The Century Foundation: Federal Voucher Program Will Increase Segregation

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2026 //
0

It is a well-established fact that the school choice movement was created in the South in the 1950s to protect segregation. After the Brown decision of 1954, whites resisted desegregation with e Rey strategy they could dream of. One such was to offer vouchers to every student to attend the school of their choice. The predictable result was to protect segregated schools.

In this century, voucher promoters sell them as parental choice, “saving poor kids from failing public schools,” etc.

But unless an effort is made to enrcuage racial integration, choice will lead to segregation.

Halley Potter of The Century Foundation wrote this report. I urge you to open the link and read it in full.

Potter wrote:

In rural Northampton, North Carolina, a private Christian school called Northeast Academy is 99 percent White in a county that’s 40 percent White. It receives about half of its tuition from taxpayers, through the state’s private school voucher program. Northeast is one of a number of private schools known as “segregation academies,” because they were founded during desegregation so that White parents could avoid having their children educated in an integrated setting.

Segregation academies ought to be a thing of the past, but they could experience a resurgence—paid for with taxpayer dollars—under the new federal private school voucher scheme enacted as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBA). Bringing back segregation academies using taxpayer dollars is part of the Trump administration’s radical two-pronged approach to undermine public education. The first tactic in the Trump administration’s plan to undercut public school systems is to dramatically reduce the federal role in education by dismantling federal programs, reducing oversight, attempting to cut federal funding for K–12 schools, and working to close the U.S. Department of Education. The second tactic is actively working toward privatization through an unprecedented federal private school voucher program.

How the Voucher Plan Would Work . . .

In July 2025, OBBA established a new federal tax credit—known as the Education Freedom Tax Credit—that, in effect, serves as a private school voucher program. The program allows individuals, beginning January 1, 2027, to contribute up to $1,700 per year toward private entities known as scholarship granting organizations (SGOs) and receive a dollar-for-dollar return of their money in the form of a federal tax credit. SGOs then would then be able to decide how to distribute the funds as scholarships to applicant students for them to spend on education. There is no cap on the size of such scholarships, and no limit on the number of individuals that can claim the tax credit. While recipient students may be able to use scholarship funds to pay for some things like tutoring or activity fees at public schools, because public schools are essentially free, it is anticipated that the vast majority of these funds will go toward private school enrollment.

There are very few requirements of SGOs in the statute, and it appears that any organization in a participating state that meets the criteria will be allowed to participate. SGOs must give scholarships to ten or more students who do not all attend the same school, must spend at least 90 percent of the income on scholarships, must give priority to students who received scholarships the previous year and to siblings, cannot earmark funds for a particular student, and must ensure that students come from families earning no more than 300 percent of the area median gross income. Essentially everything else will likely be up to the SGO, as the program’s regulations are not expected to add additional guardrails. It appears an SGO could, for example, be set up to fund scholarships to Christian schools only. Because private schools are not subject to all of the same civil rights laws as public schools, SGOs could also likely discriminate against students based on disability or sexual orientation.

While starting the process with individual donations gives the program the veneer of a charity operation, this is a ruse. All this does is mask who is truly bearing the cost of the program. In actuality, the donors to SGOs bear no cost, as they are later fully reimbursed by the federal government through the dollar-for-dollar tax credit. The federal government—using taxpayer dollars sent to the supposed donors—bears the entire cost of the program. Estimates of the cost to taxpayers range from around $4 billion to over $50 billion annually.

Moreover, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s language regarding the tax credit program is very misleading. Their fact sheet states: “A recent report estimates that the Education Freedom Tax Credit will generate an additional $24 billion in education funding annually.” That makes it sound like this is a revenue-creating program rather than one that bears a huge federal cost.

States and the District of Columbia have to decide annually whether or not to opt out of or into the voucher program. As of July 6, 2026, twenty-nine states had indicated that they plan to opt in for the first year of the program. However, federal regulations guiding the program are not expected until September. Further complicating matters, at least eighteen states will have new governors and the District of Columbia will have a new mayor when the program launches in 2027 because of term limits, and that number could be as high as thirty-six after this fall’s elections.

. . . To Increase Segregation and Undermine Public Education

One of the dangers of private school voucher programs—alongside their well-demonstrated negative effects on students’ academic outcomes, civil rights violations, and destabilization of public school funding—is that they can exacerbate racial and socioeconomic segregation.

Diverse learning environments that bring students of different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds together are one of the most powerful educational tools we have. Integrated schools help encourage critical thinking, boost academic achievement, and build the skills for working across lines of difference that are essential for our democracy. The growth of private school voucher programs threatens to roll back progress on integration, limit educational opportunity, and further fracture the educational landscape by race and class.

As state leaders and advocates weigh whether or not to opt into the federal voucher program, they should consider the evidence on how the program could deepen inequality and further racial and socioeconomic divides. New analysis in this piece shows that in some metro areas in states that are still deciding whether to opt out of or into the federal voucher program, private schools already drive more than 40 percent of the racial segregation in schools.

The Segregationist History of Private School Vouchers

Private school enrollment nationwide is disproportionately White and wealthy. As of 2021, 9 percent of American schoolchildren attended private schools. Sixty-five percent of private school students are White, compared to 45 percent of public school students. Private school students are about twice as likely as public school students to come from higher-income households, and private school attendance is concentrated among the highest earners.

Private school voucher programs were started by segregationists across the South in the 1950s and 1960s as part of efforts by Southern leaders engaged in “massive resistance” to avoid integrating their schools in the wake of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling. Many communities opened all-White private schools, which became known as segregation academies. Local governments slashed public school funding and instead created public subsidies for these private schools—including voucher programs to reimburse tuition as well as tax credits.

The courts eventually struck down many of those voucher programs tied to segregation academies, but current voucher programs still show troubling patterns of segregation. Roughly 300 private schoolsthat were founded as segregation academies still receive money from publicly funded voucher programs. Most voucher money goes to students who are already attending private schools, and data has shown that private schools tend to raise their tuition after the introduction of voucher programs. For example, when Iowa started a new voucher program in 2023–24, two-thirds of vouchers went to students who were already attending private schools. By 2026, tuition at some of the state’s largest private high schools had grown by as much as 50 percent. It is important to note that vouchers typically do not cover the full cost of tuition, making private schools still out of reach for most low-income families, and so the voucher programs tend to function mostly as cost-reducing schemes for wealthier families sending their children to private schools. In Arizona, for example, half of all voucher recipients come from the wealthiest quartile of zip codes.

There are some private school voucher programs that target low- to middle-income students and enroll mostly students of color, such as the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, the oldest operating school voucher program in the United States. However, research shows that even students in these programs, which arguably have the highest potential for integration, by and large did not give students greater access to integrated schools.

Furthermore, some voucher programs that started out serving mostly students of color have now seen an increase in White students in recent years. When North Carolina’s private school voucher program launched in 2014, for example, a majority of students receiving vouchers were Black, and just 27 percent were White; however, as the program expanded incrementally from one serving only low-income students to one with no income limits, the percentage of vouchers going to White students grew to 73 percent, in a state where only 51 percent of school-aged children are White. A 2024 investigation by ProPublica into North Carolina’s private school voucher program found thirty-nine schools that fit the profile of segregation academies that were receiving public money through voucher programs.

