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Shawgi Tell: In Minnesota, Charter Schools Frequently Fail and Close

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2026 //
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Shawgi Tell keeps close watch over the checkered evolution of charter schools. He discovered that Minnesota, the first state to open a charter school, beats every other state when it comes to charter closure and failure.

It bears remembering the reason why almost every state has authorized charter schools. When Arne Duncan announced the Race to the Top competition for a share of $5 billion, every state that applied had to first authorize charter schools. That requirement turbo-charged the growth of charter schools.

He writes:

The first charter school law in the U.S. was passed in Minnesota in 1991. The first charter school in the country, City Academy High School, opened in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1992. Since then charter school laws have been passed in 47 states, Washington DC, Puerto Rico, and Guam.

Over the past 34 years many charter schools have failed and closed in Minnesota. According to a 2025 article titled “More Minnesota charter schools are facing possible termination,” “In 2024 [alone], nine charter schools closed, the most ever. But records show another 10 charter schools could face termination.” It is worth noting here that, like many privately-operated charter schools across the country, most charter schools in Minnesota are highly segregated.

On April 23, 2026, Hoodline featured an article titled: “Charter Shock: AFSA Parents Scramble As Twin Cities Ag‑STEM School Shuts Down.”

What is interesting about this article is that it speaks to the shock, trauma, and abandonment that families and educators always feel when a charter school fails and closes abruptly, which is how charter schools close nine out of ten times. This article also highlights the same reasons that charter schools fail and close every week: declining enrollment, mismanagement, financial malfeasance, and/or poor academic performance.

Hoodline reports that, “The Academy for Sciences and Agriculture (AFSA), a Twin Cities charter serving students from pre-K through 12th grade, will shut its doors at the end of this school year, leaving families in Little Canada and Vadnais Heights scrambling for new schools.” AFSA first opened in 2001 (25 years ago).

The article continues: “Parents say the announcement came out of nowhere. Several told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS they had little warning. ‘Yes, it was sudden’, parent Kevin Cedeno said, adding that his son is having a hard time with the news.”

It appears that “the school [which focuses on science, the environment, and agriculture] has dealt with declining enrollment since the pandemic.” And like so many other charter schools nationwide, AFSA also experienced “oversight gaps” and problematic “procurement and contracting practices,” according to Hoodline. Conflicts of interest and poor accountability are common in deregulated charter schools operated by unelected private persons.

In related news, Agamim Classical Academy, a K-8 charter school in Edina, Minnesota, founded in 2015, will also be closing its doors in June 2026. Watershed High School, a charter school located in the city of Richfield, Minnesota, will also be closing its doors at the same time. The privately-operated charter school was open for only four years.

Old and new charter schools fail and close every week in America. The proponents of such schools openly and publicly embrace the idea that the “free market” should be the arena in which schools operate, which means that schools are a commodity and susceptible to the chaos, anarchy, and violence of the “free market.” This arrangement is seen by “free market” idealogues as a modern humane way to organize education and other services and social programs. In this setup, nothing is guaranteed and everyone fends for themselves. The right to education is replaced with the notion that education is an opportunity, something you shop for like a consumer. Education is reduced to chance and luck. “Buyer beware” is the only rail guard.

“Choice” and “competition” are some of the buzzwords attached to this outmoded approach to life. Thus, “parents are empowered” to choose which school to send their child to when in fact charter schools actually choose students and parents. This is why so many groups of students are under-enrolled in these “free schools of choice” that are said to be “open to all.” 

Parents are also led to believe that the philosophy of winning and losing is in no way problematic. Thus the notion of a school lottery is openly normalized in the charter school sector, meaning that some students will get into their “school of choice” while others will not. There is no concept of guaranteeing everyone’s basic right to a high-quality, free, fully-funded public education controlled by a public authority worthy of the name. You may or may not get a “good” education. How is this possible in the richest country in the world? Why is education a gamble in the 21st century?

To be sure, privatization creates and exacerbates numerous problems. See here for a detailed discussion of these problems.

According to the Minnesota Department of Education there are 173 charter schools in Minnesota today serving around 70,000 students.

Shawgi Tell (PhD) is author of the book Charter School Report Card. He can be reached at  stell5@naz.edu. Read other articles by Shawgi.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, Minnesota

FBI Raids Home of Former Capitol Police Officer, Based on Tip from Rightwing Website

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2026 //
6

This is one of those stories that is hard to believe. But it happened. Experienced FBI agents were purged by the hapless Kash Patel, after Trump put him in charge. This story demonstrates the Patel-ized FBI, which chases crazy rumors but can’t find Savannah Guthrie’s mother.

