The AI Task Force and Moms For Liberty: It's Complicated

Moms for Liberty has staked out some positions on AI in education, and it may be a preview of the policy challenge facing conservatives in the area. 

Last April, Dear Leader issued an AI in Education edict in which somebody wrote

By fostering AI competency, we will equip our students with the foundational knowledge and skills necessary to adapt to and thrive in an increasingly digital society. Early learning and exposure to AI concepts not only demystifies this powerful technology but also sparks curiosity and creativity, preparing students to become active and responsible participants in the workforce of the future and nurturing the next generation of American AI innovators to propel our Nation to new heights of scientific and economic achievement.

The edict established the Artificial Intelligence Education Task Force, five words that, when crammed together by this administration, create some sort of field that overloads and destroys any irony in the vicinity.  The federal AI Initiative offers a page of "resources" that looks much like a "list of folks hoping to make money from AI." That goes with the part calling for public-private partnerships

A bunch of organizations and businesses and also more businesses have signed the presidential Pledge To America's Youth in which [Your Name Here] pledges to provide resources that foster early interest in AI technology, promote AI proficiency, and enable comprehensive AI training for parents and educators" all of which sounds much nicer than "We promise to hook customers as soon as they are born and do whatever we can to saturate the market. Ka-ching."

Specifically, over the next 4 years, we pledge to make available resources for youth, parents and teachers through funding and grants, educational materials and curricula, technology and tools, teacher professional development programs, workforce development resources, and/or technical expertise and mentorship.

Well, of course. Hey, did you hear the unsurprising discovery via internal documents that Google is using its education products to turn schools into a "pipeline of future users"? Is it any wonder that Dear Leader, our Grifter In Chief, wants to keep an eye on this new, promising money tree.

The initiative and task force are headed up by Michael Kratsios, whose previous gigs include Chief of Staff to Peter Thiel. He served in the first Trump administration in the Department of Defense, spent his interregnum as managing director of Scale AI and is now the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. In his current gig, he's calling to "demystify these amazing technologies" and figure out what AI is and is not good for, and then American families, students and educators "can fully take advantage of AI applications with confidence and responsibility." Perhaps he's unfamiliar with the research that shows that the more people know about AI, the less inclined they are to use it. 

The task force has been meeting with folks to "discuss AI's impact in the classroom," which of course means everyone except people who actually work in classrooms. At their December confab, they heard from Chris Woolard of the Ohio Department of [Privatizing] Education, Adeel Khan of Magic School, and Tina Descovich, co-founder and current Big Cheese of Moms for Liberty. 

M4L has some thoughts about AI in education. And, well, they aren't entirely terrible. 

Along with tech companies acting responsibly, policymakers must do everything possible to make sure parents have full transparency into how AI systems operate, what data they collect, and how decisions or recommendations are made

By acting below, together we can ensure parents, not algorithms or activists, shape how AI is used in the education of our children.

Of course, they leave teachers out of the equation, perhaps because they can't quite figure out how to work "we think teachers are sometimes okay, but we hate their evil unions" into this equation. But their slogan for AI-- "Demand transparency, accountability, and boundaries" -- is not bad. And they do better by teachers elsewhere-- we'll get to that.

They've got a pledge to sign, and it hits all the usual M4L notes--

It's the usual "parents' fundamental right etc" song and dance, but that song and dance in the face of a plagiarism-driven data-mining monster makes some sense. It also suggests that M4L and its ilk are not quite ready to jump on the White House's grifty AI bandwagon. The M4L pledge certainly strikes a different tone than the White House's AI Pledge to America's Youth. 

M4L also has a model school board policy and a model bill for legislatures. The school board policy lists four purposes:

1. Protect parental rights and student privacy;
2. Preserve the central role of teachers in instruction;
3. Maintain academic integrity; and
4. Ensure transparency and accountability in the use of emerging technologies.

