NEPC - Blog Post of the Day

Diane Ravitch's Blog: Freddy DeBoer: No, American Schools Are Not Failing

elaine — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 18:43:53 +0000

Diane Ravitch's Blog: Freddy DeBoer: No, American Schools Are Not Failing

Freddy DeBoer challenges the oft-repeated claim that American schools are failing. We have heard the same lament since 1983, when the Reagan administration published a pamphlet titled “A Nation at Risk.” That publication, the work of the National Commission on Educational Excellence, proclaimed that America’s schools, once the envy of the world, were caught in “a rising tide of mediocrity.” The report gathered every possible negative statistic about public schools and turned them into a jeremiad.

Governors formed task forces and agreed that what the nation needed most was lots more testing, which eventually turned schools into a cash cow for the testing industry. Worse, it made test scores the goal of education, not a measure.

George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law, passed in January 2002, made the pursuit of higher test scores a federal mandate, accompanied by harsh and punitive measures for schools that were unable to produce the ever higher test scores.

NCLB was followed by Obama’s equally punitive Race to the Top in 2010. Not only were schools targeted for not raising test scores, but individual teachers were singled out and punished. Schools were closed, teachers were fired, charter schools became a new panacea–which failed as panaceas tend to do.

The Bush brothers–President George W. and Florida Governor Jeb–claimed that accountability was the ultimate key to success.

But in the absence of dramatic test score gains, Jeb and other Republicans decided that vouchers were the ultimate panacea: no accountability, just choose any school you want, be it religious, private, online, or homeschooling. Quality no longer mattered. Accountability no longer mattered (except for the majority of students who continued to enroll in public schools and continued to take the standardized tests). Just choice.

Go back to the beginning: that infamous report called “A Nation at Risk.” One of the staff members who wrote the report was a young man named James Harvey. In 2023, on the 40th anniversary of the release of that influential report, James Harvey wrote an article declaring that the conclusions of the report were vastly overstated. He wrote an article in The Washington Post about “how we cooked the books.”

Freddy DeBoer probably didn’t read James Harvey’s brilliant and disturbing article. But he writes from the same perspective. Our public schools have been the target of a huge smear job. The smear was a fake. It was used to promote charter schools and vouchers. Many of our public schools are excellent. Some are in desperate need of desperate measures, like reduced class sizes, wraparound services for students and families. They are not worse than they used to be. Ninety percent of our population attended public schools. Their graduates created the most powerful nation in the world. Can we do better? Of course, especially for children with the greatest needs. Are public schools failing? No.

This is what DeBoer thinks:

The belief that American public schools are an international embarrassment, sites of endless failure, is one of the few things our polarized political system seems to agree on. After all, the transition from George W. Bush’s presidential education policy to that of Barack Obama was one of remarkable continuity, based on a shared premise: Our schools were in a broad state of emergency. Today, politicians of both parties still tell that story, as do op-ed pages and nonprofit organizations and bipartisan cable panels. The notion has hardened into an axiom, a claim so familiar that the people making it no longer feel obligated to back it up with evidence. But we don’t have to buy this narrative, and we shouldn’t — because the evidence tells us that the narrative just isn’t true.

The best way to consider a country’s educational performance is in relation to the performance of international peers, and the most authoritative international benchmark is the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) exam, which tests 15-year-olds across 81 education systems. In the most recent results, from 2022, American students tested better in reading than 68 of the 80 other systems and well above the international average. In science, they bested 56 of 80. Math is our weakest subject, but even there we outscore 43 systems and tie with a dozen more, meaning that on our worst day we still do better than more than half the developed world. Our top performers look particularly good on the PISA; for example, 14 percent of American teenagers scored at the highest level in reading, double the OECD average.

Some critics note that our education system is expensive and say that we should demand better results for our money. But this demand implies that there’s a straightforward relationship between per-pupil spending and test scores; decades of evidence demonstrate that there is not. And the results show that we produce many sterling students for our money.GLOBE STAFF; ROB Z/ADOBE

Indeed, the students at the top of our system aren’t merely fine; they’re the best on earth. American teams have placed in the top three at the International Mathematical Olympiad every year for a decade and won or tied for first in 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019, and 2024. In 2025, all five members of the US physics team won gold at the International Physics Olympiad, making the United States the only country to sweep gold that year. Our chemistry, biology, informatics, linguistics, and other teams collect medals year after year. These are overwhelmingly public-school kids from ordinary suburban and urban districts, outcompeting the best academic talent the world can produce. You rarely read about them because their success doesn’t fit the declinist story.

But scores are dropping, aren’t they? Yes, and that’s exactly why international context matters. The 2022 PISA results showed an unprecedented worldwide collapse, with average scores across the OECD falling roughly 10 points in reading and 15 in math. When students in Germany, Norway, and New Zealand decline in lockstep with students in Arizona and Connecticut, the cause is plainly not American teachers, unions, or curricula. (My own guess is that the smartphone is to blame, but I can’t prove it.) Even as our raw scores fell, our international rank rose in all three subjects because our peers’ scores fell further. Again, when was the last time you heard that in our media?

None of this is to deny that some American schools are in crisis. But those failures aren’t spread evenly across our system; they’re concentrated in a small number of places suffering from poverty, structural racism, and institutional decline. The United States has the highest child-poverty rate in the OECD (roughly a quarter of our children live in poverty, versus less than 10 percent in top-scoring nations like Finland and Denmark) and our socioeconomic and demographic stratification is pronounced. As such, our aggregate scores on assessments like PISA are weighed down disproportionately by disadvantaged students.

In Detroit, which sits at the bottom of every large urban US district tested, two-thirds of students were chronically absent in a recent year, speaking to a lack of stability and resources at the family level. What teachers could succeed in those conditions? Cleveland, Baltimore, districts in the impoverished rural areas of West Virginia — they all tell a similar story. The American schools that struggle the worst share no common curriculum, union contract, or pedagogy. What they share is extreme poverty, segregation, and decades of disinvestment — in local labor markets, transportation, and health care.

Imagine swapping the students of Detroit with those of wealthy Bloomfield Hills next door, where the schools have excellent performance metrics. Does anyone believe the students from Detroit would suddenly excel?

Simply shoveling money at urban schools is not the answer. In fact, poorer, higher-minority schools in the United States receive significantly more per-pupil funding than richer and whiter schools. As it stands, the teachers in the Detroit public school system are asked to achieve similar results to the ones in the Bloomfield system, despite the vast disparities in living and learning environments of the students they teach.

I’m known to be very skeptical about the influence of schools and teachers on test scores, which tend to reflect the socioeconomic conditions of groups and the variation in talent levels between individuals. But you don’t have to share my views in that regard to acknowledge that our worst-performing schools face conditions that no amount of teaching quality can overcome. And consider a fact that’s almost never reported: America’s most disadvantaged students, those in the bottom international decile in socioeconomic status, rank sixth out of 64 comparable nations in math. In other words, even in the midst of all that poverty and dysfunction, our poorest kids outperform almost all of the world’s other poorest kids. The problem is not that our schools fail poor children at an unusual rate. It is that some of our communities are deprived to a scandalous degree.

In sum, our median student does just fine, our best students are the envy of the world, but our worst-performing students drag down our averages in a way that makes our overall performance look much worse than it is — and those extreme negative outliers are almost universally found in communities with intense socioeconomic challenges.

This resolves a puzzle that has baffled pollsters for 40 years. American parents consistently rate the nation’s schools quite poorly while giving their own children’s schools high marks. Average grades for the American school system writ large typically fall in the C or D range, but more than three-quarters of parents typically give their own kids’ schools an A or B. Often this is regarded as a kind of cognitive bias, of irrationality on the part of those parents; surely, they must be viewing their own schools with rose-colored glasses, or so the conventional wisdom has long held. In fact, that attitude makes perfect sense when you reflect on the quantitative reality I’ve described: Most American K-12 schools and students really are doing quite well, which is reflected in the high marks parents give to their own local schools, but like all of us, parents have heard the relentless doomsaying about the country’s schools. Parents judge their own schools from direct experience and the national system from what they see on television. That is, on the question they actually know something about, about which they have the best evidence, they’re quite positive, and they have every reason to be.

The myth of universal failure didn’t come out of nowhere, and for the record I don’t think it was born entirely in bad faith. Some of the people who spread it were no doubt animated by a real and decent impulse to improve the lives of American children, saw the awful conditions in our inner cities, and overextrapolated their impression of school failure. Others were likely so motivated to attack public schools for ideological reasons that they didn’t care much about misrepresenting the data. Whatever the motives, over time it became far too common for politicians, pundits, and members of the media to take data that showed a handful of distressed communities dragging down otherwise strong averages and present it as proof that American education was rotten from root to branch. An honest reading pointed toward investing in poor places and pursuing avenues for shared prosperity other than just schooling; the sensationalist reading pointed toward dismantling public schools. Many people chose the sensationalist one and repeated it until it became something “everybody knew.”

The stakes are significant. If the failures of American education really are systemwide, the response has to be wholesale reform — new national mandates and perhaps a federal takeover of local education policy; even more standardized testing; the criminalization of teacher unions; private school vouchers for all. But the reality is that our educational failure is concentrated, and it’s concentrated in predictable places, which means the remedy must be too: Serious investment for the communities where poverty has done its damage, not merely for the schools that sit inside them, along with an effort to build more pathways to middle class stability for those who are not academically motivated.

There is some evidence that such investment, for example in environmental cleanup or direct financial assistance for poorer families, can improve learning outcomes. There too, though, the evidence is contested and the effects unclear. But this investment offers obvious advantages: Even if bringing more money and development into poor communities does not close academic gaps, the direct economic advantages will endure.

These efforts are both harder and more expensive than yet another round of complaining about teachers and their unions, but they have the advantage of potentially solving real problems. If we have a moral duty to improve our schools, as the school reformers insist, then that begins with a moral duty to tell the truth.

elaine October 2, 2026

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Diane Ravitch's Blog

First Fish Chronicles: Beware the EdTech Industry Rebrand: Part 2

elaine — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 04:01:24 +0000

First Fish Chronicles: Beware the EdTech Industry Rebrand: Part 2

In Part 1 of Beware the EdTech Industry Rebrand: Extreme Makeover: EdTech Edition, we highlighted how the EdTech industry is not only aware of the growing grassroots backlash to their products, but attempting to reframe the narrative and cast themselves in a more favorable light.

We can see right through it.

Image source:u/SklounceDraxer / Via reddit.com, www.vintage.es, www.cchd.net, Stockcake

“Screenwashing”: Out, Out Damn Spot

The backlash to EdTech is not actually about “screentime” (too much vs. too little). The backlash is in response to the fact that the business model of Big Tech and EdTech companies is in direct conflict with healthy child development.

Parents and schools want advice about how to use technology with children–that’s a good thing. Problems arise, however, when that advice is given by groups who benefit from children using their product. Just like the term “greenwashing” in which a company attempts to appear “earth-friendly“ by coloring their product green or using phrases like “all natural,” the term “screenwashing” describes “the phenomenon whereby social media platforms, such as YouTube and Instagram, pretend to be more socially responsible than they actually are.”1 We are now witnessing “screenwashing” happen in the EdTech world too.

In fact, there’s a pretty predictable pattern that occurs when growing resistance forces these extreme makeovers or rebrands. As our friend Jodi Carreon of Schools Beyond Screens notes, the “screenwashing playbook” is easily identifiable:

Flatten parents’ concerns down to “screentime.”
Insist that we’re confusing or conflating consumer tech with “evidence-based, purpose-built” EdTech.
Frame grassroots solutions as extreme, “all-or-nothing” approaches or outright bans.
Point to rare or genuinely necessary uses of technology that don’t reflect the day-to-day reality of how tech is actually implemented in schools.

