Ann Telnaes was the editorial cartoonist for The Washington Post. She quit when one of her cartoons was censored. That cartoon, showing the oligarchs bowing down to Trump, recently won the Pulitzer Prize.
She commemorates Memorial Day 2026 with this comment:
“They didn’t give their lives for an autocracy.”
How much corruption will Republicans in Congress tolerate? All of them were hiding under their desks or running for their lives on January 6, 2021. How do they feel about the rioters of that infamous day getting a reward for their efforts to overturn the Constitution? How do they feel about handing out money to the people chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” And rewards for those who beat the Capitol Police officers? I watched the events from start to finish. It was a shameful day in our history.
The New York Times editorial board published the following editorial yesterday. The headline: “There Has Never Been an Example of Presidential Corruption Like This.“
Has there ever been an episode of presidential corruption so blatant and threatening to constitutional order? Certainly not in modern times. President Trump’s Justice Department is using taxpayer money to create a $1.8 billion political slush fund. Ostensibly set up to compensate those who the department claims have “suffered weaponization and lawfare,” it will in fact reward loyalists willing to defy the law and commit violence on behalf of the president.
The fund manages to combine three of Mr. Trump’s most alarming behaviors. One, it is an obvious form of corruption, coming from a president who has used his office to enrich himself, his family and his allies. Two, the fund continues his pattern of using the Justice Department as an enforcer to punish his perceived opponents and protect his friends and allies. Three, the fund is his latest attempt to rewrite history about the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress.
It is worth pausing to put the fund into the larger context of Mr. Trump’s political project: He is destroying pillars of American democracy to empower himself. He claims elections are legitimate only if he wins. He uses federal law enforcement to investigate and prosecute his perceived enemies. He purges his party of officials who defy him. He describes members of the other party and civil society as traitors and enemies. He incentivizes his supporters to break the law on his behalf and rewards them when they do. He directs his allies to change election rules to keep his party in power.
Mr. Trump’s project has not yet succeeded, at least not fully. Many Americans — in the judicial system, in Congress, in state governments and elsewhere — continue to stand up for democracy and oppose his autocratic ambitions. By now, though, nobody should have illusions about what he is attempting to do.
The fund’s existence is a story of political self-dealing. It is nominally the product of a flimsy personal lawsuit that Mr. Trump filed this year against the Internal Revenue Service, which he oversees, over the leaking of his tax returns during his first term. That lawsuit led to an absurd negotiation, in which the lawyers on one side worked for Mr. Trump the citizen and those on the other side worked for Mr. Trump the president.
Adding to absurdity, the government lawyers reported to Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, who previously worked as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer. A federal judge in Miami helping to oversee the case, Kathleen Williams, pointed out that the two sides were not adversaries, which called into question the process. Even Mr. Trump acknowledged the situation shortly after filing the suit by saying, “I am supposed to work out a settlement with myself.”
Yet the talks proceeded because Mr. Trump’s Justice Department was in charge. Unsurprisingly, they led to a deal that was extremely favorable to him.
In exchange for the president’s dropping the suit against the I.R.S., both he and his supporters will receive government handouts. For Mr. Trump, the handout comes in the form of permission to have cheated on his taxes. The government has granted himand his family immunity from ongoing audits of his tax payments. He has a long history of using questionable accounting maneuvers, and the audits could have cost him more than $100 million, experts have said. Now they will cost him nothing.
For his supporters, the handouts will come from the slush fund. The Justice Department will tap a permanent stream of revenue that Congress created in 1956, known as the Judgment Fund, to settle lawsuits against the federal government. As Paul Figley, a former Justice Department official, noted, the new fund appears to be both legal and at odds with Congress’s intent. “It’s horrible policy,” Mr. Figley told The Times.
The department has allocated $1.8 billion for what it calls, in an Orwellian flourish, an Anti-Weaponization Fund and invited applications from people who have been targeted for “political, personal or ideological reasons.” Mr. Blanche — who holds his position as acting attorney general largely because of his willingness to use federal power in service of Mr. Trump’s personal whims — will appoint a five-member board, with congressional leaders given input on one of the five. Mr. Trump can fire any of the members at any time.
