Parents and Teachers: New Study Warns of Dangers of Google AI

By dianeravitch
July 20, 2026 //
0

PBS News discussed a study warning about the dangers of Google AI:

Child safety advocates are sounding the alarm about artificial intelligence features now being used by millions of students.

Google’s built-in AI search functions pose an “unacceptable risk” to children, a new report from Common Sense Media found. 

The organization found that across more than 2,600 test interactions, Google’s AI Overview and AI Mode routinely failed to recognize harmful behavior, answered 100% of hypothetical homework assignments, and provided incorrect and inconsistent responses to questions.

“It’s deeply disturbing how poorly these widely accessible tools do,” said Justin Reich, director of MIT’s Teaching Systems Lab and associate professor of digital media.

PBS News’ Hannah Grabenstein dives into key findings from the report, and Geoff Bennett spoke with Omidyar Network CEO Michele Jawando about what should be done to protect kids in the age of AI.

Categories Technology

Paul Krugman: The Billionaire Backlash

By dianeravitch
July 20, 2026 //
4

Nobel-Prize winning economist Paul Krugman wrote about the public awakening to the menace of billionaires who hoard wealth and buy power. Not all billionaires are bad. McKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, has given away billions to worthy causes. But she is not typical. Others are using their money, like Larry Ellison, to destroy our independent media, or to buy elections, usually for reactionaries who promise them lower taxes.

Krugman’s post:

Suddenly it’s OK to sound the alarm about the political power of billionaires. And I do mean suddenly. The chart above, from political scientist Andrew Hall, examines fundraising emails to track the extent to which politicians say negative things about the hyper-wealthy. Not surprisingly, almost all mentions are negative. Until 2025 there were remarkably few such mentions – that is, until the cavalcade of fawning tech bros at the Trump inauguration abruptly made criticism of billionaires and their influence mainstream.

Hall calls this “billionaire bashing.” Tyler Cowencalls it “billionaire derangement syndrome,” as if it were unreasonable to worry about the political power of a handful of incredibly wealthy menwho are bestowing tens of millions in favors to the Trump administration and the Trump family, as well as spending vast sums to influence elections and Supreme Court nominations. The real puzzle is why it didn’t happen sooner.

You don’t need statistics to realize that there has been an explosion of wealth at the very top of the scale. From their titanic yachts to their life extension treatments, the hyper-wealthy are flaunting their billions almost everywhere one looks. For example, a few days ago the Wall Street Journal published a report on a new trend: “landmaxxing,” as in, the hyper-wealthy are increasingly buying giant estates:

And the statistics bear out the impressionistic evidence: there has been an explosion of wealth at the very top. In last Sunday’s primer I noted that in 1982, the first year Forbes compiled its list of the 400 richest Americans, the combined wealth of the 400 was only $92 billion. In 2025 it was $6.6 trillion. Even adjusting for inflation, the growth of wealth at the top has dwarfed gains in income and wealth for the average American:

So why should the rest of us care about how the other 0.0002% live? One important reason is that wealth at the top is, to a significant extent, coming at the expense of American workers. As a recent report from the New York Feddocuments, the share of national income going to workers is at an 80-year low:

Line chart tracking labor share in percentage (vertical axis) from 1945 through 2025 (horizontal axis); starting in the early 2000s, labor share entered a sustained decline, with a particularly sharp drop during the global financial crisis.

Source: Liberty Street Economics

A second, even more important reason is the fact that the hyper-wealthy aren’t just landmaxxing — they’re powermaxxing.They are seriously undermining American democracy as well as lowering the living standards of ordinary Americans.

The Journal article about mega-estates name-checked Larry Ellison, who is America’s 2ndrichest man, and Ken Griffin, who is only the 21strichest, with a mere $50 billion in net worth. In addition to buying huge compounds, both men are very much buying political influence. Ellison’s family has taken control of CBS, which it is rapidly corrupting into a right-wing mouthpiece, and is trying to take over CNN too. And the day after the report on landmaxxing, the Journal published this:

Again, statistical data bear out the impressionistic evidence. As recently as the 2000s, the hyper-wealthy played little direct role in campaign finance, although influence campaigns by the likes of the Koch brothers and Richard Mellon Scaife were already having a major effect on the politics of taxation, climate and more. Since then the combination of soaring billionaire wealth and the Citizens United decision by the Roberts Supreme Court — a court whose Trump-enabling, anti-democraticslant was itself largely engineered by the Kochs — have opened the floodgates. Billionaires accounted for almost 20 percent of campaign spending in 2024, and that surely understates their influence:

Massive political spending has given billionaires massive political power. True, some of what the Trump administration does reflects Trump’s personal whims, obsessions and vanity — which is why the Iran debacle happened and is turning into a quagmire. But a large part of federal policy now is government of the billionaires, by the billionaires, for the billionaires.

What do billionaires want and get? Money isn’t their only object. Some of them genuinely believe in causes beyond their own further enrichment. Unfortunately, these causes are on average loathsome. Elon Musk, to take the most prominent example, appears to be personally committed to white supremacy and right-wing extremism. Peter Thiel, who bought JD Vance his Ohio Senate seat, appears to be genuinely crazy: he’s called for a return to monarchy and is now ranting about the antichrist. As Henry Farrellargues, we shouldn’t be talking about billionaire derangement syndrome, we should be talking about deranged billionaire syndrome.

Obligatory disclaimer: not all billionaires are deranged, and some are public-spirited figures who try to use their wealth and power to help others. However, the Citizens United decision, along with the Trump administration’s raw corruption, opened the door for the all too numerous predatory billionaires to acquire more political power in order to further rig a system that is already greatly tilted in their favor. Want to pollute air and water? Want your anti-competitive merger approved? Want a big tax cut that benefits the billionaire class while stripping ordering people of their healthcare? Want to eliminate financial regulation so that you can play games with and siphon off other people’s money? No problem on all those counts.

Above all, the billionaires want low taxes for themselves. A recent paper by Balkir et alestimates that because we tax income from wealth at much lower rates than income from wages, the wealthiest 400 people in American pay an average tax rate of 24%, compared with 30% for the population at large and 45% for high-income Americans who derive their income from earnings rather than ownership of assets.

As I noted Sunday, low taxes on the hyper-wealthy feed a downward spiral of oligarchy in which low taxes make it easier for huge fortunes to grow even larger, and in which the power of vast wealth keeps increasing, leading to even more favorable policies for the few.

This downward spiral has been taking place for decades. As I said, the real question about the backlash against billionaires is why it didn’t happen sooner.

Please open the link to finish.

Categories Billionaires, Extremism, Inequality

ProPublica Reports on Child Abuse at Arkansas Voucher School

By dianeravitch
July 20, 2026 //
0

Imagine a school where a child is seated in the middle of a circle of students, and the head of the school encourages the other children to abuse him. She too joins in the belittling of the unfortunate child.

