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Was the “Mississippi Miracle” a Short-Time Surge?

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2026 //
20

John Thompson, writing from Oklahoma, reviews the research on the “Mississippi Miracle,” the strategies that boosted fourth-grade test scores? Those strategies are now being turned into law in states across the country. John takes another look.

He writes:

When the so-called “Mississippi Miracle” and the “Science of Reading,” became the drivers of the Oklahoma Strong Readers Act, I pointed out the large body of research-based evidence that its advocates ignored. Yes, there was evidence that the so-called “Marathon” could raise 4th grade test scores, at least in the short-term, but there was little or no evidence that it would do more good than harm. Negative results were even more likely in Oklahoma where our rightwing politics and our minimal amount of funding would drive the experiment.

I also asked experts and journalists about policies that common sense would say violate the norms of social science research. For instance, NAEP tests have been designed to minimize the use of test prep to jack up scores.  And, yes, I was told that there are people looking into that issue.

Being a former academic historian, I would read the way that reformers like Adam Tyner and Rachel Canter track NAEP scores. However, I was dismayed by their interpretations of those patterns. After all, whether laws were passed in 2002 or 2013, those mandates didn’t take effect immediately. If we want to learn what policies worked in what places, we need to identify what was actually happening in schools before we can figure out whether those approaches worked.

And that leads me to “NEPC Review: Inside the Mississippi Marathon” by, Gregory Camilli, Professor Emeritus from Rutgers University. Camilli was extremely precise and diplomatic, when reviewing the Progressive Policy Institute’s, “Inside the Mississippi Marathon,” written by Rachel Canter. He explained that it presents an “insider account of how the K–3 education system in Mississippi evolved over roughly two decades.” But, he “focuses on just a slice of the report: its description of the state’s performance in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), and, to a lesser degree, the policy implementation.”

Camilli reports that Mississippi’s Literacy-Based Promotion Act (LBPA) was passed in 2013, but “full implementation of the various pillars of the LBPA arguably took place in 2017-2019.”

Then he notes that “the PPI report also presents no research literature on [the] effectiveness of the LBPA,” and “it is not presented or intended as a research study.”

The LBPA prioritized the lowest-performing schools. By 2015-16, full literacy support was given to 18% of approximately 700 elementary schools. 

These “designated schools,” were assigned a literacy coach (hired, trained, and monitored by the state)” who modeled and observed instruction. They also received a “reading curriculum that the state had reviewed and approved as consistent with the ‘science of reading.’” 

It was estimated that the time available for administrative duty and travel, and coaching, “may equate to approximately 15-35 minutes per week per teacher.”

So, how could Mississippi’s full LBPA gains provide more than a small contribution to NAEP test score increases? 

Camilli concludes LBPA “most likely had modest impact on NAEP scores due to the relatively small number of students in designated schools and the even smaller number selected for the NAEP sample.”

Conversely, low-performing students in 82% schools were subject to some assessments, and retention, but not the comprehensive supports that were said to be crucial for the Miracle. Camilli explains, “In non-designated schools, LBPA exposure consisted of a modest state-wide bundle of supports including retention screening.”

So, was it the threat of retention that played the largest role in increasing test scores? Or, was it test-prep that improved scores? If so, is there any reason to believe those scores meant reading levels improved? After all, even though Camilli focused on the 4th grade NAEP scores that “Inside the Mississippi Marathon” emphasized, he noted Mississippi’s failure to improve 8th grade NAEP reading scores. 

That leads to the question as to whether reading comprehension improved.   

Camilli wrote that threat of retention was a prevalent incentive: 

It could be argued that the threat of retention was the primary treatment for the majority of Mississippi students, because students in non-designated schools received only distal instructional support in the form of teacher training. This threat itself may have caused principals, teachers and students to devote more instructional time and effort to literacy. 

(Distal instructional support means interventions, guidance, or systemic resources delivered remotely, indirectly, or at an organizational level rather than through immediate, face-to-face coaching.)

And, “This threat (of retention) itself may have caused principals, teachers and students to devote more instructional time and effort to literacy.”

Moreover, “the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) suggests that in 2015, the MDE revised its state assessment to align more closely with the NAEP assessment.”

Camilli noted the “vast literature on the outcomes and efficacy of test preparation, which is a notoriously controversial topic,” and the way that “it may lead to increases in test scores without enlarging students’ capabilities.”

And that leads to the question as to what was the effect of Mississippi’s use of NAEP materials in order increase its State Proficiency scores. When defending their failure to increase 8thgrade NAEP reading scores, advocates for the Miracle argue that their scores decreased less than other states. But, it’s possible (or likely) that those Mississippi scores have only declined by 2 points since NCLB became law in 2002 due, in part, to the use of NAEP materials.

On the other hand, from 2019 to 2024, the dubious Mississippi State 8th grade Reading Proficiency rates increased by 6 points, while its NAEP Proficiency scores dropped by 2 points, increasing its State/NAEP Proficiency Gap to 19 points. And the 4th grade gap reached 25 points!   

Those gaps again call into the question about whether Mississippi’s data-driven accountability and mass retentions actually improved reading, as opposed to producing short-lived surges in 4th grade test scores. And it further calls into question Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeve’s plan to ramp up those policies up until 8th grade. And I would further ask why Oklahoma should commit to Mississippi’s model, before they can present solid evidence that it has worked.

New reporting and scholarly research, like Dr. Camilli’s, indicate that the so-called “Miracle” is doing even more harm than anticipated. To defend public education, and the joy of reading, we need to better explain to its advocates why the benefits that once seemed possible, and the predictable harms of the “Marathon,” are imposing even greater threats on school cultures. We must also increase our conversations with Democrats and adult Republicans, who have questions about mass retentions of students.


In my experience with education advocates, which I suspect is similiar to education supporters in many Red states, they knew that legislation based on Mississippi’s experiment was bound to become law. So, they focused (usually unsuccessfully) on providing more social supports, like high-dosage tutoring, and better funding in order to provide human contacts, where students would be seen as persons, not test scores.   
But, now we must focus on the damage that we now know is being inflicted on K-12 education in Mississippi, and push back against those policies in our states.

Categories Education Reform

Chan-Zuckerberg Abandon Model School They Founded and Funded

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2026 //
15

This is a very sad story.

Mark Zuckerberg is a billionaire. His wife Priscilla Chan is a pediatrician. Ten years ago, they founded and funded a school that was designed to be different. They sought out children who were impoverished. Their school offered wrap-around services. They did all the right things.

But they are withdrawing their funding because they are disappointed by the school’s test scores. Test scores! Had they no better way of measuring success? Apparently not. Their scores were substantially higher than those of the local school district. But that wasn’t good enough. Were the children healthier? Were parents more engaged in their children’s education? In the end, the school was closed because its scores were not “good enough.”

It was supposed to be a long-term commitment, but it wasn’t. CZI surely could have made a 25-year commitment to their school but they pulled away their funding after only a decade. Do they have enough evidence to determine the value of investing in children’s well-being? No.

As I said, this is a very sad story.

Laura J. Nelson of The Wall Street Journal reported:

The school that Dr. Priscilla Chan co-founded for low-income students was designed to be different. 

The vast fortunes being minted in other corners of Silicon Valley had mostly missed East Palo Alto, Calif., where the Primary School opened in 2016. Funded through Chan’s philanthropy with her husband Mark Zuckerberg, the private, tuition-free school aimed to support the “whole child” through wraparound services, including free dental checkups, early-intervention screenings and wellness coaching for parents.