The policy calls for no AI tools used without prior parental consent. The school should annually provide written notice of all AI tools approved for use.

There's a whole section on "instructional safeguards" that states as its first point

Artificial intelligence shall not replace a certified teacher in providing core academic instruction or assigning final grades.

Which doesn't go quite far enough (AI should assign no grades at all), but still is a more blunt defense of actual human teaching than anything the administration has offered. 

M4L also seems to understand the AI threat to all manner of data that can be collected from young humans far better than plenty of other folks (for God's sake, stop inviting ChatGPT to scan all your social media content so it can make you a cute cartoon of yourself). 

The M4L model legislation is much of the same stuff with more expansive lawmakery language, but again, they seem to understand the issues here:

While artificial intelligence may offer instructional benefits, its use also presents risks, including data privacy violations, diminished academic integrity, ideological bias, and inappropriate replacement of human educators.

Well, yeah. 

It's an unusual day when we don't find M4L falling right in behind Dear Leader and nodding along with whatever his crew has to say, and I would love to think that this shows a bit of fissure between pro-any corporate entity that might enrich me MAGA and right-wing conspiracy crew MAGA. It almost smells a bit like that time a whole lot of Very Conservative Folks went rogue over Common Core.

But if the Moms want to join in the resistance to throwing AI into classrooms Right Away because if we don't OMG students won't be ready for the jobs of tomorrow because AI is inevitable and awesome and so much better than all those troublesome human meat widgets-- anyway, if the Moms want to stand up to all of that, I'm happy to see it. I am definitely staying tuned. Can AI make popcorn?

ICYMI: Opening Weekend Edition (2/15)

My latest show opened this weekend, and the cast is enjoying the result of their hard work. We are fortunate to have a great little theater in this community, and I am fortunate to have the opportunity to work in it from time to time. Making stuff is good for the soul.

Here's the reading for the week.

Misunderstanding and Misapplying "No Zero" Policies (and Why They Are Good)

Paul Thomas looks at the much-debated No Zero grading policy, and explains why he believes it's good practice.

Trying out the clt

Testing guru Akil Bello takes the Classical Learning Test, the alleged "classical" alternative to those all-woked-up SAT and ACT joints, out for a test drive. If you've been wondering what's actually under the hood with this test, here's your info. Fascinating and informative.

Are Charter Schools Innovative?

It's a fairly important question, but as Shawgi Tell points out, we haven't really been dealing with it honestly.

White House says it won’t withhold funding from NH schools with DEI programs

The regime takes another loss on its anti-diversity, equity and inclusion campaign. Annmarie Timmins reports for New Hampshire Public Radio.

A Subsidy For the Few: Vouchers Leaving Public Schools, Students Behind

Tim Walker (who, I think, has been writing for NEA Today for roughly a million years) gets into how taxpayer-funded vouchers really work and who benefits from them. 

"The Bill Dies Today"

True to its promise, the Mississippi Senate just killed the House school choice bill really most sincerely dead. Devna Bose reports for Mississippi Today.

Arizona librarians could become criminals for recommending these books

Arizona takes some more steps to criminalize Naughty Books and threatens librarians with jail time.

Tennessee House panel kills private-school voucher transparency bill

Yet another state's legislators declare that taxpayer-funded vouchers should not be subject to any sort of transparency. Gee, I wonder why. Sam Stockard at Tennessee Lookout has the story.

Governor Polis Has Opted Colorado Into the Federal School Voucher Scheme

The big question is whether Polis is a liar or truly doesn't understand the policy. So sorry, Colorado. Advocates for Public Education Policy explains the situation.

State Data: Ohio spent more on school privatization last year than public schools in many communities

Stephen Dyer continues to detail the many ways that Ohio's taxpayer-funded choice programs stick it to students still in public schools.

A Structural Problem, A Temporary Fix

Sue Kingery Woltanski actually goes to legislative meetings and pays attention and stuff, and she understands the many brands of Floridian shenanigans. The rest of us are fortunate that she's willing to explain it all.

