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My Views on Mayoral Control of Public Schools in NYC

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2026 //
17

I submitted the following testimony to the Committee on Education of the New York City Council, when it held public hearings February 10, 2026, on the current system of natural control of the schools.

I studied mayoral control and other forms of governance when I wrote my first book, The Great School Wars: New York City, 1805-1973.

My testimony follows:

The time has come to rethink the governance of the New York City public schools. 

Mayoral control in its present form was enacted by the Legislature in 2002, at the behest of newly elected  ayor Michael Bloomberg. 

The Legislature was no doubt dazzled by Mayor Bloomberg. He was and is an amazing businessman who built an iconic technology-media corporation. 

To think that this titan of American business was willing to take responsibility for the school system was an exciting prospect. 

What is more, the Mayor boldly said that he could fix the schools. He projected confidence. He believed, and he was convincing. 

The Legislature gave him an unprecedented level of control over the system. The Mayor would appoint a majority of a new board, which he called the Panel on Education Policy, its name a signal of its powerlessness. The eight of 13 members appointed by Bloomberg served at his pleasure, not with a fixed term. This arrangement eliminated any likelihood that his appointees would exercise independent judgment. On the rare occasion that they did, he fired them. 

And of course, the legislation gave Bloomberg the power to pick anyone he wanted as Chancellor. 

For Chancelor, Bloomberg appointed a lawyer, Joel Klein, who had no experience as an educator or an administrator. 

Klein spent 8 1/2 years as Chancellor. 

During the 12 years of the Bloomberg mayoralty, there were many changes–the dissolution of large high schools, the creation of scores of small schools, the opening of charter schools, the imposition of a standardized citywide curriculum in math and science, the launch of a Leadership Academy to train new principals, and a heavy emphasis on standardized testing to judge students, teachers, principals and schools.

Schools received A-F grades, based on whether their test scores went up or down. Schools were closed if their scores were persistently low. Test scores were everything. 

When Klein left on the first day of 2011, the Mayor appointed a retired magazine publisher who had no relevant experience. That didn’t work. After 3 months, she was gone. 

While there was much breathless reporting about a “New York City Miracle,” there was no miracle. New York City’s public schools are not a paragon for other cities to follow. 

The problems of educating New York City’s public school children have not been solved. 

Mayoral control in the administrations of DiBlasio and Adams continued to reflect the inherent flaws of the concentration of power in the hands of the Mayor. 

If we step back for a minute, the nation is now experiencing a Presidency in which almost all power resides in one person: the President. Surrounded by a servile Cabinet, a Congress whose majority supinely obeys almost every Presidential order, and a Supreme Court with a sympathetic conservative majority, Americans can see daily the dangers of a government that has no checks and balances. 

The New York City public school system is no different. Checks and balances are necessary. Presently, there are none. 

Top-down management with no checks and balances is especially inappropriate for the school system. Parents and communities feel that they have no voice, and they are right. 

The truth is that there is no organizational structure that is perfect. Mayoral control has been tried for nearly a quarter-century. We now know that it has multiple flaws. We know that there has been no”New York City miracle.”

Some adjustment is needed now. 

I propose reviving the Board of Education. Every borough should be represented on that Board. The Board should select the Chancellor, who reports to the Board on a regular basis. The Board should be composed of people devoted to improving the public schools–either as educators or community advocates. They should know the schools and school leaders in their borough. They should regularly attend meetings of local school boards. They should serve for a set term and should be free to exercise their independent judgment. They should receive a salary for their time, so that their service on the Board is properly compensated. It would be a full-time position. 

Clearly, the Mayor has a large stake in the schools. He or she should have representatives (but not a majority) on a reconstructed Board of Education. 

The Mayor’s ultimate power is that he or she controls the budget. 

Will such an arrangement solve all problems? No. But it will create a structure where parents and communities have a voice and are heard. The Board, when choosing a Chancellor, should select an experienced educator, whether chosen from the city or from another school system. 

There will still be controversies. It’s inevitable. Over funding. Over building new classrooms to meet the requirement to reduce class sizes. Over charter schools. Over admissions to gifted programs and selective schools. Over racial segregation in a system whose students are overwhelmingly Hispanic, Black, and Asian.  

The Mayor–every Mayor–has a full plate of issues to deal with: economic development, public safety, transportation, natural disasters, building codes, public health, housing, and much, much more. He or she doesn’t have time to run the school system, nor is he or she likely to be an experienced educator. 

I can’t think of any important problem that mayoral control has solved.

My advice: Create a stable and democratic structure.

Categories Accountability, Bloomberg, Michael, Charter Schools, Curriculum, Disruption, New York City

Jennifer Berkshire: The Collapsing Dream of Ed-Tech in the Schools

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2026 //
13

When I wrote a history of public schools in the 20th century (Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms), I couldn’t help but notice a consistent pattern: an infatuation with fads and panaceas, not by teachers but by pundits and education professors.

Teachers struggled with large class sizes, obsolete textbooks, and low pay, but the buzz was all too often focused on the latest magical reform. At one extreme was militaristic discipline, at the other was the romantic idea of letting children learn when they wanted and whatever they wanted to. Phonics or whole language? Interest or effort?

Every reform had some truth in it, but the extremes must have been very frustrating to teachers. There is no single method that’s just right for every child all the time.

The latest fad is Ed-tech, the belief that children will learn more and more efficiently if they spend a large part of their time on a computer.

My views were influenced by something I read in 1984. The cover story of Forbes was about “The Coming Revolution in Education.” The stories in the issue was about the promise of technology. Curiously, the magazine’s technology editor wrote a dissent. In 1984 Forbes published an article about the promise of computers in the schools. He wrote: “The computer is a tool, like a hammer or a wrench, not a philosophers’ stone. What kind of transformation will computers generate in kids? Just as likely as producing far more intelligent kids is the possibility that you will create a group of kids fixated on screens — television, videogame or computer.” He predicted that “in the end it is the poor who will be chained to the computer; the rich will get teachers.”