ProPublica found such a school in Arkansas, where the head of school led the abusive treatment of a student. It is not a public school. It’s a voucher school that operates with public funds and minimal oversight.

ProPublica reported:

At her private school just beyond the city limits of Jonesboro, Arkansas, Mary “Tracy” Morrison demanded the attention of the 19 students seated on the floor in a circle. She then directed a skinny 13-year-old boy wearing a cartoon Mario shirt to sit in the center.

“Raise your hand if he’s ever been mean to you — ever,” Morrison, the owner, prompted the other middle schoolers, and some hands shot up.

“Most people don’t think you’re a nice kid. You lie. You lie all the time,” she told the boy. She encouraged his classmates to name things they don’t like about him.

Morrison’s voice got louder. She knelt inside the circle just inches from the boy and swatted him. On the head. On the neck. At first he flinched and started to raise his hands to block her. But she snapped at him to keep his arms down: “You don’t have the right!”

“Come over here and put your hands on him, however you want,” Morrison told the students. 

A boy volunteered. “I’ll do it,” he said, and the other students cheered and clapped.

That student entered the circle, looped his arm around the boy’s neck and choked him. Morrison gave him a high-five. The boy in the center cowered. Then other students took turns slapping, pinching and punching the boy. Morrison picked up a footlong plastic cylinder — it resembled a pipe — and thwacked him over and over, calling him a liar.

The attack went on for nearly 40 minutes. At the end, Morrison made the boy apologize to his classmates for mistreating them. Three other school employees were in the room that day in April 2025 but didn’t intervene. The whole thing was captured on video.

At this point in the story, the video is posted.

Morrison had founded her school, The Delta Institute for the Developing Brain, the year before, soon after Arkansas legislators decided to allow families to use public money for private school tuition through its Education Freedom Account program. 

Delta Institute joined a surge of new private schools in Arkansas, mirroring a national proliferation. New schools are opening at a fast clip as state legislatures set aside more public money for parents to spend at private schools, without meaningful oversight. 

There were about 100 private schools in Arkansas in 2023, state records show. Now there are about 220. That doesn’t count the 100 or so microschools in the mix — a version of the one-room schoolhouse that wasn’t tracked or publicly funded previously.

But even with that boom, Arkansas largely has chosen not to regulate private or microschools or monitor what’s happening inside them. Arkansas is so hands-off that the state only requires that private schools conduct regular fire drills, keep immunization records and have an American flag and a flagpole. It doesn’t review schools’ curriculum or the backgrounds and capabilities of their operators. Anyone is free to open one, including Morrison.

Known to parents and students as Dr. Tracy, she wasn’t a licensed educator and had never run a school before. Her resume says she has a doctorate in occupational therapy and cognitive neuroscience from Washington University in St. Louis. The university said that degree is only in occupational therapy.

The Delta Institute didn’t look much like a school — it operated in a white colonial house set down a gravel driveway off a country road, its bedrooms transformed into classrooms. But it had seemed like the answer that parents of students with disabilities, including autism, were desperately seeking. Families said they put their faith in Morrison, who presented herself as an expert in autism and ADHD. “I am the best,” she texted one parent. 

Morrison did not respond to interview requests and questions from ProPublica. 

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who has said she wants to be known as the education governor, and state education officials didn’t respond to specific questions from ProPublica about the state’s oversight of private schools or how it responded to revelations about the Delta Institute. Her spokesperson said the governor championed the state’s Education Freedom Accounts because they give students more and different educational opportunities.

Both the governor’s office and the Arkansas Department of Education emphasized that the state intervenes to ensure students are safe and taxpayer dollars are spent responsibly. “Student safety is ADE’s number one priority,” Education Department spokesperson Kaelin Clay wrote in an email.

The day after Morrison and the children assaulted her son, the boy’s mother walked into the Craighead County Sheriff’s Office to write out a report in neat, looping cursive. It was not the first report about Morrison’s treatment of children at the Delta Institute that the sheriff’s office took.

Another mother had reported abuse about three weeks earlier.

More Money Fuels Growth 

Before Arkansas’ LEARNS Act passed in 2023, creating its voucher-style program, state schools secretary Jacob Oliva promised that “there is going to be accountability for the schools that participate.”  

Jacob Oliva, you might not be surprised to learn, was Ron DeSantis’ state commissioner of education in Florida.

But the oversight role his department gave itself was related primarily to finances. The department has the power to conduct random financial audits of private schools, mandate that the schools report their tuition and fees and require schools to measure student achievement with tests of their choosing, but little else.

Under pressure to tweak the rules this spring, the department again declined to monitor school quality and tinkered only with how parents can use the funds on items other than tuition, banning them from paying for travel sports teams, for instance. Even that was controversial; some lawmakers argued there should be less government interference. They argue the onus is on parents to decide whether their children are safe and learning, and if they’re not, the families can go somewhere else.

This upcoming school year, Arkansas expects that nearly 55,000 students will use their Education Freedom Accounts for tuition and other expenses. 

With most students getting about $7,000 each, the program cost about $310 million in taxpayer funds this past school year. Most of the students who used EFA money in Arkansas the prior year were already attending private school or being homeschooled, or were just starting kindergarten. Only 12% of participants reported that they’d previously attended a public school. 

In other words, 88% of the students using vouchers had previously been enrolled in private schools. Their parents used to pay their tuition. Now the state subsidizes it.

Categories Arkansas, Cruelty

Arkansas Is in a Race to the Bottom for Its Schools

By dianeravitch
July 20, 2026 //
2

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, writes here about Arkansas’s ongoing efforts to destroy its public schools. Under Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the state has jumped into privatization.

Burris writes:

Arkansas sits eighth from the bottom on our 2026 report card’s rating of the states. And it is likely to fall further in the coming years as its legislature and Governor’s hostility toward public education grows, and its allegiance shifts further from its public schools to privatized alternatives.

Arkansas’s first charter law (1995) allowed only conversion charters — a way for districts to experiment, in keeping with the original vision. Four years later, the legislature authorized start-up open-enrollment charters, capped at twelve. In 2005, it raised the cap to twenty-four and lengthened authorization terms. In 2011, it added an escalator that bumped the cap by five every time the number of schools came within two of the limit, thus creating a cap in name only.

The move away from charters as a source of district innovation came in 2013, when the Arkansas Quality Charter Schools Act created the Charter Authorizing Panel as the primary authorizer, handling authorization, renewal, revision, and revocation, and gave the authority to a politically appointed commissioner. Over time, authorization periods grew from three years to twenty.

When Governor Hutchinson appointed Johnny Key commissioner in 2015 (even though Key did not meet the state’s educational experience requirements), the number of charter schools in Arkansas almost doubled.

