Tomorrow is National Pimento Cheese Day. Happy Pimento Cheese Day if you celebrate.
Also tomorrow, at 7pm on Substack, Virginia parents Todd Truitt, Jaime Osborne, and I will talk about the issues raised in this recent article, not just in VA but nationally. The basic idea that it’s hard to think critically if you don’t have content to think critically about remains stubbornly resisted. If you follow VA education debates you’ll know that E.D. Hirsch sort of personifies the idea that no one is a prophet in their own land. And we’ll take your questions. That’s 7pm via Substack.
I’ll be at ASU+GSV next week, Rick Hess and Penny Schwinn will tell me why I am wrong about everything on Tuesday morning at a breakfast session. I’ll be talking transparency, accountability, and quality with MetaMetrics. And at a few other events. Reach out and we can try to connect.
I’ll be at UVA on 4/20 interviewing Amber Northern about federal education research and her IES recommendations. At Harvard IOP later that week.
ICYMI, on Monday Kristen Huff, of Curriculum Associates, Lesley Muldoon of the National Assessment Governing Board, and Zachary Warner of the New York State Education Department stopped by a BW LinkedIn Live to talk about different sources of assessment data and what they can and can’t do – and how they work together and need each other. This event was sponsored by Curriculum Associates. If you’re interested in becoming a future sponsor let me know.
Last week I wrote about how many things kids experience today, weed, porn, gambling, or social media, are not new, but are more intense.
Jed Wallace and I talked AI with Marissa Mission and Mary Wells from Bellwether.
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Coming Storms
If you’re someone who thinks that history doesn’t necessarily repeat but does rhyme (often wrongly attributed to Twain), then this new book, The Coming Storm, by Odd Arne Westad is worth your time. Westad looks at the parallels between the evolving world order now and the run up to the world wars. It’s not just our domestic politics that have a late 19th-Century feel to them.
This Politico article on whether Iran is going to be a Suez moment for the United States is also worth checking out.
Here at home Chad Aldeman looks at the shifting demographic burden from young to old — it’s showing up in budgets. This issue, which I’ve casually called The Geezer War*, doesn’t get the attention it should in discussions of education finance. Aging population, shifting population patterns, declining enrollment is a tall order for schools to navigate.
Rahm Emanuel sat down with the Fifth Column podcast. I have no idea if Emanuel can catch on with a Democratic primary electorate that sometimes flirts with near politically suicidal tendencies. But it’s a compelling interview and he’s raising some important issues – including very much on education where he’s asking the party to get over a seriousness threshold. Basically, voters don’t tend to vote education issues specifically at the national level but they do help frame a candidate. Think Bill Clinton as a “new” Democrat with charter schools and accountability, George W. Bush as a compassionate conservative. Even Obama to some extent on reform. Those frames matter to voters, more than the specifics.
Dems don’t lose because they’re not serious on education questions, but rather because voters assume if you’re not serious then you’re also not going to be serious on a bunch of other things. That’s why the “they/them” ads were so politically devastating.
Emanuel isn’t the only Dem talking like this, here’s Arne Duncan recently, for instance:
“We don’t have goals. We don’t have strategies to achieve them. We don’t have metrics to measure them, and we don’t have public transparency,” Duncan said. “We’re lost, and we’ve broken trust with parents, and so I feel, again, a moral and educational obligation to try and help more.”
That about covers it. But Emanuel is the only one so far in the presidential conversation making the same points. Hopefully that creates some space for a more vigorous debate.
Also on education politics, a question I am wondering about, and if you have an answer, reach out. Donald Trump, McDonalds-eater, bullet-dodger, civilization-ender — and current U.S. President talks about a lot of things. A lot. Total almost non-stop free association with this one. In our part of the world his 2025 tax bill created a landmark school choice program in the country that a year or two from now will probably be the largest federal education program. It’ll also probably be pretty popular if polling is any indication. Yet he doesn’t talk about that? Not in speeches. Not on social media. Apparently not in private. Why is that? It seems like a no-brainer and it’s a lot more popular than $4/gallon gas or hours long TSA lines. You wouldn’t be able to get a normal U.S. President to shut up about it. Yet here we are. Why?
How I Use AI
A bit of a dust-up has broken out about how people are using AI in writing. Good a time as any to briefly discuss how I use it, and don’t, around here. I don’t use to write or generate ideas (my ideas file doesn’t need any juicing from AI, it’s too long as it is). I don’t see any point in using it to write. But I do use it to edit. It’s a very good proofreader when prompted well. It’s a pretty good editor with good prompts for feedback. But I’ve learned the hard way (it changed a number in a consequential way a while ago) to monitor all suggested edits. I also use it to catch notes for me to use later. But human eyes last and human input first.
And if you think emm dashes are a good tell that I or someone is using it, well…I went back and looked at my TIME columns, all pre-AI, and I was averaging a little more than two per column across more than 100. So I do like an emm dash and am not going to let the robots take that from me – at least not yet.
*You could do worse for a name for a 70+ metal band.
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