Send Last Year's Teacher A Note

This is my new beginning of the year tradition, and I recommend it to you.

Send a note to the teacher who taught your child last year.

As a teacher, you are really heartened by words of appreciation. Like many teachers, I had a file of notes from parents and students. Thank yous, appreciations, positive memories-- they meant a lot to me. That they were written down so that I could get them out now and then and just look through them was important-- you can't really get the same thing from a file of saved e-mails or texts. 

It's common to get these on a teacher appreciation occasion, or at the end of the school year, and they really provide a boost.

It's nice to end the year on a high note. But it would also be nice to get an extra boost as the new year begins.

In that launch of the new year, you feel anticipation and anxiety. What will this year's crop be like? What new hurdles will you face at school? If your previous year was not you very best work, you may wonder whether that was just a flukey result of specific issues of that year, or part of a trend that means you are starting to lose your edge. And if you have spent the summer hearing about how your kind are a bunch of selfish commie groomers who are ruining America--well, that's a lot of dust to shake off your shoes before you head back. 

What an excellent time to get a note telling you that you did good, that a student really benefited from the work you did last year, that you really have a handle on this whole teaching thing. What a good time to have something that can pump you up and remember that you can, indeed, take on the world. And what a nice reminder that a student who was, just a year ago, a stranger, is now someone who is glad they were in your classroom. And the extra beauty of this-- the teacher doesn't have to wonder if you are just trying to grease a path for your kid or not. 

So that's my suggestion. Send a note to the teacher(s) who made your child's last year a good one. It doesn't have to be long and involved, deep and profound. Tell them how your child is now better for having been in their classroom. Tell them that you appreciate their help in your child's journey to the person they are becoming.

Write it by hand. Stick it in an envelope and mail it to the school. If your district has already gotten under way, that's okay. The beauty of this is that as a teacher, there is never a bad time to get a personal note of appreciation from a former parent or student. Yes, there are other things to do support education, but this one is quick and simple and easy and will, I swear, make someone's world a slightly better place.

A Root Of The Problem

It's bigger than education, though education is where it reared its head most recently. 

It's there with every issue that has been framed as an attack on democracy, though that framing only scratches the surface. It's an issue baked into our country's foundation

Call it betterism. The belief that some people really are better than others. Some people really do deserve more power and privilege. Some people really do deserve a more important role in the culture and society.

It's not new. The Puritans of the Northern colonies were sure they were chosen by God. The plantation owners of the Southern colonies saw themselves as a new breed of aristocrat. And everyone thought they were better than enslaved Africans (that's why it was okay to enslave them). The framers set out a bunch of high-minded ideas, and we have spent almost 250 years trying to live up to them, sometimes with more success than others. 

We fought a whole war about whether some human beings are better than others (and then allowed people who believed some really are better to claw back ground afterwards). The New Deal posited that maybe some people aren't poor and struggling because they deserve to be, and they actually deserve a hand. The Civil Rights Movement posited that maybe state and local government should not be allowed to codify Betterism into law. Women should get to vote and own things and be paid for work. Most recently, LGBTQ folks exist and have the same rights as anyone else.

But we are living through a broad rejection of that foundational idea of equal worth.

Complaints about political correctness and CRT and DEI and "woke" are expressions of, "Look, I know I am better than Those People and I am really tired of folks who tell me I am not, or that I'm not allowed to talk and act as if I am." 

The return of "race science" to the conversation--an attempt to argue that science tells that some people are just born smarter and more capable-- better-- than others. 

Read More Everything Forever, Adam Becker's book about the tech overlords of Silicon Valley and it's clear that they (like Elon Musk) believe that they are so much better that they deserve to steer the course of human history, to rule over the Lessers.

The currrent assault on immigrants, launched under the pretext of rolling up dangerous criminals, is now clearly aimed at all non-European immigrants, regardless of whether they are gainfully employed, contributing members of their community, trying to "do it the right way," or even fully legal residents. The actual argum,ent at play is clearly, "Those People do not deserve the same citizenship privileges I have."

The whole social safety net is under attack because it gives privileges and rights and power to Those People who don't deserve it. As Dr. Oz put it, Medicaid work requirements are just a requirement to "prove that you matter." Because, I guess, the mere fact of your existence as a human being isn't proof enough. 