To understand who is likely to receive payments, look at who has previously received settlements from the Justice Department. Michael Flynn, who was briefly Mr. Trump’s national security adviser in 2017, received $1.25 million, even though he pleaded guilty to lying to F.B.I. agents. The family of Ashli Babbitt, who participated in the Jan. 6 riot, and whom federal agents shot as she and others approached the House floor, received nearly $5 million, even though investigators cleared the shooters of wrongdoing. The Trump administration is paying off people who committed violence and crimes, as long as they are Trump allies.
The fund’s timeline is the giveaway of how Mr. Trump plans to use it. The Justice Department said the fund would stop processing claims on Dec. 15, 2028, weeks before the president is to leave office, ensuring the money is distributed while he still holds the power to fire anyone who objects. The window is precisely the window of Mr. Trump’s authority.
Even some of Mr. Trump’s usual defenders are unhappy. Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, meekly said that he was “not a big fan” of the fund. Brian Morrissey, the Treasury Department’s general counsel, resigned within hours of the announcement, seven months after the Senate had confirmed him.
Providing payoffs is only part of the point. Another, according to Mr. Blanche, is “ensuring this never happens again.” What, exactly, is “this”? The evenhanded enforcement of the law.
The Trump administration has already fired federal agents who did their duties by investigating the president’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Mr. Trump has issued blanket clemency to more than 1,500 Jan. 6 rioters, some of whom may soon receive payments. His Justice Department secured an indictment of James Comey, the former F.B.I. director, on dubious charges as retribution for his role in the investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign’s Russia ties. The fund continues the effort to turn law enforcement into a tool of raw political power.
The fund also encourages future lawlessness on Mr. Trump’s behalf. It sends the message that he will use his power not only to shield people who break the law from accountability but also to shower benefits on them. Just as punishment is a deterrent, rewards are an incentive.
After President Richard Nixon’s abuses in the Watergate scandal, Congress and the executive branch built rules and traditions to ensure that federal agencies, especially the Justice Department, operated in the public interest, rather than that of the president. Mr. Trump has tried to break this system. Once he is gone, it will need to be rebuilt, and better than before. He has exposed and exploited its flaws and gaps. Unless they are filled, Mr. Trump’s corruption and perversion of justice risk becoming the norm.
In the meantime, Americans should be cleareyed about what the president is doing. He is taking their money and showering it on criminals.
Trump sued the IRS for leaking his tax reports, the ones that showed that this billionaire seldom paid taxes. Some years, he paid none at all. No wonder he wouldn’t release them, unlike every Presidential candidate since Nixon.
Did anyone think that Trump would walk away empty-handed? Of course not. He was suing himself. If it had gone to court, the judge (an Obama appointee)would likely have thrown the case out because there were not two adversaries, but the President suing an agency he controls.
The Justice Department has already awarded $1.25 million to Michael Flynn, who was convicted by a jury, and an equal amount to Carter Page, a figure in the Russia investigation during Trump’s first term.
Doubtless, Tina Peters will cash in, along with the insurrectionists who beat up police officers. So much for “law and order.” Storm the Capitol, defecate on its floor, bash a cop in the head, get convicted by a jury, get a full pardon from Trump, then collect an award! What a country.
The Associated Press reported:
WASHINGTON (AP) – The Trump administration on Monday announced the creation of a $1.7 billion fund to compensate allies of the Republican president who believe they were mistreated by the Biden administration Justice Department.
The “Anti-Weaponization Fund” was announced by the Justice Department as part of a deal to resolve President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in announcing the fund in a statement that it was “a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress.”
Democrats and government watchdogs immediately pledged to fight what they called a “corrupt” and unprecedented resolution, warning that the arrangement would unjustly enrich people close to the president with taxpayer dollars and open the door to meritless claims of political persecution.
Trump’s lawyers disclosed the dismissal of the case in a filing Monday in federal court in Florida, where the president sued earlier this year.
The fund would represent not only a highly unorthodox resolution but also a further demonstration of the administration’s eagerness to reward allies who before Trump came to power were investigated and in some cases charged and convicted. Most notably, the president on his first day back in office pardoned or commuted the sentences of supporters who rioted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. His Justice Department since then has approved payouts to supporters entangled in the Trump-Russia investigation and investigated and prosecuted some of his perceived adversaries.
