Drones In Schools

School surveillance continues to be a growth industry, maybe because students don't have a lobby and some adults curl up every time someone says, "But it's for the safety of the children!" Nevertheless, it just keeps getting creepier.

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

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

That prediction was looking pretty good in January of 2020. Then March of 2020 kind of pushed it to the back burner, as far as coverage went. But the fact that we were all kind of distracted did not stop the march of ed tech's surveillance industry. 

Now we're getting a new trend in this kind of surveillance. Drones.

Drone security is growing in many sectors, with companies like Titan promising "24/7 aerial protection, lightning-fast response, and real-time visibility." Also, of course, it's cheaper than hiring live humans.

The website Dangerous Schools last year touted drones as a "transformative tool in bolstering school safety." They can provide "real-time aerial surveillance" and "monitor large areas efficiently." They can "swiftly assess emergency situations," because, as with some other surveillance tools, the promise is that AI will be able to judge the situation. And always, the advantage of being "cost-effective."

And, of course, the drones will be armed.

Campus Guardian Angel is a Texas-based firm offering "an elite, on-site safety response capability that teams with law enforcement, confronting any active shooter threat in seconds to save lives."

The start-up is a fine fit for Texas, where a 2023 law requires an armed person on every campus (the state's half-assed response to the Uvalde murders). But many Texas districts asked to opt out of the law because armed guards were too pricey. Voila! Just get a patrol drone for enhanced "situational awareness." In a Texas demo, CEO Justin Marston promised that once as teacher hit a panic button, the drones could find the shooter in 15 seconds and incapacitate them in 60. 

A set of six drones is a mere $15,000, plus a per-pupil monthly prescription.

And it's not just Texas. A few months ago, Newsweek ran a story about Florida school districts considering CGA. 

Campus Guardian Angel CEO Justin Marston told Newsweek that the drones were equipped with pepper rounds plus a glass breaker, allowing them to quickly navigate inside and outside classrooms.

"We feed live video to police, show exactly what's happening, where the suspect is, and even smash through windows with a glass punch to create distractions. This tactic, like during the SAS's famous hostage rescue [at the Iranian Embassy in London], can give officers a huge advantage," Marston said.

As with all surveillance products, this is being pitched in the context of the worst possible events, while the question that really needs to be asked is, "Once this is in place, what other uses will district administrators find for it?"  Pepper rounds to break up fights on the playground? Pepper rounds to break up what the AI thinks is about to be a fight in the hall? Assign a drone to hover over your most challenging problem students all day?

We've already got surveillance tools that are aimed at calculating students who might be considering suicide or acts of violence, so why not tie that kind of analysis to a surveillance tool that can hover over students all the time? 

Oh, and the Florida drones would be captained by people in Austin, Texas. I can't imagine how many ways that could go badly.

I get that high security for low costs has a seductive appeal, and reportedly Homeland Security is going to buy $100 million worth of drones. But there are just so many ways this could be abused or simply go wrong. Here's hoping that this little industry fades away sooner rather than later. 

The Big Standardized Test Is Still The Worst Thing In Education

For forty-some years, an array of forces have tried to shape public education in damaging ways, and I have bitched about pretty much all of them in this space. But if you gave me the power to wipe any one of these ugly insects off the windshield of public education, I would not need to think for a second. The worst--the very worst--of the forces employed to dismantle and disfigure public education is the Big Standardized Test.

The BS Test, an annual event inflicted by the state on every public school system, has undergone its own transformative journey even as it has been employed by an assortment of toxic movements. Let's collect data on students so that we track them cradle-to-career, the better to let employers order up the exact meat widgets they're shopping for. Let's come up with objective data that will let us pinpoint the worst schools so we can dismantle them. Let's collect data that will let us pinpoint the worst teachers so we can fire our way to excellence. Let's make every state use the same BS Test so that we can put some teeth behind a national standards movement. 

And it hasn't made a damned bit of difference which politicians were in charge. Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden-- every one of them has kept the BS Test grinding away like a blind badger digging its way through the guts of the public education system. 

