Weekend To-Do List

3/9 - 3/10

1. Can Any Program Be Free of Fraud?

READ/LISTEN: Can any program be free of fraud? Education savings account (ESA) critics and supporters have wrestled with this question over the past week after a grand jury indicted five former education agency employees for using fake documents to defraud Arizona’s ESA initiative of over $600,000. Linda Jacobson at The 74 spoke with ESA supporters worried about how the indictments might impact the broader movement:

“This type of thing is just devastating to those of us who really depend on the program,” said Kathy Visser, who administers a Facebook page for ESA families and vendors. “It angers us because accountability matters more to us than anyone else.”

Read more here. The news broke just hours before I met with fellow educators and advocates in DC at the American Enterprise Institute to debate whether Democrats should support ESAs. Listen to that conversation here.

2. Has Private Equity Found Its Next Prey?

LISTEN/READ: I spoke with Adam Harris at The Atlantic about his recent piece on private equity’s growing interest in child care and why advocates of public funding for early education worry the intrusion of private-equity-backed child-care providers will cause more harm than good:

Though private-equity-backed child-care providers can—and often do—offer good services to families, their business model can also prove ruinous. In other sectors, private-equity groups have been notorious for extracting exorbitant fees from businesses they’ve acquired in leveraged buyouts; when they’ve had a chance to raise wages for workers or pay down their private-equity debts, they’ve regularly opted for the latter.

Listen to our conversation here and read Adam’s piece here.

3. Coloring Book Sparks Shock and Disappointment in Brooklyn

LISTEN/READ: A Park Slope-based elementary school has received criticism for its use of a Black Lives Matter coloring book to help children learn about the tenets of the BLM movement, ranging from “Queer Affirming” to “Restorative Justice.” Reporter Francesca Block said that while some PS 321 parents expressed shock over the book’s “demonization” of the nuclear family, others were disappointed that the book didn’t go into more detail for Black History Month:

The fourth-grade mother said her daughter’s teacher told her the coloring book was the only lesson planned for Black History Month, other than a schoolwide project to make a quilt honoring famous black figures. She added that, after the Week of Action, her daughter still had never heard of civil rights hero Rosa Parks and didn’t know what Martin Luther King Jr. had achieved to make him famous.

The story inspired a friendly debate on this week's Citizen Stewart Show over the role of indoctrination in education. Listen to our conversation here and read Block's piece here.

4. The (Far?) Future of Learning

READ/LISTEN: Education Next published a new paper this week that says the results of the 1984 “Two Stigma” study, which argued tutoring offered the best learning conditions possible for academic growth, are outliers based on small-scale experiments. While AI enthusiasts like Khan Academy’s Sal Khan argue improvements akin to the 1984 study are still achievable, Matt Barnum at The Wall Street Journal reported on the growing questions within the education community over whether AI technology will ever be able to effectively turn everyday students into all-stars:

“Overpromising can lead to disappointment, and reaching for impossible goals can breed questionable educational practices,” wrote University of Texas at Austin education professor Paul von Hippel in Education Next.

Read more here. I also discussed AI’s potential with Khan on an episode of Lost Debate this winter. Listen here.

5. Texas Primary a Victory for Voucher Supporters

READ: Nine Republican candidates in the Texas House who opposed vouchers in last year’s legislative session lost their bid for another term during this week’s primaries. Karen Brooks Harper at The Texas Tribune spoke with critics and advocates of the program after Tuesday’s results, and both sides agree that the state has never been closer to passing a voucher program:

“Texas is closer than ever to delivering on the promise that every parent be in control of their child’s education,” said Mandy Drogin, a campaign director at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, an influential conservative think tank…“Empowering parents with more and better educational options will continue to be one of the top issues in Texas until it gets passed,” Drogin said.

Read more here, and if you know someone involved in this fight, let me know. We’ll visit the state later this year and would love to talk with folks on the ground.

6. Florida Bans “Frivolous” Book Challenges

READ: Individuals whose students are not enrolled in a specific school district will now only be able to challenge one book per month in that school district, according to a new bill passed by the Florida Senate this Tuesday. The bill comes after concerns from lawmakers about the amount of time spent responding to objections:

“What happened is people went overboard and they started objecting to the classics like Shakespeare, which I think is ridiculous,” [Senate President Kathleen] Passidomo told reporters on Tuesday. “So it’s like everything. We needed to rein that in, and the devil’s in the details and the kind of language and how to do that. But I think we’re on the right course.”

Democrats voted against the bill because it included a provision that allows specialized teacher certificates for classical education. Read more from Jackie Llanos at The 74 here.

7. To Empower America, Support Education

READ: President Biden touted his student loan debt relief plan, called for more gun control to stem the tide of deadly school violence, pushed for increased teacher pay, more high-quality tutoring and summer learning time, and increased access to early childhood education during his State of the Union speech Thursday night. His rationale for a robust education agenda is straightforward:

“To remain the strongest economy in the world we need the best education system in the world,” Biden said.

Read more from Evie Blad at Education Week here.