“This case is nothing but a racket designed to take $1.7 billion of taxpayer dollars out of the Treasury and pour it into a huge slush fund for Trump at DOJ to hand out to his private militia of insurrectionists, rioters, and white supremacists, including those who brutally beat police officers on January 6, 2021, and sycophant accomplices to his election stealing schemes,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said in a statement.
Trump’s attorneys suggested in their court filing seeking to dismiss the case that the resolution would not be reviewable by a judge. But a group of 93 members of Congress filed a brief teeing up a challenge.
The New York Times published an article yesterday about the fall and stagnation of scores in reading and math in the U.S. it was written by Claire Cain Miller, Francesca Paris and Sarah Mervosh. The declines are no longer the fault of the pandemic. They cut across income, racial, and geographic divides.
The link above goes to s gift article, so please open and review the graphs and finish the article.
The authors attribute the stagnation to two likely phenomena: 1) easing the testing-and-accountability pressure of the NCLB-Race to the Top era; and 2) the ubiquity of Ed-tech in the schools.
I reject the claim that scores have stagnated because of the easing of NCLB-RTTT pressures. Sure, they increased pressure on students, teachers, and principals, but their negative effects undermined the quality of education. Picking the right bubble on a standardized test became the goal of education.
Campbell’s Law says that when a measure becomes the goal, it loses its value as a measure.
Social scientist Donald Campbell wrote that “the more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”
Another way of putting it: “the more important a metric is in social decision making, the more likely it is to be manipulated.”
Lest we forget: NCLB brought us cheating on an industrial scale. Rigging the system to improve scores. Narrowing the curriculum, with schools making time for test prep by dropping the arts, recess, physical education, and allotting less time for subjects that were not tested, such as civics, history, foreign languages, and science. Fewer teachers assigned whole books, but instead focused on short passages, the kind that appear on standardized tests.
The tests themselves are flawed. The scoring is flawed. The underlying assumption that every question has a right answer and only one right answer is bad teaching.
I have written long essays and chapters in books about how standardized testing is toxic to the principles of good education. Guessing “the right answer” does not promote critical thinking, which might lead a student to pick a different answer or two right answers. As I have written elsewhere, asking the right question matters more than guessing the right answer.
Testing experts like Daniel Koretz have demonstrated their limitations. Todd Farley, in “Making the Grades,” showed how shabbily the tests are scored.
As the Times‘ article points out, other countries have experienced the same score decline and stagnation, even without NCLB and RTTT.
For God’s sake and for our children’s sake, let us not return to the horrid era of test and punish. Let it go. Students may get bigger test scores under pressure, but they may be less interested in learning.
Many European nations have concluded, as I showed in several articles posted here last week, that Ed-tech in the classroom has dampened students’ attention, persistence, and interest in learning. Sweden and Norway are pulling the plugs. Norway never fell for the tech revolution. See the Sweden article here. See the Norway post here.
If the testing industry and the heroes of yesteryear’s failed reforms want another go at killing love of learning, the parents of America will have to organize and stop them with massive opt outs. Again.
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The Times’ story begins like this;
Something troubling is happening in U.S. education.
Almost everywhere in America, students are performing worse than their peers were 10 years ago, according to new, district-level test score data released Wednesday by the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford.
Compared with a decade earlier, reading scores were down last year in 83 percent of school districts where data was available. Math scores were down in 70 percent. The declines have affected both rich and poor districts, and crossed racial and geographic divides….
The new data provides the first national comparison of school districts through 2025, and offers a detailed picture of how individual school districts have performed over time. It underscores that many districts have experienced a long-term slump in student achievement, not just a blip during the pandemic.
From 2017 to 2019, students lost as much ground in reading as they did during the pandemic, and reading scores continued to fall at a similar rate through 2024.
Immediately after the pandemic, there was hope that students would recover quickly. The new data shows that scores inched upward in reading last year, and have climbed more steadily in math since 2022. But it has been nowhere near enough to make up for lost ground, researchers said….
The biggest losses have been among the lowest-achieving students….
Education experts say there is no single reason for the declines. But the timing provides some clues.
Students’ test scores had been increasing since 1990 — then abruptly stopped in the mid-2010s. That coincided with two events: an easing of federal school accountability under No Child Left Behind, which was replaced in 2015, and the rise of smartphones, social media and personalized school laptops.