For the past few decades, Ed-tech has been the miracle elixir that will solve all problems..

But now, writes Jennifer Berkshire, there is a backlash against Ed-tech among parents and teachers.

They may have realized that the most fervent promoters of Ed-tech are vendors of Ed-tech products.

Berkshire, one of our sharpest observers of education trends, describes the backlash:

Stories about parents rebelling against big tech are everywhere right now. They’re sick of the screens, the hoovering up of their children’s data, and they view AI and its rapid incursion into schools as a menace, not a ‘co-pilot’ for their kids’ education. This is a positive development, in my humble opinion, especially since the backlash against the tech takeover of schools crosses partisan lines. Meanwhile, pundits and hot takers are weighing in, declaring the era of edtech, not just a failure, but the cause of our failing schools.

Which raises a not insignificant question. Now that everyone who is anyone agrees that handing schools over to Silicon Valley was big and costly mistake, how did the nation’s teachers and students end up on the receiving end of this experiment in the first place? And here is where our story grows murky, dear reader. In fact, if you’re old enough to remember the absolute mania around ‘personalized learning’ that took hold during the Obama era, count yourself as fortunate. Because lots of the same influential, not to mention handsomely compensated, folks who were churning out ‘reports’about our factory-era schools 15 minutes ago, suddenly seemed cursed by failing memories.

The not-so-wayback-machine

If you need a refresher to summon forth the 2010-era ed tech frenzy, proceed directly to Audrey Watters’ unforgettable write-up: “The 100 Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade.” Watters’ has moved on to a new newsletter and AI refusal, but her once lonely voice as the ‘Cassandra’ of education technology remains as essential as ever. Her tally of “ed-tech failures and fuck-ups and flawed ideas” is studded with now tarnished silver bullets that promised to transform our factory-era schools into futuristic tech centers, making a pretty penny in the process: AltSchool, inBloom, Rocketship, Amplify, DreamBox, Summit… The names have changed or been forgotten but the throughline—a fundamental misunderstanding of schools and teaching combined with the promise of hefty returns—remains constant.

My own introduction to the ed tech hustle came back in 2015. Jeb Bush’s annual convening for his group, the Foundation for Excellence in Education, or FEE, to use its comically apt acronym, came to Boston. To which I said, ‘sign me up!’ Always an early adapter (see, for example, school vouchers in Florida), FEE was unabashedly pro technology, as I wrote in a story for the Baffler.

It’s one of FEE’s articles of faith that the solutions to our great educational dilemmas are a mere click away—if, that is, the schools and the self-interested dullards who run them would just accept the limitless possibilities of technology. Of course, these gadgets don’t come cheap. And this means that, like virtually all the other innovations touted by our postideological savants of education reform, the vision of a tech-empowered American student body calls for driving down our spending on teaching (labor costs account for the lion’s share of the $600 billion spent on public education in the United States each year) and pumping up our spending on gizmos.

In virtually every session I attended, someone would relate a story about a device that was working education miracles, followed by a familiar lament: if only the teachers, or their unions, or the education ‘blob’ would get out of the way. 

False profits

In a recent piece for Fortune, reporter Sasha Rogelberg offers an interesting origin story for the tech takeover of public education. And you don’t need to read past the title to get where she’s going: ‘American schools weren’t broken until Silicon Valley used a lie to convince them they were—now reading and math scores are plummeting.’ I’d make the header even clunkier and add ‘the education reform industry’ to the mix. While the push to get tech into classrooms predates Obama-era education reform (check out Watters’ fantastic history of personalized learning, Teaching Machines, for the extended play version), it was the reformers’ zeal, when married to Silicon Valley’s profit optimization, would prove so irresistible. 

In the last hundred years, the base of the United States economy has shifted from industry to knowledge—but the average American classroom operates in much the same way it always has: one teacher, up to thirty same-age students, four walls. This report from StudentsFirst argues that this one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t cut it in the modern world, in which mastery of higher-order knowledge and skills ought to matter more than time spent in front of a teacher—and that what we need is competency-based education. This approach, also known as the “personalized model,” is characterized by advancing students through school based on what they know and can do, using assessments to give them timely, differentiated support, made easier by the introduction of learning technology.

StudentsFirst, the hard-charging school reform org started by Michelle Rhee, has since been eaten by 50CAN, which now advocates for school vouchers, but the fare they offered up was standard. Indeed, here’s a fun activity for you. Revisit any prominent reform group, individual, or cause and you will find the same argument about our factory-era schools, followed, inevitably, by the same sales pitch for a tech-centric solution. 

Race to the Top, Obama’s signature education reform initiative, didn’t just bribe cash-strapped states to overhaul their teacher evaluation systems. It also ‘encouraged’ states to shift their standardized tests online. And Arne Duncan and Obama’s Department of Education actively courted the tech industry, encouraging them to think of schools as a space ripe for disruption. “Many of today’s young people will be working at jobs that don’t currently exist,” warned the XQ Institute, the reform org started by Steve Jobs’ widow, Laurene Powell Jobs. Today Powell Jobs presides over the Atlantic, where new panic pieces regarding young, tech addled dumb dumbs appear seemingly every day.

Warning signs

My obsessive interest in the intersection of education and politics began back in 2012, when my adopted home state of Massachusetts came down with a serious—and well-funded—case of education reform fever. At a time when red states were crushing the collective bargaining rights of teachers (Wisconsin, anyone?), I was struck by how often reform-minded Democrats ended up repurposing the right’s anti-union, anti-teacher, anti-public-school rhetoric for their own righteous cause. Ed tech sat right smack in the center of this queasy juncture—beloved by liberal reformers, ensorcelled by press releases promising higher test scores, and conservatives who liked the idea of spending less on schools by replacing teachers with machines.

