Hills: not the Board purview for how the resources are allocated (except in some ways it is, which is why the submit a budget request)
Bell: Senate Ways and Means has released its version of the FY27 budget; in formal session now deliberating continues many of same themes of earlier drafts committed to working with everyone on issues facing rural districts of which they are aware
happy to entertain questions
Martinez asks steps in the budget process, as it is his first time through Bell: have seen some headlines on Legislature being committed to earlier process once through Senate, conference committee formed, deliberates, releases budget that is then passed by both chambers Smidy asks about how advocating works from Board members Hills directs to Secretary and Commissioner Zrike: "we think we do that together in tandem" would love to talk to Board members about that met with collaborative members in Northampton: hearing concerns from across the state "coming on later in the budget process" "data and information to bring back to the budget process" "learning this process now" "very productive conversations with the Legislature"
speaking on this, per the memo: Rob Curtin, Deputy Commissioner, Matt Deninger, Associate Commissioner of Planning and Research, and Kendra Winner, Research and Evaluation Coordinator
Deninger: as a former high school English teacher, it is always good to be back in a high school
...and while it sorta felt like things were dormant there for awhile--why can't we announce building committees?--there are updates, and, more importantly, places to weigh in. Burncoat High School page has an offshoot on the building project which notes that the building committee met for the first time last week* and there was a visioning session last night. But there are more:
On Tuesday, May 19, from 3:00-6:00 PM, the Burncoat School Building Project will host Educational Visioning Workshop #1 at Burncoat High School, 179 Burncoat Street, Worcester, in the cafeteria.
On Tuesday, May 26, from 4:00-7:30 PM (dinner will be provided), the Burncoat School Building Project will host Educational Visioning Workshop #2 at Burncoat High School, 179 Burncoat Street, Worcester, in the cafeteria.
On Wednesday, June 10, from 3:00-6:00 PM, the Burncoat School Building Project will host Educational Visioning Workshop #3 at Burncoat High School, 179 Burncoat Street, Worcester, in the cafeteria.
Good luck if you can only make something after 5, I guess, because only last night's did.
I really, really urge you to attend this, because Worcester, while it is speedy at getting schools through, in part does that by having one of the least public building processes around. They'll have only the building committee meetings that they are required by MSBA to have. The School Committee in Worcester has very, very limited involvement, so you also won't see updates there.
This is it. Weigh in now.
__________________ *which also does not say who is on it. Sigh.
“Finally, the resolution agreement you have provided contains provisions that are inconsistent with the values that inform our work of supporting all children in our communities. We will never issue a policy that devalues certain members of our diverse community.”
May we all be so bold in defending our students.*
_____________________ *I wish my alma mater were being so public and bold.
“Parking lots are a terrible option, but there are options that are worse,” said Jennifer Erb-Downward, director of housing stability programs and policy initiatives for Poverty Solutions, a University of Michigan project to promote economic mobility.
These are on the way to South Station in Boston. Aren't they nice?
For the past two weeks, nearly every day brings at least one, if not more, article about the tech backlash in schools. An attempt at a roundup:
If you did not see the graduates of the University of Central Florida's College of Communications and Arts boo their graduation speaker's lauding of AI as the future, please watch (that link is for when it happens, but stay to watch their faces). If by chance you're going to be in front of graduates this spring, learn from her (negative) example).
Nearly one-third of students from kindergarten to 12th grade nationwide use i-Ready, including in nine of the 10 largest school districts.
And the impact on student learning is not nearly as clear as one might like. I really recommend reading, especially if you're in a district that uses it.
“These companies are literally mandated by their corporate charters to maximize profits in any way possible,” said Bridget Kessler, a mom of elementary-school-age children in Flatlands who also serves on her local community-education council. “So how can I trust that they have the best interests of my kids in mind?”