The real embrace of privatization, though, came with Act 237, the LEARNS Act. 

That Act:

  • Eliminated the statewide cap on charter schools.
  • Created a revolving facilities loan fund for charter schools.
  • Created “transformation contracts” that hand district governance over to charter management organizations.

All of this despite the Division of Elementary and Secondary Education’s (DESE) own 2024 report that 46% of open-enrollment and conversion charters scored D or F, against 32% of public schools overall.

But the LEARNS Act did not stop there. It absorbed Arkansas’s modest voucher program into Education Freedom Accounts, at first with caps, but as of this year, all caps were lifted and universal eligibility kicked in.

Even though $277.4 million was appropriated, spending ballooned to over $326 million, with the legislature increasing funding to $379 million for 2026-27. Nearly 40% of the takers were homeschoolers or microschoolers. The state now funds unregulated and unsupervised education.

Not that there are sufficient safeguards on the private school sector taking voucher students. According to an investigation published this week by ProPublica, about 120 new private schools have opened in Arkansas in the three years since the state began handing families roughly $7,000 a year for tuition. Bill Kopsky of the Arkansas Public Policy Panel calls it “this whole new industry of pop-up, subprime private schools that have almost no regulation.”

Before LEARNS passed, Education Secretary Jacob Oliva promised there would be “accountability for the schools that participate.” What his Department actually gave itself was the power to run random financial audits, to make schools report tuition and fees, and to require schools to test students with an exam of their own choosing. Nothing about quality was included. Pressed to tighten the rules this spring, the Department declined again, and instead fiddled with what parents may buy — no more travel sports teams. Even that drew objections that it was too much government interference.

And what does the money buy? ProPublica found a school where students were put to menial labor and violence, whose owner was convicted of permitting child abuse, a felony. Shockingly, the school remains eligible for state money after a temporary stop.

The LEARNS Act also removed protections for teachers by repealing the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act and the Public School Employee Fair Hearing Act, leaving employees only notice of a termination recommendation and a hearing before the board, while displacing seniority and tenure as the basis for teacher dismissal.

It did raise the minimum teacher salary to $50,000. However, it is not surprising that our report card noted that Arkansas has a high rate of underqualified teachers, losing maximum points in that category. It is still in the lower 40% of states based on average teacher salaries adjusted by cost of living.

When it comes to funding its public schools, Arkansas hovered near the bottom, losing all possible points in three categories: funding, funding equity, and funding by ability to pay.

The state seems well on its way to competing with Florida and Arizona for last place. 

 

Categories Education Reform

Pastors in North Carolina Oppose “Christian Nationalism”

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2026 //
0

If you are a long-time reader of this blog, you know that I have a strong friendship with and great respect for the Rev. Charles Foster Johnson, executive director of Pastors for Texas Children. Charlie comes to every conference of the Network for Public Education and is a strong advocate for public schools and the 5.4 million children who attend them. He believes deeply in separation of church and state, as do the 2,000 faith leaders in Texas who are part of Pastors for Texas Children. PTC was deeply involved in the voucher battle, on the side of public schools and church-state separation.

PTC has encouraged the creation of similar groups in other states. One of these groups is in North Carolina. I received this notice and thought some of you might want to participate in their zoom conversation about “Christian nationalism.”

People of Faith for Public Schools

Dear Advocates,

Though it’s still summer, our advocacy doesn’t stop! Have you been hearing about “Christian nationalism” but maybe don’t know quite what it is or why it matters to public education advocacy?

People of Faith For Public Schools, a project of Pastors for NC Children

Christian Nationalism: 

What is it? 

Why should we care?

How To End Christian Nationalism Zoom Book Discussion

Pastors for NC Children and Christians Against Christian Nationalism-North Carolina are co-sponsoring a 2 part zoom book discussion of Amanda Tyler’s “How To End Christian Nationalism”. 

It will take place on Thursday, July 23 and Thursday, July 30 from 7-8:30pm. July 23 will look at the Introduction and Steps 1-4. July 30 will look at Steps 5-8 and the Conclusion. While we hope you read the book, you are invited to join in even if you haven’t. The discussion will include discussing the steps and how it intersects with our own experiences and life. The discussion will be led by Executive Director Rev. Suzanne Parker Miller.

ACTION ITEM: Register for the link at http://bit.ly/HTECNJuly2026

Support Our Work Today!

Thank you to everyone who has made a donation to PNCC’s ministry. WE ARE SO GRATEFUL! Would you consider becoming a monthly donor or make a one time contribution to our goal? Could your church include PNCC in their mission giving? THANK YOU!

ACTION ITEM: Donate to PNCC’s Ministry Today!

Know of congregational, denominational, or community grants or opportunities to support our work? Let us know at Fundraising@PastorsForNCchildren.org

919.346.6114

Rev. Suzanne Parker Miller, Director

Director@PastorsForNCchildren.org

PastorsForNCchildren.org

DONATE HERE!

Copyright (C) 2026 Pastors for NC Children. All rights reserved.

Our mailing address is:
Pastors for NC Children P. O. Box 37241 Raleigh, NC 27627 USA

Categories Democracy, Education Reform, Equity, Ethics, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Funding, North Carolina, Religion, Separation of church and state, Supporting public schools, Vouchers

John Thompson: What Happened When Oklahoma Adopted the “Mississippi Miracle”

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2026 //
1

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, explains what happened when state officials in Oklahoma decided to adopt the “Mississippi Miracke.”

He writes:

In so many places, there is a push to implement the reward-and-punish “Mississippi Miracle.” And, unfortunately too many journalists believe their simplistic claims about increasing literacy. Oklahoma is just one example of a state implementing the so-called “Miracle,” so, our story should be a warning to others. 

The Oklahoma State Chamber of Commerce featured Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves in an event this June. Given the misinformation that the Chamber has been spreading about the so-called “Mississippi Miracle,” I assumed that Gov. Reeves would spin the same message. But, his false and misleading statements were far worse.

The leaders of the state Chamber have long repeated the falsehood that NAEP Proficiency is “grade level” when, in fact, grade level is closer to the much lower “Basic” category. This claim was invented in the 1980s in order to attack our public schools as irreparably broken. 

Getting back to Gov. Reeves, Mississippi spins its State “Proficiency” rates as if they were connected with the reliable NAEP rates.  But, from 2019 to 2024, the Mississippi State 8th grade Reading Proficiency rates increased by 6 points, while its NAEP Proficiency scores dropped by 2 points, increasing its State/NAEP Proficiency Gap to 19 points. The 4th grade gap reached 25 points.

So, I looked at Reeves’ record as governor and found an even more disturbing history. And I wondered whether the Chamber looked into his past before they hosted him.

But, I must start with Gov. Reeves plan for expanding test prep and retention policies to 8th graders.