Recall, if you will, Rocketship charter schools, whose innovative blended learning model caused the test scores of its students—almost all poor and minority—to go up like a rocket. Richard Whitmire’s fawning 2013 book, On the Rocketship: How Top Charter Schools Are Pushing the Envelope, is a veritable time capsule of the era. Unlike the fusty Model-T schools of yore, Rocketship schools were tech forward. Students spent a chunk of each day in so-called Learning Labs, taking, retaking or practicing taking tests, a practice that had a measurable impact, especially since 50 percent of teachers’ pay was tied to test scores ascending. All that clicking also translated into dollar signs, wrote Whitmire. “A major cost-saving solution was for students to spend significant time working on laptops in large groups supervised by noncertified, lower-paid “instructional lab specialists.”

Rocketship has since fallen back to earth, in part because of stellar reporting like this from Anya Kamenetz, documenting the chain’s less savory practices. But it’s hard to overstate just how excited the reform world was about this stuff. Next time you hear an edu-pundit bemoaning the take over of kindergarten classrooms by big tech, remember that Rocketship got there first. “[K]indergarten teachers are spending less time making letter sounds,” co-founder Preston Smith told Kamenetz. And reformers couldn’t get enough.

Whodunit?

Investigative reporter Amy Littlefield has an intriguing-sounding new book out in which she uses the model of an Agatha Christie novel to suss out who killed abortion rights in the US. I imagine that taking a similar approach to the question of how big tech conquered public education would end up in Murder on the Orient Express territory. That’s the classic Christie whodunit in which everyone on the train ends up having ‘dunit.’ These days, there is a comical effort underway by reformers to distance themselves from the tech takeover—what train? I’ve never been on a train! But the idea that Silicon Valley had the cure for all that ailed the nation’s public schools was absolutely central to Obama-era education reform.

I’d locate the zenith of the reform/tech love affair in 2017 when New Schools Venture Fund, a reform org that funds all of the other orgs, laid down a challenge, or rather, a big bet. At its annual summit, backed by a who’s who of tech funders—Gates, Zuckerberg, Walton, NSVF called for big philanthropy to bet big on tech-based personalized learning. “The world has changed dramatically … and our schools have struggled to keep up,” then CEO Stacey Childress warned the crowd. But not all the news was bad. Going all in on education innovation would also pay off handsomely, claimed NSVF, producing an estimated 200 to 500 percent return on investment. And lest parents, teachers and students failed to adequately appreciate the various reimaginings they were in for, NSVF had an answer for that too: a $200 million ad campaign to “foster understanding and demand.”

As I was preparing to type a sentence about how poorly NSVF’s “Big Bet on the Future of American Education” has aged, a press release popped up in my inbox, announcing that Netflix founder Reed Hastings is joining forces with Democrats for Education Reform or DFER. “Just as Netflix replaced a one-size-fits-all broadcast model with something more personal and responsive, Hastings believes public education can make the same leap.”

AI is a once-in-a-thousand-year shift, and what happens in K-12 is at the center of it. The schools that figure out how to combine individualized software with teachers focused on social-emotional development are going to unlock something we’ve never seen before.

Of course, transforming “a school system in desperate need of reinvention” the way that Hastings reinvented home entertainment will require “governance innovation and political will.” No doubt an ad campaign is in the works too. And convincing education ‘consumers’ that individualized software = school is going to be a tough sell as the Great Big Tech Backlash accelerates.

That’s my big bet.

Categories Curriculum, Disruption, Education Industry, For-Profit, Funding, History, Innovation, Online Learning, Standardized Testing, Teaching, Technology, Computers, Virtual Charter Schools

Paul Thomas: More About the “Mississippi Miracle”

By dianeravitch
March 16, 2026 //
9

The “Mississippi Miracle” seems to be too good to be true. The scores of Mississippi fourth-graders have risen sharply on NAEP (the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Supporters of the Miracle attribute the dramatic increase to the state’s adoption of the “science of reading” curriculum, teacher training in the “science of reading,” and holding back third-grade students who aren’t reading well enough.

This formula is especially appealing to Republicans because nothing need be done to reduce the children’s poverty or improve their living conditions. Conservative states have hailed the “Mississippi Miracle” because it relieves them of any responsibility to create jobs or change the conditions in which the poor live. It’s a low-cost cure: Just raise reading scores and prosperity will follow.

The story of the Mississippi Miracle also appeals to blue states because they are convinced there is a quick and easy way to end the perennial “reading crisis.” So they too have passed legislation to require all reading teachers to adopt the “science of reading.”

Critics of the “Miracle” say that the practice of holding back low-performing third-graders artificially inflates the fourth grade scores. They also point to eighth grade scores to say that there was no miracle. Eighth grade scores are more important that fourth grade scores because they show longer-term effects of reading instruction.

Paul Thomas is a critic of the “Miracle.”

He begins a recent post with a quote from scholar Bruce Baker:

On NAEP Grade 8 Scores: “a better indicator of the cumulative effects of a system on student learning than 4th grade assessments.” Bruce Baker, February 11, 2026

He writes:

The media, political leaders, and education reformers are making a mistake about reading reform well explained in the parable of the blind men and the elephant.

In this case, many are rushing to make over-stated claims about reading reform in Mississippi by hyper-focusing on limited and distorted data—grade 4 NAEP scores on reading.

First, research details that states implementing reading reform have achieved some short-term test score increases in grade 4; however, those gains disappear by grade 8. And more damning, the determining factor in successful reform is exclusively grade retention policies (not teacher training, reading programs, direct instruction, etc.).

Next, grade retention in Mississippi has been analyzed revealing that retention distorts those scores, resulting in a statistical manipulation of the data and not higher student achievement. In short:

Yet, a new story has emerged claiming that Black students in MS are outperforming Black students in other states, notably California:

This sort of state comparison is grounded in political/ideological bickering that is challenged when grade 8 NAEP reading scores are analyzed instead of grade 4:

Suggesting that Black students are being better served in MS than CA is at least misleading. In fact, Black students in CA, GA, LA, MA, and notably the Department of Defense (DoDEA) schools outperform Black students in MS at grade 8.

