NEPC - Blog Post of the Day

Nancy Bailey's Education Website: A New National Reading Panel? It Depends

elaine — Wed, 13 May 2026 16:58:00 +0000

Nancy Bailey's Education Website: A New National Reading Panel? It Depends

… I believed that because of its weaknesses, the report was dangerous in its potential for misuse.

~ Joanne Yatvin, from Education Week (2003). Educator, former president of the National Council of Teachers of English, and member of the National Reading Panel (1997-2000).

In 2021, I advocated for a New National Reading Panel (NRP). It has been 26 years since the old one, and reading instruction has become a plethora of programs, most peddling the so-called Science of Reading (SoR), many online, exorbitantly profitable, whether research demonstrates a program’s worth or not.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (CT) has called for a reconvening of the NRP (See the video below). A new NRP would be welcome if it fixed the problems of the old NRP, not rubber-stamping ideology. Otherwise, it would be a waste of time and tax dollars. What’s the point if only one side of the reading debate gets airtime?

DeLauro, a Democrat with whom I often agree, expresses great enthusiasm for the SoR, the old National Reading Panel, and the Mississippi Miracle (discussed below). She’s not alone. Many governors are climbing on board the SoR train.

A new panel would have to include classroom teachers, especially early learning and special education teachers, with degrees in reading, as they were left off the last panel.

There would need to be more inclusive research questioning the SoR, addressing the failures of policies, such as No Child Left Behind and the Every Child Succeeds Act, and the money spent on Race to the Top and the Common Core State Standards, which have affected curriculum and how and what students learn for years.

Would they consider a variety of reading concerns from prominent educators in the field of literacy?

DeLauro is from Connecticut, and I wonder if she has discussed reading with Professor Emeritus of Literacy, Elementary, and Early Childhood Education from Central Connecticut State, Jesse Turner. She needs only look at his podcasts. Here’s an older one I chose about assessment, with a beautiful ring story, worth the whole presentation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLwoXf2ULKc

Would a new NRP refer to the writings of Dr. Stephen Krashen, a long-time leader not only in second language acquisition but phonics and reading? They’d read Krashen’s Phi Delta Kappan report Whole Language and the Great Plummet of 1987-92: AN URBAN LEGEND FROM CALIFORNIA.

They wouldn’t ignore the Boston Globe Op Ed, The fallacy of settled science in literacy by Nancy Carlsson-Paige, professor emerita at Lesley University, and Lexington school superintendent Julie Hackett.

They state:

Science of reading laws prescribe or prohibit specific reading programs according to the “science of reading’’ criteria. The approved programs implement a singular model of reading in which the explicit teaching of decoding/phonics skills dominates reading instruction. Many approved science of reading programs are scripted lessons that tell teachers what to teach, when to teach, and how to teach. School authorities monitor teachers to ensure they are following the script.

Professor PL Thomas, writes about literacy and discusses concerns about the SoR, including retention. He listed research reports worthy of consideration.

Professor Elena Aydarova’s research What You See Is Not What You Get: Science of Reading Reforms as a Guise for Standardization, Centralization, and Privatization is critical.

Thomas Ultican wrote about billionaires driving the Science of Reading.

Would they include professors like Rachel Gabriel whose research (2020) raises questions. What happened to Success for All and Reading Recovery, two very different programs but considered successful by Johns Hopkins University and the National Center on Intensive Intervention?

Will a new NRP look into the concerns surrounding technology and big business including AI?

Historian Diane Ravitch has repeatedly written about her concerns surrounding the SoR. She recently added in a Substack essay:

The problem with “the science of reading” is that it’s not new. American schools have tried it, dropped it, tried it, dropped it, on and on.

The74 report by Jessica Harkay describes The Robust Reading Comprehension Report. Recent findings show children gain phonetic skills but lack comprehension skills later.

These are similar findings from the Reading First Impact Study (2008-2009) grown from the old NRP report. Reading First had a statistically significant positive impact on first graders’ decoding skills but did not produce a statistically significant impact on student reading comprehension test scores in grades one, two, or three.

They’d study Robert J. Tierney (Literacy Professor at the University of British Columbia) and P David Pearson’s (emeritus professor, the University of California, Berkeley) Fact-Checking the Science of Reading: Opening Up the Conversation.

They wouldn’t delete Heinemann publishing and the authors’ great reading and writing ideas and information, including Nancy Atwell and the late Kylene Beers, or other books and papers that might not fit the narrow parameters of the SoR.

Would they cover Crouch and Cambourne’s Made for Learning: How the Conditions of Learning Guide Teaching Decisions and Wyse and Hacking’s The Balancing Act: An Evidence-Based Approach to Teaching Phonics, Reading and Writing?

They’d reread books by Kozol and Ohanian, and many others, that teach us to celebrate children in America. These are only a few suggestions.

Is it a miracle or grade retention?

Mississippi and other states in the south have been getting attention for raising reading scores. The teachers involved, and all who work hard to help students learn to read deserve credit. But serious questions remain about the long-term gains of these state programs focused on the SoR.

Students look to be doing well in 4th grade, but most of these states have one thing in common. They hold third graders not performing well back, before 4th grade testing. Professor Andy Johnson another vocal student advocate and reading researcher, to prove a point, notes he can make Mississippi 4th graders taller. How? Hold back all the shorter students in third grade!

Research is clear, retention is stigmatizing. Students might initially do well, but later not so much. It’s also unnecessary. There are many ways to address reading difficulties without holding children back or pushing them forward without help.

A recent report showed benefits in Mississippi could be dissipating by 8th grade. There’s also a risk retained students will drop out later. In other words, it isn’t a miracle socially.

For years, the phonics v. whole language debate, and later balanced literacy, has lit a spark aptly labeled the Reading Wars. It has hurt instruction and there has been concern it’s intentional to make teachers and public schools appear to fail, for school privatization to take place, by focusing on drill that’s easily presented by tutors, or students in front of screens.

Children need a well-rounded curriculum in reading, developmentally appropriate, geared towards individualized needs, with phonics instruction and a variety of other reading activities.

A new NRP would have to include the voices that care about children, include parents, and those who are sincere and capable of pulling together the research, without having a financial interest in play. It would be truly an inclusive, democratic group. They would respectfully debate and argue and come to a workable solution to what constitutes great reading instruction.

Could Americans trust a new NRP? For what it’s worth I used to think so. But lately, and I don’t mean to be cynical, but after all these years, and witnessing what’s happening in the country today, I don’t have much hope for this to happen. There are too many individuals profiting from education and sadly greed rules supreme. I hope I’m proven wrong.

DeLauro can be seen here on a panel, 13:30 and 1:47:20 discussing a reconvening of the NRP.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZAlYUn4yp0

References

Yatvin, J. (2003, April 30). I Told You So! The Misinterpretation and Misuse of The National Reading Panel Report. Education Week. Retrieved from https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-i-told-you-so-the-misinterpretation-and-misuse-of-the-national-reading-panel-report/2003/04.

Gabriel, R. (2020). The Future of the Science of Reading. The Reading Teacher, 74(1), 11–18. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1924.

Schwartz, S. (2026, February 10). Congress wants to know what makes the ‘Science of Reading’ work. Education Week. Retrieved from https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/congress-wants-to-know-what-makes-the-science-of-reading-work/2026/02.

elaine May 13, 2026

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Nancy Bailey's Education Website

Janresseger: McMahon Continues Dismantling Dept. of Education. Will She Succeed?

elaine — Tue, 12 May 2026 16:45:31 +0000

Janresseger: McMahon Continues Dismantling Dept. of Education. Will She Succeed?

As someone who has advocated for responsible and equitable federal public education policy since the No Child Left Behind era, through the Race to the Top years, and through the growing rush to privatization, I am finding the Trump era frightening, baffling, and hard to track. Outrageous plans are announced that would undermine the U. S. Department of Education’s role of protecting the rights of the nation’s most vulnerable students; threats are made; policies are hinted at; then there is no news for weeks and sometimes months as we all wait and nothing happens.

Although I was relieved that in early February, six months late, Congress passed an education budget for the last half of Fiscal Year 2026 (until September 30), a budget that prevents the draconian cuts in President Donald Trump’s proposed budget, Education Secretary Linda McMahon had already begun a process to dismantle the Department of Education by handing off the work of particular offices to other agencies. A number of the “temporary interagency agreements” to move programs to different Cabinet Departments were signed off in November. Has the work itself already been transferred? Have staff, who are being assigned to travel with and oversee their programs, already moved? I haven’t been able to find out.

Why does all this matter so much? Because it is part of a strategy to eliminate the Department of Education altogether. On March 20, 2025 President Trump signed an executive order to shut down the Department. It is well known, however, that without Congressional approval, the President and a Cabinet Secretary cannot eliminate a federal department established by Congress. Nor can the executive branch eliminate offices or full programs established by Congress. When Trump appointed Linda McMahon as Education Secretary, he defined her job description as shutting down the department.