All the Ways the Trump Admin. Keeps Redefining Civil Rights by Banning Equity and Inclusion in Education

Jan Resseger looks at several of the reports about the Trump regimes work in redefining civil rights and who gets to have them.

Kristof Is Wrong about Reading (Again), and He Knows It: A Reader

Paul Thomas has collected many of his resources about the science of reading in this post that argues that Nicholas Kristoff is wrong about something else, again.

Does Love Really Make the World (or Classroom) Go ‘Round?

Nancy Flanagan with some reflections on the importance of some non-academic factors in school.

Students Unite!

Jennifer Berkshire highlights some of the students who are standing up to ICE.

Homophobic President Attacks Transgender Students

Thomas Ultican looks at Trump policies and trans students.

A pair of giants here.

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Why Is Inclusion Political

One more anti-banner ideological censorship law is under legal attack, this time in Idaho. And there is something we can learn about the defense.

This is fallout from the case of Sarah Inama, the Idaho teacher who got in trouble for a classroom poster that showed "Everyone is Welcome Here" with cartoon hands of different skin tones. Her administrators were sure this would violate the state's anti-ideology poster ban. Here it is--

If you are an ordinary human, you may wonder how the heck this poster is ideological or political. Lucky for you, you ordinary human, the attorney general of Idaho, Raul Labrador, wrote a whole op-ed (One state’s bold fight against classroom indoctrination targets woke ‘welcome’ signs) to explain why, and it's illuminating.

On its face, the message appears neutral — simple, positive words that seem apolitical. But the design reveals its true purpose: colorful letters above imagery designed to signal adherence to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. The rainbow colors and progressive symbols accompanying these messages make their political purpose unmistakable.

Do they? What political purpose is that? This, I think, is leads to an important idea that isn't always mentioned--

These classroom displays reflect a broader ecosystem of political resistance groups launched in protest of the political rise of President Donald Trump.

There's aplenty to unpack there.

For one, if you've been looking for a working definition of "woke" or "ideological," here's one for you-- anything opposing Donald Trump. This, really, makes a certain kind of sense. If the regime is going to value first and foremost loyalty to Dear Leader over all else (competence, ethics, adherence to the rule of law, religious principles), then anything that is disloyal to Dear Leader would be Very Bad. When your primary ideology is Loyalty to Dear Leader, then anything that is not loyalty is by definition a bad ideology. Woke. 

For another, there is the underlying notion that people like Sarah Inama do not put up "Everyone is Welcome Here" signs or otherwise promote diversity, equity, or inclusion because they have some sort of ethical or moral beliefs about the value of human beings and diversity in a pluralistic society. No, the assumption is that people are only pretending to care about those things in order to oppose Dear Leader. The assumption is that these folks are not operating out of principled ethical values, but out of their desire to oppose those in power. 

This is not a new Trumpian thing; scratch opposition to movements like Black Lives Matter and you get some version of "Race problems were totally solved around 1964, and everything Black folks have done since then is simply political posturing in order to get some sort of unearned advantage." But now we have upped the ante by viewing even this idea through the lens of loyalty to Dear Leader.

People keep tearing hair out over what appears to them to be hypocrisy. I will continue to argue that when you encounter what seems to be hypocrisy, you're just failing to see the true underlying value. Looking at the seeming contradictory positions of Trumpers through a lens in which the main, even only value, is loyalty to Dear Leader, and it doesn't seem so hypocritical at all. 

Everyone really is welcome here-- as long as they demonstrate their loyalty to Dear Leader. 

Sarah Inama Takes Idaho To Court

Sarah Inama is the Idaho middle school teacher who was told to get rid of her "Everyone is Welcome Here" poster. 

The boneheads at West Ada School District decided that the sentiment, combined with an image of hands of different skin colors, was just too political to be tolerated, citing Idaho's House Bill 41, yet another bill designed to censor any double-plus-ungood ideas that teachers tried to express. 

