John Thompson, historian and retired teacher, worries that the latest fads will undermine public education and replace teachers with technology. He’s right to worry. Those are the outcomes that the new crop of reformers actively pursue.

He writes:

I’m frustrated by the need to prepare for this year’s legislature, and the dangers that Oklahoma schools will face. But, too many other states will also be targeted by Trumpist right-wingers. So, I believe we all need to connect the dots and address the potentially existential threats regarding urban education.

The Oklahoma City Public Schools survived the loss of tens of thousands of students due to the “White Flight” of the 1970s, which was a tragic response to racial desegregation. 

It also survived the No Child Left Behind, and the Race to the Top’s test-driven, competition-driven corporate school reforms. It then survived the Pathways to Greatness’ excessive closures of schools, Covid, and the Ryan Walters administration, as well as attacks on students who are immigrants. These challenges dramatically contributed to OKCPS enrollments dropping from 46,172 in 2016 to 35,652 in 2024.

And, due to demographics, it is likely that the district will continue to lose students to the exurbs. As the Bellwether Foundation reports, “Nationally, public school enrollment declined over the past decade and is projected to continue decliningthrough at least fall 2031.” It is “driven by falling birth rates, expanding private school choice programs, and migration trends.”

Our schools have survived decades of underfunding, and they face the threat of SQ 844, which could cut property tax funding, as hundreds of millions of dollars are given to private schools. And like schools across the nation, the OKCPS will have to struggle with social media, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the so-called “end of reading.”

Moreover, the Oklahoma Voice reported, “the number of graduates completing Oklahoma teacher preparation programs, including college degrees in education, has fallen by about 40% since 2013.” And, “Emergency certified educators, once considered a stop-gap measure, were the most common of all first-year teachers in 2025. And, “They represented 38.8% of teachers in their first year.” And, “So far, they represent 45.5% of 2026 first-year teachers, but state data doesn’t yet reflect the full hiring cycle.” 

I’m worried that the legacies of these challenges and today’s education policies, will do more than undermine reading, and teaching and learning. I’m worried that the Oklahoma Readers Act could create destructive school cultures that push vulnerable school systems over the tipping point.  

I’m struck by the new surge of scholarly research and investigative reporting which reveal the growing harm being done by the politicization of the “Science of Reading,” and the “Mississippi Miracle.”Oklahoma passed the Strong Readers Act based on the unfounded claims that the “Mississippi Marathon” improved students’ reading capacities. In fact, it briefly increased test scores for 4^th graders, but not for 8^th graders, which is evidence that it did not improve reading comprehension.

Yes, there has been a debate over the benefits and harms of retaining students who do not score high enough on tests. But, it is hoped that Mississippi-style investments in tutoring and student supports will minimize the harms. However, a growing body of evidence explains how the politicization of tutoring, turning it into test prep, which is often being conducted by AI (even for kindergarteners), is hurting kids more than was anticipated.

Moreover, since Mississippi failed to increase 8^thgrade test scores, Governor Tate Reeves bragged about expanding policies that raised 4^th grade scores to 8^th grade.  So, what does that look like in middle schools?

A new report in Wired magazine documents the ways that Mississippi’s test-prep drills are degrading teaching and damaging reading. It began with a visit to a class which has:

20 eighth graders enrolled, but only 10 are present; six have been pulled out for remedial work with a consultant the district has hired to boost test scores, and the remaining four are absent for unclear reasons. The students in the room each grab a Chromebook and log in, at speeds ranging from feet-dragging to actively resistant. They open the StudySync software program, which shows them each a series of questions tailored to their weaknesses. Their faces look like they’re being marched to the guillotine.

It explains how the middle school “now begins and ends with screens.” And, “They’re not reading books for the love of books.”

The article ends with the teacher saying that she “can’t think of a single student across her five periods who reads for fun, who considers her class anything beyond an ordeal to be survived.”

And that gets back to the danger that I have long worried about. What will happen if the growing number of experts are right, and the Strong Readers Act undermines schools’ learning cultures from kindergarten to high school? After all, many advocates for the “Miracle” are also calling for a return to the reward-and-punish mindset of NCLB. And it sure sounds like they want to bring back the winners-and-losers, corporate reforms on steroids.

Our urban schools have been beaten down by a range of market-driven mandates, as well as other challenges that are not under their control. What happens when scripted curriculums take more time away from the essential background knowledge that comes from learning history, science, the arts, and critical thinking, and that are essential to reading comprehension. 

What is the result when test-prep undermines the joy of reading; and digital technology increasingly replaces human contact? Will our struggling schools cross over a tipping point?

Will it mean the eras of public education, and reading are coming to an end?        

Joyce Vance, former federal prosecutor for northern Alabama, describes Trump’s renewed effort to block birthright citizenship. His obsession with immigrants is odd, since two of his wives were immigrants. His mother was an immigrant. His children were born before either Ivana or Melania had become a citizen. And Melania’s parents were beneficiaries of chain migration.

