Werd I/O

[Alec MacGillis at ProPublica]

"Voucher advocates, backed by a handful of billionaire funders, are on the march to bring more red and purple states into the fold for “school choice,” their preferred terminology for vouchers. And again and again, they are running up against rural Republicans like Warner, who are joining forces with Democratic lawmakers in a rare bipartisan alliance. That is, it’s the reddest regions of these red and purple states that are putting up some of the strongest resistance to the conservative assault on public schools."

This is heartening to see: a bipartisan push against the school voucher system. Public schools are important social infrastructure that deserve significantly more investment rather than having funds siphoned away to support exclusive institutions. A free market for schools is not the way - and clearly, the communities who would be most affected by a voucher system see this too.

This also feels like one of those rare moments where some Republicans are actively practicing old-school conservatism: the kind that isn't drawn from The Handmaid's Tale. That's nice to see, and I'd love to see more of it.

"[Republican Representative] Greene believes vouchers will harm his district. It has a couple of small private schools in it or just outside it — with student bodies that are starkly more white than the district’s public schools — but the majority of his constituents rely on the public schools, and he worries that vouchers will leave less money for them."

Exactly. Not to mention a worse education.

#Education

[Link]

"When Courtney Gore ran for a seat on her local school board in 2021, she warned about a movement to indoctrinate children with “leftist” ideology. After 2 1/2 years on the board, Gore said she believes a much different scheme is unfolding: an effort by wealthy conservative donors to undermine public education in Texas and install a voucher system in which public money flows to private and religious schools."

An interesting ProPublica story about the motivation behind some of the money that's funded these bizarre right-wing school board elections. It's not so much about the ideology as it is about undermining trust in public education itself, so that it can be replaced with a voucher system that would benefit the underwriters.

This quote says it all:

“It’s all about destroying the trust with the citizens to the point where they would tolerate something like doing away with public schools.” #Education

[Link]

"Five dictionaries as well as eight encyclopedias and other reference materials including “The Guinness Book of World Records” and “Ripley’s Believe it or Not” are among over 1,600 books that Escambia County Public Schools removed from its library shelves in December and flagged for review."

Alongside Anne Frank and a biography of Oprah Winfrey. I wish I could say it was baffling, but it's not: the mindset and set of values that lead to this is obvious and abhorrent. #Education

[Link]

"The tools that likely brought down Harvard president Claudine Gay are improperly used on students all the time. [...] The technology of text mining can be used to destroy the career of any scholar at any time."

Tools like Turnitin are rife with false positives, and can be weaponized to target students for any reason. It's bad software. But even more importantly, it's bad educational policy to deploy it, and its design encourages bad grading decisions. The result is an entire generation of students who are badly served. #Education

[Link]