The Department of Education is an obvious target for Betterists because its primary purpose is to protect and enforce equity and non-discrimination.

LGBTQ persons (especially those Ts)? Pfrobably shouldn't exist, but if they do, they should have the decency to understand that they are Less than the rest of us, and hide their true nature from polite society. Certainly they should never have insisted on the right to marry.

People who have chosen not to worship the correct God in the correct way should understand that people who have chosen correctly are better than the poor choosers. And it's not just individuals. As Katherine Stewart put it, "It [Christian nationalism] asserts that legitimate government rests not on the consent of the governed but adherence to the doctrines of a specific religious, ethnic, and cultural heritage."

What reads as an attack on democracy in instance after instance is really an attack on the underlying premise, the notion that no person is better than any other. "End this foolish insistence," says MAGA, "that Those People are as good and deserving as their Betters. It's only common sense that some people are better, more deserving, more worthy than others, and it flies in the face of common sense to try to elevate Thoze People above their proper place." The Trump administration has been aggfressive in a host opf initiatives that can all be described as "Putting Those People in their proper place."

Privatizing education will have the effect of creating a multi-tiered system in which people of different status and power get different levels of educational quality for their children. For the Betterism crowd, this is a feature, and we should stop expecting them to care when we threaten them with what is, from their perspective, a good time. Education, their common sense tells them, should be about sorting young humans into their proper place and not about trying to elevate all of them. 

For Betterists, society should be a variety of tiers, with different levels of power and privilege for each tier. It makes sense that the sc hools in such a society would also be separated into various tiers, and privatization in which everyone had to pursue an education armed with the resources they have would help establish those tiers. 

The whole "this is an attack on democracy" argument holds little weight with the betterism crowd because they do not believe in the underlying ideas behind democracy. For them, people are not equal, and a system that tries to treat them as if they are or worse, tries to give the equal privilege, opportunity and attention, is simply immoral. You don't know how to explain to these folks that they should care about other people because they have already rejected your premise that all people are equally deserving of care. They don't hate the Lessers, but they do get angry when the Lessers won't simply stay in their proper place.

No, the conversation that's missing is the one in which we talk about how all people are people, equally worthy of love and support and attention and all the powers nd privileges that we would claim as an inherent right for ourselves. Until we've settled that conversation, conversations about threats to democracy will be stalled. Is this everything that's challenging us? No. But it's no small part.

PA: School Choice Lobby (And Jeff Yass) Spends Big

Stephen Caruso and the crew at Spotlight PA did some trememndous work on Pensylvania campaign contributions back in March and it deserved more attention than it got at the time. But it has a lot to tell us about who some Pennsylvania politicians are deeply indebted to when it comes to education.

The big industries playing in PA politics are energy, gaming, transportation and, surprise, K-12 education-- more specifically, the charter school industry (health care and real estate get a separate article). The researchers at Spotlight PA looked at contributions from January 1, 2023 through December 31, 2024. Over those two years, lawmakers raised over $42 million-- $17 million by Shapiro, and $25 by the other lawmakers.

Of that $42 million, over $10 million came from those four industries. Add to that another $7.6 million that those industries contributed to party caucus political committees.

Of that almost $17 mill, just under $9 million came from teachers’ unions, charter school operators, and private school backers.

"Yeah," I hear someone complain. "That teachers' union spends a lot of political money, and the privatizers have to try to keep up."

Sure. Spotlight PA found that of the almost $9 million, under $1.2 million came from the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA) through their politicazl action wing (PACE-- which is funded by teacher contributions but cannot, by law, be funded with dues money).

The bulk of the rest of that money comes from two sources-- the Commonwealth Children's Choice Fund and Students First PAC.

Students First PAC emerged in 2010, and it is very simply, Pennsylvania gazillionaire Jeffrey Yass dressed up in a PAC suit. He is their sole contributor. It appears they haven't even bothered to maintain a website since shortly after their founding. Yass is the richest man in the state, a guy who won his initial stake playing poker, then moved into the investment biz.