Reeves and the Oklahoma Chamber seem unaware that a major reason why test-driven accountability did so much damage was that No Child Left Behind (NCLB) set impossible targets that pressured schools to treat kids like numbers in order to try to minimize the inevitable harm the law would inflict. 

However, he acknowledged that Mississippi hasn’t increased 8th grade scores. Over the last 28 years, Mississippi’s 8th grade NAEP reading scores improved by one point, indicating that they did not improve reading for comprehension, or help students “learn to read, so that they can read to learn.”

In 2023, their average 8th grade NAEP reading score was 253. But, in 1998, the average score was 255. 

Worse, NAEP – which (at least previously) couldn’t be taught to – has a long history of being the most reliable metric. But, Mississippi’s new 2025-26 standards:

Are based on multiple measures including statewide assessment results in English language arts, math and science, English learner progress, advanced course and career and technical education performance, and graduation rates.

Since Mississippi’s new tests are designed to be taught to, there is little reason to believe they reflect growth in learning.  

Reeves then bragged about recently increasing Mississippi’s new targets. Under state law accountability, standards must increase “when 75 percent of students are proficient or when 65 percent of schools or districts earn a grade of B or higher.”  But, their State and NAEP proficient scores were dramatically different. In 2024, only 23% of Mississippi 8th graders scored Proficient or above in NAEP reading.

I also wish the Oklahoma Chamber would fact check Reeves’ unsubstantiated claim that raising the bar leads to increased student learning. They could start with former Oklahoma Secretary of Education Daniel Hamlin’s research which found that states which set high performance test standards “have not found a way to translate these new benchmarks into higher levels of student test performance.” 

Next, I would like to ask the Oklahoma State Chamber’s leaders if they looked into Reeves’ history. As the Mississippi Free Press explained, Reeves’ ties to the Sons of Confederate Veterans were longstanding. In 2013, He:

Spoke to the SCV’s national gathering in Vicksburg, Mississippi, in front of a massive Confederate battle flag and in a room decorated with smaller Confederate flags and cotton plants. After then-Lt. Gov. Reeves congratulated the organization for “keeping history for our youth,” speakers defended the Confederate “cause” and compared “Yankees” to German “Nazis” in World War II.

Moreover, Reeves’ subsequent proclamation did not mention the role of slavery and white supremacy.

And this April, Reeves, once again, signed the proclamation for the “Confederate Heritage Month.”

I have asked but received no answer as to what the Oklahoma State Chamber of Commerce knew about Reeves when it invited him to Oklahoma City.

In terms of improving schools, I would urge them to pay more attention to peer reviewed education research. And, it seems to me, that state leaders also should pay more attention to the Oklahoma City Chamber’s approach to school improvements, as opposed to the State Chamber.

It’s “Civic Lab is working to advance civic collaboration. Their practice is to look at what makes community collaboration flow best, document what they find and share those practices at a broad level.” Rhonda Baker, Director of Education for the Chamber, explained that they seek to report to the state legislature about better ways to connect the community and improve educational outcomes. And, “they’re talking to the nonprofit community to seek recommendations on policy and alignment changes to ultimately make programs mesh better.”

That, not praise for Jim Crow, sounds more like the Oklahoma Standard to me.

Categories Accountability, Literacy, Mississippi, Oklahoma

Hypocrite! Trump Gutted Federal Agencies in Charge of Election Security

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2026 //
0

Last night, Trump delivered a prime-time speech complaining about election security and blaming other countries–China and Venezuela–for trying to mess with our elections. Almost every word out of his mouth was a lie, with the exception of “a” and “the.”

He has long complained that the 2020 election was “rigged,” forgetting the inconvenient fact that he was President at the time. His lawyers sued to overturn the election results in 60 different cases, and lost repeatedly, even twice in the U.S. Supreme Cout that he stacked. The plain fact was that his lawyers presented no evidence of vote rigging. Even judges he appointed ruled against him.

CBS, now controlled by friends of Trump, reviewed his speech last night and demolished his false claims. Even CBS!

Nicole Sganga of CBS News pointed out that Trump officials fired thousands of federal employees whose job was to assure election security.

She wrote:

Election security has been one of President Trump’s primary preoccupations for years — lately, he’s been pressing Republicans in Congress to pass a voting regulation bill and he delivered a live primetime speech on the topic Thursday night. And yet, since the beginning of his second administration, the government has cut thousands of workers who were tasked with ensuring secure elections in the U.S. 

At the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the government’s top cyber defense body protecting U.S. election systems, nearly 1,000 CISA personnel — or nearly one-third of the agency’s workforce — had left or been removed from active service by mid-2025.

Some were terminated, while others resigned or took administrative leave. Others had contracts that were not renewed or their programs were shut down. Altogether, staffing lingered at around 2,500, down from approximately 3,400 a year earlier. Those numbers were reflected in the Trump administration’s budget proposals. The request for the 2025 fiscal year sent by the Biden administration sought about $3 billion for CISA. The fiscal-year 2026 budget proposal sought approximately $2.4 billion and estimated a staff of 2,649 positions. 

CISA was established in 2018, during the first Trump administration and received broad bipartisan support, investment and praise. But after President Trump lost the 2020 election, and the director of the agency, Chris Krebs, described the election as “the most secure in American history,” the president criticized what he called Krebs’ “highly inaccurate” comment and fired him.

Soon after Mr. Trump took office for his second administration, in February 2025, 17 CISA election-security employees were placed on administrative leave. CISA’s broader election-security activities were also subjected to an internal review.

CISA subsequently ended federal support for the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center. Its core function is to help state and local election offices protect their systems from cyber threats.

The agency also reduced, then ultimately ended, its cooperative arrangement with the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center, which provides resources for cybersecurity, like monitoring for threats and vulnerabilities to networks, to state and local governments. 

CISA said the cuts would save approximately $10 million annually, eliminate duplication and redirect resources to mission-critical work. But as a result, states have been forced to rely on their own information-technology agencies, fusion centers, private vendors and informal interstate relationships for services that used to come from the federal government. 

In May, Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, the vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, acknowledged the cuts had left them vulnerable when he formally asked DHS to justify reports that CISA was no longer providing states and localities with election-security support. 

In the House, state officials asked Congress to restore or extend federal cybersecurity programs and grants, telling lawmakers that state and local entities were facing escalating threats but lack the personnel and resources available to the federal government or major private companies.

FBI, Justice Department and ODNI cuts putting elections at risk

While CISA is the major agency securing U.S. elections, there are other groups and task forces across the government working to ensure the integrity of elections that have also been slashed. 

The Trump administration disbanded the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, with Attorney General Pam Bondi dissolving the unit on Feb. 5, 2025, her first day in office. The task force — which was created during Mr. Trump’s first administration in the wake of Russia’s 2016 election-interference operation — was charged with investigating covert foreign-influence activity, including campaigns targeting U.S. elections. At the time, Bondi said ending the task force would free resources for more pressing priorities and reduce the risk of politicized or abusive enforcement.

