ProPublica: When Parents Refuse Essential Vitamin K Shot, Babies May Die

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2026 //
0

Duaa Eldeib, health reporter for ProPublica, reports that parents who refuse the vitamin K shot normally administered to babies, are putting their infants’ lives at risk. Influenced by the anti-vaccine rhetoric that started during the pandemic, some parents no longer trust the standard of care developed and validated over decades by scientists and doctors.

How many children will RFK Jr. kill before he is either fired for incompetence or has four full years to discredit necessary medical care?

She writes:

They entered the world the way babies should, with piercing cries announcing their arrival. They passed their newborn screening tests. Some made it to their 2-week wellness visits without concern.

Then, without warning, their systems began to shut down. A 7-week-old boy in Maryland developed sudden seizures. An 11-pound girl in Alabama stopped breathing for 20 seconds at a time. A baby boy in Kentucky vomited before becoming lethargic. A brown-haired girl in Texas, not yet 2 weeks old, bled around her belly button.

Desperate to save them, records show, doctors inserted tubes into their airways and hooked them up to IVs. They ordered blood transfusions. They spent half an hour trying to resuscitate one boy until his parents told them they could stop. They shaved another boy’s soft locks to embed a needle directly into his skull to reduce the pressure in his brain.

None of it was enough.

At the morgue, the babies were brought in with their diapers and blankets and with their hospital ID bracelets still wrapped around their tiny ankles. The pathologists’ findings were like those you would typically see in ailing adults, not newborns — the kind of bleeding seen during strokes or brain tissue loss similar to what happens when radiation is administered to treat cancer.

Their autopsies, which took place over the last several years, all came to the same conclusion: The deaths were caused, in whole or in part, by a rare but potentially fatal condition known as vitamin K deficiency bleeding.

In almost every case, the babies’ deaths could have been prevented with a long-standard vitamin K shot. But across the country, families — first in smatterings, now in droves — are declining the single, inexpensive injection given at birth to newborns to help their blood clot.

Many of them are doing so out of a well-meaning but ill-informed abundance of caution. In the hopes of safeguarding their newborns from what they see as unnecessary medical intervention, they have shunned fundamental and scientifically sound pharmaceutical intervention. The trend is also fueled by a contradictory pairing: families’ fierce desire to protect their babies and a cascade of false information infused into their social media algorithms.

Although it is not a vaccine, the vitamin K shot has been swept up in the same post-pandemic tide that has led to a drop in key childhood vaccines, including for measles and whooping cough.

The vitamin K shot is one of the three main interventions, along with the hepatitis B vaccine and an antibiotic ointment in the eyes, that newborns typically receive before leaving the hospital. Leading American institutions and the World Health Organization recommend that newborns get the shot.

In December, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped recommending that all newborns get the hepatitis B vaccine, which has been highly effective at fighting a virus that can lead to lifelong infections and liver cancer. A federal judge in March temporarily blocked the revised childhood vaccination schedule that included that recommendation. Some families are also rejecting the eye ointment.

Two weeks ago, at a House subcommittee hearing, Rep. Kim Schrier, D-Wash., pressed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to reassure parents that the vitamin K shot is safe. He refused and pushed back.

“I’ve never said, literally never said, anything about it,” Kennedy said.

“That’s exactly the point,” responded Schrier, who is a doctor. “You don’t say anything about it, but the doubt you’ve created about all of medicine and science is causing parents to make dangerous decisions.”

An HHS spokesperson did not respond to questions but in an email blamed the administration of former President Joe Biden for the rise in parents rejecting vitamin K shots. “Vitamin K at birth,” the spokesperson added, “remains the standard of care.”

Meanwhile, families continue to be inundated with advice from self-proclaimed experts using medical terms incorrectly and misunderstanding science to convince parents that getting the shot could put their newborns at risk of grave harm.

Nearly a century’s worth of research and medical advancements shows the opposite to be true.

Please open the link to finish trading.

Categories Extremism, Health, Ignorance, Lies, Medicine

Trump Lies About Vaccines and Babies

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2026 //
9

Trump was interviewed and asked his view of vaccines. He responded with a barrage of lies about how many vaccines babies get and the dangers of them. He claimed that babies get 80 or more vaccines, which is wrong. His ignorance could be deadly. His comments could discourage parents from getting their babies vaccinated, which will expose them to risky diseases.

Trump defended Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s crackpot views about vaccines and their relationship to autism.

Kelby Vera of The Huffington Post reported:

President Donald Trump made an outlandish claim about early childhood vaccine recommendations, lamenting that “beautiful little babies” were given a “vat … of stuff pumped into their bodies.”

In an interview with journalist Sharyl Attkissonon the Sunday episode of her show “Full Measure,” Trump defended Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., saying, “People love him.”

