ICYMI — Laura Marcus from Tidelines Institute stopped by to talk about her education journey and the experiential education work she is leading in Glacier Bay, Alaska. Jed and I discussed several issues on the last WonkyFolk. Here’s a new analysis on AI from Bellwether. And here’s a new analysis of special education finance from Bellwether.

It took Harvard 388 years to catch up with Bellwether.

One of Bellwether’s most popular — or most frustrating, depending on your perspective — policies over our almost fifteen years is that we don’t take organizational positions or put out statements about things on behalf of everyone who works at the organization. The personal positions of the organization’s leaders don’t affect what people who work here can say, write about, or work on. Part of my job is editing and helping to strengthen arguments I don’t personally agree with on various issues. It’s not for everyone, but I believe it’s a good approach.

When the draft of the Dobbs decision was leaked in advance of the 2022 Supreme Court decision, I remember receiving an email from a prominent education advocacy/DEI organization with a bunch of employees saying they were all devastated. All? That struck me as odd. Unless your position on abortion is a litmus test for hiring, a diverse organization would likely have people on all sides of this complex issue. I know we do at Bellwether. (Why an education organization even has a position on abortion is a different issue, but these are the times we live in.)

Meanwhile, the data on abortion shows disagreement that transcends various demographic lines (and despite the best efforts of politicians to divide us, there’s a rough consensus that people aren’t okay with restrictions in the first trimester, are in the third, and disagree mightily on the second). About one in four Black Americans believe abortion should be illegal in most or all cases, as do about one in three Hispanic Americans. So you should expect some diversity on the issue in a diverse organization unless you’re actually screening for politics not diversity. Abortion is hardly the only issue where such differences arise. You see it on issues like immigration and on many education questions where polling may surprise you. It’s probably one reason Trump has steadily made meaningful gains among non-white voters since 2016. Life is more complicated than how it’s portrayed in most elite non-profit conference rooms.

People sometimes ask why Bellwether follows this approach, and the answer is straightforward: We work with various organizations across the sector. We don’t choose clients by segment but by whether the work is innovative and improvement-focused. We collaborate with charter schools, school districts, private schools, and people from a range of ideological viewpoints. We work in red, blue, and purple states with state leaders and public entities.

It’s challenging to work like this if you’re constantly taking positions on the issues of the day. Especially, because as anyone paying attention knows, these various essential positions often turn out to be surprisingly ephemeral. I’ve been in this field long enough to have seen reformers supporting and then opposing — and maybe supporting again — high standards, for example. What were once absolutely totemic beliefs are often quickly and quietly forgotten as fashions change. Note the Economist item below. 

Practically, it allows us to avoid circuses like this. Not surprisingly, more and more institutions are realizing that silence isn’t violence; instead, it’s a way to stay focused on your actual mission. (Around the sector, people sometimes argue that the mission is everything or some vague commitment to social justice broadly speaking. That’s not a mission; it’s a slogan.) Our team is free to express their political views on their own time. We don’t police editorial content or restrict what employees say or do outside of work, even regarding education issues (this happens more than you might think).

This approach can be frustrating. Externally, people want to know why we don’t take positions on certain issues. Or they suggest that not doing so will get us “coded” as having a particular stance. This is obviously silly — judge people and organizations based on what they actually say, not on everything they don’t say. Internally, some staff wonder why we don’t at least take positions on what are probably universally agreed-upon issues around the organization. Understandably, people sometimes want their employer to take a stance on something they or their peers feel strongly about. But that road opens up endless debates, internal persuasion efforts, and the like. You can’t only lean into a principle when it’s easy; it matters most when it’s hard. Besides, everyone believes their particular issue is so important it must be the exception to the rule.

What we don’t do is claim we’re open to multiple viewpoints and then quietly police them — something that’s also unfortunately common. While I don’t agree with organizations that fire people for unpopular viewpoints, at least they’re transparent about it.

In any event, the narrowing of the scope of statements view seems to be winning the day. A Bellwether perhaps. 

Lessons

Robert Pondiscio wrote an op-ed related to the Corey DeAngelis issue, pointing out that conservatives are more likely to be “canceled” than lefties. He’s not wrong, but it’s a case of whataboutism and hammer-nail thinking (if you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail).

First of all, Corey wasn’t truly canceled — he was back at it just days later (tweeting and advocating, to be clear). Second, to the extent that any canceling happened, it was from the political right. He lost his role at AFC, but it’s not unreasonable for a pro-kid choice organization to find his actions a bit too much. Especially given the context in which Corey operated and fueled. They didn’t fire him for a controversial viewpoint. The left didn’t like Corey to begin with, so I guess they couldn’t cancel him — though they surely would’ve happily done so if it were on offer. 

Robert is certainly correct that left-wing radicals dominate education academia, where they outnumber right-wing radicals and where thought policing is disturbingly common. That’s because, in our long-running culture war, the right got state governments and institutions, while the left took academia and media — and we fight over the rest.

I’m not sure that DeAngelis doing porn sheds much light on any of that or on much of anything else beyond his personal story. Several of his allies have told me that if he hadn’t been such a toxic presence on social media, he probably would’ve had a much softer landing. That might be the lesson here.

Denver

It’s a poor reflection on the education sector that new studies showing important impacts are largely ignored if they don’t fit the prevailing narrative or political fashion. This tendency is how we ended up in the reading policy mess that leaders are now trying to untangle, but it’s a lesson few seem eager to learn.

A new study out of Denver is important for two reasons. First, the results of the portfolio approach show significant effects. Is it perfect? No, but the findings are significant. Yet we hear mostly crickets. Second, the results underscore how we tend to abandon reforms before they’ve had time to demonstrate their efficacy. Denver walked away from what seems like a crucial set of reforms.

USS Michael Bennet and Tom Boasberg weigh in on some of the implications.

What’s worse is that the district actually fought to keep the data from reaching researchers. It’s not uncommon in our sector — and that should also be a story! The local paper did gymnastics to undercut the findings. Public radio did better.

It’s not just the media. These implications should be central in education conversations, at conferences, and among leaders. You don’t make major decisions based on one study, but you do pay attention and discuss the findings. We don’t.