Who does Students First PAC mostly give money to these days? Mainly the Commonwealth Children's Choice Fund. The website Transparency USA shows CCCF taking in $31,763,400. Of that, $31,505,000 came from Students First PAC. The #2 contributor is Clay Hamlin with a measley $100K. The Commonwealth Children's Choice Fund turned around and spent $33,579,570. Of that (take a deep breath), $27,234,761.63 was handed off to the Commonwealth Leaders Fund; that group and CCCF are the two Political Action Committees of Commonwealth Partners, a group that says it "engages entrepreneurs to lead free-market change in Pennsylvania," and they do appear to involve more than just Jeff Yass.

So Yass through Students Firsts PAC and Commonwealth Children's Fund is spending millions and millions of dollars to elect and support the GOP, especially the part of it that wants to privatize education. Some of the money coming into the races is astonishing. Spotlight PA found $1.4 million from privatizers to help PA State Senate President Pro Tem Kim Ward-- far more than came in from other sectors and far more than raised by Dem candidates. And that pile of money came in despite the fact that Ward ran unopposed in 2024! What the heck did she need over a million dollars for? 

The House GOP Campaign Committee pulled in $3.5 million from the K-12 privatizer crowd; the Senate GOP committee drew $1.9 million. Meanwhile the corresponding Dem committees together pulled in barely $600K.

So yeah-- a million dollars plus being put into campaigns by a union that is bundling the contributions of a tens of thousands of working teachers is totally as significant as a few million dollars being pumped in basically from one individual. Absolutely the same thing. But how wild to imagine that Pennsylvania politics for the past decade or two might have unfolded completely differently if one man hadn't hit a winning streak playing poker. How wild to imagine that if just one guy suddenly cvhanged his mind, state politics would suddenly lurch in a whole new direction. Interesting times we live in.

PA: Mastriano's Latest Voucher Bill

Pennsylvania States Senator Doug Mastriano, Trump-annointed failed gubernatorial candidate, has floated yet another in the state's long line of bad voucher legislation.

The one thing we can say about SB 969 is that it's at least short.  Beyond that, it's a waste of the small amount of space it takes up. But there's plenty of assorted baloney in its six pages.

The main thrust is the Educational Freedom for Families Account, an education savings account version of vouchery that has just a few features. 

Eligibility-- any family that meets the household income requirement of the state's existing voucher program, and who lives within the attendance area of a school in the bottom 15% of state metrics. The money can be spent on the usual list of items, from private school to homeschooling expenses. 

This bill comes with a justification for its own existence. Its purpose is to

(1) Provide access to education savings accounts for eligible students. 

(2) Increase flexibility for parents in determining appropriate educational options. 

(3) Improve educational outcomes and equity across school districts.

The first, sure. Second-- "increase" is doing a lot of work here, as school choice continues to rest not on what parents want, but what private schools are willing to give them. And at this point, we know that the third is not a real thing. Plenty of research shows that choice increases segregation and kneecaps educational outcomes. 

Mastriano proposes a different sort of funding set-up.

Each fiscal year, money shall be appropriated from the General Fund to the department in an amount not less than the average per-pupil State subsidy for basic education funding, as calculated by the most recent data published by the department.

"Average" is a scary word here, because state per-pupil spending varies wildly from district to district.  Funding the vouchers from the general fund is likely an attempt to placate Governor Shapiro, who is voucher-friendly, but has made clear he won't support a program that drains money from public schools. But it leaves the question of where this money is going to come from, exactly, or what is going to be cut from the general fund to pay for it. Don't get me wrong-- I am happy to finally after all these years open up a conversation about the true cost of school choice and how we can't have it without making education overall more expensive. 

But this will be expensive. Particularly since the bill calls for the state to set up an account for every eligible student. Not every family that has asked for it, but every eligible student. Maybe that's not wbat they actually meant.

There's language to say that the money shall follow the child, not the school, which the bill already makes clear, but I guess someone wanted to get that rhetoric in their. They did stop short of saying that the students should be given backpacks full of cash. 

There's a part about "misuse and audit" which says if families are caught misusing the money, they may be disqualified. How often? How many recipients? The Department of Education is supposed to perform annual audits, which seems like a great deal of work if they are supposed to audit every single family, but that's not clear.