The new federal private school voucher program specifies that participation is open to families earning up to 300 percent of area median gross income, which means it would be open to roughly 90 percent of students nationwide. With near universal eligibility, the federal program could easily be susceptible to similar patterns of segregation, disproportionately benefiting White students and furthering segregation between public and private schools.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Extremism, Privatization, Racism, School Choice, Segregation, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Afghanistan: The Corruption of Boys’ Education

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2026 //
5

The Guardian posted a fascinating and depressing article about the “education” of boys in Afghanistan.

It is a reminder that religious education is likely to be indoctrination.

It is a reminder of the importance of separation of church and state.

It is a reminder of why public funds should not pay for religious education.

It is a reminder of the wisdom of the Founding Fathers, who guaranteed freedom of religion and prohibited the establishment of any state religion.

In the world of the Taliban, critical thinking and questioning are not permitted.

In the world of religious zealots, indoctrination is the goal of education.

In the U.S., critical thinking and questioning are necessary for our democracy to thrive.

Which path we will choose?

The Guardian reports:

Before he leaves for Kabul University each morning, Hashmat* checks his face for the beard he has been ordered to grow. Male students are required to grow their facial hair and wear traditional Afghan clothes and those who fall short are punished. Hashmat says he recently saw a classmate beaten for wearing trousers.

“They look at you before they listen to you. If your appearance is wrong, you are already in trouble before the class begins,” he says.

Five years after the ultra-conservative Islamists of the Taliban retook Afghanistan, students have described to the Guardian a collapsing education system, with women banned, lecturers leaving and teaching increasingly focused on religious subjects and discipline.

University has lost its purpose. It feels more like a … place where curiosity is banned and remaining silent ordered

Qader

Students are required to attend religious lectures and pray in public every day, sometimes for two hours at a time, says Hashmat. The lectures are about Islam, conduct and obedience. They are not optional. In some cases, he says, they are held during time that would otherwise be used for regular academic courses.

“I am missing my actual classes to sit in a lecture about obeying. That is what they [the Taliban] think education is for. Everyone talks about the girls who were banned, but nobody talks about what is happening to the boys who were allowed to stay.”

Another student studying in central Afghanistan said the problem is not only weak teaching, but also the disappearance of debate and questioning from the classroom. “We are expected to listen, not to question,” says Qader*. “Since the fall of Kabul, the university has lost its purpose. It feels more like a madrassa now — a place where curiosity is banned and remaining silent ordered.”

Hashmat studies journalism, a subject shaped by digital tools, online platforms, verification, ethics and technology, but as he listens in class, he says he wonders whether the person teaching the course understands the subject well enough to teach it.

“He is teaching us about the modern world while struggling to use PowerPoint in the class. How can you teach journalism technology if you do not understand what technology is?”

Hashmat’s account matches those of more than 20 students interviewed by phone at public and private universities in seven provinces across Afghanistan – Kabul, Kandahar, Helmand, Nangarhar, Bamiyan, Balkh and Wardak.

Teachers come to class and read from old notes they cannot explain … it feels like we are back in high school

Zalmay

Afghanistan’s higher-education sector contracted sharply between 2019 and 2024, according to Unesco, with female enrolment down to zero by 2024 and male enrolment falling from 310,369 in 2019 to 188,957 in 2024.

Kabul University still looks like a university from the outside. The buildings are open, male students still attend, exams are held and degrees are issued. But students say much of what makes it a university has been hollowed out.

Experienced professors have left the country, stopped teaching or been pushed aside. And ideologically aligned Taliban lecturers have been hired in their place. In some departments, recent graduates and even undergraduates are teaching.

*Names have been changed.

Categories History, International, Religion, Separation of church and state

Texas: 350 Teachers Were Investigated for Comments They Made After Charlie Kirk’s Death

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2026 //
3

The Texas Monthly reported on the aftermath of the murder of Charlie Kirk. Texas legislators wanted to punish public employees that posted “inappropriate” responses to his death. Their scrutiny ensnared 350 teachers who had not responded in a way that expressed sympathy. Eventually almost all the teachers were cleared of wrongdoing, but in the near term, they lived under a cloud of fear, fear that they would be fired, fear that they would lose their license. The hero in this story was the Texas AFT, the union, which stepped in to defend the teachers, few of whom could afford to pay for legal defense.

Naina Srivastava of The Texas Monthly wrote:

In her 28 years as a teacher working at schools in the Harris County area, Jennifer Courtemanche felt most at home at Lee High School. That changed for the 54-year-old English teacher on September 10. Hours after conservative influencer Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Courtemanche made a series of posts on Facebook about the right-wing influencer’s death and was met with dozens of comments, texts, and voicemails from strangers attacking her positions. Someone—it’s unclear who—reported her to the Goose Creek Consolidated Independent School District, while others attacked her directly. “I hope you’re next,” one read. “I hope you die by violence in front of your family,” said another. “Kill yourself,” said a third. 

Courtemanche, who was born in Dallas and has lived in Texas for her whole life, had made four posts about Kirk that day. The first, in response to Utah Governor Spencer Cox’s statement that Kirk’s assassination was a tragedy, read, “I’ll bet if the victim had been Black or Brown or a Democrat influencer he’d have been singing a different tune. Could Kirk have baited just ONE too many people? Could this have been the consequences of his actions catching up with him?” The second was a repost of a friend’s post, containing a list of controversial statements on civil rights, the LGBTQ community, and gun deaths that Kirk had made throughout the years. The third was another repost, this time from Occupy Democrats, a progressive advocacy group, that quoted Kirk— “I can’t stand the word empathy, actually,”—with the caption “#karma.” And the last was another Occupy Democrats repost about President Donald Trump and other Republicans’ silence after Melissa Hortman, a former speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives, was assassinated in her home last June. 

At some point, Courtemanche’s posts reached the attention of Texas State Representative Briscoe Cain, a Republican from Deer Park who represents her district. On X, he called for her immediate termination for “celebrating the news of Kirk’s assasination.” That post now has over 550,000 views. 

That night, Courtemanche recalls furiously searching for the settings to make her account private. A half hour before midnight, she received another voicemail. “I found your address. Someone is going to come to your house and f— you up, bitch,” an anonymous caller said. As messages continued to pour in, she worried about how people in the community might react. Courtemanche said she and her husband didn’t even go to church that Sunday, despite being regulars. Scared, Courtemanche reached out to her school principal, asking what she should do. He told her to call her local police department and to contact the district’s Human Resources. She did. 

The next morning, the HR department rang her back. The district told her not to come in and that she was being put on administrative leave. By the next Monday, Courtemanche received an email from the district notifying her that it had reported her to the Texas Education Agency.

In the wake of Kirk’s assassination, there was a wide push by the Texas GOP to discipline teachers who’d made posts about his passing that it deemed offensive. Two days after Kirk died, TEA Commissioner Mike Morath instructed ISDs to report instances of educators sharing inappropriate content online to his agency. In total, 350 complaints were levied, including those against Courtemanche. According to documents obtained by Texas Monthly via public-records requests, some school districts, like Goose Creek, chose to terminate employees after conducting investigations. Others simply reported the complaint for a state investigation into the matter. But more than six months after Kirk’s death, it appears the discipline Texas politicians promised hasn’t gone very far. All but two of the 350 complaints against teachers had been dismissed as of April, according to the testimony of Keith Ingram, an attorney with the Office of the Attorney General.  