Key here is that grade 8 NAEP scores are better data because of the distorting impact of grade retention (usually grade 3) on grade 4 data.

But an even better story is that student achievement among Black and Hispanic students is very complicated, especially when you consider that states have dramatically different percentages of these populations of students.

Further, if we return to the parable from the opening, even better data at grade 8 is not the full picture.

In MS and throughout the US, Black students are still suffering the consequences of the persistent race gap in achievement (most states have the same gap as 1998, including MS).

And Black Americans remain trapped in the burden of racial inequity both in schools and in their communities.

The misleading stories about MS using grade 4 NAEP data are designed to promote a “beating the odds” story—one that isn’t true—but all students in the US would be better served if we chose not to seek those who beat the odds, but to change the odds so that no one—especially children—would have to overcome those inequities in the first place.

Categories Curriculum, Education Industry, Literacy, Mississippi

Tom Ultican: There is No “Crisis” in Math Education

By dianeravitch
February 3, 2026 //
4

Tom Ultican was a teacher of physics and advanced mathematics in California for many years. He now writes about education issues.

In this post on his blog, he dissects a recent publication which seeks to alarm the public about the state of math education. It seems that the best way to get attention is to raise an alarum about “the crisis in the schools…” Reading is in crisis! Math is in crisis! Students are in crisis! Teachers are in crisis! The nation is at risk! Estonia has higher scores than ours!

Some of us have become jaded after so many crises, but the crisis talk is meant to grab attention, and it usually does.

The crisis talk has an insidious goal: to delegitimize public schools; to persuade parents that they should send their children to charter schools or voucher schools.

After 30 years of experience, we now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that choice schools are not better than public schools. When they record higher test scores, it is because they choose their students carefully, bypassing students who are likely to get low scores.

But, lo! That “math crisis!”

What about this latest alarming report?

Tom Ultican shows that it’s another in a long line of fraudulent reports, distorting statistics to reach a predetermined conclusion. He read it so you don’t have to.

Read the post.

Categories Curriculum, Education Industry

John Thompson Reviews the Evidence About Mississippi’s “Miracle”

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2026 //
3

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, is concerned about the snake-oil salesmen pitching the Mississippi “miracle” in his home state. It’s amazing how quickly quack ideas spread.

He writes:

As Oklahoma’s legislative leaders became even more devoted to the “Mississippi Miracle” narrative pushed by “astroturf” think tanks like Jeb Bush’s ExcelinEd, and the Chamber of Commerce, I’ve been taking a closer look into the so-called “studies” they spread. I’ve long been wary of cheap, simplistic solutions to complex, interconnected problems.  But, the research I’ve been analyzing provides warning that their agenda is more dangerous than I would have anticipated.  

After discussions with advocates for large numbers of retentions of children who don’t produce grade level reading scores, I’ve focused on the need to fund and build the support services, like high-dose tutoring programs – before holding student back. Apparently, many of them believe that we were on track to an Oklahoma Miracle in 2014 when we held back 21,000 children, second only to Mississippi. In fact, our scores had been improving before the retentions, almost certainly due to meaningful funding increases that ended in 2008. And, like Mississippi, our retention-driven approach didn’t increase 8thgrade scores, indicating that they taught young children how to improve test scores, without improving reading comprehension.

After federal Covid funding ended, Mississippi shifted to a cheaper method of tutoring students, known, ironically as the “Paper” online tutoring.   In 2023, the reliable Chalkbeat did a deep dive into “Paper,” which documented, “This online tutoring company says it offers expert one-on-one help. Students often get neither.”

Chalkbeat found a system which required single tutors to multitask, working at a breakneck speed to serve multiple students. One tutor served up to 12 students at once. And “Paper” incentivized outputs with “surge” bonuses of 2 to 3 times more than their regular wages for tutoring multiple students at a time. 

I wonder what parents would think if their 3rd graders had to undergo the stress that that sort of online technology can generate. And since Mississippi spent $10.7 million dollars for online tutoring for kids from 3rd to 12th grade, how will such a system effect the learning cultures of schools? 

Moreover, National Public Radio recently presented the findings of the Brookings Institution’s study of A.I., which concluded, “At this point in its trajectory, the risks of utilizing generative AI in children’s education overshadow its benefits.”

NPR reported:

At the top of Brookings’ list of risks is the negative effect AI can have on children’s cognitive growth — how they learn new skills and perceive and solve problems.

The report describes a kind of doom loop of AI dependence, where students increasingly off-load their own thinking onto the technology, leading to the kind of cognitive decline or atrophy more commonly associated with aging brains.

One of the report’s authors warned:

When kids use generative AI that tells them what the answer is … they are not thinking for themselves. They’re not learning to parse truth from fiction. They’re not learning to understand what makes a good argument. They’re not learning about different perspectives in the world because they’re actually not engaging in the material.

And, NPR quoted one student who’s comment on A.I., “It’s easy. You don’t need to (use) your brain.”

There are some reasons for hope in Oklahoma. It is my understanding that more business leaders have been listening to real education experts, and people in our schools. And, Representative Dick Lowe has filed HB 3023 which says:

Reading intervention shall not be provided solely by digital technology. Reading intervention shall include a majority of direct instruction from a teacher, specialist, or literacy coach and shall be led by a teacher or specialist trained in the science of reading.

But, our budget will remain flat, at a time when federal cuts for agencies and nonprofits that provide essential services to schools, are struggling to finance their own programs. 

And, it is hard to be hopeful in regard to legislators and business people who believe, or claim to believe, and join in spreading,  the lies told by true believers in reward-and-punish, free market ideologies, and think tanks like ExcelinEd.

Sadly, we must continue to push back against corporate school reformers, at a time when we we face world history levels of challenges, such as the rapid rise of A.I. increased inequality, and Trumpism.   