BS Testing has warped schooling itself. The tests create a hierarchy of content, with schools reducing the amount of arts, music, science, history, even recess because that content is Not On The Test. Not that favored content fares any better; in English class, full texts have been replaced with short excerpts, and meaningful slow, thoughtful discussion has been replaced with a quick solitary race to answer multiple choice questions.

Test-centered schooling encourages sorting students into three groups, usually via more time-wasting "practice" or "benchmark" tests early in the year. Students are labeled as 1) probably going to get a good score on the BS Test, 2) probably no hope they'll get a good score on the BS Test, and 3) enough of a borderline case that if we really hammer them, maybe we can get a good score out of them. Group 3 gets to suffer intensive test prep. That's because test-centered school is upside down-- the school is not there to serve the students' educational needs; instead, the students are there to serve the school's need for good data, aka high scores.

In that pursuit, we waste soooo much time on the test. Prepping for it, practicing for it, taking it-- the school year has been radically shortened by the BS Test. 

And as the BS Test became cemented as part of the status quo, a generation has absorbed the notion that the BS Test is the whole point of school, that the year is about prepping for the test and once the test is done, the year is basically open. At an even deeper level, we find the underlying assumption being passed on that Understanding and Knowing are just the acts of selecting and plugging in the One Correct Answer (which is already known by someone Out There). And these meager and stunted ideas about education and school are now part of a self-feeding loop as students who have spent their life on this tiny treadmill come back to the classroom as teachers. 

You can argue that attempts have been made to reduce the high stakes of BS Testing, but little has been done that made a difference. A decade of insistence that this test is a valid measure of school, teacher and student achievement has produced a public that thinks "what are the test scores like" is an incisive probe into school quality--and many of those folks are now on school boards. 

If that were the end of the matter, it would be problematic enough. But every troubling trend in public education has been nourished with water from this toxic spring. 

Of course, BS Test scores were important in selling school privatization, allowing fans of that movement to claim that they had hard data "proving" that public schools were failing. When it turned out that results for charter and private schools weren't any better, BS Test scores quietly exited the discussion. But the damage was done; one of the biggest frauds perpetrated in education policy and journalism is the continued use of "student achievement" as a euphemism for "test scores."

Yet there's a secondary effect-- the BS Test has made alternatives to public school more attractive by making public schools less attractive, because it turns out that parents are not that excited about subjecting their children to test-centered schooling and its hollowed-out de-humanized version of education. 

As we've sold the idea that knowledge and understanding are about being able to Pick The Right Answer, it's no wonder we've also seen the rise of "Why should students learn stuff when they can just google the right answer." This is life under the BS Test-- schooling is about grabbing right answers and generating data deliverables. 

The widely reported difficulties with student behavior and attendance have complex roots, but BS Test-based schooling shares some of the blame. What is there in test-centered schooling to engage students? What is the message beyond "As long as you can pick up those answers on the test, the job is done." I'll argue that when the treadmill stopped for the big pandemic pause of 2020, many folks looked at what they had been doing on autopilot and thought, "Wow, that was some bullshit." That includes students, because by 2020, test-centered school had injected a great deal of BS into schools (not that I'm going to argue that schools were ever fertilizer-free pastures).

Ditto for teachers. Of all the things that inspire people to go into the profession, "I've always wanted to help students prep for a mediocre multiple choice standardized test" is not top of the list. The BS Test is a monument to the general stripping of autonomy from the profession, encouraging districts to prescribe exactly how and what teachers should teach. 

Even the newest educational panic over AI owes much to BS Testing. AI moves most easily into spaces where heart and humanity have already been hollowed out, and a system centered on forking over the preferred answer is primed for AI. Approach students with an attitude of "Just fork over the right answer, kid," and they will find a quick and easy way to do just that.

We could argue about all of the above if the BS Test was actually useful for something. It is not.

Teachers are not allowed to see the questions on the test, and therefor get results that are meaningless, vague, broad, and way too late. And that's before we even get to the baloney of using maths to beat data into value-added scores. We have seen repeatedly that school level results correlate directly to socio-economic demographic data. 

That correlation is meaningless because twenty-some years in, we still don't have a lick of data (despite the claims of Hanushek et al) that raising BS Test scores improves life outcomes. The premise is that if we take a student who would have scored 55 on the test and fix her so she'll score a 75, she'll be more successful, make more money, and have a better life. Researchers have had decades to provide evidence of that premise and yet they haven't found enough evidence to cover a gnat's eyelash.