In the past couple of weeks, a bit more clarity has emerged about how McMahon is trying to accomplish that goal.

Many supporters of public schools hoped that when Congress signed the education budget at the beginning of February, its members would protect the Department by inserting a provision to preclude the handoff its work to other federal departments. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn) the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee did her best to prevent the dismantling of the Department’s work. In a committee and chamber dominated by the GOP, however, DeLauro could not find enough votes for a clause in the budget bill itself that would prevent the handing off of education programs. The best she could accomplish was a strong explanatory statement attached to the budget. K-12 Dive‘s Kara Arundel explains:

“When Congress passed the fiscal year 2026 budget for the U.S. Department pf Education earlier this month, many critics of the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the agency had hoped the appropriation would ban the outsourcing of certain education programs to other federal agencies. It did not. But while the appropriations statute does not prohibit the Education Department from carrying out or entering into interagency agreements with other federal agencies, the legislation’s accompanying explanatory statement—which is nonbinding—strongly condemns and discourages the transfer of key programs out of the department. The bicameral and bipartisan statement (which DeLauro’s committee passed) said that no authorities exist for the Education Department ‘to transfer its fundamental responsibilities under numerous authorizing and appropriations laws’ to other federal agencies. The statement also raised concerns that ‘fragmenting responsibilities for education programs across multiple agencies will create inefficiencies, result in additional costs… cause delays and administrative challenges… (and) weaken Federal support to protect the rights of students, children, youth, and families under Federal education laws.’ ”

A court challenge has been mounted to block McMahon’s steps to spread education programs across other Cabinet Departments, but sadly, the courts seem to take a long, long time as cases go through the appeals process. Arundel adds: “An ongoing lawsuit opposing the Education Department’s downsizing was amended in November to include opposition to the agency’s interagency agreements. The lawsuit called the agreements unlawful and harmful to K-12 and higher education systems. The updated complaint in Somerville v Trump was brought forward by a broad coalition of school districts, employee unions and a disability rights organizations. That case has been consolidated with New York v McMahon, which was brought… by groups of states, school districts and teachers unions. The case is ongoing.” Arundel reports that a group of Democratic Senators has also asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate the legality of the “interagency agreements.”

The Federal News Network‘s Jory Heckman recently reported on another step Linda McMahon has taken to protect her right to dismantle the department: making all of the interagency agreements to hand off the work of the department temporary and less vulnerable to legal challenge: “Education Secretary Linda McMahon told employees last November that the department’s interagency agreements would reassign staff to other agencies ‘on a temporary basis.’ ” The Education Department’s press secretary Savannah Newhouse explains that the temporary agreements are key to McMahon’s long term strategy: “We will continue to deliver successes through these partnerships, further solidifying the proof of concept that interagency agreements provide the same protections, higher quality outcomes, and even more benefits for students, grantees, and other education stakeholders… We look forward to working with Congress on the next steps to codify these partnerships.” The goal here is to create a trial run, prove the dismantling of the Department is harmless, and then convince Congress to take the necessary action to approve the restructure.

Last November, Department of Education work was transferred to other departments through interagency agreements with Primary and Secondary Education programs including Title I sent to the Department of Labor and smaller programs sent to the Departments of Interior, Health and Human Services, and State. The issuing of temporary interagency agreements continued early this week.

Education Week‘s Mark Lieberman reports: “The U.S. Department of Education… announced it will begin offloading the management of key federal programs for school safety, community schools, educational TV programming and family engagement (in) an ‘interagency agreement’ with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services… Separately, the U.S. Department of State will take over management of a grant portal that displays foreign gifts to higher education institutions…. Under Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, the department has now forged nine separate interagency agreements to transfer program responsibilities to other agencies, including administration for most K-12 programs and funds. But shifts the administration has touted for special education (to HHS), civil rights enforcement (to the Department of Justice,) students-loan management (to the Treasury Department), and data collection (to a federal statistics agency) haven’t yet materialized.”

Lieberman notices that this week’s, “Grant programs shifting to HHS are already beleaguered. The six grant programs included in this week’s announcement include several the Trump administration over the past year has proposed to defund and moved to disrupt. Congress recently supplied level year-over-year funding for all of them—$514 million in total. The Department of Education is currently facing three separate lawsuits from recipients of Full-Service Community Schools grant recipients in Illinois, Maryland, North Carolina, and the District of Columbia, who saw their ongoing grant awards abruptly discontinued in December. All told, the agency discontinued roughly $168 million that Community Schools grant recipients in 11 states had been expecting in the coming years.” The Department claims the grantees were promoting “diversity, equity, and inclusion”in their Community Schools.

Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA), the ranking member of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce, does not buy Linda McMahon’s theory that all the temporary interagency agreements will “provide proof of concept” and win over Congress. The Federal News Network‘s Heckman describes Scott disdain for the “legally dubious interagency agreements… Over and over again, the administration has circumvented the law to hamstring the future of public education without the consent of Congress or the American people.”

elaine May 12, 2026

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Janresseger

Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: Teachers Using Technologies in U.S. Classrooms: Who Decides?

elaine — Mon, 11 May 2026 16:33:53 +0000

Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: Teachers Using Technologies in U.S. Classrooms: Who Decides?

U.S. presidents, philanthropists, parents, and researchers all say, no they swear, that teachers are the most important in-school factor in getting children and youth to learn (see here, here, and here). Yet those very same teachers, lauded for their effectiveness, as experienced professionals with advanced degrees, have little to say in determining access to or use of hardware and software in their classrooms. In buying and deploying new technologies for classroom use, district policymakers. more often than not, decide, not teachers.

School boards buy iPads for kindergarten teachers. Superintendents contract with companies to supply every classroom with interactive whiteboards. Sure, maybe a few teachers serve on a district-wide committee that advises the school board and superintendent but key decisions to spend and distribute machines are seldom made by teachers.

Teachers–most of whom already use an array of electronic devices at home–are expected to use new technologies in classroom lessons but have little to no say in determining which devices and software they will use and under what conditions. That is the paradox that champions of technology–including philanthropists, software engineers, programmers, and CEOs–fail to understand or if they do understand, choose to ignore.

Yet that is not the case in other professions. Doctors, lawyers, engineers, and accountants working either as solo practitioners or in small groups decide which new technologies they will buy and use. In most public and private organizations that hire professionals, such as hospitals, top decision-makers often meet and confer with doctors. Ditto for engineers and architects in big companies, and senior lawyers in firms. But seldom in school districts.

Non-involvement does not mean, of course, non-use. In school districts, for example, once major investments in high-tech are made, there are many teachers who choose to use the new equipment and software in their lessons. And there are teachers who ingeniously weave learning and machines together in imaginative ways that spur students to learn even more than they would from conventional lessons. There are such teachers and they show up in articles in Edutopia, on technology advocacy websites, and in software testimonials. They comprise a small fraction of a district’s teacher corps, however.

So what? What’s the big deal about teachers not being part of the decisions to buy and deploy new technologies?

Here’s my two answers to this “So What” question.

1. Such policy and administrative decisions ignoring teachers’ ideas, concerns, and issues of implementation send the message that those who teach are mere technicians who hammer the nail and turn the screw. They are not decision-makers capable of making judgments about identifying, buying, and using new technologies.

2. Without serious teacher involvement in decisions to purchase and use new technologies (more than a token teacher or two on a district-wide committee), avoidable, even foolish, decisions will occur in buying new equipment and software. There are, for example, new hardware and applications hidden in school closets for years testifying to rash decisions made without teacher involvement.

Anyone who has been in schools when spanking new devices were rolled out at the beginning of a school year knows all the “Oops,” “Sorry about that,” and “we had not considered that possibility” that get said in subsequent months. Much, but not all, of that could have been avoided had teachers participated fully in piloting new devices and discussions prior to purchase and use.

Were teachers to become part of the district and school decision-making processes determining access to and use of new technologies, would they eventually integrate these new technologies into classroom lessons? A higher percentage would, I believe.

Why? Because those teachers who piloted the hardware and software would have thought through and learned connections between curriculum knowledge and skills, which lessons could be taught that use the new devices and software, and expertise would have emerged among those teachers and their peers that could be shared. Treating teachers as undeserving to be at the table when decisions are made about buying and deploying of machines and applications reflect the low opinion that too many policymakers have for teachers.

Would decisions on access and use to high-tech devices in classrooms be better-informed? You bet. Would teachers use the software both differently and more creatively?

Perhaps. It would be worth finding out.

elaine May 11, 2026

Source

Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Second Breakfast: Miseducative Experiences

elaine — Fri, 08 May 2026 17:46:48 +0000

Second Breakfast: Miseducative Experiences

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do/ with your one wild and precious life?"