Will Sommer wrote in The Bulwark:

WHEN THE CONSERVATIVE WEBSITE the Blaze published an article last November accusing a former Capitol Police officer of being the January 6th pipe bomber based on “gait analysis,” most of the public reacted skeptically.

But not the FBI.

Instead, the nation’s foremost law enforcement agency allegedly acted on the information the Blaze had gathered and sent bomb-sniffing dogs, agents in tactical gear, and even a helicopter to that former Capitol Police officer’s home. It was dramatic, terrifying, and wildly unnecessary.

That’s according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday by the former officer, Shauni Kerkhoff—who had defended Congress from the January 6th rioters and later testified in court against some of them.

Kerkhoff’s lawsuit provides startling new allegations about the government’s frantic and largely futile efforts to try to close a case that had generated a wave of wild speculation on the right and befuddled the leadership of the FBI under Director Kash Patel. It also underscores the degree to which conspiracy theories have influenced official government action, even at the highest levels.

The drama actually began shortly before the Blaze published its now-infamous and since-retracted “gait analysis” article. According to Kerkhoff’s lawsuit, the reporter behind the story, Steve Baker, shared his allegations with staffers for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. His findings were based on supposed similarities between Kerkhoff’s style of walking and the bomber’s. Gabbard’s office subsequently drafted a memo identifying Kerkhoff as a possible suspect, CBS News reported.

On November 6, 2025, two days prior to the publication of the story—though one day after Baker had begun publicly teasing his findings on a podcast with the Blaze’s founder, Glenn Beck—Kerkhoff, who had left her job to work in security at the CIA, alleges that she was called in to an office at her job to meet with two FBI agents saying they were interested in “online chatter” about her role in the attempted bombings. Kerkhoff claims in her lawsuit that she was then put on administrative leave from the CIA and asked by the FBI agents to give permission for a few of them to enter the house she shared with her boyfriend to look for a pair of shoes worn by the bomber.

Kerkhoff claims she and boyfriend did not give permission to the agents, but agreed to meet them at the home.

Soon after Kerkhoff arrived at the house, she claims, a “caravan of FBI vehicles descended on their street.” The group included a bomb-disposal truck and an FBI helicopter flying overhead, as well as agents in “full tactical gear” with their guns drawn. Kerkhoff alleges the agents “swept through the house” with bomb-sniffing dogs, “rifled through drawers” and tossed the couple’s belongings on the floor.

Screenshot of a passage from the lawsuit.

“It suddenly occurred to Ms. Kerkhoff that they were not simply looking for a pair of shoes,” the lawsuit reads.

At one point, Kerkhoff claims, she asked a “senior FBI official” on the scene why “online chatter” had prompted the raid. The official, according to her lawsuit, said he was responding to orders from “higher up.”

A spokesperson for the FBI responded that the agency wouldn’t comment on ongoing litigation.

The hours-long search ended at 8 p.m., according to Kerkhoff’s lawsuit. But the ordeal wasn’t over yet. She claims she was then subjected to an hours-long polygraph test at an FBI office, leaving only in the early hours of November 7. A day later, the Blaze formally published its allegations that she was the bomber, prompting Kerkhoff and her boyfriend to hide in their home for fear of their lives, according to the lawsuit.

Baker’s article was promoted by Republicans members of Congress, and prompted Beck to declare it “the biggest scandal” in a century. Yet it quickly fell apart under scrutiny, and was retracted after the FBI arrested suspect Brian Cole Jr. for the attempted bombing in December. Cole has since confessed to planting the bombs, which did not detonate on the day of the riot. His legal team has since tried to argue for his innocence by noting, among other things, that Baker has not backed off his original reporting.

But the Blaze has backed off, even to the point of firing Baker earlier this month. And while he was set to make a podcast appearance with Megyn Kelly, that too was apparently canceled amid fears of defamation suits. Baker, himself a January 6th defendant, told me that Blaze management is “in the fetal position” over the prospect of Kerkhoff’s lawsuit, saying the potentially massive judgment would amount to an “existential threat” to the site.

Kerkhoff returned to her job at the CIA a few weeks later, after establishing an alibi by showing prosecutors video of her playing with her dog at the time of the attempted bombings, according to the lawsuit.

She is now suing the Blaze and its former reporters for six counts of defamation, saying she suffered “reputational harm” and “emotional distress” over the article and related podcast appearances. Kerkhoff doesn’t specify how much money she’s suing for, asking instead for “actual damages in amounts to be proven at trial.” Kerkhoff is represented by heavyweight defamation firm Clare Locke.

