Rep Gwen Moore (D-WI) will soon introduce the Keep Public Funds in Public Schools Act, legislation that would REPEAL the federal school voucher scheme. Let's show broad support for repeal when the bill is introduced! Take 30 seconds to ask your rep to co-sponsor TODAY: bit.ly/repeal_fed_vouchers

In 2006, Big Tobacco ran a copycat initiative to confuse voters.  It didn't work.  Now a DeVos-linked group is trying it with school vouchers.

15 Iowa school boards have passed a resolution demanding adequate public school funding & phasing out vouchers. Just one district, Bettendorf, has rejected the resolution when brought to a vote. Wild to elect school board members who are against public schools. qctimes.com/news/local/e...

🎉 We’re marking our 10th birthday with a party and you’re invited! Thursday June 25th, 6:30pm at Movement on Montrose. Host committee is still in formation; you can buy your ticket or join the host committee here: actionnetwork.org/ticketed_eve...

Fox-hen-house alert: "Youth AI Safety Institute is world’s 1st independent lab to make sure the AI kids use is safe...Several philanthropic and industry leaders —incl Walton Family Foundation, Anthropic, OpenAI Foundation, & Pinterest—have helped launch effort." www.techpolicy.press/we-make-sure...

Today in AI in education is cop shit: "BusPatrol’s cameras would take a photo of each car a bus drives past, record the car’s license plate and GPS location, and then law enforcement can query that data."

👋 Public school supporters! The Illinois General Assembly is back in Springfield to start their last week of Spring Session. Here’s our update on what’s needed and what’s still moving + a complete to-do list of actions for reaching out to your legislators! www.ilfps.org/to_do_list_f...

Tuesday, May 26 and Thursday, May 28 at 1 – 2pm CDT Join Citizen Action/Illinois—talk to Illinoisans about the importance of taxing the rich & patch them through to urge their legislators to take action! “Tax the Rich Power Hour Illinois Revenue Alliance” sign up: www.mobilize.us/citizenactio...

"In Libertyville Elementary District 70, every grade from kindergarten through eighth has a formal recess block." www.dailyherald.com/20260511/hea...

“The fact that aesthetic/emotional response—the root of my response to what I read—is beyond the capabilities of generative AI is one of the reasons I cannot get on board with the idea that they have anything useful to say about a piece of human authored writing.” open.substack.com/pub/bibliora...

Probably related story from Feb 2026: "Did IL 6th, 7th and 8th graders really dramatically increase their learning to the extent implied on the 2023 & 2024 Illinois tests? Or were the huge gains reported in 2023 & 2024 due to flaws in the Illinois tests?" evanstonroundtable.com/2026/02/12/a...

Hell yeah! "Data-center insiders blame the state’s Biometrics Information and Privacy Act, passed nearly two decades ago, with keeping so-called hyperscale users on the other side of the border."

🫠 $1.6M per job??? "From the start of the data-center incentive program in mid-2019 through the end of 2024, Illinois provided $983 million on 27 projects with a combined investment of $8.1 billion and 591 new jobs" www.chicagobusiness.com/politics-pol...

“The country's internet regulator eSafety had first issued the fine in 2023, after the social media giant did not respond adequately to a request to supply information on how it was tackling the exploitation of children online.” www.bbc.com/news/article...

That tracks.

I'm trying to think of a technology that was so roundly hated and yet pushed so hard by the government-corporate complex

👏 “There’s so much evidence to suggest they perform better, their mental health is better, they’re safer drivers, and everything works better with their lives if they don’t have to get up at that really, really uncomfortable hour.” www.chalkbeat.org/2026/05/20/l...

this was HR 2616 which also bans books by or about trans and nonbinary people from schools START CALLING YOUR SENATORS NOW CIS FRIENDS TRANS KIDS NEED YOU

Reminder that 5calls.org makes it super-easy to call your Senators & implore them to oppose the abominable anti-LGBTQ bills H.R. 2616 & 2617 that just passed the House. Introverts like me can take advantage of the voicemail option while the offices are closed.

⚠️ ICYMI Student data privacy violation settlement ⚠️ The claim deadline is July 27, 2026. More info and to submit a claim: powerschoolnaviancesettlement.com

“Originally from Colombia, Ricardo & his mother came to the US in 2022, when he was 15. She filed for asylum…court records show…For Navarette, the ruling on Tuesday marks a positive step in her case. But her son’s petition remains pending.” www.chicagotribune.com/2026/05/19/c...

“I would like to see schools adopt what I’ve called a culture of sleep. If you have a school culture that values sleep and thinks of it as a key piece to adolescence well-being and learning development, a lot of things fall into place.” www.edweek.org/leadership/t...