Meanwhile, the Department of Education would also be responsible for maintaining a list of eligible vendors and providers. What safeties would be in place to make sure a vendor was qualified and legit? Nothing is mentioned in the bill.

One thing homeschoolers are not going to love--the bill calls for each voucher recipient to file "an annual education report, including attendance records and student progress evaluations, to the department." For homeschoolers who wanted to escape the state's big pokey eyeballs, this doesn't seem like a great fit.

The bill also calls to "streamline" the application process for charters and cyber charters; since one of the adverttised aims of the bill is to increase the number of such schools I assume that "streamline" means "lower the requirements."

Also, no "infringement" on the rights of lawful homeschoolers. Not sure why the bill's creator left out language requiring the state not to interfere with voucher schools, as is common in most new voucher bills. But it also promises that the state will "make available" various STEM stuff for home schoolers. What does "make available" mean? Drop it off at the house? Send clipped-out coupons for materials? Open a special state home school store?

Finally, this bill offers "Teacher performance incentives," sort of. "The Teacher Excellence Incentive Fund is established in the State Treasury" and funded with any federal funds for that purpose, private donations and grants, any "dormant" funds just kind of lying around unused in Harrisburg, and "other measures" determined by some imagined future law. That money (all $1.95 of it) will be used for "salary supplements, bonuses or student loan forgiveness." Awarding that pile of cash will be based on "objective improvements" in PSSA, SAT, or ACT scores, "year-over-year" student growth, schoolwide average grade point average increase,  or improved graduation/college admission rates. 

I have so many questions. Will the incentives be paid to individuals or to schools (the bill suggests the answer is "yes"). Do they mean improvements in one student's SAT score, or are they talking about when this year's group scores higher than last years? Will we be measuring a student's year-over-year growth in raw scores or inches or liters?

This bill reads like the barest outline of an idea for a bill, and if it had come from somebody else, I might not have paid attention. Since Mastriano has a memey promo for this bill, I'm not sure whether this is an actual attempt at creating policy or just a play for attention. Either way, it can go throw itself on the scrapheap of Pennsylvania voucher bill history.

In his press, Mastriano touts the bill as "a comprehensive, student-first solution that empowers parents, encourages school improvement and guarantees that every child has access to the best possible education." It does none of those things, and it especially, spectacularly not comprehensive. “For too long, Pennsylvania families have been denied the right to choose the best education for their children," he whinges. But in fact Pennsylvania families have had vouchers available since 2001. 

Mastriano announced this turkey back in February; it doesn't seem to have attracted a becy of co-sponsors, and was just sent to the Senate Education Committee. Let's hope it languishes and dies there.

A History Lesson: The Great Leap Forward

I read about this many years ago, but for some reason it has floated up in my consciousness lately. It's a chapter in Chinese history, and if you look hard enough, you might just see some important lessons there.

In the late 1950's, Communist Party Chairman and Beloved Leader Mao Zedong decided that he wanted to bring China into a modern era, to make the country great again, so he devised the Great Leap Forward.

One of the goals of the Great Leap was to convert from an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Part of the plan to accomplish this was to combine some farmers into communal farms and to send others to the city. A book I read years ago claimed that the central government actually gathered up metal tools from rural farmers and used the metal to try to create industrial machinery, leaving families with no implements for farming or, in some cases, cooking. Meanwhile, farmers were sent into factories or their own backyard furnaces to manufacture steel and iron, because, hey, anybody can do that. Except that the result was a lot of weak, unusable steel and iron.

At the time, if you were in government you could point out that this kind of fiorced transformation of an economy was unlikely to work, but Beloved Leader got rid of anyone who showed insufficient loyalty, and the only way to display loyalty was to agree that Mao's idea was awesome.

Agricultural experts had a bad feeling about Mao's ideas, so Mao simply got himself "experts" who had no real expertise at all, but were enthusiastic about the half-assed untested amatuer hour ideas they wanted to push. Foremost among these bozos was Russian Trofim Lysenko, Stalin's favorite hack geneticist, who had brillinat ideas like the notion that plants of the same species wouldn't compete and could therefor be planted really, really close together (this turns out to not be an actual thing). His ideas were dumb and bad, but they made Mao's plan look good, so he was in.