What will Kerkhoff win at a trial for defamation and damages? It should be enough to deter others from making wild accusations without evidence.

Categories Accountability, Extremism, Failure, Stupid, Trump

The Recidivism Racket and Our Broken Prison System

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2026 //
10

Rxan Smith writes on his blog about America’s broken prison system. We spend more on prisons than any other nation and have the highest recidivism. Our “get-tough” approach to crime is a failure, and a very costly one.

Smith writes:

Here’s an uncomfortable math problem nobody in Washington wants to do out loud:

America spends $182 billion per year locking people up.

That’s billion. With a B. Every year.

Not to rehabilitate. Not to reduce crime. Not to make you safer.

Just to warehouse human beings in a system so thoroughly designed to fail that two out of every three people released from prison are arrested again within three years.

Our country’s criminal justice system does not offer criminal justice, and it’s barely worthy of being called a system at all.

It’s a revolving door — and somebody built that door on purpose, installed it at taxpayer expense, and charges you rent every time it spins.

Uncomfortable Truth About “Tough on Crime”

For fifty years, American politicians — left, right, and everything in between — have campaigned on being “tough on crime.”

You know what “tough on crime” actually produced?

*The largest incarcerated population on earth: over 2 million people

*A recidivism rate of 67% within 3 years of release

*A $182 billion annual price tag that grows every year

*Communities so stripped of working-age adults that poverty compounds across generations

“Tough on crime” didn’t reduce crime. It industrialized it.

It turned human failure into a growth industry — complete with lobbyists, quarterly earnings calls, and a political class that discovered you can always raise money by scaring people.

Meanwhile, Norway — with its functional approach — runs a prison system with a 20% recidivism rate.

Ours is 67%.

Norway’s isn’t radical. It’s just effective. The difference? They decided prisons should actually produce people who don’t go back.

The Numbers Behind the Nightmare

Let’s get specific, because the specifics are infuriating:

The Scale

*United States incarcerates 655 people per 100,000 — highest rate on earth

*Rwanda is second. We beat Rwanda. Let that land.

*43% of inmates are Black Americans, who represent 13% of the population

*Average cost per inmate: $39,000 per year — more than a year at many state universities

The Recidivism Machine

*67% of released prisoners are rearrested within 3 years

*83% are rearrested within 9 years

*People released with less than $50 in their pocket, a bus ticket, and a criminal record that disqualifies them from housing, jobs, and student loans

*Then we act surprised when they come back

The Private Prison Problem

*Private prison companies manage roughly 8% of inmates but spend millions lobbying for longer sentences, mandatory minimums, and policies that ensure full occupancy

*CoreCivic and GEO Group spent over $25 million on lobbying and political donations between 2000-2020

*They are literally paid to make sure prisons stay full…

What We Got Instead of Rehabilitation

The American philosophy of incarceration rests on three pillars, all of which are broken:

Deterrence: The idea that long sentences scare people away from crime.

Reality: Most crimes are not committed by people weighing a rational cost-benefit analysis. They’re committed by desperate, mentally ill, or addicted people who aren’t doing the math. The death penalty states don’t have lower murder rates. The math doesn’t work.

Incapacitation: Lock them up so they can’t hurt anyone.

Reality: The average sentence ends. People come out. If they come out with zero support, no job prospects, and the same addiction or mental illness that got them there — you haven’t solved the problem, you’ve aged it.

Punishment: They did something wrong; they should suffer.

Reality: Fine. But suffering without any change in behavior just produces someone who suffered. If we want public safety, we need to care about what happens after the punishment ends.

We skipped the part where any of this was supposed to work.

What Rehabilitation Actually Looks Like

Other countries figured this out. We just refused to copy the homework.

The Norwegian Model (No, It’s Not Soft. It’s Smart.)

Halden Prison in Norway has a music studio, a jogging trail, a kitchen where inmates learn to cook, and individual cells with windows. Guards eat lunch with inmates. The focus is on preparing people to live normal lives.

Result: 20% recidivism rate.

The cynical American response: “That’s not punishment.”

The functional response: “Their prisons actually work.”

You want punishment or you want results?

Because right now, we have neither.

What a Real Rehabilitation System Looks Like

Open the link to learn what we should be doing instead of the present failed approach.

