comes with a massive cognitive load and a tremendous under-supply of time. But the choices you make as a teacher are part of your influence. Your students are carrying a cognitive load and the challenge of finite time, too, and you are modeling how to deal with those burdens. The issue is not new; out there somewhere are the teachers who got their literature lesson plans from Cliff Notes or Dr. Google and whose students figured out that the whole class was just a game where you look for the easy button. If your model is "find a way to offload your mental load to a bot," do not imagine for a moment that your students do not see you

MS: The Honest Case for School Choice

Russ Latino spent a decade practicing business and constitutional law before he decided to launch the Magnolia Tribune Institute, an online news-ish purveyor of conservative stuff, funded by an odd assortment of foundations and trusts. That was a few years ago, and Latino has been cranking out aggressively cranky content ever since.

"The Dumb Leftist Argument Against School Choice That Won't Go Away" is a typical Latino screed, with bitching about "leftists" and a badly-reasoned argument. 

But in his latest, "The House passed school choice, but what is it and why do conservatives want it?" Latino actually offers a direct statement of why, in fact, school choice is a favorite among certain conservatives. Here's the key quote:

Fundamentally, it is rooted in a very old conservative belief that parents, not the government, are responsible for raising and educating their children. They do not belong to the state. Parents know their children and have the most vested interest in their child’s success.

Emphasis mine. That's it-- the heart of the argument, going all the way back to Milton Friedman, is that raising and educating children should be the responsibility of the parents-- and only the parents. Not shared by the community, not supported by the government or taxpayers, but just the parents, who should depend on their own resources-- and only their own resources-- to provide for that education. 

Everything after that is an excuse, a way to sell this severe slashing of what most people have grown up considering a basic service. 

How do I know guys like Latino aren't serious about parents being able to choose? Because they envision a system in which control belongs to the school, not the parent. Latino runs the usual complaints that public schools are terrible and overrun by crazy leftists. What he doesn't talk about is safeguards for people who choose to try to leave that system.

In his essay about the "dumb leftist argument," he is pinpointing the argument about public dollars going to private schools. Hey, he points out, SNAP dollars go to private businesses. 

That's true. But what is also true is that no grocery store can say, "Sorry, you can't buy your beans here, because you go the wrong church." The grocery store can't refuse to take your SNAP card because you are LGBTQ. The checker at the store can't refuse to take your SNAP card "just because he doesn't feel like it." The store doesn't say, "Since you're getting SNAP benefits now, we're going to raise the price on everything."

Private schools can-- and do--do all of that. The fact that you have a voucher in your hand doesn't mean jack. You are on your own. 

School vouchers are the same principle that Trump proposes for health care. The government doesn't want to subsidize your insurance any more, so why not let them just give you a few hundred bucks and you can go shopping for your own health care. 

We're throwing you off the grand boat that is our community. Here's a raft and a small stick. Enjoy your freedom.

Guys like Latino are so very angry about how all those lefty organizations are denying parents educational options and yet have no anger left for private schools that tell parents, "Sorry about your voucher, but we don't want your kid here. You can't have your choice." 

Mississippi legislators have some choices to make; we'll see just whose interests they serve. 

NH: Let's Segregate Schools

There's a mini-flap going on in New Hampshire now. Somebody leaked a Signal chat involving some GOP lawmakers and the Granite Post has published it. It includes some eyebrow raising posts (you can find the leaked chat here). 

Kristin Noble indicates that "extra requirements" aren't helping because "stopping woke mind virus stuff is good." Then Katy Peternel asks if folks support the hunting bill, and Melissa Litchfield says she's not supportive. "No, not the way schools are run right now. I do not want to risk kids being taught that guns are bad." That exchange (which hasn't been widely reported) sets up the exchange that has been reported.

Noble: when we have segregated schools we can add all the fun stuff lol (Peternel replied with a laugh emoji) 

Noble: imagine the scores though if we had schools for them and some for us

Noble is the chair of the House education committee. Peternel is the vice chair. Noble is on her second term, and has backed a variety of legislation, including 

HB1299- Says that discrimination is bad, but requiring trans students to be identified by their birth gender is not discrimination

HB360- Prohibits public schools from performing surgery or prescribing pharmaceutical drugs. Because that's a thing that totally happens.

HB721- Establishes gold and silver as legal tender.

HB1050- Learning pods can't be subject to zoning laws

HB1191- Parents must be notified of non-academic surveys in school

HB1268- Among other things, erases all testing requirements for homeschoolers

HB1792- Prohibiting the teaching of any "critical race theory and LGBTQ+ ideologies" as well as giving parents the right to sue over such teaching. Entitled the "Countering Hate And Revolutionary Leftist Indoctrination in Education Act" or the "CHARLIE Act".

Noble gave up a career in security software to become a stay at home mom, and rounded up some parents to complain about school closures. Noble's campaign got its largest contribution from Liberty Prosperity for NHP and also got a nice chunk from New Hampshire Liberty Alliance, a libertarian coalition that holds a Liberty Dinner every year where they name a Legislator of the Year; in 2025, Noble won that award. Speakers at the dinner have included 2008 Libertarian Party presidential candidate Mary Ruwart,[8] New Hampshire Union Leader publisher Joe McQuaid,[9] New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner,[10] and former American Federation for Children senior fellow Corey DeAngelis.

When the leak broke and folks started accusing Noble of calling for racially segregated schools, you might think she would try to walk back or explain what she really meant, and she sort of did that-- focusing on defiance and offensiveness. Said the House GOP Office:

“It’s funny to watch the Democrats feign outrage when I thought they’d be supportive of managing their own schools, with libraries full of porn, biological males in girls sports and bathrooms, and as much DEI curriculum as their hearts desire,” the release read. “Schools like that will have terrible test scores because they focus on social justice rather than academics.”

“Republicans have been self-segregating out of the leftist indoctrination centers for decades,” the release continued. “If democrats had their own schools, and we had our own, families wouldn’t need to avail themselves of the wildly successful education freedom account program. It’s a win / win proposition.”

See, she just wants schools segregated by politics, because Democrats are out there stuffing the shelves of school libraries with porn and DEI while pretending to be offended by the idea of segregation when, I guess, everyone knows it's no big deal?  

I am mystified by the constant need to escalate. How hard would it have been for Noble to say, "Yeah, that was a bad choice of words. Racial segregation was bad and I certainly don't support that." Easy peasy. 

Though I will grant you this-- Noble's comments are a window on what seems to be the overarching goal of having two separate school systems. One for us, which is well funded, and one for them, which we'd rather not pay taxes to support. It would be a segregated system like the racially segregated schools of yesteryear, but instead of excluding just the children of the wrong race, let's exclude everyone who disagrees with us.

Meanwhile, New Hampshire continues to shovel huge piles of taxpayer money into a voucher program that the legislature had to slip through in the dead of night, while continuing to refuse to honor the court order to fix the funding system for the public schools. 

My grandmother was a GOP New Hampshire legislator for years. She would have some choice words for this stuff.