Earlier in the piece, by the way, is something I have found particularly insidious: the use of so-called "fellowships" to infiltrate school administrations:
Three years ago, Google partnered with the AI-focused investment firm Global Silicon Valley Ventures to “advance technology” in education — through programs like Amira, which GSV Ventures has a stake in. Top education administrators have joined the Google GSV Education Innovation Fellowship, including superintendent of Manhattan high schools Gary Beidleman and chief academic officer Miatheresa Pate, who is responsible for the city’s AI guidelines. In a policy document from the fellowship, Beidleman advises educators on how to get parents and teachers to accept AI: Find “early adopters and key messengers” to convert skeptics and achieve a “cultural shift” from within.
Such programs are not approved by school committees, despite being a commitment of time, and often no one checks if they align with the goals, policies, and values of the district.
Government Technology reports that three-quarters of those surveyed by PA Unplugged think students are spending too much time on screens in schools. The article looks at some specific responses in Pennsylvania.
Speaking of making money off of all of this, 404 Media reported that the OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft are all supporting the federal Literacy in Future Technologies Artificial Intelligence, or LIFT AI Act. They aren't doing that out of the best interest of students.
In terms specifically on AI, I thought this piece in Vanity Fair in which AI is appearing in TV shows and it is always a bad guy was really telling:
The Hacks team also explores the real-life messaging that the tech community has been using—that “AI is coming whether you like it or not,” a catchphrase that is heard around Hollywood on a near-daily basis. Ava (Hannah Einbinder) pushes back on that idea, criticizing this “forced inevitability.” “People like you are always saying that it’s happening whether you like it or not, but you are the ones making it happen,” she says. “You could easily stop it if people could say that they don’t want it—but you don’t give people a choice.”
Statsky says that aggressiveness from the tech community about AI’s inevitability is a red flag for her as a writer. “Sometimes, when something is being forced so hard, you can smell behind it that it’s not organic and it’s not natural,” she says. “If this was really the dream technology that they were pushing, well, then why are you needing to force it down our throats?”
The family of one of the victims of last year's shooting at Florida State University is suing OpenAI, which the shooter used in planning the attack.
“OpenAI knew this would happen. It’s happened before and it was only a matter of time before it happened again,” Joshi said in a Monday statement. “But they chose to put their profits over our safety and it killed my husband. They need to be responsible before another family has to go through this.”
Attorneys for Joshi also reiterated that “ChatGPT inflamed and encouraged Ikner’s delusions; endorsed his view that he was a sane and rational individual; helped convince him that violent acts can be required to bring about change,” adding that the software provided what he viewed as encouragement to “carry out a massacre, down to the detail of what time would be best to encounter the most traffic on campus.”
I broke with my usual tradition of turning first to the net school spending page* when cracking open** the FY27 Worcester Public Schools recommended budget, because, as I've been noting, the looming end of the Student Opportunity Act implementation is high on my concerns. Worcester, as part of adhering to the requirements of the Meritorious Budget Award, does a projection of three years forward. That's on page 32 of the PDF, and it looks like this:
That's a $7.9M gap next year, rising to $20.2M in FY30.
This problem is not the Worcester Public Schools' nor the city of Worcester's to solve. The requirement to ensure children have a public education belongs to the Commonwealth.
_______________________________________________
*Net school spending is on page 386 of the PDF and, I am somewhat stunned to find that the city is projected to meet required spending. That's at least in part because cityside claims for school services continue to rise (it's over $10M just for administration for FY27) and because WPS transportation is holding down non-net school spending costs.
Nonetheless, that's a positive number at bottom right.
**metaphorically; one does not crack open a PDF.
I literally have done nothing else with this book other than check those two pages, but the flip through shows another year of a tour de force, so congratulations to Sara Consalvo on heading up what I know to be a massive effort for her first time!
New this morning, the American Academy of Pediatrics has issued today their first updated guidance on recess, and they're doubling down on its importance. From the AP's coverage:
The group “has always supported play – free play for kids – but it’s been increasingly threatened over time,” partly by the drive for higher test scores, said Dr. Robert Murray, a lead author. “It has a very powerful benefit if it’s used to the fullest.”