Also, someone might say thank you to Paul Hill. 

Education is always the last to get the memo?

The Economist recently examined the ebbing of “woke” sentiments, using data not just vibes. It touches on the issue of activist capture, which has done considerable damage to the education sector. The kicker:

Ruy Teixeira of the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank, says, “I think people will one day look back on the 2015 to 2025 era as being a bit of a moment of madness.” But even though Mr. Teixeira believes the woke wave has set social progress back, he notes that, over the long run, America has been reducing discrimination and improving opportunities for minorities of all sorts. That trend, he believes, is lasting.

There are plenty of problems, but in practice the country is depolarizing racially you see that in political behavior, social mobility, and habits. Raj Chetty just released some work that you’d think would get more attention about race and class. Most social indicators are going in the right direction. Yet activists have a vested interest in arguing the opposite on a host of questions and too often the education world is an easy mark.

20,000 parents walk into a bar…

This new survey from 50Can is worth your time, with great state-by-state breakouts.

Friday Fish Porn

Terry Ryan is one of the best people to work with in our sector. Committed, patient, impactful, interesting backstory, wonderful human. His daughters are gems, too. Here’s one with her boyfriend and a lovely trout on the Owyhee River in Oregon.

Want more fish? Check out this unique archive of hundreds of pictures of education types with their fish. Send me yours!

If you want to get Eduwonk.com in your inbox when it’s published  you can sign up for free here.

*The one exception we have is issues affecting 501(c)(3) organizations as a class. It has never come up, but if, for example, changes to the tax code that could negatively affect an organization like Bellwether were proposed, we would weigh in insofar as it impacts our ability to do our work.

Greetings! Will it ever stop raining? I hope so, because I’m riding in the PMC Unpaved this weekend in the Berkshires. If you see a rider with pink handlebar tape on a black gravel bike, that’s me—riding for a good friend. It’s not too late to join this year’s campaign, and I’d be grateful, as would the many who will benefit from your generosity.

ICYMI – new Bellwether work on AI is out. One ed tech founder called it the most useful resource they’ve seen to date. Check out why. If you haven’t signed up for Bellwether’s AI newsletter yet, a new edition is out this week.

On Monday, I took a look at the Corey DeAngelis situation. I’m not a fan (or I guess an OnlyFan, as it turns out…), but wow, on a human level. A few folks have tried to turn this into a big school choice story. It’s not. In the same way that when a teachers’ union leader gets indicted for corruption, it’s not really a union story, or when a school superintendent is charged with malfeasance, it’s more about personal failings. It doesn’t tell you much about the institution. This, too, is a personal story (and a culture war story as well). That said, it does warrant a closer look at how it all came about and lessons about educelebrity. The 74’s Linda Jacobson has advanced the reporting, rather than just summarizing it.

Jed Wallace and I discuss this further in the latest episode of WonkyFolk, but we also talk about a new study out of Denver that you should check out, ESA funding, what’s happening with education in Oaxaca, Mexico, and why Don Shalvey matters so much—plus, what a great human Larry Rosentock is.

You can listen and read through this link. At the player below. Or, if you like to watch, on YouTube:

Laboratories of Democracy

The Washington Post editorial board weighed in on two education-related ballot referendums. One seeks to eliminate some testing requirements in Massachusetts, spearheaded by the teachers’ union. It’s pretty obvious what’s going on there. The other concerns a proposed electoral reform in Florida that would require school board candidates to declare party affiliation. Currently, most school board elections are non-partisan, but this change would undo a prior Florida reform that made them ostensibly non-partisan.

Point: school board elections should be non-partisan. Counterpoint: too late!

A reform package I’m more interested in (and one Florida is considering) is around the timing of school board elections. We still hold them, in many places, at off-peak times, which gives special interest groups extra leverage. There’s very little evidence suggesting this is a good idea, and plenty suggesting it’s not. We should vote for school board members at the same time we vote for federal, state, and local officials. This would be low-hanging fruit for good government reform, and it’s surprising there isn’t more momentum behind it. Especially considering that many of the same people who complain about voter suppression are defending time and place rules for school board elections that depress turnout.

I’d also keep an eye on Amendment 80 in Colorado. In the late 1990s, a parents’ rights amendment was defeated there. This year, voters will decide on a measure that would create a right to school choice. While it sounds appealing on the surface, there are potential secondary effects, and the language is vague. Conservatives are sponsoring it, but some homeschoolers worry it could lead to more regulation. Public schools and many Democrats see it as a step toward vouchers. Coloradans have 14 proposed amendments on the ballot this year.

Friday Fish Pics

Here’s one of Julie Corbett’s kids (with some expert fishing guide work from grandpa) and a fat sheepshead in Lake Champlain in Vermont. When not being the fishing photographer, Julie’s a great consultant in our sector and is working on a doctoral dissertation on the systemic barriers that result in the underrepresentation on local school boards. I’m not entirely sure, but with the hats it looks like there is some Boston – NY stuff happening here in the background, too.

And Friday Fish Porn

Here’s Bellwether’s Amy Chen Kulesa (one of the authors of the AI report at the top of this post) with a nice one in Colorado.

New around here? Wondering what this is all about? Check out this unique archive of hundreds of pictures of education types with fish. Send me yours!

If you want to get Eduwonk.com in your inbox when it’s published you can sign up for free here.

We do fish porn around here, sure. We don’t do the real kind, this is a family friendly publication. Yet this week the sector has a porn scandal. So here we are.

It turns out that self-described school choice evangelist Corey DeAngelis (who I know of professionally, obviously, but have never met) allegedly has a history in gay porn under the screen name “Seth Rose.” Not going to link here and it’s not safe for work (suffice it to say you can bet this is not the race theory Corey wanted to talk about), but you can look it up easily on social media. Pretty pedestrian porn name, but what do I know. He’s a beloved figure on the right and a favorite of culture war politicians. Not so much on the left.

It was a far-right website that brought this to light, it should be noted.