And that's before we even address the question of whether or not students even make a serious attempt on these things. 

"But if we stop giving the Big Standardized Test," come the objections, "how will we hold schools accountable? How will we know how schools are doing?"

You know what's worse than not knowing something? Believing you've got an answer when you don't. Ceasing the search for the truth because you have accepted a lie in its place. Or, to quote Josh Billings (probably), "I honestly believe it is better to know nothing than to know what ain’t so."

I agree that accountability is important, and that we should know how schools are doing. Big Standardized Tests don't give us either of those, and in fact make public education worse and less accountable. The answer to those objectors' question is, "You don't know any of those things now, and you are damaging the system at the same time."

Lord knows I'm not going to argue that eliminating the BS Test would return public education to some imaginary state of perfect grace. There are other issues that need--have always needed--to be addressed. But test-centered schooling is an obstacle rather than an aid to pursuing those improvements. 

One of the challenges of public schools is inertia, and after all these years, the BS Tests have inertia on their side. When the pandemic pause hit, there was a moment when that inertia was interrupted, and testophiles panicked and fought hard to keep testing, and mostly, they won. Now some states are testing more (while pretending they'll test less). I haven't said anything here that I haven't said multiple times over the past umpteen years, but one of the ways that institutional inertia works is that Bad New Ideas become that Same Old Thing We're Tired Of Complaining About. 

If we're looking for things to reform, axing the BS Test would be a great place to start. We wouldn't lose much of anything worth having, and we would take back time, money and focus for education in this country. 

I Took The PragerU Unwoke Teacher Test

"Inspired by" Oklahoma's "America First Teacher Test, PragerU, the conservative propaganda mill, has a "Teacher Qualification Test," which, in their attempt to establish themselves as a player in the teacher cert game, is suddenly everywhere. Watch some of their videos, they invite, and then take the test-- "Pass, and you’ll earn your certificate—proving your commitment to truth and integrity."

Is this going to be as bad as I think it is? Let's dive in and see.

Step one is give them your personal info so they can add you to their mailing lists. Luckily, I have some contact info for just such an occasion.

So here we go. Thirty-four questions, which seems more than enough to determine if you're a real murican teacher or not. This will take a while, but I think we should get the full effect.

1) Cites Meye v. Nebraska and the right-wing-beloved Pierce v. Society of Sisters to ask who has the ultimate right to direct a child's education. Superintendent, board, federal ed department, or parents? I picked parents and it says that's correct!

2) What is the "fundamental biological distinction between males and females?" Guess we'll assume they mean humans. Two dilly choices (blood type?) plus personal preference and "chromosomes and reproductive anatomy." That's a choice between a straw man that minimizes the way a person comes to grips with their gender and an incomplete answer that skips over all the ways that chromosomes and anatomy do not clarify the issue. I pick blood type. "Sorry, that is not right. Try again." 

So this is not really a test, but a training. Cool.

3) How is a child's biological sex typically identified. Skip "parental affirmation of child's preference" and "personal feelings." "Visual anatomical observation and chromosomes" is the preferred answer here, and given the use of the word "typically," I don't even disagree.

4) Which chromosome pair determines biological sex in humans? Pretty sure the wrong answers here are all made up. XX/XY again skips some details, but it's what they want.

4) Why is the distinction between male and female considered important in sports and privacy? Choices are "For equity in minority communities," "To increase participation in sports, To enhance the self-esteem of transgender children, " or their winner, "To preserve fairness, safety, and integrity for both sexes." 

As I expected, this test is telling us a lot about what these folks think "the other side" thinks. Nothing here about letting children play sports to have fun with their friends.

6) Should teachers be allowed to express their own political viewpoints in order to persuade students to adopt their point of view? The question is rendered silly by the inclusion of a presumed motive. Wrong answers include "Yes, teachers have freedom of speech, too," "No, once you become a teacher, your freedom of speech in and out of the classroom is restricted," and "Yes, sometimes when the issues are civil rights and social justice." Correct answer is, "No, the classroom is no place for activism." Possible answers did not include "It's only okay when teachers are pushing christian nationalist views that we agree with or showing our propaganda-filled videos."