Categories Failure, For-Profit, Fraud, Justice

Arizona: State Supt. Intervenes to Save Failing Charter School owned by Multi-Millionaire

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2026 //
2

In Arizona, the state charter board did the right thing: it planned to close an online charter school with a long record of failure. But the owner of the charter school was a big Republican donor. And he was a multi-millionaire, who had been richly rewarded by his ownership of Primavera. He had a meeting of the minds with the State Superintendent of Schools, Tom Horne. Horne is a strong believer in choice. Suddenly, Primavera’s grades were recalculated and closure of the piggy bank was off the table.

Veteran reporter Craig Harris told the story for Channel 12:

PHOENIX — For more than a year, Arizona’s largest online charter school, Primavera, and its multi-millionaire owner, Damian Creamer, faced the very real possibility of being shut down. 

Plagued by poor academic performance and mounting scrutiny, the State Charter Board had already taken multiple steps toward revoking the school’s charter in 2025.

But in a surprising turn of events, Primavera has been given a lifeline — thanks to an intervention from Republican State Schools Chief Tom Horne.

The decision sparked frustration among board members who had spent months working toward closure.

Longtime board member James Swanson, reflecting the general mood of the 11-member board.

He said the board acted within its authority to hold Primavera accountable after students recorded “D” letter grades for three consecutive years ending in 2024.

Board Chairwoman Jessica Montierth echoed that sentiment after the 9-2 vote, noting the significant time and effort invested in the case. 

“Our authority is based on following through with policy and procedure, and that’s what we have done,” she said, adding that the outcome was difficult to accept given the circumstances.

The controversy surrounding Primavera intensified following a 12News investigation early last year. 

The 12News Investigates report in February 2025 revealed that the school’s owner, Creamer, had paid himself $24 million since 2017.

At the same time, the school consistently underperformed academically as the Charter Board gave Primavera its worst annual rating four times: Falls Far Below Standard. Two times, Primavera got the second-worst rating: Does Not Meet Standard. 

The free-wheeling at Primavera is a byproduct of Arizona’s loosely regulated charter school industry that allows owners to make as much money as possible for years with public funds. 

But in March 2025, the Charter Board formally voted to begin the process of shutting the school down after it received three consecutive annual “D” letter grades.

Creamer, who did not attend Tuesday’s meeting, previously attributed the low grades to administrative errors. 

He argued that Primavera should have been evaluated under alternative school standards rather than traditional ones. 

And he appealed directly to Horne, after having the support of Republican leaders who also lobbied the Charter Board on his behalf. 

“We’re so grateful for Tom Horne,” Creamer, a major GOP donor, said during a press conference in mid-March 2025. “For working with us so that we can correct this administrative error.”

Horne twice that month said he wasn’t going to intervene. 

“My first priority for all public schools is academic success,” Horne said in March 2025. “It is important that charters and district schools alike are held accountable for the quality of education they provide. The Board’s action demonstrates that these are not just words, but actions. Primavera is being held accountable and losing its ability to operate because of poor academic results.”

Horne, however, later allowed Primavera to privately meet with his staff and present new records to his office.

The board accused Horne of taking the “unprecedented steps of retroactively reclassifying Primavera from a traditional school to an alternative school, reopening prior-year data, and allowing the submission of additional information.”

That was key because traditional charter schools are evaluated under higher academic measures, while alternative schools, which typically serve higher-risk or non-traditional student populations, are evaluated with different performance expectations.

It’s unclear when Horne, who is currently in a tight re-election campaign against Treasurer Kimberly Yee for the GOP nomination, made all of the changes. 

But Charter Board officials on Tuesday said Horne’s intervention resulted in the Department of Education indicating the school would have received three Alternative “C” grades instead of three “D” grades under the traditional model. 

The board, in a statement, said this “after-the-fact rewrite of Primavera’s academic performance fundamentally changed the facts underlying the Board’s case long after enforcement had begun, effectively removing the Board’s ability to proceed under its established authority.”

Remember, “it’s all about the kids! No child should be trapped in a failing charter school! Parents know best!”

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Ethics, Failure, For-Profit, Fraud

Timothy Snyder and Phillips O’Brien on the War in Iran

By dianeravitch
April 12, 2026 //
1

This is a conversation you should not miss.

Categories Failure, International, Trump

Shawgi Tell: The Pace of Crime and Corruption in Charter Schools Continues

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2026 //
2

With the rapid spread of vouchers, which are busting the budgets of several states and tearing down the wall of separation between church and state, it’s easy to overlook the danger posed by charter schools. Charter schools are a strong step towards vouchers, replacing neighborhood schools with consumerism. Almost 90% of American students attend public schools. We should be funding those schools, not schools operated by private boards and religious groups.