Arguably and more than a little ironically, this may be one of the most frequently invoked lines of poetry on social media – I won't add "for better or worse," although I'm tempted to, because as much as I frown when art is reduced to meme, I'm never mad when I read Mary Oliver's words. How could I be? Just these two lines unlock other lines and other poems, and I'm always hopeful that their simplicity and accessibility and power will lure people into reading more. Not just more Mary Oliver, but more poetry of any and all sorts.

Poetry, after all, isn't something you can "optimize" -- neither its reading nor its writing -- and "optimization" seems to be the despairingly destructive driving force of our culture, an exercise that, if nothing else, serves to make our lives much much less beautiful and wild.

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do/ with your one wild and precious life?"

I ask this question -- "plead" may be the better verb -- of those who are spending an increasing amount of time typing to chatbots, who are handing over important cognitive tasks and key decisions -- personal and professional -- to "artificial intelligence." I ask this question -- "implore" even -- of those who are hunched over their laptops or their phones, those who are watching television on multiple screens, almost every waking minute of their day.

Because this is what you've decided to do with your one wild and precious life.

"I don't know exactly what a prayer is," Oliver admits in that same poem, but continues, "I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down / into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, / how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, / which is what I have been doing all day. / Tell me, what else should I have done?"

Tech writer Taylor Lorenz tells Wired she spends 17 hours a day online. She does not want to "touch grass," she insists. She's a 40-something year old woman; she can do what she wants.

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do/ with your one wild and precious life?"

What you decide to do with your one wild and precious life is up to you -- whether your prayers of devotion are to the computer or to "AI" or to social media and not, as Oliver might encourage us, to the grasshopper and other planetary intelligences.

What you decide to do with your one wild and precious life, where your attention and your prayers are directed, is also, of course, what you've opted not to do. And these decisions do, in fact, matter.

Lorenz (and plenty of others) like to argue that "there is no evidence" that social media (or the Internet or computers or ed-tech or television or video games or whatever) harms children – an exaggeration, no doubt, as there is evidence; they just don't like it. (They don't like Jonathan Haidt, to be specific. And I get that, I really do.)

Lorenz's latest newsletter cites the work of psychologist Christopher Ferguson, best known for his challenges to his field's prevailing research on video games: that there is a link between video games and aggressive behavior. Ferguson contends that claims about the relationship between violence and video games is not just exaggerated; it is non-existent, that is all merely a moral panic. This is the framing that Lorenz leans into with recent efforts to regulate social media too, which she explicitly links to the push to censor LGBTQ content online.

The right-wing movements that are actively seeking to ban books, eliminate academic departments, circumscribe what can be taught in the classroom, and yes, limit children's access to social media should not be ignored. Indeed, it is imperative that those who seek to curb Silicon Valley's power and influence over education and information delineate how their efforts are not politically aligned with the Moms of Liberty ilk.

But to frame any opposition to technology as a "moral panic" is a rhetorical sleight of hand in which one side gets to invoke "science" and "research" while dismissing the other as mere "hysteria." To dismiss people's concerns about what kids – any of us, really – are up to online as fundamentally reactionary, as censorious is more than a little disingenuous.

There is research (and plenty of it) that finds that various forms of new media – apps, games, and so on – affects us, affects how and what we think and know. I mean, of course it does. People are spending hour after hour after hour after hour – almost every waking minute of every day – clicking on things.

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do/ with your one wild and precious life?"

What we do with our time -- online or off -- matters, and profoundly so. Everything we do shapes who we are. Everything we experience shapes who we become.

This belief is at the core of progressive education – contrary to those accusations above that arguments against technology only come from right-wing zealots – and certainly this belief is at the core of the work of John Dewey. In Experience and Education, he too turns to poetry to make his point, citing Tennyson: "...all experience is an arch wherethro' / Gleams the untraveled world, whose margin shades / For ever and for ever when I move."

But as Dewey argues, not all experiences are necessarily educative; and as repeated experiences can become habits, we might find ourselves adopting patterns that are incredibly destructive not just to our own learning, but to our relationships with one another, with the world around us – destructive even to democracy. We might find ourselves having been fundamentally changed by the behaviorist practices and libertarian ideologies that undergird every single piece of computer technology we use.

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do/ with your one wild and precious life?"

At what point can you no longer even plan to do things with your one wild and precious life because these technologies have obliterated your ability to even imagine something outside their dictates, their designs for you?

Everything Everywhere All At Once:

“The birth of the bio-edu-data-sciences” by Ben Williamson
“Why the two cases against Meta and YouTube are even bigger than you think” – Alistair Alexander cites David Golumbia's Cyberlibertarianism: The Right Wing Politics of Digital Technology
“A School District Tried to Help Train Waymos to Stop for School Buses. It Didn’t Work” by Jason Doiy
“‘BLOCKADE’: The Right Is Using AI Content Scanners to Try to Supercharge Book Banning” by Claire Woodcock
“The Conviction That In The End Nothing Matters Except People” -- Josh Brake on Ursula Franklin
“Reflections on AI from Melanie Mitchell, thinking human” by Benjamin Riley
“On-demand college counseling, courtesy of AI” by Jon Marcus
“Who Goes AI?” – Rusty Foster updates Dorothy Thompson’s famous “Who Goes Nazi?” essay and goddamn, it sure works
“Chromebook Remorse: Tech Backlash at Schools Extends Beyond Phones” by Natasha Singer
“A Math Memorization Routine” by Michael Pershan, who gets the almost-final word here:

Teaching a group is hard, so there’s a tendency to retreat to what works for individuals. Give everyone flashcards. Give everyone a computer. Every kid has a tutor. Every kid works on the app. This tendency is maybe especially strong in thinking about math facts, since they’re so heavily studied by special education and psychological researchers who tend to think in terms of individual support—the one-on-one intervention or study. The “Science of Learning” has a bias towards individual pedagogy.

This tendency should be resisted. Teaching a group is most viable when you’re able to teach them as a group. When you treat them as twenty single individuals, each on their own different path, the job also gets twenty times harder. Now, I’m not naive. I understand there are times when the different needs of students are too great for uniform expectations. But I think we’re often too eager to turn a class into a collection of individuals. Instead we can keep class vibrant, interactive, and engaging without asking everyone to retreat to their desks. The collective deserves more respect.

from Experience and Education by John Dewey

We always live at the time we live and not at some other time, and only by extracting at each present time the full meaning of each present experience are we prepared for doing the same thing in the future. This is the only preparation which in the long run amounts to anything.

All this means that attentive care must be devoted to the conditions which give each present experience a worthwhile meaning.

"The Summer Day" by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Today's bird is the northern cardinal – a nod to Mary Oliver’s poem “Red Bird” in which the cardinal’s vibrant plumage stands in contrast to the dull browns and greys and blues of winter: “Red bird came all winter / Firing up the landscape /As nothing else could.” A fairly common bird in North America, particularly if you have a bird feeder, the cardinal can also boast being the most common state bird and the mascot to about a zillion sports teams.

elaine May 8, 2026

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Second Breakfast

Shanker Blog: When “Success” Leaves Students Behind: How Market-Based Schools Exclude Students with Disabilities

elaine — Thu, 07 May 2026 12:47:48 +0000

Shanker Blog: When “Success” Leaves Students Behind: How Market-Based Schools Exclude Students with Disabilities

As a freshly licensed teacher, I entered the profession hoping to challenge common stereotypes about teaching. I was ready to defy persistent myths of the ‘jaded teacher’ who re-used their lesson plans year after year and taught from their desk chair. So, I sought an environment where teachers taught with rigor and acted as advocates for change. When I encountered a job listing for a national charter school network, it felt like the perfect place to teach: the network emphasized high expectations for both staff and students, all in the name of helping disadvantaged communities beat the system.

Once the school year started, every moment of lesson prep and execution was centered around a single goal: excellence. As the year progressed, the administration increasingly painted certain students as threats to this goal students who struggled to comply with the demanding curriculum and constant test taking. These students—many of whom were multilingual learners and had a learning disability—were many grade levels behind. The strict behavioral regime didn’t accommodate their needs, and they were often in the dean's office instead of participating in instructional time. But when I questioned what we could do to support them, I encountered pushback. They will learn to meet the expectations. We need to focus on the cuspers. Because we were compared to other charters in the district, my leadership wanted to prioritize “cuspers”—students on the verge of advancing performance categories, whose gains would most directly improve accountability metrics—over students who were severely under proficient and therefore viewed as unlikely to advance brackets.

That school year taught me a lot about the nuanced and tense views on how to help disadvantaged students succeed in a world of standardized success. However, a broader question stuck with me years after this experience: To what extent do charter and private schools exclude students with disabilities within a highly standardization education system? Existing research confirms that charter and private schools do, in fact, exclude students with disabilities—- not only by discouraging initial enrollment, but also by pushing students out after enrollment.

