You can do this right now: Think of a person who wrote a paper you love, whose work influenced or helped you, or has made your professional life better. Search up their email address. Shoot them a quick email of thanks. It means so, so much. This is a rough time of year, share some joy.

As we've continued collecting IA & NE tuition data, we found Iowa schools became substantially less likely to publicly report tuition in 25-26 (1st yr universal ESA eligibility). NE schools saw no similar shift, suggesting universal subsidies may alter schools’ incentives to disclose prices publicly

The Real Scandal Isn’t Arizona’s Taxpayer-Funded Homemaking Camp for 8 Year Old Girls. It’s That Democrats No Longer Believe in Hospitality.

That special academic bile produced by reviewing an article 95% written by AI. Going forward, all papers should be labeled: 🧑‍🎨 artisanal, or 🥜mass-produced with an LLM that also processes peanuts.

Exposure to frontier knowledge through college courses increases educational attainment and earnings, by keeping students engaged and by building labor-market skills, from Barbara Biasi and Song Ma www.nber.org/papers/w35269

Something I really appreciated about joining Randi @aft.org last week for this speech is that she’s leaning into the policy space to put something forward. When it comes to schools, we have to do more than just block the bad stuff. There has to be a plan to move ahead.

For a serial reviser, book proofs are a haunted house.

Ohio House Bill 643 would limit EdChoice-Expansion scholarships after the state removed all income restrictions in 2023, making millionaires eligible for taxpayer-funded private school vouchers.

Listen, if you want your kid to have a functioning HVAC at school during a climate crisis, the state will give you a coupon to attend a private school that can provide this kind of luxury.

Another thing we know for sure: Bloomberg would ban their pizza. de Blasio would show up in the sewer with a fork and knife.

10 years old and still one of my favorite resources for explaining my frustration with proficiency: When Proficient Isn't Good The deceptive nature of proficiency as a measure of student progress — and how to fix the funhouse mirror www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/usable...

This smart op-ed by @arielkalil.bsky.social and Derek Rury makes me think that states should assign letter grades to standardized test scores so that parents find such information more comprehensible and salient. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/26/o...

Grading takes so much longer now, not just because of the logistics of AI detecting. It's also slower because it's so demoralizing

This NYT article on autism services focuses on Medicaid $ exploitation but we are seeing the same predatory behaviors aimed at ESA/voucher $.

What’s cool about BlueSky: no incited pile-ons from former adult film star and his Heritage Foundation dweebs that produced creepy messages, threats of sexual violence, and other annoyances that only made my day worse

Increasing teacher pay isn't a panacea so instead do my preferred thing, which is much more complicated and for which there is less evidence.

Donning his favorite color at the best ol' place of all, Jeopardy champ Jamie Ding '13 is back on campus for #PrincetonReunions. Thank you @feathersmcg.bsky.social#PrincetonReunionsfor supporting research and higher education. Join him: https://bit.ly/4tTMGhM

I had the chance to weigh in, observing that the tension about funding Islamic schools "could be a major fissure in the school choice movement." www.edweek.org/policy-polit...

Memphis is under attack by ICE goons

Arizona Treasurer’s office is pitching a remarkable public records theory: route taxpayer-funded ESA purchases through ClassWallet, then claim the receipts have legally evaporated. The future of govt transparency is an electronic shredder with vendor branding.

Yet another opportunity to choose the bear.

The amount of money Arizona Dept Ed and the Arizona Treasurer have burnt fighting release of ESA expenditures made with public $ is outrageous.

What does America’s migration history reveal about today’s battle over higher ed access for undocumented students? Dominique Baker and @insidehighered.com digs in with @unlawfulentries.bsky.social in this Q&A oxford.ly/3Rusy8b

Three Decades Since Kathy Edin's Making Ends Meet - two special issues from Russell Sage! @ffcws.bsky.social

the takeaway lollipop case is genius AI could not have invented

After Eric Adams mismanaged 3K and UPK for 4 years, what a relief it is to see @mayor.nyc.gov getting it right.

Stars & Palm Trees #nightsky

My face upon receiving requests to change grades after I’ve written: For all of the reasons we’ve discussed in this class—who asks is not random, and that creates inequality within classrooms—I do not change grades.

Save the Data: LGBTQ+ Data Rescue Hackathon on Thurs May 28 from 12:00–1:30 p.m. ET.

Thanks to @iluvpolitix.bsky.social, we know that the taxpayer funded public education score in the Arizona marketplace data is: Jesus: 797 hits George Washington: 69

Funded by Arizona's taxpayer dollars for education: I Want You To Make America Great Again - Donald Trump Patriotic Wall Art Print

If you’re looking for a little procrastination this am, some unknown hero took Arizona 12 News August 2025 Open Records Request and made it a searchable database. Relive the 4th grade fun of looking up banned words in the dictionary. Happy “Make State Supe Tom Horne’s Heart Flutter” Day to all

Arizona has reached the “state-subsidized charcuterie board with sharp knives” phase of educational freedom. The free market has spoken, and it would like your 7-year-old to bring $85 and knife skills. Or, BYO paraprofessional.

Do any of you send an “I do not change grades” message when you release final grades?

You've got grit

We attended Survivor: The Children’s Dance Recital Season. 25 acts. 2.5 hours. My niece was act 24. No intermission. Around act 17, I began waving at children I do not know just to feel alive. A few numbers later, “Top Dads” appeared, because the Geneva Conventions do not apply in South Jersey.

My objection: it’s wrong. Recessions are cyclical. I’ve never seen evidence of a “business cycle” in achievement data.

I regret to inform these folks that “come,” “sit,” and “stay” - not a K12 scope and sequence On your own dime, homeschool away, but the state should do more than say: good luck, kid We have state laws for car seats. But when it comes to their education, the oversight regime is ¯\(ツ)/¯

Millions of Americans are paid through government programs to care for disabled family members. Now that lifeline is under attack on multiple fronts: Trump’s $1 trillion Medicaid cuts, strained state budgets & growing attacks from the right framing the programs as wasteful. My story on the fallout

Call me old-fashioned, but maybe set up clear oversight systems at programs’ outset rather than after your state burns 1B/funds a year.

This is genius. We need an app that translates the strategy to email. You are number 1,262. Take a seat and get comfortable.

"Haidt advised graduates to 'take control of your own attention' and 'do hard things.'"

Necessary, given “29.9 percent of respondents reported that they had cheated on an assignment or exam during their time at Princeton,” but sad. I don’t know what it would take to address the core issue - the integrity problem - but proctored exams won’t fix it.

New WP: NAEP and State tests often disagree about educational progress. How much? What do we do? We show how to use these "two watches" to improve trend measurement whenever we have multiple trends. Our paper, including methods underlying our new SEDA/EOP data: edopportunity.org/papers/two_w...

Here, I use a Fancy Professor Word, "loosey goosey," to describe AZ ESAs. 3 points are: ➡️"Risk-based" auditing is "risk-ish," inconsistently followed ➡️COIs ignored [cue sexy adult novel storyline - staff w COI allows purchase] ➡️Handed 571K potential prob transactions by vendor, ADE ignored them.

My two cents: everyone studying and making education policy should know education history. Since that seems unlikely, I’ll settle for requiring Groundhog Day: nearly every “new” reform has already been debated, tried, renamed, or memory-holed.

"The state refashioned its argument to say, well, everyone has equal access to apply for admission." But even that isn’t true. Many private schools require families to visit, tour, or jump through other hoops before they are even allowed to apply.

Here's a free link to the paper: rdcu.be/fiyrF