The new guidance, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, is similar to the previous policy statement but cites the latest research on why these breaks are essential for kids’ academic success and mental, physical, social and emotional growth.
I will opine only as I have before that there is a solid argument for Massachusetts counting recess as instructional time, which is the main holdup on increasing such time. That would take the Board of Ed passing a change to the time on learning regulations, 603 CMR 27.04.
If my calendar does not deceive me, the Worcester Public Schools will release their proposed FY27 budget on Friday, but we're getting an early warning via press release of something of what's in it. The Patch does their best with it here.
The Academic Center for Transition (ACT), which serves 59 elementary students in grades K-6 with individualized education plans (IEPs), will close in June. Students will be referred to the Central Massachusetts Collaborative’s Hartwell Learning Center, located in the same building at 14 New Bond St. District officials said the Collaborative has agreed to accept all ACT students and keep them in their current classroom spaces.
The Worcester Alternative School, a therapeutic program for 36 high school students with IEPs, will also close at the end of the school year. Those students will be referred to the Central Massachusetts Academy, also operated by the Collaborative at the New Bond Street location. Some students may also be placed in other district programs.
The New Citizens Center Secondary Program, which serves 37 English learner students ages 12 to 17 with limited or interrupted formal education, will not close but will move out of its standalone building at 1407A Main St. Students and staff will transition into Worcester middle and high schools.
We then get some paragraphs about increased opportunities and etc, but it's also clear that this is a budgetary decision.
Once we've waded through the spin*, to make clear what's happening here: that's the district closing two in-district special education programs, and moving those students out of district to the Collaborative. I do not know if that will actually better serve the students; that is not something I could know. I do think it for sure should raise least restrictive environment flags, as well as always the question of who we're saving our money on.
The students at New Citizens--properly, Caradonio New Citizens Center, as it was named after the former superintendent in tribute to his experience with and attention to students for whom English was a second or later language--being moved into their home (one assumes?) middle and high schools raises both the question as to how the program isn't then closing, and also if the building is remaining open and used as a school. Historically, the way in which Worcester treated with particular care their students with interrupted formal education was one of the prides of the district.
We'll be able, one assumes, to see the money saved--which I would also assume is being reallocated--in the budget this weekend.
This goat's "what's happening here?" is my question as well.
*the degree with which every piece of information from WPS in recent months has a lot of words to try to impress us with how this is a great, amazing decision, rather than just telling us what is happening has me at the end of my patience, even more so when I reflect that we are paying for that
Every decision about a school is one that *someone* cared enough to make. I am always grateful for those who chose to ensure there are springtime flowers. I took a second outside of a policy meeting in Millis this week to enjoy this tree, which also smelled amazing.
I have a load of tabs open of things I'd suggest you read--so many are technology in schools, that I will work to give that its own post here!--so here's a round-up:
it feels not great that this got bumped to the end
Rachelle Engler Bennett, Associate Commissioner of Student and Family Commissioner joint effort of Department and MA Commission of LGBTQ Youth part of DESE's Student and Family Support office advance educational vision for all students
Martinez: recommends adoption of alternative pathway; three year implementation and evaluation "BOLD five year plan" for diversification of pipeline Abbott, Associate Commissioner of Educator Effectiveness maintaining teacher quality: diverse, culturally responsive, well-prepared, and committed to continuous improvement working to expand the pipeline; effectively prepare and license; and sustain and retain alternative licensure pathway waiving communication and literacy skills test available for three years as Department studies impact and student outcome
four options to fulfill requirement:
completion of a Massachusetts-approved Educator Preparation Program
License from another state;
Master's/Doctorate from an accredited degree program;
2 years of field-based experience and attestation from school or district leader
three implementation period and annual reporting to the Board on impact and progress will come at no cost to candidates; will be able to take applications in a couple of weeks first report to Board next spring; spring of 2028 (licensure and employment rates); early 2029 (success in classrooms) then Board will have to consider renewal one piece of a larger set of initiativesalso technical amendments West: if we adopt this, who will still take the exam? Anyone pursuing provisional licensure who don't have any of the other characteristics above41% of educators on a waiver would theoretically be eligible
Martinez notes the literacy grant wasn't in the House Ways & Means budget, nor were the literacy institutes, nor reimagining high school grant (pay for AP exams) and support early college and MyCap
Today is the first meeting at which the new Secretary, Steve Zrike, will be present in that capacity. As a reminder, Zrike was Salem superintendent, though most of his appearances at the Board of Ed previously were in his prior-to-that position as Holyoke receiver. As an offhand observation, today is the eleventh anniversary of the Board voting the Holyoke Public Schools into receivership; I don't know if there's a balance to that or not.