Dr. Shawgi Tell reminds us that charter schools continue to breed corruption and fraud, as they drain resources from public schools. Charter schools are not subject to the same accountability as public schools. They operate under private management, which shields them from the accoubtabilty to which public schools are subject. Without oversight or accountability, bad things happen.

Dr. Tell is a professor of education at Nazareth University in Rochester, New York.

He writes:

Even though they make up only 8% of schools in the country, crimes, scandals, and arrests take place at a robust tempo in the nation’s privately-operated charter schools.

These non-stop wrongdoings usually include fraud, embezzlement, harassment, and a range of sex crimes.

This is not surprising given the weak accountability, transparency, and background checks that have plagued the crisis-prone charter school sector for more than 30 years.

A small sample of headlines from just this year speaks volumes:

·        Cedar Rapids Prep Charter principal terminated this week as second harassment charge is filed (The Gazette, April 3, 2026).

·        Las Vegas charter school assistant principal arrested on child abuse charges (FOX5, March 23, 2026).

·        L.A. charter school teacher accused of assaulting 6-year-old girl (2UrbanGirls, March 21, 2026).

·        Little Elm charter school teacher arrested for child sex crimes (FOX 4, January 30, 2026).

·        $25M swindled by fraudulent charter school recovered for San Diego K-12 students (City News Service, January 30, 2026).

·        Owner of Newark charter school accused of stealing wages from teachers (NBC Bay Area, January 21, 2026).

·        Former New Orleans charter school may have improperly spent more than $600,000, audit says (NOLA, January 21, 2026).

·        Former Midlands charter school teacher arrested for allegedly assaulting student (WIS, January 14, 2026).

·        North Carolina charter school teacher charged with multiple child sex crimes, including against a student (FOX 8, January 3, 2026).

Do such horrible things happen in traditional public schools and private religious schools? Yes they do, but when looking at scale, scope, frequency,  and proportionality, they are considerably more rampant in charter schools, which are deregulated businesses governed by unelected private persons.

The privatization and marketization of education lends itself to such phenomena on a broad scale. Privatization increases corruption and lowers standards across a broad range of operations, roles, and services. Converting public programs and services into capital-centered programs and services usually enriches a handful of people while harming the public interest in the process. When programs and services focused on uplifting people and society are transformed into profit-maximizing entities, the majority suffers.

See here for more examples of charter school crimes and scandals.

Shawgi Tell (PhD) is the author of Charter School Report Card. He can be reached at stell5@naz.edu 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Industry, Failure, For-Profit, Fraud

Tom Ultican: Grade Retention is a Popular “Remedy” That Hurts Students

By dianeravitch
March 24, 2026 //
12

When an education policy is tried and failed, then tried again and continues to fail, that policy may justly beee called “zombie policy.” It survives despite experience..

Tom Ultican, retried teacher of physics and advanced mathematics in California, here describes such a policy. It is called “grade retention,” but is more commonly known as flunking a student because he or she is not “ready” to be promoted with peers. The short-term effect may seem successful: test scores. But the long-term effect on students’ success is typically negative.

Ultican writes:

Twenty-six American states have a mandatory third-grade retention policy for students who do not pass the state’s reading exam and Maryland is set to implement that policy in 2027. According to researchers, this is bad thinking based on intuition not science. Writing for Education Trust, Brittney Davis declared, “The research is clear that grade retention is not effective over time, and it is related to many negative academic, social, and emotional outcomes for students — especially students of color who have been retained.”  

Economist Jiee Zhong won her PhD from Texas A&M in 2024 and is now an assistant professor of economics at the University of Miami. Last year, she just finished a very impressive study on the effects of grade retention for Texas third graders. Texas abandoned mandatory third-grade retention in 2009.

Zhong studied outcomes of third-graders from 2002-03, 2003-04 and 2004-05 school years who took the Texas reading exam that carried retention consequences. This large data set allowed her to use a fuzzy regression discontinuity design to extract many results. By 2024, the students studied were all young adults over 26 years of age. She was able to evaluate their education, social and economic outcomes using powerful math techniques.

Zhong concluded:

“I find that third-grade retention significantly reduces annual earnings at age 26 by $3,477 (19%). While temporarily improving test scores, retention increases absenteeism, violent behavior, and juvenile crime, and reduces the likelihood of high school graduation.”