The pandemic then accelerated learning declines, especially for the poorest students. Some pandemic effects have lingered. Student absenteeism, for example, remains higher than prepandemic.
In one in three school districts in the United States, students are reading a full grade level lower than they were in 2015…
Some experts believe that the end of No Child Left Behind, the contentious school accountability law signed by President George W. Bush in 2002, explains some of the recent test score declines.
The law set a goal that all students would be proficient in reading and math, and schools that did not show progress could face penalties. It coincided with a period of rising test scores, especially in math, though reading scores improved more modestly. Low-performing students saw the biggest gains.
The law, though, was deeply unpopular with many educators and parents. Critics said it put an outsize focus on testing, pushing schools to teach to the test and spend less time on other important subjects, like the arts or social studies. In 2015, Congress replaced it, and many states dialed back on requirements.
Like many who have studied the law, Brian A. Jacob, professor of education policy at the University of Michigan, showed that it increased test scores but had problematic elements.
“It was not a cure-all, but I think it really did improve student achievement,” he said. “There’s evidence that school accountability does change behaviors of teachers and administrators and probably parents and students.”
Beyond the policy specifics, its passage reflected a nationwide, bipartisan push to improve education, some experts said, that the country seems to have lost in its absence.
Yet some other countries have seen similar declines in scores, suggesting additional factors may be at play.
Something happened globally around the same time: the proliferation of devices, at home and in school.
Nearly half of American teenagers now say they are online “almost constantly,” compared with just under a quarter who said that a decade ago, according to Pew Research Center. Virtually all schools give children laptops or tablets in class, as early as kindergarten.
Few rigorous studies have teased out the role of devices in academic outcomes. Yet educators say there’s no question that swiping has decreased students’ focus and persistence, and time on devices has displaced time spent reading or studying. Far more teenagers — nearly one in three — now say they “never or hardly ever” read for fun.
In turn, schools expect less from students, assigning fewer whole books and simplifying the curriculum, said Carol Jago, associate director of the California Reading and Literature Project at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“There’s no other way, except volume, in order to become a really proficient, fluent, avid reader,” she said.
Radnor Township, an affluent district outside Philadelphia, is one of the highest scoring in Pennsylvania. Teachers still expect students to read full books, including novels like “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The vast majority of students are proficient readers. Still, fewer score at an advanced level on state tests — under 40 percent last year, down from 51 percent in 2015.
Dana Goldstein of The New York Times reached out to students and teachers in schools and colleges to find out how they teach writing in the age of AI.
What she learned was that many teachers are expecting students to write in class, not at home, to ensure that they are not turning in essays written by AI.
For today’s high school and college students, the all-night writing session, hunched over a laptop at home or in a library carrel, is on the way out.
In the era of artificial intelligence, take-home writing assignments have become so difficult to police for integrity that many educators have simply stopped assigning them.
Instead, in a rapid shift, teachers are requiring students to write inside the classroom, where they can be observed. Assignments have changed too, with some educators prompting students to reflect on their personal reactions to what they’ve learned and read — the type of writing that A.I. struggles to credibly produce.
This transformation is happening across the educational landscape, from suburban districts and urban charter schools to community colleges and the Ivy League.
The New York Times heard from nearly 400 college and high school educators who responded to a callout about how generative A.I. is changing writing instruction. Almost all described a deep rethinking of how to teach writing — and whether it still matters, since A.I. has become a better writer than most students (and adults), they said.
Teachers are responding to a widespread challenge. Over the past year, A.I. use has become ubiquitous among American students. Between May and December of 2025, the share of American middle school, high school and college students who reported regularly using A.I. for homework increased from 48 to 62 percent, according to polling from RAND — even as two-thirds of students said the technology harmed critical-thinking skills. A third of the students reported using A.I. to draft or revise writing.
The link is a gift article. Feel free to open and read.
A massive revolt against educational technology in the classroom is under way, especially in certain European nations. Education leaders in some countries have concluded that Ed-tech is the primary reason for declining interest in reading and ability to read.
In the U.S., experts blame declining reading scores on the pandemic, on teachers, or on schools that have not yet adopted the “science of reading.” But even here, some parents and educators have concluded that Ed-tech is the driver of declining interest in reading books. Meanwhile the Ed-tech industry continues to promote their products as the answer, not the problem.