Trump was then asked whether there should be a commission to scrutinize vaccine safety, as Kennedy has long advocated.

“I believe in vaccines, but I don’t believe that, you know, you have to have a mandate for all of them,” Trump said.

Then, he falsely claimed that children were required to receive more than 80  vaccines and argued for reducing the number of immunizations.

“I look at these beautiful little babies, and they get a vat, like a big glass, of stuff pumped into their bodies,” Trump said. “And I think it’s a very negative thing to do.”

As of early 2026, the CDC recommends, rather than mandates, that children under 10 be inoculated against 11 conditions, down from a previous recommendation of 17.

Trump also claimed that paring back the childhood vaccine schedule would lead to a “better result with the autism.”

Despite extensive scientific evidence debunking a link between childhood vaccines and autism spectrum disorder, Kennedy has continued to push the theory. Last year, he personally directed the CDC to change its website to say that there was “not an evidence-based claim” to discredit the connection between vaccines and an autism diagnosis and that studies showing the contrary had been “ignored by health authorities.”

“The whole thing about ‘vaccines have been tested and there’s been this determination made’ is just a lie,” Kennedy told The New York Times in 2025.

Open the link to view the video.

Categories Fake News, Health, Ignorance, Lies, Medicine, Trump

Lone Democratic Member of FCC Warns ABC About Plans to “Censor and Control” Media

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2026 //
1

Anna Gomez, the sole Democratic member of the board of the Federal Comminications Commission (FCC) took the unusual step of writing a letter to the CEO of ABC to warn him about the federal government’s goal of censoring the media. Early on in the second Trump administration, Trump sued ABC because one of its hosts, George Stephanopolous, asked Trump about “rape” charges in the E. Jean Carroll case, when Trump denied the charge and even denied the charge of defaming her, of which he was convicted. ABC paid Trump $16 million to persuade him to drop the lawsuit.

But the payoff did not buy peace. The FCC has now opened an investigation of ABC because of its talk show “The View,” which it accuses of bias.

The Wall Street Journal has the story:

ABC has been a victim of a “sustained, coordinated campaign of censorship and control” by the Trump administration, Federal Communications Commissioner Anna Gomez told Josh D’Amaro, chief executive of Disney , the network’s parent company.

The FCC under Republican Chairman Brendan Carr has been weaponized to pressure “a free and independent press and all media into submission,” Gomez wrote in a letter sent to D’Amaro on Monday and viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The lone Democratic commissioner, Gomez has been an outspoken critic of many of Carr’s actions, which she has alleged are aimed at pressuring broadcasters for political purposes. 

The letter to D’Amaro comes in the wake of several investigations into Disney and ABC initiated by Carr’s FCC, including whether the talk show “The View” should continue to be granted certain exemptions as a news program…

Gomez told D’Amaro that these investigations and incidents, along with an FCC decision to reinstate a complaint into ABC’s moderating of a 2024 debate between then-candidate Donald Trump and opponent Kamala Harris, are “not a series of coincidental regulatory actions….”

The FCC is also investigating whether Disney has engaged in diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives that run afoul of the agency’s equal-employment-opportunity rules….

Gomez said the administration’s attacks on the network began in earnest with a defamation lawsuit against the network and “Good Morning America” anchor George Stephanopoulos that ABC settled for $16 million, including legal fees.

“That settlement did not buy you peace,” Gomez wrote, adding “you cannot buy this Administration’s favor. For the right price, you can only borrow it. And the price always goes up.”

In her letter, Gomez pledged to use “every tool available to me as a Commissioner to shine a light on what this FCC is doing to curtail press freedom and to hold this process to account at every step.”

While Gomez is a frequent critic of Carr, it is highly unusual for a government regulator to tell a company under investigation that the probe is without merit.

The investigations, Gomez said, are unlikely to succeed but that is not the point.

“The threat is the point. As sitting Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch recently reminded us by invoking Justice Thurgood Marshall: ‘The value of a sword of Damocles is that it hangs, not that it drops,’” she wrote.

Categories Censorship, Extremism, Media

John Merrow: AI Didn’t Kill Writing. The Testing Regime is the Culprit!

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2026 //
4

John Merrow was the education correspondent for the PBS Newshour for many years. Some people never forgave him for his many episodes lionizing Michelle Rhee. I forgave him when he filmed a final episode thoroughly exposing her cruel methods and her indifference to allegations of cheating.

John’s latest post seeks to correct the record, with reference to Dana Goldstein’s article in The New York Times blaming AI (artificial intelligence) for killing the teaching of writing.

No, says John, AI didn’t do it. Our hyper-focus on standardized testing and standardized writing and standardized thinking did it.

He writes:

This week the New York Times turned over a significant portion of its front page to a long piece headlined “How A.I. Killed Student Writing (And Revived It).”