At the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, senior career attorneys responsible for voting-rights enforcement were also reassigned as part of a broader shake-up, and the Justice Department also withdrew from several voting-rights cases while redirecting the Voting Section toward voter-roll maintenance and suspected fraud. 

At the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, then-Director Tulsi Gabbard announced a restructuring that would reduce ODNI’s workforce by more than 40% and gutted the Foreign Malign Influence Center. FMIC had previously served as the intelligence community’s central hub for integrating intelligence on foreign efforts to manipulate American political attitudes and housed the Election Threats Executive. At the time, ODNI claimed the center duplicated work. 

In April 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio shut down the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference office, a successor to the Global Engagement Center whose work included countering Russian, Chinese and Iranian information operations that could affect American political debate. 

Most recently, the Trump administration removed all remaining members of the bipartisan U.S. Election Assistance Commission. On July 9, the White House fired its two Democratic commissioners, while its remaining Republican commissioner resigned, leaving the four-seat commission with no active leadership.

Historically, the EAC has been a national election clearinghouse, accrediting voting-system testing laboratories, certifying voting systems and distributing federal election grants — all while maintaining the national mail voter-registration form. The White House said the president was able to remove commissioners who are not aligned with his election-security objectives. 

Categories Education Reform

Trump Nominees Flagrantly Lie to Keep Him Happy

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2026 //
15

This past week, Trump nominees appeared before Senate committees seeking their approval. when Senators ask direct questions, the nominees lied to avoid offending Donald Trump.

Mary Trump observes that the Big Question predictably elicits the Big Lie.

The Big Question is: Who won the 2020 election? Trump nominees dare not say, truthfully, Joe Biden. They have to find a way to pretend they didn’t hear the question or to duck answering.

Mary Trump writes:

Donald’s nominees continue to struggle with the most basic facts. They reject any history that does not fit the mythology he has created, and they seem far more concerned with demonstrating personal loyalty to Donald than with telling the truth to the American people.

Over the past several days, that pattern played out repeatedly during confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill.

Donald’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence refused to acknowledge who won the 2020 presidential election. Another nominee claimed ignorance about Tulsi Gabbard’s role in the FBI raid on Fulton County’s election office in Georgia, despite the fact that it happened only months ago. Donald’s nominee to lead the Centers for Disease Control could not even commit to refusing an illegal order from the President. And Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche once again tied himself into knots attempting to defend the indefensible while continuing to shield Donald from accountability over the Epstein files.

Taken individually, each exchange was disturbing. Taken together, they reveal something much more dangerous. Donald is not selecting public servants. He is selecting people willing to deny objective reality if doing so pleases him.

Donald’s nominee’s are lying through their teeth because they desperately want to continue working for, or begin working for, a pathetic little man they are apparently terrified of offending.

The Senate Intelligence Committee held this confirmation hearing for Jay Clayton, Donald’s nominee to replace Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence. It is difficult to overstate how important this position is. The Director of National Intelligence oversees the nation’s intelligence agencies, including the CIA, the NSA, and works closely with the FBI and countless other intelligence organizations. The entire purpose of the position is to provide the President with accurate intelligence, even when that intelligence is inconvenient or politically damaging.

The job is not to protect the President’s feelings. The job is to tell the truth. Does anybody honestly believe somebody unwilling to acknowledge who won an election four years ago would tell Donald something he does not want to hear today?

Not if he wants to keep his job.

Jon Ossoff, Democratic Senator from Georgia recognized exactly what was happening and continued pressing Clayton during the hearing.

This is the exchange: 

Ossoff: It’s a simple question, Mr. Clayton.

Clayton: I’ve answered it.

Ossoff: Who won the 2020 presidential election?

Clayton: I’ve answered it.

Ossoff: You are here asking for the support of senators to lead America’s intelligence community. We’ve established that you have an obligation to be honest and forthright with this committee and with the American public, but you refuse to answer a simple matter of fact about the 2020 election. Is that right?

Clayton: No, that’s not right.

Ossoff: Then answer the question. Who won the 2020 election?

Clayton: I have answered the question.

Ossoff: Answer it. What is your answer?

Clayton: I’ve given you my answer.

Ossoff: What is your answer? You refuse to answer a basic question about who won a presidential election, but you ask to lead America’s intelligence community. Isn’t it humiliating to be unable to answer this question, to have to indulge the president’s delusions? We know you know. Everybody in this room knows the truthful answer to that question. Why can you not give it?

Clayton: I think I gave you the answer.

No.

He could not given the answer because he knows exactly what would happen if he did.

If he simply stated the obvious fact that Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 election by nearly eight million votes, Donald would immediately withdraw his nomination.

Clayton understands that. Every nominee understands that. Their confirmations are contingent upon demonstrating absolute loyalty, not competence. That is why they continue speaking in this absurd coded language about certifications, procedures, and Electoral College votes while refusing to utter one simple sentence.

Joe Biden won. Donald Trump lost. Those facts remain intolerable inside the Trump regime because Donald himself cannot tolerate them.

If I had been asking questions during that hearing, I would have taken a different approach. I would have asked who won the 2016 election. Then I would have asked who won the 2012 election. Then 2008. Then 2004.

I suspect they would answer every single one correctly. Only one election has become unspeakable. Only one historical fact has been erased from acceptable Republican discourse. That tells you everything you need to know.

The hearing became even more disturbing when Clayton was questioned about Tulsi Gabbard’s involvement in the FBI raid on Fulton County’s election offices in Georgia earlier this year.

This was not an obscure historical event. It happened only six months ago. It involved the very office Clayton hopes to lead. And yet he suddenly developed an astonishing case of selective amnesia.

This is what Senator Jon Ossoff asked.

Ossoff: Are you aware that Director Gabbard was present at the Fulton County raid in Georgia earlier this year?

Clayton: You discussed that with me yesterday in your office.

Ossoff: Are you aware that Director Gabbard was present at the Fulton County raid earlier this year?

Clayton: You brought it to my attention yesterday.

Ossoff: What is going on here? You’ve said at the beginning of this you have an obligation to be honest and forthright with the committee. I’m asking a very simple question. Are you aware that Director Gabbard was present at the Fulton County raid earlier this year? Yes or no?

Clayton: I was…

Ossoff: You won’t answer that question either.

Clayton: I just said I was made aware of it by you yesterday.

Ossoff: The first time you learned that Director Gabbard was present at that raid was in my office yesterday?

Clayton: It was the first time that, in my recollection, I’ve thought about it recently. Now, was I aware of it before? You brought it to my attention yesterday. I had not thought…

Ossoff: So you had not known until…

Clayton: I had not thought about it until you brought it to my attention yesterday.