The school joined a long list of efforts by the country’s wealthiest, dating back to Andrew Carnegie, to put their stamp on the American classroom. Then, after a decade of operation and more than $125 million from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Primary School shut down in June.

Dr. Priscilla Chan speaks onstage at the 2025 SXSW Conference and Festival.

Dr. Priscilla Chan SUZANNE CORDEIRO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

The board voted unanimously in April 2025 to close the school after learning that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative wouldn’t fund it after the 2025-26 academic year, people familiar with the situation said.

The school’s demise marks the end of one of the highest-profile education efforts funded by the couple’s philanthropic arm, which has shifted its focus from social issues toward scientific research. 

By some measures, the school’s academic performance fell well short of state norms and its leaders’ expectations, complicating efforts to spread its model to public and charter schools. By others, it succeeded in helping students outside the classroom in ways that are usually not available in public schools.

Board president Jean-Claude Brizard said that before the vote to close, he shared several options with CZI about the school’s future, including “winding down.” The board wouldn’t have voted to close without alignment from their biggest funder, he said. 

A CZI spokesperson said the decision to close was up to the school’s board and that the organization was focused on the school’s academic results, not the cost.

The Primary School’s closure has illustrated what philanthropic investment means for a community when it arrives, and when it leaves. 

“It was a godsend school,” said Mele Fakapelea, whose daughter Telesia won a lottery spot in the founding class. Fakapelea later enrolled her four younger children. Losing the school’s support system, she said, was “crushing.”

Mele Fakapelea and her daughter Telesia celebrating Telesia's 8th grade graduation.

Mele Fakapelea, in red lei, and her family at the eighth-grade graduation for her eldest daughter, Telesia, center. SAO LUTUI

Nearly 540 children were enrolled at the Primary School’s two campuses. The Ravenswood City Elementary School District is now preparing for an enrollment surge, renovating a campus to avoid packing students into portable trailers.

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative pledged $50 million when the closure was announced. That includes paying the balance of the school’s lease to the district and supporting local groups to carry on some services. CZI also gave $3.6 million to education savings accounts: $10,000 for elementary students, $2,500 for preschoolers and $1,000 for children in early-childhood education.

Business leaders and founders “look at K-12 education and go, ‘Man, how hard can it be to improve this thing?’” said Rick Hess, the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. “Well, it’s incredibly hard.”

Zuckerberg announced one of the couple’s first major charitable gifts, a $100 million grant to Newark, N.J., public schools, on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in 2010. The Primary School was far more hands-on.

Chan said then that her work as a pediatrician, and at a Boston housing-project after-school program, had taught her that systems to help children are often siloed. The school set out to help children overcome the effects of poverty and childhood trauma.

Staff worked with community clinics to find high-needs families, including students with behavioral issues and learning disabilities. Three in four students spoke a language other than English at home. 

Some things felt more startup than school. Teachers signed nondisclosure agreements as part of their employment contracts. Some toddlers wore recording devices at home to count back-and-forth conversations with their caregivers, part of a program to boost language development.

Chan was on campus often, including to read a Mo Willems book (“The Pigeon Needs a Bath!”) to kindergartners. During the launch of a curriculum with Sesame Workshop, Chan bantered with Elmo in a promotional video. Teachers attended the workshop’s 50th-anniversary gala and met Michelle Obama.

Parents were on campus regularly for coaching sessions and classes about child development. 

But the school had some challenges, including high principal turnover. It also initially lacked clear plans and approaches for special education and student discipline, former employees said. 

Katherine Carter, a former middle-school principal hired as a consultant in 2019, said there “really was not an understanding of the amount of time and support” and planning to launch a school. Carter, who left in 2024, said it can take five years for a new school’s approach to gel.

It took time for the new school to find the right curriculum and policies, said Lindsey Luebchow, a founding member of the Primary School. Principal turnover, she said, was one result of the structural challenge of “managing many programs in a single school.”

Chan was the Primary School’s co-founder and board chair for about eight years, until 2023; CZI was the main funder. Having one major backer in perpetuity hadn’t been the original plan, CZI said, but rather a model that “could be sustained through primarily public investment.” To that end, the Primary School said it tried to keep per-pupil spending at a reasonable level for a public school.

Chicago Public Schools head Jean-Claude Brizard speaks at a school event.

Jean-Claude Brizard, chairman of the board of directors for the Primary School SITTHIXAY DITTHAVONG/AP

Chan lobbied her network “to bring in other funding sources,” CZI said. But finding donors to supplement CZI was a tough sell, said Brizard, who is the former head of Chicago’s public schools. “Why would you give money to an entity being funded by one of the wealthiest people in the world?” he said.

Chan was “not shy” about her frustration with academic performance, Brizard said. Chan told The Wall Street Journal last year that outcomes weren’t where “frankly, anyone would have wanted them to be.”

Early last year, soon after Zuckerberg and Chan attended President Trump’s inauguration, CZI told staff its mission was changing. Funding for social advocacy had been “wound down” over the past several years to “align with our focus as a science philanthropy as well as the current legal and policy landscape,” staff were told. There was no evidence that the couple’s attendance influenced the board’s vote, CZI said.

That April, the Primary School’s board voted unanimously to close after the next academic year. The timing of the CZI changes and the inauguration, Brizard said, was “an unfortunate coincidence.” 

Angelica Cardenas, 29, whose 3-year-old daughter was enrolled along with her siblings’ five children, said she heard about the closure from the news. “If they knew they were going to stop investing in our community, it should have been spoken about earlier on,” Cardenas said.

Some staff and parents said they thought the Primary School would last for decades, in part because it was focused on long-term outcomes. 

“This was never something that was supposed to be just a philanthropic play in perpetuity,” Brizard said. “Maybe that wasn’t articulated well enough.”

A Stanford University report found that in spring 2025, 14% of local students in third grade and above exceeded literacy standards; at the Primary School, it was 26%; statewide, it was 47%. 

Eighth-grade students, many of whom had attended the school for a decade, demonstrated above 50% grade-level proficiency in their final year, the school said.

Luebchow said students saw “steady and encouraging” academic progress after the pandemic, and pointed to improvements in children’s well-being and socio-emotional skills. About 85% of students had their annual well-child visit, compared with 55% of children on Medicaid in the county.

Every teacher returned for the final year. School leaders told parents: We understand if you don’t want to stay. If you do, we’ll close the year out strong.

School leaders arranged tours of other schools, set up a station for parents to complete admission applications, and called in a representative from a 529 savings plan to help parents open the accounts seeded by CZI. 

Parents and teachers tried to savor the “lasts”: the last back-to-school night, with Pacific Island dancers on a tapa cloth mat. The last pep rally, where children blew red vuvuzelas.

Fakapelea’s oldest daughter, now 13, was one of two speakers when the school’s lone class of eighth-graders graduated in June. She cried afterward, as her family draped her in leis. 

Categories Billionaires, Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Closing schools, Education Reform, Poverty

Peter Greene: Will the Federal Voucher Program Put Private Schools at Risk?

By dianeravitch
July 30, 2026 //
2

Some years back, I was invited to lecture at Notre Dame University. My views of charter schools and vouchers were well known. I wasn’t sure how to frame my critique of school choice at this great Catholic university. When I spoke, I warned that public support for vouchers might eventually lead to public accountability, meaning regulations. Independence, I argued, mattered more than money.

I doubt that anyone who believes in vouchers for religious schools changed their mind. But I was treated with great warmth and appreciation. Notre Dame is simply an awesome university.

At the time, I couldn’t imagine that the federal government would ever adopt a voucher program.