Due to the rapid expansion of charter schools and the widespread adoption of private school voucher programs in many states, this research is all relatively new. However, one argument that has consistently championed the charter movement is that charter schools perform slightly better than traditional public schools on standardized tests. This stance became less clear as research has muddied reported score growth when accounting for student demographic and location. More recently, political verbiage has shifted to center priorities like educational freedom and parent choice to push for market-based schools. Beyond political rhetoric, this shift raises important questions about the larger costs to public education. Here are three key patterns that demonstrate how market-based schools exclude students with disabilities.

Pre-Enrollment Exclusion: Cream-Skimming and Counseling Out

Prior to charter school enrollment, phenomena like cream-skimming and counseling out are used to discourage or prevent students with disabilities from being admitted. These tactics are often utilized by school administrators or teachers to suggest that their school is unable to provide adequate services that a large public school can. Researchers largely argue that charters employ these tactics because students with disabilities are more expensive to educate and tend to score lower on standardized tests than students without disabilities. Through a qualitative study of NYC’s small and large public schools, researcher Jessica Bacon found a problematic pattern of students with disabilities being pushed from charters to traditional public schools to avoid low test scores.

When Bacon interviewed teachers and administrators at a small charter school, she found that conversations about students with disabilities were often framed through deficit-based assumptions. One teacher described advocating for a student with a learning disability to be transferred out of the school because they couldn’t keep up academically. Despite a robust body of research demonstrating that inclusive settings better support academic growth, the teacher believed the student belonged in a self-contained classroom and convinced the parent to concede (Bacon, 2019, pg. 37). An administrator from the same school further explained that the principal chose not to open any self-contained classes due to what they described as “fear and ignorance,” noting concerns that such programs would attract students who might “take the school down” academically (Bacon, 2019, p. 36). This interaction exemplifies how counseling out is enacted through moral pressure and professional authority, and functions to protect charter schools’ academic standing.

Teachers from the large public high school described the consequences of these practices, explaining that they often absorbed students whom charter schools implicitly discouraged from enrolling. One teacher acknowledged that “a certain amount of creaming is still happening… there are schools still not taking kids across the continuum of disability and need. Certain schools send a message: ‘Don’t come here, we don’t want you’” (Bacon, 2019, pg. 39). As a result of charter schools’ exclusionary tactics, large public schools become responsible for educating a disproportionate number of students with disabilities and are subsequently labeled as failing due to lower academic standing shaped by this unequal distribution.

Structural Barriers in Admissions and Enrollment Policies

A more explicit form of exclusion exists in private schools, which are legally allowed to deny admission to any student, including students with disabilities. Many private schools require academic testing for admission, charge an average annual tuition of around $15,000, and have no requirements to provide data on school performance to parents. In fact, many parents must sign away their rights to federally regulated IDEA protections in order to admit their child to private schools.

Studies show that adequate information is not shared with parents regarding losing their federal IDEA, FAPE, and LRE rights when enrolling for a private school. The National Center for Learning Disabilities found that “many parents participating in school choice programs did not understand the impact their participation had on their IDEA rights” (NCLD, 2024, pg. 15). This pattern opposes the argument that privatization efforts support all families through increased academic performance as the numbers simply don’t represent all students' experience.

Disciplinary Practices and the De-Identification of Disability

Even when students with disabilities are enrolled in a charter or private school, they are disproportionately suspended and deidentified from their initial disability status. New Orleans touted high achievement marks after switching to an all-charter school system but also suspended a third of the city’s special needs students for disciplinary reasons. In Newark, researchers found that being in a charter school led to a decrease in students keeping their IEP services after 2-3 years. Gilmour et al. studied Newark’s charter enrollment for students with disabilities, using models to measure the casual effect of charter enrollment and receiving an IEP (Gilmour et al., 2022). They found that enrolling in a “participating charter school led to a statistically significant decrease in the probability that a student who at entry was receiving special education services still had an IEP two or three years later” (Gilmour et al., 2022, pg. 15). These findings support a broader pattern suggesting that charter schools are likely to deidentify students with disabilities, which contributes to the earlier mentioned under enrollment findings in the field.

Implications

Exclusion of students with disabilities has been proven to occur before enrollment, during enrollment, and while a student is enrolled in market-based schools (Barnard-Brak & Schmidt, 2018; Bacon, 2019; McKittrick et al., 2019; Gilmour et al., 2022; NCLD, 2024). This exclusion happens implicitly in charter schools with cream-skimming, and explicitly in private schools with exclusive admissions processes. Within these systems, teachers often become unintended agents of exclusion because of the systems’ sole focus on academic achievement. In charter schools, teachers must conform with academic pressures, which results in very negative implications like segregation (Bacon, 2019). This pressure to conform may be related to the phenomenon of students being deidentified from their disabilities after being enrolled in a charter school (Gilmour et al. 2022) which takes away their mandated support and could affect their future opportunities (Dudley-Marling & Baker, 2012).

In private schools that face no IDEA regulation, “private schools can change or eliminate a child’s services without notifying parents— and at any time” (NCLD, 2024, pg. 12). This further exacerbates families’ confusion regarding what services they are entitled to receive, while private schools benefit from their enrollment through high tuition costs. In short, although market-based schools frame themselves as offering parental choice and academic excellence, they often narrow families’ options and weaken the legal protections available to students with disabilities.

Rethinking Educational Success in a Standardized System

The most troubling aspect of market-based schooling is the advertised premise that it improves academic outcomes for all students. These findings not only suggest that students with disabilities are being excluded from charter and private schools nationwide, but that their exclusion is an integral part of improving academic scores and leaves many families confused about their student’s rights (Dudley-Marling & Baker, 2012; Bacon, 2019; McKittrick et al., 2019). While there are short term solutions to these exclusions, like setting up equitable enrollment preferences and ensuring transportation for students, the long-term solution must prioritize all students' education access over some students’ academic performance.

These patterns suggest that while existing research has informed efforts to reduce opportunity gaps for students with disabilities and support their parents within the current system, systemic change remains essential to remediate these gaps. Future research should compare similar states to one another and engage in longitudinal studies that track the effects of enrollment discrimination on students with disabilities over time. Ultimately, future market-based education policy must account for the students of disabilities and their families who are disadvantaged by these schools, as well as the broader consequences of exclusion, unequal access, and the prioritization of short-term academic gains over equitable education for all.

Market-based, neoliberal education reforms have commodified students in a way that moves the symbolic educational goal post from access to performance. Because of this shift, students with disabilities do not have the support to succeed in charter or private environments. These researched patterns necessitate a consideration of the standardized system of success the education system relies on. If public education is meant to serve all students, we must redefine success beyond narrow metrics and ensure that students with disabilities are given access, support, and opportunity to succeed.

elaine May 7, 2026

Source

Shanker Blog

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

elaine — Wed, 06 May 2026 16:48:50 +0000

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

"'It’s going to make grades matter again,' said Rep. Fawn Pedalino, a Turbeville Republican who sponsored the bill." Skylar Laird (11 February 2026)

A “no zero” policy received media attention and stirred controversy and resistance in Greenville, South Carolina in 2016. Now, a decade later, Laird reports, ‘A kick in the pants’: SC bill banning minimum grades in schools advances in House.

Establishing a “no zero” policy is counter-intuitive for most people since it seems to work against a sense of fairness, and as those who oppose the policy typically respond, a “no zero” policy seems to encourage laziness and even passing students along who do no work, as covered by Laird:

“We are teaching bad habits with grade floors and diminishing the capacity of a grade to accurately report what the students know and can do,” [Patrick Kelly, lobbyist for the Palmetto State Teachers Association] said.

More students may graduate under the lower standards, but they’re less prepared for what comes next, Kelly said. State data reflected that trend this year, when more students graduated than in the past decade but a quarter remained unprepared for college or the workforce.

However, a “no zero” policy is the right thing to do both statistically and academically—but only if that policy is part of wider assessment practices that support dropping zeroes as part of the grading system.

First, an analysis shows why assigning zeroes is flawed in a traditional A-F grading system in which the F range is often 50-60 points while all other grade ranges are 10 or fewer points. As Cristea explains:

The flaw in the system is that a 100-point grading scale does not mathematically equalize zeros to have the same weight as other scores. This paper presents the view that zeros are not fair to anyone including students, parents, teachers, and society as a whole.

The statistical flaw of zeroes and a disproportionate F range lead us to the equity problem. As Rick Wormeli has noted, fair isn’t always equal. So let me lay out briefly the broader assessment practices and concerns that must be in place when a “no zero” policy is adopted (and the “no zero” policy and these issue below should be implemented).

Schools, teachers, parents, and students must set aside grading as a system of rewards and punishments, and begin to see grading as a subset of assessment, which must be used as a system of feedback and student revision to support student learning.

In other words, assessment, tests, and grades must become part of teaching and learning and not the conclusion of learning.

Student assignments, tests, and performances must be viewed as obligations by the students; in short, they must be done.

Ideally, all students would complete all assignments with mastery at the same rate, but in the real world, that will never happen. Thus, everyone must begin to worry more about students learning than at what rate they learn or if they learn simultaneously with other students.