Ossoff: Your answers lack credibility. Your testimony lacks credibility. You’re being evasive and you’re not being candid or forthright. Everybody across the country is going to watch this and know that.

Ossoff: Are you aware that former Director Gabbard testified that her presence at the raid was requested by the president?

Clayton: I’m not aware of that until now.

What?

How could he possibly not know? This is a man seeking confirmation to oversee the nation’s intelligence apparatus. He either knew and lied about it, or he truly did not know one of the most controversial actions taken by the office he hopes to inherit. Neither possibility inspires confidence.

As Senator Ossoff pointed out, these confirmation hearings are job interviews. The nominees are expected to answer questions honestly, demonstrate competence, and reassure senators that they can be trusted with enormous responsibility.

Donald Trump’s nominees do exactly the opposite. They evade. They deflect. They pretend not to remember. They refuse to acknowledge reality when reality happens to inconvenience Donald Trump. And somehow they expect the American people to forget everything we have watched unfold over the last several years.

That is not intelligence. It is obedience. And that increasingly appears to be the only qualification Donald requires.

The same pattern continued when the Senate Health Committee held a confirmation hearing for Dr. Erica Schwartz, Donald’s nominee to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. During the hearing, Senator Maggie Hassan asked Schwartz a direct and entirely reasonable question: if Donald instructed her to take an action that violated the law, would she follow the law or obey him? For anybody seeking to lead one of the most important public health agencies in the world, the answer should have been immediate and unequivocal.

This is what Senator Maggie Hassan asked Dr. Erica Schwartz:

Hassan: Dr. Schwartz, just a few minutes ago, you said in response to a question from Senator Kaine, you will always follow the law. So just to be clear, if the President of the United States instructs you to take an action that would break the law, will you follow the law or follow the President’s instruction, Dr. Schwartz?

This is what Dr. Erica Schwartz said:

Schwartz: The President would never ask me not to follow the law, but I will always follow the law.

Senator Hassan responded:

Dr. Schwartz, there are multiple examples of the President actively instructing people to break the law over and over again. So I hope you will update yourself on that because it’s not a satisfactory response to say he would never do that.

Yes, Donald would never do the thing he does on a regular basis. That is like saying Donald never lies. Give me a break. This is the quality of nominee we are getting from the Republican Party: people who cannot answer basic questions because the truthful answer might offend Donald. Schwartz could have simply said she would obey the law under all circumstances. Instead, she began by protecting Donald from a hypothetical that is barely hypothetical, given the number of times he has pressured officials to ignore legal limits or bend institutions to serve his personal interests.

Then, of course, there is the execrable Todd Blanche, Donald’s former personal attorney, although he still behaves very much like Donald’s personal attorney, who is also serving as Acting Attorney General. This week, the Senate Judiciary Committee opened a two day confirmation hearing on whether to give Blanche the position permanently. Doing so would inflict untold damage on a Department of Justice that has already been profoundly compromised.

Blanche is the person Donald can rely upon to help with his Epstein problem, and he has repeatedly demonstrated that he is willing to bend over backwards to do exactly that. He is also the Justice Department official who personally met twice with Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s convicted co conspirator in the rape and sex trafficking of girls and young women. Blanche was instrumental in Maxwell’s transfer to a minimum security facility, where she now enjoys privileges unavailable to most inmates convicted of comparable crimes.

Blanche is despicable, and yet he is poised to assume the most powerful law enforcement position in the country. During the hearing, Senator Dick Durbin asked whether Blanche would extend to Epstein’s survivors the same personal attention he extended to Maxwell. Ten survivors were sitting in the room. According to Durbin, none of them had been given an opportunity to speak with Blanche or anyone else at the Department of Justice or FBI, despite repeatedly asking to do so.

This is what Senator Dick Durbin asked Todd Blanche:

Let me talk to you for a moment about the survivors who are in the room. There are ten individuals who were exploited and abused by Mr. Epstein. They are here today. None of them have had a chance to speak to anyone in the department or FBI, though they’ve asked repeatedly. So can I get your word under oath that within the next thirty days you will personally sit down with these ten victims and hear their case in terms of what needs to be done by the Department of Justice?

This is what Todd Blanche said:

Chairman, I appreciate them being here today. I also have somebody from my office who’s spent her entire career working on cases like Mr. Epstein’s. She’s in charge of our task force investigating human trafficking. She’s available to talk to them.

Senator Durbin pressed him:

She can sit right next to you. She can sit right next to you when you meet with these survivors.

Blanche responded:

I have never said I will not meet with survivors.

Senator Durbin asked again:

Will you meet with these ten survivors? I’m asking you on the record.

Blanche replied:

If they have lawyers, as you know, I’m prohibited from meeting directly with them.

Blanche does not care about the survivors. He cares only about doing Donald’s bidding. Blanche had no difficulty personally meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell, a convicted sex trafficker and Epstein’s co conspirator, but when ten survivors ask him to sit down and hear them, he suddenly discovers procedural complications and delegates the responsibility to somebody else.

This is not Blanche’s first time obfuscating about Epstein and the Epstein files. During a Senate hearing in May on the Justice Department’s budget, Senator Jeff Merkley asked Blanche whether the Epstein investigation remained open. Blanche, who now leads the Department of Justice, suddenly appeared unsure what the term “Epstein investigation” even meant.

This is what Senator Jeff Merkley asked Todd Blanche:

I want to go on to the Epstein investigation. Is it closed or open?

Blanche responded:

When you say the Epstein investigation, what are you referring to, Senator?

Senator Merkley clarified:

Well, the FBI said last year in July that it had closed the Epstein investigation. So I’m just using their words. Is it open or closed?

Blanche replied:

I don’t believe the FBI said that. I mean, if you’re referring to…

Senator Merkley interrupted:

Well, you’re head of the Department of Justice. Is the Epstein investigation open or closed?

Blanche answered:

I guess I don’t understand what Epstein investigation means. The investigation of Jeffrey Epstein himself?

These people are liars, but it is so much worse than that. They are seeking positions from which they can destroy the rule of law in this country. Blanche, in particular, has demonstrated that he is absolutely and utterly willing to do so in order to protect one of the most prolific and recidivist criminals in American history, Donald Trump.

The evasions in these hearings are not isolated incidents. They are part of a pattern. Jay Clayton refuses to say who won the 2020 presidential election because Donald cannot tolerate the truth. Clayton claims ignorance about Tulsi Gabbard’s involvement in a federal raid he should understand if he wants to run the intelligence community. Erica Schwartz cannot simply say she would reject an unlawful order because even acknowledging that Donald might issue one is apparently unacceptable. Todd Blanche will meet personally with Ghislaine Maxwell but will not commit to meeting with Epstein’s survivors. He then pretends not to understand what senators mean when they ask about the Epstein investigation.