Courtemanche’s case is an instructive one outlining how the state attempted to crack down on anti-Kirk speech. On September 22, less than two weeks after her original posts, the Goose Creek school board voted to terminate her contract by a vote of 2–0 with four abstentions. Mercedes Renteria III, one of the two members who voted for Courtemanche’s termination, gave an interview with the town’s local paper, TheBaytown Sun. “[S]he is an incompetent teacher, and she shouldn’t have crossed the line and spoken publicly on social media and every other venue to say bad things about Charlie Kirk,” he said. “I think she should be fired, and karma’s a bitch. How about that?”

Courtemanche immediately sought legal representation via the Texas American Federation of Teachers, a statewide labor union. By November, she had reached a settlement with the school that cleared her of wrongdoing. She chose to retire, but per the settlement, she waited until December 31 to resign, giving her an additional year’s worth of credit—worth $200 each month—under the teacher-retirement system.

Courtemanche was not alone. In January, the Texas AFT,  which has more than 66,000 members, filed a lawsuit against the TEA, arguing Morath’s instructions for districts to report teachers violated teachers’ First Amendment right to speech and “unleashed a wave of retaliation and disciplinary actions against teachers.” The AFT contends that simply being placed under investigation—even if the probe leads nowhere—negatively impacts an educator’s reputation. When the state opens an investigation, it places a flag on the educator’s certification and can even include them on the agency’s public registry listing employees “Not Eligible For Hire,” according to the TEA’s website. Such investigations can result in the sanction or revocation of their teaching certificate.

AFT President Zeph Capo estimates that thirty to forty educators reached out to the AFT regarding discipline about Kirk posts. Some ended up being part of the litigation, while the AFT offered verbal counseling and individual representation to others. Capo said the organization’s biggest concern was for educators who were unable to renew their certificates while under investigation. If an educator’s certificate lapses, the school district could fire him or her automatically, he said. 

“Just imagine you’ve went to school, you’ve paid a lot of money, you are now at risk of not being able to renew your certification to keep your job, all because of something you said on a Facebook post that had nothing to do with kids or anyone else,” Capo said. “That has an absolute chilling effect on those individuals.”

The Texas AFT’s lawsuit is supported by six anonymous teachers’ experiences, though filed on behalf of all its members. One teacher was placed on the “do not hire” registry for three months, preventing them from finding work, according to the lawsuit. Another was unable to renew her certification because she was under investigation and may lose her job this month as a result. 

Texas Monthly’s investigation found that some teachers were reported for fairly tame posts, including reposts of popular progressive infographics regarding Kirk’s statements and gun violence. An educator who wrote, “He was ok with children dying in schools. I am not saying he should have been shot. He defended guns above all else,” received a complaint. Another educator posted a screenshot of a Newsweek article with the headline, “Charlie Kirk Says Gun Deaths ‘Unfortunately’ Worth It To Keep 2nd Amendment,” with the caption, “First Amendment meets Second Amendment.” That educator also received a complaint. To some observers, these posts, in particular, seem to squarely fall under the protection of the First Amendment.  

Because teachers are public employees, however, their free speech rights are limited in some contexts. There have not been any notable Supreme Court rulings that directly address teachers and students’ social media usage, but the landmark 1969 Supreme Court ruling in Tinker v. Des Moines established that if speech outside the classroom “materially and substantially disrupt(s) the work and discipline of the school,” it can be restricted. 

Daxton “Chip” Stewart, a Texas Christian University professor and First Amendment expert, said that the question at the heart of the Kirk cases is whether speech outside of the classroom may have affected lessons within it. “Posts about Charlie Kirk are undoubtedly a matter of public concern,” Stewart said. “That’s core First Amendment-protected speech. People should be able to comment about that kind of thing. So really, it comes down to, does that speech interfere with teachers’ [abilities] to do their jobs.”

This question has come up repeatedly in the complaints to the TEA obtained via records request. For example, in an email to an educator with the district who received a complaint for her posts, the Eagle Mountain–Saginaw ISD superintendent wrote, “You do not get to stop being a teacher off contract hours. You continue to be seen as a public service provider that is entrusted to take care of a vulnerable, impressionable community of children. It is expected that you conduct yourself in a manner at all times that is conducive to earning and maintaining the trust of the community, parents, students and coworkers.” 

Stewart believes this standard is unfair. If a teacher spoke about Charlie Kirk in the classroom, it would be a different story, a “no-brainer,” he said. But in teachers’ private time, the state must prove that the speech is something outrageous for it to be punishable. (Ultimately, both Eagle Mountain–Saginaw and the TEA declined to take action against the educator.) 

In the past, the TEA has protected teachers’ right to speech that is controversial. In 2019, a Fort Worth English teacher asked president Trump for help removing the “illegals” from Fort Worth’s school system. She was fired. Morath said that her tweet was protected by the First Amendment, that the school district had overstepped, and that she should be reinstated. Later, courts upheld her firing.

That Morath is now taking a different stance strikes Capo, who agreed the Fort Worth teacher should not have been fired, as evidence of viewpoint discrimination in the TEA when it comes to free speech. “At least be consistent,” he said. “If you’re going to fire people for speech, then fire them for speech no matter which political direction it runs, and if you’re not going to fire them for speech, then you should be doing the same regardless of [the] political direction it comes from.”

The case between the TEA and Texas AFT hinges on the interpretation of Morath’s directive: whether it constituted a policy that school districts were required to follow. The letter sent to superintendents noted that if superintendents were made aware of “additional instances of inappropriate content being shared,” they should report it to the agency. In a September media statement, Morath said, “While all educators are held to a high standard of professionalism, there is a difference between comments made in poor taste and those that call for and incite further violence — the latter of which is clearly unacceptable.”

Capo said Morath has failed to define what would be considered “poor taste” or “inciting violence,” leading many districts to report teachers improperly out of caution. Indeed, some districts, like Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, reported they were influenced to submit complaints to the TEA because of the letter, even though they believed their employees’ speech fell within their rights. In an email to the TEA, the general counsel for Cy-Fair ISD, for one, wrote, “The District reviewed each instance of reported misconduct related to the death of Charlie Kirk individually and in light of the legal standards applicable to the specific situations. Because none of the posted comments were determined to violate District policies and to fall within the First Amendment rights of each employee, the complaints do not fall within the reporting requirements of Chapter 22A of the Texas Education Code.” However, the district still chose to report the complaint, it said, because of the notice letter. 

So far, the courts have sided with the TEA. At an April preliminary injunction hearing in the U. S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Alan Albright, appointed by Donald Trump in 2018, said he failed to see how Morath’s letter infringed upon the First Amendment. “He’s not recommending punishment here,” Albright said. “He’s recommending that if the superintendents determine that inappropriate statements, in their view, were made, that there might be, you know, one of these investigations. I don’t understand how that’s chilling.” 

The Texas AFT now has the option to appeal the ruling, but Capo said it likely will not, owing to the dismissal of most of the complaints against teachers. He said every AFT member who was terminated has now reached a favorable settlement or returned to work without disciplinary action. “Ultimately, what I was really looking for, it has been accomplished,” Capo said. He told me the union now believes that its other members won’t have to worry about state sanctions or issues that could impact their teaching certifications.