For one outcome, she investigated a group of students who barely passed or barely failed the reading test. She learned that the barely failing students earn $1,682 (11.3%) less at age 23 than the barely passing students. Zhong noted that 64.2% of barely passing students graduated from high school while just 55.1% of the barely failing students graduated. She observed that both of these results were statistically significant at a 5% level.

Zhong also noticed a racial disparity. She reports, “White students experience a sharp 43.8 percentage point decline in high school graduation probability, higher than the reductions for Black (17.6 percentage points) and Hispanic students (0.6 percentage points).”

These results from 2025 add more weight to similar results that previous researchers have reported.

The Retention Illusion

In January 2025, Duke University in Chapel Hill, North Carolina published a linked series of three policy briefs concerning grade retention by Claire Xia and Elizabeth Glennie, Ph.D. The Duke researchers stated, “The majority of published studies and decades of research indicate that there is usually little to be gained, and much harm that may be done through retaining students in grade.”

They also mention the grade retention illusion is held by many community members, administrators and teachers who believe grade retention is helpful and needed. The Duke researchers stated, “The findings that retention is ineffective or even harmful in the long run seem counterintuitive.” This belief is so strong that on the 31st Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallop Poll, 72% of the public favor stricter promotion standards even if significantly more students would be held back. Other studies show the public being strongly opposed to social promotion believing low-achieving students will continue to fall farther behind.

Please open the link to finish reading.

Categories Accountability, Failure, Research

Audrey Watters: Who Benefits from AI? Not You.

By dianeravitch
March 23, 2026 //
6

Audrey Watters is one of the best–maybe the very best–writers about Ed-tech. As she has documented in her writings, including her book, Teaching Machines, the quest for a cheap and mechanical way to replace teachers with efficient devices has a long history. A few people dream of endless profits, but the promise of better teaching by machines has never been realized.

Watters believes that the Ed-tech industry is minting money for itself without delivering on its promises. In this article, which appears on her blog, Second Breakfast, she describes the current AI boom and the likely endgame.

She writes:

This morning I attended one of the new NYC Chancellor’s public “conversations,” his administration’s initiative to “engage directly with communities to reflect on what safety, academic rigor, and true integration look like in practice.” There were about one hundred folks in attendance, including members of the AI Moratorium for NYC schools, who were there to leaflet beforehand (and were vastly outnumbered, I should note, by the NYPD). 

As the aforementioned name suggests, this coalition of local organizations is asking for a two-year moratorium on AI in the city’s schools, pointing to the growing opposition to AI and (in their words) “to evidence that it represents substantial risk to student privacy, cognitive development and skills, critical thinking, creativity, mental health, and the environment.” I’d add that it represents substantial risk more broadly: to labor (teachers’, librarians’, translators’, social workers’) and to democracy itself.

And really, what’s the rush?! I mean, other than the desperate need of the tech sector to prove that the trillions of dollars invested in this endeavor will soon show some profit and that – unlike crypto and Web 3.0 – this isn’t just some giant fraud being perpetrated so executives can buy more private islands.

I’ve said repeatedly (but didn’t articulate into any open mic at the meeting because I still very much feel like a new New Yorker), this recent push for “AI” is yet another grandiose and grotesque experiment on children – one that no one asked for and few want. Another grandiose and grotesque experiment on all of us. 

We have lived through decades and decades now of repeated digital promises — we’ll be better, faster, stronger, more connected, what have you — and none of the computational fantasies have really come to fruition, certainly not for everyone. We are not more productive (despite now being asked to work so much more, clicking away on our devices at all hours of every day); we are not smarter; and most importantly, we are not better. (A tiny group of men are, on the other hand, now richer than any other humans have ever been in all of history. So there’s that.) Our public institutions are crumbling, in no small part because these men are fully and openly committed to the failure of democracy, having positioned themselves to profit mightily from years of neoliberalism. “AI” marks the further (and they hope, final) consolidation of their power – not just the privatization and monopolization of all information under their control, but the automation of the dissemination and replication of knowledge. These men are more than happy to sell a story, a system that trains all of us, but particularly young people, to become entirely dependent on and subservient to computational machinery; they are more than happy for us to sacrifice our cognitive capabilities, our creativity, our agency, our decision-making, our morality, to solidify their crude oligarchal dreams of total efficiency, total financialization, total domination.

Jennifer Berkshire writes about the back history to the growing backlash against not just “AI” but a lot of ed-tech and what she calls “the curious case of collective amnesia” (invoking one of Hack Education’s enduring contributions to “the discourse: “The 100 Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade” as well as Teaching Machines).

