Today is always a great day to not use generative AI ever again.

Democrats are as inclined to turn public education into subsidized training for tech companies rather than democracy.

Barbara Kopple last night, talking about how anti-union thugs had a $5K bounty on her during filming of HARLAN COUNTY USA (1976). “It taught me not to be afraid, that you need to stand up for what you believe in.” The 50th anniversary run continues thru May 7 at @ifccenter.bsky.social. #FilmSky

In #MichEd, legislators have given millions to corporate vendors, including ed tech/AI conglomerates and curriculum publishers, while schools close their libraries and lay off their librarians. You can't solve a "literacy crisis" without fully-funded and staffed school libraries.

What happens when your school leader doesn't read research or makes decisions based on trends, ideology, vendor sales pitches, or social media? Not staying aware of research or writing in the field reduces teachers' power and influence to participate in decision making and, if needed, push back.

The main goal of the back-to-basics movements in schools is to decontextualize learning and depoliticize people, so they take books, authentic writing, and human interaction out of classrooms and fill the time with low-level workplaces training tasks done in isolation, often on surveillance ed tech.

“…some of Michigan’s smallest, rural governments are facing big questions about how relatively new developments can change their communities. And without an established playbook, some local officials feel ill-equipped to handle all the uproar around new projects.”

I think the most interesting and important school problem is to figure out why, if you ask kids what school is for, hardly any of them will say that learning is an intrinsic good. People have other problems, but I like this one—touches a lot of big issues.

This is one of the issues with the "knowledge building" crowd, like Natalie Wexler. Wexler and her friends won't address questions about what happens when your government tries to erase you and your knowledge from schools.

I'm so behind on @haveyouheard.bsky.social episodes, but this one featuring @jaustinedu.bsky.social, @johndownesangus.bsky.social, @annieabrams.bsky.social, & Nora De La Cour might be the best of the year. A Dream Team of tackling this exact dilemma: soundcloud.com/haveyouheard...

If you think Toni Morrison "alienates" students, consider how "alienated" they will feel later in life when references are made to Beloved and they don't understand. A lot of things are unfamiliar or difficult for students. That isn't a reason not to teach them.

TWITTER USER: "Education research is shoddy and weak." ALSO TWITTER USER: "All of my viewpoints on education are from the tweets of SovereignCitizen420 and EduDissenter6969."

All of the folks retweeting Kelsey Piper's articles about education are about to learn this lesson the hard way.

Seeing all the different things schools are doing right now to motivate students to try their best on testing says a lot, I think, about how divorced they are from being meaningful for students.

As a caregiver, educator, and researcher concerned about edtech in schools, I’m not interested in forming alliances with bigots. ht: @jaustinedu.bsky.social

One of the most important arguments @annieabrams.bsky.social has made: don't cede books to the political right. Unfortunately, the lack of a progressive answer to the reactionary rhetoric is because we've done just that, but it doesn't have to stay that way!

One of the big lessons of the SoR movement has been to be careful of the company you keep, even when there's alignment on goals. I think as the pushes for more books and less corporate ed tech in classrooms grow, this will be important to remember. Resistance to reactionary nostalgia is key.

Beware of the latest push toward competency-based education in #MichEd. Much of it is a back-door attempt by the political right, including CEOs and former politicians, to push atomized, low-level skill-and-drill instruction along with harmful language policies. michiganadvance.com/2026/04/08/m...

Very excited to share my most recent episode of Conceptually Speaking! No matter where you’re situated in the English Studies penumbra, @manshel.bsky.social’s research on the history of English education is must-read scholarship. #literacies #edusky #academicsky open.substack.com/pub/trevoral...

I'm hoping the editor at BookRiot who mocked me to her followers for pointing out how literacy laws, including those supported by by Dems, are covert attempts at book banning under the guise of "reading science" deserve our attention, protest, and anger is feeling awesome about herself today.

Our political leaders want to Make Literacy Technical Again nationwide in order to totally control schools: mandated scripted curriculum from corporate vendors, endless standardized assessment, banned teaching methods, and restrictive book lists.

Never a better time than now to follow the money.

Recommended reading: Nora De La Cour's latest for Jacobin on how the right ended up with a more appealing vision for public schools than test/career prep jacobin.com/2026/04/righ...

Red state book bans and mandates rightly attract a lot of attention. Meanwhile, there’s been and continues to be a quieter shift in blue states away from meaningful kinds of reading and writing.