In the piece, the usually reliable Dana Goldstein puts forth sweeping generalizations based on what about 400 teachers volunteered. This, in a nation with nearly 4 million public school teachers and another 1.5 million college faculty! Granted, most of these 5.5 million teachers probably aren’t teaching writing, but relying on self-selected sources seems dubious, especially for the front page. What we learn is that a few creative and dedicated teachers, frustrated by their students’ reliance on A.I., are having the kids write in class, on paper, with pens or pencils. That’s not really news, although Goldstein, a very good writer, brings their stories to life…and may make you wish you could be in their classes.

More than a year earlier Ben Cohen reported about the dramatic rise in the sale of ‘blue books’ on college campuses: Sales of blue books this school year were up more than 30% at Texas A&M University and nearly 50% at the University of Florida. The improbable growth was even more impressive at the University of California, Berkeley. Over the past two academic years, blue-book sales at the Cal Student Store were up 80%.

Both of these news reports hang on the same premise: Student writing is dead, and A.I. is the killer. I think that’s flat out false. Our obsession with test scores and our prioritizing quantity over quality are the culprits. Most education systems stopped trying to teach writing back when Artificial Intelligence was the stuff of science fiction, unfortunately. Playing up to politicians, the education bureaucrats (who generally don’t trust teachers) decided to ‘raise standards,’ which to them meant having students write more papers and read more books and plays. Any suggestion that writing one outstanding paper would be better than six or a dozen so-so papers fell on deaf ears.

And because writing skills can’t be tested by a machine, why bother? Since we don’t trust teachers, it would be foolish to rely on their evaluation of their students’ writing skills.

Happily, I know in my bones that lots of teachers have not given up. A quick Google search turns up a treasure trove of ideas for improving student writing, starting in the elementary years. Writing thank you notes, keeping a journal, and so on. Here’s one I think you will enjoy (and might want to share with teachers in your world).

It’s not semantics to assert that the goal is to develop writers, not “teach writing.” That’s an important distinction.

So what can teachers who want to develop writers in their classes do in 2026? First of all, take a deep breath because we’ve been through this before–back when the internet emerged. Soon some students discovered that they could download papers and submit them as their own. Next came profit-making companies offering papers written to order. While small-minded bureaucrats thought they could win that struggle by spending millions on technology that supposedly could scan papers and detect plagiarism, thoughtful teachers won that struggle by 1) reducing the number of papers assigned, and 2 )working with individual students as they developed their ideas and wrote drafts. It’s harder to cheat when the teacher is overseeing the process and when kids are writing about something they genuinely care about.

What’s called for now is emulating what my high school English teacher, William Sullivan, did nearly 70 years ago. Two or three times every week he would tell us to clear our desks of everything except for a single sheet of paper and a pencil. What followed was what he called a “2-8-2,” meaning that we had two minutes to think–no writing allowed–followed by eight minutes to write, and then two more minutes to read what we had written and correct any errors. He would put our writing assignment on the blackboard. Sometimes we would have to include a certain sentence, such as “I wish I had missed that train.” Or “I still wish I hadn’t missed that flight.”

Even today I still remember one particular assignment: “Turn out the light; I don’t want to go home in the dark,” which Mr. Sullivan told us were the dying words of William Sydney Porter and challenged us to explain the contradiction. After we turned in our papers, Mr. Sullivan told us that we knew William Sydney Porter as the writer O. Henry.

(Fun fact: Some forty or fifty years later I discovered that Porter actually did not contradict himself. His dying words were “Turn up the lights. I don’t want to go home in the dark.” Apparently Mr. Sullivan changed his words to create a challenging paradox for us to try to explain.)

Although I went to a private school with small classes and privileged students, Mr. Sullivan’s approach can work at all levels. I know this to be true because I taught working-class kids in a public high school, first generation African American college students in an HBCU, and young men serving sentences in a federal prison.

I used Mr. Sullivan’s “2-8-2” all the time. I got to know my students’ writing, and I’m convinced that their writing skills improved. They became writers, confident in their voices.

Frequent in-class writing worked then, and it should work in the age of Artificial Intelligence and with all the other ‘advances’ in our future.

However, policymakers and administrators have to behave sensibly and understand that ‘less is more.’ That means smaller classes, fewer students per teacher, and heightened trust in teachers. Those shouldn’t be a bridge too far, if we really want our young people to be thoughtful and capable citizens.

You can stop here if you wish. What follows is the story of my own dabbling in A.I., printed in my blog in April 2023, more than three years ago.

If you’re at all like me, you’re curious about Artificial Intelligence and new applications like ChatGPT and Bard. The brilliant Thomas Friedman of the New York Times says the world will never be the same again, but my interest is narrower: If students can simply ask Bard or ChatGPT to write their papers for them, how can teachers prevent this?