Remember, EdTech is just Big Tech in a sweater vest and we are confident that the lawsuits being filed against EdTech companies will reveal similar issues to those found in consumer tech companies– leaders knowingly compromising children’s safety in order to acquire data and increase engagement because the business model requires it.2

Our grassroots efforts are not anti-technology. But we know that the best preparation for a digital future is an analog childhood and an analog education. EdTech is not Tech Ed. We would love to see a return to computer labs or laptop carts and a dedicated (non-digital, non-tech-funded) technology education curriculum implemented in K-12 immediately. Children need technology education more than ever, but just like we teach teens about drugs and alcohol without giving them drugs and alcohol, so too should we teach all children about technology without giving them internet-connected 1:1 health-harming products that benefit technology companies, not children.

Why the Screenwashing?

So who is doing the screenwashing and why? As we wrote about in Part 1, ISTE3 is leading the screenwashing efforts. Their newly released “Summary of Evidence for Technology in Education: From Screentime to Screen Value” immediately proposes a new false dichotomy in the title– “screentime” vs. “screen value.”

Before we dig in, some context:

First, ISTE considers Google and Meta both proud funding sponsors and partners. That alone should stop anyone genuinely concerned about children’s use of such products from reading the rest of the document. Google and Meta are not going to partner with, let alone fund, an organization that will actively discourage use of digital products in schools. We should know that by now. But of course, ISTE does not make such recommendations.

Screenshot from ISTE’s website

Second, ISTE would like us to believe that the research is clear and that EdTech products “benefit learning when it is well-designed, well-implemented, and aligned to clear learning goals.”4

Even if we could look past their funding (we can’t), we would still have questions about this “research.” Just saying “research shows” tells us nothing about who funded and completed the research, what they studied, if the research is replicable, what the effect size is, or what we should or could interpret from this “research.” (Emily has an entire essay here about vetting EdTech research.)

Un-washing ISTE’s “research”

Because so many school districts cite ISTE’s “research” as evidence of EdTech product effectiveness, let’s look at what ISTE claims are the “four themes [that] consistently emerge across the evidence.”

Screenwash 1: “Quality matters more than quantity.”

Reality: Quality learning requires a teacher and traditional tools.

While “quality matters” might be true when talking about friendships or food, when it comes to EdTech products this is a marketing ploy. “Quality” teaching and learning requires a multisensorial world built on human relationships, something an EdTech product can never offer.

ISTE argues that quality matters more than quantity when it comes to educational technology. We assume they mean that there are better quality EdTech products out there, and those are the ones children should use. However, the scientific study they cite (Støle et al., 2020) to prove their claim that “poorly built EdTech adds unnecessary cognitive load, thus inhibiting learning and academic performance,” is a study that concludes this (bold ours):

“Our finding that students across all skill levels perform more poorly on a digital test than on paper, is an urgent call for a more nuanced perspective on implementation of digital technologies in elementary education, and a signal to policy makers, school administrators and educators that the medium matters, especially for reading comprehension.”

This study doesn’t support the claim that there are differences in quality between high and low quality EdTech products; this study supports the claim that reading on paper is superior to reading digitally.5

As the parent-led child advocacy group Child First Policy Center recently noted at the Power of Parents Summit: “Big Tech has deep pockets, but parents have deep purpose, and Big Tech will never be able to compete with that.”

Screenwash 2: “EdTech is particularly impactful for underserved students.”

Reality: EdTech is particularly harmful for underserved students.

The argument that EdTech will decrease inequities is pervasive and dangerous. Of course, technological equity in education is a complex topic. Historically, underserved students lacked access to computers and technology, and efforts were made to “close the digital divide.” But in 2026, the pendulum has swung too far. Today, underserved students spend disproportionate amounts of time on screens, which increases their exposure to harmful content, data and privacy violations, and interferes with optimal learning experiences.

As a result, new digital divides have emerged, and we will increasingly see underserved students provided with “personalized learning” via artificial intelligence,6 robot teachers, and low-quality products, while better resourced schools and communities will ensure their students have human teachers and high quality learning materials. As academic, teacher, writer, and consultant on educational technology and policy Dr. Velislava Hillman notes, a “troubling divide is emerging: mass, app-based instruction for the many, and human tutoring and intellectual exchange reserved for the elite. What is sold as the ‘democratisation’ of education may be entrenching further inequality.”

Worse, teachers and speech-language pathologists like Denise are seeing increased requirements in IEPs and 504s that provide accommodations for more technology-based “solutions” for students with diagnosed learning disabilities, but the impact of the overreliance on these tools for these students is taking a devastating toll.

Developing brains need exercise just like any other muscle in the body. But the use of EdTech products claiming to serve as “accessibility tools” in the name of personalized learning actually reduces the opportunity for children to practice and develop their skills on their own. This instead builds dependency on technology-based products and puts an algorithm in charge of evaluating and supporting a child’s learning, rather than a human teacher.7 One of big concerns is that as grassroots efforts continue to grow, districts will acquiesce and reduce EdTech for mainstream students, but double down on students whose learning needs “require” technology, as we are seeing happen in LAUSD:

Screenshot from LinkedIn, May 29, 2026

But this is concerning too, as the research that ISTE cites includes one study with a sample size of only three students diagnosed on the Autism Spectrum. The method of the study investigated those students’ performance using technology on a pre-test/post-test for a science vocabulary lesson on amoebas. The other research cited includes a meta analysis of 72 research studies, but only eighteen of the 72 studies used in the analysis are from the United States and of those, fourteen were completed over a decade ago and five occurred prior to 2010. That isn’t reliable, recent, or representative research.

We’re not the only ones noticing that orgs like ISTE are cherry-picking research and hoping that no one will really look at it. As Dr. Horvath points out in his article, The Equity Illusion of EdTech, “lower-performing students’ [scores] declined far more sharply than their high-performing peers” since the “digital inflection point” of EdTech in schools, around 2012. Other researchers have presented similar findings, noting that since the mid-2010s, the “gap between higher- and lower-performing students has consistently widened across subjects, grade levels, and demographic groups, in all of the best surveys of educational performance in the United States.”

If EdTech products are positively impactful for underserved students, as ISTE claims, wouldn’t we see these students performing better? Wouldn’t those gaps be closing, not widening, with increased access to EdTech products since 2012?

Screenwash 3: ISTE states, “Consumer technology and EdTech are not the same.”

Reality: EdTech is Big Tech, but EdTech isn’t Tech Ed.

True to the wording of Step 2 of the screenwashing playbook (“Insist that we’re confusing or conflating consumer tech with “evidence-based, purpose-built” EdTech”), we see continued effort to present a false binary when it comes to technology– good vs bad, educational vs. entertainment, “consumer tech” vs “EdTech.” As we discussed in our last essay, Instructure8 created a report to help us understand ISTE’s attempt to differentiate “consumer tech” and “EdTech.”

A glimpse at the Big Tech companies who partner with Instructure should be enough to immediately prevent us from seeing their report as independent or useful in advising schools or policymakers about EdTech issues:

Screenshot of Instructure’s corporate “partners”

Again, if we were to ignore the extremely problematic funding ties (and we can’t and we won’t), looking deeper into Instructure’s report we see another screenwashing attempt to confuse the consumer and differentiate their products as “Good Tech.” In spite of this attempted reframe, however, the report shows that only 40% of what they deem as the “top EdTech tools” they analyzed have any level of ESSA evidence and and even worse, the majority have only Tier 3 which describes research that shows “promising evidence” and Tier 4 isn’t even research - it’s a rationale!

Screenshot from Instructure’s report

Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA, is a national education law which replaced No Child Left Behind in 2015. Their “tiers” of “evidence” are (theoretically) used to “provide districts and schools with a framework for determining which programs, practices, strategies, and interventions work in which contexts and for which students.” If we assume that ESSA’s framework is rooted in guidance that focuses on what is best for children and learning, then how is it that only 2% of EdTech products show strong evidence of effectiveness? Only 2%!

It’s not like this 2% finding is coming from an organization critical of EdTech; it’s coming from a report on EdTech products written by an organization who is funded by the tech industry itself. Can you imagine if this level of ineffectiveness applied to other consumer products? Sorry, your Clorox bleach cleaner only kills 2% of bacteria, not 99%. Or, your child’s car seat meets the federal safety standard only 2% of the time? It is shocking to see these numbers and know that most school districts are still choosing to deploy hundreds of EdTech products anyway.

As if those numbers weren’t bad enough, the report also attempts another reframe by posing the question: “What can consumer technologies do to be more effective in schools?” We would find this question far more useful to answer first: “Why are consumer tech products in schools in the first place?” We know why, of course (the business model again), but if the EdTech industry can repackage the same product with a new purpose, perhaps school leaders won’t ask the second question, and life can continue as normal.

Screenwash 4: ISTE says “Teachers are doing it all wrong–they just need to learn from us how to use the products the right way!”

Reality: This is pinning the problem on teachers, when in reality it’s a product problem.

Ok, that isn’t exactly what ISTE states in their fourth theme, but it is what they imply. As we would expect from an industry who continues to shirk responsibility, teachers are a convenient scapegoat. If we blame the teacher for failing to implement a product “with fidelity” then we do not have to admit the product is terrible. Thus, their logic follows, teachers actually need more training and professional development on how to teach while using these products, which, what a surprise, conveniently requires districts to pony up even more money to these companies.

Obviously, blaming teachers is the opposite of what is true and what we believe. Of course, technology companies like OpenAI and Microsoft have complicated the solution by partnering with one of the largest teachers unions, offering the AFT millions of dollars in funding to create a National Academy of AI Instruction that will provide AI training to teachers. This “groundbreaking $23 million education initiative” will provide access to “free AI training and curriculum for all 1.8 million members of the AFT, starting with K-12 educators.” A familiar pattern here– criticize the user for failing to implement the product effectively, partner with their largest union to provide the “right” training, and come out looking like the (increasingly wealthy) problem-solver.

Don’t forget– in January of 2026, the AFT and NEA, two of the largest American teachers’ unions, signed on to a letter written by yet another tech-friendly “organization” in an attempt to preemptively counter the testimony that Emily and Dr. Horvath provided for Congress. The letter stated that the signatories saw a difference between “unsupervised, entertainment-driven technology use at home” and the “intentional, monitored, and carefully curated use of technology in schools.” In many ways, this letter marked the start of the industry-backed groups rebranding efforts. We saw through it then, and we will continue to call it out now.

An AI-generated image from Realbotix showing a likeness of their humanoid robot in a classroom setting, which was until recently proposed for use in a district in New York state, where one-third of students live below the poverty line

So what can we do?

We propose four useful actions to counter EdTech screenwashing.