Yet here we are, and Peter Greene has a warning for private schools.

He wrote in Forbes:

State level school vouchers have enjoyed a period of growth largely free from regulation and oversight, but the advent of federal vouchers has the potential to change that. 

Most states have voucher laws that explicitly forbid the state from interfering in any way with how a voucher-receiving school conducts business. Education Savings Account style vouchers provide parents with a grant of funding they can spend on many sorts of education-related expenses, but again, these programs often come with little oversight. As the Florida Department of Education announces on their website:

The Florida Department of Education does not have jurisdiction over private schools. Legislative intent not to regulate, control, approve, or accredit private educational institutions, churches, their ministries, religious instruction, freedoms, or rites, is explicit. The owners of private elementary and secondary schools in Florida are solely responsible for all aspects of their educational programs,

The One Big Beautiful Bill created a federal voucher program, a program that may help further the goal of pushing voucher programs into states that have resisted vouchers. Yet those states may move to insure that federal vouchers do not bring with them the fraud and abuse seen in other states.

In Arkansas, the LEARNS Act allowed students to qualify for a voucher for students with disabilities with nothing more than a note from a doctor.Jennifer Smith Richards and Jodi S. Cohen reported for ProPublica on a private school that had students attack a fellow student, under the direction of a school leader whose only qualification is a degree in occupational therapy. Arkansas does not review private school curriculum or the qualifications of the school leaders; anyone is free to open a private school.

In Florida, ProPublica found that the state of Florida had stripped a teacher of her license for sexual abuse of a 16-tear-old boy a decade ago, then, last year allowed her to open a private school. 

Arizona’s taxpayer-funded school vouchers have been plagued with reports of misuse. State auditors found in 2018 that $700K in voucher money being spent on cosmetics, clothing, and other inappropriate items. Craig Harris reported at 12News that the level of fraud and unallowable purchases was not the 1% declared by voucher supporters like state Schools Chief Tom Horne, but closer to 20%. According to the Department of Education’s own records, of 385,000 purchases made with voucher dollars, 84,000 violated the rules governing what is allowed.

When Harris followed up in 2025, he found voucher money still being spent on a variety of items such as iPhones, smart TVs, jewelry, hotel stays, airline tickets, diapers, gift cards, lingerie, and other unallowable expenses. In November 2025, the Department of Education began automatically approving all voucher spending requests because it had become swamped with a backlog of such requests.

Utah’s brand new program was just audited, with Carmen Nesbitt reporting for the Salt Lake Tribune that some spending was found to be “wasteful and extravagant.”

Utah has already added some guardrails to its program, and other states are also seeing a push for greater accountability and transparency. In Arizona, a proposed ballot initiative will likely call for greater accountability for the state’s voucher program. In Pennsylvania, the House passed a bill that left voucher funding untouched, but add transparency and accountability. 

State Rep. Matt Bradford said, “No one should ever fear transparency,” and has argued for more oversight, according to Maddie Hanna and Gillian McGoldrick at the Philadelphia Inquirer. 

Vouchers also bring with them questions of taxpayer-funded schools that pick and choose which students to accept, what Kevin Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center has called an “outsourcing of discrimination.” Voucher-funded schools have, in some states, reserved the right to reject students for coming from homes have an atmosphere “that is counter to or in opposition to the biblical lifestyle.” There are also examples of schools that reject students with academic or behavioral struggles. There are at least two cases currently working through the courts that seek to establish a private school entitlement to state funding even as they violate the state’s laws forbidding discrimination against LGBTQ persons.

All of this serves as an indication to governors considering signing on for the federal voucher system may want to make sure that they put legislative guardrails in place to protect both the academic integrity of the education system as well as the rights of marginalized student communities. 

Some voucher supporters are already anticipating that outcome. It would not be the first time; as Jennifer Berkshire reported in In These Times, some of the strongest opponents to Governor Greg Abbott’s Texas school vouchers were conservatives, who see in vouchers a way for government to extend control over schools. 

That may go double for federal vouchers. Writes American Enterprise Institute fellow Daniel Buck,“The greatest risk in my mind is that in time this program will become a stick that the federal government can wield to thwack private schools into submission.”

Yet currently, there are no sticks attached to the federal voucher program. When Governor Tony Evers vetoed the Wisconsin legislature’s attempt to force participation in the federal voucher program, he stated

This nationwide voucher program has no student achievement metrics, no school accountability measures, no minimum or maximum scholarship size, no certain end date, and no cap on how much the federal government can spend. Republicans in Washington have given private voucher expansion carte blanche to run roughshod over public education in this country — and a blank check to do so at taxpayer expense, clearly without any regard for whether it actually does what is best for kids.

School vouchers occupy a unique policy position; no voucher program has ever been put into place by the voters. Instead, these programs have always been installed by legislatures working around the voters. Now the federal government has launched a voucher program by making an end run around state legislatures. It will be up to those legislatures to install guard rails to protect the interest of their taxpayers and students. 

Categories Education Reform

Audrey Watters: More Ed-Tech Hoaxes

By dianeravitch
July 29, 2026 //
4

Audrey Watters says in this post that she never wanted to be the Cassandra of Ed-tech, but she can’t help herself. There are simply too many for-profit phonies that are coming on to the market and too many dupes willing to buy them.

She writes on her blog “Second Breakfast”:

“The future is here. It’s just not very evenly distributed.” This quotation, attributed to science fiction author William Gibson, is often used to imply that some lucky few, particularly those surrounded by silicon gadgetry, live in some glorious high-tech promised land; while the rest of us, without access to that machinery, remain stuck in an industrial, even pre-industrial past.

That always strikes me as a huge misread — not just of the fictional tomorrows that Gibson has imagined, but of the realities of various technologies today. The uneven distribution isn’t simply about the “haves” and “have-nots” of the latest in fancy consumer electronics. Rather, it’s about what sorts of possibilities, what sorts of agency, what sorts of freedoms these technologies might afford us. Who even gets to have a future.

“The future is here” — and let’s just say that “the future” is some sort of automated classroom – what exactly does it look like? What’s the distribution of that future? And for the community in and around that classroom, what sort of future, whose future, does the robot teacher enable?

“The future is here.” Or at least, some version of a rather Gibson-esque dystopia looms threateningly: “Rural NY School District Will Be One of First to Bring Humanoid Robot Into Classroom,” Melissa Manno reported this week for New York Focus. The Salamanca City Central School District, located on the Seneca Nation reservation, has agreed to purchase a robot from Realbotix for use in the upcoming school year. “The female robot, named Sally, will have a “lifelike appearance” with silicone skin and long brown hair. … Students will use a unique identification code when interacting with the robot during class, allowing it to access their learning data and provide personalized support based on their past communication with the avatar, [Realbotix CEO Andrew] Kiguel said. ‘They’ll be able to say, “Hey, I’m student number 1234,” and then the robot will be like, “Hey, we were talking about this yesterday, do you want to continue that conversation?”’

“Hey, I’m student number 1234” – number 1234 in a district where about 80% of the students are classified as “economically disadvantaged” and almost 32% live in poverty. Number 1234 in a district where 32% of students identify as indigenous. Uneven distribution indeed.

And Sally, ah Sally. Sally “will be stationary in a seated position but have a wide range of upper-body movements and facial expressions.” The district reportedly will pay $57,590 for the robot, which “unlike other Realbotix robots … will not have advanced features such as facial recognition and recording.” Realbotix, “previously known as Tokens.com,” Kotaku’s John Walker informs us, “a crypto company that has since pivoted to the latest fad, after purchasing sex doll maker Simulacra.”