So, naturally, I turned to Bard, which told me (within seconds) that, while it can help students generate ideas, do research, improve their writing, and learn about different writing genres, it’s not supposed to be a substitute for original research and writing. Then it warned me to “Monitor students’ use of Bard to make sure that they are not plagiarizing or engaging in other forms of academic misconduct.”

Yeah, right. If I’m teaching English in a public high school, I probably have between 100 and 125 students! There aren’t enough hours in the day….

Second question: Can Bard help identify cheaters and plagiarists? Within seconds, I received an answer:

“There are a few things you can look for to tell the difference between original writing and prose provided by Bard.

  • Original writing is typically more creative and original than prose provided by Bard. Bard is trained on a massive dataset of text, so it can be very good at generating text that is grammatically correct and factually accurate. However, it is not always able to generate text that is creative or original.
  • Original writing is typically more personal and engaging than prose provided by Bard. Bard is a machine learning model, so it does not have the same level of understanding of human emotions and experiences as a human writer. As a result, its writing can be dry and impersonal.
  • Original writing is typically more nuanced and complex than prose provided by Bard. Bard is a large language model, but it is still under development. As a result, it can sometimes struggle to understand the nuances of human language. This can lead to writing that is simplistic or even nonsensical.

……

  • Ask yourself if the writing sounds like it was written by a human. Bard-generated text can sometimes sound robotic or unnatural. Original writing should sound like it was written by a human.

To put this the test, I gave Bard the following task:

I am one of six children, the second oldest and the first-born son. We grew up on a small farm with chickens, a few cows, a few pigs, and one goat. I’m now 81. Please write a short memoir of no more than 200 words about my childhood.

Within seconds, Bard spit out this:

“I was born in 1942, the second oldest of six children. We grew up on a small farm in the Midwest. My father worked hard to provide for our family, and my mother took care of the house and the children. We didn’t have much money, but we were happy.

I loved growing up on the farm. I spent my days playing with my siblings, helping my father with the chores, and exploring the woods behind our house. We had chickens, a few cows, a few pigs, and one goat. I loved taking care of the animals, and I learned a lot about hard work and responsibility.

I also learned a lot about nature on the farm. I spent hours watching the birds and the animals, and I learned to identify all the different plants. I loved being surrounded by nature, and it helped me to appreciate the beauty of the world.

I had a wonderful childhood on the farm. It was a time of innocence and discovery, and I will always cherish those memories.

Now that I am 81 years old, I still look back on my childhood with fondness. I am grateful for the opportunities I had, and I am proud of the person I have become. I know that my experiences on the farm helped to shape me into the man I am today.

Boring, and also wrong, and so I responded:

This is inaccurate. I was born in 1941, and our farm was in Connecticut. Worse, however, it does not capture either the small pleasures of collecting the eggs every morning or learning to milk cows, and it also does not capture the deep pain of watching a pig or steer that I raised being slaughtered. Please rewrite.

In just a few seconds, Bard responded by adding a few paragraphs, highlighted below to make it easier for you to read: “Sure, here is a more accurate and detailed memoir:

I was born in 1941, the second oldest of six children. We grew up on a small farm in Connecticut. My father worked hard to provide for our family, and my mother took care of the house and the children. We didn’t have much money, but we were happy.

I loved growing up on the farm. I spent my days playing with my siblings, helping my father with the chores, and exploring the woods behind our house. We had chickens, a few cows, a few pigs, and one goat. I loved taking care of the animals, and I learned a lot about hard work and responsibility.

I also learned a lot about nature on the farm. I spent hours watching the birds and the animals, and I learned to identify all the different plants. I loved being surrounded by nature, and it helped me to appreciate the beauty of the world.

One of my favorite things to do was collect the eggs every morning. I would wake up early and go to the chicken coop, where I would find a dozen or so eggs waiting for me. I would carefully collect the eggs and put them in a basket, then bring them back to the house. My mother would use the eggs to make breakfast, and I would always get to eat one of the freshest eggs in the world.

Another thing I loved to do was milk the cows. I would go to the barn in the evening and bring the cows into the milking parlor. I would sit on a stool and milk each cow in turn, collecting the milk in a bucket. The milk would then be used to make butter, cheese, and ice cream.

Of course, there were also some challenges growing up on a farm. One of the hardest things was watching the animals being slaughtered. I knew that it was necessary to eat meat, but I still felt bad for the animals. I would often cry when I saw them being killed.

Overall, though, I had a wonderful childhood on the farm. It was a time of innocence and discovery, and I will always cherish those memories. I am grateful for the opportunities I had, and I am proud of the person I have become. I know that my experiences on the farm helped to shape me into the man I am today.

OK, but even with this information, the writing remains pedestrian and without emotion. Human writers would know not to begin with their birthday, for one thing. They might lead with a sentence designed to keep the reader’s interest. Something like, “70 years later, at age 81, I can still hear the terrified squealing of the hog as it was strung up by its hind feet to be slaughtered….”