Among the nations that are abandoning ed-tech, Norway is a leader of the pack. In 2016, the schools gave every child a laptop. Since then, Norwegians have seen growing aliteracy and illiteracy. Education leaders decided that Ed-tech was the reason that students lost interest in reading.
Norwegian libraries are the hub of a rebirth in literacy. According to a report in the Sunday Times of England, Norwegian libraries have reinvented their activities to bring back children and teens. They offer roller skating, rap workshops, and–most especially—-books.
To revive Norwegians’ ability to read, the nation is emphasizing reading books and de-emphasizing ed-tech.
Children find a nook in Lillehammer’s library as part of the Boklek scheme BARBORA HOLLAN FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES
There are 1,100 chairs in the main public library in Oslo — rocking chairs, armchairs, chairs on balls which let you spin yourself around. Every one is full.
When the Deichman Bjorvika library opened in 2020, staff quickly realised they needed teenagers’ ideas about how to attract young people. “When we used to arrange free pizza evenings on our own, nobody came,” said Mariann Youmans, head of Deichman Young.
Their ideas? Workshops to clean your trainers and write rap lyrics, chess tournaments and parties where you rollerskate around piles of books.
The theory is that the teenagers, who are paid about 187 Norwegian krone (£14.50) per hour to sit on the council for two hours a week, invite their friends; the library becomes a place that they know and like, and gradually they start borrowing books.
They held 1,000 events last year — and lent a record 2.2 million books across Deichman’s 23 libraries in the Norwegian capital. About 50 per cent were to children. It is books by the back door.
Welcome to the latest chapter in Norway’s attempts to reverse its catastrophic decline in reading. It might have one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds — about £1.5 trillion, and rising by the day — and the highest percentage of electric car sales — 96 per cent — but Norway, temporarily, forgot about the importance of books.
Around 500,000 Norwegians, in a population of only 5.6 million, cannot read a text message or simple instructions. Of the 65 countries measured for children’s enjoyment of reading by Pirls (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study), it comes bottom.
“We are far, far too rich, so we do stupid things with our money,” said Trine Skei Grande, the former education minister, now director of the Norwegian Publishers’ Association.
In 2016, the “stupid thing” was to give an iPad to every child when they started school at the age of five. It had no parental controls on it, and the parents who complained were ignored, dismissed as “dinosaurs”. Books disappeared from classrooms. Children stopped reading.
Norway is below the international average, and far below Britain, in the Pisa reading scores, compiled by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). Before the iPads were introduced, it was significantly above both of them.
Such children were left, Skei Grande said, with what she described as “kitchen language”, a vocabulary for only the ordinary things in life, perhaps 17,000 words, rather than a bookworm’s 55,000-70,000.
But the fightback has truly begun. The prime minister, Jonas Gahr Store, vowed to make Norway into the best country in the world for reading. “Norwegian children used to be among the best readers in the world. But today, 15,000 pupils finish primary school without being able to read properly. That is serious,” he said, at the launch of a national reading initiative last August.
A reading commission was set up by the government in January. There are 13 experts on it, including two authors, who will report later this year. Skei Grande said there is political consensus across Norway’s parliament to resolve the problem. “We have no representative of Donald Trump saying: ‘I love the uneducated’. I’m happy with that,” she said.
Money is being poured into new strategies to get children reading again — and adults, constantly staring at their phones, are being targeted too.
An initiative, from Foundation Read, will encourage workplaces to set up book clubs for their staff, or at least to have a shelf of books that staff can exchange with each other. Nearly 30 companies have signed up.
Silje Brathen, from Foundation Read, said: “We need children to see their parents reading because why should they be forced to read if their parents are never doing that?” IPads have been removed for the first three years of school, and mobile phones banned for all ages.IPads have now been removed for younger schoolchildren.
There are summer reading competitions during the eight to nine-week holiday which begins in the middle of June, just as the sun barely sets in Norway.
Every child is encouraged to log their reading — cartoons and newspapers, as well as novels — and then to go to the library to pick up a prize to reward a milestone, such as getting to page 50. The shark tooth that children were given proved particularly popular one summer.
Helene Voldner, from the Norwegian Library Association, said: “Last summer, a library in Haugesund [a coastal town in the southwest of Norway] completely ran out of children’s books because so many wanted to take part.”