They all know what they are doing. They are denying reality, evading basic questions, and humiliating themselves because protecting Donald is more important to them than telling the truth. That is not public service. It is submission to a criminal boss.

The danger is not merely that these people lie. The danger is that they are being placed in charge of institutions whose legitimacy depends upon truth, independence, and fidelity to the law. The Director of National Intelligence must tell the president facts he does not want to hear. The head of the CDC must follow science and the law, even when the president objects. The Attorney General must serve the United States, not the person occupying the Oval Office.

Donald does not want any of that. He wants officials who will indulge his delusions, erase inconvenient facts, and protect him from accountability. He wants people who understand that their positions depend entirely upon refusing to acknowledge reality whenever reality threatens him.

That is why they are lying. They are not confused. They are not forgetful. They are not struggling to understand the questions. They know the truthful answers, and they know that giving them could cost them Donald’s approval and, therefore, their jobs.

Every one of these hearings is exposing the same thing. Donald is not building a government of qualified public servants. He is assembling a collection of loyalists willing to discredit themselves, corrupt the institutions they lead, and deny what everybody knows to be true in order to protect their criminal boss.

Categories Accountability, Lies, Trump

Hegseth Wants All Troops over the Age of 30 to be Tested for Testosterone

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2026 //
7

The blogger “Liberty Beats News” reported the following disturbing story. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is obsessed with the idea of “lethality” and “masculinity” that leads to stories like this one, as well as bias against women, who don’t have the same levels of testosterone as men. Even without the testosterone that Hegseth demands, women seem to be capable of exemplary leadership. Hegseth, however, continues to block most women from leadership roles in the military.

Blogger Liberty Brats News reports:

Pentagon Announces Mandatory Testosterone Testing for Troops Over 30 — And the Science Behind It Is Shakier Than Hegseth Is Selling It

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is framing declining testosterone as a fixable threat to military “lethality,” but the medicine tells a messier story: most people prescribed testosterone therapy never get properly diagnosed first, and the FDA has flagged real cardiovascular risk

WASHINGTON — July 15, 2026

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Wednesday that all active-duty service members age 30 and older will be required to undergo annual testosterone deficiency screening as part of their existing periodic health assessment — branding the effort “The High-T Department of War” in a video posted to social media.

What Was Announced

Under the new policy, troops 30 and up will be tested annually; those under 30 can opt in voluntarily. If a service member is found to have a deficiency, testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) is offered, not mandated — the choice to actually take it remains with the individual. Hegseth framed it as a health and performance initiative: “It’s about restoring and optimizing your natural capabilities, protecting your longevity, and ensuring you have the biological foundation required to sustain the fight.” The Pentagon has not clarified whether the requirement or the treatment option extends to women in the military, whose testosterone levels also decline with age.

The Marketing Language vs. the Actual Medicine

Hegseth’s own phrase, “High-T,” isn’t a medical term — it’s borrowed directly from a social media fitness and masculinity trend, where influencers encourage men to chase higher testosterone numbers as a marker of strength and virility. That distinction matters, because the FDA has never approved testosterone therapy on that basis. 

The only FDA-approved use for TRT is treating clinical hypogonadism — a specific, diagnosable medical condition involving genuine testicular or pituitary dysfunction, confirmed through repeated blood tests and documented symptoms. Simply having a number that’s lower than it used to be isn’t the same thing as having a treatable deficiency, and the FDA has never approved TRT as a tool for boosting combat performance, aggression, or “lethality” in men with normal age-related hormone decline.

What “Low Testosterone” Actually Means — And Doesn’t

Testosterone drops by roughly 1% a year after age 30, according to the Mayo Clinic — a completely normal, expected part of aging, not a malfunction. True testosterone deficiency, called hypogonadism, affects an estimated 5.6% of men between 30 and 79. That means the overwhelming majority of the men this policy will test every year have testosterone levels that are simply aging normally, not failing. 

Testosterone Levels By Age: Normal Ranges 2026 Guide

A 2026 Endocrine Society study presented at its annual meeting found that most men who are already being prescribed testosterone therapy in civilian medicine never received proper, guideline-based diagnostic testing beforehand — meaning a huge share of current TRT patients may not actually meet the medical bar for needing it in the first place. One of the study’s independent reviewers, a reproductive endocrinologist at Imperial College London, called overprescribing “a problem of our time,” driven in part by corporate telehealth providers with minimal clinical oversight — a dynamic a mandatory military-wide testing program risks reproducing at scale.

The Risks Nobody’s Talking About in the Announcement

Testosterone therapy isn’t risk-free. The FDA issued a formal safety communication requiring TRT products to carry warning labels about a possible increased risk of heart attack and stroke. The research since then has been genuinely mixed — some large studies have found elevated cardiovascular risk in men on TRT, while others, including a comprehensive Harvard-affiliated review of 72 studies, found no compelling evidence of increased heart disease or cancer risk. What that actually means is that the cardiovascular safety of giving testosterone therapy to a large, mostly healthy population has not been settled science — which makes rolling it out across the entire U.S. military, framed as a performance and readiness initiative, a real-world experiment on hundreds of thousands of people rather than a proven intervention.

A Broader Pattern

This isn’t happening in isolation. The FDA moved in April to expand access to TRT more broadly, and Hegseth has spent his tenure building what he calls a “warrior ethos” around hyper-masculine physical standards — requiring all combat roles to meet a single “highest male standard,” warning against “fat generals and admirals,” and mocking transgender troops in public remarks. 

Notably, Health and Human Services official Dr. Mehmet Oz has already publicly praised Trump’s own testosterone levels, according to RFK Jr., calling them the highest he’s seen in a man over 70 — a strange data point to have entered the public discourse days before this policy, and a reminder that “optimizing testosterone” has become as much a cultural signal in this administration as a medical one.

Bottom Line

Nothing about this policy is inherently sinister — screening for a real, underdiagnosed medical condition isn’t unreasonable on its face. What doesn’t hold up is the marketing: testosterone testing doesn’t measure “lethality,” normal aging isn’t a deficiency, and the treatment itself carries cardiovascular questions that haven’t been fully answered even in civilian medicine, where prescribing already outpaces proper diagnosis. Framing a hormone panel as the key to combat readiness sells better on social media than it does in a peer-reviewed journal.