My initial reaction to the claims was to figure they were some deep fake bullshit from the trench warfare corners of the internet where every day brings a stupid battle over something. Or look-alike and mistaken identity. How could this not have come to light sooner, I wondered? And given his combative style he was ripe for a hit. But Corey’s profile was removed from the American Federation For Children’s website where he has been a senior fellow. Also the Hoover Institution did the same. And the word on the edustreet is that there is something to this.

To me, something always felt a little off about Corey, this interview with Reason’s Nick Gillespie is a good inadvertently revealing example of why. Public affairs is about performance at some level, but this always seemed like too much of one. His popular Twitter account just seemed like trolling. I could never quite put my finger on it, and certainly didn’t guess this.

Anyhow, a few notes on the kind of scandal we don’t often get in education:

It’s not the the heat it’s the hypocrisy. I don’t care what consenting adults do. It does not change how I like my coffee and there is way too much ‘live and let me tell you how to live’ going around these days for my taste. The problem here is Corey has been a high-profile culture warrior, including on LGBT issues. Some of his positions don’t rise to the level of hypocrisy – for instance plenty of gay people think the current obsession with drag by progressive parents of kindergartners is a little strange and performative. Plenty of gay and transgender people don’t think schools should get in front of or supplant parents on gender transitions. But he traded in less defensible claims and a general context of ‘they’re coming for your kids’ as well. That’s going to be hard for his allies to defend in this context.

A little empathy. As is often the case with this sort of thing it seems like this is probably a deeply troubled person in one way or another. Corey may have been lacking a fully functional empathy or compassion gene, that doesn’t mean you should. It’s understandable to be frustrated by the apparent hypocrisy, angered by the climate he stoked, and still show a little grace.

This really isn’t a school choice story. Corey used culture war issues as an argument for school choice (I’m for giving parents choices but that’s an argument I disagree with). It will all get lumped together, of course, yet this really isn’t about choice, it’s a culture warrior story and a hypocrisy / human story. There might also be some lessons about celebrity culture in education.

Ed media is falling down again. I was in the mountains of Colorado last week and heard about this. It’s been days and still crickets from mainline ed publications. A correspondent for the Texas Observer is following on Twitter. This may not be a story you want to touch, but it is a story. At this point enough for a brief mention this is happening even if not a full story. This is an influential person with a big platform. And, upstream, why did no one vet this guy, this could not have been totally unknown?

If you want to get Eduwonk.com in your inbox when it’s published you can sign up for free here.

Don’t miss this new package on the impact of enrollment on school finance from Bellwether, just released. 

On Monday I wrote about why Freddie deBoer is wrong about NCLB’s policy specifics, why that matters, and why you should read him anyway. 

Bonus recommendation: Read Dan Meyer on AI.

Today, I am re-upping a 2020 post and 2021 post that Mike Goldstein cited on LinkedIn, Dale Chu did on Twitter, and a few other people have mentioned to me with varying degrees of bemusement or despair. 

It’s related to this new work from Matthew Kraft that is getting a lot of attention. But I’m sharing for a different reason (though…the hacks who pushed back at the time for funding reasons…be better). There is this idea out there, it’s pervasive, that nothing works. Some people think that’s because we can’t expect a lot of kids to do well. Others because they think the system is hopelessly structured or broken. That’s wrong! Decline is a choice. Mediocrity is a choice. Policy is about choices. 

The number of policies that can enable better learning conditions, among them small schools, small classes, teacher evaluation, charter schools, and now tutoring, that are discredited because people won’t tell funders hard truths, foundation staff won’t tell principals hard truths, policymakers and funders make political compromises that erode effectiveness and fidelity, or we just do things in a slapdash fashion is discouraging. We should learn from rather than repeat that. 

(Related, and this is why Kraft’s work here is valuable, we should be evaluating actual initiatives, not funding streams.)

Anyhow, from October 2020:

Tutoring!

If you invest in the silver bullet market there is a buy opportunity coming in tutoring.  Not just any tutoring, high-dosage tutoring. The word itself sounds exciting – high-dosage!

It’s hard to miss a convergence around the idea that high-dosage tutoring is “the thing.” The research does favor it, Buzzy Hettleman lays out a good case here. (And the rich do it, which in 2020 makes it at once desirable and very bad).

Yet here is how these things tend to go: New idea – or not new but reintroduced idea – widely implemented through a funding and think piece gold rush. And widely implemented in uneven ways with little fidelity to the research because of the haste and good intentions coupled with lack of capacity around the field.

End result, good idea gets discredited because, on average, it shows little if any impact. You see this around the ed tech sector, class size, teacher evaluations, some reading initiatives, charter schools, teacher evaluation, are just some of the examples.

What all those ideas have in common with tutoring is a lot of promise. That’s all the more reason to be intentional, focus on equity, and not, to mix one more metaphor, spread everything around like peanut butter.

From March 2021:

For Tutoring The Best Of Times, And The Pretty Good Of Times, Too, But Some Risk…

If I put on my hat as someone who is concerned about the way the Covid school disruption, and Covid more generally, has disproportionally affected some students and communities then I see all the attention to tutoring pretty clearly one way: It’s an important remedy to help kids who need help, right now.

If I put on a different hat, as someone who wants to see good interventions, like tutoring, deployed as part of a more seamless and customized web of supports for kids, not just now but moving forward, then it’s different. In this case I see all the attention to tutoring and high-dosage tutoring as a mixed blessing.

Why? Hardly anyone doubts the efficacy of well-designed tutoring initiatives. Here’s a just released today study on that point (more from The 74 here). Rather, the issue is what happens if there is a gold rush or an effort to scale these programs rapidly or just do tutoring everywhere. When that happens in our sector, traditionally, a few things follow. First, fidelity to what makes something effective goes out the window. That’s obviously not a reason not to pursue an intervention that can help. It is, though, a reason to be intentional in crafting policy and rigorous about practice.

That’s because, second, usually the evaluations come back later and find no effect. This is because evaluating broad funding streams rarely turns up significant effects, we’re bad at thinking about differences in differences, and most fundamentally when you spread everything around you don’t get focus or efficacy. We saw this most recently on school turnarounds, where the overall results, and general discrediting of the idea, obscured some pretty important nuance about what worked and didn’t. Also small schools, a host of things around ELL and dual language, various curricular reforms, the list is long.