Categories Curriculum, Education Industry, Literacy, Mississippi, Oklahoma

ProPublica: The Zealots Who Hate Public Schools Now Work in the U.S. Department of Education

By dianeravitch
January 8, 2026 //
2

ProPublica published this article by Megan O’Matz and Jennifer Smith Richards in October, but I somehow missed it. It’s still relevant because it nails the personnel that Trump and wrestling entrepreneur Linda MacMahon installed at the U.S. Department of Education. The common thread among them: they want to privatize public schools, and they want to emphasize the Christian mission of schools.

It starts:

The department is not behaving like an agency that is simply winding down. Even as McMahon has shrunk the Department of Education, she’s operated in what she calls “a parallel universe” to radically shift how children will learn for years to come. The department’s actions and policies reflect a disdain for public schools and a desire to dismantle that system in favor of a range of other options — private, Christian and virtual schools or homeschooling.

Over just eight months, department officials have opened a $500 million tap for charter schools, a huge outlay for an option that often draws children from traditional public schools. They have repeatedly urged states to spend federal money for poor and at-risk students at private schools and businesses. And they have threatened penalties for public schools that offer programs to address historic inequities for Black or Hispanic students….

To carry out her vision, McMahon has brought on at least 20 political appointees from ultraconservative think tanks and advocacy groups eager to de-emphasize public schools, which have educated students for roughly 200 years.

Among them is top adviser Lindsey Burke, a longtime policy director at The Heritage Foundation and the lead author of the education section in Project 2025’s controversial agenda for the Trump administration.

In analyzing dozens of hours of audio and video footage of public and private speaking events for McMahon’s appointees, as well as their writings, ProPublica found that a recurring theme is the desire to enable more families to leave public schools. This includes expanding programs that provide payment — in the form of debit cards, which Burke has likened to an “Amazon gift card” — to parents to cobble together customized educational plans for their children. Instead of relying on public schools, parents would use their allotted tax dollars on a range of costs: private school tuition, online learning, tutors, transportation and music lessons.

Although more than 80% of American students attend public schools, Burke predicted that within five years, a majority would be enrolled in private choice options. The impact of their policies, she believes, will lead to the closure of many public schools.

Accountability, once a watchword for conservatives, won’t be needed in the future that McMahon and Burke are building.

As tax dollars are reallocated from public school districts and families abandon those schools to learn at home or in private settings, the new department officials see little need for oversight. Instead, they would let the marketplace determine what’s working using tools such as Yelp-like reviews from parents. Burke has said she is against “any sort of regulation….

Advocates for public schools consider them fundamental to American democracy. Providing public schools is a requirement in every state constitution.

Families in small and rural communities tend to rely more heavily on public education. They are less likely than families in cities to have private and charter schools nearby. And unlike private schools, public school districts don’t charge tuition. Public schools enroll local students regardless of academic or physical ability, race, gender or family income; private schools can selectively admit students.

Karma Quick-Panwala, a leader at the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, which advocates for disabled students, said she wants to be optimistic. “But,” she added, “I’m very fearful that we are headed towards a less inclusive, less diverse and more segregated public school setting.”

McMahon has welcomedeaders of extremist rightwing groups into the Department, like Moms for Liberty and Parents Defending Education.

Little attention was paid to the conservative education activists in the front row [at McMahon’s confirmation hearings] from Moms for Liberty, which has protested school curricula and orchestrated book bans nationwide; Defending Education (formerly Parents Defending Education), which has sued districts to fight what it calls liberal indoctrination; and the America First Policy Institute, co-founded by McMahon after the first Trump administration.

Now two people who once served at Defending Education have been named to posts in the Education Department, and leaders from Moms for Liberty have joined McMahon for roundtables and other official events. In addition, at least nine people from the America First Policy Institute have been hired in the department.

AFPI’s sweeping education priorities include advocating for school vouchers and embedding biblical principles in schools. It released a policy paper in 2023, titled “Biblical Foundations,” that sets out the organization’s objective to end the separation of church and state and “plant Jesus in every space.”

The paper rejects the idea that society has a collective responsibility to educate all children equally and argues that “the Bible makes it clear that it is parents alone who shoulder the responsibility for their children.” It frames public schooling as failing, with low test scores and “far-left social experiments, such as gender fluidity…”

AFPI and the other two nonprofit groups sprang up only after the 2020 election. Together they drew in tens of millions of dollars through a well-coordinated right-wing network that had spent decades advocating for school choice and injecting Christianity into schools.

Ultrawealthy supporters include right-wing billionaire Richard Uihlein, who, through a super PAC, gave $336,000 to Moms for Liberty’s super PAC from October 2023 through July 2024.

Defending Education and AFPI received backing from some of the same prominent conservative foundations and trusts, including ones linked to libertarian-minded billionaire Charles Koch and to conservative legal activist Leonard Leo, an architect of the effort to strip liberal influence from the courts, politics and schools.

Maurice T. Cunningham, a now-retired associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, studied the origins and connections of parents’ rights groups, finding in 2023 that the funders — a small set of billionaires and Christian nationalists — had similar goals.

The groups want “to undermine teachers unions, protect their wealthy donors from having to contribute their fair share in taxes to strengthen public schools, and provide profit opportunities through school privatization,” he concluded. The groups say they are merely trying to advocate for parents and for school choice. They didn’t discuss their relationship with donors when contacted by ProPublica.

These groups and their supporters now have access to the top levers of government, either through official roles in the agency or through the administration’s adoption of their views.

Tiffany Justice, one of the co-founders of Moms for Liberty, is optimistic about the plans of MacMahon:

Asked what percentage of children she imagines should be in public schools going forward, Justice, who is now with The Heritage Foundation’s political advocacy arm, told ProPublica: “I hope zero. I hope to get to zero….”

McMahon’s tenure also has been marked by an embrace of religion in schools. She signaled that priority when she appointed Meg Kilgannon to a top post in her office.