Huge thanks to @jenniferberkshire.bsky.social for amplifying the conversation about how "blue state" politicians have embraced the corporate, back-to-basics "Make Literacy Technical Again" movement at the expense of a more holistic, compelling, and purposeful vision for education.

Kids are being denied access to books because of a toxic mix of deficit thinking and corporate control enabled by state governments. Now, in the place of books, students are getting slop designed in the name of test prep. It's exhausting to defend access to books from both the right and the left.

Do not do this. Our literacy instruction should be responsive. Dyslexic students need more direct, explicit instruction than non-dyslexic students, and we should give both what they need. Too much direct, explicit instruction can set non-dyslexic students back.

@meaonline.bsky.social claims LETRS is shown to be effective, but there is no Tier 1 research to support that claim. It's sad we don't hold big corporations taking millions in state money, like Cambium, accountable to the same evidence-based practices that we demand of classroom teachers.

I really, really need academic organizations to think more critically about travel (conferences, talks, and meetings) during the Trump administration. Sadly, most are not.

HELL YEAH AFROMAN WON!! First Amendment lives to fight another day. What an absolute American legend. Recap if you need it, doesn't do the entire saga justice, justice did right today though! Effin a. PS Streisand Effect is now Adams County OH Sheriff Department Effect youtu.be/2DyQzs2QW5I?...

Boy, howdy. I have so much to say about this, including some recent experiences. I will say to college and university friends that there’s more to gain from solidarity with K-12 colleagues than separation-by-derision, especially given the current terrain.

"In an ideal world, the plaintiffs would sue Grammarly into nonexistence and the fiery depths of Hell, setting a precedent for other institutions built entirely on theft."

Formulaic templates, cutesy acronyms, and other gimmicks that teach kids to write badly....but score well on tests: goo.gl/RIVJ49. And every example of good scores for mediocrity - or poor scores for impressive thinking - reminds us never to judge kids or schools on the basis of standardized tests.

Corporate ed reformers want to pay people minimum wage to churn out depolicitized, decontextualized curriculum using AI while using "personalized learning" bots, eliminating those pesky teachers and their unions. This is why Mackenzie Price and the Alpha School model has so many followers.

I'm trying to find the right words to convince people that relying on grades, credentialing, and job training as "purposes" for school are playing into the forces working to destroy public education. This moment calls for us to argue for public schools as foundational democratic institutions.

Coming to a workplace near you

EDUCATORS: Education policy that mandates curriculum and legally limits pedagogy in many states, including blue states, is reducing access to books across classrooms and kids are reading way less as a result, which is both sad and dangerous. NON-EDUCATORS: Shut up and vote blue no matter who.

We are really going to regret the technology we have built.

Realizing as I read Maxine Greene for the first time how unusual it is to read people who study education make the case that teacher autonomy is central to the success of public education’s goals, the most important of which is fostering autonomy in our students.

When we talk about the "Miracle," we should also mention that: 👉MS ranks near the bottom on 8th grade NAEP. 👉MS did not have a Black student score at the advanced level on the 8th grade NAEP. 👉Only 1 in 4 MS 11th graders meet the ACT "readiness" benchmarks. Why is this a system to emulate?

From Yong Zhao's "What Works Can Hurt," which should be a must-read for governors and legislators making education policy with low expertise, high urgency, and big time corporate lobbying money.

Maintaining robust public education will require us to hold "blue state" governors and legislators accountable for their crusade to "Make Literacy Technical Again" by turning classrooms over to corporations through curriculum mandates and testing requirements while failing to stand up to censorship.

✅ Core Knowledge Foundation Board Member ✅ "Race to the Top" Advocate ✅ EngageNY Curriculum Developer Steiner checks so many of the ed reform boxes that many liberals on this site love and say we can't criticize!

Corporate Dems are undermining the democratic foundations of schooling with legislation cloaked in co-opted notions of "science" and "equity." An unwillingness to hold them accountable because they have a "D" by their name will be the end of public ed. As always, listen to @mraleosays.bsky.social.

Kelly can mock away, but in the schools I support books are becoming more endangered every day because of curriculum mandates and demands for fidelity. I spoke with student teachers tonight at Michigan and they reported a consistent move to excerpts and passages, as they have to stick to the script.

(cough, Massachusetts) That much-vaunted literacy bill is, in one version, going to BAR particular modes of teaching. There are, in my view, very very few things that should rise to "banned by state law" when it comes to how we instruct students.

State literacy laws that mandate curriculum and proscribe pedagogical practices are already doing some of the heavy lifting here. We should absolutely fight this, but we should also fight against these soft censorship initiatives—often championed by Democrats—in our own states!