Love this! and yes, yes, yes—hypothetical scenarios foster valuable conversations, including with students! thebrokencopier.substack.com/p/an-interes...

“I’m sorry you can’t replicate my paper - the data access is restricted.”

By my count, this is the 39th opinion piece @wsj.com has published pushing school vouchers since Jan 2022. Another 10+ mention vouchers favorably. That’s 1 voucher column every ~5 weeks—for 4 straight years. Wall Street loves vouchers but what about Main Street?

To this end, I am also looking for sources of public school fieldtrip frequency and payer (i.e. are parents paying out of pocket). The scholarly lit is pretty light on this topic. If you have thoughts on how often/who pays based on your experiences as parent or teacher, would love to hear them

With ESA $, Arizona kids took excursions in >=13 countries on state taxpayers. That is an interim estimate - I'm still cleaning these data. Also, excursions in 44 non-AZ states. 🇦🇹Austria 🇧🇪Belgium 🇪🇬Egypt 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿England 🇫🇷France 🇩🇪Germany 🇬🇷Greece 🇮🇹Italy 🇯🇴Jordan 🇲🇽Mexico 🇳🇱Netherlands 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿Scotland 🇪🇸Spain

Lord have mercy...Waymo! Arizona ESA public school funds used on Waymo. I have so many questions.

Battle Hymn of the Graduate Student: If I have seen further, it is by keeping my footing on a zebra’s ass.

In earlier voucher debates, a common argument was: why should I pay for your uber when we fund public transportation? I took that as a hypothetical - but now I am here coding up the costs of Ubers and Lyfts charged to Arizona taxpayers.

Since 2022, AZ taxpayers funded $7.25M in Legos that individual families kept for themselves. Every AZ K12 teacher could have spent ~$125 on purchases *for their whole class, present & future* w those "take my toys & go home" Lego sets. [And yes, my code for this analysis was straight bananas.]

Co-sign

Check out Virginia’s language that restricts teaching Jan 6 as a day of peace and love

We are certainly at a crossroads around AI in education (and likely will be for some time) but I continue to think the focus needs to be centered on the choices ADULTS are making, not the students Three questions I think are worth asking any educator using AI in their work right now:

I see bacon everywhere

Bless @alondra.bsky.social for opening this Pandora’s box at the end of midterms week

I used to dress up integrals in calculus and now I know I’m not the only one in this racket

I had the kind of sleep night that has me considering the odds of arrhythmia if I drink a Celsius before lecture🫠

Someone putting the Institute for Advanced Study chalkboards to other good use…

Get thee to a McDonald’s (by March 19th)

Don’t even get me started on why colleges schedule games and meets and matches and championships that require *student* athletes to miss an unconscionable amount of their educations.

The social media ads you get as a ~47 year old woman are straight up rude.

"It sure looks like TX would like to provide taxpayer dollars only to certain schs..connected to certain religions...which inevitably involves the State deciding which religions are legitimate."

I'm thrilled to see unallowable purchases called out, but the real scandal is what is allowed & the absence of oversight to ensure kids are being educated. Public money=public accountability. Require every ESA kid be tested on core academic subjects every year, and publicly report results

Here’s a summary video of early Arizona ESA analyses. Much of this debate asks whether purchases are allowable. The real question is return on investment. A chicken coop or infinite Legos or 3D printers may be allowed, but they're not the same investment in a kid's future as books & instruction.

Baller ESA account: By day, I girlboss in an executive chair. By night, I’m wrapped in faux-fur blankets, mood-lit by a jellyfish lamp & hydrating from 1 of 2 Stanleys. I carry my life in a series of increasingly expensive black leather bags. With a Coach charm, obv. I own a neck air conditioner.

If we say Arizona is flushing taxpayer money with its ESA program, it turns out that’s not a metaphor. An electric bidet, purchased with ESA funds. After spending the day in these data, I’m beyond frustrated. Public dollars meant for kids’ educations, literally down the drain.