The so what? If you’re a tutoring advocate you should be excited, concerned, and probably most of all aware right now.

Recent, and not so recent, tutoring content: My caution on this, Goldstein Going Wild about tutoring, a Samuel Freedman tutoring story from back in the day, Slavin on tutoring risks and solutions, here comes the great Susanna Loeb!

If you want to get Eduwonk.com in your inbox when it’s published you can sign up for free here.

ICYMI – Some colleagues and I, in partnership with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, put out a paper on the business role in education reform. Business can provide some useful guardrails against the more extreme positions on both sides of the education debate. We need them back in the game. 

Tom Kane, Dan Goldhaber, and I talked pandemic recovery on LinkedIn. Was all that federal money wasted? No. Was it as high leverage as it might have been? Also no. 

Also if you missed the last WonkyFolk, it’s here. 

Today I want to do a short post that basically suggests you to check out a longer one by Freddie deBoer. Regular readers know I consider him one of the sharpest reform critics out there. Maybe help him out and subscribe to his blog? I did not agree with everything in his Cult of Smart, but it’s must-reading if you operate in this sector in any kind of consequential role in the sense that, to paraphrase Mill, if you only know half an argument you don’t know it at all. His Substack is the same way and you might find yourself agreeing and disagreeing in equal measure. 

DeBoer gets into the fraught topic of genetics and intelligence. It’s one of those issues where the received wisdom (on all “sides”) and what people actually working on the question talk about is very different. I agree with deBoer that an inclusive, meaningful, and kind economy and society has to provide opportunities for people who don’t have a specific kind of intelligence or go to a subset of colleges and universities. And I agree that material security is a predicate to freedom. 

I disagree, though, about what we can and should expect from our education system in these regards. That’s why I come to work each day. And today’s post is an illustration of why. DeBoer writes,

As I put it exactly three years ago, you can define the problem with blank slate thinking in four words: No Child Left Behind. The most radical and destructive piece of educational policy in our country’s history, passed with remarkably broad bipartisan report, could only have been conceived of by those who believed that students have no intrinsic tendency towards a given performance level. And the result was disastrous – there was an immense waste of resources associated with NCLB, students and teachers and schools were suddenly forced to undertake inefficient and unnecessary census testing, and teacher tenure and unions were attacked. All because of a cheery and casually destructive insistence that every child was in possession of the same educational potential.

This is a strawman. It’s similar to the mischaracterization of NCLB in Ibram X. Kendi’s popular Stamped and a common one. There are plenty of reasons to be critical of NCLB, I welcome that debate, like most debates, because that’s how progress happens. But let’s try to be on point. 

In this case, it’s important to remember that NCLB said states had to get kids to proficient on their own state tests. Both those features matter – their own tests, their own definitions of proficiency. It’s not widely understood just how minimal many of those proficiency levels are because of all the mischief in how states set cut scores (what it means to be at various performance levels) on those tests and the lack of transparency there. Forget alignment with NAEP proficiency, where there is serious disagreement about the quality of that specific performance level, there is a gap in many states between NAEP “basic” and “below basic” and what states report as passing and proficient. Figures as politically diverse as Arne Duncan and Glenn Youngkin have called this an “honesty gap.”

The argument for NCLB’s approach was not that all students would perform at a high level but rather that all (with some obvious exceptions) would at a minimal level. And that level will vary by state so you have to be specific there, too. This looks different in say Tennessee and Virginia. You can certainly disagree with that theory of action, but that’s the actual policy to debate and that we should debate. Should we expect schools to get almost all kids to a minimal level of proficiency or not?

(Also deBoer is correct that you don’t have to do census testing for accountability at a school level but the problem is parents want to know where their own kids are at a point in time. Many teachers do, too. So do school district C-suites. It’s one of those things most everyone is for until they realize what it means in practice and are then like, what what?” And it’s why there are so many misaligned tests out there today in many places.)

In any event, his post today is worth checking out on the broader issues here. 

If you want to get Eduwonk.com in your inbox when it’s published you can sign up for free here.

ICYMI – a lot of new content Wednesday including a look at the new study on teacher strikes, philanthropy, and policy change.

Jed Wallace and I want freedom, too (from dysfunction and lame education policies and for parents to choose schools…)

Jed Wallace and I have a WonkyFolk out today. Looks at the D and R conventions, education implications (that part is short), and what might be next. Plus, Jed talks about Milliken v. Bradley, an anniversary that passes with a lot less attention than Brown but is also quite important. I talk about how the off-the-rails Kamala Harris – Drew Barrymore “Momala” moment obscured a really interesting and significant moment and discussion with education and family implications.

Transcript and show notes here. Listen below or wherever you get podcasts:

YouTube if you’re a watcher:

Did federal Covid dollars matter?

It seems like you run into two relatively prevalent views about learning loss from pandemic policies. One is the idea that it’s mostly cooked up by politicians, designed to make schools look bad, or overstated in order to re-litigate pandemic-era decisions.

The second, said more quietly, is that the learning loss is so substantial it’s sort of a lost cause to try to address it.

These are both wrong. Learning loss is a big deal – especially for students already behind pre-pandemic. The average loss is a big deal, the more substantial impact is catastrophic. But, with targeted high quality interventions it can be addressed. Just as impact varied across districts, so does recovery. That’s important!

It’s also one of the things Dan Goldhaber, Tom Kane, and I discussed yesterday while talking about Covid relief dollars on LinkedIn Live. Tom and some colleagues have an analysis here and Dan and some colleagues here. Times account on both here. The Republicans say the money did nothing. The Democrats say the opposite. Both those claims are false according to the evidence. It did matter though not like it might have, and there are some lessons for how it might have mattered more that matter going forward. We get into all of that, learning loss, and what might be next.