John Merrow

former Education Correspondent, PBS NewsHour

My blog: themerrowreport.com

“I don’t want to BE old when I am old.”  Jack LaLanne

Categories Literacy, Teachers and Teaching, Technology

Trump Gives No-Bid Contract to Paint the Historic Reflecting Pool Blue

By dianeravitch
May 11, 2026 //
24

Trump must spend a lot of time redesigning the nation’s Capitol. Tearing down the East Wing, without asking anyone’s permission; building a “triumphal arch” that will tower over the area; paving over the Rose Garden installed by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy; turning the historic White House Treaty Room, where important documents were signed, into a guest bedroom.

He is treating the White House as if it were his private property, when in fact he has a four-year lease on a historic home.

His latest project is to drain and repaint the reflecting pool that connects the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial. He decided that the pool should be painted swimming pool blue. It’s been drained and the painting has begun.

The contract was awarded without competitive bids. Trump chose a swimming pool contractor who worked on the pool at one of his clubs.

Trump seems to think that he can do whatever he wants, without regard to law, tradition, or rules. Not for him!

Here is a gift article describing the situation.

At least, he didn’t paint it gold!

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Ethics, Extremism, Trump

Nancy Bailey: Robert Sweet and the Making of the “Science of Reading”

By dianeravitch
May 11, 2026 //
11

Retired teacher Nancy Bailey wrote on her blog about significant figures in the evolution of the history of reading. In this post, she focuses on the role of Robert Sweet, an important figure in the Department of Edication during the Reagan-Bush era.

Bailey writes:

Today’s Science of Reading (SOR) was born of a right-wing conservative phonics focus. A Nation at Risk helped advance that messaging, and one of the messengers was Robert Sweet, Jr.

As the country mandates the Science of Reading (SOR) and invests heavily in unproven programs, marketing disputes flourish over which best align with so-called evidence. These programs control teachers’ instruction through one-size-fits-all directives, delivered with manuals or online. It’s easy to see where this is going. States could spend millions more on reading programs that don’t appear to improve learning as teachers are driven out with tech.

During the Reagan administration, A Nation at Risk raised unfounded negativity towards public schools and teachers (See Biddle and Berliner, The Manufactured Crisis). Reading, already controversial, became a vehicle for attacking teachers, their teacher colleges, and public schools, furthering a school privatization agenda that continues to this day. Schools weren’t doing badly, but those who wanted to privatize them worked to make them fail.

The obituary of Robert Sweet, Jr. is glowing. I don’t doubt that, like many SOR enthusiasts, he believed he was doing the right thing. He became instrumental in the phonics movement, working later with the Science of Reading and Reading First promoter Reid Lyon to create No Child Left Behind and Reading First. Yet he’s rarely mentioned today.

Sweet wasn’t a qualified reading teacher. He taught physics, coached, and sold textbooks. He arrived in DC as a member of the US House of Representatives staff during the Reagan administration. He supported Reagan initiatives such as tuition tax credits, low-income voucher programs, student self-help reforms, education savings accounts, and other conservative school initiatives.

He met Dr. Onalee McGraw, a PhD political scientist and a Heritage Foundation representative. McGraw, unrelated to the publishing company, was a Reagan appointee to the National Council on Educational Research (See Robert Sweet interview 4.17 below).

The Heritage Foundation is behind today’s Project 2025. Lindsey Burke, who wrote the education part, works with Education Secretary Linda McMahon. Neither are educators.

McGraw wrote “Family Choice in Education: The New Imperative,” arguing that public schools were in decline, academics had been replaced by social engineering, and humanistic curricula and subjective values had taken over. She believed education was inherently religious, not value-free. She promoted vouchers, minimum competency requirements, and moral education classes.

Sweet initially didn’t see reading as a problem. He and his children learned to read. But McGraw introduced him to Michael Brunner, who convinced Sweet otherwise.

Brunner wasn’t a reading teacher either. He had a degree in library science becoming the director of Title I in Idaho. He connected with the Reading Reform Foundation, created after Rudolph Flesch’s Why Johnny Can’t Read. Brunner wrote Vowelectomy. He believed in the work of well-known reading expert Jeanne Chall, but didn’t think vowel and mixed digraph instruction took place early enough, waiting until the end of first grade.

Both Sweet and Brunner repeatedly claim that students aren’t learning to read and teachers and especially their colleges are failing to teach phonics.

But Berliner and Biddle in The Manufactured Crisis pointed to media claims as being distorted and hostile, describing reporters failing to address cited study details, indicating that research really showed that poverty was the leading cause of reading difficulties (see p. 10-11).

