if someone told me i didn’t actually deserve to be the valedictorian of my elementary school i‘d probably say “that sounds right,” not ”my whole life is a lie”

imagine vomiting because you found out you were one point away from giftedness 40 years ago, that’s insane

we also used to play scrabble collaboratively as a family and this is probably why i’m Like This

one reason ap is so popular is that a lot of people secretly like tracking and think it’s impolitic to say it aloud so they default to the company

To be clear: is art harder for many disabled artists? Less accessible? Yes. But disabled artists from Indian mouth painters to Frieda Kahlo and others have been making art their way for centuries. Their own work. Not work that is a simulacrum of art, reliant on stealing others work.

Here’s a fun fact—a few years ago, the DOJ investigated schools under the pretense of antitrust for DROPPING AP together. www.justice.gov/archives/opa...

Indeed, if American prep schools lose their international audience - if Deerfield or Exeter no longer signals, to foreign elites, a pathway to the Ivy League - they are really in for trouble.

we also have some elites who’ve given up on a definition “having nice things” that includes poetry

I think it’s undeniable that some students, teachers, and institutions are being hit harder, but I think it’s also a potential misdiagnosis of what we’re facing to assume that private prep schools will remain what they‘ve long been.

Trying to make a poetry anthology for my kids for next year. What is a poem you think every HS kid should read before they graduate from HS?

one person to another in the lobby on the way out the door: how about that game last night from inside the elevator as the door closed, going up: KNICKS IN FIVE

people are setting off fireworks and hollering and screaming in the street in park slope

people are honking car horns and screaming in the streets i love this city

i went to the woods to learn to live less algorithmically

one path to "viewpoint diversity" is empowering as many people as possible to read as widely as possible

My elementary school called it SQUIRT: Super Quiet Uninterrupted Individual Reading Time

honestly part of the issue is precisely that it’s not rocket science to run programs like this, you don’t need teams of consultants and specialists

kindergartner: mom it’s like who even cares about the san antonio spurs

we should teach this in schools

"It's time to read the CliffsNotes, study the AP exam, and work alongside our high school colleagues" I am extremely enthusiastic about the work @manshel.bsky.social is doing here. Also, he's a lot of fun to read. Part of a crucial new @atpost45.bsky.social cluster post45.org/2026/06/inst...

same as it ever was

"If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible-society, vote with a great party either for the government or against it...under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are." Emerson, who was annoying and made some good points

(Again, I think you’d be surprised by how few books the rich in private school are reading)

books, essays

"If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible-society, vote with a great party either for the government or against it...under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are." Emerson, who was annoying and made some good points

my favorite thing about this thread is that the nyt is beneath contempt

“We have lost control and need to bring books back.” let's gooooo

not just seattle

I mean I never shut up about this

oh man

years ago a student said “the test is like a tax we have to pay to have class together”

am fascinated by the responses, so many of which are about personal experiences years ago

On developing a historical sense: “To possess a historical sense does not mean simply to possess information about the past. It means to have a different consciousness, a historical consciousness, to have incorporated into our minds a mode of understanding that profoundly influences the way we/

"New programs like the Classical Learning Test’s Classical Baccalaureate (CB) program, developed with Arcadia Education, are positioning themselves as more rigorous benchmarks of student ability."

I had a kind of unusual HS experience here because my school offered a combined English/History course in place of grade 11 History and English which I took instead of APUSH and as a result had a more comprehensive education despite lacking a test credit that said I knew it

it's been watered down A LOT, as have the English exams, and Republicans have now been beating this drum for years as they develop their own alternatives

we could make new things

last week's article in the free press on the classic learning test holds up tate as a kind of activist deeply concerned with academic standards, which i don't think is accurate

there are better ways to teach about america

that TikTok is a classic teleological fallacy that they warn you about in history school. just because we ended up somewhere didn't mean it was foreordained to happen that way. people made choices within the constraints of the structures they lived within, but they could've done otherwise.

politicized school boards, yes, and also corporate reform

Having thought about this: "high school" catches a lot of strays in talk about universities, and I regret adding to that with this choice of words. There are differences, but where control over teaching is the issue, putting it this way reinforces at one level the interference it decries at another.

Failing to fetch me me at first keep encouraged,

seems to me a really important thing to consider, too much to post about, and i've not seen long form writing on it

this

Democrats, Republicans, university administrators, K-12 administrators, all in firm agreement about this. And it’s terrible for kids.