Weekend To-Do List
Stuff to ponder, read, hear, and watch
We consume way too much content over here at Lost Debate. We do it, so you don't have to. Starting this week, I'll empty my notebook (mostly) every Friday with the podcasts, shows, articles, tweets, and ideas that have caught my attention. These will mostly be things created in the past week, but sometimes I'll throw in old stuff that I happened to get around to late or am revisiting for some reason.
Here are our top ten from the week:
1. We Need to Talk About Andrew Tate
READ/LISTEN: Emma Bubola and Isabella Kwai wrote an alarming article in the New York Times about how British schools are seeing a rise in male students trafficking in the ideas from social media influencer/former kickboxer/macho-pseudo-intellectual/alleged rapist Andrew Tate. Chris Stewart and I devoted much of our most recent episode of the Citizen Stewart Show to the question of how we combat the growing and pernicious effect of people like Tate.
2. Social Media and Teenage Girls
READ: Jonathan Haidt wrote a lengthy Substack article that argues (persuasively, in my opinion) that the verdict is in and that social media is objectively a significant cause of the rise in teenage depression and anxiety.
3. Physical 100
WATCH: This hit Netflix show pits Korea's top 100 athletes against each other in individual and group competitions to see who has the "best physique." It's hard to describe how crazy this show is. And though there's a lot to critique about it, it's truly a mesmerizing and sometimes inspiring watch. At first, I was struck by how strong respect and sportsmanship are in Korea. (Important caveat: there are concerning allegations of the behavior of some of the athletes (seemingly outside of the show).) I don't know what to make of it all. You can count on this show being adapted in the United States. It will be fascinating to see how our athletes differ from the Korean model. My training starts today.
4. Catholic Schools Must Innovate
READ: Ray Domanico recently wrote a post in City Journal that chronicles the newest wave of Catholic school closures in New York and pushes for more innovation in the sector. K-8 enrollment has dropped from 47,000 in 2011 to 25,000 last year. The next few years will either bring the demise or the rebirth of the Catholic school sector. I've long felt that if the Archdiocese of New York didn't have so much baggage (to put it lightly), it would be an excellent perch for an ambitious and visionary educator. If that person is you, now is the time to reveal yourself.
5. Don't Give ESAs the Charter Treatment
READ/LISTEN: Adam Peshak (Stand Together, Permissionless Education) wrote a thoughtful piece in his Substack about how we shouldn't use the cautious, regulation-heavy approach to ESAs that we brought to charter schools. Chris Stewart and I critiqued Adam's piece on this week's episode of the Citizen Stewart Show.
6. TikTok Sets Screen Time Limit for Teens
READ: TikTok announced Wednesday that it will set automatic one-hour screen time limits for users under 18. When the 60 minutes are up, the users can override the limit, which makes me skeptical that this will do that much good.
7. Vandy Administrator in Hot Water Over ChatGPT
READ: Last week, Vanderbilt's Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion had to apologize for an email they sent to the student body after the Michigan State University shooting. The problem: they generated their message of inclusion and compassion using ChatGPT. Liz Wolfe, over at Reason, argues that this saga teaches us that AI isn't the problem; we are. ChatGPT merely "revealed to us more about ourselves, making us squirm a bit in the process."
8. GPTZero Branches Out
READ: ChatGPT detection tool GPTZero announced in an email that they're "partnering with K16 Solutions to bring GPTZero to schools, including servicing AI detection on Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle, D2L, and Schoology." Some details:
"A frank piece of feedback we've heard from now hundreds of educators: could GPTZero just be an extra button we click in our LMS systems — whether Moodle, Canvas, Blackboard, D2L or Schoology? We're beyond excited to announce that this is now possible. This month, we're signed partnerships with multiple ed-tech platforms and organizations to do so.
In the meantime, we added Batch File Upload, a new feature on our Dashboard app.gptzero.me built for educators. We've been listening to feedback and Batch File Upload is one of the most requested features. This will allow users to upload multiple files at once and run GPTZero on them in one click!"
The team at GPTZero also claims to have addressed concerns about its reliability:
"In the past, the GPTZero beta released Jan 1st was trained only from news articles. Many copy-cat AI detectors released afterwards, leverage the same principles and variables we outlined (ie. perplexity and burstiness), with the same pitfalls. The glaring problem? NONE of these models (including GPTZero) were specifically trained for student writing.
The past month, our awesome research team (currently six ML researchers from Princeton, Yale, McGill, and the University of Toronto) have worked extensively to train an AI detection model for student articles, and from unique datasets both collected and from our partner organizations."
Is this sufficient? We have no way to know yet. Are we scaling something unproven that could lead to false accusations of academic dishonesty?
9. Rush to Spend Pandemic Dollars
READ: The clock is running out for districts to spend pandemic dollars. Marguerite Roza over at The 74 details how school systems are doubling their spending rate as the 4-year deadline approaches. She implores districts to plan for the looming fiscal cliff.
10. Tennessee Copies Mississippi
READ: Marta Aldrich at Chalkbeat chronicles how Tennessee is copying some of the policies Mississippi used to improve its literacy. Most controversially, that includes Mississippi's policy requiring third graders to pass a state reading test to get promoted to the fourth grade. As luck would have it, these are the two states where I founded and ran charter schools, and I had a chance to break down the data on the Mississippi experiment on a past episode of the Citizen Stewart Show.