So now Inama is going after that bill.

There's a whole lot of racism involved in the law and its enforcement, and the state Attorney General Raul Labrador went the extra mile to clarify that, in fact, everyone is not welcome in Idaho classrooms (no, he didn't use those exact words, but the sentiment was clear). Labrador issued a press release/op-ed (picked up by Fox, of course) that framed the whole flap as "One state's bold fight against classroom indoctrination targets woke 'welcome" signs." 

I have written a whole separate post on how this "woke" message is "political," rather than digress wildly here. Suffice it to say that the anti-inclusiveness in West Ada ran all the way from local parents all the way up to the state capital.

After battling her district, Inama got out of West Ada and immediately found a new home in the Boise school district, where she can put up her scary woke signs in her classroom. And she could be forgiven for just shaking the dust off her shoes and getting back to work. 

Instead, she has filed a lawsuit in federal court looking for a declaration that the state's flag and banner law is unconstitutional. 

The defendants in the in the lawsuit, filed February 3--

The Idaho State Board of Education
The Idaho Department of Education
Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador
The West Ada School District
West Ada Superintendent Derek Bub
Monty Hyde, principal of West Ada’s Lewis and Clark Middle School

The suit points out Inama's distinguished career, and puts her posters in the context of a district attempt to make its schools, already struggling with some racism issues, more welcoming. The suit also points out that administration admitted, as they forced her to remove the posters, that no actual complaints had been lodged against them. 

Then all hell broke loose. Inama became a national story, and the administration and school board scrambled to make it go away (a crisis management technique familiar to teachers in districts across the nation). This included meetings with admins, including one at which the superintendent told Inama that he wanted to protect her from a smear campaign, but if she wouldn't let up on the issue, he would not be able to protect her. And then state decided to pipe up.

The lawsuit argues that the Speech law is vague and inconsistently applied. Inama is asking for damages, attorney fees, a jury trial and an injunction against the law.

Inama is represented by attorneys from Dorsey & Whitney, a large, high-powered firm, with the team including Elijah Watkins (a partner at the firm), Aaron Bell (an associate), Latonia Haney Keith (Dean of Graduate Studies at the College of Idaho, with a law degree from Harvard) and McKay Cunningham, a Constitutional law professor. The state has its work cut out for it. Here's hoping they lose big. 

Kristoff Loves That Asian Bootstrapping

Nicholas Kristoff is part of the New York Times stable of amateurs with high-profile unfounded opinions about education, and last week he decided that maybe we should be more like Taiwan or Vietnam. 

He waves vaguely in the direction of societal commitment to education (the headline is "What if the Valedictorians in America's Schools Were the Cool Kids," which, in assuming that they aren't already the cool kids, reveals its own biases). He talks about visiting schools in Asia since the 1980s. "Every time I visit, I feel a pang of envy for societies that seem to value education more than America does."

Okay, I feel his pain here. Our country's attitude toward education mirrors our attitude toward young humans-- we make a lot of noise about valuing them, but when the rubber meets the road, it turns out there are plenty of other things we value way more. 

Kristoff, however, is not so much focused on what society can do to live up to educational value as he is on how such a value will inspire students to bootstrap the hell out of themselves. He focuses on stories like the girl who works full time and studies full time so that she can go to college (she sleeps for two AM hours at her workplace if things are slow). Or the student who eschews dating because in these countries "respect for education is so deep that it can even overwhelm youthful hormones."

He nods to the idea that such obsession stifles creativity and robs children of fun and youth. He also nods to the fact that some nations devote huge amounts of money to education (Taiwan mandates 22.5% of net budget revenues go to education). He notes these things with a "Yes, but" and swings right back to promoting a culture obsessed with education so that young humans will feel moved to grab those bootstraps. He Yesbuts his way past poverty, inequity, and injustice without examining how this A) restricts access to both education and bootstraps and B) how education obsession doesn't seem to have mitigated the issues.