In Lillehammer, about two hours by train north of Oslo, an initiative, called Boklek, which translates as “book play”, was born, the brainchild of Marit Borkenhagen, festival director of the Norwegian Festival of Literature.
In the months before they start school in August at the age of five or six, every kindergarten class is invited to visit the local library.
Each year, one book is chosen, and the author, or a storyteller, comes to the library to read the story to the children, but also to play games linked to it. This year’s book is Det Runde Problemet by Vegard Markhus about a boy called Robert who loses his head.
At 10am in the library on Wednesday, there were 47 children listening to the story, with their 12 teachers, all sitting in socks, not shoes, in the children’s section. At midday, there were another 59 children from other kindergartens.
They do not listen silently. They were encouraged, by the storyteller, Kristine Haugland, to get involved — patting their head to check it is still there, and counting the number of socks on Robert’s messy bathroom floor. Kristine Haugland of Boklek keeps children enthralled at the library in Lillehammer BARBORA HOLLAN FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES
It is reading, but not the quiet, dull type that puts off so many children. The aim is to show the children, and their teachers, how reading can be fun.
The same book is read to all children that year, and a copy given both to their kindergarten and their new class at primary school. It is designed to make them feel comfortable when they make the move to big school.
Mia Granum, a Boklek co-ordinator, said: “When I was a child, we all watched the same TV. We had a lot more in common with each other. It’s important to have something comfortable that is familiar to everyone. The Boklek book gives them this.”
For Sarah Willand, director of one of Norway’s oldest and biggest publishers, Cappelen Damm, the decline in reading — but the newfound determination to reverse the problem — means she describes herself as a “concerned optimist”.
She said: “We are concerned that both people — children and adults — are reading less … It is not enough that books exist. They must be read or heard.
Next month, Norway will be the guest of honour at the annual Children’s Book Fair in Bologna, Italy, with dozens of events organised by Norla (Norwegian Literature Abroad).
Back in Oslo, Deichman Bjorvika — all 19,600 square metres of it — has five 3D printers, six sewing machines, and a scheme to hand out seeds to visitors. The architect designed the five-storey building — or ten if you include the five mezzanines — to look like a forest. If you look up, you see light coming in through the glass roof. Oslo’s central library, Deichman Bjorvika. The five-storey building opened in 2020.
To open the library, streets were closed, royalty invited, and little children — with rucksacks of books on their backs — walked from the old library to the new building. “We wanted the first inhabitants of the new library to be children. We wanted to show them the way,” said Youmans.
One essential aspect of the so-called “science of reading” is the policy of “retaining” (flunking) students in third grade who do not pass the mandatory third-grade test to enter fourth grade.
Retaining low-scoring students boosts fourth grade scores. The students who are held back to repeat third grade may see a rise in their reading scores, but there are likely to experience harmful long-term consequences.
Steve Hinnefeld of the blog School Matters reports on a study that documents the long-term effects of retention.
He writes about a study by an economist at the University of Miami:
The study’s author, Jiee Zhong, found that academic gains from retention fade over time, and the practice “increases absenteeism, violent behavior, and juvenile crime, and reduces the likelihood of high school graduation.” Analyzing data on Texas students, Zhong found that being retained was tied to a 19% reduction in earnings at age 26.
Other studies have reached the same conclusion.
Teacher-blogger Nancy Bailey has suggested alternatives to retention that help children and don’t hurt them, like tutoring, smaller class size, summer school, small group instruction, looping two classes with the same teacher, a mixed-grade class, and assistance with resource classes. Bailey cited Melissa Roderick of the University of Chicago, who wrote in 1995: “The permanency of retention and the message it sends students may have long-term effects on self-esteem and school attachment that may override even short-term academic benefits.”
Hinnefeld writes:
Indiana started giving its third-grade standardized reading test in 2012 as part of a wave of “reforms” that also included private-school vouchers and expansion of charter schools. Initially, schools were told to retain students who didn’t pass the test; for a few years, they did. But they gradually returned to the previous approach: Teachers and families consulted to decide if it was in a student’s best interest to be promoted.