Sources

• Forbes — “Hegseth Announces ‘Testosterone Deficiency’ Screening For Soldiers 30 And Over,” July 15, 2026. forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2026/07/15/hegseth-announces-testosterone-deficiency-screening-for-soldiers-30-and-over/

• Newsweek — “Hegseth’s New Military Testosterone Rules: Who Is On The Hook?” July 15, 2026. newsweek.com/hegseth-announces-new-required-pentagon-testosterone-tests-who-it-impacts-12200211

• NOTUS — “Testosterone-Fueled Troops? Hegseth Says Military to Begin Testing Hormones,” July 15, 2026. notus.org/defense/testosterone-troops-hegseth-testing

• Stars and Stripes — “‘High-T Department of War’: Hegseth announces annual testosterone screenings for service members age 30 or older,” July 15, 2026. stripes.com/theaters/us/2026-07-15/hegseth-approve-testosterone-testing-troops-22274442.html

• The Hill — “Pentagon to screen troops over 30 for testosterone,” July 15, 2026. thehill.com/policy/defense/5969935-hegseth-testosterone-testing-dod/

• Endocrine Society — “Testosterone therapy in men may be overprescribed, inconsistent with clinical guidelines,” June 13, 2026. endocrine.org/news-and-advocacy/news-room/2026/papaleontiou-press-release-endo-2026

• U.S. FDA Drug Safety Communication — “FDA cautions about using testosterone products for low testosterone due to aging,” fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/ucm436259.htm

• Harvard Gazette — “Study finds no direct links between testosterone therapy, diseases,” Harvard Medical School review of 72 studies. news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2004/01/study-finds-no-direct-links-between-testosterone-therapy-diseases

Categories Bigotry, Gender, Health, Injustice

Paul Thomas: The Proficiency Mirage: Florida Version

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2026 //
6

Paul Thomas taught in public high schools for many years, before becoming a professor at Furman College in South Carolina. He is a persistent critic of the “Mississippi Miracle.” He uses data to check on state claims. In this post, he fact-checks Florida.

He wrote:

Reading proficiency is a powerful data point despite it being a moving target.

When anyone refers to “reading proficiency,” that usually means a percentage of students who have met or exceeded an established score on a standardized test of reading.

However, “proficiency” is not a standard term. States tend to use “proficient” as grade level expectations while NAEP uses “proficient” as an aspirational achievement level (and “basic” more closely correlates with state grade-level proficiency).

To further complicate “reading proficiency,” not only does the measurement vary from state to state, but also the expectations for what percentage of students should be proficient at any grade is more a debate than an established fact.

How many students should be proficient in reading? Sometimes it is 90%; sometimes it is 95%—and then there are state goals, for example, in Florida, as reported by Aldeman:

A 10-part video series produced by the Children’s Literacy Project tells what happened. It makes a compelling case that these results are attributable to a distinctive public-private partnership between the district and a nonprofit called The Learning Alliance. The story starts with two moms, Liz Woody-Remington and Barbara Hammond, whose children were struggling to read. In 2010, they asked themselves: What would it take to get 90% of the district’s children reading on grade level by the end of third grade?

I find these statistics troubling, similar to concerns raised by Hansford:

Over the years, I have on numerous occasions seen the claim that 95% of students can learn how to read proficiently, so long as they are provided adequate tier 1/2 instruction. Truthfully, it has always stuck out to me as a strange figure, for three reasons. First, most academic research does not typically use percentages in this sort of manner. Second, I often see this figure unaccompanied by a citation. And third, it seems low; I find it hard to believe that 5% of students just cannot learn how to read. …For this figure to have scientific validity, it would need experimental research demonstrating it to be true. Ideally, I would want to see multiple large scale studies, due to the universality of the claim. Intrigued by the discussion, I put out a public call on twitter asking if anyone had a citation for the figure.

Hansford walks us through the research (thin at best) and reaches an interesting conclusion:

This all said, it does seem there is some level of support for 96% being a benchmark goal, for reading proficiency rates. While some might argue, this is too high, I worry it’s too low, as it is clearly possible to achieve better than 96%. For example, in the Torgesen 2003 paper, 98.4% of students were able to read at grade level. When I asked for research on this topic, I was given an anecdote about a school using EBLI that went from 87% proficiency rates to 100%, within a matter of years. Well this is just an anecdote. I do think 100% proficiency is—in many cases—possible and should always be the goal.

I think the points here that must not be missed are the role of “anecdote” in claims about reading proficiency as well as claims about surprising gains and outlier “miracle” evidence, such as, again, Aldeman highlights:

Even more impressively, low-income third graders at Indian River schools scored better than the statewide average for all students. And, perhaps not surprisingly, when we went looking for high-poverty schools that were nevertheless getting good outcomes in reading, we identified three of the district’s schools — Rosewood Magnet, Fellsmere Elementary and Pelican Island Elementary — for our “Bright Spots” list. Fellsmere in particular stood out: Based on its 99% poverty rate, our calculations predicted that it would have a third grade reading rate of just 29%. But its actual rate was much higher, at 53%.

Indian River County was never exactly a failing district, but a decade ago it was performing a bit worse than the state as a whole. It has since begun to pull away, especially in third grade. Coming out of the pandemic, 60% of district third graders scored proficient in reading in 2023. That figure rose to 63% in 2024 and then jumped again, to 69%, in 2025.

This reporting fits into a “beating the odds”approach that frames outlier evidence as the normfor an entire population.

The evidence [1] is overwhelming in education that outlier “miracle” evidence is usually misleading or false, and even more problematic, outlier success, when valid, is rarely scalable.

In short, “beating the odds” stories make for compelling journalism and politics but not for effective or reasonable education reform.

These stories from Florida also raise some red flags.

The organization promoting this reform, Children’s Literacy Project, is faith-based.

Like other Republican states such as Oklahoma and Texas, Florida is seeking ways to erode the separation of church and state, specifically in public schools.

Schools partnering with organizations to promote and support reform is not necessarily a problem, but the outside help does create tensions about ideology as well as erodes the likelihood reforms are scalable.

Another few aspects of Florida are not highlighted in the reporting but deserve attention.

Returning to measurements of reading proficiency, Florida is in the bottom quartile of states in terms of the standard for “proficient”:

Florida, like Mississippi, is also a state where relative success in grade 4 reading quickly evaporates by grade 8:

Again like Mississippi, Florida is in the top of states for grade 4 reading on NAEP, but drops to the bottom quartile in grade 8:

https://radicalscholarship.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/image-6.png

Finally, the media and political story most often focuses on reforms in reading programs, teacher training, school leadership, and school expectations; however, outlier and surprising gains in grade 4 reading are likely driven by grade retention (a harmful punishment) and not the celebrated reforms.

Notably, high-grade retention states like Florida and Mississippi are also the states with significant decreases from grade 4 to grade 8.

Florida has a long history of aligning itself with “miracle” education reform that proves to be a mirage.

Beware the current numbers game about reading proficiency—a measurement that changes with the political wind.

[1] Thomas, P.L. (2016). Miracle schools or political scam? In W.J. Mathis & T.M. Trujillo, Learning from the Federal Market-Based Reforms: Lessons for ESSA. Charlotte, NC: IAP.

Categories Accountability, Data, Florida, Gender, Literacy, NAEP
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