Sweet became the director of the National Institute of Education and later the US Department of Education, bringing Brunner to DC to work on reading. They commissioned a report, Becoming a Nation of Readers. It’s informative, covering phonics importance, but also comprehension, meaning, and environmental influences. Sweet complained it was unfocused (8.45 video below).

He commissioned another report by Marilyn Jaeger Adams Beginning to Read: Thinking and learning about Print. The book, still popular today, stresses the importance of phonics and whole language. I could not find what Sweet thought about Jaeger’s book.

Both Bruner and Sweet favored Spaulding, a reading program spun from Orton-Gillingham (OG). Sweet criticizes Reading Recovery, praising Spaulding at the end of this interview. OG remains popular in the Science of Reading, despite common knowledge that it has lacked high-quality, peer-reviewed studies of its efficacy for 50 years!

Brunner and Sweet traveled the country observing teachers, without being reading experts. They blamed colleges for failing teachers on how to teach phonics. While teacher colleges can always improve, generalizing the same criticism towards all is dangerous. I knew of excellent teacher college programs at that time. Brunner created his own reading program, Phonics Made Plain.

He authored numerous articles on reading, including a Republican policy paper “Illiteracy: An Incurable Disease or Educational Malpractice?” Sweet’s paper was supported by the U.S. Department of Education and the Center for the Study of Reading at the University of Illinois. It called for enlarging the restoration of the instructional practice of intensive, systematic phonics in every primary school in America.

Next, under President George H.W. Bush, Sweet became administrator for the Juvenile Justice Department. Brunner writes Retarding America: The Imprisonment of Potential, highlighting that juvenile crime is due to current reading methods (i.e. little phonics), while ignoring other variables. A good thing is that they establish reading programs in some detention facilities.

Sweet learns of the National Institute of Health and Human Development and met Reid Lyon. He seemed then to form the idea that reading must be based on scientific principal and one assumes he’s talking about phonics (11.58 video below).

In 1993, Sweet became co-founder and president of the now defunct National Right to Read Foundation which focuses again on phonics (12:41 video below). He still implied that teachers didn’t know about phonics.

Brunner criticizes the All Handicapped Children’s Act (PL 94-142) throughout the book listed above implying children simply lack phonics instruction.

But, public schools were working to accommodate children with reading difficulties in schools using phonics in resource classes especially after the 1975 passage of PL94-142. And phonics may have been taught later.

Sweet eventually helps pass the Reading Excellence Act in 1998 under President Clinton, although he doesn’t care for Clinton’s America Reads program where college students read to students (14.18 video below).

Under President G.W. Bush he collaborates with Reid Lyon, an advisor to the president, crafts language for the No Child Left Behind Act. Sweet becomes the primary author of the Reading First initiative which saw “scientifically based research” noted more than 100 times. Reading First turned out controversial.

Lyon immensely disliked educational schools, stating in 2002, a year after 9/11, You know, if there was any piece of legislation that I could pass, it could be to blow up colleges of education. He supports today’s Science of Reading initiative.

Around this time Reid, according to the NYTs, advised his former boss, Dr. Duane Alexander, about candidates for the National Reading Panel (Schemo, 2007). No early childhood teachers who teach reading were included on the panel. It’s controversial findings are still promoted by SOR enthusiasts, including some whom were on the panel. [I mention the lack of early childhood teachers but one teacher/principal was selected for the panel. Joanne Yatvin wrote many reports about her concerns about the panel itself. Minority View]

Robert Sweet and those described here were given much clout over teachers and how they teach. Yet after all these years, focusing heavily on phonics, and adding billions in technology often for SOR online programs, teachers, and their teacher colleges are still blamed as failing.

References

Berliner, D. C., & Biddle, B. J. (1995). The manufactured crisis : myths, fraud, and the attack on America’s public schools. Addison-Wesley.

Gursky, D. (1981, August 1). After The Reign Of Dick And Jane. Education Week, Retrieved from https://www.edweek.org/education/after-the-reign-of-dick-and-jane/1991/08

Schemo, D. J. (2007, March 9). In War Over Teaching Reading, a U.S.-Local Clash. The New York Times, Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/education/09reading.html

This post is adapted from my panel presentation at the 2025 Network for Public Education meeting.

Categories Curriculum, Education Industry, Literacy, NCLB (No Child Left Behind)

Peter Greene: Colorado Governor Endorses Schools That Discriminate

By dianeravitch
May 11, 2026 //
5

Peter Greene knows the dirty little secret about vouchers: schools choose, families don’t.

Not only do private and religious schools choose their students, they are free to discriminate against students because of their race, religion, sexual preference, disability, or for any other reason. A religious school can exclude students who are not of the same faith. Any private school may exclude gay students or straight students if their parents are gay.

Governor Jared Polis of Colorado is openly gay, but he embraced Trump’s federal vouchers, which subsidizes private schools that discriminate against him and his children.