Here, I must emphasize that assigning a zero for incomplete or skipped assignments is fundamentally no different than simply passing a student along because both practices prove that the assignment never mattered. The analogy I offer here is student assignments are similar to medicine prescribed by a doctor; neither the student nor the patient benefits if the assignment/medicine is simply ignored. In short, the only option is to do the assignment.

My alternative to the zero is that students must complete fully all work assigned or no credit can be assigned for the course; this approach addresses the problems with both assigning zeroes and simply passing students who do not complete the work.

That said, a key practice supporting all of this is requiring and allowing student revision without belaboring over trying to keep every student at the same pace or number of revisions. This expectation is also supported by using a grade contract instead of grading each assignment.

I have implemented these policies and practices in writing courses for over four decades, and students quickly learn that the sooner they try and the more fully they participate, the sooner they can move on; this is a much more authentic and academically positive and intrinsic motivation than punishing/rewarding with grades.

In the context of so-called content courses (wile problematic, many see writing as process, not content, although I disagree on that point), allowing zeroes or even low grades on assessments of acquiring content sends a message to students that some content simply doesn’t matter—if a student makes a zero or 63, and the class simply moves on to the next topic.

This traditional practice, I believe, has a much more negative impact on learning than any downside to “no zero” policies.

A “no zero” policy, then, is not an isolated issue, but it one important reform within a larger revision of how assessments, tests, and grades can and should be used in formal education to support the learning of all students—a messy and unpredictable process that should not be shackled to a traditional system of grading that is neither statistically nor academically sound.

For Further Reading

The Case Against Zeros in Grading, Alexis Tamony

Rick Wormeli’s Responses to a Parent of a High-Achieving Student with Concerns About Grading Changes

The Gray Areas of Grading, Rick VanDeWeghe

More Thoughts on Feedback, Grades, and Late Work

Update

But Carifio and Carey found the opposite to be true. In a comprehensive 2015 study, they analyzed seven years’ worth of data for more than 29,000 high school students, looking at the impact that minimum grading had on test scores, grade inflation, and graduation rates. Compared with their counterparts in schools with traditional grading schemes, students who benefited from minimum grading actually put more effort into their learning, earning higher scores on state exams and graduating at higher rates.

In fact, for many students, according to the researchers, receiving a zero was demoralizing—not corrective. “The assigning of even a small number of catastrophically low grades, especially early in the marking term, before student self-efficacy can be established, can create this sense of helplessness,” Carifio and Carey explain, putting students in an impossible situation and discouraging them for the rest of the grading period. Giving students a lifeline out of a ruinous situation keeps them engaged and motivated to do better, the research suggests.

The claim about real-life norms is also dubious. There are times when deadlines must be strictly enforced, but for the most part, employers are typically forgiving of extensions and late work, recognizing that “assigned deadlines can be stressfully tight, compromising output quality,” according to a 2022 study, which also found that 53 percent of workplace deadlines were flexible. In fact, “deadline estimates are often overly optimistic,” and adhering to them too stringently can dramatically increase burnout.

Why the 100-Point Grading Scale Is a Stacked Deck

elaine May 6, 2026

Source

Paul Thomas

Curmudgucation: Excerpts or Whole Books?

elaine — Tue, 05 May 2026 16:52:17 +0000

Curmudgucation: Excerpts or Whole Books?

In a post last week, Timothy Shanahan has some worthwhile points to make about literacy, reading, and excerpts versus whole works. But in the end, we come back to the same old problem (spoiler alert: it's testing).

In "Whole Books or Excerpts? Which Does the Most to Promote Reading Ability," Shanahan notes that the excerpts vs. whole books debate keeps busting out. He starts out by questioning the premise of one side's claims of a "purportedly damaging shift" from books to excerpts.

I say “purported” because the claim seems to be that in the past teachers were teaching their kids to read books, and now they aren’t. I’ve been around quite a while, and I don’t remember the past that way.

That's fair. Shanahan says he's been worked on various textbook reading programs for fifty years, so he would correctly remember that most basal literature texts generally relied heavily on short works, a few excerpts, and probably one full play and one full length work. When my department decided to incorporate more complete works, we had to move outside the basal text. Our AP track required students to read 7 or 8 novels, but even in the "general" track, we covered a couple of books a year. I would expect your mileage may vary depending on your local teachers. Shanahan later argues that the lack of complete books has been particularly true for K-5, though a first grader's "complete book" is a far cry from Moby Dick.

But I think Shanahan is missing part of the concern here. In my last decade of teaching under test-and-punish policies, it's not just that I was directed to use more excerpts, but that the excerpts were of particular low quality. Like innumerable teachers across the country, I was handed a stack of workbooks, typically with a few paragraphs on one page with four or five multiple choice questions on the facing page. To make room for all this drill, something had to go (of course, administrations tend to add items to teachers' plates without any direction on how to make it fit).

We did all this, of course, for test prep. The Big Standardized Test asks students to read a short, context-free excerpt, and answer some multiple choice questions about it. So that's what we practiced. Shanahan says that "it would be the rare program that presents reading instruction as a series of random excerpts," and I would agree if we were only talking about basal texts-- but that's not what much of the "excerpts are killing us" crowd is talking about.

And the Big Standardized Test hangs over Shanahan's whole discussion.

I’d love to say that “Smith and Jones (1998) found that teaching reading with books increased reading levels by 26 points over what resulted for the excerpts group.” Or vice versa.

The problem is that there is no such research.

This is unsurprisingly correct. But it's also the heart of the problem with his main question. Shanahan is treating "reading ability" and "scores on a reading test" as synonyms. And no reading test I've ever heard of tests for things like "read an entire novel then reflect and develop and understanding of the major themes and how they are set forth and connected over the entire length of the work. There's a level of literacy that is simply impervious to standardized testing because that level of literacy requires depth and time. It's the level of literacy that, for instance, helps you understand that The Great Gatsby parties are meant as a demonstration of using excess to try to drown out the inner wailing of sad, empty lives and not as an example of the kind of cool party that people should want to imitate. It's the level of literacy that is able to grapple with the ambiguity that enriches rather than demanding that every question about a piece of reading must one and only one correct answer.

I don't know how you test for that level of literacy, especially the level that pays off throughout one's life as a grown human person. But it is precisely that level of literacy and comprehension that is needed to navigate a complicated modern world, and yet we have engineered a system that focuses schools' energy on Not That. Are we paying a price for it as a country and a culture? Aspects of our current national situation might point to "yes," but can I cite actual testing data? I cannot, because there is no test checking for that kind of reading ability. And as long as we keep treating "reading ability" and "score on a Big Standardized Test" as synonyms, we will not have such evidence.

Shanahan argues that reading a full book to students is not helpful, and I agree (he says that lots of whole book fans think Reading To is fine, and I disagree-- I have certainly met those people, but they were a minority among professionals I have known).

Shanahan speaks in favor of building "reading stamina" but says we don't need to go whole text to do that. And at some points in his post, I'm not really sure what Shanahan is trying to say:

My point isn’t that there is no cultural benefit to be derived from having read The Scarlet Letter, The Great Gatsby, or Beloved in their entirety. Those are wonderful books and the more kids who know them the better. However, I also think it’s wonderful for kids to get to know Steinbeck, Salinger, Morrison, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Hawthorne, Melville, Lee, Knowles, Crane, Golding, Dickens, Homer, Frank, Bradbury, Wiesel, Twain, Atwood, Doerr, Lowry, Kesey, Keyes, Smith, Hinton, Updike, Orwell, and so on. There are so many fine authors and wonderful books, stories, plays, and essays, that a whole book curriculum is certain to be deficient when it comes to familiarizing students with this range of voices.

So... full novels are swell but have no benefit? Because we can't full novel our way through a full range of writers, why bother? I'm not sure. I'm pretty sure that there are benefits to reading some of these works, even if the variety is limited. Those benefits would include 1) there are a wide range of rewards and understandings that come from full immersion is a large-scale work and 2) there are many different voices out there and you will like some and not others.

Shanahan lists five concluding, and his last is his most solid:

There is no reason why schools cannot combine both excerpts and whole books in their English Language Arts instruction – fostering both depth and breadth.

Sure. And I would add that it is helpful if these works have some sort of depth or merit to them. Yes, we will argue until our tongues can no longer wag about what works truly have depth and merit, but as long as we're trying to steer by those values, I'm convinced that we will end up some place more rich and rewarding than we get with somebody's super duper test practice workbook sheets, even if our test scores don't go up on the way.

elaine May 5, 2026

Source

Curmudgucation

Asia Times: Chinese Private Equity Circling Trump’s School Voucher Gold Rush

elaine — Fri, 01 May 2026 18:18:27 +0000

Asia Times: Chinese Private Equity Circling Trump’s School Voucher Gold Rush

US school choice advocates calling Trump’s federal voucher program ‘free money’ may be underestimating its China influence costs.

