Today we’ve got a remembrance, healthy food and unhealthy politics, some media and narrative discussion, and what is real competition in education?
NOLA then and now
First, a reminder, next week we kick off a set of webinars about the post-Katrina education experience in New Orleans. For the first one, on Monday, we have three-term Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, who also hails from a legendary New Orleans family, as well as NOLA educators Jamar McNeely and Alexina Medley who were there pre- and post-storm. On many New Orleans education questions people have views that -surprise!- align with whatever their larger reform priors are. This is a chance to learn from three people who were actually there, sleeves rolled up. And get a fact base from the leading analyst of education in the city. It’s part of a series, learn more and register (free) here.
Healthy Competition
Adam Peshek, who if you don’t know him is one of the nicest people you’ll run into in this sector, posted an essay in his newsletter about increasing competition in education (he’s also funded Bellwether, but I’d say that part about him being nice regardless).
Peshek notes that competition, and behavioral responses to competition are a feature, not a bug, of school choice plans. Yes. And although a lot of people have somehow decided that education is the one part of the world where the normal rules of human behavior, incentives, economics, and politics don’t apply that’s not actually the case. And as a champion of mass customization in public education I welcome more. We should have more and varied kinds of schools and options for kids in publicly funded education.
But, not all competition is created equal. As Rick Hess noted years ago in Revolution at the Margins, a book with newfound salience given the new wave of school choice underway, competition can take different forms. In politically controlled institutions like public schools that form is often cosmetic not substantive. It’s great to see schools advertising and not taking parents for granted. But you know what matters more? What happens in the classroom.
Consider Washington, D.C. The disruption caused by increased school choice and the growing market share for charters created the political disruption that ushered in Michelle Rhee and Kaya Henderson. That was important. But what really changed the facts on the ground for kids was the specific teaching and learning reforms (and some foundational operational reforms, DC really was dysfunctional) that came once Rhee and Henderson were on the scene.
Peshek writes, “School choice doesn’t just introduce new options. It reshapes the behavior of existing ones. It forces everyone to ask: What are we offering? For whom? And why should they choose us?“
That’s quite true, but in an industry without clear consistent reporting on outcomes (a problem school choice is currently making worse not better) keep an eye on what’s an actual change versus what only looks like changes.
Today’s Friday, are we for or against healthy lunches today?
If you had told me even a few years ago that one of Robert Kennedy’s kids would run for president and I wouldn’t be over the moon about, it I’d have said that’s crazy. (People have their own favorites but I’d suggest Evan Thomas’ biography if you’re looking for a good entry one on the OG RFK and why he inspires so many). Now, in 2025, I’m not happy that one of his kids is Secretary of Health and Human Services given his views on vaccines and research. But, that doesn’t mean he’s wrong about everything. Negative polarization will make you stupid, and maybe also fat.
Case in point: School lunches have a lot of room to go to be more healthy for kids. It’s really a crazy program in some ways. And yes the Trump Administration has cut some adjacent programs that are aimed in the direction of healthy lunches because, well, DOGE. But when the admin says they want to get food dye and ultra-processed foods out of what kids eat, take the W and move on to fight about other stuff. We don’t have to fight about everything. “Brace” for healthier food? Really? It should be what we expect and if you code it partisan you’re part of the problem.
Here’s chef Tom Colicchio on healthy lunches from a 2016 Bellwether publication. And here’s local farming leaders Lindsay Lusher Shute and Eric Hansen on how local food can fit into the equation from the same pub.
Look, it was good when Michelle Obama championed healthier lunches (and the right lost its mind about that it’s worth remembering) and it’s good when RFK does, even I think he’s quite wrong on other things. American politics can’t be a game of 100%. Food dyes and ultra-processed food are bad news regardless of who is in the Oval Office.
Narrative
Recently at the baseball All-Star game players were asked how many hits the average fan would get off of major league pitching. This set off a discussion on social media as well with a lot of armchair DHs speculating about how much good contact they could make. Spoiler alert: As Red Sox ace Garrett Crochett concisely noted, the correct answer is none. Unless you have played for money or were in elite NCAA baseball these pitches are too fast and have too much movement on them. (As one wag noted if you did manage to get lucky and make clean contact you might get a hit because the fielders would be too shocked to move to the ball). Even the jump from AAA pitching to the majors is real. That’s why you pay money to watch those guys play, they’re that good and the differences are that significant. The game as fans talk about it and as it’s actually played is quite different. Rooting interests are a lot of fun, the mechanics and analytics of the game something else.
I thought about that dynamic reading the dueling accounts of what happened recently at Virgina’s George Mason University, one of many schools now in the crosshairs of Trump’s Department of Justice. We talked about UVA and what happened there, the Mason situation is at once similar and different but there was a lot of speculation the Mason president might be terminated at the school’s board meeting.
But read this account and then this account of the board meeting. What’s important here is less what you think about the various issues, the school’s president, DEI, the Trump Administration, or any of that than how things like this are increasingly covered. It’s the failure to even get facts and context right. We’re moving back to late 19th-Century approach to media and information. On a range of issues it leaves people confused or with an incomplete picture. And a time of rapid social and economic change that’s a real problem. It’s a big problem in the education sector.
Yes, the labor of staying informed has increased. Treating public affairs as a rooting interest sort of thing, like we do sports, obscures more than it reveals and makes it that much more challenging.
Life Well Lived
John Forkenbrock passed away earlier this month. He was 80. Among a broad career in service he ran the organization focused on federally impacted schools. At least for now, and hopefully in the future, the federal government owns a lot of public land and land for other purposes. Schools can’t tax that land as they can other property. So there is a transfer program to try to make them whole. The sort of program that’s both mundane and essential and often not considered in conversations or theatrics about the federal role in schools.
That’s where I got to know John. When he was running that organization – an organization he continued to assist even after he retired. He was exceptionally kind and a generous source of information and advice when he had no need to be. He helped me when there was nothing in it for him. When his passing came up with a few of my contemporaries, unprompted, that is the first thing people said about him – what a generous person he was in all ways. That’s unusual in a town where people step on each other to get ahead or get an edge (and then talk about all the mentors that stood in the way of their path to greatness). It’s a genuine legacy. The kind that doesn’t get washed away with changes in politics.
View the original article and our Inspiration here