Get informed. Learn to identify the four steps of the Screenwashing Playbook and call them out each time you hear one from your district leadership, skeptical parents, an EdTech executive, or even members of the media. Here are a few resources we recommend:
1. From Bans to Recalls: A Public Health Framework for AI Companion Bots (Gaia Bernstein of the Brookings Institute
2. A Product Safety Playbook for the Digital Age (Lisa Levasseur of Internet Safety Labs)
Get active. This fall will be unprecedented in EdTech resistance. Ride the wave. Email your school board directors, testify at school board meetings, challenge the pro-EdTech messaging you hear at Back-to-School Night, contact your local representatives. Express your concerns and ask them for the evidence they use to justify the costs and risks. Then look at that research and challenge it if it is industry-funded. Respectfully, of course, but with conviction. Here are a few resources we recommend:
1. Emily has a lot of sample public testimony on her Substack.
2. The Distraction-Free Policy Project hosts weekly action-oriented calls
3. Join Fairplay’s Screens-in-Schools Action Network (Emily is co-chair!)
Get together. There has never been more pushback on EdTech than there is right now. The wind is at our back. Don’t accept “You can’t opt out” or “This platform isn’t optional” as an ending; see it as the opening salvo for further conversation. Other parents are asking these same questions. Find each other. Work together. Here are a few resources we recommend:
1. Download Emily’s free Unplug EdTech Toolkit
2. Our friends at Schools Beyond Screens can help you open a local chapter
3. Check out the model legislation at The Distraction-Free Policy Project
Get optimistic. Don’t give in. Don’t settle for “this is just the way things are now.” Don’t accept that GenAI and EdTech products are a foregone conclusion. They are not. These companies are worried, as evidenced by the hate mail and death threats we’ve both gotten for speaking up and out about this. But it’s because they know we are right, and they see the pushback growing from all over the world. We have to keep swimming.

Photo by Rachel Hisko on Unsplash

1 See: From greenwashing to screenwashing?

2 There is also a new lawsuit against Curriculum Associates, parent company of iReady, alleging false advertising. Curriculum Associates is having a rough summer, but these cases are just the tip of the iceberg. More will follow.

3 ISTE is formerly known as the “International Society for Technology in Education.” They merged with Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) in 2022 and recently rebranded themselves as the International Society for Transforming Education.

4 See: A Summary of Evidence for Technology in Education

5 For those who want to learn more about “the quality of the product” mattering “dramatically,” check out the book, The Digital Delusion, by our friend and colleague, Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath, which provides a detailed breakdown of the research and clearly articulates how technology impedes the learning process.

6 It is called "artificial" intelligence. We want our kids to have something "artificial”— and in schools, no less?

7 EdTech product use is especially harmful– not helpful– to our most vulnerable students. Denise has written about how the overuse of technology can impede struggling learners, including in her easy, We Can't Ignore This for Another Decade. Denise also wrote about how the EdTech industry intentionally attempts to confuse well-meaning educators and instill fear in parents with claims that removing technology will harm their learning here: Be Leary of EdTech Industry Narratives.

8 Parent company of the EdTech product Canvas and actively being sued.

elaine September 30, 2026

Source

First Fish Chronicles

First Fish Chronicles: Beware the EdTech Industry Rebrand: Part 1

elaine — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 15:30:26 +0000

First Fish Chronicles: Beware the EdTech Industry Rebrand: Part 1

Note from Emily and Denise: We are noticing that EdTech companies seem to be shifting uncomfortably in their metaphorical chairs these days— increasingly so as the school year approaches and concerns about their products’ presence in schools grows. We believe we are witnessing an “EdTech industry rebrand” and we’re here to call it out. This is Part 1 of a two-part essay.

Photo by Maksim Shutov on Unsplash

From summer conference themes to repurposed terminology to doubled down efforts to insert AI into more classrooms this fall, educational technology companies and their ilk are feeling the heat from the growing backlash of parents, teachers, neuroscientists, lawmakers, and advocates opposed to the overreliance on for-profit products in schools that do not improve learning outcomes, threaten the teaching profession, and expose children to serious risks.

In response, instead of pulling their health-harming products from the classrooms or seeking external audits and independently verifiable scientific research to prove their claims, they’re getting a makeover.

But the trouble is, “Children do not need tech; technology companies need children,” as Emily pointed out recently in her testimony to the Kentucky State Senate on education and screentime. At the end (and beginning) of the day, EdTech is an industry– a massive one worth nearly $200 billion currently, with some projections putting it at nearly double that over the next ten years. (Can you imagine if schools had budgets like that?)

“How do we grow when the easy money is gone?”

EdTech products are heavily pushed into school districts by an industry that is well-funded and skilled at marketing. As one example (and there are many), the Tech & Learning EdExec Summit scheduled for September 2026 is pitched to attract:

CEOs & Founders “who need to steer the ship through economic uncertainty”;
Sales & Marketing Directors “who need to shorten complex sales cycles and bypass gatekeepers”;
Product Managers “who need to build for ‘Evidence-Based’ compliance and interoperability”; and
Strategic Partnership Directors/Business Development “looking to build relationships with key industry players.”

This “learning” summit promises that attendees will have access not just to industry executives, but “school district administrators” too.

The “two-day strategic summit” will seek to answer one question: “How do we grow when the easy money is gone?”

The hosts of the Tech & Learning EdExec Summit say the experience is built to “deconstruct the real friction points in today’s district sales cycle—guided by the leaders who control the budgets.“ Attendees will “get valuable insight into the education market in time for the Back-to-School buying season.” Who are these attendees?

Here’s a list:

Who attends the Tech & Learning EdExec Summit? Lots of companies who stand to profit from potential business deals!

It seems to us that the only “learning” occurring here is how to keep milking the cow even when she’s gone dry.

Profits are clearly the motive at such events, not education.

Which is What the Backlash to EdTech Really Threatens

Activists and teachers and concerned parents like us often get painted as “anti-tech”-- but this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Yes, we are deeply concerned about the kinds of content our children can see on their school-issued Chromebooks and yes, we see the potential for serious risks to the mining and selling of their personal data, and yes, we would much rather see kids engaging in classrooms with human teachers and books and pencils. But we do not believe that all technology is inherently evil— we just see a big difference between EdTech and TechEd, for example.

The problem is the business model of the EdTech companies.

These companies rely on “time on device” and “engagement” to compete for a piece of that $200 billion pie, but this business model is fundamentally in opposition to healthy child development.

It doesn’t matter if an EdTech company has a noble mission, or if they have high quality materials, or if they swear they do not collect and sell student data— at the end of the day, if their business model depends on children spending time on a device this is no different than the business models of social media companies.

That’s why we say “EdTech is just Big Tech in a sweater vest”— the business models of Instagram and Snap and Meta are the same as iReady and Seesaw and Canvas. (Which may explain why Emily is also finding she has to fight to protect her intellectual property and trademarks from being co-opted by the very industry she is battling.)

This is how we find ourselves in the middle of Extreme Makeover: EdTech Edition.

The EdTech Industry’s New Look: “Purpose-Built EdTech”

The EdTech industry has taken notice of our movement…and they are concerned. They’re seeing and feeling the impact (and trolling us on social media). They are trotting out the same tired talking points that we’ve come to expect.

But a new report from Instructure reveals a new tactic: “purpose-washing.” You may remember Instructure as the parent company of Canvas, an EdTech company that was the target of a massive data breach in the spring of 2026. Canvas is used by over 40% of higher education in North America and the breach nearly paralyzed institutions around the country.

Instructure’s newest report claims to have analyzed the evidence, compliance and interoperability, and accessibility and usability of the top 150 EdTech products used in K-12 schools during Fall 2025. Before we dive into their report, we should point out that Instructure’s partnerships with companies like Google and Microsoft render such a “report” as scientifically compromised.

According to Instructure, “families, communities, and policymakers” are starting to ask if “all this screen time is beneficial for students.”

Screenshot from Instructure’s report

As a result of these questions being asked, Instructure believes, school leaders will need to defend their use of technology in the classroom to “boards, families, educators, and their communities.”

Of course, the most burning question is “Why weren’t they doing this before?”

Screenshot from Instructure’s report

Instructure, of course, has a “solution”: school leaders should make a distinction between “purpose-built” screentime and “consumer products,” and be sure parents and policymakers see Instructure products as the former not the later.

By attempting to put distance between “purpose-built EdTech” (which Instructure claims includes Kahoot! and iReady) and “Consumer Tech” (YouTube and ChatGPT), Instructure attempts to weave a story that “purpose-built” products like these offer more evidence of effectiveness and are safer.

Except we know from research, journalistic deep-dives, and lawsuits that products like iReady are anything but “effective” or “safe” or “legal.”

Real-Time Rebrand: What It Looks Like

A recent LinkedIn post by Curriculum Associates, creators of the troubled iReady Math program and current defendant in a lawsuit about data privacy concerns, is a great example of an EdTech company attempting to assuage parental and school administrator anxiety by claiming that by partnering with “Digital Promise,” Curriculum Associates will be able to provide a “framework” to justify inserting AI into schools.

Screenshot of LinkedIn post by Curriculum Associates

The only problem is that Digital Promise, an organization that describes itself as “a global nonprofit working to expand opportunity for every learner,” has numerous funders and partners with the tech industry.1

Emily and Denise were both lead authors on Fairplay’s recent Call for a Pause on AI in PreK-12th Grade and we firmly oppose the use of any AI products in education. We reject the notion that in an era of “rapid AI experimentation” that a “framework” given out by tech-funded “non-profit” and bestowed by a problematic EdTech company facing lawsuits for taking kids’ data without parental consent should be the arbiters of such designations.

At the same time, the language now being used by Curriculum Associates (and other EdTech companies) sounds very similar to the “Tech-Intentional” framework created by Emily. We’re seeing this in multiple places, and as Emily has written about, it appears to be a growing issue.

Screenshot of a LinkedIn post by Curriculum Associates

It’s Not just EdTech Companies. It’s the Organizations Who Defend Them, Too.

We have written previously about the need to follow the money, not just behind EdTech companies, but the organizations that defend them, too.

One well-known example is ISTE, formerly the International Society for Technology in Education, who merged with ASCD (the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) in 2022 and recently rebranded themselves as the International Society for Transforming Education. In a not-so-transparent attempt to distance themselves from the growing skepticism of the products they push in schools, note how the word “Technology” has been replaced with “Transforming.”

ISTE also offers an “ISTE Seal”2 for EdTech products that “align” to their ISTE Standards.3 However, the ISTE Seal, which seems to require only a self-audit, appears to be a pay-to-play rubber stamp for well-funded EdTech companies to lend their for-profit products false merit. To “receive” an ISTE Seal, companies must pay $5K to apply and pay a $3K fee every two years.

ISTE also targets educators through tech-funded conferences sponsored by tech industry giants such as Microsoft, Google, META, Pinterest, Intel, Epson, Logitech, Samsung, Dell and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

ISTE is obviously tech-funded, but claims to be a “non-profit” serving educators and administrators. They’re doing quite well for a non-profit. In 2024, ISTE announced that Google had invested $10 million “to support ISTE+ASCD in its efforts to provide AI skills training to educators and students across the country.” According to CauseIQ, in 2024 ISTE had a revenue of approximately $46 million.

What the Makeover Reveals

ISTE is attempting to reframe the conversation around screentime in schools. Language in a recent document titled “From Screentime to Screen Value”4 cites research that is a decade old or comes from compromised, tech-funded organizations; pitches four “themes” rooted in industry myths and propaganda (more on this in Part 2); and implies that parents just don’t understand the value of “quality” screentime.

ISTE has it all wrong, of course.

This is not just a conversation about “quality” screentime or “consumer tech vs EdTech.”

What the industry doesn’t seem to understand is that the growing backlash from parents, teachers, lawmakers, and a few brave school administrators is not about what type of screentime children are getting at school; it is driven by the fact that children can and should experience quality learning experiences without the use of technology products created by for-profit companies in the first place.

As criticism grows, EdTech companies will continue to dig into their deep pockets and spend their marketing budgets to “purpose-wash” their products in the best light possible.