Also as a reminder, the Secretary is a single member and a single vote on the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (as well as the two other education boards, Early Ed and Care, and Higher Ed), serving at the pleasure of the Governor, who appoints him*
Across the state people are rallying to address it — from Fall River to Winchester, Northampton to Cambridge. And pressure is coming from every direction: parents in Scituate, the teachers union in Melrose, cost-conscious administrators in Arlington.
The list of concerns is long. Young children, glued to screens, miss out on needed play and socialization; older students, glued to screens, use them to bully each other. High schoolers rely on AI to cheat. School-issued laptops, taken home, keep sleep-deprived youngsters up past their bedtimes.
Above all, critics worry that the hypnotic flicker of screens is coming between students and learning.
One issue not mentioned above in the Globe's list is that of student privacy; Curriculum Associates, which owns iReady, is currently being sued (for one):
In the original complaint the plaintiffs allege the company “creates and extracts reams of personal information from K–12 students.”
“Using that data, Curriculum Associates creates detailed data profiles of students that are used to predict and influence their behavior and guide decision-making about them. It further uses that information for commercial purposes, including developing, marketing, and delivering its own products,” the complaint said. “Curriculum Associates also allows numerous third parties to access the information it obtains from K–12 students for the commercial benefit of both Curriculum Associates and those parties.”
One of the issues at hand, according to the complaint, is that students in schools that use i-Ready are required to be in school, where they are required to use the software during the school day with no alternative, and without giving their consent about the use of their data.
And:
According to the complaint, the data in question may include basic information like a student’s first and last name, birthday and gender, as well as things like their race, first language, grade level, school of enrollment, their teacher, data from their responses to questions in i-Ready assessments and lessons, and data collected about the student when the i-Ready profile is set up. The complaint alleges it could also include data about the specific device students used to complete the lesson on i-Ready.
“The data Curriculum Associates generates and extracts from students who use its Products, including Plaintiffs, far exceeds what could be legally or traditionally characterized as “education Records,” said the complaint. “Even if certain data could be characterized as education records, Plaintiffs — like all students — retain significant rights over the personal information contained in such records, which are protected by state and federal law.”
Makes one long for the days of filing cabinets and manila folders.
All of that, of course, is without the looming insistence that AI be part of all of this. I cannot recommend highly enough this piece by Massachusetts writer and parent Jessica Winter in The New Yorker, "What will it take to get AI out of schools." She starts with her own family's experience:
I don’t like A.I., and I am raising my children not to like it. I’ve been telling them for years now that chatbots are manipulative and dangerous, that A.I. image generators are loosening our collective grip on reality, that large language models are built atop industrial-scale intellectual-property theft. At times, I find myself speaking with my kids about A.I. in the same terms that we might discuss a creepy neighbor who lives down the block: avoid eye contact, cross the street when you walk past his house, and, when in doubt, call on a trusted adult. Yes, I, too, have suspected that the creepy neighbor walks on cloven hooves inside his Yeezy Boosts, but he probably isn’t going anywhere—in fact, he keeps buying up properties around town—so just try your best not to engage.