He is the first Democratic Governor to sign on to the Trump-McMahon voucher plan. They both hate public schools and are doing their best to defund them. Polis is willing to go along.

Now, New York Governor Kathy Hochul is interested in following Polis’s lead. She thinks that she will win the votes of Orthodox Jews by letting the state pay their tuition. This is truly outrageous for two reasons:

  1. The Orthodox Jews vote Republican. Hochul’s gift won’t change their behavior.
  2. The Orthodox schools have been called out repeatedly for refusing to teach the state curriculum, for teaching students primarily in Hebrew, not English, and for delivering a sub-par education.

Governor Hochul should be ashamed of herself.

Governor Polis, on the other hand, has a long history of disdaining public schools. He personally founded two charter schools.

And on a historical note, I had a personal encounter with Polis in 2010, when he was a member of Congress. I was invited by Representative Rosa DeLauro to meet with the Democratic members of the House Education Committee and discuss my book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.

When I finished speaking, then-Rep. Polis announced that my book was “the worst book he had ever read” and tossed it across the table at me. He demanded his money back. Another member of Congress pulled out $20 and bought Polis’s copy of my book.

Categories Bigotry, Budget Cuts, Education Industry, School Choice, Trump, Vouchers

Trump’s “National Garden of Heroes”

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2026 //
9

In Donald Trump’s eagerness to leave his mark on the nation’s Capitol, he has launched numerous renovations and new projects. His gaudy ballroom is his heart’s desire, but he also loves his triumphal arch towering over the District.

And then there’s his plan for a “national garden of heroes.”

Present plans include about 250 statues. Here is his list of honorees.

Categories Trump

John Thompson: Can We Control AI or Will It Control Us?

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2026 //
9

John Thompson, retired teacher and historian, knows that we are at a fork in the road with artificial intelligence: Will it control us or will we control it? The evolution and implementation of AI is driven by corpirations making huge investments and seeking huge profits. The well-being of children is not their uppermost goal.

He writes:

My head has been spinning since I attended the University of Oklahoma’s “Applied A.I. in the Workplace seminar.”

The session began with O.U.’s Dr. Shishir Shah who provided a detailed history of machine learning, starting with the 1940’s. Dr. Shah went into the nuances of the phases of A.I.  It culminated in today’s period of “Human Alignment” with its exploding data bases. He says that we’re entering an era where we don’t ask whether machines “think,” but what will A.I.  learn next.

In conversations with Dr. Shah, I was especially impressed with his insights into public education, and what we would need to do to prepare students for the 21st century. He also said:

As both Dr. Ali and Dr. Jones indicated, we all have to engage in open and transparent discussions about AI and its uses.  This will help improve our understanding of its potential impacts, which then can help shape appropriate guidelines, standards, and policies.  Engagement is important.

Then Dr. Kyle Jones, who leads field engineering for “Databricks,” warned that anything you think you know about A.I. changes in 6 months. Dr. Jones described a number of ways that A.I. provides useful results. But, he added that A.I. is making things easier for robots, and then asked, “What about human beings?”

Dr. Jones also questioned the role of corporate profits in rapidly expanding A.I.   

Then, Dr. Asim Ali, from Auburn University, explained that private investment in A.I. is dominated by the U.S., but we need international solutions, and more regulations. He focused on the recent history of A.I increasing, declining, and returning to growth as it approaches long-term growth. For instance, he used Anthropic’s “Claude” chatbot for an example of what’s possible, as well as its major shortcomings.

Dr. Ali advocates for engaging conversations about A.I. and its uses; if we are “passive about A.I., the future with AI will not be one we like.”  

He also reported on “the low likelihood that we will have [A.I.] Superintelligence anytime soon, but that there’s value in discussing a future with Superintelligence because it challenges us to determine our values when using AI and wrestle with the potential negative outcomes for human society.”

That brings me from the various, nuanced history and possible futures they explained to the more complicated paths towards minimizing the harms of A.I.  They offered complex appraisals of multiple paths forward. Perhaps we could refine technocratic skills to program A.I. so it doesn’t turn on humans. Or should we try to launch A.I. so that it then learns how to protect and make a better world for humans?

And, yes, companies want us to use more data, despite the environmental damage that results.   But shouldn’t we ask whether our rampant use of digital tools and social media is meaningful enough to justify the harms done by data centers? 

And, shouldn’t we do a better job of teaching critical thinking?

So, when I drove home from those sessions, my plan was to first reread my notes and to deepen my understanding of their research.  But, the first thing I found in my mailbox was Jill Lepore’s “We, The Robots.”

And Lepore’s opening sentence was a quote from Geoffrey Hinton, a “Nobel Prize-winning godfather of A.I.” “’Unless you can be very sure that it’s not going to kill you when you grow up, you should worry.’”