7) Asks about the Mahmoud case in which the Supremes gave parents the right to opt out of any lessons they disagree with. Some of these questions aren't really questions; just a chance to make a point.

8) First three words in the Constitution?

9) Why is freedom of religion important to America's identity? Correct answer here is "It protects religious choice from government control," which I guess is why outfits like Prager are jockeying for government contracts and approval so that they can have the government control the religious choices of their audiences. "Let the government decide what religion should be in schools" seems counterproductive here, and Prager is not going to approach that question.

10) What are the two parts of the US Congress? Yikes.

11) How many US senators are there?

12) Why do some states have more Representatives than others? Lots of complicated nuance here that could be considered, but no, it's just because of population.

13) What is the primary responsibility of the president's [sic] Cabinet [sic]? Yeah, we have some capitalization issues. "Praise him effusively and try to soothe the aching chasm where his soul should be" is not a possible answer, so I guess "advise the president [sic]" is how to go. 

14) Who signs bills into law? 

15) What is the highest court in the United States?

16) Which of the following "is a responsibility reserved only for citizens"? Jury duty, home ownership, paying taxes, or possess a driver's license? (It's jury duty)

17) Which of the following are explicitly listed in the bill of rights? Freedom of speech and religion, voting and public education, reproductive rights and healthcare, freedom from data collection and surveillance. Just Prager's little way of saying, "These are the things you are not entitled to." "Owning an automatic weapon that can kill twenty people in one minute" apparently didn't make this list.

18) What right does the Second Amendment protect? I spoke too soon. 

19) What is the supreme law of the US? These suckers want you to say "the Constitution." I give them points for including Presidential Executive Orders as a wrong answer, but clearly they are not up to date with Dear Leader's policy of "I am the President. I can do what I want."

20) Who wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence?

21) When was the Declaration of Independence adopted? Take your pick of July 4 in several years, and note once again that John Adams was sure July 2 would be celebrated as Independence Day because that was they day the founders actually voted to sever ties with England. The paperwork was finished two days later. Sorry, John.

22) Primary reason colonists fought the British? To resist expansion of British empire, to maintain slavery, to resist taxation without representation, or to resist forced military service? This is prime Prager stuff here, lacking in any hint of nuance or depth and instead focusing on broad, simple answers that a six year old can easily retain. They think it's the tax one. Do not expect a follow-up about how the taxes were related to costs incurred by the French and Indian War.

23) First three presidents?

24) Who is called the "Father of Our Country"? Ben Franklin, Abe Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., or George Washington?

25) What did the Emancipation Proclamation do? Now, Prager does like some detail in its handling of slavery, which it often characterizes as "not that bad." This question is to remind you that Lincoln only freed the slaves in the rebelling states.

26) What was Lincoln's primary reason for fighting the war? Two silly answers and a choice between abolish slavery and preserve the union, because Prager would like you to buy the Southern claim that the way was not about slavery. Bet the next question is not "why did the Southern states commit treason and insurrection?"

27) I win. Next they ask what Martin Luither King, Jr., was best known for. Advocating for segregation, the abolition of slavery, diversity, equity and inclusion, or racial equality under the law? See, even MLK didn't want that DEI stuff. He dreamed of a day when white guys would get jobs over Black guys just because they were better.

28) How did the cold war end? Weird set of answers. US won Cuban Missile Crisis? Russia invaded Ukraine? US, European Union, and Soviet Union signed peace treaty? Soviet Union collapsed? I have so many questions, like did they not hear JD Vance explain that all conflicts were ended by negotiations. But no, we're just meant to remember that capitalism will always beat communism, even when capitalism doesn't actually do anything. 

29) Who was President [finally got it right] during the Great Depression? 

30) What is the name of the national anthem?

31) Why are there thirteen stripes on the flag? 

32) Which national holiday honors those who died while serving in the military?

33) Which of the following is a phrase from the Pledge of Allegiance? Rule out the two obvious incorrect answers and you get a choice between "one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all" or "one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." Too late to change your answer for #6.