Somehow, I was not prepared for the creepy neighbor to start hanging around my kids’ schools; somehow, I thought we had until high school. In February, my son, who is in third grade at a public K-5 in Massachusetts, came home with a piece of paper in his backpack that read “Certificate of Completion,” for “demonstrating an understanding of the basic concepts of Artificial Intelligence.” He and his classmates had earned this honor, I learned, by playing a computer game produced by the nonprofit Code.org in partnership with Amazon Future Engineer, called Mix & Move with AI, in which the student “designs” a cartoon dancer and “remixes” a popular song—available, needless to say, on Amazon Music. The game is an inane drag-and-drop affair that has little to do with A.I.; the certificate, it turned out, was merely a memento of a pointless and deceptive branding exercise.
Then, in March, students at my eleven-year-old daughter’s public middle school began receiving new Google Chromebooks, and that is when I heard the tap-tap of the cloven hooves approaching our doorstep. The Chromebooks, which the students use in every class and for homework, came pre-installed with an all-ages version of Gemini, a suite of A.I. tools. When my daughter, who is in sixth grade, begins writing an essay, she gets a prompt: “Help me write.” If she is starting work on a slide-show presentation, the prompt is “Help me visualize.” She shoos away these interruptions, but they persist: “Help me edit.” “Beautify this slide.” The image generator is there, if she’d ever wish to pull the plug on her imagination. The Gemini chatbot is there, if she ever wants to talk to no one.
So many times, so many times, I warned her about the creepy neighbor. Now he reads her poems and knows her passwords. He’s always watching through the screen.
We cannot be passive. Our kids deserve better than this.
I've been considering what to say about it since then (sorry if you've been waiting for me to post on it), and the refrain I kept coming back to is what state law says is the intent of the Legislature when it comes to school funding:
The full section reads:
It is the intention of the general court, subject to appropriation, to assure fair and adequate minimum per student funding for public schools in the commonwealth by defining a foundation budget and a standard of local funding effort applicable to every city and town in the commonwealth.
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Screenshot of Monday's orders, highlighting the relevant line Yes, that is all that they send out!
Unless you were watching for it, you may have missed it, but on Monday, the Supreme Court denied the writ of certiorari (or "denied cert") in the Foote v. Ludlow case. That means the First Circuit decision from last February, which found in favor of the district, which I noted here, stays in place.
To quote again what I quoted from that then:
As this opinion has endeavored to illuminate, we acknowledge the fundamental importance of the rights asserted by the Parents to be informed of, and to direct, significant aspects of their child's life--including their socialization, education, and health. Be that as it may--as this opinion has also made effort to explicate --parental rights are not unlimited. Parents may not invoke the Due Process Clause to create a preferred educational experience for their child in public school. As per our understanding of Supreme Court precedent, our pluralistic society assigns those curricular and administrative decisions to the expertise of school officials, charged with the responsibility of educating children. And the Protocol of nondisclosure as to a student's at-school gender expression without the student's consent does not restrict parental rights in a way courts have recognized as a violation of the guarantees of substantive due process. All told, the Parents have failed to state a claim that Ludlow's Protocol as applied to their family violated their constitutional right to direct the upbringing of their child.
Civil liberties groups and organizations in favor of tech privacy — including some that are backing the bills — warn the proposals could backfire and make online activity even less private by requiring users to submit personal information to verify their ages or parental status.
Some restrictions, experts argue, would also face First Amendment challenges by limiting young people’s speech and vulnerable groups’ abilities to find community online.
They also note that this means we're not fulfilling our responsibility to students:
“Children need to learn how to use social media so they aren’t using it irresponsibly, and we need to learn how to use our phones,” said Max Nash, a junior at Mashpee High School who formed the Coalition for Student Mental Health to lobby for alternative tech policies. “But that requires education and not a ban.”