Kilgannon had worked in the department as director of a faith initiative during the first Trump term and once was part of the Family Research Council, an evangelical think tank that opposes abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.

She has encouraged conservative Christians to become involved in what she’s described as “a spiritual war” over children and what they’re being taught in public schools.

Open the link to read the article in full.

Categories Bigotry, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Curriculum, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, For-Profit, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Privatization, Religion, Vouchers

Andy Spears: The Dangers of AI Schools

By dianeravitch
January 7, 2026 //
6

Andy Spears continues to raise the alarm about the drive by tech companies to replace teachers with some version of AI, or teaching machines. Think how much money can be saved after buying the machines! Machines don’t get salaries or pensions or healthcare.

The tech titans prefer to ignore the fact that humans learn best when they engage with other humans, who can express human approval or disappointment, can offer encouragement or a pat on the back.

Andy writes on his blog The Education Report:

two hands touching each other in front of a pink background

Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash

I’ve written before about a network of private (and now charter) schools that use AI to drive instruction. To be clear: In these schools, students learn using laptops and AI, no teacher needed. 

Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano Nightmare Is Here

Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano Nightmare Is Here

ANDY SPEARS

OCTOBER 29, 2025

Read full story

Katya Schwenk takes a deeper dive into this horror-scape.

Academic instruction in Price’s schools is delivered via a suite of online education apps for two hours per day, leaving the afternoons free for Cybertruck construction and tech CEO make-believe. This is the brand around which her work revolves: 2 Hour Learning, which is billedas an “AI tutor” that can entirely replace all classroom teachers via a few hours spent glued to a laptop screen.

Peter Greene takes a look at recent research on AI and young users. The findings should raise alarms about using AI as the primary source of instruction. 

Curmudgucation 

Studies Show Issues With Students And AI Companions

Since the moment that large language models (LLM) and chatbots became available for students who wanted them to churn out serviceable schoolwork, schools have been concerned about the effect of AI on academic integrity. But an assortment of studies suggest there are other concerns that schools must reckon with…

Read more

Aura found that kids use AI for companionship 42% of the time, and over a third of those interactions involve talk about violence. Half of those interactions combine violence with sexual role-play. A study by Common Sense Media finds larger numbers, with 72% of teens reporting they have used an AI companion and 52% saying they use AI companions a few times a month or more.

Humans are built for connection. With other humans.

Children crave companionship – and they are finding it in AI bots. 

There are all sorts of issues with this, including the creation of a fantasy world in which one’s companion is always available and ready to meet the immediate needs of the human. 

There’s also the inability to develop the skills that allow for real human connection – listening to understand, nonverbal interactions, and managing emotions when things don’t go your way. 

Turning instruction over to AI means kids will spend even more hours of the day disconnected from other humans. It also seemingly increases reliance on AI tools to manage even basic tasks. 

Greene highlights the potential pitfalls of turning over academic instruction to an AI bot. It’s not clear whether any perceived rewards from doing so outweigh these enormous drawbacks.

Categories Curriculum, Online Education, Teachers and Teaching, Technology

Jess Piper: Not That Kind of White

By dianeravitch
December 30, 2025 //
7

Jess Piper lives on a farm in rural Missouri. She taught American literature in high school for many years. She left teaching to run for the state legislature. She raised a goodly amount of money but lost. She has chastised the Democratic Party for abandoning large swaths of the country. In rural areas, most seats are uncontested. They are won by Republicans who have no opponents. She’s trying to change that and restore a two-party system.

As a former teacher, she is upset that so many students are miseducated about race and racism. She posted her views about that here.

She wrote:

I can’t tell you how many times I was asked the same question while teaching American Literature: 

“If there is a Black History Month, why isn’t there a White History Month?”

My usual response? Because every month is White History Month. History is written by the victors — and colonizers. Much of the American history and literature we learned for generations erased the contributions of marginalized groups. 

A strange fact is that much of the history and literature I learned in the South was written by the losers, not the victors. I learned an entirely incorrect version of history because my textbooks and curriculum were shaped by The Daughters of the Confederacy — I didn’t understand that until college.

That was purposeful. 

For a few decades, we have made a conscious effort to highlight the experiences of minority groups in curriculum — no such effort is required for the majority because their experience is always present.

I think it is incredibly important to teach rural kids the literature and history of marginalized groups. Many of my former students lived in White spaces with limited travel experiences. 

So, I applied for scholarships to learn what I had not been taught, and I traveled the country every summer to learn to be a better teacher. I studied slavery in New York and Mount Vernon and Atlanta and Charleston. 

My students had the advantage of learning the history I had never learned. I had the confidence to teach the hard truth.

You can imagine, after so many years teaching an inclusive curriculum, I am horrified daily by the naked White supremacy I see coming from the Trump regime and many Republicans in general. 

I have lived under a GOP supermajority for over two decades, and these lawmakers often slide into racism and try to cover their tracks by attacking the rest of us as being “woke” or “DEI warriors.” 

It is projection.

A moment I will never forget is when a Missouri Representative stood on the House floor and spoke on “Irish slavery” to dispute the suggestion that Black folks have no exclusive claim to slavery and that both Black and Irish slavery should be taught in Missouri schools. He obviously failed American History as he did not understand chattel slavery and that most Irish immigrants were indentured servants, not enslaved people. 

Indentured servitude is not an ideal situation, but it is not comparable to chattel slavery.

You know my infamous Senator Josh Hawley, who held up a fist on January 6, but you may not know my other Senator, Eric Schmitt, who is an open White supremacist. When comparing the two men, I am left to say Schmitt is even worse than his insurrectionist counterpart. Hawley is a Christian nationalist. Schmitt is both a Christian nationalist and a White supremacist.

In a speech titled “What Is an American,” Schmitt wrote:

America is not “a proposition” or a shared set of values, rather it is a country for White people descended from European settlers, whose accomplishments should not be diminished by acknowledging the people that some of them enslaved, the Native Americans they killed, or anyone else denied equal rights at the founding.