But we know what this makeover really shows— that the EdTech industry is worried enough that a hasty remodel seems the best path forward to protecting their bottom line.

Just like slapping a coat of paint on a mold-infested wall only hides the dark spots temporarily, however, attempting to rebrand the same old EdTech products as somehow new and improved does not hide the problem— it reveals it.

In Part 2, we will break down ISTE’s “Four findings that cut across the evidence” and challenge the dubious research they cite to defend these “findings.”

1 “Digital Promise Global has a diverse and independent governing board comprised of individuals with relevant expertise to the mission and operations of the Digital Promise Global, including fundraising, financial, controls and subject matter expertise in innovation in education, education technology and research to support education. Digital Promise Global board members, both current and former, include university presidents, education technology entrepreneurs and key researchers in the fields of education and learning. Digital Promise Global has a broad fundraising campaign and actively seeks new donors. Finally, Digital Promise Global’s mission is to accelerate innovation in education to improve opportunities to learn which is a charitable purpose with broad public appeal” From 2024 public tax documents

2 Formerly known as the “Seal of Alignment.”

3 “A framework that guides educators in using technology to create high-impact, sustainable and scalable learning experiences for all students.”

4 A “summary of evidence for technology in education.”

elaine September 30, 2026

Source

First Fish Chronicles

The Reliable Narrator: Misunderstanding Third-Grade Reading Proficiency: On Resisting Efficiency and Punishment in Reading Policy

elaine — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 16:56:58 +0000

The Reliable Narrator: Misunderstanding Third-Grade Reading Proficiency: On Resisting Efficiency and Punishment in Reading Policy

"Schools held 1,281 third graders back after the 2024-25 school year when the law went into effect, compared to 424 a year earlier, according to figures provided by the S.C. Department of Education."

My grandchildren, Brees and Skylar, are featured on this book cover reading the sorts of real books all children deserve access to.

Reporting on the number of South Carolina third-grade students being retained based on state reading tests increasing from 424 to 1281, Ian Grenier offers without a link a standard argument:

Research suggests that students who can’t read by the end of third grade will struggle as it becomes vital for understanding other subjects, making early intervention essential. Teachers in higher grades usually aren’t equipped to teach the basic literacy skills students are meant to pick up in early elementary school, leaving kids who didn’t learn them floundering.

The hyper-focus on third-grade reading proficiency is not just pervasive, but it mostly goes unchallenged.

“Third grade reading proficiency matters—enormously,” declares Mike Schmoker in How to Make Reading Instruction Much, Much More Efficient for Education Week.

Recently I saw this piece from 2019 pop up on my social media feed, and I immediately noticed the subheading: “Scaling back small-group instruction would have dramatic improvements in literacy.”

Since Schmoker’s article fell solidly in the current “science of reading” crisis rhetoric and misguided reading policy being passed across the U.S., it certainly was poised to create even more harmful classroom level decisions for students and teachers—notably an increase in grade retention as well as fatalistic justifications for using punishment as reading policy, as reported by Grenier:

Requiring weak readers to repeat third grade has long spurred debate in the education world. Its proponents, including education leaders in South Carolina, say it’s an unfortunate necessity.

Two aspects of this argument are compelling and misguided—the standard but false appeal to “third grade reading proficiency” and the prioritizing of “efficiency” for making instructional decisions.

Of course there are well documented correlations between third grade reading achievement and later negative educational outcomes for students (low reading achievement correlated with dropping out and low overall academic achievement, for example), but the traditional response to those correlations has resulted in over-reactions that do far more harm than good.

Left out of this calculation is an important causal relationship between reading test scores and the lives of children outside of school:

Almost 63% of the variance in test performance was explained by social capital family income variables that influence the development of background knowledge. Background knowledge is a known predictor of standardized test results. Family income variables are immutable by schools. Only public policies, outside the control of school personnel, can influence family income.

What if political leaders prioritized a different fact? Children living in poverty into third grade are likely to suffer long-term negative consequences; and thus, policy must address poverty and the home and community lives of children

Instead, of course, one of the worst over-reactions has been states adopting grade retention based on third grade reading assessments—despite grade retention having a causal relationship with students dropping out and negatively impacting their earnings as adults.

Doubling down on practices that punish and hurt vulnerable students to address misunderstanding the research on third grade reading achievement is a profound failure in logic.

Some of the motivation for making these policy mistakes is that U.S. cultural norms are too often grounded in punishment. Many affluent and privileged people embrace the concept of grade retention as a way to insure that children are taught lessons about achievement and effort, but they also embrace punitive measures because they suspect grade retention, for example, will only impact “other people’s children,” as noted by Grenier:

“The bottom line is, we’ve got to stop just passing kids on,” Abbey Duggins, the state Education Department’s chief academic officer, said.

There is more than a little bit of racism and classism in the urge to embrace punitive schools and aggressive policing and legal systems.

But another source of making terrible policy decisions, especially about reading, is the core of Schmoker’s argument—determining instructional practices by prioritizing efficiency.

Although an enduring Urban Legend criticizes U.S. public education as essentially progressive (which it isn’t, and has never been), scholar Herb Kliebard detailed that by the early twentieth century U.S. public education had embraced key elements of efficiency.*

One powerful example of that commitment is the use of standardized testing, primarily multiple choice tests that can be quickly scored, such as the SAT and most state-level accountability testing, yet another failure of education policy entrenched in education reform:

Policy makers and education leaders should rethink the current reliance on standardized test results as the deciding factor to make decisions about student achievement, teacher quality, school effectiveness, and school leader quality. In effect, policies that use standardized test results to evaluate, reward, and sanction students and school personnel are doing nothing more than rewarding schools that serve advantaged students and punishing schools that serve disadvantaged students.

Despite decades of research showing that standardized testing is often a weak measure of learning, is most strongly correlated with status (socioeconomic, racial, gender), and creates inequity, standardized testing has persisted in the U.S. because it is more efficient than what we tend to call authentic assessment—essays, performances, projects, etc.

In fact, our blind commitment to efficiency is so strong that when we do use authentic assessment we now demand highly structured rubrics to insure that the grading is efficient (which erases the authentic nature of the assignment).

Formal education in the U.S. has structures that, of course, create the need for “efficiency”—grade levels around biological age and courses provided through a format that requires one teacher to serve the largest number of students possible (in K-12, typically 1 to 25-35, but university-level ratios can be 1 to hundreds of students).

Although universal education is a public good, we are bound by market forces when providing education for all children.

I do recognize that efficiency must be one concern for instructional practices, but I have witnessed across five decades of teaching since the 1980s that we overemphasize efficiency, especially in literacy instruction.

For 18 years as a high school English teacher, I struggled within a system demanding efficiency while attempting to teach writing authentically—a workshop method requiring students to write multiple drafts that I provided ample feedback on throughout the process.

This experience was physically and mentally exhausting; I left K-12 education with my right wrist in a brace from writing on about 4000+ essays per year for almost two decades.

Could I have implemented something identified as writing instruction more efficiently (and less taxing for me)? Of course.

But that would have been a lie (many efficient approaches, such as direct grammar instruction, is simply not writing instruction) and would have cheated my students.

Teaching first-year writing at the college level has further cemented my awareness that efficiency is extremely harmful for writing instruction effectiveness.

For example, teaching 100-125 students at a time (more efficient and the reality of high school English teaching) is far less effective than my current obligation to first-year writing seminars capped at 12 students.

As long as we are committed to current teacher/student ratios (one-on-one tutoring/mentoring is, of course, the ideal teaching/learning context), the best instructional approach to managing effectiveness and efficiency is balancing the whole-class, small-group, and individual instructional practices.

If anything, most K-12 teachers need to reduce whole-class instruction and increase small-group and individual instruction.

Why? Whole-class instruction is often the least effective of the three, particularly with literacy instruction. For example, my first-year writing students continue to struggle with whole-class assignments and instruction but thrive in our face-to-face conferencing (even in comparison to the individualized instruction they receive from my comments on their essays).

But also, small-group and individualized instruction can often be, ironically, more efficient because that instruction is targeting identified need and allows student choice (instead of the teacher making all decisions for students).

Even the best whole-class instruction is addressing only some students’ needs. And another irony of whole-class instruction is that it tends to more effective after students have submitted authentic artifacts of learning that they are then required to revise (as opposed to giving great deal of instruction up front before students perform).

The ugly truth about prioritizing efficiency is that we are valuing coverage of scripted instruction over student need or student learning as well as erasing teacher autonomy.

Finally, we must acknowledge that teaching conditions are learning conditions. Current teacher/student ratios of 1/25-35 are cheating teachers and students. Yes, we should address those teaching/learning conditions.

But until that political commitment occurs, we must support teachers managing well the tension between effective and efficient. The trick, despite crisis rhetoric grounded in third-grade reading, is maintaining our commitments to instruction that targets identified student needs for each student.

In fact, when we pull aside the curtain of efficiency, we are left with a damning reality about adult decisions, included by Grenier at the end of his piece:

Students who are already being underserved shouldn’t also have to face the negative consequences of repeating a grade, Paul Thomas, an education professor at Furman University, said.

“It’s just punishing them for our negligence,” he said.

Recommended

Callahan, R. E. (1962). Education and the cult of efficiency: A study of the social forces that have shaped the administration of the public schools. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Was There Really a Social Efficiency Doctrine? The Uses and Abuses of an Idea in Educational History, Thomas Fallace and Victoria Fantozzi (2013) (H/T Jennifer Binis)

*NOTE: From Fallace and Fantozzi: “For Callahan (1962) and Kliebard (1995), social efficiency educators diverted progressive education away from the democratic ideas of John Dewey and Harold Rugg” (p. 145). As a critical scholar of the history of education (curriculum and instruction), I think we must make distinctions between the scholarly world (philosophy and theory) and the “real world” of day-to-day education. While I agree with the claim above, I also understand that nuanced and complex philosophy/theory often finds its way into practice in reductive and distorted ways (consider "behaviorism," "whole language," "progressivism," etc.). My argument here is not about the actual social efficiency movement, but that some of the elements of that movement have manifested themselves in powerful and enduring ways (consciously and unconsciously) in how we "do" education in the U.S., one of which is prioritizing "efficiency" in harmful ways. My best example, again, is standardized, multiple-choice testing.

elaine September 23, 2026

Source

The Reliable Narrator

Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: Lessons I Have Learned From Researching School Reform

elaine — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 11:59:32 +0000

Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: Lessons I Have Learned From Researching School Reform

Many years ago, I had met with a group of Stanford University graduate students then working on their joint Masters in Business Administration (MBA) and education. Some had taught for a few years through Teach for America and were eager to graduate and then apply their knowledge and skills learned in their MBA program to largely minority, low-performing schools.

Here is the post I wrote about that discussion I had with these wannabe reformers eager to engage in changing schools.

Many of the 18 MBA students sitting around a seminar table had taught a few years in urban schools through Teach for America (TFA). Those who had no direct experience in schools had worked for consulting firms with contracts in major urban districts. Smart, savvy about organizations and passionate about reforming schools, the students wanted to hear my thoughts about reform that I had extracted from nearly a half-century of experience as teacher, superintendent, and researcher.

I offered four lessons. Since I have written about each of these lessons in earlier posts I will compress the lessons and cite the earlier posts for those readers who want more information.