Who among us hasn't subsidized a European vacation, or visited Petra, on the state of Arizona's taxpayers? Two different account holders. This is outrageous, and fully allowable under Arizona's ESA policy. [Dates are dates submitted, not dates on which expense happened.]

I don’t make the data. I just analyze them (Arizona ESA)

Excited to share year 3 tuition increase findings soon with Jason Fontana’s nearly complete dissertation. Anyone who took a 100-level college micro class knows exactly what we find about the impact of universal subsidies on prices but the magnitude nonetheless shocked me.

There’s a big public management literature on third-party governance and contracting out. At this point when you’re dealing with 99% of private students paid via voucher subsides, Iowa private schools are contractors for public service provision. They should be treated as such @donmoyn.bsky.social

Join us for this incredible learning experience, NYC public school teachers! 2 week summer institute, honorarium & CTLEs, and an ongoing community of critical practitioners for educational justice. Apply by April 3. tinyurl.com/HEALSI2026

Jason Fletcher's substack is terrific food for thought.

It was not until I used Chat GPT's Codex that I understood many of the points made in this article. Normatively, I don't know what I think about it. But the delta is profound. And I haven't even tried Claude Code yet.

Who among us hasn't subsidized a European vacation, or visited Petra, on the state of Arizona's taxpayers? Two different account holders. This is outrageous, and fully allowable under Arizona's ESA policy. [Dates are dates submitted, not dates on which expense happened.]

Good thing the public schools are left with the crumbs so rich kids could get their Legos! I'm pretty sure you can make a cake from Legos.

Imagine you are a Lego fanatic. In ~3 years (Aug22-Nov25), how much could you spend on Legos alone? AZ's winner-this is one ESA account-spent $15,944.59 of AZ taxpayer money on Legos* (*May be more: WalMart Target Michael's etc purchases aren't disaggregated. Waiting for those data.)

Feeling sticker rich

Milton Friedman argued parents, if given govt $ to spend on education, would invest in kids' human capital. His model excluded pets. Drawn from multiple ESA accounts, some of my favorite pet expenditures. Did you know they make wrinkle cream for bulldogs & frenchies? Or that dog DNA kits exist?

I'm writing the wildest code of my life for a project on Arizona taxpayer funded ESAs (vouchers). gen sexystuff=strpos(vendor_key, "insane words for public ed") Purchases below are drawn from multiple ESA accounts. I'm not going to write them here bc my post will get blocked, but see ⬇️

Excellent points here from @drbritwilliams.bsky.social one additional point: HE’s teaching advice derives from the very real fact that teaching doesn’t matter for tenure & promotion unless you are identified as a massive problem. And that’s an incentives issue that could be addressed

Telling faculty to “not spend too much time on teaching” is one of the most noxious norms in academia. The guidance I got as junior was “just don’t suck.” Higher Ed is under siege and we hand critics ammunition with these norms.

Good morning from Moynihan station’s extra fancy Laduree cart. 2026 goals: travel late enough to eat macarons.

“The lawsuit, filed Wednesday, argues that since Trump took office, the work of the OCR — once one of the federal government’s largest enforcers of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — has become significantly more opaque.” This is a big deal.

At my desk, it's machine learning vs. items like Brazilian waxing kit, Victoria's Secret thongs, & vaginal probiotics in the Arizona ESA data. There's only one GoodMan who can name this paper @joshua-goodman.com

I just found a 2024 charge for $1,348.03 to French Laundry - the 3 Michelin star restaurant in California - in Arizona ESA reimbursements.

I am estimating *the dumbest regression models ever* on Arizona ESA parents' vacation spending, sports fees, and Lego purchases. Because that's what red state ESA education policy decided taxpayers should fund instead of investing in kids' human capital.

Excited to release this policy brief exploring the college enrollment impacts of Massachusetts' recent dramatic expansions of free community college. TLDR: The clear messaging and simple design of MassReconnect & MassEducate sparked substantial increases in community college enrollment.

Dreams do come true. There is a Cinnabon food truck on York Avenue.

Remember tcf.org/content/comm...

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