As we note for transparency, the convo is a hive of personal and professional overlaps, Dan and I collaborate on projects, I’m on Tom’s advisory board for CEPR, friends etc…

End of summer Fish Porn

I am really behind on posting fish pictures. Here are a few good ones that have come in to land the summer:

Gemma Lenowitz of Samvid Ventures with a trout on the Salmon River:

Here’s Bellwether’s own Kate Neifeld with one on Montana’s Gallatin River, an amazing resource where parts of River Runs Through It were filmed:

Here’s Kevin Kosar, the mayor of Fish Porn, with a longnose gar from the Potomac River (we did this once before):

New reader? Wondering what this is all about? Check out this unique archive of hundreds of pictures of education types with fish. Send me yours!

If you want to get Eduwonk.com in your inbox when it’s published you can sign up for free here.

Slow posting over the summer, I was in Maine, Massachusetts, Delaware, and elsewhere with my girls, squeezing all the time out of summer I possibly could. Caught a fantastic Springsteen show in Pittsburgh. They’re off to college, which is almost impossible to believe. It seems like this was just a few months ago. So, got a new dog.

Also rode the PMC in August, riding again in September, and still raising for Dana-Farber Cancer Institute through the end of September. Closer by the mile to a world where cancers are not what they are today. Thanks to all my fantastic and generous sponsors – especially those I was able to see along the route.

More regular posting – about education not my travelogue and charitable efforts – coming up as well as a lot of fish porn! For today:

On Thursday, this week, Tom Kane, Dan Goldhaber, and I are going to talk about Covid recovery – and specifically Covid recovery dollars. Great chance or you to engage with two of the leading researchers on these questions.

Bellwether and the U.S. Chamber have a new paper out today highlighting why business leaders are essential to educational improvement efforts: they help keep policy focused and on the rails. People can disagree about what caused what, but the retreat of business leaders from an education sector that has become toxic doesn’t help anyone who wants to refocus attention on student needs and what works. The political right wants competitiveness but doesn’t want to talk about equity as part of that strategy (which, in fairness, now is a term with a hundred definitions, but I mean the old fashioned way the sector thought about equity pre-awokening) and the left wants to “dismantle” structural barriers to opportunity but won’t talk about school choice or reform of school districts. Business can help bring some seriousness and focus to the conversation.

Earlier this month I asked a bunch of Minnesotans about Tim Walz, here’s what they had to say (and in some cases not say).

I’m getting asked by clients and peers what to think about Walz, or Harris for that matter, on education policy? Seems like the same as Biden. They’re pretty normal politicians. They will proceed accordingly and so should those who want to see actual school reform. Context and conditions matter. Change those. If you don’t believe me consider that in her acceptance speech Kamala Harris said multiple things that would have gotten you fired at a lot of education non-profits not long ago. And the reaction to that? Cheers. Fall in love with the change you want to see in the world, not the politics. The politics are ephemeral, the change matters.

As for Vance, I actually thought his book was OK, up until the last chapter, which felt rushed and slapped together. His education agenda, though, seems likely to be self-serving and opportunistic.

I recently sat down with Julia Freeland-Fisher to talk about cell phones in schools, you can watch/listen here if you missed it. Most people agree there is a problem, but what actual policy should be is a lot more complicated.

We have some exciting and forward looking news at Bellwether, Rebecca Goldberg will become managing partner later this fall. Learn more here.

What are you for?

I’m generally optimistic that we’re going to see another round of innovative education policymaking and dynamism around schools. There is a lot of energy out there and you can see some of the telltale signs of a shift from trough to wave. Still, I’m struck how often I talk to people who are very clear about what they’re against – conservatives, the teachers unions, choice, wokeism – or what they want to “abolish,” say school districts or “whiteness,” but are not especially clear or articulate about what it is they are *for*. What it is they are working toward.

This seems like a problem in a sector focused on human development and flourishing! We don’t need a unified vision about the ends of education, for some people its community, for others individual or shared prosperity or basic economic security. And sure, some things might need to be changed or even abolished to achieve those visions. Yet that’s a method, not the end game. The end game has to be a positive vision both to be effective for young people substantively and also to get traction politically.

Abolishing the teachers unions is an incomplete vision for a robust public education system. Just reflexively being against conservatives doesn’t move the needle for young people – and sometimes people you disagree with politically are right. Telling kids math, objectivity, or focusing on the right answer are racist is both absurd and seems hard to square with creating personal or collective opportunity and prosperity. These are negative not positive themes.

For me, I believe education and human development is about a life of choices and agency. That’s good for individuals and I believe for all of us collectively. I’m less hung up on *what* specifically those choices are than whether people are empowered and able to make decisions for themselves. I think that creates individual and shared prosperity

Anyway, the next time someone says, we need to get rid of school districts or teachers unions, or that we need to abolish this or that, ask how, why, and toward what end? Perhaps we do, but why?

Mixed Methods?

A point that Matt Pasternak makes here, and I think is important, is that we need a lot more boldness from philanthropy. His whole post is well worth reading.

I think the big education philanthropies should do what all entrepreneurs do: take risks and then de-risk those risks by following the scientific method.

Something that is odd to me is the disconnect between how people made their fortunes and then how they choose to deploy them philanthropically. I don’t mean in the Balzac behind ‘every great fortune there is a great crime’ sense. That’s clever but not always true and many of today’s funders made their money with boldness and smarts. I mean more in terms of willingness to be disruptive, make enemies, solve political problems and so forth. In practice, the teachers unions operate more like ruthless capitalists in pursuit of their political goals than the formerly ruthless capitalists do in pursuit of their philanthropic ones.

I disagree, however, with the ‘we’ve accomplished nothing’ rhetoric. On the contrary, in the context of U.S. social policy things were moving in a good direction on education until a one-two punch of throwing in the towel on the politics and then the pandemic. And while I have my disagreements with fashionable philanthropic strategy (see here, here, and here for instance) grantmakers have played an essential role in that progress.

Stuff Is Happening

Speaking of things hidden in plain sight, everyone says nothing much is happening in education. And that’s true in terms of federal policy, which is in an eight year drought. That would probably be less true if more people were willing to actually put their name on what they think rather than whisper it to Tim Daly. Chad Aldeman is a notable exception here. Again, Harris, like Biden, is a centrist in the sense that she’ll tack to the median position. That’s politics. You don’t like it? OK, change the politics.