For Courtemanche, however, even reaching a settlement felt like a bittersweet resolution. She told me she’s just starting to heal from what happened. Some people she went to church with unfriended her, she said. “And so I guess if they weren’t friends to begin with, I could still go and worship with them. But if they pass judgment on me, that’s on them,” she told me.

Initially, when the social media firestorm started, Courtemanche feared she’d be pushed out of the classroom before she was ready to stop teaching. But after the investigation, she was eager to retire. She’s eligible to find work at a different school next year, but she told me it’s unlikely she’ll go back.She said the environment for educators has gotten worse in Texas, and she doesn’t want to subject herself to further difficulties. 

Categories Censorship, Freedom of Speech, Texas

Arkansas: “Abstinence Only” Approach is a Failure for These Teen Moms

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2026 //
1

The leaders of Arkansas–such as Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders–oppose abortion. They also oppose birth control. They apparently don’t teach sex education. They rely on “abstinence education,” or just say no.

But it’s not working the state has the second highest rate of births to unwed teen mothers.

The Arkansas Times reviewed a movie that explains the human consequences of this policy.

Watching “Baby/Girls,” a documentary about teen mothers in Arkansas that screened Wednesday at the Bentonville Film Festival, might be an impossible task if it weren’t for the youthful optimism of its subjects. The seriousness of what’s happened to them hasn’t sunk in, at least not in the opening scenes. They still speak in soft, girlish tones. They wear fake eyelashes, dye their hair teal. One giggles while trying to recall the word for “uterus,” the organ her baby will be emerging from in just a matter of weeks. By the end of the film, the light has gone out of their eyes.

One girl has taken off with her baby and run away from home. Another is pregnant again, on an 18-month waiting list for childcare, and desperately poor. The third, living in a dingy flop house with her boyfriend, chooses to give her baby up for adoption after leaving the infant alone on at least one occasion so she can hang out with her sisters. 

“Baby/Girls” is cinematic, but it’s a hard watch, and I don’t think the people who really need to see it — the politicians that enforce abstinence education and work to outlaw abortion, and the religious fanatics who treat sex like we’re living in Victorian England — will even bother. 

But the movie isn’t just for pro-lifers; it’s for the rest of us who need to be reminded that unplanned pregnancy is, for many women, especially teenagers, one of the absolute worst things that could ever happen, leading to a cycle of poverty, family dysfunction and more teen pregnancy. 

According to Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, “Arkansas is still 49th in the country for teen births with a rate that is almost double the national teen birth rate of 13.” (That is: On average, 22 of every 1,000 women aged 15 to 19 give birth annually in Arkansas.) 

The movie is a tastefully-done “scared straight” for the grownups in Arkansas who should be protecting these girls. I was not surprised to find on the film’s website that its creators, Jackie Jesko and Alyse Walsh, have launched a campaign advocating for sex education, birth control and better support for pregnant teens in schools, with links to Arkansas organizations including Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences’ LARC (Long-acting Reversible Contraception) Initiative.

“Baby/Girls” traces three girls — Grace, 15; Olivia, 16; and Ariana, 17 — from pregnant-and-near-bursting until their kids are infants or toddlers. They’re all living in Compassion House, a home for teen moms in Springdale, at the documentary’s start. 

The filmmakers are given incredibly intimate access to their births, family dynamics, home life, court dates and the like. We quickly learn all three grew up in terrible, neglectful situations — and their pregnancies are a continuation of a terrible, unending cycle. Grace was molested at age 3 by a man she thought to be her biological dad. Her mother was a drug addict. Olivia’s mom committed suicide when Olivia was 8 years old, and when we meet Olivia, a judge has ordered her to Compassion House because she’s decided that her grandmother’s house is not a safe place for her to be. Finally, Ariana, somehow the most well-adjusted, is the product of rape. Her mother — wire-thin and missing her teeth — is emotionally abusive and absent. 

It’s disturbing to watch the girls explain why they ever thought this would go differently. Grace watched the lives of glamorous teen moms on TikTok. They looked happy. “I wanted to feel that,” she says. Olivia simply didn’t realize that sex made babies — ”I didn’t even realize I had three holes down there,” she says, chortling. 

But none of them got pregnant on purpose. Grace forgot to take her birth control consistently. Ariana was too embarrassed to ask her mom for condoms. For Olivia, “it just kind of happened.” On the subject of abortion, Ariana is the only one who speaks about it directly. She’s religious. It was never an option. 

Crystal, the movie’s wise sage who works at Compassion House, says that girls aren’t learning basic sex education in school anymore.

None of that matters now, as the girls’ lives come spectacularly undone once they leave the shelter and support of Compassion House and move out on their own after the birth of their kids. The girls’ lives go so horribly wrong that I almost wondered if parts of the film had been staged.

Grace, a beautiful, impossibly childish girl, runs away again to live the life of a degenerate teen, vaping and doing shots around a bonfire. She leaves her baby behind with her mother, who, with four other kids to raise, is buckling under the responsibility. Grace is mystified as to why she doesn’t want to be a mom. It’s not your fault. Society failed you, the filmmakers want us to scream. And I do, silently. 

Olivia goes away to juvenile detention for a year, missing her baby’s first steps. The second she gets her ankle monitor off after returning home, she takes off with her kid. 

Ariana’s story is the saddest because, for a moment, the filmmakers let us believe she might beat the odds. Early in the film, still at Compassion House, we see Ariana’s list of goals, written out in pencil. She wants to get her own apartment and a nursing degree, find childcare, get on food stamps. It’s an impossible list for a 17-year-old but she seems so determined and clear-eyed. 

Even with a supportive partner and a tidy home, reality catches up to her. Without a GED and no time to finish it, she can’t get a better job and can’t afford childcare. The bills are piling up. And then she ends up pregnant again. 

How did we get here? The movie is careful not to blame the obvious scapegoats — pro-lifers and right-wing politicians — and equally careful to not suggest abortion as the only or even the most immediate solution. Crystal, a woman who manages Compassion House and a former teen mom herself, says that she’s a Christian and she’s pro-choice, but “the pro-life movement won the war against abortion a long time ago.” Her role in all this is just to give these girls a chance to survive. 

I want to be mad at the film for not advocating harder for abortion access but also have to agree that teen pregnancy is a multi-headed hydra that will be solved with a lot of different approaches. Helping girls know how to identify a uterus before they start having sex seems like an obvious place to start. 

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Childhood, Cruelty, Gender, Poverty

CNBC: Tennessee is Worst State in Which to Live; Texas is Second Worst

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2026 //
3

CNBC published a list of the 10 worst states in which to live.

These are factors that should be considered by businesses before relocating.

The rankings considered: Crime rates, air quality, healthcare access, worker protections, and civil rights laws…among factors that can hurt a state in quality of life rankings.

Tennessee ranks as the worst state. Texas is the second worst.

These are the 10 best states in which to live.

Nebraska ranks #1.

It also ranked #1 in the Network for Public Education’s report card on states that support public education.

Where does your state rank?

Categories Education Reform

Trump Guts Federal Election Security Agency

By dianeravitch
July 22, 2026 //
1

Last week, Trump gave an address to the nation about malign attempts by foreign powers to influence our elections. He said that China was meddling in our elections, but the documents he released pointed to Russia’s efforts to help him. When he ran against Biden in 2020, the documents showed, Russian propaganda tried to portray Joe Biden and his son Hunter as recipients of foreign bribes; multiple investigations never produced any evidence for these claims.