I learned that:

*It is essential to distinguish between reform talk, adoption of reform-driven policies, and putting reforms into classroom practice. (See https://larrycuban.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/the-inexorable-cycles-of-school-reform/)

* Reform talk and policy action in the purposes of tax-supported schooling, curriculum, instruction and organization of schools often occur in cycles but putting reforms into practice is slow, requires steady work, incremental, and often zig-zag. (See https://larrycuban.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/the-inexorable-cycles-of-school-reform/)

* Turning to public schools as a solution for larger economic, social, and political problems has become a national tic, a peculiar habit, that U.S. reformers have had for decades (See https://larrycuban.wordpress.com/2011/01/15/does- reforming-u-s-schools-soften-or-harden-inequalities-in-wealth-and-health/

* Both stability and change mark the path of public schools over the past two centuries (See https://larrycuban.wordpress.com/2009/08/16/how-do-teachers-teach-2/ )

I spent about 30 minutes going over these lessons and then I opened the floor to students’ questions.

After a few questions asking me to clarify the lessons I had learned, a visibly agitated young woman recounted her experience as a TFAer in an urban district and her journey to Stanford for conceptual and organizational skills (and credentials). She wanted to return to a similar system to make organizational and instructional changes.

Then she asked her question: “Larry, look around this room. It is filled with people who want to reform failing schools. We will have the knowledge and skills and we will work hard. But your message to us is that reform talk occurs in cycles, adopted reforms come back again and again, reformers stumble a lot and when changes do occur they are small ones. Well, how can I put it: you don’t give me and my colleagues here too much hope. I am depressed from the lessons you have learned over so many decades. What advice would you give to all of us?”

I was neither surprised nor put off by the question. David Tyack and I had taught a course on the history of school reform for over a decade from which we wrote our book, Tinkering toward Utopia. Moreover, I had heard variations of this question often as a conference keynoter and in many prior discussions with students, colleagues, and conferees.

The upside of the student’s comment is recognizing that emotions and passions buried in heart-felt values of equity and helping urban low-income and minority students drive much school reform. That is a plus often overlooked by policymakers who too often prize values of effectiveness and efficiency and cite cost-benefit trade-offs and return on investment (ROI) rather than openly acknowledging the emotions involved in reform.

Emotions fuel practitioners, policymakers, and parents to move past the inevitable potholes on the road to reform success. Whether a reform is scientifically proven, logical, or even efficient surely matters but high-octane self-confidence and righteous belief in doing something worthwhile count also.

Unfotunately, emotions too often skip over inspection of assumptions. And there is one quiet assumption hidden in that student’s question.

Wanting to do good for urban youth, willing to put in hard work, and having a Stanford degree were somehow enough to turn around a failing classroom and an under-performing school. And here in this seminar I was claiming that any wannabe reformer needed knowledge of previous well-intentioned designs and prior reformers who had also worked hard but experienced a few small victories while often tasted the salt of many failures. That I may have triggered the blues in some of these wannabe reformers seemed both unfair and unrealistic to my questioner.

Even though nearly all these students accepted the accuracy of what I said-–many had read similar accounts of previous reforms–- I sensed that the questioner wanted reassurance that her time, energy, and commitment would pay off later in successful reforms.

Since I could neither reassure her nor give her unvarnished hope, what advice did I give this room filled with Reformers-R-Us?

What I did was talk about the importance of knowing realistically what faces anyone undertaking an adventure that contains the possibility, nay, probability of failure. I compared the launching of a reform in a school or district to climbing a difficult mountain. Responsible people want a guide. Someone who can tell the adventurers where the crevices are, what false turns to avoid, where the icy spots are and to be honest about the possibility that they may have to turn back before reaching the summit.

Accurate knowledge of forthcoming difficulties, honesty, and humility are crucial to reaching the summit of a mountain or implementing a school reform. Hope for success rests in expertise, problem solving, and courage but–and this is an especially important “but”–climbing that mountain (implementing that reform in an actual classroom or school) is still worth the effort even if success (however defined) is not achieved.

That is what I told those MBA students.

elaine September 22, 2026

Source

Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Shanker Blog: Proficiency or Penalty? Grade Retention Policy and Its Implications for English Learners in Utah

elaine — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 16:50:10 +0000

Shanker Blog: Proficiency or Penalty? Grade Retention Policy and Its Implications for English Learners in Utah

One common goal of public education is to ensure all students reach academic mastery. In fact, most U.S. states have agreed upon a set of aligned standards of mastery through the Common Core. To that end, it may make sense to lawmakers that students repeat third grade and get another ‘at bat’ if they weren’t able to reach reading proficiency. This theory of change— accountability in action— has prompted many states to reinforce their literacy legislation with retention provisions. Eighteen states, including the District of Columbia, require grade retention for nonproficient third graders with varying good cause exemptions. Oklahoma and Utah both added retention requirements in their 2026 literacy legislation. Our study seeks to determine whether the theory of change used by lawmakers aligns with existing research on grade retention.

In the aftermath of burgeoning grade retention policies, scholars and stakeholders are questioning whether retention will improve outcomes, or if it will become another reform that unintentionally punishes marginalized families. By interviewing stakeholders in one of Utah’s most diverse school districts, Granite, we aimed to answer the following question: what are the long-term implications of retention provisions in Utah's literacy legislation for third graders? Through qualitative interviews and a literature review on the impacts of grade retention, we found that rather than targeting evidence-based interventions, the policy risks displacing responsibility onto families least equipped to absorb it.

Utah's Literacy Ambitions

Utah is a rapidly growing state with a largely homogenous population. It has grown 21.8% in the last decade, becoming slightly more diverse in racial makeup. Currently, 72% of its 3.5 million residents are white and 17% are Hispanic. In comparison with national averages, Utah holds its own with strong literacy scores. The 2022 NAEP reading report card shows that only eight states scored a higher percentage than the national average of 32% at or above proficiency, Utah being one of them at 37%. These scores, in part, have resulted from a history of commitment to literacy from various Utah actors.

Utah’s current Governor, Spencer Cox, has made his dedication to education clear since coming into office in 2021. The 2022 Read to Succeed Initiative, or SB 127, was passed with a goal to bring state third grade reading proficiency from 46.5% to 70% by 2027. To pair with the legislative mandate, in August 2025, the Utah State Board of Education set the third-grade proficiency benchmark score to a 750 Lexile. This Lexile score is aligned to the 75th percentile of U.S. third grade students.

Put simply, Utah expects their third graders to score in the 75th quartile of the nation’s third graders to be on grade level. This guidance along with the legislature’s continued mandates on percentage of students meeting proficiency shows high expectations for literacy in Utah. However, some stakeholders are concerned about the feasibility of these marks, stating that using state third grade reading scores as predictors for college readiness and high school dropout rates miscommunicate literacy to Utahns who hear that only 50% of students are proficient — a figure inflated by the state's unusually high benchmark threshold.

Despite these efforts, Utah policy leaders did not see the growth necessary to reach their proficiency goal. Reports on reading proficiency like in figure one show that third grade rates only increased from 48% to 50.3% from 2022 to 2025 respectively. In response, in January 2026, Governor Cox announced in his State of the State address that his first legislative priority will be early literacy, claiming that “nearly half of Utah’s third graders are not reading at grade level” and calling “literacy ‘moral infrastructure’ essential to freedom, opportunity, and self-governance.” Additionally, Cox endorsed retention despite its unpopularity, claiming that “It’s hard… people don’t love that. But in Mississippi, if you’re not reading on third grade level at the end of third grade, you stay in third grade.” With the governor’s full support, SB 241 was passed in the 2026 legislative session, and is set to take effect on July 1, 2026.

SB 241 moved the goalpost from 70% proficiency by 2027 to 80% by 2030. With this shift, the legislature added additional provisions to support science of reading instruction, teacher preparation, literacy support staff, and language “requiring retention in grade 3 except in cases of certain good cause exemptions.” Utah lawmakers involved the state board of education in several requirements throughout the bill, including creating a panel for science of reading research, and approving a reading benchmark assessment to be used statewide. This benchmark will be administered three times during the school year to students in k-3. The scores are mandated to be communicated to parents.

The proposed theory of change is that retention will allow Utah students to be adequately supported in their literacy progress. However, not all stakeholders agree that retention will fix Utah’s literacy rates. University of Utah researcher Brandley posits that longer term investments like teacher support and intensive reading intervention would be more effective.

Granite School District

The student population demographics of Granite School District offer a deeper understanding of what SB 241 might mean at local levels. Relative to the state’s demographic structure (72% white and 17% Hispanic), Granite School District’s (GSD) student body is composed of 44% white students and 41% Hispanic students. In comparing state literacy proficiency scores, Utah’s 37% literacy proficiency rate lessens to 32% of students meeting proficiency in GSD. GSD made commitments to improve these scores through concerted funding, capacity building, and support system efforts. The district says their “two overarching strategic goals [for] Granite School District are to increase graduation rates and to increase literacy and numeracy proficiency.”

What the Research Says on Grade Retention

Research indicates mixed results for whether retention begets academic improvement. While there might be short-term gains, some studies show that those gains tend to fall off over the course of that student's educational career (Shepard & Smith, 1990), and a meta-analysis of 63 studies found that only 14% showed significant positive gains for retained students compared with promoted students (Holmes, 1989). A longitudinal study in Chicago found that retained students scored significantly lower in reading and math than their promoted peers — specifically eight months lower in reading and six months lower in math — and the effects of early grade retention (grades 1–3) were similar to those of later retention (grades 4–7), further suggesting that retention alone does not address the root of the problem (Reynolds, 1992; McCoy & Reynolds, 1999).

Beyond academics, grade retention is associated with an increased likelihood of dropping out of high school, increased aggression during adolescence, and elevated long-term anxiety in boys, with retained students showing anxious, inattentive, and disruptive behaviors even when retention occurred in primary school (Jimerson et al., 2002; Pagani et al., 2001).

The issue of retention efficacy is compounded by equity concerns, as the majority of retained students are from marginalized backgrounds; a study analyzing Michigan's third-grade reading retention laws found that an economically disadvantaged EL has only a 30% chance of passing the M-STEP, with even lower odds for Arabic and Spanish speakers (Winke & Zhang, 2019).

Teachers Weigh In

The research on retention’s limitations is not lost on the educators implementing it. Granite School District teachers echoed these findings consistently across interviews, raising concerns that fell into three clear patterns. For anonymity, these teachers are referred to as teacher A, B, C, and D.

1. Retention is a band-aid solution that doesn't address root causes

All four teachers expressed skepticism that retention addresses the underlying reasons students fall behind, pointing instead to socioeconomic factors, parental involvement, and early intervention as the real levers. In teacher A’s interview, he talked a lot about how out-of-class factors affect his students’ reading performance. He stated that his students' reading level “has a lot to do with things outside of their control, often where it's about class and race and parents ability, which ties in with class, but ties like it's their parents ability to read with them when they're younger… I feel like those are really the causes.” So when it came to discussing retention for third graders who aren’t proficient, A posited that "It feels like a band-aid solution. It doesn't feel like it's addressing root issues of what's happening, like why aren't students getting to that level by the time they need to."

In agreement with A’s opinions on retention being a surface-level solution, teacher B stated that "Just saying, yeah, we'll just retain them — that isn't a fix." Teacher C said: "I don't think there's one bit of research that says retention is effective...there are so many other ways you can address the problem without retaining kids." All teachers expressed that retention targets students’ actions in school, instead of targeting the problems outside of school that cause low literacy scores.