Realbotix, for its part, insists that this new education-focused product and the old, sex companion robot RealDoll “do not share employees, payroll, physical locations, or technology.” But as robotics researcher Julie Walker notes on Bluesky, “a ‘teacher’ robot built by a company whose core embodiment expertise is companion and sex robots is going to carry that design logic into the classroom, whether anyone intends it or not.” And as all the AI-in-education evangelists keep insisting – and have insisted now for one hundred years – the automation of the classroom means that the teacher can focus more on caring for her students, the very gendered practices that these robots (both embodied and as chatbots) also promise.

“We anticipate benefits we cannot yet fully foresee,” the Realbotix press release insists. It gestures at a future that’s both here and not-yet-so. What’s being distributed unevenly in this future isn’t simply gadgetry: it’s surveillance, ideology, racism, patriarchy, control. Dystopia. The sexbot just embodies, makes explicit, what’s a more subtle message encoded into the rest of AI-in-education.

The future that’s promised is a return to some imagined, idyllic past, others try to tell us. “Bring back testing,” we hear over and over and over, as though the polycrises faced by schools and students and communities are because too many people balked at bubble-sheets.

“The Debate Over Standardized Testing Is About to Converge With Two Scary On-Campus Realities” Nick Ripatrazone writes in Slate. Those scary realities that demand a return to more standardized testing and, by extension, better “standards,” he implies. The latest college students – those who’ve somehow made it to campus without adequate SAT scores – simply aren’t “college-ready,” he argues. “Already hampered with budgets cuts and bloated class sizes, professors will now regularly be tasked with remedial instruction in all subject areas, not merely in unique situations. Without standardized testing as a reasonable barometer of student skill, colleges will be flooded with students of unknown abilities. American higher education might not be able to withstand such a crisis.”

And of course, plenty of the pressures to keep and expand testing don’t simply come from the tsk-tsking professoriate or contributors to The Atlantic. They come from tech companies, who’ve profited from the push to digitize not just teaching but testing. (These two are, as education psychologists insisted a century ago, inseparable – that is, if you see the classroom as simply a laboratory where students can be trained and tracked and measured like mice in mazes.)

Meanwhile…

“Teachers save time with AI. Their students may pay the price,” Jill Barshay reports. (I’m not sure I really even believe the “save time” bit, to be honest.)

“The End of Homework? Teachers Grapple With Cheating in the Age of AI” by Greg Toppo. (Obligatory reminder: Generative AI is itself built on data theft and plagiarism. It’s pretty rich to expect young people to look at a world rife with fraud and exploitation and then notcheat. These are the values one implicitly encourage when one tells them they must use “AI” to secure their future.)

“To AI-Proof Lawyers, Some Law Schools Restrict Technology,” Kathryn Palmer writes.

I’m willing to retire the “ed-tech’s Cassandra” title – trust me, I’ve never really wanted it – because damn, I would not have predicted that Colin Kaepernick, of all people, would become an ed-tech villain. And yet here we are, with Kaepernick and his AI company Lumi Story AI engaged in some awfully shady shit across multiple school districts.

I mean, it’s bad enough to sell schools a product in which students’ imagination is co-opted and corralled by “AI.” But to use his celebrity as a marketing gimmick to quite literally buy students’ and shape superintendents’ support is pretty gross.

Back in May, 404 Media wrote, in horror, that “Researchers Wanted Preschool Teachers to Wear Cameras to Train AI.” Parents too were angry that their children might be recorded – audio and video – in order to “develop and evaluate AI models for assessing classroom interaction quality.” What about privacy protections? How would this data be used? What rights did families have to consent or to refuse, and what would be the implications of the latter – that is, how would those children who opted out retain access to their classmates and teachers?

None of these sorts of questions come up in a similar sort of research scenario, described in a story this week in The 74– a reminder that too often, education technology journalism gets far too excited about the education technology at the expense of the very humans involved: “Nebraska Head Starts Use Vests With ‘Talk Pedometers’ to Boost Early Literacy.” In this particular project, preschoolers’ conversations are recorded; their vocalizations quantified, analyzed. But here, rather than a privacy invasion, the technology is framed as a superpower.

The reference to the pedometer in the headline should immediately give us pause because those fitness devices sold the world on the importance of “10,000 steps” – a figure that was always more about marketing than an indicator of some threshold for actual health. (Indeed, the “30 million word gap” is a problematic and questionable framing in and of itself.)

To finish the post, open the link.

Categories Education Reform

Big Tech Chokes Off Popular Blogs That Challenge Them

By dianeravitch
July 28, 2026 //
13

When I first started blogging in 2012, the number of people reading the blog astounded me. Every day, between 15,000-25,000 people read what I wrote.

Most of the referrals to the blog were coming through Facebook.

Then, in 2016 or so, there was a precipitous and inexplicable drop. Something happened but I don’t know what. I know I offended some powerful people, but that was my job. I still have had more than 43 million page views since 2012, so I shouldn’t complain.

But something similar happened to Judd at Popular Information.

He writes:

“Here are the facts:

In 2021, 34,594 people subscribed to Popular Information after seeing our reporting on Google, Facebook, and Twitter (now X).

We are more than halfway through 2026, and just 932 people have subscribed to Popular Information from those same platforms.

“Our work is better than it was five years ago. (We were recently awarded the David Nyhan Prize for Public Policy Journalism by Harvard’s Shorenstein Center.)

“But the billionaires who control Google, Facebook, and X have made the decision to choke off traffic to independent outlets like Popular Information. They are not interested in building an audience for stories like the one you are about to read.”

The algorithm changed. Someone knows, but I don’t. It changed for my blog, around the time that I began opposing Trump. Now the algorithm has changed for Judd.

Here is Judd’s latest post.

https://open.substack.com/pub/popularinformation/p/the-truth-about-the-viral-911-petition?r=rls8&utm_medium=ios

Categories Education Industry, Education Reform, Personal, Technology

Carol Burris: School Choice Is Weakening Public Schools, Which Enroll Most Children

By dianeravitch
July 28, 2026 //
3

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, wrote about the harm that charters and vouchers are inflicting on public schools. Her article appeared in The Progressive.

It begins:

‘School Choice’ Does Not Provide Better Education for All Families

Voucher and charter school programs are taking funds that could make our public schools stronger.

Please open the link as I cannot copy the article.

https://progressive.org/public-schools-advocate/school-choice-does-not-provide-better-education-for-all-families-burris-20260724/

Categories Education Reform

George Will: The Senate Should Reject Todd Blanche as U.S. Attorney General

By dianeravitch
July 27, 2026 //
10

George Will is a respected voice of conservatism, not MAGA, but the thoughtful conservatism that once was Republican philosophy. Thoughtful conservatives were fiscally prudent and careful about their public language. They looked carefully before engaging in new policy. They viewed innovation with suspicion. They demanded honesty and integrity from those who held the Presidency. They did not tolerate Presidents who ignored the Constitution or who engaged in profiteering.

George Will is that kind of conservative.

Here is what he wrote about Todd Blanche, who has been nominated by Trump to serve as the Attorney General of the United Dtates.

What benefit of norms is owed to someone who disdains norms? There are many sufficient reasons to oppose confirming Todd Blanche as attorney general. Presidents generally are owed some deference in selecting Cabinet members, but “some” implies limits, lest the Senate’s advice-and-consent duty be drained of responsibility. And not all presidents are equally owed. Today’s president is owed little, given his contempt for the unwritten rules of civility that can lubricate a congenial society’s governance. 