The Supreme Court has spoken; birthright citizenship is part of the Constitution. Babies born here, with rare exceptions like one for children born to foreign diplomats, are American citizens regardless of their parents’ immigration status. 

There was an asterisk, of course. We discussed it at the time the decision in Barbara, the birthright citizenship case, came down. The asterisk was the concurrence by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who joined the majority but had different reasons for reaching that result. (For more detail, that piece is here.)

Justice Kavanaugh believes Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship violated a federal law—but importantly, not the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. That matters because although Trump can’t amend the Constitution with an executive order, Congress can change laws it has passed. Kavanaugh wasn’t particularly subtle; his opinion was an invitation for Congress to do just that, implying he would then flip sides. Congress, he wrote, could “enact new legislation” that ends automatic citizenship for babies born to people who are “unlawfully or temporarily in the country.”

But apparently Congress doesn’t want to do that, at least not now. 

Barbara did not, however, stop Donald Trump. Thursday, in a pair of Executive Orders that read more like political puff pieces than actual policy, Trump tried, again, to undo birthright citizenship.

The first order is titled “Ending Birth Tourism.” You can find it here.

That’s ironic, since Trump-branded properties in Florida were linked to Russian birth tourism back in 2018, although it appears to have involved people in his buildings leasing their property to birth tourists, with no indication Trump or his businesses were benefiting financially. 

The executive order defines birth tourism as any effort by someone with a nonimmigrant visa to enter the U.S. “for the purpose of giving birth on American soil” or any effort by someone to help such a person enter the United States. It gives the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security the authority to take:

• appropriate action to prevent the entry into the United States of, or the granting of any visa or other travel authorization to, any alien entering or attempting to enter the United States for the purpose of engaging in birth tourism; 
• revoking the visa or travel authorization and permanently barring entry of any alien who enters or attempts to enter the United States for the purpose of engaging in birth tourism.

The Secretaries can also deny entry to or remove any alien from the U.S. if they “previously engaged or plans to engage in birth tourism” and also lets them take “appropriate action” against people and entities that facilitate birth tourism. 

And, of course, there’s a loophole so Trump can still help out his friends. Because there’s always one. The Secretaries, “may exempt a foreign national from actions taken pursuant to this order on humanitarian grounds or when the foreign national’s entry is in the national interest, as determined by the Secretary of State or the Secretary of Homeland Security.” One can only imagine the subtlety with which an administration that gives every appearance of offering pardons for sale could deploy a provision like that to its benefit.

The second executive order has a title so saccharine that you know it must have given Stephen Miller a thrill when he picked it out: Continuing To Protect The Meaning And Value Of American Citizenship.

The EO, which you can read here, purports to take away birthright citizenship “when neither parent of that person (the baby) is a citizen and any of the following applies”:

• “either parent of that person is an alien enemy”. They define “alien enemy” as a member of certain designated terrorist organizations, in other words, a concept so vague as to be applied however the administration chooses to—we all remember the boats blown out of the water on baseless claims that fishermen on them were members of the Tren de Aragua gang, intent on invading the U.S. 
• “either parent of that person is a foreign government employee,” which they define to include traditional exclusions that are recognized to birthright citizenship like foreign ambassadors’ kids or embassy employees who are foreign citizens, but it also includes new categories like “persons employed by an international organization that possess international-organization immunity” or children born to a parent who “engaged in a commercial transaction to purchase or access birthright citizenship for the person, or engaged in fraudulent activity to obtain citizenship,” a concept so poorly designed it could be used to target people the administration wants to while permitting others to retain citizenship. It purports to deny citizenship to babies “born in a territory or territorial waters of the United States where citizenship is not conferred by Federal statute,” perhaps a nod at Justice Kavanaugh as there were four clear votes for the proposition that this is a constitutional right, not a statutory one.

There will, of course, be litigation. The issue of standing, among others, will have to be evaluated, and then the pro-democracy lawyers will go to court. We will find out if Justice Kavanaugh meant it when he said only Congress could change the law, not another, more carefully worded but still unconstitutional directive from the authoritarian in the White House. 

These newest Trump’s executive orders are little more than a performative stunt, a smack back from a narcissist who doesn’t like to be told no, even by the nation’s highest Court, which usually tells him yes. The EO’s seem unlikely to find much love from the lower courts, given the precedent from Barbara that they are obligated to apply. But we do live in the era of the unitary executive and a Supreme Court that panders to that theory, and sometimes to its current personification. So we will watch; we will see how the administration tries to implement its new policies and how the courts respond.

The issue of who gets to be a citizen is too important to be left to the whims of Donald Trump and Stephen Miller. This whole sordid affair exemplifies why we have laws and why it’s important to be a rule of law country. Trump is trying to change the rules that determine who can be an American to suit his own whims. That’s not how a democracy works. We believe in justice and fairness, not kings. No kings. Not on this issue or any other. 

Here at Civil Discourse, we’ll keep following this story long after today’s headlines disappear. If you want to know what happens next, make sure you’re subscribed!