In state law for 5 years that recess must be screen free 😭 “Two of the biggest changes are eliminating students’ ability to directly access YouTube, something many parents have complained abt, & not allowing students to use devices during free time or indoor recess.” www.oakpark.com/2026/05/18/d...

evidently the kids are starting to say "that's AI" as slang for "that's bullshit" and I could not be happier

Let’s not take Polis’ advice to opt in to Trump’s harmful federal school voucher program either, huh?

“For the first time, all 21 members of Chicago’s Board of Education will be up for election. It’s the last step of a multi-year process — kickstarted by the state legislature — to transition away from having Chicago’s mayor appoint members to the board” www.chalkbeat.org/chicago/2026...

Arizona, the model for voucher programs across the country, spent so much money paying private schoolers’ tuition that it faced hundreds of millions in budget cuts to critical state programs and projects. (Published July 2024)

Just no. Ugh “The goal of this study is to better understand children’s everyday learning experiences and to develop Al tools that can help assess classroom interaction quality" www.404media.co/researchers-...

Ohio spent over $1 billion dollars on school vouchers last year, while seriously cutting public school funding. About 80% of Ohio's children attend public schools.

It’s a birthday party for Illinois Families for Public Schools! Join us for an “old-school” celebration of our 10 years in the fight for public schools and a fundraiser to keep us moving into our next decade. Tickets and more info: bit.ly/June25party See you Thursday, June 25th, 6:30pm!

“At least 14 states have proposed laws to limit screen time in schools, according to Ballotpedia, with four states — Alabama, Tennessee, Utah and Iowa — passing such legislation.”

Parents in suburban Philly pushing for opt-out options for ed tech and screens: “Teaching how to use technology is not the same thing as using technology to teach everything else” www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/m...

Maybe one day there will be a podcast with a snappy name that explains how “Sold a Story” didn’t quite have its science right either and caused districts to counterproductively overcorrect www.the74million.org/article/repo...

Dang, if all the fish in my 5 million gallon aquarium died, I'd start by testing the water, not each individual fish. 🤔

Read this! (And weep, but also share!)

Anthropic is running a continuous research project inside real classrooms at scale and Google DeepMind is doing an RCT of an AI chatbot with 1500 UK schoolkids. Big tech is now all about evidencing AI effects through classroom experiments. The big question is... newsletters.qs.com/6a04954386e7...

“Because early on, those wild and crazy experts in student life and academic affairs began to suggest—within five years of making LMS’s available—that students had better outcomes if you handed them a printed syllabus, and took notes by hand.”

“Canvas has known since the end of April that they had a problem, and they warned no one. The hack was only a surprise to their millions of customers, who do not just attend and work at colleges and universities, but thousands of high schools.” open.substack.com/pub/clairepo...

“[A]nyone who in 2026 is still pronouncing that ‘there’s going to be some move-fast-and-break-things’ in education is a fool, a dangerous fool even, who really shouldn't be making crucial decisions about what and how our children should learn, who and what they can become.”

@audreywatters.bsky.social: “Increasingly people want me to weigh in on why I think there’s growing pushback against ed-tech in schools, and this ridiculous New Yorker interview certainly gets at some of it: this is a stupid vision of the future.” 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/the-self-dri...

“Worse, all the evidence indicates the Educational Choice for Children Act is more likely to impede rather than improve student achievement, just to subsidize rich kids attending private schools. Which means this issue really isn’t thorny after all. Gov. Pritzker should just say no.”

“Subsidizing individual decisions that do not generate a public good or service — even legitimate ones well within the rights of, in this case, the parents making them — is an inappropriate use of public money.” chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/2...

👀 hoo boy!!!

Private school vouchers are so unpopular with voters that proponents have repeatedly failed to gain enough signatures to put pro-voucher measures onto the ballot. See, e.g., California in 2021, 2023, and 2025, and Michigan in 2021. pfps.org/federal-vouc...

Board members aligned with Mayor Brandon Johnson argued for stepping up efforts to lobby state lawmakers for more funding in the final weeks of Springfield’s legislative session.

We’re hearing about school budget cuts all over the state… “When we give big developers a free pass not to pay the taxes everyone else pays, our communities suffer the consequences.” www.chicagobusiness.com/opinion/comm...

And the tech companies wonder why people hate them so much.

Bill passed in committee but there will be discussions on amending it. Please let your state senator know that the state should *ban* use of biometric information in schools not expand it! SB 415 should be amended so it strengthens restrictions... elections.il.gov/ElectionOper...