Eight days after the 2024 election, Donald Trump set the tone of his second term by announcing his beau ideal of an attorney general: Rep. Matt Gaetz. This insult lasted eight days, until Gaetz withdrew as nominee. He had resigned from the House earlier, reportedly to prevent release of the House Ethics Committee’s report on his alleged drug use and sexual misconduct, which a woman said included sex with her twice when she was 17.

Trump settled for Pam Bondi as attorney general, with Blanche as her deputy. While Blanche was the Justice Department’s second-in-command, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, a Justice appendage, sought criminal indictments of six congressional Democrats, all with military or intelligence backgrounds. They had made a video. 

Made while Trump’s administration was killing people on boats (in international waters) suspected of carrying drugs, the video said what the Uniform Code of Military Justice says: Do not obey illegal orders. A grand jury did something vanishingly rare in criminal cases. It refused to indict the six.

Blanche was acting attorney general when the Justice Department took seriously Seashellgate. His department secured a second indictment of former FBI director James B. Comey, this time for posting a photograph of shells arranged on a beach to read “86 47”; “86” is slang for “remove.”Trump is the 47th president. Blanche’s DOJ pretended to regard Comey’s infantile gesture as a prosecutable threat.

Republican senators now have demanded Blanche’s assurances that the proposed $1.776 billion slush fund, for compensating persons Trump designates as victims of Biden administration persecution, is dead. But this grift was incubated in Blanche’s DOJ.

Blanche, who serves at the pleasure of the president, signed a memo pledging that the IRS is “Forever Barred” from “examinations” of Trump, certain members of his family, the Trump Organization and “related or affiliated individuals.” This “negotiated” — try not to snicker — settlement between the president and the executive branch he heads exemplifies the administration’s sludge of self-dealing. 

Trump sicced Blanche’s compliant Justice Department on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell, ostensibly about fictitious criminality in construction spending, actually to pressure Powell to resign. With Blanche as deputy, then acting, attorney general, the Justice Department (per the Economist) gave courts inaccurate information “nearly 100 times in Mr Trump’s first 14 months.”

In April, Blanche became acting attorney general when Trump fired Bondi. “Nobody has any idea why,” said Blanche. Plausible reports said Trump considered Bondi insufficiently aggressive about prosecuting his enemies. Blanche has said, cloudily, that “some” Justice Department prosecutions “involve men, women, and entities” that Trump “has had issues with. … That is his right, and indeed it is his duty to do that, meaning, to lead this country.”

Blanche said it is “completely false” that the president targets political enemies. Trump merely “wants justice.” Blanche said he was not “celebrating” Trump’s pardons of almost all the approximately 1,500 Jan. 6 rioters when, to a gathering of Trump supporters, he praised the “generous” pardons as one of the administration’s accomplishments. 

If at most four Republican senators had, in committee or floor votes, behaved as independently as the Founders thought senators would, Bondi, Kristi Noem, Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others would not have been confirmed to offices far above their competences. Children probably have died of measles, and of hepatitis B passed from mothers to infants, because of vaccine hesitancy promoted by Kennedy, who lied when he promised not to indulge in such quackery if confirmed as secretary of Health and Human Services. 

Now comes Blanche. He received this embarrassingly backhanded endorsement (in the Wall Street Journal) from former attorney general William Barr: Blanche “will run the department as effectively as anyone could under President Trump.” Is this sufficient reassurance for Republican senators? Or will, at last, a nominee trigger their gag reflexes?

Once, when someone noted that Sen. Richard Russell, the Georgia Democrat, had “served under” six presidents, Russell bristled, saying he “served with” six. It will be a pleasant surprise if, concerning Blanche, a few Republican senators become similarly sensitive about those prepositions.

Categories Education Reform

Randi Weingarten: Why We Are Fighting for a Better Society for All

By dianeravitch
July 27, 2026 //
1

This is one of Randi Weingarten’s best speeches. She delivered it at the 2026 Convention of the American federation of Teachers on July 26 in Washington, D.C.

Not only does she identify income inequality as a dire threat to our democracy, she speaks one of the greatest lines I have ever read:

Mr. President, you don’t own July Fourth. You own Jan. 6.

Randi points out that the dramatic income inequality of our times is destroying the middle class. Unions build a strong middle class. The large increase in the number of billionaires is it a sign of a healthy society; it is a sign of gross inequality.

As more people slip out of the middle class or hang on by their fingertips, our social problems get worse.

How do we restore a thriving middle class? Encourage the growth of strong unions.

She reminds us that today only 1 of every 10 workers belongs to a union. Union workers are paid more, significantly more, than non-union workers. In mid-century America, when 1 in 3 American workers were in a union, we had the largest middle class and the lowest income inequality. And she says, “That’s why, in the long term, growing the union movement is key to solving America’s affordability crisis.”

Rightwingers have done their best to eviscerate unions. And they have won significant victories in the courts.

But, despite the obstacles, the AFT is growing. It now has the largest number of members in its history: 1.875 million members. Al Shanker and Sandy Feldman would be proud of that accomplishment.

Unions are key to a better life.

Randi said in her address:

We plan our conventions years in advance. When we decided to hold this convention in our nation’s capital, to coincide with the celebration of America’s founding 250 years ago, who would have thought that the grievances that led to the American Revolution would be so relevant and relatable today? Or that America would have a new kind of aristocracy based on mind-blowing wealth? 

In the United States, there are now 1,000 billionaires—and the world’s first trillionaire—at a time when nearly half of American households—46 percent—don’t earn enough to make ends meet. 

This wealth imbalance—the top 1 percent having as much wealth as the entire bottom 90 percent of Americans combined—has led to a power imbalance that affects the lives of everyone in our country. These oligarchs influence policy. They have the power to undo social progress. To sway financial markets, monopolize the media, buy elections and undermine democracy.

In an earlier period of extreme wealth inequality, the country elected Franklin D. Roosevelt, and his New Deal programs lifted millions of Americans out of poverty.

This time, the country elected Donald Trump, and well … 

Remember that warning—about the barbarians at the gate? Well, the barbarians aren’t at the gate, they are inside, including at the highest levels of government. 

The president and his cronies are abusing government powers to punish political opponents. Every day they find new ways to attack voting, presumably to entrench themselves. Their war on working-class Americans includes stripping collective bargaining rights from 1 million federal workers, including members of our union, in the biggest act of union-busting in U.S. history. All while engaging in the most blatant corruption in modern American history to enrich themselves. 

The attacks—on unions, on working people, on public education, on higher education, on the public good, on democracy—didn’t start with Trump. They’ve been decades in the making, going back to the 1971 memo by future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell that successfully plotted corporate dominance in American politics. And the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision that fueled the massive surge of “dark money” in elections—which has now been supercharged by the court’s ruling last month that blew up whatever campaign finance limits were left. And its 2018 Janus decision that anti-union forces hoped would drive a stake through the heart of public sector unions. Project 2025 became the playbook to enact this extremist agenda. This year’s Callais decision not only gutted what remained of the 1965 Voting Rights Act but did so in time to affect the 2026 elections. Then there’s the bare-knuckled crusade to destroy public education and higher education. Just look at Christopher Rufo’s tweets, or his unabashed declaration years ago that “To get to universal school choice, you really need to operate from a premise of universal public school distrust.”

And I haven’t even gotten to Big Tech and artificial intelligence.

Yes, the other side has enormous power. But this is what they don’t have: the power of the people. 

That’s not a mere slogan; it’s the potential to work together, to bargain together, to protest together, to vote together, to act together to bring about change—real, lasting, life-improving change. That is the power and potential of our movement and of the AFT.