We should know by now that this stuff is almost entirely wretched – we do, right? I mean, at this stage, I’d be deeply embarrassed if I was out there, trying to argue that this stuff is any damn good. And yet here comes Silicon Valley and education reform, hand-in-hand once again, trying to peddle disruption and innovation and their long war on “one size fits all education,” armed with their algorithmic bullshit and billionaire board members.

It doesn’t help, I think, that there are several prominent technology journalists who keep falling for / perpetuating this stuff, who loudly insist in caps-lock-on prose that “THERE IS NO EVIDENCE!!!111” that devices are bad for children. (The irony, of course, is after they repeat this claim — and with such certainty — they turn around and point to dozens of stories of the most batshit–crazy news about the horrors of digital culture.)

And maybe part of the problem too is just that: we are so steeped in the insanity of techno-capitalism, the insanity of techno-capitalists that some folks are losing track of what aberrant behavior really is. Cory Doctorow writes a bit about this this week, offering “three more AI Psychoses” — a response, in part, to Samantha Cole’s excellent piece in 404 Media, “How to Talk to Someone Experiencing ‘AI Psychosis’.”

I wonder if it isn’t simply that “AI” delusions are ubiquitous (at this stage, I’m thinking these delusions are experienced by almost everyone, not just a tiny fraction of “AI” users); it’s that many of these delusions are unrecognizable as such because they reflect precisely the sort of sociopathy long embraced by Silicon Valley’s Ayn-Randian, libertarian set. “Here’s to the crazy ones” indeed.

[A] great embarrassing fact… haunts all attempts to represent the market as the highest form of human freedom: that historically, impersonal, commercial markets originate in theft. – David Graeber, Debt…

If plagiarism is wrong and bad and theft is wrong and bad and schools are duty-bound to help instill these values in students, how can they justify adoption of a technology that is, at its core, built on stolen work and whose purpose is the extrusion of text to be passed off as one’s own thinking and writing?

I invite you to open the link and continue reading this thought-provoking article.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Education Industry, Failure, For-Profit, Online Education, Technology

Chalkbeat: Retaining Third Grade Students Has Long-Term Negative Effects

By dianeravitch
March 16, 2026 //
6

One of the key features of the “Mississippi Miracle” is the retention of third-graders who do not score well enough to enter fourth grade. Third-graders with low reading scores are held back for an extra year.

Critics of the “Miracle” say that holding back the lowest scoring third-graders inflates the fourth grade scores.

But what about the effects of retention in the students who are held back?

Matt Barnum of Chalkbeat reports on a new study that found negative, long-term effects of third-grade retention.

It’s an age-old debate with an emerging conventional wisdom: Third graders should not move on to the next grade if they are still struggling to read.

There’s both logic and evidence behind this policy. Studies have found that students have higher test scores after they’re held back. This practice may also have played a role in helping Mississippi make remarkable improvements in recent years. A chorus of policymakers and journalists have insisted with growing confidence that others should replicate the state’s model.

But a new study offers a warning about the downside risks of retention. Third graders who had to repeat a grade in Texas were far less likely to graduate from high school or earn a good living as young adults, nearly two decades later. The harmful effects were quite large and came despite initial improvements in test scores.

“Retaining low-achieving students in third grade further deepens educational and income inequalities,” writes Jiee Zhong, an economics professor at Miami University. 

The findings are hardly the last word on this topic. But they complicate the evidence base for retention at a time when more states — like Arkansas, Indiana, and West Virginia — are adopting this policy.

The paper, set to be published in an economics journal, examines an early 2000s Texas policy to hold back struggling readers. Students had three chances to pass the state exam. 

Zhong, the researcher, looked at those who just barely missed the passing score versus those who just reached it. These students were essentially identical — the only difference was a few questions right or wrong on the test. Yet those handful of questions changed the trajectory of many students’ lives by determining whether they would be held back. This also created a natural experiment that allowed Zhong to compare the two groups of students, thus isolating the effect of retention.

Failing the exam wasn’t a guarantee that students would repeat the grade — parents could seek exemptions — but it dramatically increased their chances. Relative to the overall student population, the retained students were more likely to be low-income, Black or Hispanic, and still learning English.

In the short term, the results were promising. By the time retained students finished fourth grade, their test scores were much higher. But there were warning signs. Students missed more school after they were held back. As the years went on, the test score gains, relative to non-retained students, started to fade. In middle school, the students who had been held back were more likely to exhibit violent behavior (although this remained rare).