34) From whom does the US government derive its power? "The people" will have to do as a correct answer, as "certain people who are the true Americans" is not a stated option.

So, a combination of fourth grade civics questions, push-poll type questions designed to make a point rather than ask a question, and absolutely nothing about actual teaching, pedagogy or content knowledge. Throw in some LGBTQ panic and parent rights flapjackery. Also, a pitch for a contribution, and now their contact list is a little larger. I look forward to my snappy certificate certifying that while I may or may not know jack squat about teaching, I am at least knowledgeable about some part of the current culture panic. In the meantime, people who are only half paying attention will absorb the notion that PragerU has something to say about teachers in this country, which is a sad lie to have loose in the world. 

ICYMI: Up and Hobbling Edition (8/31)

So this week, I had some arthroscopic surgery and took delivery of a new desktop computer to replace the eight-year-old dysfunctional one. This will be good news for those of you who are really bothered by my typos, which are exponentially worse on the mobile office laptop. 

I've had this kind of surgery twice before. The first time was back in 1980 and back then the protocol was to put the leg in a cast and spend six weeks letting the muscles turn into limp spaghetti. Nowadays the protocol is use crutches for the first day and then get yourself in gear. So I am hobbling mightily and will be back to normal sooner or later. 

Meanwhile, as much as I bitch and moan about the annoyances of modern tech, I have to acknowledge that moving toa new machine has gotten way easier since last time. Here I was painstakingly offloading everything onto an external drive and then the new computer and the old computer just copied all of my stuff on their own. It was both creepy and massively labor- and time-saving.

We've got plenty for you to read this week. Here we go.

Is Public Education Over?

If you read just one thing on the list, read this. Jennifer Berkshire puts standardized testing and Democrats who run against public schools in their proper context.

I Know What You Did Last Summer

Audrey Watters read Berkshire's piece, and she expands on the understanding that public education didn't get damaged all at once.

Parents Sue Open AI for ChatGPT’s Role in Son’s Suicide

The indispensable Mercedes Schneider brings us the story of an inevitable and necessary lawsuit. The court documents detail the chilling ways ChatGPT facilitated and encouraged a teen's suicide through multiple attempts.

Two Va. school districts sue U.S. Education Dept. in fight over gender policies

A couple of Virginia districts are suing the ed department over withholding funds. Washington Post has the story.

Florida education officials urge school districts to work around unions

Florida's new ed chief is just as big of a tool as the last one. Jeffrey Solochek reports for the Tampa Bay Times.

DeSantis appoints another failed Florida school board candidate

Also from Solochek at the Tampa Bay Times, a look at DeSantis's favor election-denying trick-- when the voters don't pick his favored school board candidates, he just puts the failed candidate on the board anyway. Because Democracy is stupid.

The Washington Post Celebrates The 20th Anniversary Of The New Orleans ‘Miracle’

Yes, WaPo did that. Lucking Fary Rubinstein is here to debunk that reality-impaired piece.

Dark money spending could overshadow local priorities for Denver schools

Mike DeGuire details how dark money is involved in Denver school board races.

Oakland Public Education Fund Questioned

Thomas Ultican pries apart some of the sources of funding one busy group in Oakland. You may not be in Oakland, but it's a good model for how these sorts of groups work.

Public Education Is in Trouble. Whose Job Is It to Fix It?

At EdWeek, a very practical piece about how district admins can help, and connections are important.

Kelly Nash Doubles Down on Call to Eliminate LGBTQ+ Alaskans as Daughter Runs for Public Office

How bad and ugly can it get for LGBTQ educators? Pretty bad and ugly. From Matthew Beck at The Blue Alaskan.

Is There Really a Decline in Pleasure Reading?

You've read the terrible news. Nancy Flanagan says maybe you don't need to get all depressed just yet.

ChatGPT Is Unoriginal—and Exactly What Humans Need (Dana Karout and Houman Harouni)

Okay, this is one I hadn't thought of. A guest post at Larry Cuban on a project that challenged students by showing them that what they came up with wasn't any better than what ChatGPT extruded. So, ChatGPT as a way to charge students with lack of creativity.