2. The social and emotional cost of retention is a serious concern

Retention has been linked with disruptive and anxious behaviors in students all the way into secondary levels (Jimmerson & Ferguson, 2007; Pagani et al., 2001). Our qualitative findings aligned with this literature, as all four teachers raised concerns about the isolating and demoralizing effects of retention on students, particularly on peer relationships and self-esteem. Teacher B, a literacy coach for a Granite elementary school, shared her concerns about specific students she’s worked with that would be demoralized by being held back. She said that “if the only thing you're looking at is a reading score and you're not looking at anything else, how are you really doing what's in the best interest of that child?” She asked deeper questions of how retention will detriment students' social and emotional growth as well: "You've gotta be careful about who you retain, because sometimes, socially, it would be a very bad thing to retain a student...what is it going to do to their self-esteem? What is it going to do to them emotionally?" From a middle school perspective, teacher A and D both proposed that students already hold negative associations to learning when they’re behind, which affects their attitude and expectations for themselves.

3. Early intervention and increased funding are the preferred solutions

Rather than holding students back, all four teachers pointed to earlier intervention, smaller class sizes, better-resourced classrooms, and preschool access as more effective approaches. Teacher C, a career elementary teacher, gave clear program recommendations that she felt would more appropriately support students. "Well-trained paraprofessionals, greater intensive support in K-2, maybe preschool programs, parent awareness — I just think there are so many other ways you can address the problem." Other responses from interviewees includes that "school should start in preschool...if children are not able to be exposed to those words and to literacy so young, then children need to be put in school earlier” and “things like class size and adequate support staff would obviously assist them." Teachers agree with some researchers’ opinion that the best way to ensure long-term success is through individualized student support (Shepard & Smith, 2001; Westbury, 1994). These suggestions, aligned with current research, target interventions that begin earlier than third grade, and extend past retention to build a more sustainable future of educating students before falling behind. These teachers’ voices are not represented in Utah’s legislation.

A Divided District Office

While interviewing Superintendent Horsley, he expressed themes of strong support for SB 241 with rigor, high expectations, and parent involvement. He is “optimistic and excited about implementation” and feels that the legislation is more of a shift in method rather than goals. When asked about how the implementation will affect Granite students, he explained that during the legislative session, he pulled the predicted number of retained third graders in his district. “We tracked about 500 kids. So on average, it's about 10 to 12 kids mostly in impoverished elementary schools. We had one elementary school that had a high—it’s probably one of our larger Multi Language Learning campuses with a high refugee population. They have 26 kids.” This statement shows that Horsley is aware of the intersectional effect of retention on EL students but still believes that retention is the right method to ensure all students are proficient, stating that “getting 500 kids out of the 50,000 up to great reading levels is achievable, so my plan is to just not fail.”

In response to asking how he feels Granite families will react to the legislation, Horsley answered that Granite has done a “good job” with family engagement strategies, and they will need to “help them [parents] understand this new legislation and the impact that if we're not successful, and when I say we're it's not just us, it's together with the family. We're here to support you that grade retention will be required… and I'm optimistic that parents are going to step up and help and support make sure their kids are ready to go.” Many of Superintendent Horsley’s statements reflected high expectations for parents and teachers to take responsibility for their students' literacy.

In Granite Board Member Julie Jackson’s interview, there were more parallels to the teacher’s perspectives than that of Superintendent Horsley’s statements. When asked about the implications of retention in Granite, Julie responded that their plan is to intervene before third grade retention is necessary. She focused on the provisions of SB 241 that encourage administrators to retain students in K-2 grades: “We will not want to retain third graders. We know data shows that retaining third graders significantly lowers their likelihood of graduation. We will intervene long before third grade. We will look to retain kids earlier—in kinder or first grade if we can see the writing on the wall.”

Additionally, when asked how teachers and policymakers can best support literacy rates, Julie simply responded “Lower class size.” She also mentions the gaps in teacher preparation and quality curriculum. It is noteworthy how policymakers’ views on action differ from one another, with the superintendent posing third grade retention as necessary and advantageous, while the Granite board prioritized prior-to-third retention and lowering class size as the best interventions for their students.

The Cost for English Learners

EL students are rarely the focus of legislation—and literacy intervention is no exception. The policy language in SB 241 leaves discrete opportunities for persistent gap-widening instead of closing. Retention exemptions for “an EL [student] with fewer than three years of instruction in the EL program” aim to account for minoritized student groups, and yet data show that the majority of Utahn ELs begin their EL program in kindergarten upon registration, making them ineligible for this exception as they would be three years into the program by third grade. To date, this exemption for retention is the only mention of ELs in Utah literacy legislation.

Based on the literature review and qualitative interview research, SB 241 errs on the dangerous side of strategies promoting equity. Well-intended as it may be, SB 241’s efficacy is a short-term bandage solution. Both the interviews and research studies emphasize the potential repercussions the policy could have, particularly for Granite School District’s students and parents. In addition, the assumption that parents will ‘take things more seriously’ about their student’s literacy is flawed. It blames parents and students instead of utilizing evidence-based interventions that researchers recommend.

Grade retention may feel like accountability in action, but for English Learners in districts like Granite, it functions as a structural penalty: one imposed on the families with the fewest resources to respond to it. Utah's SB 241 arrives with ambition, but without the early intervention funding, equitable exemptions, and reduced class sizes that research consistently identifies as levers of lasting literacy.

elaine September 21, 2026

Source

Shanker Blog

Curmudgucation: AI Is Not for Amateurs

elaine — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 12:31:37 +0000

Curmudgucation: AI Is Not for Amateurs

Ben Riley has pulled a lot of attention lately for the story of his father, who turned to AI for advice on how to manage his cancer, and died because of it. Riley gets into the experience of being a New York Times story subject in a recent post, and looks into the reporters idea to show oncologists the advice the AI was providing. Riley shares their responses, and even for AI, it is shockingly, horribly wrong.

A trained cancer doctor would recognize that it was nonsense. An amateur might be fooled by how AI manages to mimic the look and feel of s real medical report.

This points to a recurring theme in AI use. The "human in the loop" principle is all about including a human being who can actually understand--and check-- the AI output. Or consider one of the more popular AI assignments for students-- have a LLM write about a topic you know well, and count up all the mistakes it makes. In other words, experts.

Large Language Models can perfectly mimic form and confidence. They have, literally, no shame, less than even the most shameless bullshit artist that ever sold you some Florida real estate or a White House super-duper ballroom. They are elegantly mechnized Dunning-Kruger machines.

I recently sat and talked to someone who works in the computer tech and coding world and describes himself as a power user of AI. AI does save him and his team time, but there are caveats. AI doesn't remember what it has done. "It's like talking to a smart person with Alzheimer's." And it is not trustworthy. The project has to be broken down into chunks, and then each chunk has to be run through testing, designed by and/or involving a human coder in order to determine if the code actually does what it is supposed to do. The resulting process is still faster than the old all-human approach, but it still requires the involvement of humans with expertise to check the work, go back, re-do, check again, and on and on. It is most definitely not "Press a button and an hour later a fully-completed project is ready to go."

The conversation raised lots of questions for me. If the AI is doing all the entry-level grunt work under the watchful expert eye of human accountability sinks, then where will the future expert eyes come from?

I'm also thinking of all those folks happily burbling "I use AI to write my journalism-flavored content" or "I use AI to write my lesson plans," and wondering if their process looks similar, if they are taking the bot through building up a lesson plan step by step, carefully examining each product every step of the way with their own expert eyes. Because I'm betting not.

Because while coding involves a lot of time-intensive grunt work hours that can be collapsed by AI, writing things does not. Doing the thinking work (outlines, brainstorming, etc) is how you get ready for the writing work, and that includes writing a lesson plan. If you have the AI write the outline, you still have to do the thinking part. In short, if you use the bot to write your lesson plan in a responsible, professional manner, I don't see it saving you any amount of time.

In fact, if you really are an expert, I'm betting lesson plans or writing by bot, if done well, will actually take more time than just doing it yourself. The people who are finding it botting their way through the work are, just like the students using cheatbots, the folks least qualified to use the bot without producing junk.

It is the central irony of AI is that it's really only safe to use if you are already an expert in your field. And that's a terrifying thought when you consider that AI has the potential to completely gut the pipeline that would ordinarily produce experts.

Mind you, expertise is not a guarantee of well-used bots. AI repeatedly encourages users to trust its illusory expertise. Last week CNN reported that a top-ranked lawyer at "one of the most prestigious firms on the planet" became the latest in a long string of lawyers tripped up by AI error. He had to send a letter of apology to a judge after submitting a filing loaded with errors-- it took three pages to highlight and correct all of them. The mistakes were caught by opposing counsel.

All of this underlines one clear idea-- of all the people who shouldnt be using AI, students shouldn't be using it the most. Jessica Winters, in her recent New Yorker article, cites a host of experts who point out the many ways that AI is not a useful, appropriate, or even safe tech to include in education. But it is already pushed heavily in all manner of K-12 education.

The Chromebooks, which the students use in every class and for homework, came pre-installed with an all-ages version of Gemini, a suite of A.I. tools. When my daughter, who is in sixth grade, begins writing an essay, she gets a prompt: “Help me write.” If she is starting work on a slide-show presentation, the prompt is “Help me visualize.” She shoos away these interruptions, but they persist: “Help me edit.” “Beautify this slide.” The image generator is there, if she’d ever wish to pull the plug on her imagination.

There are so many reasons to keep AI away from students. At the very least, we should be replacing all the cute little "become an AI expert" lesson plans helpfully provided by AI corporations with lessons about what AI is not and can not do, and nwhy children should avoid it like they avoid strangers in vans offering them candy.

Winters asks what it will take to push AI out of schools, and the answer, I think, is a whole hell of a lot because a lot of very powerful people have bet a very large amount of money that they can push AI everywhere, regardless of what harms it will do. It is as if the wealthiest corporations in the world have bought a vast supply of very powerful crack and they now are desperate to move it into any market they can think of.

AI is not for amateurs in any field, and I only grudgingly accept that in some forms, it may have some use for some experts. In education, I think it will be awesome for cranking out lesson plans that administrators demand but don't read and teachers generate but don't use. For anything else, educators had better be prepared to use it like grown-ass experts in their field and not like a 14-year-old trying to generate a term paper ten minutes before it is due. And if using it like an expert in your field turns out to create a process that is longer and less productive than the non-AI version, well, experts should know how to get the job done.

elaine September 18, 2026

Source

Curmudgucation

Daily Kos: Texas’ New Propaganda Social Studies Standards

elaine — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 12:00:23 +0000

Daily Kos: Texas’ New Propaganda Social Studies Standards

A roadside billboard in Texas where the state promotes a propaganda history curriculum. Internet

According to the newly approved Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Social Studies standards “The primary purpose of Texas and American social studies is to educate students to become responsible, self-governing citizens who respect the rights of their fellow citizens and who cherish liberties and laws.” To promote “responsible” citizenship in the Lone Star State, the high school standards are laced with Islamophobic statements, justifications for slavery, the glorification of Christianity, Western Civilization, and capitalism, and leave out significant portions of Texas history. After all, in MAGA world, “Ignorance is Bliss.”

This is a curriculum guide that Donald Trump would love, if he read it. The Texas Republican Party website claims the new standards support Trump’s campaign that “schools provide patriotic education that instills admiration for our nation and rejects indoctrination in radical, anti-American ideologies.” In support of the standards, MAGA Republican Congressional Representative Chip Roy accused “The Marxist-Islamist alliance” of mobilizing to “remove the current factual standards revealing the truth about the violent, aggressive actions of the promoters of Islam.”