Most of all, he doesn't examine the Rugged American biases that lead him to center this story about education valuation on students rather than, say, political leaders and other adults who throw society's weight behind education. This is the Rugged Individualist dream-- students who rise up and doggedly pursue education without any powerful adults doggedly working to make that pursuit of education more doable. It is an Asian version of a familiar story-- the heartwarming portrait of a young human overcoming obstacles without ever questioning why those obstacles are requiring overcoming in the first place.

Kristoff might want to take a look at the work of Yong Zhao, the China-born scholar who has plenty to say about the Asian brand of education obsession.

But mostly he might want to look at his vision (and it's a vision shared by many) that a more education-valuing society would look pretty much exactly like our society right now, except that students would work harder.

He ends the piece with some questions: "Maybe we could acknowledge the inequity of local school finance that results in sending rich kids to good schools and poor kids to weak schools? Perhaps politicians could stop demonizing universities and taxing their endowments? What if we respected human capital as much as financial capital?"

Those are not bad questions. But they need to come at the beginning of a piece, not as a sort of post-script of a piece that is mostly about something else entirely.

Will School Choice Kill Athletics?

Nancy Bailey, a retired teacher and longtime blogger, asked a good question this week-- Will school choice destroy athletics as we know it?

Let me provide the answer from Pennsylvania-- the shape of high school athletics "as we know it" is already deeply influenced by school choice.

It's worth remembering that we have always had school choice-- what we're talking about these days is really taxpayer-subsidized school choice. But the school choice we already have in Pennsylvania is more than enough to shape the athletic landscape.

Right now, the top rankings of high school basketball are dominated by Catholic high schools, with a few private schools thrown in for good measure. Flip back through the years on sports site MaxPreps, and you'll see the same names year after year. Same thing for girls' basketball. You can see the same thing in football, though not quite as pronounced. 

But if you are a Pennsylvania high school enjoying a really good year in sports, you will almost certainly meet one of the usual private Catholic schools on your path through the playoffs. 

The secret is recruiting, and it works just like college. Woo the family, promise a good spot on a successful team, and throw in a hefty scholarship. Plus, perhaps, some help in relocating the student or even the family to the location. In my state, Catholic and other private schools recruit-- and they recruit hard. We think of "school's choice" as gatekeeping-- the school just sits there and sifts through the applications that come in. But for high stakes operations like these, recruitment is a big deal. Schools actively choose students without passively waiting for them to show up.

Pennsylvania privates enjoy an extra advantage. We classify school sports through A rankings (Single A all the way up through 6A) based on enrollment size-- not the size of the population the district serves. So 2A public schools with small student bodies get to compete with 2A Catholic schools that also have small student bodies--but which can draw from students anywhere in the state. (And if you call them out on this in, say, a local newspaper column, their athletic director will send you a cranky letter filled with non-denial denials.)

Recruitment is a feature of choice, and always has been (it was used by the "miracle" T.M. Landry school). Because schools need to be able to do marketing, they will go after students who can help them with that marketing, whether it's by strengthening a sports program or helping a high-profile marching band or keeping test numbers up. Turning school choice into taxpayer-subsidized school choice just supercharges the whole business, putting more money into the recruitment kitty. 

Nancy Bailey's piece covers other states and has some excellent references-- you should read it and keep in mind that in some states, the transformation of school sports by school choice athletics began years ago, much to the frustration of many public school programs. 

The Feds Push School Prayer

Last week the U.S. Department of Education offered some "guidance" on prayer and religious expression in public school. 

“The Trump Administration is proud to stand with students, parents, and faculty who wish to exercise their First Amendment rights in schools across our great nation,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “Our Constitution safeguards the free exercise of religion as one of the guiding principles of our republic, and we will vigorously protect that right in America's public schools.”