Claremont's Finances are Dire

Claremont, NH is in trouble, with a massive financial challenge caused by, apparently, some serious mismanagement. It's a lesson in how a district can go off the rails and a state can say, "Tough noogies." I'll confess I'm especially interested because these were my schools back in my K-3 years. Andru Volinsky has the story.

The Ramaswamy Education Cons

Stephen Dyer and David Pepper had a video conversation about Ramaswamy's education baloney in his run for Ohio office.

I Was A High School Teacher For Decades. This Is What Your Kids Will Lose If The Far Right Gets Its Way.

Nancy Jorgenson is a retired music teacher, and she has some objections to the notion that schools should just dispense facts and content.

Texas Businesswoman Wants to Open AI-Driven, Teacherless Cyber Charter School in Pennsylvania

MacKenzie Price, Alpha schools, and the 2 Hour Learning idea have all been back in the news lately, so I'm re-upping this piece I wrote in January about this well-connected pile of baloney.

Greetings from Your New Superintendent: Seven-Time WWE Champion, The Undertaker

Rob Shapiro at McSweeney's, where they get that perfect blend of comedy and tragedy.

As WA government officials embrace AI, policies are still catching up

NPR takes a look at Washington state's attempt to get all up in the AI in government. Some parts aren't working so well.

Neurosymbolic AI—not with a bang, but a whither?

Ben Riley makes sense of one more debate going on in the AI world. Read this and get smarter.

AI is ummasking ICE officers. Can Washington do anything about it?

Politico has this fun new story. 

This week at Forbes.com, I looked at a new NPE report on the charter school biz. 

Here's brand new music from an unlikely combo.

As always, you're invited to subscribe to my newsletter and get all the stuff straight to your email.

The Legal Doctrine That Says Censorship Is a First Amendment Right

This is worth digging into the legal weeds because A) it's going to keep coming up and B) a Florida case successfully beat it.

When it comes to free speech, it's a topsy turvy country out there. Take the Alachua County School Board in Florida. They had a batch of parents doing that thing where they would protest a book by reading isolated excerpts in board meetings, going for shock value without context. The board is now in trouble for objecting to that language. Their attorney has given them guidelines to help them Be Better, including this one--

Merely offensive language is not enough. Comments when viewed as a whole must be obscene (crude, abusive, vulgar, pornographic or indecent).

In other words, the naughty speech the member of the public is delivering in the meeting must be considered in the larger context of their speech. Yes, the same naughty excerpt that they're reading without any consideration of the larger context of the complete work. The context of the quoting should be considered, but the context of the actual quote can be ignored. 

Also in the Free State of Florida, attorneys are working another theory by which the First Amendment is used to justify the suppression of First Amendment rights. 

The authors of And Tango Makes Three write in The Atlantic about this theory, deployed in their lawsuit over the banning of their book in Escambia Couty schools.

In casting about for a way to defend the ban, the school board landed on the theory that library books represent “government speech.” The government, the board explained, has its own First Amendment rights and must be allowed to speak as it wishes. Thus, it can remove any library book it finds objectionable for any reason.

This is a silly argument, but this isn't the first time it has been rolled out. The Supremes used it in 2009 in Pleasant Grove City v. Summum, ruling that Pleasant Grove, Utah, could refuse to allow a certain monument in its park because "Placing a monument in a public park is government speech, so it is not controlled by the First Amendment." In other words, the government is exercising its own First Amendment rights when it refuses to let someone else speak. In 2015 they let Texas refuse to issue certain specialty license plates.

The government speech argument was used against libraries successfully this May in the wingnut-let First Circuit Court of Appeals issued a divided opinion that nobody can challenge the banning of books because that is government speech. It starts from the not unreasonable position that any library involves curation choice because no library can carry all the books in the world. 

Wrote Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan for the majority, "That is what it means to be a library—to make judgments about which books are worth reading and which are not, which ideas belong on the shelves and which do not. If you doubt that, next time you visit the library ask the librarian to direct you to the Holocaust Denial Section."

I'll give the theory high marks for honesty. But there are some issues here. First of all, I'm not sure librarians would agree that their job is to decide "which books are worth reading"-- there's also a hefty helping of "what the customers want to read." Sure, they are supposed to separate the junk from the better stuff. Duncan also throws in the old "if the library doesn't carry it, they can get it somewhere else," and I'm trying to imagine what act of government censorship that would not cover. 