There was also a campaign to wipe out The Four Pests (mosquitoes, rats, flies, and sparrows), which wreaks all sorts of environmental havok.

All of this set the stage for a massive agricultural failure, which the Chinese government dealt with by lying. For several years, the actual crop output plummeted, but the official government reports said the crop output was increasing, because reality must never be allowed to interfere with an authoritarian's dreams. 

To say, "There isn't enough food and the people are starving," was seen as disloyal to Beloved Leader, so people didn't say it (and if a few did, they didn't say it more than once). All official sources reported the greatest crop surplus ever. 

End result? The Great Chinese Famine. Because nobody was keeping actual reality-based data, we don't know how many died, but estimates range from 15 to 55 million. 

So, in short, an authoritarian tries to force dramatic changes through sheer force of will, discounting expertise on both the large and small scale, then when things aren't working, simply demands that anyone who wants to keep his job must prove loyalty by supporting Beloved Leader's version of events, no matter how divorced from reality that might be. Bad ideas covered by authoritarian lies and bullshit, followed by disaster. 

For some reason, it's been on my mind lately.

ID: Sarah Inama Has New Classroom (And All Are Welcome There)

Sarah Inama has put her poster up in a new classroom.

Inama, you may recall, is the 6th grade world history teacher told by her district bosses at West Ada School District that her "Everyone Is Welcome Here" poster, complete with hands of many human shades, would not be tolerated in the district.  (I've been following this here, here, and here). West Ada is the largest district in Idaho, but their treatment of Inama has been spoectacularly awful, both from an Awful Display of Racism standpoint, a Grotesque Mistreatment of Staff standpoint, and a Boneheaded PR Management standpoint. 

Inama went to local news and the story blew up, delivering the shame that West Ada so richly deserved. We know a lot more thanks to some stellar reporting by Carly Flandro and the folks at Idaho Ed News, who FOIAed 1200 emails surrounding this and showcasing the board's stumbling response. You should read the resulting stories (here and here). 

The day after Inama was on the Today show, the district issued a memo entitled "Ensuring a Consistent and Supportive Learning Environment." They decided to go with sports analogies. The Chief Academic Officer is a like a referee who enforces rules "to ensure a fair and level playing field." And there's this howler--

If one player decided to wear a different uniform, use a different-sized ball, or ignore the rules, the game would lose its structure, creating confusion and imbalance.

Then a report from BoiseDev that the Board of Trustees is considering making every teacher put up an "Everyone is welcome" poster-- just without those multi-colored hands. Responding to BoiseDev, a district spokesperson explained:

Regarding the Everyone is Welcome Here posters, the district determined that while the phrase itself is broadly positive, certain design elements have been associated over time with political entities and initiatives that are now subject to federal restriction.

Inama told Idaho EdNews, “That’s appeasing not a political view, but a bigoted view that shouldn’t even be considered by a public school district.”

Inama was told the poster was divisive, that it was "not neutral," that the problem was not the message, but the hands of v arious skin tones. Teachers shouldn't have political stuff in the classroom. Inama nails the issue here

“I really still don’t understand how it’s a political statement,” she said. “I don’t think the classroom is a place for anyone to push a personal agenda or political agenda of any kind, but we are responsible for first making sure that our students are able to learn in our classroom.”

Some parents and students showed up at school to make chalk drawings in support. And yet many folks within and outside the district saw this as a divisive issue. How could anyone do that? Meet district parent Brittany Bieghler, who was dropping her kids off the day that parents were chalking the "Everyone is welcome here" message on the sidewalks.

“The ‘Everyone is Welcome’ slogan is one filled with marxism and DEI, there is no need for those statements because anyone with a brain knows that everyone is welcome to attend school, so there is no need to have it posted, written or worn on school grounds,” she wrote. “My family and I relocated here from a state that did not align with our beliefs and we expected it to be different here, but it seems as time goes by, its becoming more like our former state, which is extremely disheartening.”

"Anyone with a brain" might begin to suspect that everyone is not welcome here under these circumstances. And the school board itself couldn't decide what to respond, drafting an assortment of emails that tried to show conciliation to those that were defiant and defensive, including one complaining in MAGA-esque tones that Inama was naughty for going to "new media."