In September 2023, Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis stunned school choice advocates when he kicked out four private schools from the state’s school voucher program.

The schools’ offense, according to the state’s announcement, was their “direct ties to the Chinese Communist Party,” which were seen as “an imminent threat to the health, safety, and welfare of these school’s [sic] students and the public.” The alleged “ties” were not explained in the announcement.

What was surprising about the announcement was that Florida has long been regarded as being “number one in education freedom” by school choice advocates, and its largely unregulated voucher market, along with those of other states, has been described as the “wild west of school voucher expansions.”

A report on the state’s announcement by WFTV explained that the governor’s decision was likely due to the for-profit owner of these schools, Spring Education Group, “controlled by Primavera Holdings Limited,” which is a reference to Primavera Capital, a private equity investment firm based in Hong Kong.

Spring Education Group is one of the largest operators of private schools in the US, overseeing more than 200 schools in 19 states. The company’s schools are considered prestigious and include Stratford School, LePort Montessori Schools, Nobel Learning Communities, and BASIS Independent Schools.

In a written statement to WFTV, spokespersons representing the four Florida schools, banned from the voucher program, stated, “We are regularly acknowledged as one of the best private schools in our area and have a track record of delivering outstanding educational outcomes, which is why parents choose us. Our schools are locally run, abide by local, state, and federal laws, and do not have ties to any government or political party.”

Nevertheless, when the New York Post, a conservative tabloid owned by right-wing firebrand Rupert Murdoch, caught wind of this story from Florida, it reported that “[a] group of elite private schools in Manhattan and Brooklyn,” operated by BASIS Independent Schools, were sold to Spring Education Group in 2019. “Primavera’s chairman and CEO is Fred Zuliu Hu, who has previously been named as a one-time senior member of the Chinese Communist Party.”

The article further said that “While BASIS schools tell parents in a disclaimer that its parent company, Spring Education Group, is controlled by Primavera, which it says, ‘is itself owned by Chinese persons residing in Hong Kong,’ the schools do not acknowledge the Communist link. Primavera dispute[s] that Hu is currently a Communist Party member.”

But concerns about Spring Education Group and Primavera continued to be a flashpoint among conservative lawmakers and advocates in other states. In February 2024, Republican US Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas wrote a high-profile letter to then-US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin expressing concerns about another company associated with Primavera Capital called Tutor.com.

“Tutor.com is a long-standing provider of tutoring services to our service members and their families,” Cotton wrote, and its acquisition by “a Chinese-owned corporation,” along with the Princeton Review in 2022, concerned him. “Tutor.com collects personal data on users,” the senator said, “such as location, internet protocol addresses, and contents of the tutoring sessions.”

That business arrangement, Cotton maintained, was akin to “paying to expose our military and their children’s private information to the Chinese Communist Party.”

Cotton’s letter quickly caught the attention of multiple right-wing advocacy groups. In March 2024, Parents Defending Education, a conservative astroturf organization that accuses public schools and universities of spreading “transgender ideology” and liberal “indoctrination,” issued a “non-exhaustive list of school districts that give students access to Tutor.com.” (In 2025, Parents Defending Education rebranded to Defending Education.)

The New York Post promptly amplified the concerns of Parents Defending Education, reporting that Tutor.com was assisting the Chinese government in “infiltrating American classrooms.” Picking up the New York Post’s conspiratorial language, another conservative group critical of public schools, Freedom in Education, “uncovered” evidence of Tutor.com facilitating “infiltration of Chinese spyware” in schools in Georgia.

By December 2025, it was no longer “clear” if Primavera divested from Tutor.com or still owned shares, according to the Washington Free Beacon, a right-wing media site funded by billionaire Paul Singer, a hedge fund manager and “major donor to Republican political candidates.”

But, pointing to the connection between Primavera and Spring Education Group, the article stated, “There are also signs of [China’s] new approach to influencing elementary and high schools: just buy… [the schools]. … The expansion of groups like Spring Education into the American educational landscape comes as American youth are increasingly open to far left socialist economic ideology, as evidenced by the election of [New York City Mayor] Zohran Mamdani.”

Also in December, another news outlet in the right-wing media echo chamber, Texas Scorecard, warned readers of Primavera’s connections to the Spring Education Group and its ownership of 13 schools in the Lone Star State. The article was published around the time Texas debuted a $1 billion school voucher program.

In other states, which like Florida have largely unregulated school voucher programs, state tax dollars are already flowing to private schools operated by Spring Education Group. In North Carolina, Spring Education Group operates eight schools, two of which are participating in the state’s voucher program (the other six are preschool-only programs, which are ineligible for North Carolina voucher money).

Those two schools, Chesterbrook Academy Elementary and Middle School in Cary and Chesterbrook Academy Preschools and Elementary in Raleigh, received $106,778 and $49,475, respectively, in public funds in the 2024–2025 school year, according to state government reporting.

Yet, despite the conservative movement’s fears about Chinese communist influence in America’s education system, many red state officials and advocacy groups are opting into a new federal program created by the Trump administration that may lead to huge financial payouts to education companies like Spring Education Group and Tutor.com and, in turn, their private investors, including Primavera Capital.

Who’s Hu

Conservative rumors about ties between Primavera and its founder, Fred Hu—who also goes by Fred Zuliu Hu, Zu Liu Hu, and Zuliu Hu on English language sites—to the Chinese Communist Party have some basis in fact.

According to multiple websites, including Chinese ones that Our Schools translated into English with the help of researchers, an individual named Hu Zuliu [Fred Hu] served multiple terms, from 2008 through at least 2023, as a delegate in the Hunan Provincial Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), economic sector.

According to the CPPCC’s official website, “The CPPCC is an organization in the patriotic united front of the Chinese people, an important organ for multiparty cooperation and political consultation under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), and an important means of promoting socialist democracy in China’s political activities.”

“In 2008, Hu Zuliu was elected as a member of the 10th Hunan Provincial Committee of the CPPCC, and in 2013, he was reelected as a member of the 11th CPPCC,” according to Primavera Capital’s Chinese-language website.

The Berggruen Institute, a Los Angeles-based think tank founded in 2010 by investor-philanthropist Nicolas Berggruen, describes Hu as having “advised the Chinese government.”

Hu’s Columbia Business School bio describes him as the founder of Primavera Capital and a partner at Goldman Sachs Group, who also “served at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC, and has advised the Chinese government on financial reform and macroeconomic policies.”

An archived page from Primavera’s previous website describes the Chunhua Capital Group, Primavera’s native name, as “founded by Dr Hu Zuli, a renowned economist and financial expert. Dr. Hu previously served as a partner and chairman of Greater China at Goldman Sachs.”

Snooping on Students

Republican concerns about Primavera’s involvement with Chinese government surveillance technology appear to have some validity. The financial group appears to have a penchant for investing in companies heavily involved in surveillance tech.

According to Bloomberg, Primavera was one of eight “cornerstone investors” that committed to subscribe for $450 million in shares of Chinese artificial intelligence company SenseTime Group, Inc.

In December 2021, SenseTime was placed on the US Treasury Department’s investment blacklist for its role in surveillance technology deployed for monitoring ethnic Uyghur populations in the Xinjiang region of Western China.

As the Washington Post reported, “The Treasury Department, which oversees the investment prohibition list, said SenseTime ‘has developed facial recognition programs that can determine a target’s ethnicity, with a particular focus on identifying ethnic Uyghurs,’ a persecuted Muslim minority population in China,” and “used digital surveillance technology to track Uyghurs’ movements and activities… to ‘create a police state in the Xinjiang region.’”

China’s repression of Uyghurs, a Muslim ethnic minority group, was seen as a crime against humanity by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2022.

Another artificial intelligence company that Primavera has invested in, which has been accused of developing highly invasive surveillance technology, is Palantir. In May 2025, the New York Times reported that the Trump administration was spending hundreds of millions of federal dollars to install Palantir’s Foundry operating system in multiple federal agencies to “compile a master list of personal information on Americans that could give… [the president] untold surveillance power.”

According to an article in The Conversation by Nicole M Bennett, who described herself as “a researcher who studies the intersection of data governance, digital technologies, and the US federal government,” the Trump administration has employed another Palantir operating system called Gotham.

Gotham, the article said, “is an investigative platform built for police, national security agencies, public health departments and other state clients” to “take whatever data an agency already has, break it down into its smallest components, and then connect the dots.”

To be clear, no one has accused Spring Education Group of snooping on students. The company’s privacy notice states, “We do not make your Personal Information available for purchase or otherwise share your information with third parties in exchange for monetary compensation.”

However, privacy advocates, parents, and teachers are expressing growing concerns about how edtech company platforms in schools collect and use student data and how that use constitutes a breach in student and educator privacy. So Primavera’s interest in both education and surveillance as hot investment properties is bound to raise questions.