Ironically, MSNOW points out, Trump has eliminated the federal agency that helped protect election security. You have probably never heard of that agency (CISA), so he correctly assumes that you won’t notice.

Now the Department of Himeland Security says it will offer election security only to states that hand over their voter rolls.

It’s important to remember that the U.S. Constitution gives states the power to control their elections, not the President or any federal agency.

Laura Barrón-López and David Rohde write:

President Donald Trump says he is worried about foreign interference in U.S. elections. That was the reason he gave when he released declassified intelligence documents last week that ended up undercutting his own baseless claims about rigged elections.

In his primetime address on July 16, Trump said the U.S. “must take urgent action” to protect voting infrastructure against foreign actors. But shortly after taking office last year, Trump gutted a key agency designed to protect America’s elections from exactly that. 

It’s called the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — an office created during Trump’s first term. CISA is one of the main federal partners for states on election security, sharing intelligence on potential threats to voting infrastructure and providing quick regional support. 

After Trump returned to office, the cyber agency housed under the Department of Homeland Security took a major hit. Elon Musk’s DOGE fired more than 100 workers, including election security advisers. More than 600 others were placed on administrative leave, were reassigned or took buyouts. 

Now the Trump administration is telling states they will only receive resources if they hand over voter rolls to be screened through a new federal database that a judge recently deemed unlawful in its current form.

That database is known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, which experts and a federal judge are concerned has a high error rate that could disenfranchise voters. 

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said CISA will release an “election infrastructure plan” in the next 30 days — barely three months out from the midterms, which will determine which party controls Congress.

“If they participate in the SAVE program, we’ll provide the resources and training to support state election integrity,” Mullin said last week. “We’re not trying to change the outcome.”

‘They’re flying blind’

Multiple current and former senior election and national security officials told MS NOW that they could not recall a time when the federal government held back resources and money meant to secure America’s elections. 

And multiple state election officials have said they are not receiving any briefings on possible foreign threats to election security from the federal government. Such briefings were once a regular occurrence, they said.

During the first Trump administration, “we were collaborative — carrots rather than sticks,” said one of the former officials, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. The second Trump administration is “very much focused on sticks.”

One election official in a swing state said the difference from 2024 is stark, saying that “it’s every state for themselves.” The official spoke on the condition of anonymity over concerns about retaliation from federal officials. During the last cycle, the state official said they had a regional federal cybersecurity expert “on speed dial” who could “see the whole puzzle.”

That doesn’t exist anymore, and without it, the state election official said, “we’re less informed on the pattern of the attackers and are slower to respond.” 

“I’ve literally never heard anybody effectively say ‘to keep you safe, you have to give me what I want,’” said the swing state election official, referring to DHS threats to withhold resources if states don’t hand over sensitive voter data. 

The risks compound at the local level, they added: “Does [a clerk’s] laptop have the IT infrastructure to defend against an attack from Iran? That’s what keeps me up at night.”

Cait Conley, a West Point graduate and combat veteran who served as the senior adviser to the director of CISA during the Biden administration, accused Trump of gutting the agency and sowing doubt about the security of U.S. elections in his speech last week. 

“If Donald Trump were truly concerned about election security, he would not have fired hundreds of federal workers whose jobs were to secure our elections,” she said. Conley is now running for Congress in New York as a Democrat. 

To continue reading, open the link.

Categories Elections

You Can Help Turn Texas Blue!

By dianeravitch
July 22, 2026 //
2

I am once again posting a fascinating account of an important district in Texas. The district is Tarrant County. It’s the third largest district in Texas. For a long time, it was reliably red. Now, we learn in Michelle H.Davis’s post, it is close to turning blue.

You can help by sending contributions of any size to candidates she describes. I was moved to send $100 to Alisa Simmons, whom she describes near the end of the post. Any of the candidates mentioned would appreciate $10, $25, whatever you can afford.

The best part of the post is that it gives you a flavor of why these races matter. Like the contest for leadership of the prison, where more than 70 prisoners have died while in custody since 2017.

Davis writes:

This is the third installment of this series, where we’re looking at election data from the largest counties to see where we need to be for our hypothetical big blue wave in November. If you missed our previous installments:

Harris and Dallas, the only counties with higher populations than Tarrant, are reliably blue and need to focus on turnout. Tarrant, on the other hand, is where the battleground is. It’s a swing county because Republicans have held the reins of county government for too long. 2026 could be the year that changes. 

Twenty years ago, Tarrant County was over 75% white and the largest red county in America. 

Tarrant County

And of course, we know that Demographics are not destiny, but we can see in Tarrant County that votes have been trending blue for a long time. 

More than that, there’s a heavy burden on Tarrant County, just like Harris and Dallas. In 2024, 7.96% of all Texas Democrats lived in Tarrant County. And in a state as big as Texas, that’s a lot of weight to pull. 

The good old boys are still hanging on. 

Because here’s the thing about Tarrant County. This isn’t a story about demographics slowly working their magic while everybody waits around for the numbers to catch up. This is a county government that knows exactly what’s coming and is doing everything in its power to make sure it never arrives. They’ve gerrymandered maps. The Tarrant County jail that can’t stop killing people. The County Judge told the only Black woman on the Commissioners Court to shut up. This is what a dying regime looks like when it still has its hands on the levers.

Start with Tim O’Hare, the County Judge. Before Tarrant, O’Hare was mayor of Farmers Branch, where he made it his life’s work to run Latino residents out of town, an obsession that ended up costing that city millions in legal fees. He brought the same energy to Fort Worth. He’s taken money from the Defend Texas Liberty PAC, an organization with documented Nazi ties, and he has never denounced it, not once, not even when asked directly. He led the charge to defund Girls Inc. of Tarrant County, a program that serves Black and Hispanic girls. And in April of 2025, in front of the entire Commissioners Court, he told Commissioner Alisa Simmons, a Black woman, to “sit down and be quiet,” then accused her of lacking “a semblance of class.” Read that however you want. 

He’s not doing this alone. Tony Tinderholt, the just-retired state rep, announced he was running for Simmons’ own Precinct 2 seat the day after the county’s gerrymandered map passed. Tinderholt is also one of the Texas House’s top recipients of Defend Texas Liberty PAC cash, and he was one of the few Republicans in the state to vote against the CROWN Act, a bill that simply says you can’t fire someone for their hairstyle.Matt Krause, another commissioner, used to represent a State House district that federal courts had once found to have been racially gerrymandered. This is the bench.

And then there’s the jail. Sheriff Bill Waybourn has been in office since 2017, and in that time, more than 70 people have died in his custody. Anthony Johnson Jr. died of asphyxiation after a jailer knelt on his back for over a minute while he said he couldn’t breathe. Two former jailers are now indicted for murder. The county has paid out more than $4.3 million settling lawsuits over deaths and abuse in that jail. When Commissioner Simmons has tried to get Waybourn to brief the court on what’s happening inside, she’s refused, calling her requests “hostile.” Waybourne has also spoken at a Turning Point USA event, an organization with its own well-documented ties to white supremacist rhetoric.