Imana resigned from her position, and by June the word was out that she was a new hire at Boise Schools. She told Idaho Ed News, 

I’m so grateful to be able to work within a district that knows the beauty of inclusion and diversity and doesn’t for a second consider it an opinion but embraces it. As an educator, it’s an amazing feeling to know your (district’s) officials, board, and administrators fully uphold the fundamentals of public education and (have) the dignity to proudly support them. I really feel at home knowing we are truly all on the same team … and that’s a team that is rooting on all of our students.

Damned straight. And just last week, as reported by KTVB news, Inama posted video of herself putting up an "Everyone is welcome here" poster in her new classroom.

So the story ends well for Inama, and that's a great thing. This is the sort of boneheaded administrative foolishness that can drive teachers out of the profession. The unfortunate part of the story is that up the road in West Ada schools, the administration, board and a non-zero number of parents think that challenging racism is bad and saying that students of all races are welcome in school is just one person's opinion that shouldn't be expressed openly in a school. Shame on West Ada.

ICYMI: Getting Back To It Edition (8/17)

Vacation time is over and we are back at the Institute's home base. The CMO goes back to work later this week, and the board of directors gets to it next week. This will be my eighth year of not going back to the classroom, and it almost doesn't feel unspeakably weird. God bless everyone who is going back to do the work. 

Here's the reading for the week, selected from the small number of articles not concerned with Putin, Epstein, or fascism. Mostly.

Republicans demand gay school board member resign because he’s working for a Pride organization

Of course it's Florida, where the same board that Moms for Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler serves has found one more way to harass their single gay member.

Arziona Supreme Court Strikes down School Funding Method

Arizona joins the club of states compelled by the courts to fix their crappy funding system. 

Schools do not have to follow Trump administration’s DEI order, federal judge rules

You may recall that back in February the regime issued an edict saying that schools that did naughty DEI stuff would be punished. A federal judge has said that directive is unlawful and nobody has to follow it. Chalkbeat has the story.

Prescriptive Practices

Audrey Watters reports on practices of math teacher Michael Pershan, who reminds us that learning is a social activity. Then she covers all the other stuff. Have you subscribed yet?

Ending High Truancy Rates: How to Get Students to School

Nancy Bailey's title is a bit misleading, because these ideas wouldn't just get more kids to school, but would make schools all around better.

Widespread Tax Cuts Eviscerate the Social Contract

Jan Resseger looks at how the many many cuts affecte school bot directly and indirectly.

Reader mailbag

Ben Riley answers some reader qustions (and sneaks in his response to ChatGPT-5), including more news from schools making terrible mistakes.

Do You Need a Private College Counselor? I Asked the Pros

Yes, there are such things, and they aren't cheap. Akil Bello has the necessary contacts to check around and find out if you really need a private college concierge for your kid.

The Reading Proficiency Bait and Switch

Paul Thomas has a grear new name for his blog-- The Reliable Narrator-- and another good explanation of how a reading crisis has been manifactured in this country.

Kent County judge denies request to toss school librarian’s lawsuit against Moms for Liberty member

In Michigan, a school librarian was fed up with harassment and slander from the local Moms for Liberty lady, so she sued, and this week, a judgebthrew out the M4L attempt to get the case dismissed.

Read Whatever the Hell You Want

Blogger Charoltte Clymer has a short and simple point to make. You are never going to read all the great books.

This Evangelical Pastor Wants to Replace Women’s Right to Vote

David French wrote a New York Times profile of Doug Wilson, another far right pastor making Christianity look bad. As you read the profile, keep in mind one detail that French didn't include-- Wilson is one of the founding fathers of the Christian Classical Schools movement.

This week I was happy to report at Forbes.com that a judge threw out most of a Floirida book ban law. Good news there. 

There are many reasons to love the Blues Brothers movie, and not the least is that it's a master class in using a platform to lift up a whole bunch of other folks, many of whom, in 1980, had drifted away from the public eye. The Seventies had not been great for Aretha Franklin, but a new label and this kick-ass performance in the movie opened up a whbole new era of success for her. The film wasn't about co-opting current top-40 artists. And just look at how Belushi and Ackroyd stay out of the way and let the queen do her thing.

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