I appreciate Rep. Gordon in general, but this is such an odd thing to own up to:
Representative Kenneth Gordon, who chairs the education committee, said lawmakers shaped the bill to closely follow a similar law in Florida, whose under-14 social media ban has faced court challenges for two years.
Florida + court challenges seemed like a good path to follow?
And all of this here:
Both the Healey and House proposals would require age verification measures that civil liberties groups and privacy experts say are excessive. All users — not just minors — could be required to give tech companies more personal information, such as photos of government IDs, to prove their age, they warned.
Healey’s proposal, for instance, would require social media companies to provide a host of age-specific data that could require checking users’ ages.
People who don’t have such IDs, or might be hesitant to provide them, could then be unable to access a wide range of online content. The bill includes a broad definition of social media sites, including nearly any platform with personal accounts and user-generated content, which opponents argue could encompass sites such as the popular information forum Wikipedia.
That ID hurdle has formed the basis of First Amendment challenges in many states, according to Paul Taske, co-director of the NetChoice Litigation Center, a tech industry-funded group that has successfully sued to have the law set aside in several cases.
“Ultimately, the laws suffer from the same core constitutional infirmity: They block or restrict access for users, particularly minors, but also adults when it comes to speech that is lawful for everyone,” Taske said.
Cybersecurity experts warn that children could bypass the checks, and hackers could seek to steal data collected. Parental consent requirements could present further security issues, with little way for parents to reliably prove their relation to a user, opening the door for nefarious actors who abuse online reporting systems.
More than 400 cybersecurity experts, including from MIT, Tufts University, and Boston University, issued a public letter last month calling for a moratorium on online age verification laws they said “might cause more harm than good.”
“This policy will inevitably massively reduce privacy online by forcing users to reveal more information to service providers than they do nowadays,” the group wrote.
The age verification measures could also run counter to the goals of a separate date privacy bill the state Senate passed last fall and is backed by the ACLU of Massachusetts and other groups. That legislation would allow companies to collect only “reasonably necessary” personal data and permit consumers to opt out of data collection. Companies would also be barred from selling children’s data.
Plus, of course, there are those who have positive uses for social media that would be barred by this bill:
Advocacy organizations also raised concerns about other First Amendment violations, including for users who might face the most repercussions from verification measures and social media restrictions.
Such a law, some argue, could limit teenagers’ abilities to organize political activity, hear the latest news, express themselves creatively, or find community online.
Teddy Walker, a 21-year-old Bostonian who is trans and a leader of a group organized to protect trans rights, said he was isolated and depressed as a teenager until he found solace in Instagram and YouTube trans communities.
“It really helped give me the language and understanding for who I am,” Walker said. The proposed parental restrictions could “lead to trans youth and trans kids being less safe, being less able to access that content online that was so life-saving and life-affirming for me.”
“Covid relief money is gone, inflation is bad, buses are expensive, special education is expensive,” former Massachusetts Education Commissioner Jeff Riley told an audience of about 200 that filled an auditorium at the museum last Wednesday. “We have an opportunity for this new pot of money to help us with things like expanded learning time, high dosage tutoring, special education services. This seems like a time when people should get together.”
Yes, taking time away from his fulltime job of trying to get schools on the AI bandwagon, our former Commissioner is all in our vouchers, but we're going to frame it as public school assistance. Also involved:
The National Parents Union is spearheading the local coalition which aims to pressure Gov. Maura Healey to adopt the tax credit program. So far, the group counts 124 organizations in support, including The Pioneer Institute, The Boston Foundation, the Lynch Foundation, 45 individual Catholic Schools, 18 Montessori Schools, 13 Jewish day schools, the umbrella organizations supporting those types of schools and dozens of YMCAs and Boys and Girls Clubs.
NPU will surprise no one, nor will the private schools, but the outside of school organizations no doubt have this sold to them as after school dollars that could be coming their way.