This is some seriously upside-down thinking. The First Amendment is meant to prevent government censorship, not provide legal cover for it.

But if you want some excellent arguments against applying the theory of government speech to Florida-style library book bans, we need look no further than another Florida book ban case recently decided in  the US Middle District Court of Florida just a couple weeks ago. In his decision, Judge Carlos Mendoza pointed out several problems with the argument.

One was that the way Florida's book banning law is constructed, the bans constitute not government speech at all. Parents, Mendoza wrote, certainly have the right to object to “direct the upbringing and education of children,” but the government cannot “repackage their speech and pass it off as its own.”

Mendoza warned of the danger of the government speech doctrine, quoting from Matal v. Tam (a case about a band trying to register an offensive band name). 

But while the government-speech doctrine is important—indeed, essential—it is a doctrine that is susceptible to dangerous misuse. If private speech could be passed off as government speech by simply affixing a government seal of approval, government could silence or muffle the expression of disfavored viewpoints.

Mendoza considers other courts' viewpoints on the question of whether or not library book selection constitutes government speech, and the winning quote comes from the Eighth Circuit Court in GLBT Youth in Iowa Schools Task Force v. Reynolds:

The Eighth Circuit has soundly rejected the argument, stating: “if placing these [disparate] books on the shelf of public school libraries constitutes government speech, the State ‘is babbling prodigiously and incoherently.’”

The law does not, Mendoza argues, involve any sort of "expressive activity" by the government, but simply following a law that requires "the removal of books that contain even a single reference to the prohibited subject matter, regardless of the holistic value of the book individually or as part of a larger collection."

Perhaps this crazy-pants doctrine is going to work its way up to the Supremes (Mendoza's decision will undoubtedly be appealed), in which case who knows if they will cheerfully declare that the government's First Amendment rights include the right to take away citizens' First Amendment rights. It seems Mendoza may even have anticipated that journey, as he has quoted Justice Alito several times in his opinion. Here's hoping libraries survive this. 

TX: Replacing Tests With More Tests

Nobody likes the Big Standardized Test (well, except test manufacturers making a living from it), and periodically, someone comes up with a clever idea for addressing that dissatisfaction. Texas has come up with a particularly bad one.

Texas's Big Standardized Test is the STAAR (which does not stand for Some Tests Are Always Ridiculous or maybe Should Throw Away Any Results or even Stupid Tests' Asses Are Raggedy). And the STAAR has a troubled history including technical glitches and questions without correct answers and just losing crates of answer sheets and just not working. Or is not aligned with state standards. And after many years, still glitch like crazy.

A big STAAR highlight is covered in this piece by poet Sara Holbrook, a poet who discovered that A) her own work was being used on the STAAR test and B) she couldn't answer some of the questions about her own work.

After several years of struggling, STAAR went fully on line, which didn't help anything. As usual with the move to an online model, nobody seems to have paused to consider whether or not adding a computer interface to the test might add one more problem.

Now here comes SB 9 (and its companion, HB 8). It reimagines the Big Standardized Test as the Instructional Supportive Assessment Program and declares that the "primary purpose" of the program will be "to benefit the students of this state." And if that were true, it would be a smart move, because one of the problems with the BS Test has always been that it ignores the fact that a test can only really serve the single purpose for which it is designed. Instead states use the test for a multitude of purposes, so if the new law would really have the common sense to do that then... well, never mind.

The new program is supposed to "provide information regarding student academic achievement and learning progress" to be used--

--by public schools to improve instruction

--by students, parents and teachers "for the purpose of improving student instruction"

--by researchers to study and compare achievement level and learning progress at state and national level

--by state ed agency for school accountability and recognition purposes

--to evaluate achievement level and learning progress of individual students

--to identify students strengths and weaknesses to determine readiness for grade promotion and graduation

--to assess whether or not education goals and curriculum standards are being met on local and state level

--to evauate and develop education policies and programs

--and to "provide instructional staff with immediate, actionable, and useful information regarding student achievement of standards and benchmarks that may be used to improve the staff ’s delivery of student instruction"

So, factoring in that some of these are actually several different combined purposes, I get about seventeen various purposes for this test program. Chances that the testing program will be useful for all 17 goals? Zero.