Our union stands at the intersection of the ways that regular people gain and exercise power in our democracy—through public education, unions and voting. 

The skills and knowledge people secure through public and higher education expand opportunity—that’s power. Union contracts improve economic well-being—that’s power. Elections—voting for people who answer to their constituents, not wealthy donors—that’s power. 

It’s power not just for ourselves, but for our students, our patients and our communities. Power to build what Martin Luther King Jr. called the “beloved community”—an America where hate has no home. Where the trans nurse, the Palestinian teacher, the Jewish student, and every person regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, gender or place of origin, feels welcome, safe and valued.

We use our power for good—against chaos, cruelty and corruption. We care, we fight and we show up—for a better life for all. Oh, and one more thing: We get shit done! 

We are a fighting union. To quote the president of Texas AFT, Zeph Capo, “Our members will forgive us if we fight and lose, but they’ll never forgive us if we don’t even fight.” 

Look at what we have fought for, and won, in these last two years—despite constant challenges.

Through the AFT’s student debt clinics and our other activism, we have helped more than 1 million borrowers, many of them our members, get $78 billion in student debt forgiven! That is life-changing; people can start a family, buy a home, save for retirement. 

The AFT has filed more than 25 lawsuits against the illegal actions of the Trump administration. If I talked about all of them, I would blow everyone’s bets on the length of the speech. So here are just a few: The Trump administration tried to stop any school—pre-K through college—from doing anything that could be construed as advancing diversity, equity and inclusion, essentially erasing 60 years of civil rights law. And it sought to condition all federal funding for schools on compliance with its dictates. We sued, and we won. We challenged the administration’s policies to detain and deport noncitizen students and faculty for participating in protected political speech. Again, we won. We sued to stop the administration from stripping federal funding from universities and to stop its efforts to control curriculum, hiring and speech. You guessed it—we won.

And then there’s the collective bargaining victories. Like for better wages—from Boston to Kansas City, from Chicago to Los Angeles and so many more. That’s the union difference: Union workers’ wages are 11 percent higher than nonunion workers. Unionized teachers earn 24 percent more in states with collective bargaining, and education support professionals earn 13 percent more.

And as we speak, the city council in New York City is voting to provide every United Federation of Teachers-represented paraprofessional a $10,000 “Respect Check” that the union has relentlessly fought for. 

Life is better with a union.

It goes beyond wages. Take the United Educators of San Francisco, whose successful strike this year led to winning premium-free healthcare not only for members but for their families. 

And paid parental leave. Kudos to our affiliates in Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Fairfax County (Va.), New York City and Oregon for making great strides to help families thrive. 

And safe staffing. The UFT has had some incredible wins through arbitration. And in New Jersey, our healthcare union, Health Professionals and Allied Employees, has negotiated 14 contracts in a row with enforceable safe-staffing provisions. And now one of our newest affiliates, Hawaii Nurses and Healthcare Professionals, has created a broad coalition to do the same. 

And we have a sacrosanct commitment to retirement security. After a generation-long battle, we won passage of the Social Security Fairness Act that gave millions of public workers the full benefits they had earned but been denied. Our New York unions made great progress this year to fix Tier 6; now younger workers who had inferior pensions can retire in their late 50s. And AFT Massachusetts, AFT Pennsylvania and our Alaska affiliates are making progress on retirement security as well. 

There’s also what we have fended off. The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers reached an agreement to stop the cuts of 340 school-based positions for the coming school year. In Utah, a labor coalition including AFT Utah gathered more than 250,000 signatures and got the Legislature to repeal a ban on public sector bargaining. AFT New Hampshire has a mean game of whack-a-mole—defeating right-to-work, school vouchers and campus carry legislation, and successfully challenging a law that restricted teachers’ rights to teach and students’ access to honest history. In New York, our unions—United University Professions and the Public Employees Federation—and a broad community coalition successfully fought to keep SUNY Downstate hospital open after years of threatened closure, and they secured $1.1 billion to upgrade and expand facilities and services. 

These are fights we’ll have to keep waging. The Republicans’ Big Ugly Bill cuts $1 trillion in Medicaid, makes the largest cuts to nutrition assistance in history, triples the cost of student debt for tens of millions of Americans, and threatens hundreds of rural hospitals with closure—all to give $1 trillion in new tax cuts to the richest 1 percent. State and local budgets are seeing the strain. We’ll keep fighting, school district by school district and hospital by hospital. 

Then there is artificial intelligence—the most seismic industrial revolution of our time. From UUP in New York to the University Professionals of Illinois, we’ve won strong contract language so AI won’t be used to take our jobs, replace our professional judgment, or evaluate or discipline us.

And density matters: Like New York State United Teachers in education, Oregon’s density in healthcare is making a difference. The Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals secured the largest raises in its history—nearly 35 percent over four years for registered nurses. And OFNHP and HNHP in Hawaii have aligned all their contract expiration dates for the next Kaiser battle. 

And then there is the protection of our students, our patients and our neighbors from brutal immigration tactics, like the recent fatal shootings by ICE agents in Texas and Maine of two men who should be alive today. Healthcare locals in Oregon won legislation to protect healthcare facilities from immigration enforcement. Educators across the country have fought for their students’ release from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers. Our Twin Cities union family peacefully and courageously stood up to the occupation and harsh immigration enforcement that led to the killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti and terrified thousands of immigrant families. We were there with mutual aid—food, diapers, rent money, books, toys and safe passage for children to and from school. 

The AFT is always at the ready to help—like with our program for states and locals in crisis. Right now, we are helping our members in Florida, who are in the bull’s-eye of anti-union attacks intended to wipe them out. Let me be clear: We are with you every step of the way. And we’re investing in our affiliates through our MOVE grants, which affiliates are using as fuel to engage members, connect with community and strengthen their power. 

This is what the power of the people looks like: caring, fighting, showing up and getting shit done. 

This administration is waging a war on knowledge, from school voucher schemes, to erasing rather than facing history, to selling the Department of Education off for parts, to its all-out assault on higher education. Here, too, we’re not just fighting back; we’re putting forward big ideas. 

The AFT and the American Association of University Professors have launched a national higher education campaign. We’re fighting to keep vital research funded and against attacks on academic freedom. We won collective bargaining rights for higher education employees in Maryland and made strides toward free college in Connecticut and Pennsylvania. In April, the AFT and AAUP released “A Blueprint for Strengthening and Transforming Higher Education”—and we launched it in Texas, because that is ground zero in the attacks on critical thinking. 

Through AFT Healthcare’s Code Red campaign, we’re working to secure safe staffing limits, enforceable workplace-violence standards, and contracts that help recruit and retain frontline caregivers. That’s good for patients and for healthcare workers.

And on AI, we have a multifaceted plan: from limiting screens and child-facing AI for young students, to a tech tax to hold tech companies accountable for the massive disruptions their products are creating, to contract language, to our National Academy for AI Instruction to help educators master AI so AI doesn’t master us. AI is not going away, so we’re going to fight for the protections that matter to our members, our families and our communities.

And of course, we give out books, 11 million and counting, to children and families through our Reading Opens the World program.

All this is why the AFT is bigger, badder and more big-hearted than ever.

The AFT is the fastest-growing union in the AFL-CIO. Since our last convention, we have organized 173 more units, with close to 60,000 new members in these new locals. New affiliations have deepened our work in states like Hawaii, Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. And many existing locals have grown as well. 

I am thrilled to announce that, despite everything that’s been thrown at us, we have hit a historic milestone: We proudly represent more members than ever before. Today the AFT is 1.875 million members strong! 