And the redistricting, the whole reason Tinderholt is running for Simmons’ seat in the first place, is because the Commissioners Court redrew Precincts 1 and 2, the only Democratic-held seats, and O’Hare admitted on camera it was to lock in a Republican majority. Simmons and her fellow Democratic commissioner had the UCLA Voting Rights Project analyze the new maps, and the conclusion was that every proposed map packed Black and Hispanic voters into a single district to dilute their power everywhere else. Lawsuits were filed. They got dismissed on procedural grounds. The map stands for 2026.

But something has shifted in Tarrant County. Democrats have been sweeping local races, and Taylor Rhemet’s win was the cherry on top.

Last year, Democrats flipped multiple school boards in Tarrant County. This year, they flipped several city council races across the county. And on January 31, Democrat Taylor Rehmet beat Republican Leigh Wambsganss for a state Senate seat that hadn’t gone blue since 1991. Not close, either. 57% to 43%, in a district Trump carried by 17 points just over a year earlier. Wambsganss outspent him by two million dollars. She’s the chief communications officer for Patriot Mobile, the outfit that’s spent the last several years funding the Christian nationalist school board takeovers. 

Hispanic voters did that. In some of the heavily Latino precincts on Fort Worth’s north side, Rehmet outperformed Kamala Harris’s 2024 numbers by more than 50 points. That’s a mobilization story, the same one I’ve been telling you about Harris and Dallas counties, except this time it happened in a district that hadn’t elected a Democrat to that seat in 35 years. Rehmet and Wambsganss go at it again in November for the full term, and if Tarrant Democrats can do what they did in January one more time, that seat is gone for good.

Down at the State House, the map is a little friendlier, if you squint.

Five Republican-held House seats anchor themselves in Tarrant County, and depending on how big this wave gets, we could see two of them flip. Maybe four. Maybe all five, though that’s the kind of year Democrats haven’t had here in three decades.

HD93 and HD96 are the two to watch first. HD94 is Tony Tinderholt’s old seat, now open since he’s bailing to run for Simmons’ commissioner spot, and Democrat Katie O’Brien Duzan is running there. HD96 has an open seat left by David Cool, defending against Democrat Ebony Turner, in a district that’s been quietly drifting for years.

HD98, Giovanni Capriglione’s old seat covering Keller, Colleyville, and parts of Southlake and Grapevine, is open too after his retirement, with Democrat Cate Brennan running.

HD94 and HD97 round out the list, the kind of districts that turn competitive the moment turnout ticks up, exactly like it just did in SD9.

Two of these flip in a decent night. Four flip if Tarrant does in November what it just did in January. And if all five go blue, that’s no longer a wave. That’s Tarrant County telling the rest of Texas the fight is already over.

Congressional seats to watch.

Tarrant now sits inside four competitive-adjacent congressional districts, and all four have a name on the ballot worth knowing:

  • TX24: Beth Van Duyne vs. Kevin Burge, a Marine Corps veteran who worked in the DIA and served in Biden’s White House Situation Room. Not a top-tier flip on paper, but this is the district that got carved through Tarrant’s fastest-diversifying suburbs, and it’s the one to watch for over-performance.
  • TX12: Craig Goldman vs. Heli Rodriguez-Prilliman, a Fort Worth entrepreneur running her first race. Goldman inherited Kay Granger’s old seat, and this is the most Tarrant-heavy of the four districts.
  • TX25: Roger Williams vs. Dione Sims, who won her primary runoff outright. This district picks up Arlington and Grand Prairie, the same ground that just delivered Rehmet’s win.
  • TX06: Jake Ellzey vs. Danny Minton, though only a sliver of this district touches Tarrant at all, it may be the most populated part of the district.

None of these is the marquee pickup Rehmet already delivered. But they’re the four names that turn a good night in Tarrant into a great one down-ballot, and if the county keeps trending the way Rehmet has shown it can, one of them stops being a long shot sooner than people think.

Now let’s talk about Alisa Simmons, because she’s the whole ballgame.

Simmons is the Precinct 2 commissioner Tim O’Hare told to sit down and be quiet, and this November, she’s running to replace him.

Before politics, Simmons spent 12 years as a broadcast journalist and then 18 years running budgets and public safety communications for the Tarrant County 9-1-1 District, the kind of job where you learn exactly how county government works and exactly where it breaks down. She spent ten years as president of the Arlington NAACP, served as second vice president of the Texas NAACP, and sat on the ACLU of Texas board. She ran for HD94 in 2020 and lost, then won her Precinct 2 commissioner seat in 2022. Since then, she’s been the loudest, most consistent voice on that court, demanding accountability from the jail, fighting the defunding of Girls Inc., and opposing the elimination of free rides to the polls.

When O’Hare and his Republican majority redrew her own precinct to make it harder to hold, Simmons ran countywide instead. And on March 3, she didn’t just win the Democratic primary for County Judge, she buried it.

Her platform is exactly what you’d expect from someone who’s spent years watching this county’s dysfunction up close. A full Department of Justice review of jail operations, independent oversight with actual teeth, and a direct reckoning with the 76 lives lost in that facility since 2017. She’s running on affordability, on fiscal responsibility that doesn’t require dipping into reserves to cover basic obligations, and on ending what she calls the constant partisan theater that’s replaced actual governance on that court. In her own words, it’s time for the Tarrant County government to get to work instead of getting into shouting matches.

I expect her to win in November. I’m not just saying that because I like her, although I do, a lot. I’m saying it because the numbers back it up, because O’Hare’s own party is nervous enough about Tarrant that they’re gerrymandering commissioner precincts mid-decade instead of just running on their record, and because Simmons has already shown she can win a race Republicans specifically redesigned to make sure she couldn’t.

So what does it actually take to get there?

Turnout, same as always. Tarrant County has nearly 1.5 million registered voters, and the difference between a good night and a great one lives entirely in the precincts that already agree with us and just haven’t been asked to show up yet. 

The Hispanic vote that swung so hard left for Rehmet in January has to swing that way again in November, and it will, if the same organizing that worked in that special election gets replicated at scale. 

The Tarrant County Democratic Party fielded its broadest slate of candidates since 1994 this cycle. That’s not an accident either. That’s what happens when people stop waiting for demographics to save them and start building the infrastructure to ensure demographics actually show up.

Tim O’Hare knows what’s coming. That’s why he’s spent his entire tenure trying to outrun it instead of earning it. Alisa Simmons is the one running straight at it.

You can learn more about Alisa Simmons on her website, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Threads.

If you’re in Tarrant County, please consider volunteering for her campaign.

Donate here if you can.

Tarrant County doesn’t need to wait for a statewide wave to matter.

It needs its own county government back, and it’s closer than it’s been in thirty years.

Rehmet already broke the seal. Simmons is next. Somewhere between two and five House seats are up for grabs. The good old boys know it, which is why they gerrymandered instead of governing.

Show up, and Tarrant stops being the excuse Texas Republicans hide behind. It becomes the county that ends them. And in 2026, Democrats take back Tarrant County.

Categories Bigotry, Civil Rights, Courage, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Texas

Julian V. Heilig: The Hunger Games of Education Has Begun. Who Will Survive?

By dianeravitch
July 22, 2026 //
2

This is a thoughtful essay on a crucial problem: shrinking enrollments in higher education and the budget cuts to meet them. Julian Vasquez Heilig lays out the problem and the typical response. He thinks there is a better way and he describes it.