Miller does---as always--an excellent job of framing the issues with the push, very much including that they don't actually work. But he also notes that Governor Healey, whose decision this is, so far has been silent on this issue. That is very concerning. There will be an effort to frame this as a "ed reform" issue, and she has some close to her that are in on that.
Despite promises that the scholarships could cover special education services, among other school-related expenses, Fliter said that wouldn’t be true for public schools. The way qualified education expenses are defined by the federal government only includes things for which schools bill parents.
“Unfortunately, when you dig into the text of the statute and what the regulations are from the IRS and from others, it becomes very clear that a qualified education expense, as it’s referenced in the Internal Revenue Code and by the Coverdell Education Savings Account, does not include anything like special education expenses,” Fliter said.
Read Miller's coverage, and then keep an eye out on this one.
*who maybe don't exercise a say over this, but one does question the venue choice
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The back-and-forth in last month's House hearing on undocumented students' right to a public education revealed their using stats on English learners, which is not the same group at all
The Wall Street Journal takes up the topic facing many Massachusetts towns this spring with a look at South Hadley's tax override (that's a gift link).
DESE has received some additional projected figures from the federal government that have allowed us to refine the Title I projections we shared last month; we’re also able to anticipate statewide totals from other major ESSA programs (Title II-A, Title III-A, and Title IV-A), as well as from Perkins. Again, these numbers are still preliminary. DESE receives final awards from the federal government on July 1st.
Title I – Updated figures from the federal government show that MA will experience about a 7% reduction overall, not a 10% reduction overall as we projected last month. DESE has revised the FY27 Title I Warning Chart accordingly. These district-level projections are likely more accurate than last month’s projections, but it bears repeating that they are subject to change. Districts will receive final numbers in July.
Title II-A – Similar to Title I, preliminary figures from the federal government show that MA overall will likely experience about a 7% overall reduction from last year. We do not have district-level projections for Title II-A, which could vary greatly, so we encourage districts to budget conservatively.
Title III-A – Preliminary figures from the federal government show that MA overall will likely be level-funded for Title III-A. DESE will provide district-level projections for Title III-A in several weeks when we issue the Title III-A Intent to Participate application in GEM$. Until then, we encourage districts to budget conservatively.
Title IV – Preliminary figures from the federal government show that MA overall will likely see about a 6% increase in Title IV-A. We do not have district-level projections for Title IV-A, which could vary greatly, so we encourage districts to budget conservatively.
Perkins – Preliminary figures from the federal government show that MA overall will likely be level-funded for Perkins.
I very much appreciate Matt Barnum's piece this week on how it turns out---color me shocked--that Sal Khan's whole forecast on how AI in education was going to work out is not.
Three years ago, as Khan Academy founder Sal Khan rolled out an AI-powered tutoring chatbot, he predicted a revolution in learning.
So far, the revolution hasn’t happened, he acknowledges.
“For a lot of students, it was a non-event,” Khan told me recently about his eponymous chatbot, Khanmigo. “They just didn’t use it much.”
Khan gives this analogy: Imagine he walked into a class, sat in the back of the room, and waited for students to seek out help. “Some will; most won’t,” he said. That’s been the experience with AI tutoring, he said. It doesn’t necessarily make students motivated to learn or fill in gaps in knowledge needed to ask questions.
And in a particularly "we could have told you that" bit:
Kristen DiCerbo, the organization’s chief learning officer, said AI can only respond to students based on what they ask. And it turns out, she said, “Students aren’t great at asking questions well.”
Right, because asking good questions is part of learning which is a thing that has to be taught.
It's a change from the sweeping rhetoric of Khan's 2023 TED Talk in which he proclaimed that, "We’re at the cusp of using AI for probably the biggest positive transformation that education has ever seen." Invoking the highly questionable (that is to say utterly un-replicated) findings from the classic "2 Sigma Problem" paper by Benjamin Bloom – a paper first published in 1984 and invoked now by decades of ed-tech evangelists – Khan claimed that “the way we’re going to do that is by giving every student on the planet an artificially intelligent but amazing personal tutor.”