Meanwhile, in the states a surprising amount of policy is happening. And, oddly, it’s happening on reading instruction, school choice, and finance. In some cases it’s bipartisan. Those are three issues long considered close to intractable.

Bellwether supports a lot of state finance work, led by Jenn Schiess, more on that here.

Teacher Strikes Are Happening

In a new NBER paper Melissa Arnold Lyon, Mathew Kraft, and Mathew Steinberg take a look at teacher strikes: do they make a difference? It’s an interesting analysis but I think it misses what is arguably the crux question here. The study looks at whether places where there are strikes see appreciable differences in measurable dimensions like teacher pay and most importantly student achievement. Yet the strike is the actual act of walking off the job. So the proper analytic baseline for this question at least insofar as teacher compensation and other benefits are concerned is not conditions before a strike and then after. Rather, it’s what was the district’s final offer before the strike compared to the final agreement afterwards. That’s the delta. I haven’t looked at all of them, but in many recent strikes the final offer is pretty similar to the final deal raising the question of whether the strike was even necessary. I have a story about the 2012 Chicago strike I will tell sometime that gets at this. After the recent Portland strike, for instance, the union’s chief negotiator quit because he said the strike was just a performative waste of time for students and did nothing to advance the deal already on the table.

In fairness, the authors didn’t have that data though AI can give you a quick and dirty look based on open source material like media accounts. This doesn’t mean strikes don’t matter, it’s plausible they do, but it raises the question of whether it’s the threat of a strike and actions ahead of time or the strike itself that really makes the difference. You can argue it’s a difference without a distinction because the threat of a strike has to be credible. But it’s a difference that matters to everyone whose lives are upended by these actions. Measuring threat is more challenging of course, but that seems likely to be the dynamic that is pushing local decision makers.

A second question I’m interested in is what happened pre-and post-Janus? The database the author’s built starts in 2007. Has there been a change in the post-Janus environment? That’s an important question to understand. The authors have that data and told me they plan to look at that question.

Big Blur

Ed Surge reports on the rising percentage of community college students who are still high school students. This creates some resource tension with school districts but is undoubtable in the best interest of students who benefit from more choices and options and potentially a jump start on college to set them up for a three-year college experience as PPI analyst and Johns Hopkins dean Paul Weinstein has advocated for.

What I’m Reading

I try to read a shipwreck book every summer. It’s an admittedly odd tradition. The summer it was The Wager, by David Grann (Killers of the Flower Moon). Recommend. It’s a wild story of trials at sea, actual trials on land, betrayal, exploration, and the foolishness of empire.

This interview with new NAPCS CEO Starlee Coleman is worth checking out. She’s thinking about musical chairs.

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Lions, tigers, and Project 2025!

A lot of people seem pretty freaked out about Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s effort to lay out an agenda for a second Trump term. And also, it should be noted, seed their ideas into the policy conversation, which is a purpose of these ideas docs as well. Heritage updates their manifesto every few years, this is not some new whole cloth exercise despite what you may have heard. (In a sign of how stagnant education policymaking has been the last eight years, despite the pandemic, here’s Bellwether’s 2016 ideas book, many are still topical).

One way to think about Project 2025 as far as education (I have not read all of it across the range of issues but, not surprisingly, plenty in there I don’t like based on what I have read) is that it’s extraordinary, a unique threat. The other is that it’s mostly just more of the same, often longtime, conservative wish list updated with some 2024 culture war themes.

Every time someone comes along and says they’re going to “abolish” the Department of Education it’s treated as a new and unique moment. It’s not. Trump proposing it, as president, would not even be new.

Rotherham: 3 Things to Consider About Trump’s Risky, but Not Necessarily Bad, Idea to Merge the Education & Labor Departments

Yet despite largely being more of the same Project 2025 is nonetheless important because elements of it could happen, especially with J.D. Vance on the scene. Despite his recent stumbles, Vance will care about policy. That’s not something Trump can be credibly accused of. Trump also has been generally indifferent on education policy. Vance likes these populist social issues. He’ll want to leave a mark on policy. Say what you want about Project 2025, it is chock full of policy ideas.

That’s where it gets interesting. Though not getting so much attention, for obvious reasons, Trump is distancing himself from Project 2025. Of course, we’re talking about Donald Trump, so this could be just what he instinctively thinks he needs to do in the moment and he’ll tack a new direction when it suits him. Or it could be a hide the ball play. But right now, rhetorically, the Democrats and the former President are largely in agreement on Project 2025. He’s called it “abysmal” and “seriously extreme.” Democrats would not disagree. At last, unity.

So here’s why and how Project 2025 matters. It’s the maximalist position right now. That’s worth paying attention to because those markers matter to the debate. Our politics are fluid and evolving and so sometimes outlier positions end up on the agenda. The Project 2025 people are not doing some Overton Window exercise. This is what they want and what they will work for.

It also matters because should Trump win in November he’ll have to staff a government. Ordinarily that’s a logistical problem but there are plenty of people. Trump’s situation is somewhat unique and different. We’ve never had a former president run for a second term with most of his senior Senate confirmed officials and many former aides saying they would not work again for that president and that they don’t even think he should be president. Even with the obvious caveat that in politics winning forgives a lot, Trump has a staffing problem.

So while everyone is saying lots of Trump people are attached to Project 2025 doing the former president’s bidding, the reality is probably the inverse. His administration will inevitably end up doing some of their bidding precisely because they’ll be buried in the various agencies where the day to day minutiae of policy happens. Trump may have consolidated power among Republicans on the big picture items – the gap between the RNC platform and Project 2025 is noteworthy on some hot-button issues. Still, incoherence remains. And that incoherence will be resolved in different ways on different issues. Personnel is policy. This is going to be a source of personnel. Control of Congress will obviously matter a great deal as well in terms of how much Project 2025 is a messaging document versus a policy document.

As far as the Department of Education is concerned the Project 2025 folks seem to realize that an outright straight-up abolition is unpopular and impractical so they’re talking a sort of Shawshank Redemption approach to it. Smuggle the department’s work out piece by piece into other agencies. The policy ideas here are more detailed than we’ve seen in the past.