By the end of high school, retained students were 9 percentage points less likely to graduate, compared to similar students who weren’t forced to repeat third grade. This is a very large effect. Even those students who graduated typically did so a year later, reflecting the extra year from being held back.

At the age of 26, the previously retained students, now young adults, earned less money than if they hadn’t been held back. Again, the effect was substantial: nearly $3,500, a decline of 19%.

To finish reading the article, please open the link.

Categories Accountability, Failure, Literacy, Mississippi

Peter Greene: The Education of Diane Ravitch

By dianeravitch
February 4, 2026 //
8

In addition to blogging at Curmudgucation, Peter Greene is a Senior Contributor to Forbes, where this review appeared.

He reviewed my book in Forbes. You may be tired of seeing the wonderful reviews of my book by fellow bloggers. I agree with you….but…the book has been overlooked by the mainstream media. It is the first book I have published that was not reviewed by the New York Times.

I am thrilled that well-informed bloggers have taken the time to read and review it.

An Education

Peter Greene writes:

Diane Ravitch is one of the biggest turncoats in education policy history, and American education is better for it.

She tells the story in her newest book, her memoir An Education. From humble beginnings in Houston, she moved on to Wellesley, where she rubbed elbows with the likes of future Madeline Albright and Nora Ephron. Upon graduation. she married into the prestigious Ravitch family. Casting around for a career, she gravitated toward education history, starting with researching and writing a massive history of New York City public schools, launching her career as an academic.

She was in those days considered a neoconservative. She believed in meritocracy, standards, standardized testing, and color blindness, and these beliefs combined with her academic credentials formed a foundation for a burgeoning career of advocacy for the rising tide of education reform. By the time the 1990s rolled around, she was tapped for a role as Assistant Secretary of Education under President George H. W. Bush. She appeared in television, met and socialized with top political leaders, enjoyed other odd in-crowd perks like a visit to George Lucas at Skywalker Ranch. She was brought onto an assortment of conservative think tanks, served in various commissions and agencies under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and wrote several books that brought rounds of interviews on major media. She was a committed supporter and promoter of No Child Left Behind, which included all the emphasis on standards and testing that she thought she wanted to see in education.

When she graduated from high school, her English teacher gifted her with two quotes. The second was from Alfred, Lord Tennyson: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” Those turned out to be prescient words for a woman who was about to engage in a public re-evaluation of her entire body of professional beliefs.

Michael Bloomberg was elected mayor of New York City and brought in Joel Klein to run the schools, and for four years Ravitch watched the ideas she championed implemented, and she saw the down side. She was critical, though carefully so (it was still not common knowledge that she had years ago left her husband for a woman). But she could see that Bloomberg and Klein were “faithfully, if erratically, imposing the right-wing policies that I had once endorsed and demonstrating their ineffectiveness.”

In the following years, Ravitch “step by step” abandoned her long-held views about education. Those long-held views had been her bread and butter, the web that sustained personal and professional networks. And Ravitch was willing not just to break those ties, but determined to “expose the big money propelling the cause of what I called corporate education reform.” 

Her 2010 book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education was a shot across the bow of education reform, signaling a new set of beliefs. “Why did you change your mind,” she was frequently asked.

I changed my mind when I realized that the ideas I had championed sounded good in theory but failed in practice. I thought that standards, tests and accountability would lead to higher achievement (test scores). They didn’t. Even if they had, the scores would not signify better education, just a fortunate upbringing and the mastery of test-taking skills. I originally thought, like other so-called reformers, that competition and merit pay would encourage teachers and principals to work harder and get better results. They didn’t. The teachers were already working as hard as they knew how.

Ravitch came to view the punitive attempt to use test scores to determine teacher careers as demoralizing, destined to discourage young people from choosing the profession. The “toxic policy” of high-stakes testing was ‘inflicting harm on students and teachers.”

Ravitch became a key figure in the movement to support public education in the US. She co-founded the Network for Public Education and spoke out repeatedly against the education reform movement. Her blog became a popular outlet that connected many of the far-flung supporters of public education.

Ravitch has written page upon page critiquing the education reform movement of the past few decades, and in the final chapters of this memoir, the reader can find a clear, crisp encapsulated version of her conclusions and beliefs about the top-down government mandates and big-money attempts to dismantle the public school system and replace it with a multi-tiered privatized system. This brisk, readable book provides a historical recap of the ed reform movement and the resistance to it, as well as the rich history of a woman who, more than any other observer, has examined the pieces of the movement from both sides. 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Bloomberg, Michael, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Privatization, Vouchers
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