But the real kicker is this-- there must be a beginning-of-year, middle-of-year, and end-of-year assessment. Yes, the single STAAR test will be replaced with three tests. 

The press coverage keeps saying that the three tests will be shorter than the STAAR, and the bill promises that "The agency shall adopt procedures to reduce total administration time." and that the tests "must be designed to minimize the impact on student instructional time." In fact the bill requires the adition of language arts as a tested area, including testing writing. The bill says that most students should beable to finish the beginning and middle tests in 75 minutes and the end-of-year test in 85 minutes. that's 235 minutes, which is just under four hours. The curent guidance on STAAR testing is that it should take three to four hours.

So by the time you factor in the starting and stopping administrative stuff, it sure looks like the new system will be even more time-wasting than the STAAR. And that's before we even get to the question of whether or not you can effectively test the many subject areas (for the 17 purposes) in 75 minutes. I don't think you can-- but if you can, then why have Texas students been sitting through a three-to-four hour test previously?

The bill also requires results in two business days after the testing window closes, which strikes me as impossible. The state is also supposed to issue diagnostic reports for each student, with "practical and useful instructional strategies" for parents and teachers to use. The bill seems to call for norm-referenced testing, and without getting too far into the weeds, a norm-referenced test is like grading on the curve-- you can't do it until all the scores are in and someone has decided where to draw the line between, say, the A and B grades.

The bill calls for increasing "rigor" in A-F system used to grade schools, as part of an aspirational goal of having Texas rank among the top five states within 15 years. Also, because they are tired of the lawsuits over STAAR and letter grades, lawmakers would like to outlaw "taxpayer-funded" lawsuits over school assessment, which would presumably mean no more lawsuits brought by school districts. 

The only positive point in this bill is that it prohibits "benchmark" aka "practice" tests in grades that already have to deal with the STAAR.  But overall, this is a big baloney sandwich that simply extends the test's toxic influence over the school year, while increasing the likelihood that alreadyuseless results will be even more useless. There's still a chance that it could die somewhere in the legislature, and that's by far the best Texas families could hope for.

Moms For Liberty Draws No Crowd For Nancy Mace

MAGA wingnut Nancy Mace was supposed to deliver a speech hosted by the Horry County, South Carolina chapter of Moms for Liberty. She's part of a five-person field of folks who are already jockeying for the GOP nod to replace the current term-limited governor. That election is coming up in--oh, lordy-- 2026. 

Mace's advance team might have guessed that this might end poorly. A quick check of the Horry County Moms for Liberty chapter shows a whopping 21 members (and that, as is standard for M4L, includes the parent group and national chapter coordinator Pat Blackburn). 

So it maybe shouldn't have come as a surprise that only eight people showed up.

It should have been a perfect fit-- Mace has built a whole brand on being wildly anti-LGBTQ, a self-declared "proud transphobe." She has used trans slurs in the House, gotten her X posts flagged for hateful condiuct, and has policed the bathrooms of Congress.

The expectation for last Thursday was for around 100 people. Eight is way less than 100.

According to one acount, Mace "pivoted" to just chatting face to face with the few faces that showed up. 

Moms Form Liberty tried to replace this face plant with a prettier face by describing event as a "meet and greet with supporters." She also talked to reporters, which leads one to wonder how many of the eight attendees were members of the press.

Mace herself did her best to pump up the county:

"Horry County makes presidents. Horry County elected Donald Trump, and they're a big part of the state," Mace said. "We're winning by double digits everywhere, but particularly with folks who support the president."

In fact, Mace has been doing well in polls. The five candidates (who are all pretty terrible) are climcing over each other to suck up to Dear Leader and earn his golden endorsement. Moms For Liberty, despite their dreams of electoral power, might now turn out to be uch of a factor in this race if they can't do a better job of raisin crowds.

In the meantime, did I mention that this is for the 2026 election? South Carolinians better batten down the hatches and prepare for lots more of this baloney. And Moms For Liberty might want to take stock of their actual boots on the ground.