From 2017 to 2024, few third-graders were retained, even if they didn’t pass IREAD-3. Then state officials decided once again to get tough. The legislature voted in 2024 to require students to pass the test to be promoted, with “good cause” exceptions for some special education students and English learners. Indiana became one of 26 states to tie retention to tests, according to the Education Commission of the States.
The good news: Hoosier third-graders did better than anticipated. In 2025, the first year of mandatory retention, 87.3% passed IREAD-3, up from 82.5% the previous year. Statewide, just over 3,000 students had to repeat third grade.
State education officials took credit for the improvement, attributing it to Indiana’s emphasis on the “science of reading,” along with increased state and foundation funding. Students also have more opportunities to pass the test: They take it at the end of second grade, at the end of third grade, and, if they don’t pass, during the following summer. (There are no penalties for second-graders who don’t pass).
It’s also likely that teachers are more focused on ensuring that students pass IREAD-3, knowing there will be serious consequences if they don’t. They also would have worked to ensure students receive good-cause exceptions if they qualified. The number of Indiana students with exceptions increased by almost half between 2024 and 2025.
Teachers and families, for the most part, understand that holding kids back should be a last resort. Zhong’s study puts data behind what they know intuitively.
Indiana, like the other 25 states that follow this testcentric, anti-child policy must decide what matters most: test scores or the well-being of students.
Paul L. Thomas of Furman University has been a persistent critic of the narrative about the “Mississippi Miracle.” The story gained great traction when New York Times‘ columnist Nicholas Kristof took it national on September 1, 2023, in an article titled: “America Has a Reading Problem. Mississippi Has a Solution.” The “miracle” supposedly was accomplished without doing anything to improve the lives of children and their families, without even raising teachers’ salaries. The “science of reading” did the trick; that, plus holding back third graders who didn’t pass the final reading test.
Many articles have been written since then recycling the claim that the “science of reading” was largely responsible for the impressive growth in Mississippi’s fourth grade reading scores on NAEP (the National Assessment of Educational Progress), which is administered every two years. If only states forced teachers to teach the “science of reading,” there would be no failure in reading (except, of course, for the students who were retained in third grade and not participants in the fourth grade testing.)
The “Mississippi Miracle” allegedly occurred within the context of a “Southern Surge,” where low-spending, non-union states like Alabama and Louisiana also participated in a miraculous increase in reading scores. These professors complexified that claim recently.
The most recent article confirming the “miracle” appeared in The Atlantic and was written by Rachel Canter, who participated in the Mississsippi reforms as leader of Mississippi First and is now at the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.
Paul Thomas writes on his Substack blog:
“No story has caught the imagination of education reformers this decade quite like the ‘Mississippi miracle,’” Rachel Canter asserts in The Atlantic, adding:
Other states are now trying to emulate what Mississippi did. Those efforts largely revolve around adopting what’s known as the “science of reading”— a set of principles and teaching techniques, including phonics, that are grounded in decades of empirical research.
Canter, the Director of Education Policy at the Progressive Policy Institute, released as well a report on Mississippi reading and education reform, noting:
I personally spent 17 years helping state leaders run that race. As the head of Mississippi First, a nonprofit I founded in 2008, I played a hand in, and sometimes led, many of the state’s key education policy conversations with the legislature while also working with the Mississippi Department of Education to implement the reform agenda. This is my insider’s view of what policymakers, philanthropists, and pundits should know about what really happened.
Both Canter’s article and her report are lessons themselves in how education reform in the US works, specifically during this cycle driven by the “science of reading” and “science of learning.”
Notably, Canter mentions “empirical research,” yet neither a magazine article nor a think tank report meet the standards of “scientific” championed by “science of” reformers—experimental/quasi-experimental research published in peer-reviewed journals [1].
Also, Canter’s article introduces on a larger scale one of the many multiverses of the “science of reading” existing currently.
The article and report express what Mississippi officials have been arguing for a while: Mississippi reform is not a miracle; it is many years of hard and complex work.
Canter, in fact, seems to double-down on Mississippi reform is effective due to high-stakes accountability (the core of education reform since Reagan, reform that has never worked but perpetuated a permanent cycle of crisis and reform in the US).
I will return to Canter’s argument about Mississippi’s reform success, but I think the criticism of overly simplistic stories about the Mississippi “miracle” are valid and many are beginning to acknowledge that news articles and podcasts have driven reductive and misguided reading reform, policy, and classroom practice [2].