And any politician viewed as steering public funds to bad actors in the student privacy debate is likely to become a target for criticism.

A workaround to voucher regulations

While concerns about Primavera’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party prompted conservatives to curtail the firm’s access to funds for public education, the Trump administration has opened the door to another potential pot of public money.

Included in the One Big Beautiful Bill that Trump called for, and Republican lawmakers in Congress passed in 2025, was a provision establishing the first-ever federal school voucher program, known as the Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA).

Beginning in 2027, this tax-credit program allows individuals to receive up to a $1,700 annual, dollar-for-dollar, federal tax credit for donations to state-licensed school voucher providers, called scholarship-granting organizations (SGOs).

After SGOs receive donor funds, they cream some money off the top for administration and then give what’s left to families to pay for education expenses. Although formal guidelines are yet to be finalized, the law as written gives families broad leeway about what constitutes education expenses, which may include private school tuition, homeschool expenses, tutoring, transportation services, before- and after-school programs and summer camp.

Trump’s Department of Education calls this initiative “Education Freedom Tax Credit (EFTC).” Florida was among the first states to opt into the voucher program, declaring, in a January 2026 announcement from the governor’s office, “The newly enacted federal Education Freedom Tax Credit is an opportunity to further support education freedom.”

Other Republican-led states joined Florida in opting into the program, and even some blue states have signed up, including Colorado and Virginia. Other states have been more skeptical of the program. In North Carolina, for instance, the state legislature voted to opt in, but the state’s democratic governor vetoed the legislation.

Governors in both red and blue states in favor of adopting the program, such as outgoing Colorado Governor Jared Polis, have argued that the federal vouchers are “free money” that shouldn’t be turned down.

What’s largely been left out of the discussion is how the new federal voucher program may undermine state control over existing voucher funding. In states that have rejected voucher programs, the federal program provides another way for school choice advocates to pry open the market.

Meanwhile, for states with current voucher programs that include some regulatory control, the new federal voucher program may provide a workaround for education merchants to find new inroads to public money.

“We know that not only is this a voucher scheme,” said Education Law Center’s litigation director Jessica Levin in an email, “but the aim of it is to expand vouchers nationwide, including into states that have repeatedly rejected voucher programs.”

For instance, while North Carolina’s state regulations block Spring Education Group’s private preschools from receiving public money, the federal voucher program offers a workaround because the voucher money it dispenses can be used to pay for things like after-school programs and summer camps that Spring Education Group preschools operate in the Tar Heel State.

In Texas and Florida, lawmakers who are kicking Islamic schools out of their state voucher programs over claims that the schools are linked to “terrorists” may find that opting into the federal voucher program will help these schools access public tax dollars.

Because companies that provide tutoring services, like Tutor.com, may also be allowed to receive money from the federal voucher program, conservatives who have railed against Tutor.com’s connection to Primavera Capital and the Chinese government may see even more public funds going to these enterprises via the federal program.

Yet, after Arkansas Senator Cotton raised an alarm about Tutor.com, there’s no evidence on record that he has objected to his state’s decision to take part in the federal voucher program.

“Until the Treasury Department issues regulations,” said Levin, “we don’t know what leeway states will have to regulate the federal voucher program. So it doesn’t make sense for states wondering about that to opt in before the federal regulations are even proposed.

However, based on the late 2025 request for comment documents from IRS/Treasury and the policies of the Trump administration regarding education privatization, it’s likely those regulations will be designed to provide little or no leeway for states to place restrictions on the SGOs that will hand out the vouchers.”

‘Free Money’ With Big Costs

State leaders and education advocates who are not spooked by public dollars for education enriching investment firms connected to the Chinese Communist Party may object to the federal voucher program for other reasons.

For instance, ECCA’s call on states to set up SGO voucher providers is expected to provide a way for private investors to reap a financial windfall from public funds meant for education.

In anticipation of the program’s rollout, investment firms are hyping the profits to be made. One firm claims, “The SGO provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act offers a powerful opportunity to expand access to independent school education”—and, no doubt, profit as a result.

A September 2025 blog post on the website of the Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP), a watchdog focused on the private equity industry, warned that the new federal voucher program will likely lead to greater involvement of private equity investment firms, like Primavera, in profiting from public services like education.

Because the new program allows for services like transportation, PESP senior researcher Azani Creeks explained, it will likely result in public money profiting private transportation companies like First Student, “a school bus service provider owned by private equity firm EQT.”

A report PESP published in 2022 found, “Private equity firms and the companies they own have promised to improve educational outcomes for struggling individual students and schools through new technology, personalized learning strategies, and resources for staffing and administration, but there is no conclusive data showing that school funding is better spent at private-equity owned companies than staying within the district.”

In that report, PESP pointed to a particularly egregious example in the charter school industry of private equity profiteering at the expense of public services, where a combination of for-profit operators backed by private equity has resulted in elaborate business schemes and networks of interrelated companies that hide profiteering while doing little to improve the quality of services to the public.

In a phone call with Creeks, she explained, “The point of policies like ECCA is to funnel public tax money into the private sector. But private equity investment in public services that impact the quality of people’s lives is inherently at odds with profit-making. For that reason, the new federal school voucher program needs strong guardrails.”

Public school advocates who oppose the federal voucher program have provided other reasons why state officials should not opt in. Their arguments, such as those put forward by Public Funds Public Schools, emphasize the public policy negatives of vouchers, including how they tend to have harmful impacts on funding for public schools, worsen academic outcomes of students and fund private schools that actively discriminate against students, disproportionately impacting students of color, students with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ students.

In Congress, Democratic Senators Mark Kelly of Arizona and Mazie Hirono of Hawaii are planning to introduce legislation called the Keep Public Funds in Public Schools Act that will repeal the K-12 federal tax credit voucher program included in the One Big Beautiful Bill.

But if state officials who aren’t convinced to oppose federal school vouchers for public policy reasons, maybe the messy politics of the program will convince them that the supposed “free money” offered by the Trump administration actually comes at a very high cost.

elaine May 1, 2026

Source

Asia Times

First Fish Chronicles: Ten Questions to Ask Your School Leaders About EdTech Products

elaine — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 18:39:07 +0000

First Fish Chronicles: Ten Questions to Ask Your School Leaders About EdTech Products

Note from Emily: My essay “Sunlight is the Best Disinfectant: How recent news out of L.A. can shine light in dark corners” garnered a lot of interest. Within that piece I had listed ten questions we should be asking of our school leaders. I’ve pulled those out here to be an easy-to-access list you can print and use in your own advocacy efforts. Remember, as always, replace judgment with curiosity.

1. How many unique EdTech products, platforms, apps, or curricula does our district contract with?

This answer should be readily and publicly available. Some estimates of products per district can number in the hundreds; other in the thousands. If a school leader does not know this information or cannot easily provide it, that is a problem. You cannot vet products for safety, efficacy, and legality if you do not know about them. 2. Where can I see the individual contracts for each EdTech product used by our district?

Parents, concerned citizens, and taxpayers have a right to know how money is being spent. The contracts that districts sign with technology companies should be publicly available. If they are not, this is another good question to follow-up on it.

2. Where can I easily view the contracts for each EdTech Product used by our district?

Parents, concerned citizens, and taxpayers have a right to know how money is being spent. The contracts that districts sign with technology companies should be publicly available. If they are not, this is another good question to follow-up on.

3. How much money does our district spend on EdTech contracts per year?

Again, particularly in public education, taxpayers should know how money is being spent. This information should be easily accessible on a district or state website and school administrators should have a very clear idea of how many total dollars are spent on technology products. Sometimes technology products fall into a different budget category than books and paper, for example (see next question). That is good information to know about too.

4. Which budgets cover technology products, such as our learning management system, digital curricula, and online portals? Do books and paper come from that same budget, or a different one?

This information should be clearly mapped out so that the public can see how costs are broken down. It is also important to know if books and paper come from a different budget than technology products or services (the physical devices themselves, as well as the contracts for curriculum and software).

5. Where can I see a list of all EdTech products used in our district?

Depending on which estimate you use, some districts contract with hundreds of companies; others with thousands. Not all products go through a formal vetting process, however, and some classrooms or teachers may use products that did not go through formal vetting. This is a concern. Parents and the general public should be able to see a complete list of all products used. In a few instances, some schools are posting lists of vetted products on their websites. This is a good start. If your school does not have a list readily available or it is not provided on a school website, it would be great to ask why not.

6. Which EdTech apps and platforms are used by which grades? In other words, where can I find a list of the products my child will encounter in their current grade/subject?

If technology products are used by students in a school, there will likely be variation in how they are used. School leaders should have a very clear chart of how different products, platforms, or apps are used by grade level and subject, not just a broad list of products used in a district.

7. What is the process by which a district vets each unique product– not just digital curriculum adoption, but any other digital product that is used by teachers and/or students?