This does begin to answer the serious follow-up question to cries for abolition, which is, ‘ok, if you get rid of the Department, what’s the plan for administering all the funds, programs, and regulatory roles that the agency oversees?’ That’s where big idea politics meets program administration.

I’m not a fan of many of the Project 2025 proposals for education but it’s not just a straight up wave your hand and abolish the Department of Education document, and every idea is not beyond repair. It has ideas for how to reform or move some of the programs. We could do worse than debate those from an efficacy point of view because pretty much everyone agrees there is some room for improvement. I’m not optimistic we’ll get that conversation, I didn’t just fall out of a coconut tree. Some of the rhetoric in the document harkens back to when Republicans bullied civil servants at the Department of Education.

Again, keep an eye on J.D. Vance with all of this. He is going to want to do policy, and has to in order to set himself up for 2028. He’s caught lightning in a bottle but a disastrous second Trump term would upend that. Even a political shape shifter like Vance will have to make some commitments, this seems like a likely place.

Politically, Vance will help the ticket with young men, across demographic groups. In 2016, 51% of young men identified as Democrats, in 2023 that was 39%. He’ll also help in the rust belt, where the Trump campaign, too, seems to think this race will be won. But he’ll hurt among women – especially if he can’t get in front of his rhetoric – and that’s a group that’s been key to Trump’s success. Project 2025 is a liability there as well, including on education. There is a reason suburban Democratic door knockers are wearing buttons that say, “Google Project 2025.”

Trump had plenty of options to expand his map but went with Vance instead. It’s a Clinton picking Gore style move: define and focus the message. That was a better choice when the opponent was Biden. Now, facing Kamala Harris, the Trump team has to wish they had broadened the map. It’s a race with some underlying dynamics that matter a lot more than Project 2025.

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Last week my colleagues Alex Spurrier and Marisa Mission launched the first edition of a new Bellwether newsletter focused on AI. I’m crossposting the first one in its entirety and hope you will subscribe to get future ones by signing up here. – AR

June 2024

ISSUE #1
By Alex Spurrier and Marisa Mission

We’re sharing the first issue of this newsletter with all our subscribers, but if you want to receive future updates on the latest AI news, be sure to subscribe here.

The education sector is no stranger to technological fads and shifts. Flipped classrooms, Massively Open Online Courses, 1:1 device programs, and other tech-forward approaches are variations on the same tune: over-hyped introduction, muddled and inconsistent implementation, and results that fall well short of their initial, transformative promise. 

The introduction of ChatGPT nearly two years ago felt like a renewal of this all-too-familiar cycle. But there’s good reason to believe the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in education will present a far different challenge to educators and policymakers, with far more impact than prior ed tech offerings. Within two months, ChatGPT reached 100 million users, making it the fastest-growing consumer app in history. New AI tools – including ChatGPT, Claude, and others – are already used formally and unofficially in schools by students and educators. Meanwhile, district, state, and federal policymakers have struggled to catch up and regulate a fast-moving environment. 

Bellwether’s Leading Indicator: AI in Education newsletter helps folks working in the education sector, from teachers and administrators to policymakers and funders, stay current with the latest AI developments and understand what this fast-moving technology means for sector-wide policy and practice. We’ll cover education-specific AI patterns before they become trends by aggregating links worth clicking and providing expert analysis that separates signal from noise. We’re excited for you to join us on this trip. 

Get More AI News from Bellwether

Education Evolution: AI and Learning

Newark is one of many school systems across the country piloting and assessing the use of AI tools. In doing so, education leaders must grapple with evolving opinions from key stakeholders like teachers. Survey data from Pew and the RAND Teacher Panel last fall indicated that only 6% of teachers thought AI tools offer “more benefit than harm,” while 25% thought they offer “more harm than benefit.” The remainder thought it’s an equal mix of “benefit and harm” (32%) or were unsure (35%). Yet a new survey from the Walton Family Foundation conducted in May 2024 found that knowledge of and support for AI in education is growing quickly, with 59% of teachers feeling favorably towards chatbots. These survey results demonstrate that educators’ opinions of AI are a nuanced blend of skepticism, optimism, and curiosity. If school systems are serious about integrating AI tools into classrooms, there’s work to be done to get educators on board. 

 The Realm of Possibility

• Map the current landscape of AI in education organized by potential use cases.
   
• Are You Ready for It? Amazon announces new Gen AI “maturity readiness assessment”.
   
• “Democratizing EdTech innovation” with AI prompts.
   
• Universities are building their own GPTs amid privacy and intellectual property concerns.

 Teacher’s (AI)de

• Three ways teachers can use AI in their classrooms via Transcend.
   
• Microsoft and Khan Academy partner to offer all U.S. educators an AI-powered teacher’s assistant, for free.
   
• Setting the curve: Researchers find that ChatGPT is “roughly speaking, probably as good as an average busy teacher” when it comes to grading essays.

 Cautionary Tales

• IBM tried for years to turn supercomputer Watson into a personalized tutor, and failed.
   
• “Robocops” normalize room scans and eye detection during K-12 online exams.
   
• Could students get “lost in the algorithm” of Nevada’s funding formula?
   
• AI-created deepfake of a principal’s voice leads to the arrest of a high school athletic director in Maryland.

 Hello, Ed: Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Launches AI Tool

• “Ed” is a personal assistant and “one-stop shop” for students and families.
   
• Two months post-launch: What exactly does “Ed” do?
   
• Lessons for EdTech from LAUSD’s AI Experiment.

The Latest: AI Sector Updates

OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Apple each held recent keynotes and product announcements that unveiled new and more powerful ways to integrate AI into everyday life. The Sal Khan-led demonstration of ChatGPT–4o tutoring his son is one example of how AI products built for a general audience can have education-specific applications. It’s impressive, especially given the progress of ChatGPT in less than two years. But it also has important limitations in an education context – see Dan Meyer and Ben Riley for more on the limits of this generation of Large Language Models (LLMs). 

 Updates From Some of the Largest AI Companies

• OpenAI’s rollout, announcement, and demo of GPT-4o on X.
   