People see the value of belonging. They see that we’re a fighting union—and that we get shit done! It’s amazing. You are amazing. And we are not going to let up. Too few people have the benefit of a union. 

Half of all nonunion workers want to join a union, but only 1 in 10 workers in the U.S. belongs to a union. Americans are 14 times more likely to have an Amazon Prime membership than to be a member of a labor union.

In the mid-20th century, when 1 in 3 American workers were in a union, we had the largest middle class and the lowest income inequality. That’s why, in the long term, growing the union movement is key to solving America’s affordability crisis. 

But what do we do now? We’ve got to win elections. And here’s why. 

As I said, 46 percent of households—55 percent of households of color—did not earn enough to make ends meet in 2024. And inflation has soared since then. That means there’s not enough to put food on the table, gas in the tank and still cover rent. It means constant stress and struggle. 

Our members see it every day in the people they teach, heal and protect. 

And our members feel it.

This winter we surveyed AFT members about the financial issues that keep them up at night, and 7,500 responded. Nearly three-quarters report living paycheck to paycheck, and more than a third say they are unable to cover all of their monthly bills.

There are few things worse than the fear of not being able to provide for your family. Reading our members’ responses took me back to my teenage years when my father was laid off. I remember my parents whispering about which bills they had to pay now and which they could hold off on until he found work. They tried to protect my sister and me from knowing, but there’s no hiding anxiety that deep. 

Millions of Americans believed Trump’s promises to end inflation and make America affordable again on “day one.” It’s “day 542” since he took office. Is anybody paying under $2 a gallon for gas like he promised? What happened to the “DOGE dividend checks”? Or your tariff rebate check? After they got rid of the Obamacare tax credits, have they fixed healthcare? 

Trump isn’t worried about being able to afford healthcare, housing or anything else. Since returning to the White House, he has raked in more than $2.2 billion, through what government watchdogs call unprecedented corruption and self-dealing. 

The president has called the affordability crisis “bullshit.” And he has said, “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation.” But he has made it worse.

Trump’s tariffs sent the strong economy he inherited into a slump, even with an AI bubble. His trade wars are costing American families $1,000 more every year. He started a costly war against Iran that has left us worse off than when it started. Trump said taxpayers wouldn’t pay “one dime” for his ballroom, but it turns out we’re on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars. 

We’re not holding our breath for the president to deliver on his promises to lower costs. We’re fighting for economic security and to put more money in our members’ pockets—like the 1 million borrowers we’ve helped get Public Service Loan Forgiveness relief. Our Fight for Affordability builds on that work, with resources to help navigate medical and credit card debt and on other support people are legally entitled to but may not know about. 

And we are working with allies in Congress on bold solutions, like increasing the minimum wage to $25 and passing the Working Americans’ Tax Cut Act, which would exempt 104 million lower-income adults from federal taxes—paid for by millionaires paying a fairer share. We’re pushing for increased funding for public schools and colleges. We’re fighting back against the draconian cuts to Medicaid and to rural hospitals. Millions of children risk going hungry because of the heartless changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in the Big Ugly Bill; we are fighting for every single one of them. 

But we need majorities in statehouses and in Congress this year, and ultimately the White House, to secure the foundational changes we seek.

Threats to Democracy

We face another grave danger: dire threats to democracy. I know, some of you are thinking, here she goes. But really, when is the erosion so much that we can’t get our freedoms back? 

I remember the scoffing when terms like “authoritarian” were first used. And I have been asked repeatedly about why I used the term “fascist” in the book I wrote, Why Fascists Fear Teachers. 

Unfortunately, the answer is clearer every day. 

I don’t actually care what you call it, but I care very much about what Trump is doing. He is weaponizing the justice system to target political opponents, journalists and dissenters. He is sending armed forces trained for war to police American cities, especially to Democrat- and Black-led cities. He is using the presidency for his own benefit and to enrich himself and his family. He is trying to obstruct free and fair elections to maintain power. 

Donald Trump keeps trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He urged on the Jan. 6 rioters and pardoned even those who brutally attacked officers bravely protecting the Capitol. 

He is aggressively testing the legal and constitutional limits of presidential power. 

Then there are the lies. It started with crowd size but now he lies about everything—about election results, the economy, his critics, the war in Iran. Even the botched paint job on the Reflecting Pool. 

And sadly, instead of uniting the country to celebrate the great American experiment of democracy, what did Trump do for the 250th? He held what he described as “the most spectacular TRUMP RALLY of them all.” 

Mr. President, you don’t own July Fourth. You own Jan. 6.

I speak and write about democracy a lot because education is vital to understanding, and understanding is vital to acting. If we don’t heed the warnings from the generals who worked for Trump in his first term; if we don’t recognize the hallmarks of authoritarianism—fear, division, isolation and apathy; if we don’t learn the lessons of tyrants, how do we the people have the shared understanding and the urgency to organize and mobilize for democracy to work for working people. 

As I wrote last year, fascists fear teachers because they fear a well-educated citizenry. They fear what educators do—the teaching of critical thinking, of honest history, of pluralism—because their brand of greed, power and privilege cannot survive in a democracy of diverse, educated citizens. We see it in the book bans. In the attacks on DEI. In the efforts to control what schools and universities can and cannot teach. And in the attempts to rewrite and whitewash history. 

To be clear: Fascists don’t just fear teachers—they fear, loath and try to silence all of us who stand up for democracy, dignity, fairness and opportunity for all. 

And stand up we must. 

Americans are losing faith in democracy. Seven in 10 U.S. adults say they are dissatisfied with the way democracy is working in the country. Young Americans in particular feel the country is on the wrong track. 

I understand the disappointment. But we cannot give up on democracy. Winston Churchill was right when he said in 1947, “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried.”

But we must improve it. As John Dewey said, “Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.”

Look at where democracy is being born anew: In Hungary, where this spring 80 percent of voters turned out to reject Viktor Orbán’s far-right agenda, ending his 16-year grip on power. In South Korea, where labor unions spearheaded mass protests and nationwide “strikes to defend democracy” after the president declared martial law. And here at home, at May Day and “No Kings” protests in small towns, suburbs and cities across America, where millions of people turned out to say we will not stand by while democracy is dismantled. 

We are not helpless to change what is wrong. We can build a better future and a stronger democracy. But that requires winning in November. 

Elections

As big and bad and big-hearted as we are, neither bargaining nor bullhorns alone will get us out of these treacherous times. 

To get a working-class tax cut, to pass living-wage legislation, to get limitless money out of politics, to fix the healthcare system, to strengthen education, and to restore vital safety net and climate programs, we have to win majorities in 2026 and the White House in 2028. We have to elect people who support working people, leaders with real plans to make life better. 

Strengthening public schools and stopping the reckless runaway train that private school vouchers are becoming should not be a partisan issue. Ensuring everyone who works can earn a living wage should not be a political issue. Fighting so everyone has access to high-quality, affordable healthcare should be a human priority, not one party’s priority. Shoring up Social Security to keep seniors out of destitution should have universal support. Addressing the climate crisis that threatens all humanity should unify all humanity.

Perhaps one day these issues will be bipartisan. 

But sadly, the reality is that since Trump’s first term, Republican officeholders’ support for our priority issues averaged just 8 percent, while Democrats averaged 95 percent. Do I wish that was different? Of course. And do I wish Democrats were bolder? I do. But Republican leaders don’t even seem to want to try. 

This election will decide whether we are a country governed by the people or ruled by the powerful. A country of opportunity or oligarchy. A country whose people live in freedom or in fear. 