All schools (should) have a formal vetting process for adopting new curriculum, including technology. This is an important question because it is common for many EdTech products to be used in a classroom even if they have not gone through a formal adoption or approval process. The vetting process should be clear and parents should understand the criteria used to “approve” or “deny” an app or product, and what happens with unsanctioned use of apps or if unsanctioned products get used.

8. What GenAI products does the district use, including which existing EdTech products embed GenAI? If I do not consent to my child using GenAI products, how will the district support that?

GenAI products are everywhere, and many are added into existing EdTech products used by children in schools (think Gemini in your Google email account, for example). A school should be fully knowledgable about where GenAI shows up in student-facing technology use. We should be very concerned about the risks of using untested products on children. For any GenAI products used, schools should provide independent research that proves a product is safe for use by children. (However, currently, no GenAI is safe for use by children). Additionally, schools should have an easy process for parents to protect their children from the risks of exposure to GenAI products or apps. If schools require children use GenAI or GenAI-infused products to participate in school, an important follow up question would be: Why?

9. Schools cannot consent on behalf of parents to data and privacy collection. Where can I see a list of each product’s terms of use and privacy policy? If I do not consent to them, what are my options?

Ideally, schools will clearly list all technology products used in a district. In addition to the name of the product itself, it is important that the complete privacy policies of each product are also included and easily accessible. Prior to their children using these products, parents should be able to review the privacy policies of all the products used and determine whether or not they consent to the individual terms of use for each unique product (according to Internet Safety Labs, 96% of EdTech products collect children’s personal data). For parents who do not consent to data collection, schools should provide an analog alternative.

10. How does the district support teachers and parents who do not consent to the data collection, privacy risks, or additional screentime presented by EdTech products?

School leaders need to provide pathways for parents, children, and teachers to participate in the educational process without being subjected to data collection, privacy risks, or even additional screentime, which has known harms to children and development.

elaine April 30, 2026

Source

First Fish Chronicles

Diane Ravitch's Blog: Corporate Reformers Want to Revive Testing, Tough Accountability, as in NCLB, Race to the Top

elaine — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 17:17:09 +0000

Diane Ravitch's Blog: Corporate Reformers Want to Revive Testing, Tough Accountability, as in NCLB, Race to the Top

Matt Barnum of Chalkbeat wrote about a convening of education “reformers” who agreed that it’s time to revive the “bipartisan” education coalition, exemplified by No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.

Barnum writes:

These days there’s a new energy around an old idea: bipartisan school reform.

Reviving this was the quaint but ascendant goal of a recent Washington D.C. event that I attended last month. The Bipartisan Policy Center convened a group of influential education leaders from both parties to sketch out a new agenda for school reform.

“The moment is now,” said former Education Secretary Margaret Spellings during the opening panel. “We have not recovered from COVID fully. We really need to light the fire of urgency.”

This was the sort of thinking that used to dominate Washington D.C. Presidents from both parties once insisted on a muscular federal role to hold schools and teachers accountable for raising test scores. These advocates have been on the outs politically for over a decade, but some see an opportunity to revive the old coalition. A flurry of reports, compacts, commissions, events, and essays have made the case that politicians of both parties need to come together to address the striking declines in student learning and center education as a national priority.

Whatever you think about this mini-resurgence, it’s worth paying attention to. Bipartisan school reform upended schools once before (with a much debated legacy). Could it happen again? Maybe. In many ways the ground is ripe, but it’s not clear advocates have a clear constituency or reform agenda.

Drawing from recent history, here are three reasons this particular brand of reform could return and three obstacles this effort faces.

Why bipartisan reform could be revived: There really is a learning crisis.

Modern bipartisan school reform has its roots in a 1983 report “A Nation at Risk,” which claimed (with disputed evidence) that the country’s schools were in dire shape. These days the data is clear: Test scores have been on an alarming trajectory for a decade. This has again led to widespread concerns among policymakers, academics, and journalists.

The aspiring reformers are driving the mainstream media narrative about education.

Centrist education advocates and politicians, like former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, have offered a clear theory to explain these recent learning declines. Emanuel argues that Democrats deserve blame for backing COVID-era school building closures, focusing on culture war issues, and downplaying the importance of test scores. He says Democrats should look to Republican-led states in the South, like Mississippi.

A remarkable slew of articles have endorsed versions of this narrative. That includes several pieces in the New York Times. Not many other prominent Democrats are echoing Emanuel, but we can be sure they are reading the Times. Crucially, those Democrats more sympathetic to teachers unions and public education have not articulated a clear alternative theory to explain recent learning declines.

Both parties may have political incentives for moving to the center on education.

The prior iteration of bipartisan reform came at a moment where both parties used education as a strategy to appeal to centrist independent voters. Bill Clinton promised to be a different type of liberal who would take a tough-minded approach to schools, while George W. Bush pitched himself as a “compassionate conservative” who would champion the education of disadvantaged children.

Once again Democratic reformers say the party faces a similar political imperative. Emanuel and many others have claimed the party has lost its edge on education with voters. This isn’t true, according to the vast majority of recent surveys, but the talking point has nevertheless proven deeply influential at a moment when Democrats have been casting about for answers following Trump’s election in 2024.

Republicans are not at this soul-searching stage — they’ve leaned into school choice and parents’ rights. But Trump is quite unpopularat the moment, and so is his effort to close the Education Department. Depending on the midterm results, it’s possible that the GOP will make efforts to tack away from Trump’s combative approach to education.

Why bipartisan reform might not happen: Reformers don’t have a clear bumper sticker.

Although the centrist reformers are aligned on what’s gone wrong, their solutions are a bit less clear. This was apparent during a Bipartisan Policy Center panel on education, which I moderated. The group released a number of recommendations about improving schools. These ranged from broad goals (“reimagine the high school years”) to very specific policies (“require transparent, consistent annual reporting” on teacher pension plans). But there wasn’t an overarching idea or takeaway, as best I could tell.

So I asked each participant on the panel what their bumper-sticker pitch for school reform would be.

“Responsive systems and better information,” responded Andy Rotherham, the co-founder of Bellwether, an education consulting firm, and a former Clinton White House staffer.

“Locals lead; feds fund, measure, and evaluate,” said Tom Kane, a Harvard education professor.

“Education is the way out of your parents’ basement,” said Katie Jenner, the Indiana education secretary.

This range of responses is in contrast with the relatively clear bumper stickers from the political right and the left. (“More choice, less wokeness, no U.S. Department of Education,” on the right. “More money,” on the left.)

Without a snappy message for what bipartisan reformers want to do, I suspect advocates will struggle to coalesce policy elites or regular people around their ideas.

There is little clear grassroots demand for this sort of reform.

Indeed, the push to address learning declines has seemingly not broken through to voters. While Americans have an increasingly negative view of the quality of K-12 schools, very few rate education as a top issue. This is quite different than in the late ‘90s and early 2000s. Remarkably, in the 2000 presidential campaign, voters sometimes ranked education as the top issue facing the country.

And despite years of headlines about bad test scores, most parents still give their child’s school relatively high marks.

Bipartisan reform may require presidential leadership

Starting with George H. W. Bush and continuing through Barack Obama there were four straight presidents who championed an overlapping agenda of school accountability and school choice. Each made education a central national issue. In a number of cases, these presidents brought along reluctant members of their own parties. The bipartisan coalition crucially depended on this presidential leadership. In turn, bipartisan school reform has collapsed under Trump and Biden since neither bought into this agenda.

To succeed, the bipartisan reformers may need a like-minded president. That could, of course, be tough to get. Right now, Rahm Emanuel is polling at 0%-1%. The question for these aspiring reformers is whether they can find other presidential candidates to carry their mantle.

My response: The bipartisan education reform coalition of Bush and Obama faded away because it s “reforms” failed. It treated test scores as the goal of education, and it turned schools into testing factories. Its philosophy of test and punish failed. Its demand for evaluating teachers by student test scores demoralized teachers and caused teachers to avoid low-performing schools. Merit pay failed, as it has for a century. Common Core was a disaster, ignoring the value of context and background knowledge. It welcomed charter schools, promising that they would be more innovative, get higher scores, and be more innovative than public schools. But charter schools opened and closed with regularity, some were for-profit scams, and some were founded by grifters.

Even Mike Petrilli of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute referred to the years from 2010-2020 as “the lost decade” for education.

Defenders of public schools have more to say than “more money.” They could also make bumper stickers about public schools that protect democracy, public schools that serve communities, not hedge fund managers; public schools designed to introduce children to friends from different backgrounds; public schools that teach critical thinking, not the indoctrination characteristic of religious schools.

Parents like their public schools because they know the teachers and appreciate the links between students, parents and schools. The bipartisan coalition of education reformers failed because they constantly derided public schools; their efforts to replace public schools with standardization failed.

The reformers look back to their glory days with nostalgia. Parents and students don’t.

elaine April 29, 2026

Source

Diane Ravitch's Blog