• Google launches updates to Gemini as well as an education-focused model, LearnLM.
   
• Microsoft unveils Copilot+ PCs, purpose-built to work with on-device and cloud-based AI models.
   
• Apple announces Apple Intelligence, which will use a combination of on-device and cloud-based LLMs to provide personalized AI experiences while balancing privacy considerations.

 Searching With Gen AI: Promising Tech or Highway to Hallucinations?

• Google’s “Supercharged Search” announcement is one of several efforts by tech companies to integrate new AI tools into search engines. 
   
• However, Google has also pulled back on using “AI Overview” after questionable results, including suggestions to eat one small rock per day and add non-toxic glue to cheese pizza … ?
   
• Confusing answers aren’t the only risks of AI-powered search; SEO and homegrown web publishers are worried about how the change threatens their livelihoods.

 How Much Can AI Really Do?

• Stanford University’s 2024 Artificial Intelligence Index Report highlights trends in AI’s progress.
   
• Can AI really “beat” humans at basic tasks? Not really….
   
• Meta’s AI chief is skeptical that LLMs will reach human-level intelligence. 
   
• More effective than casual Fridays? Companies hope AI can boost productivity.

Pioneering Policy: AI Governance, Regulation, Guidance, and More

State policymakers are offering guidance for schools regarding the use of AI, but efforts are unfolding slowly. Absent leadership from state education agencies, districts are establishing policies and guidance on their own or in collaboration with peers. Meanwhile, the patchwork of state policies that govern what children can (and can’t) do is often inconsistent – as a recent Bellwether analysis highlights. Lawmakers considering policies related to children and AI should center the consequences both for children and bodies tasked with enforcing those policies, like schools.

 Road Work Ahead: New State and District Policies

• Ohio’s Lt. Gov. Jon Husted announces AI education toolkit for K-12 educators.
   
• Michigan coalition releases sample guidelines for teachers and administrators.
   
• Nevada Department of Education solicits input from community on its emergent AI policy.
   
• University of Southern California professors warn that California’s state education agency isn’t moving fast enough.

 The Next Generation: Centering Children in AI Policies

• The National Center for Youth Law issues an urgent call for child-centered AI policies.
• Back in 2022: The World Economic Forum published a toolkit for companies developing trustworthy AI.
• Back in 2021: UNICEF’s Project AI for Children included policy guidance, toolkits, and case studies.

We’re sharing the first issue of this newsletter with all our subscribers, but if you want to receive future updates on the latest AI news, be sure to subscribe here

ICYMI

David Winston and I discuss the upcoming election in a Bellwether Linkedin Live you can watch via this link. Among other professional work David is on the CBS decision desk for election night, so it’s an opportunity to hear how a professional thinks about the upcoming election. President Biden has his work cut out for him, especially on the economy, but the election is far from settled.

Earlier this week I wrote about an overlooked education aspect of the Harrison Butker discourse: The ‘Sir, this is a Wendy’s’ problem:

It seems almost certain that on one of the most special days in their life Butker made someone feel small, bad, or excluded when there was just no reason to do so and he could have made his broader points absent that. I’m not arguing for safetyism, thought and word policing, or any of the other absurdities infecting public discourse. I’m just pleading for manners and decency. For time and place.

My Bellwether colleagues Julie Squire, Marisa Mission, and Paul Beach look at the role of navigators in a high choice environment.

In this home we believe science is real…

Caitlin Clark discourse has been something, huh? It’s hard to miss the gap between actual experts and then the politicians and folks on Twitter/X and armchair types when it comes to discussion of why Clark won’t be on the Olympic roster. The experts talk about differences with the international game, experience, defensive prowess, and physicality. From others it’s talk about her media appeal, excitement, or role in the culture war.

This is a common thing with sports, everyone has an opinion but the experts see almost an entirely different game than the one casual fans watch. I remember watching an MLB baseball game once on TV at a bar with the wife of someone who was playing. There was a guy there vocal and full of opinions about all the mistakes that the manager was making in how he was using the bullpen. After a bit she calmly explained, in an almost My Cousin Vinny-style, all the dynamics this person was missing and why the manager was playing his hand OK.

My own ‘welcome to the NFL’ introduction to this was a few years ago doing some work with Brendan Daly, then a coach for the NFL Rams. The project was about what teaching coaching can learn from NFL coaching, but what was quickly clear to me talking with him was how little even people who consider themselves serious fans really understand about the subtleties of the NFL game – especially the action away from the ball on each play.

This is true in most domains. A gap between how things actually work and how most observers think they work. It’s why it’s useful to seek out professionals. It’s why you probably shouldn’t bet a lot on sports unless you’re a professional gambler.

All this is why I recommend this new podcast from Alex Grodd on transgender medicine. Alex has Dr. Erica Anderson and Dr. Jack Drescher, two specialists who don’t entirely agree, on his Disagreement podcast to discuss the state of evidence and practice. But what they really disagree with is the popular discourse around the issue – on the political right and the political left. That has education implications.

The gap between how these two talk about these issues and what you hear in the public debate, and from leaders in our sector, is startling. For starters they are dismissive of the idea that that schools should socially transition kids absent their parent’s involvement and consent – something of an article of faith with a lot of people in our sector and credulously repeated by journalists. They parse what are complicated medical questions that have been boiled down to slogans by activists on both sides of this issue and also too often accepted uncritically.

Anderson’s work has been especially valuable to me as I’ve tried to learn about this issue and its policy implications and she’s personally been quite brave, empirical, and anti-tribal in how she’s approached these questions. Both she and Drescher are thoughtful and measured.

And where kids are involved is that, rather than activist capture, political sloganeering, and all the rest too much to ask for?

Friday Fish

Steve Rees, an education maven whose photographic work has appeared in various Grateful Dead and Bill Graham retrospectives, wrote a must-read review of Street Data, one of the most popular PD books in education right now.

He also knows his way around a trout stream. Here’s a fish his son caught in the Catskills on a trip the two of them took recently:

Yes. Here is a unique archive of hundreds of pictures of education types with fish they’ve caught. Send me yours!

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