Examining the Texas State Board of Education high school standards, I couldn’t find any mention of the Comanche, the Apache or the Tonkawa, the original Native American inhabitants of the area that became Texas; how the Texas War for Independence was fought to protect slavery, which was illegal when Texas was part of Mexico; or that Texas fought with the Confederacy during the Civil War. The Tulsa Race Riots are included, but not who was rioting (whites) and who were the victims (African Americans). According to the Texas State Historical Commission, 339 African Americans were lynched by white mobs in Texas between 1885 and 1942, but that is not mentioned in the high school standards so apparently it is not considered “essential knowledge.”

In Texas, “students understand the benefits of the United States free enterprise system, also referred to as capitalism or the free market system. This system, predicated on limited government and strong property rights, emphasizes the individual exercise of economic decisions without government interference, allowing people the opportunity to prosper.” Missing are the negatives – periodic economic downturns, structural inequality, the underfunding of essential social services, and climate change that has a devastating and deadly impact on the environment in Texas.

Slavery is to be taught as something that “existed in many societies throughout history, including at the time of colonization, among some Indigenous peoples in America, in Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, and earlier, in ancient civilizations.” Students don’t learn about the unique characteristics of slavery in the Americas, the United States, and Texas where it is based on race, the enslaved are property, not human beings, the Chrisian Bible is used to justify slavery; and it is the foundation of the agricultural economy of the South, provides the raw material for Northern industrialization, slave-produced commodities are the country’s chief export, and leads the country into Civil War. During the 17th and 18th centuries Christian Great Britain was the world’s largest slave-trading nation. But the only thing students learn from these standards is that the Christian religion’s belief in the inherent dignity and rights of all people, something apparently missing in the American South, led to the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and “influenced movements to end slavery around the world.”

The biases against Islam in standards that promote Christianity as the bedrock of Western Civilization and American history are pronounced. The Prophet Mohammed is accused of brutal military campaigns against Christians and Jews; the teachings of jihad are blamed for the Islamic conquest of Christian lands during the European Middle Ages; and Radical Islam is the cause of terrorism today. Students are expected to learn about slavery in the Islamic world, but not that it was less extensive and less cruel than Christian chattel slavery in the Americas and that in the Islamic world enslaved people maintained their human status. Missing in the high school standards is that it was European Christians that invaded Islamic lands during the Crusades and looted Jewish sites; any mention of the Islamic Golden Age and contributions to mathematics and science; the Islamic world preservation the teachings of ancient Greece and Rome; the expansion of Islam into sub-Sahara Africa bringing literacy and numeracy; and the liberatory Islamic challenge to caste in India and feudalism in parts of Europe;

To graduate, high school students must be able to denounce Texan LBJ’s Great Society efforts to abolish poverty and racial inequality as the much hated DEI and cite how the Reverend Martin Luther King, jr. used Biblical references in his speeches and writings. Of course, King, like Johnson, wanted to abolish poverty and racial inequality believing they violated Christian teachings and he also opposed the war in Vietnam, a war the standards present as a necessary effort to prevent the spread of communism.

elaine September 17, 2026

Source

Daily Kos

Janresseger: Growth of School Vouchers at State and Federal Levels Threatens Public Schooling

elaine — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 12:01:19 +0000

Janresseger: Growth of School Vouchers at State and Federal Levels Threatens Public Schooling

Advocates for the privatization of public schooling are on the attack these days. Public education advocate, Jeff Bryant notes: “In what is being touted as the Golden Age of School Choice, the option that is most popular with American families—to fund and attend their local public schools—is gradually being made less viable.”

In his in-depth report, Bryant identifies the millions of dollars states are investing in private school tuition voucher schemes as a primary contributor to a growing public school finance crisis across the states. Comparing voucher growth in North Carolina and Ohio, Bryant identifies an important and frequently unnamed result of privatization: it contributes to the competitive politics around state school funding and local property taxes: “On the privatization front, Ohio is somewhat ahead of North Carolina, with 4.2 percent of the state’s students receiving some kind of voucher to attend a private school or homeschool… But Ohio’s privately operated school sector may have an even more negative impact on school funding… (E)fforts by Ohio lawmakers to undermine the state’s funding for public schools have put pressure on local governments to steeply raise property taxes, resulting in Ohio having the eighth-highest property tax rate in the U.S., Statehouse News Bureau reports. Understandably, there is now growing evidence of a popular uprising among Ohio voters to repeal property taxes….”

Last week for News5Cleveland, Katie Ussin described how all this is playing out in Mentor, Ohio, an exurb in the Cleveland area. After the state failed fully to fund a new public school finance formula in the recent state budget and currently plans to invest over a billion dollars on private school tuition vouchers every year, and because the school district has failed to pass a property tax levy in two different election cycles, Mentor has decided to join the Vouchers Hurt Ohio lawsuit, which is challenging the constitutionality of the state’s school privatization scheme. The district is desperate for funds. Ussin reports: “Mentor has committed to cutting $6.6 million (in school services) heading into this upcoming school year and is planning an additional $3.5 million in cuts the year after. The district also plans to go back on the ballot in November with a lower levy ask.” Mentor School Board president, Maggie Cook explains: “Joining the lawsuit isn’t really a public versus private school issue… It’s a taxpayer issue and it’s a school funding issue.” Despite the urgent need to fight to contain voucher growth, Mentor’s financial crisis means that the school district can’t afford to pay the $2 per student cost of becoming a plaintiff in the Vouchers Hurt Ohio lawsuit. In its desperation, the school district has been forced to turn to a Go Fund Me campaign in hopes of being able to join other school districts fighting against Ohio’s voucher program.

No longer only a state concern, vouchers are now a federal issue as well. A federal tuition tax credit private school voucher program was tucked into last summer’s huge, federal “One Big Beautiful” tax and reconciliation bill. By donating to a scholarship granting organization (SGO) parents can receive a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit to help pay up to $1,700 for tuition at a private school of their choice. Governors can decide whether their state will opt to participate in the program, a choice already made in 31 mostly GOP-led states.

Recently, however, the Trump administration has been pushing to lure Democratic-led states to opt into the program. Last Thursday, Education Week‘s Matthew Stone, Evie Blad, and Mark Lieberman reported that the U.S. Department of the Treasury confirmed that public schools and public school support organizations can also qualify for the federal vouchers with particular types of programming: “The law specifically lists tutoring, before-and after-school programs, uniforms, books, technology, and services for students with disabilities as school-connected expenses the scholarships can cover. The Treasury Department said this week that it plans to issue additional guidance on allowable expenses later this year.”

Luring Democratic States to Opt-In The reporters describe Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University and a dogged and ardent promoter of the privatization of public schools, describing why she thinks Democratic governors should be interested in the federal vouchers, and how the federal vouchers could be adapted to support public education support programming: “One day, Roza said, the annual student bake sale fundraiser could be replaced with a drive to encourage people to sign up to send funds to an SGO that supports their public school, and employers could let workers easily direct funds from their paycheck withholdings to SGOs supporting local public schools… Public school districts could charge for ‘add-ons,’ paid for by scholarships (the tax credit vouchers)… Roza envisions three possible scenarios. The first is relatively financially modest: private or home-schooled students could use the scholarships to pay public schools for ‘add-ons,’ like participation on sports teams or ala carte courses. In a second scenario, public school students would use the scholarships for programs like after-school or summer enrichment. In the third, most ambitious option, districts would bundle a set of ‘enhanced services’ covered by the scholarships, like expanded electives, mental health supports, and out-of-school learning opportunities. Districts would then work with families and a supporting SGO to sign up every eligible student for a scholarship that covers those services.”

Education Week‘s Stone, Blad and Lieberman quote critics who worry about the dangers: “(T)he notion that public schools can benefit from the tax-credit scholarship program is a Trojan horse meant to make opting in palatable for reluctant governors, private school choice opponents argue. Private schools will see the most benefit, and decreased federal tax coffers will ultimately harm public schools, these opponents argue.” The reporters quote Melinda Person, president of the New York State United Teachers: “The question isn’t just about this year’s dollars and what we can get for public school kids this year. It’s about whether we’re helping to entrench a policy that we believe is ultimately going to weaken public education.”

It is likely that if states begin expecting federal tax credit vouchers to be used for public school programming, this federal program will complicate the politics around funding public schools. The final rules are expected to be released in September, and it is not yet clear whether there will be limits on what public school support programs will be covered. Will state legislators expect public school groups to start applying for federal tax credit vouchers to pay for programs their public schools already provide? Will parents eventually be expected to make make additional tuition tax credit donations for educational enrichment programs on top of the state income taxes and the local property taxes they already pay? Will the availability of federal tax credit vouchers undermine support for urgently needed local property tax levies?

How much will the vouchers cost the federal government? Education Week‘s Stone, Blad, and Lieberman report that a federal estimate predicts that the federal tuition tax credit vouchers could reduce federal revenues by as much as $4.4 billion by 2034. The Cleveland Plain Dealer‘s Sabrina Eaton discovered that’s probably a gross underestimate: “There is no federal cap on how many people can claim the credit, making its total cost open-ended. The Joint Committee on Taxation has scored the program at $25.9 billion over ten years, but the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy has estimated the real annual cost could reach $51 billion or more if a significant share of eligible taxpayers participate.”

The Education Law Center’s Public Funds Public Schools Campaign debunks six claims made by the Trump administration in its effort to promote the federal tuition tax credit vouchers across the states.

False Claim #1 “Vouchers expand educational access and opportunities for students.” Instead, many “students who take a voucher to attend a private school—particularly LGBTQ+ students, students of various religious faiths, and other vulnerable populations—risk losing civil rights protections that they are guaranteed in public schools.”
False Claim #2 “Vouchers do not take money from public schools… Public schools receive funding largely based on the number of students they enroll. When students take vouchers and exit their local districts to attend private school, public school funding decreases but fixed costs remain, leaving (the) students in those (public) schools with fewer resources…. The federal voucher program will also significantly decrease federal revenue…. Federal funding streams such as Title I… and IDEA… provide critical support to students…. Diminishing the federal treasury imperils these and… other programs.
False Claim #3 “Vouchers improve student outcomes… High-quality, large-scale studies demonstrate that vouchers have significant negative impacts on academic outcomes.”
False Claim #4 “Vouchers do not burden taxpayers… The one-to-one tax credit for contributions to SGOs means that tax dollars owed to the federal government are re-routed to the voucher program. The loss of billions of dollars in tax revenue by the federal government will mean that taxpayers will feel the effect either as cuts to federal programs and services that no longer have funding, or as increased federal taxes to cover this budget hole.”
False Claim #5 Vouchers provide families with affordable education options. Vouchers frequently do not cover the full cost of private school tuition. And they are usually insufficient to cover other essentials that are provided for free in public schools….”
False Claim #6 The federal voucher program enjoys public popularity. Vouchers are historically unpopular, and voters have rejected voucher programs every single time the choice has been put to them at the ballot box.”

Public Funds Public Schools concludes: “The establishment of a federal school voucher program is part of a broader assault on public education, one of the most important common goods underpinning American democracy. But federal vouchers cannot be forced on states that don’t opt in.”