Do we want a future where billionaires and a trillionaire continue to grow their wealth at the expense of working people? Or one where working people earn a decent wage, support their families and take a vacation once in a while? 

Do we want a future in which classrooms lack resources and life-changing research is abandoned? Or one in which we can nurture the potential of every student and continue to lead the world in bold discoveries? 

Do we want a future where big healthcare corporations put profits over people? Or one in which every person—every person—has access to healthcare, and healthcare professionals have the resources, staffing and power to help their patients? 

Do we want a future ruled by tech bros and robots? Or a future grounded in dignity and humanity? 

Do we want a future in which elections are rigged to maintain one-party control and government is for sale to the highest bidder? Or one in which every person’s vote matters and government serves the people? 

That’s what’s at stake in November 2026. And the future we want is within reach. We can win majorities in the House and in the Senate and in state capitals. Majorities who will act on our priorities. 

But only if we vote, get others out to vote, and protect the vote. That’s why we are committing to our most ambitious election program ever.

Here’s the math: 1.3 million AFT members and their families live in a place where there is a competitive race in November. 600,000 of us are in battleground gubernatorial states. 464,000 live in the states with the seven top U.S. Senate battleground races. We need to flip four seats to win a Senate majority that works for working folks. And we have more than 1,000 members and voting family members in 86 critical, competitive congressional districts. We only need a net gain of three seats to win a working folks’ majority in the U.S. House. Can we do it?

With the AFL-CIO, we have a goal of reaching 2 million new voters. That means the AFT has to turn out about 200,000 more householders than in the last election. That means we need 28,000 volunteers to make calls, knock on doors and get out the vote—28,000 out of 1.875 million. Can we do it?

And it’s not just about getting out the vote in this election but also about protecting the vote. That’s why we are launching a new Democracy Defenders election protection program. We are recruiting 5,000 members to make sure that people can exercise their right to vote free from intimidation. Our Democracy Defenders will be part of the 50,000 people the AFL-CIO is recruiting for this critical work. Can we do it? 

People power can win, but we need to be all in, and that means we need you to be all in. No one can do everything, but each of us can do something to win in November and achieve the better future we fight for. 

So are we going to vote? Are we going to get out the vote? Are we going to protect the vote? 

Conclusion

That’s the energy and commitment we need to achieve the America we dream of: An America where everyone has opportunity and economic security. An America where everyone’s dignity and freedoms are respected. An America whose democracy not only endures but finally lives up to its noble ideals. 

I’ve spoken often this year about Martin Luther King Jr.’s final book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? Since January 2025, we have experienced a lot of chaos, fear and division. 

Lately, I find myself drawn to another piece of King’s wisdom—that the “arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I still believe that, and I hope you do too. 

But the arc doesn’t bend on its own. It bends toward freedom and opportunity through the work you do every day making a difference in people’s lives—in classrooms, at the bedside, in our communities. You bend the arc. Unions bend the arc. Voting bends the arc. The power of the people bends the arc toward justice.

On this 250th anniversary of our nation, that is our responsibility. That is what I am asking you to do, what I am asking us to do—this bigger, badder, big-hearted union and our 1.875 million members. 

And when we do, when we bend that arc, we will change the trajectory of our nation and secure a better future for all, from sea to shining sea. Thank you. 

Watch the full speech

https://www.aft.org/media/oembed?url=https%3A//youtu.be/oIASmJ3ZO70&max_width=0&max_height=0&hash=Sadl1eN7tbOr37C7SenWNH-Hx34YmVOAuIc7CHYyQyQ

Categories Academic Freedom, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Democracy, Education Reform, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Funding, Justice, Teachers and Teaching, Unions

CNBC: Tennessee is Worst State in Which to Live; Texas is Second Worst

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2026 //
4

CNBC published a list of the 10 worst states in which to live.

These are factors that should be considered by businesses before relocating.

The rankings considered: Crime rates, air quality, healthcare access, worker protections, and civil rights laws…among factors that can hurt a state in quality of life rankings.

Tennessee ranks as the worst state. Texas is the second worst.

These are the 10 best states in which to live.

Nebraska ranks #1.

It also ranked #1 in the Network for Public Education’s report card on states that support public education.

Where does your state rank?

Categories Education Reform

Julian V. Heilig: The Hunger Games of Education Has Begun. Who Will Survive?

By dianeravitch
July 22, 2026 //
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This is a thoughtful essay on a crucial problem: shrinking enrollments in higher education and the budget cuts to meet them. Julian Vasquez Heilig lays out the problem and the typical response. He thinks there is a better way and he describes it.

Heilig is on the faculty of Michigan State University and is a national expert on topics such as diversity, equity and inclusion.

He writes:

The warning signs are no longer theoretical. Schools are closing. Colleges are preparing layoffs. Faculty buyouts are spreading. Academic programs are disappearing. Dorm beds are sitting empty. Classrooms are thinning out. Tax revenue is weakening. State appropriations are uncertain. Consultants are being hired and paid millions to identify “efficiencies.” Boards are quietly discussing mergers and closures. American education is entering a period of deep instability.

This is not only a crisis for presidents and superintendents. It is a crisis for communities. When a school closes, a neighborhood loses more than a building. When a college cuts faculty and staff, a region loses jobs and opportunity. When families question whether education is worth the price, the consequences ripple through local economies and democracy itself.

In this article, I first define the problem. Enrollment pressure, funding instability, demographic change, and political attacks are converging across K-12 and higher education. These pressures are already producing closures and painful restructuring. But this is not only a warning. At the end, I turn to what communities can do through politics, public pressure, local organizing, accountability, and leadership selection before the choices become narrower.

The Warning Signs Are Already Here

At my own institution, public projections suggest new student enrollment could decline somewhere between 3 and 5 percent this year. If those projections hold, that would mark a return to consecutive enrollment declines after the gains achieved during my years as provost. During that period, we reversed an almost decade-long enrollment slide.

That is alarming because this moment was supposed to be the “high water mark” before the demographic cliff. WICHE projects that the total number of high school graduates will peak around 2026 and then decline steadily through 2041. Universities were supposed to be maximizing enrollment now. Instead, some are struggling while the student pool remains historically large.

In many ways, education is being pushed into an arena where resources are shrinking and the odds are being rewritten before many institutions understand the rules.

The Old Survival Strategies Are Running Out

Much of higher education survived the past several years through strategies that are becoming unsustainable. Institutions poured millions into financial aid discounting. They leaned harder into full-pay families. They expanded retention offices and predictive analytics systems. They built student success centers and advising infrastructure. They spent heavily on marketing and enrollment staff.

Ironically, retention and enrollment strategy helped save some institutions from earlier financial pressure. During my time in executive leadership, we understood that higher education had entered a new era of competition. Universities were no longer competing only over prestige. They were competing over affordability and survival.

Financial aid, student success infrastructure, and community partnerships became essential tools. Institutions that moved aggressively like Arizona State and Georgia State often stabilized themselves. Institutions that remained complacent fell further behind.

But even enrollment growth stories now face new threats. Federal research funding is unstable. State appropriations remain uncertain. Inflation is pressuring budgets. Some states like Michigan have seen stronger FAFSA activity. Yet many families are questioning the value of higher education. Political attacks have also weakened public trust while threatening research capacity and institutional autonomy.

Please open the link to read Heilig’s creative proposals for meeting the crisis.

Categories Budget Cuts, Courage, Creativity, Democracy, Disruption, Education Reform, Equity, Ethics, Funding, Higher Education
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