Lepore asks Daniel Roher, the director of the documentary “The A.I. Doc,” which quotes an A.I. insider who says, “I know people who work on A.I. risk who don’t expect their children to make it to high school.”

Roher further explains that the government has “abdicated the regulation of artificial Intelligence, just as it failed to pass any meaningful legislation regarding social media.” 

Lepore uses  Anthropic’s “Claude’s,” effort to create an A.I. “Constitution” as a “trying” example of the problems with A.I,  during a time when President Donald Trump is attacking the American Constitution. 

And, she asks whether Anthropic’s efforts are designed to “move toward human participation and democratic governance instead of relying on what appears to be technocratic automatism.” 

Lepore recalled reasons for hope when OpenAI formed a “Superalignment team” and President Joe Biden issued an executive order “calling for Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence.  But “In Trumpworld, this was the equivalent of DEI for computers.”

And that brings me back to the O.U. seminar. I don’t know enough to compare and contrast its experts’ detailed findings on A.I. with those of the experts Jill Lepore drew upon. I heard them as being less pessimistic, emphasizing the long histories of challenges that humans have overcome. But, I believe the biggest difference between them is the tone of their analyses. 

For instance, Dr. Jones told me, “There is no single inevitable path that A.I. will follow. As humans we have free will and we get to choose.  So, his “response is to engage with this, rather than ignore it and hope for the best. After all, hope is not a strategy.” 

Categories Ethics, For-Profit, Technology

Denny Taylor: The Science of Reading is Behaviorism in a Digital Wrapper, Funded by For-Profit Corporations

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2026 //
28

Denny Taylor, a distinguished scholar in the teaching of literacy, has done impressive research to identify the origins of the “science of reading.” The roots of this latest fad are deeply entwined in the work of behaviorist Edward Thorndike. She explains how one view of literacy got embedded in the report of the National Reading Panel. Other views, other research was excluded.

It’s a fascinating article.

She writes:

This Substack post documents how George Bush and the Texas Business Council took control of how children are taught to read through their alignment with Reid Lyon and reading researchers on the Thorndike-Skinner-Engelmann-Carnine, stimulus-response, operant conditioning continuum, and delivered American children to technology companies, owned by hedge funds and private equity firms that capitalize on the profits of adaptive AI technology that constantly evaluates a child’s performance to adjust their instruction in real-time.

The post provides the historic foundations of how the integration of real-time adaptive AI into K-3 reading programs marks a shift from education as a social exchange to a closed-loop feedback system between child and machine. In future Substack posts I will focus on how this dynamic reshapes the learning process into a form of “distributed cognition,” where the boundaries between human and artificial thought – the child and the machine begin to blur.

**

Taylor then goes on to document the relationship between Reid Lyon and George W. Bush in the late 1990s. From 1992 to 2005, Lyon served as  the Chief of the Child Development and Behavior Branch within the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health. He met up with Texas Governor George W. Bush and persuaded him that he had the key to reading success. Bush became a true believer in Lyon’s ideas and embedded them in No Child Left Behind after he was elected President in 2000.

In 1997, Lyon created the National Reading Panel, whose research leaned strongly towards one side of the “reading wars.”

Taylor narrates a historical account that should interest anyone interested in the origins of the “science of reading.”

She concludes:

The damage to the American public school system is extreme and for children the Science of Reading laws are catastrophic. The state laws that have been passed mandate beginning reading instruction in public schools that is developmentally inappropriate, and children’s health and wellbeing, as well as their academic development are at risk. The digitization of reading instruction exponentially compounds the risks.

For children in crisis in America the situation is dire, and we must respond. There is substantial evidence that between 60%and 70% of children in U.S. public schools have had Adverse Childhood Experiences and many of these children are coping with ongoing toxic stress which is compounded by 45 state lawswhich mandate state approved “Science of Reading” programs and excessive standardized assessments developed by technology companies owned by hedge funds and private equity firms….

The six year forensic analysis has provided extensive evidence that the experimental research studies that form the four cornerstones of the “Science of Reading” have no scientific validity. Of particular concern are the dog-whistles and lies that have been “sold” to policy makers and the public about the National Reading Panel Report, which has no scientific legitimacy. A compelling case can be made for the removal of the NRP Report from all documents that policy makers have used to require by law the fundamentally flawed “evidence-based reading instruction” in U.S. public schools. Such an action would remove the ban on cueing and the requirement of direct instruction in the “five pillars,” and thus, nullify the 45 state laws that mandate the Science of Reading. It would also mean that universities would be able to base reading courses on the peer-reviewed articles and books of reading researchers whose scholarship has been banned, and curriculum decision-making would be returned to teachers, parents, and local school districts.

Categories Curriculum, Education Industry, Ethics, Literacy
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