To be clear, the rights of students to freely exercise their religion has never been in question. Well, okay-- the right of Christian students to freely exercise their religion has never been in question. What has been "in question" is the rights of school-adjacent adults to practice their religion in ways that pressure students to follow along. 

The guidance still recognizes some restrictions. They point out "Public schools may not sponsor prayer nor coerce or pressure students to pray. For example, a school principal may not lead a prayer at a mandatory school assembly." Also, you're allowed to shut down a student whose prayer disrupts class (as long as you are consistent in restricting other forms of class-disrupting speech). 

But there is still plenty of baloney here. Schools should not "favor secular views over religious ones or one religion over another." This follows the religious conservative view that secularism is just another religion (albeit a naughty anti-god one). That's incorrect (I get to it in greater lengths here and here) much like saying that the plate a meal is served on is one more food item. If I never talk to my students about what person they should marry when they grow up, that is not suggesting that they shouldn't get married at all-- it simply leaves that conversation for a more appropriate person to have at a more appropriate time in a more appropriate place. 

The not favoring one religion over another is also problematic. Exactly who gets to decide A) what counts as a legitimate religion and B) what counts as favoritism? 

The guidance calls for judging religious speech with same standards as secular speech, for exampling "a paper with religious content," which I think can assume refers to the bullshit case of the Oklahoma student who trolled her trans professor with a terrible religious content, just so she could make a fuss about it. 

The department cites the Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the case of the football coach who wanted to pray on the fifty yard line and made it to the Supreme Court, where the justices decided in his favor by using a legal technique known as Making Shit Up (the scripture you're thinking of is Matthew 6:1-- Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them). Coach Kennedy promptly quit his job and went on the conservative speaker circuit.

In that vein, the regime's new guidance declares that "visible, personal prayer, even if there is voluntary student participation in such prayer, does not itself constitute coercion." As long as the teacher doesn't say, "Come pray with me" or "Points off for anyone who doesn't pray with me" or "I will think less of those of you who don't pray with me" it's okay. Even if it is obvious to the students that these are on the table. "Voluntary" is doing some real heavy lifting here.

Like the Kennedy case, this pretends that if a teacher isn't directly commanding students to join in, there is no coercion or endorsement going on. And it is certainly true that some students are pretty well inoculated against any such pressure (I am thinking of a Jewish student of mine whose elementary teacher tried to nudge her toward Jesus). 

But at the same time, these are the folks who are sure that students should not be exposed to any mention of sex or LGBTQ persons. If we were using a similar approach to religion, the rule would be that teachers can't even mention that any religions exist and any books that include characters who pray would be pulled from the library. 

Look, this is a tricky issue, with schools landing all over the place and finding a variety of ways to be wrong, from the school that forbid a student to pray in his graduation speech to the school where the superintendent opened an elementary choir concert with a Jedsus prayer. And just wait till some teacher decides to open class with an Islamic prayer or starts Transcendental Meditation club during the school day. Or when teachers start praying in front of the class for God to support a particular politician. 

If only there were a way to accommodate a variety of deeply held personal religious beliefs in a space shared by many members of a pluralistic society. It would be so important we could attach it to the Constitution, like an amendment. I think it would be important enough that we could put it first.

Seriously-- the framers covered this. Make a government-run institution like public schools a religion-free zone, in which no religions are required, practiced, or endorsed. Let people of all ages pursue their religious beliefs on their own time (particularly if they are adults in position of authority).

It will be messy and difficult at times, but certainly more valuable and useful for the health of society than, say, letting each group of believers hide together in their own silo, or allowing one group to dominate the school. It would require balance and negotiation and occasional pauses to think about where lines should be drawn and to reel in overzealous folks on one side or another, but all that would be good practice for living as an adult human in a pluralistic society. Yes, I realize that some folks are very anti-pluralism these days, but I don't think that's very American of them, and I look forward to the day when we can replace this not-very-helpful guidance.