Schmitt went on to say that the real Americans are those who settled the country, denying both the people who lived here centuries before colonization and the Black people who were forced here on slave ships. 

I am horrified by the speech — Schmitt references Missouri so many times that I want to scream. He is reinforcing the White supremacy that I specifically taught my students to watch for…to listen for. To speak out against. 

Senator Schmitt even went so far as to make light of George Floyd’s killing. The entire speech had a “blood and soil” feel. It makes me sick. I am embarrassed to be his constituent.

I opened my news app yesterday to see that JD Vance gave a speech at the Turning Point USA Summit in which he said, “In the United States of America, you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore.” 

My God. I am so tired. And I am White. 

I can only imagine what it feels like to be a person of color in America and hear the daily racism. To feel racism. To exist in this country when our government is attacking Black and Brown folks. Disappearing them. Killing them.

So, I fight to elect people who do not espouse racist views and do not want to harm immigrants. 

But I also do work in my own family. My children and grandchildren are White. They deserve the truth of the country of their birth. They should know what the Trump regime is doing in the name of White supremacy. So, I teach them.

I took my teenage daughter to Charleston. We visited the regular sites, and then I took her to the sites of the enslaved who were shipped across the world to be enslaved for their labor. She saw the slave pen downtown. I took her to Fort Sumter, where she listened to a Park Ranger tell her the main reason for the Civil War. 

Slavery.

No, it wasn’t Northern Aggression — it was slavery. And if she ever has any doubt, she should read the South Carolina Declaration of Secession, which clearly states that the state broke from the union because of “An increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery.”

I took her for a walk to Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. The site of a brutal racist massacre. I explained what a White supremacist did to nine Black people who were praying in their own church…people who invited their murderer in with the love and compassion of their faith. 

He murdered them because of the color of their skin and because he didn’t understand history. He thought Black people were given preferential treatment in this country. He had a profound lack of understanding that led him to murder.

The Trump regime is pushing this misunderstanding of history onto another generation, and we can’t sit by while it happens. Teaching hard history to White people is the business of other White people. Teaching about racism should not fall on the marginalized groups who are the target of racism.

Racism is a White problem…not the other way around. 

It’s on people who look like me to do the hard work of challenging the naked White supremacy we see in our country. 

We know the lies. We have to teach the truth.

~Jess

Categories Bigotry, Curriculum, Democracy, Ethics, Evil, History, Missouri, Propaganda, Racism

John Thompson: Oklahoma Wants to Copy the “Mississippi Miracle” by Retaining 3rd Graders

By dianeravitch
November 12, 2025 //
6

Oklahoma legislators are debating whether to follow the lead of Mississippi by adopting a phonics-based reading curriculum and requiring the retention of 3rd graders who can’t pass the reading test. Mississippi has been hailed for the dramatic rise in its 4th grade reading scores, which was initiated by the Barksdale Foundation in 1999 with a gift to the state of $100 million to improve reading.

The dominant Republicans in the Oklahoma legislature are taking advice from Jeb Bush’s ExcelinEd group, which enthusiastically supports school choice, privatization, high-stakes accountability, and holding back 3rd graders who don’t pass the state reading test.

The key to instant success in the Mississippi model (it worked in Florida too) is holding back 3rd graders who can’t pass the test. If the low-scoring students are retained, 4th grade scores are certain to rise. That’s inevitable. Is the improvement sustainable? Look at 8th grade scores on NAEP. Sooner or later, those kids who “flunked” 3rd grade either improve or drop out.

Many years ago, I attended a conference of school psychologists. While waiting my turn to speak, the president of the organization said that the latest research showed children’s three worst fears:

  1. The death of their parents
  2. Going blind.
  3. The humiliation of being left back in school

Let’s not lose sight of the pain of those left back and think about alternative ways to help these children .

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, urges the legislators to think again before enacting a punitive retention policy.

Thompson writes:

The appointments of Lindel Fields as Oklahoma State Superintendent (replacing  Ryan Walters), and Dr. Daniel Hamlin as Secretary of Education, create great opportunities for improving our state’s schools. In numerous conversations with a variety of advocates and experts, I’ve felt the hope I experienced during bipartisan MAPS for Kids coalition which saved the Oklahoma City Public School System, and working with the experts serving in the administrations of Sandy Garrett and Joy Hofmeister. 

On the other hand, we still face threats from ideology-driven politicians and lobbyists who spread falsehoods about the simplistic programs they push. 

Just one example is a legislative committee meeting on the “Science of Reading.” Although I admit to being slow to acknowledge the need for more phonics instruction, and “high-dose tutoring,” as long it is not a part of a culture of teach-to-the test, I remain skeptical of simple solutions for complex, interconnected, problems. So, I am more open to positive programs, like those that enhance the background knowledge that students need to read for comprehension, as opposed to increasing test scores. 

But I’m especially worried Oklahoma could focus on the punitive part of the so-called  “Mississippi Miracle,” which requires the retention of 3rd graders who don’t meet accountability-driven metrics. 

For instance, when Rep. Jacob Rosecrants, a former inner-city teacher who took over my classroom when I retired, expressed concern that their “highly structured teaching and testing approach … might actually discourage reading,” his reservations were “largely dismissed.” Instead, Rep. Rob Hall, who asked for the meeting, said, “What we’ve learned from other states is that wide-spread illiteracy is a policy choice.” 

In fact, it is unclear whether Rep. Hall’s policy choice has produced long-term improvements in reading comprehension. 

Based on my experiences in edu-politics, and the judgements of local experts, who saw how our 2012 high-stakes testing disaster unfolded, I’d be especially worried by how the Oklahoma School Testing Program could be used to hold back kids, and the reward-and-punish culture it could produce. The same persons pushing accountability for 3rd graders also seem to believe the lie that NAEP “proficiency” is “grade level,” and that setting impossible data-driven targets will improve student outcomes. 