Amazing. Or ... not.
She observes that inevitably, the response of the rejection is to then given students (and teachers, often) no choice but to use whatever the new hip tech thing is that is around, which is, of course, just what Khan Academy has done; from Chalkbeat:
Now Khanmigo is incorporated directly as a way students can get advice as they’re working through specific problems. A spokesperson said the organization made this change because “students were not seeking out Khanmigo’s help as much as we had hoped.”
Do literally anything at all about Massachusetts being the only state in the country that has Democrats in charge of both chambers and the Governor's office and has a 287(g) contract with ICE. Seriously. Anything at all. You could even pass a bill to make it illegal, like Maryland or Virginia, as that's the whole reason we have a legislature: making laws.
Pass legislation protecting our immigrant neighbors from being preyed upon by the federal government, like the PROTECT Act, which passed out of committee two weeks ago, yet somehow was not seen as being as urgent as that bill on cell phones. I have been told they passed this? That missed my radar. One hopes it receives half the urgency from the rest of the process that this appears to have
Move forward the legislation that updates how inflation is calculated in the foundation budget, and make it effective for FY27, better aligning the foundation budget with district costs (and perhaps keeping us from the mistake of digging even bigger hold harmless aid holes).
please enjoy these pansies from my walk to work in Boston
The House on Wednesday put Massachusetts on track to join a handful of other states in placing restrictions on children’s social media use – an issue that is playing out in courts across the country. The House passed legislation on a 129-25 vote, largely along party lines, prohibiting social media use for children under 14 and requiring that social media platforms obtain parental consent for users aged 14 and 15. Representatives said the legislation closely follows a similar law in Florida, which is still being challenged in court two years after it was passed. The legislation leaves many of the regulatory decisions surrounding how to enforce the policy amid an ever-evolving online landscape up to Attorney General Andrea Campbell. Reps added language to the bill that limits some parental monitoring of social media usage "to protect certain vulnerable populations," Rep. Peisch said on the floor, and adds further protections for 14- and 15-year-olds related to the "addictive nature" of some platforms. The bill also bans students from using their cellphones throughout the school day. The House dispensed with almost all of the 29 amendments filed on the legislation through two consolidated amendments.
"on party lines" means it was Democrats who voted to violate young people's privacy, Democrats who voted to make them less safe in school, Democrats who voted to require that we all turn our information over to social media companies.
Is there bad AI news this week? Friends, there is ALWAYS bad AI news!
Two things to review:
A paper released by Cornell University looking at the "consequences of AI assistance" using mathematic reasoning and reading comprehension (that is, two of the core competencies of education!). They found:
AI assistance reduces persistence and impairs independent performance: After brief AI-assisted sessions (~10 minutes), participants were significantly more likely to give up on problems and performed significantly worse once the AI was removed, compared to participants who never had AI assistance.
Effects are concentrated among users who seek direct solutions: Persistence costs were concentrated among participants who prompted AI to solve tasks for them directly. Using AI for hints or clarifications did not produce significant impairments.
Effects generalize across domains: Effects replicated across fraction arithmetic and reading comprehension, suggesting it is a general consequence of AI-assisted problem solving, not specific to any particular task.
Their conclusion?
These findings raise urgent questions about the cumulative effects of daily AI use on human persistence and reasoning. We caution that if such effects accumulate with sustained AI use, current AI systems — optimized only for short-term helpfulness — risk eroding the very human capabilities they are meant to support.
Sam Altman, the head of OpenAI, is the subject of an in-depth profile in The New Yorker . It reads almost as a parable of hubris: you can trace the loss over time within the company of values expressed early on. That he has as much power as he does is horrifying.