Heilig is on the faculty of Michigan State University and is a national expert on topics such as diversity, equity and inclusion.

He writes:

The warning signs are no longer theoretical. Schools are closing. Colleges are preparing layoffs. Faculty buyouts are spreading. Academic programs are disappearing. Dorm beds are sitting empty. Classrooms are thinning out. Tax revenue is weakening. State appropriations are uncertain. Consultants are being hired and paid millions to identify “efficiencies.” Boards are quietly discussing mergers and closures. American education is entering a period of deep instability.

This is not only a crisis for presidents and superintendents. It is a crisis for communities. When a school closes, a neighborhood loses more than a building. When a college cuts faculty and staff, a region loses jobs and opportunity. When families question whether education is worth the price, the consequences ripple through local economies and democracy itself.

In this article, I first define the problem. Enrollment pressure, funding instability, demographic change, and political attacks are converging across K-12 and higher education. These pressures are already producing closures and painful restructuring. But this is not only a warning. At the end, I turn to what communities can do through politics, public pressure, local organizing, accountability, and leadership selection before the choices become narrower.

The Warning Signs Are Already Here

At my own institution, public projections suggest new student enrollment could decline somewhere between 3 and 5 percent this year. If those projections hold, that would mark a return to consecutive enrollment declines after the gains achieved during my years as provost. During that period, we reversed an almost decade-long enrollment slide.

That is alarming because this moment was supposed to be the “high water mark” before the demographic cliff. WICHE projects that the total number of high school graduates will peak around 2026 and then decline steadily through 2041. Universities were supposed to be maximizing enrollment now. Instead, some are struggling while the student pool remains historically large.

In many ways, education is being pushed into an arena where resources are shrinking and the odds are being rewritten before many institutions understand the rules.

The Old Survival Strategies Are Running Out

Much of higher education survived the past several years through strategies that are becoming unsustainable. Institutions poured millions into financial aid discounting. They leaned harder into full-pay families. They expanded retention offices and predictive analytics systems. They built student success centers and advising infrastructure. They spent heavily on marketing and enrollment staff.

Ironically, retention and enrollment strategy helped save some institutions from earlier financial pressure. During my time in executive leadership, we understood that higher education had entered a new era of competition. Universities were no longer competing only over prestige. They were competing over affordability and survival.

Financial aid, student success infrastructure, and community partnerships became essential tools. Institutions that moved aggressively like Arizona State and Georgia State often stabilized themselves. Institutions that remained complacent fell further behind.

But even enrollment growth stories now face new threats. Federal research funding is unstable. State appropriations remain uncertain. Inflation is pressuring budgets. Some states like Michigan have seen stronger FAFSA activity. Yet many families are questioning the value of higher education. Political attacks have also weakened public trust while threatening research capacity and institutional autonomy.

Please open the link to read Heilig’s creative proposals for meeting the crisis.

Categories Budget Cuts, Courage, Creativity, Democracy, Disruption, Education Reform, Equity, Ethics, Funding, Higher Education

CNN: France Becomes First European Country to Ban Social Media for Children

By dianeravitch
July 22, 2026 //
4

CNN reports on a growing phenomenon: banning young children from social media. France is the first European nation to do so, and others are set to follow. This action reflects growing concern about the effect of social media on children’s attention span and exposure to inappropriate content.

CNN reported:

French lawmakers voted Tuesday to ban social media use for children under the age of 15, making it the first country in the European Union to introduce such an age limit.

Australia made history late last year when it implemented the first ban on social media for under-16s. The British government announced similar restrictions last month, expected to come into effect next year. Spain, Greece and Denmark are also planning to impose minimum age limits for social media use.

French lawmakers overwhelmingly voted in favor of the bill, which was strongly backedby France’s President Emmanuel Macron. He will now sign it into law.

“Social media will be banned for children under 15 starting this school year,” he posted on X after the vote as he thanked lawmakers for passing the bill.

“The brains of our children and our teenagers are not for sale,” he had said in a video message in January. “The emotions of our children and our teenagers are not for sale or to be manipulated, neither by American platforms nor by Chinese algorithms.”

Macron had ordered the French government to expedite the bill’s passage through parliament, with the aim of having legislation in place for the beginning of the new next school year in September.

It is not yet clear how the social media sites will verify users’ ages. Australia requires companies to “take reasonable steps” to prevent underage children from opening or keeping accounts, and the French government has promised to implement age controls to back up the law.

Members of the French Senate debate a draft law that aims to ban social media access for children under 15, in Paris, France, on March 31, 2026.

Members of the French Senate debate a draft law that aims to ban social media access for children under 15, in Paris, France, on March 31, 2026. Firas Abdullah/EPA/Shutterstock

Earlier versions of the legislation also included proposals for a ban on advertising promoting social media to children, including by influencers, and to require advertisements for social media platforms to carry the warning: “Dangerous products for children under 15.” However, these plans did not make it into the final bill.

The new law will be enforced by Arcom, France’s audiovisual and digital communications regulator. It is expected to apply to all the major platforms.

According to Arcom, children aged 12 to 17 in France spend an average of 1 hour and 21 minutes a day on TikTok. The regulator says the platform’s recommendation algorithm tends to promote the most “extreme” content, exposing teenagers to a continuous stream of anxiety-inducing or otherwise harmful videos.

Social media companies say they already take steps to protect children from some kinds of content.

‘Real change of atmosphere’

The proposal for a ban was welcomed by many French parents earlier this year.

“I think it’s great,” mother-of-six Geraldine Delacroix told CNN in March. “Now I’m waiting to see how it’s workable, but in any case, it’s better than nothing,” she added, noting that children could often get around existing parental controls. “Even if we block, they find ways to get around it,” she said.

In her work as a pediatrician, Delacroix has seen a growing distrust of smartphones and social media over the past decade among her patients’ families. “People are tense (about smartphones),” she said. “There’s been a real change of atmosphere.”

To finish reading the article, open the link.

Categories Childhood, Technology

I Owe an Apology to Ted Dintersmith

By dianeravitch
July 21, 2026 //
13

About a dozen years ago, I heard from Ted Dintersmith. I didn’t know anything about him other than that he was a venture capitalist who was interested in education reform. My hackles went up, because the term “venture capitalist who was interested in education reform” immediately conjured up images of Democrats for Education Reform,” a faux group that is dedicated to charter schools, Teach for America, evaluating teachers by student test scores, and union-busting.

When I thought about the people in this category, I thought about very wealthy men like Ravenal Boykin Curry IV, Whitney Tilson, John Perry, Ken Griffin, Jeff Yass, Daniel Loeb, Arthur Rock, Joel Greenblatt, Bruce Rauner, and Paul Tudor Jones. They are financiers who have committed millions to the cause of privatizing public schools. They are united in their contempt for public schools, teachers, and unions.

So I was wary of Ted and suspicious of his motives. And I pushed him aside, thinking he was part of the cabal of know-it-all entrepreneurs with a zeal to reform (privatize) public schools.

So, I now publicly admit that I was wrong. Ted has traveled the country, visiting schools and listening. He knows how hard teachers work, and he admires them. He has teamed up with some savvy people, like Tony Wagner and the late Sir Ken Robinson, to produce films and write books.