If these regulations were used to determine whether 3rd graders are retained, the damage that would be done would likely be unthinkable. It is my understanding that 50% to 75% of the students in high-challenge schools might not be eligible for promotion. And like the latest expert who briefed me about 3rd grade testing, I’ve witnessed the humiliation that retention imposed on children as Oklahoma experimented on high-stakes End-of-Instruction tests, which undermined learning cultures, even when they were just a pilot program.

I would urge legislators to read this study by Devon Brenner and Aaron Pallas in the Hechinger Report on 3rd grade retention. Brenner and Pallas concluded, “We are not persuaded that the third grade retention policy has been a magic bullet; retention effects vary across contexts. Even in Mississippi, the evidence that retention boosts achievement is ambiguous.”

By coincidence, another reputable study of the “Mississippi Miracle”  was recently published. Chalkbeat’s Matt Barnum evaluated the “Southern Surge” in reading programs in Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Alabama. And, yes, “Mississippi’s ascent has been particularly meteoric and long-running. Since 1998, the share of fourth graders reading at a basic level on NAEP has increased from 47 to 65%.” And, Louisiana’s 4th graders made progress.  

But, eighth graders’ results “have been less impressive for these Southern exemplars.” Alabama’s eighth grade reading scores have been falling and are among the lowest in the country. Louisiana’s eight grade reading scores remain at the 2002 level. And, Mississippi’s eighth grade reading scores are about the same as they were in 1998.

Barnum noted, “a number of studies have found that retention does improve test scores.” But:

The long-run effects of holding back struggling readers remain up for significant debate. A recent Texas study found that retaining students in third grade reduced their chances of graduating high school and decreased their earnings as young adults. A paper from Louisiana found that retention led more students to drop out. (Some studies find no long run effect on high school completion, though.)

I would also add that Tennessee’s huge School Improvement Grant, which was focused on test score gains, “did not have an impact on the use of practices promoted by the program or on student outcomes (including math or reading test scores, high school graduation, or college enrollment).”

Moreover, as the Tulsa World reported, Mississippi “spent two years and $20 million preparing for the rollout of the program.” It provided far more counselors and more intensive teacher training and student interventions. But it cites data suggesting “students who received intensive literacy instruction in third grade made only temporary gains, briefly besting their national peers in fourth grade but falling back behind in subsequent years.”

Even the most enthusiastic supporters of the “Mississippi Miracle”, like The 74, agree that it required “universal screenings to identify students with reading deficiencies early and to communicate those results to parents.”

And Mississippi’s success required the prioritization of “proactive communications and stakeholder engagement strategies around early literacy;” “building connections and coherence with other agency efforts across the birth through third grade continuum, especially pre-K;” and anticipating a “multi-year timeline to see changes in third grade outcomes, and invest in monitoring and evaluation strategies that can track leading indicators of progress and identify areas for improvement.”

What are the chances that Oklahoma would adequately fund such programs?

So, what will Superintendent Fields conclude after studying evidence from both sides of the debate?

The Tulsa World recently quoted Fields saying “that literacy is the building block. … So until we get that right, everything else is just going to be hard.” I’m impressed that he then added, “I’m learning about it myself.”

He then said:

What’s important to note about that is the Mississippi Miracle was not an overnight thing. It was more than a decade in the works. And I think if we were to model that and replicate it, you have to do the whole thing — we can’t walk around the block today and run a marathon tomorrow. I think replicating that and setting the tone for the next 8 or 10 years, we can expect to see the same kind of results. I think that’s an excellent example to look to.

Fields wants more than a “program.” He wisely stated:

We might disagree on how we actually get there, but I haven’t found anybody that disagrees that we have to get reading right before the other things.

He then called for “systemic, long-term dedication” to “a multi-faceted approach.” He also emphasized investments in teacher training, and the need to improve teachers’ morale.

In other words, it sounds like our new Superintendent is open to humane, evidence-based, inter-connected, and well-funded efforts that draw on the best of the “Mississippi Miracle,” but not simplistic, politicized, quick fixes, that ignore the damage that those ideology-driven programs can do to children. And I suspect he would think twice before holding back third graders before studying the harm it can do to so many students.

So, if I had just one recommendation to offer, I would urge a balanced effort that combines win-win interventions, not programs that can do unknown amounts of harm, especially to high-poverty children who have suffered multiple traumas. That would require a culture that uses test scores for diagnostic purposes, not for making metrics look better.

Categories Accountability, Curriculum, Education Industry, Education Reform, Ethics, Literacy, Mississippi, Oklahoma

Pennsylvania: Democrats Sweep School Board Races, Ousting Extremists

By dianeravitch
November 6, 2025 //
11

In Pennsylvania school board races, extremists who provoked battles over culture war issues were ousted. One winner said that parents looked forward to the days when school board meetings were “boring,” not divisive.

Pittsburgh’s NPR station WESA reported:

A slate of Democratic candidates won four seats on the Pine-Richland school board last night and unseated one incumbent with ties to a statewide movement of conservative education leaders.

The sweep capped an Election Day marked by Democratic victories in school board races statewide.

Pine-Richland electee Randy Augustine and his peers on the Together for PR slate won over voters with slogans like “excellence over extremism.”

“School board positions are theoretically supposed to be non-partisan, non-political positions,” Augustine said. “A number of the school board members were trying to push a political agenda, focusing on culture war issues, not focusing on the students.”

The Republican-led school board initiated policies that gave board members the final say over which books were included in school libraries and challenged books with LGBTQ characters. The district’s teachers union issued a vote of no confidence in the majority of school board members this spring.

“ It was becoming toxic, and the turmoil, I think, was spreading,” said fellow Together for PR winner Melissa Vecchi. “People just wanted to see it back to boring.”

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Curriculum, Democracy, Democrats, Education Reform, Elections, Extremism, Parent Groups, Pennsylvania
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