In short, a lesson we should learn, finally, is to reject “miracle” narratives in education.
The problem with Canter’s article and report (beyond that they lack experimental rigor) is that her claims are just as misleading and often just as incomplete as the media stories being sold.
One lesson ignored in the Mississippi story is that it suffers from “the moment” syndrome. I have been asking since the start of the “miracle” narrative: Why haven’t we looked at the historical increase in grade 4 NAEP reading scores, including an ignored spike well before the 2019 christening of “miracle”?:
A bigger lesson, however, is taking greater care when deciding if reforms work as well as what causes that success. Related, as well, is assuring that the data used to decide success or failure represents learning.
Here the Mississippi story is much different that the media “miracle” or Cantor’s argument that high-stakes accountability has worked in the state.
Several questions must be answered.
If Mississippi’s reform has worked, why does the state have the same wealth and race gaps as in 1998?
If Mississippi’s reform has worked, why does the state continue to retain about 9000 K-3 students per year?
And most significantly, if Mississippi reform has worked, do the test score increases in grade 4 represent greater student learning?
There is little scientific evidence on this important question, but the evidence is suggesting a principle by Gerald Bracey: “Rising test scores do not necessarily mean rising achievement.”
First, an analysis of reading reform and a statistical analysis of Mississippi test score increases suggest that those increases are statistical manipulations caused by grade retention and not student learning.
When grade 8 data are compared to grade 4, those analyses seem accurate since states behind Mississippi in grade 4 catch and pass by grade 8 (include the subgroup of Black students):
The irony here is that in 2019 when Hanford declared Mississippi reading reform a “miracle,” many uncritically jumped on that bandwagon.
The Atlantic article is receiving the same uncritical and effusive response—although it is no more credible.
Canter offers just a different compelling but ultimately misleading story.
As of 2026, there simply is no empirical evidence Mississippi’s reading reform has worked.
There remains no “science” in the multiverse of “science of reading” stories.
[1] One frustrating aspect of the “science of reading” movement has been the demand for “science” while advocates tend to use anecdotes, cherry pick evidence, and ignore research counter to their stories. Note the expectations, often ignored, for “scientific” by The Reading League:
[2] I have four open-access articles in English Journal, documenting with research that the media stories (specifically by Emily Hanford) are misleading and inaccurate.
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P.L. Thomas, Professor of Education (Furman University, Greenville SC), is the poetry editor for English Journal. NCTE named Thomas the 2013 George Orwell Award winner. Follow his work @plthomasEdD.
The blog Wonkette takes exception to Republicans attacking Democrats for rhetoric that incites violence against Trump. Any criticism of Trump is off limits, say Republicans, but Trump can say or tweet anything he wants without criticism.
Wonkette writes today about CNN’s Dana Bash interviewing Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin:
But Bash couldn’t help but try to use both-sides-ism to somehow blame Dems for this event.
On CNN’s State Of The Union, host Dana Bash interviewed Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin. The House Judiciary Committee ranking member was in attendance at the WHCD along with Bash and talked about his firsthand experience.
BASH: And you have, and as many of your fellow Democrats have used some heated rhetoric against the president. And do you think twice about that when something like this happens?
Raskin was diplomatic in his answer, while being perplexed at the idiotic implication.
RASKIN: What rhetoric do you have in mind? I …
Bash then quickly clarified that she was insinuating a correlation by doubling down.
BASH: Well, just talking about some of the fact that he is terrible for this country and so on and so forth. I understand that that’s your democratic right. But, overall…
RASKIN: Right.
BASH: … do you have a responsibility?
Raskin went on to calmly explain the First Amendment and his valid criticisms of Trump.
We, however, are not members of Congress nor beholden to niceties. So with no due respect to Dana Bash, she can f—- off with this bullshit. In fact, if anything, many Democrats are too restrained with their commentary against Trump, too scared of calling a fascist a fascist.
Here are some things Donald Trump has called the Democratic Party and/or just generally people who oppose him, in no particular order:
These kinds of moments expose the insane double standard “liberal media” places on Dems. Trump’s constant, daily violent rhetoric against his enemies is normalized — sanewashed — while Democrats are taken to task for incivility for daring to oppose the king.
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