When I recently read his latest article, I realized that I had completely misjudged Ted. He doesn’t want to destroy public schools or privatize them. He wants to make them better. He wants students to love school and learn what they need to know to make informed choices.

He has seen some good charter schools (as I have), but he knows that a few hundred charter schools won’t lead to the transformation of tens of thousands of public schools. And–my thought–to the extent that charter schools defund public schools, they create more problems, more inequities.

So, I hereby apologize to Ted Dintersmith for prejudging him and for lumping him with the Billionaire Boys Club, those who see school transformation as a hobby.

When you read this post you will see that he doesn’t have all the answers, but he is asking the right question.

He writes:

About these notes: Always Monday. Always short. Always free. Always about civil society’s future. At times, interesting. If this was forwarded to you, subscribe here.

First, thanks for your feedback on my recent posts. My goal of late is to explore the various factors causing America to unravel. Toward a systems model of the forces undermining America’s democracy, moral compass, and social cohesion. Today, education.

For five decades, U.S. education policy has been driven by two goals: test scores and college. The No Child Left Behind Act in 2002. Then in 2010, Common Core. Obama’s rallying cry: “By 2020, the United States will once again lead the world in college completion.” Our all-consuming education focus. With massive collateral damage.

Let’s start with the funnel. While the college path works out well for some, most end up on the wrong side of education’s Bell Curve. Over half go directly to career, lacking a hirable skill and often with gutted self-esteem. Of those heading off to college, half don’t finish. Of those who graduate, half don’t get any kind of dream job. A system that’s produced some 43 million adults burdened by $1.8 trillion of student loan debt.

With a boost from Harvard-educated JFK, America grew to equate a prestigious college degree with human worth. This equivalence worked its way into news stories, movies, television shows, commercials . . . and labor markets. Prestige employers (that’s you, Goldman Sachs and McKinsey) made an elite college degree the essential hiring criterion. Less glamorous companies (that’s you, Sherwin-Williams) made a college degree mandatory for promotions. Rich families push their kids from the womb toward an Ivy+ degree. Poor families want the same for their kids. University research teams (that’s you, Georgetown) produce skewed studies touting a massive $1.2 million earnings lift for college grads. The Federal government opens the spigot for readily-obtained, impossible-to-shake student loans.

We’d like to think that America’s education system levels the playing field, but it does the opposite. The SCOTUS 1973 San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez says it’s just fine for U.S. public schools to be largely funded by local property taxes. Rich kids are showered with resources’; poor kids show up to school hungry. Test scores point to an education ‘achievement gap’ that gets pinned on our teachers – not America’s staggering income inequality. The system’s winners feed elite colleges that educate more students from the richest 1% of families than from the bottom 50%. For more, read Paul Tough’s book The Inequality Machine.

With college placements as the measure of success, America’s K12 schools became college-ready test-prep institutions. Pit kids in dog-eat-dog competitions: class rank, SAT scores, AP scores, college placement. A barrage of state- and Federally-mandated multiple-choice exams that rank kids, teachers, schools, districts, and states. Clear marching orders for K12 schools – train kids to perform well on multiple-choice exams and get them off to some college.

To this day, America relies on two numbers to define the education quality of a school, district, state, nation, and human. Math and reading scores. That’s it. Don’t believe me? Just note what journalists write and what policymakers cite. We’ve pushed generations of young Americans to get those damn test scores up. No worries if we short-change career-based learning, civics, history, and art. No worries if we disenage kids and demoralize teachers. No worries if a relentless focus on rote learning crushes a child’s curiosity, creativity, joy, and agency. No worries if kids get the soul-sucking message that what matters in life is outcompeting others on pointless tasks. Education priorities that encapsulate the classic definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results.

So many reforms, so little change

During their formative K12 years, America’s kids take more than 100 standardized exams. These cost-minimizing exams are expressly designed to be graded by a computer. And if a computer can grade a task, it can do that task. In every sense, we push kids to develop rote skills that machines handle flawlessly. Already, AI aces every assignment and exam required to graduate magna cum laude from Harvard. Reading exams call for regurgitating what’s put in front of you – perfect training for conspiracy-absorbing adults. Math exams are tied to esoteric micro-procedures (e.g., factoring polynomials) that adults never use. Yet we chase these scores, for decades, making no progress, ignoring Goodhart’s Law: “Any measure that becomes a target ceases to be a good measure.”

There you have it. America’s colossal education botch. Train kids to perform rote tasks. Crush out the essential human traits of curiosity, audacity, creativity, agency, and joy. Standardize what’s taught and tested to produce data that ranks and sorts — rather than helping each child develop their distinctive human potential. Most get a chronic ‘you lack proficiency’ message in a system that heaps advantage on the affluent. Botched priorities, paving the way to our current nightmare. A populace unable and unwilling to critically analyze the torrent of lies coming from the White House. A populace that holds its nose to vote for a convicted felon who rails on the ‘educated elite.’ A boiling cauldron of resentment, corruption, and anti-science vitriol. As to how this has worked out, read David Brooks’ fascinating How the Ivy League Broke America.

I don’t offer these views on education casually. For the past fifteen years, I’ve immersed myself in this world. I’ve visited hundreds of schools, and convened thousands of conversations, all across America. I celebrate the bright spots in my books (What School Could Be: Insights and Inspiration from Teachers Across America) and films (Most Likely to Succeed and Multiple Choice). But I’ve seen the failure. Failure caused by an obsolete system and failed accountability measures. Our classroom teachers are heroes. It’s not easy to fight the system, but many do. Give special thanks to the teachers in your life, who persevere despite being shortchanged on pay, respect, and trust. They endure in an entrenched system that has churned out generations of young adults ill-prepared for career, citizenship, and life. A system sowing the seeds for democracy’s collapse.

Three Bold Ideas

Career-Based Learning for All: My recent film Multiple Choice showcases a mainstream public school district that immerses all high-school kids in career-based learning across a range of skills (e.g., carpentry, welding, healthcare, cybersecurity, digital media, AI). Better for the career-bound and, a bit surprisingly, better for the college-bound. The key is making career-based learning essential for all kids, not just ‘those’ kids who don’t resonate with academic curriculum.

Finland: America can learn much from Finland. Their remarkable education progress resulted from a budget crisis that forced them to choose between data and educator excellence. They dumped all standardized tests and focused on developing outstanding classroom teachers – better training, more pay, loads of respect. Finnish kids spend comparatively little time on ‘school’; even high-schoolers have just six hours of class time and homework during the school week. Lots of time for play and exploration. A well-educated populace. For more, read Pasi Sahlberg’s Finnish Lessons.

Accountability: Base accountability on a child’s growing ability to create and carry out initiatives that help make their world better. Portfolios of purpose, not a checklist of counterproductive numbers. Check out New York’s Performance Standards Consortium or read Tony Wagner’s Mastery.

Bonus Idea: Long talked about, America would be well-served if every high school graduate engaged in public service — lifting up their community while developing important skills. Those going on to college bring maturity and real-world experience to years often wasted on beer pong. Those eschewing the college path are off and running with purpose and skills. Young Americans across all demographics in a melting pot that bridges our current demographic and political divides.

Nervously, 

Ted

Categories Accountability, Curriculum, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Higher Education, Jobs, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Standardized Testing
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