Weekend To-Do List
1. Cardona’s Tenure of Turmoil
READ: Rick Hess took to the pages of National Review to declare Miguel Cardona the worst Secretary of Education in U.S. history, citing his department’s disastrous FAFSA rollout, lax oversight of ESSER funding, and prioritizing what Hess labeled a “relentlessly partisan” political agenda. Hess turned to Education Daly’s Tim Daly to help bolster his case:
This summer, Tim Daly, the respected center-left-ish school reformer and pundit behind Education Daly, reached out to a bipartisan array of two dozen education chieftains, education insiders, and Hill types, asking them to evaluate the Biden-Cardona record. The most common grade was “F.” Daly noted that “more than one person asked if an F-minus was permissible.” Republicans and Democrats slammed Cardona and Biden for their inattention to student learning, describing them in terms such as “absentee,” “silent,” “lacking vision,” “no sense of urgency,” and “missing the boat.”
Read more here. Chris and Kate will discuss this piece on next week’s episode of The Citizen Stewart Show. If you’ve got thoughts about the piece, drop them in the comments so they can include them in the discussion.
2. School Board Showdown: The Sequel
READ: Just three years ago, Moms for Liberty burst onto the national scene with a rallying cry for “parental rights” and began to reshape school boards and school policies across the nation. In response, newer organizations have emerged over the past two years, using refined campaign strategies and robust funding to support as many moderate candidates as possible in an attempt to win the majority of the estimated 12,000 school board races on ballots this year. Organizers like Rebecca Jacobsen, a professor of education politics and policy at Michigan State University, say candidates have had to adapt their campaign approach to match the intensifying political dynamics introduced by Moms for Liberty:
Jacobsen was part of a team of researchers who watched 156 board meetings in 15 states from 2019 to 2022. They found a marked increase in shouting, insults and threats — both by board members and people in the audience — particularly in areas where Moms for Liberty and similar groups were active.
Traditionally, school board service involves constant compromise, Jacobsen continues: “But there are no compromises when [you believe] the other side is harming children. How do you work with the other side when you think the other side is fundamentally evil?”
Read more from Beth Hawkins in The 74 here.
3. Higher Ed Finds Itself at (Another) Political Crossroads
READ: Wesleyan President Michael Roth denounced calls for college leaders to embrace “institutional neutrality” ahead of the election, pointing to campaign rhetoric portraying universities as adversaries and proposed policies like dismantling the Department of Education as urgent reasons for leaders to actively and openly defend higher education’s core values. Roth cautioned that embracing neutrality would equate to complicity in the erosion of educational freedoms and diversity:
Many fans of institutional neutrality today reverentially cite the University of Chicago’s 1967 Kalven Report to legitimate the silence of educational leaders. But even that report noted that “from time to time, instances will arise in which the society, or segments of it, threaten the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry. In such a crisis, it becomes the obligation of the university as an institution to oppose such measures and actively to defend its interests and its values.” This is such a time. We must not be neutral.
Read more in Slate here.
4. Varsity Blues: Singer’s Second Act
READ: Rick Singer, the mastermind behind the 2019 Varsity Blues college admissions scandal, is out of prison and planning his next move. So what’s next for the man who was forced by prosecutors to shut down his college counseling business after he orchestrated a $25 million scheme to secure wealthy teens admission to elite colleges? Establishing a new college counseling business. Singer says this one will be legitimate:
“I am not living in the gray anymore. The gray is over. I was the all-time Mr. Gray,” Singer, 64 years old, said in a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal. “Now, I’ve made a concerted effort to live in black and white.”
Read more from Melissa Korn and Jennifer Levitz in The Wall Street Journal here.
5. A High-Trust Culture Is Key To Embracing AI
READ: Tyler Austen Harper returned to The Atlantic to argue that schools facing AI-enabled cheating scandals don’t have a technology problem—they have a cultural one. After visiting institutions with strong honor codes like Haverford and Bryn Mawr, Harper observed that students on these campuses were more likely to value the intrinsic rewards of writing and learning, in part thanks to access to ample resources, such as accessible faculty, writing support, and small class sizes. But before you rush to update the honor code at your own school, make sure you’re ready to fully buy in:
The decisive factor seems to be whether a university’s honor code is deeply woven into the fabric of campus life, or is little more than a policy slapped on a website. Tricia Bertram Gallant, an expert on cheating and a co-author of a forthcoming book on academic integrity, argues that honor codes are effective when they are “regularly made salient.” Two professors I spoke with at public universities that have strong honor codes emphasized this point. Thomas Crawford at Georgia Tech told me, “Honor codes are a two-way street—students are expected to be honest and produce their own work, but for the system to function, the faculty must trust those same students.”
Read more here.
Imbroglio will take a short break next week. We’ll be back in your inbox on November 8.