Here is a striking early example of one organization’s plan to use the federal vouchers to grow a network of Christian schools. Ohio has opted in to the federal tuition tax credit vouchers, and Ohio’s Center for Christian Virtue has already announced an adoption of the federal tuition tax credits that is particularly troubling for those of us who worry about the John Roberts Supreme Court’s abandonment of the protection of the separation of church and state. In late April, The Center for Christian Virtue announced that it has already established a Scholarship Granting Organization (SGO) to use federal tuition tax credit vouchers for students participating in the national expansion of its Christian Education Network:

“The Christian Education Network (CEN), founded by the Center for Christian Virtue (CCV), has launched a federal Scholarship Granting Organization… positioning Ohio as the hub of a growing nationwide effort to expand access to Christian education… This is a defining moment for Christian education in America,’ said Aaron Baer, Founder of CEN and President of CCV. ‘For the first time, families can take money they already owe to the federal government and redirect it into scholarships that fund a Christ-centered education… Under the federal framework, donors from any state can contribute, but only states that opt in will be eligible to receive scholarship funds…The new Federal School Choice Tax Credit presents the greatest evangelism opportunity in our lifetime.”

There is already pushback in Congress against the federal tax credit vouchers. Some members of Congress are deeply concerned about the future implications the federal school voucher program. In April, Peter Greene reported: “Senators Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Mazie Hirono (D-HI) and an additional 28 senators have introduced the Keep Public Funds in Public Schools Act. The act would strike IRS Code Section 25, the portion of the IRS code that was inserted to create the federal school voucher program.” On Thursday, June 11, The Plain Dealer‘s Eaton reported that Gwen Moore (D-WI) introduced a companion bill, Keep Public Dollars in Public Schools Act, in the U.S. House of Representatives. A teacher in my own school district and president of the Cleveland Heights Teachers’ Union, Karen Rego traveled to Washington, DC to participate in the press conference announcing Moore’s bill.

Moore represents Wisconsin, and Rego is a public school educator in Ohio—the two states which have the longest experience with statewide private school voucher programs. Both programs began in the 1990s as small experiments to serve poor children; today both have expanded state-wide and ballooned in cost. Now, like all the other statewide voucher programs, Wisconsin and Ohio vouchers serve primarily wealthy students. The federal tuition tax credit vouchers Kelly’s and Moore’s bills oppose are also designed to direct federal funds to wealthy families. Education Week‘s Stone, Blad and Lieberman remind readers: “The federal law doesn’t specify the size of the scholarships, and most students will be eligible—anyone from families earning up to 300% of their area’s median income, which is $510,000 in Westchester County, N.Y., on the high end and about $114,000 in Wolfe County KY., on the low end.”

elaine September 16, 2026

Source

Janresseger

Dr. Joe's Substack: Anthropic Launched Claude for Teachers. We Blocked It for Our District.

elaine — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 12:00:56 +0000

Dr. Joe's Substack: Anthropic Launched Claude for Teachers. We Blocked It for Our District.

We made that decision quickly and thoroughly.

Not because Claude is a bad AI model. Quite the opposite. I believe it’s one of the best AI models available today.

We blocked it because I believe Anthropic made one of the biggest K-12 go-to-market mistakes I’ve seen in years.

The frustrating part is that it was completely avoidable.

Here’s What I Saw

As I read through Anthropic’s launch materials, a few things immediately stood out.

Claude is described as:

Safe with student data.
Built with FERPA in mind.
Designed specifically for teachers.

Anthropic’s own examples encourage teachers to work with student assessment data, attendance information, classroom notes, and even reference IEP meeting notes.

Then, farther down the same page, Anthropic says:

“Claude for Teachers is for individual educators. A dedicated offering for schools and districts is coming soon.”

That’s where they lost me.

The district offering should have come first.

Not later.

If your product encourages workflows involving protected student information, districts need governance before teachers need access.

Not the other way around.

Teachers Were Put in the Middle

This is my biggest concern.

Teachers aren’t privacy attorneys.

They aren’t FERPA experts.

They’re teachers.

When a company tells teachers a product is safe with student data, built with FERPA in mind, and then demonstrates workflows involving student information, many educators will reasonably assume those workflows are appropriate.

In my opinion, Anthropic has put teachers in a position where they could inadvertently make unauthorized disclosures of protected student information while believing they were using the product exactly as intended.

I am not suggesting teachers would intentionally violate FERPA.

I’m saying they could reasonably believe they were doing exactly what the product was designed to do.

That is not a position teachers should ever be placed in.

The District Treats It Like a Data Breach

When an unapproved application receives district data, we do not start by asking how good the AI model is.

We handle it exactly like a data breach.

Because, from the district’s perspective, protected information may have been disclosed to an unauthorized third party.

We immediately need to know:

Which employees created accounts?
What information was uploaded?
Which students were affected?
Were IEPs, evaluations, behavior records, assessment data, or other protected records involved?
Can the data be permanently deleted?
Can the vendor prove it?
Do we have notification, legal, or regulatory obligations?

Whether a specific incident meets the legal definition of a reportable data breach depends on the facts and applicable law.

Operationally, we don’t have the luxury of debating terminology first.

We contain it.

We investigate it.

We determine the scope.

We document the response.

We notify the appropriate parties when required.

We demand deletion of district data.

The teacher clicked upload.

The district owns the investigation.

The district owns the legal review.

The district owns the communication with parents.

The district owns the regulatory response.

The district owns the cleanup.

The platform gains another user.

The district gains another incident to investigate.

Privacy Is More Than Model Training

Anthropic deserves credit for making meaningful privacy commitments, including that educator conversations are not used to train their models.

That’s the right decision.

But protecting student information is about much more than model training.

The first question isn’t:

“What happens after the data gets there?”

It’s:

“Should the data have been disclosed in the first place?”

Those are two completely different questions.

From a district perspective, student data isn’t considered protected simply because it won’t be used to train an AI model.

It also has to be disclosed under the appropriate legal, contractual, and governance framework.

Then I Got to the Verification Process

This one surprised me.

Depending on the verification pathway, educators may be asked to provide a school-issued ID, government-issued ID, employment verification, a contract, or a recent pay stub.

Think about that.

School districts already know who their employees are.

We already have HR systems.

Google Workspace.

Microsoft Entra.

Identity providers.

Clever.

ClassLink.

Why create another process that asks teachers to submit sensitive employment documentation to another third party?

Even if handled securely, I don’t understand why that additional risk needs to exist.

This EdTech GTM Playbook Is Getting Old

Unfortunately, this isn’t unique to Anthropic.

I’ve watched this same playbook repeat itself for years.

Launch free teacher accounts.

Drive rapid bottom-up adoption.

Get thousands of educators using the platform.

Then walk into the district office and say:

“Hundreds of your teachers are already using our platform. If you want visibility, governance, identity management, administrative controls, and district oversight, you should purchase the enterprise version.”

That isn’t responsible K-12 adoption.

It puts districts in a position where they have to react after adoption has already started instead of evaluating the platform before sensitive student information may be shared.

Governance becomes the upsell instead of the foundation.

That’s backwards.

Governance isn’t an enterprise feature.

It isn’t a premium add-on.

It is the prerequisite for adoption.

School districts are the customer.

More importantly, they’re the legal stewards of student data.

Teachers, students, and staff are the district’s users. They are not an independent customer base for vendors to acquire around the district.

This Didn’t Have to Happen

One thing that surprised me was the apparent lack of engagement with many of the district technology leaders I regularly work with before this launch.

When Google and OpenAI were preparing major K-12 initiatives, their GTM leaders reached out to me and many other district CIOs, CTOs, and K-12 leaders.

They wanted us to challenge the strategy.

They wanted us to find the holes.

They changed things because of those conversations.

I’m not saying Anthropic didn’t engage with anyone.

I’m saying this rollout doesn’t feel like it was pressure-tested by enough district leaders who live with student privacy, procurement, governance, and technology risk every day.

Because if it had been, I believe someone would have asked one simple question:

“Could a teacher reasonably and falsely believe they’re authorized to upload protected student information because of how we’ve presented this product?”

If the answer is yes…

The rollout wasn’t ready.

Claude Deserved Better

I don’t think Anthropic has a technology problem.

I think they have a K-12 strategy problem.

Claude is an exceptional AI model.

I genuinely want it to succeed in education.

But great AI doesn’t excuse a poor go-to-market strategy.

District office should not be an afterthought.

Governance should not be an upsell.

And teachers should never be placed in a position where they inadvertently create FERPA compliance issues while believing they’re using a product exactly as intended.

Claude deserved a better rollout.

I hope Anthropic fixes it.

elaine September 15, 2026

Source

Dr. Joe's Substack

NEPC - Blog Post of the Day

Diane Ravitch's Blog: Freddy DeBoer: No, American Schools Are Not Failing

First Fish Chronicles: Beware the EdTech Industry Rebrand: Part 2

Image source:u/SklounceDraxer / Via reddit.com, www.vintage.es, www.cchd.net, Stockcake

“Screenwashing”: Out, Out Damn Spot

Why the Screenwashing?

Screenshot from ISTE’s website

Un-washing ISTE’s “research”

Screenwash 1: “Quality matters more than quantity.”

Reality: Quality learning requires a teacher and traditional tools.

Screenwash 2: “EdTech is particularly impactful for underserved students.”

Reality: EdTech is particularly harmful for underserved students.

Screenshot from LinkedIn, May 29, 2026

Screenwash 3: ISTE states, “Consumer technology and EdTech are not the same.”

Reality: EdTech is Big Tech, but EdTech isn’t Tech Ed.

Screenshot of Instructure’s corporate “partners”

Screenshot from Instructure’s report

Screenwash 4: ISTE says “Teachers are doing it all wrong–they just need to learn from us how to use the products the right way!”

Reality: This is pinning the problem on teachers, when in reality it’s a product problem.

An AI-generated image from Realbotix showing a likeness of their humanoid robot in a classroom setting, which was until recently proposed for use in a district in New York state, where one-third of students live below the poverty line

So what can we do?

Photo by Rachel Hisko on Unsplash

First Fish Chronicles: Beware the EdTech Industry Rebrand: Part 1

Photo by Maksim Shutov on Unsplash

“How do we grow when the easy money is gone?”

Who attends the Tech & Learning EdExec Summit? Lots of companies who stand to profit from potential business deals!

Which is What the Backlash to EdTech Really Threatens

The EdTech Industry’s New Look: “Purpose-Built EdTech”

Screenshot from Instructure’s report

Screenshot from Instructure’s report

Real-Time Rebrand: What It Looks Like

Screenshot of LinkedIn post by Curriculum Associates

Screenshot of a LinkedIn post by Curriculum Associates

It’s Not just EdTech Companies. It’s the Organizations Who Defend Them, Too.

What the Makeover Reveals

The Reliable Narrator: Misunderstanding Third-Grade Reading Proficiency: On Resisting Efficiency and Punishment in Reading Policy

"Schools held 1,281 third graders back after the 2024-25 school year when the law went into effect, compared to 424 a year earlier, according to figures provided by the S.C. Department of Education."

My grandchildren, Brees and Skylar, are featured on this book cover reading the sorts of real books all children deserve access to.

Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: Lessons I Have Learned From Researching School Reform

Shanker Blog: Proficiency or Penalty? Grade Retention Policy and Its Implications for English Learners in Utah

Curmudgucation: AI Is Not for Amateurs

Daily Kos: Texas’ New Propaganda Social Studies Standards

Janresseger: Growth of School Vouchers at State and Federal Levels Threatens Public Schooling

Dr. Joe's Substack: Anthropic Launched Claude for Teachers. We Blocked It for Our District.

Here’s What I Saw

Teachers Were Put in the Middle

The District Treats It Like a Data Breach

Privacy Is More Than Model Training

Then I Got to the Verification Process

This EdTech GTM Playbook Is Getting Old

This Didn’t Have to Happen

Claude Deserved Better