Light content over the past few weeks despite everything going on—lots of travel and work. Apologies, or you’re welcome, depending on why you read. Here today is some recent content you might have missed, along with a look at the upcoming SCOTUS religious charters case, the restructuring of the Department of Education, and whether you … Continue reading "Wednesday’s Department Of Education Is Full Of Woe. SCOTUS Religious Charter Schools Action. It’s OK To Say Diversity. Plus Frozen Fish Porn!"
Light content over the past few weeks despite everything going on—lots of travel and work. Apologies, or you’re welcome, depending on why you read.
Here today is some recent content you might have missed, along with a look at the upcoming SCOTUS religious charters case, the restructuring of the Department of Education, and whether you should stop saying “diversity” (spoiler: you shouldn’t). Plus, frigid fish porn. Absence makes the posts grow longer.
I talked with NPR’s On Point about what’s happening at IES and what the future might look like for the Department of Education—and why, though it has problems like other government agencies, ED matters.
For RealClearPolitics’ SiriusXM show, I talked with Carl Cannon about what’s happening in federal policy, some context, and why it’s likely a recipe for further variance among the states.
Coming attractions: Next week, I’ll be on Nat Malkus’ podcast, The Disagreement with Alex Grodd on Tuesday evening via Substack (taking your questions), and on Michael Feuer’s podcast later this month with Denise Forte discussing all of this. On April 1, I’ll be at Harvard for an Askwith on the role of federal education research (more on that below).
Jed Wallace and I did a live WonkyFolk in D.C. at a whiskey bar—so Whiskey Folk. You can listen to that conversation here or wherever you get podcasts. Or watch here.
One issue we talked about is the forthcoming Supreme Court case on religious charter schools. This is a significant case.
There are really a few ways to think about the implications of this case. One is the straight-up legal issues related to recent First Amendment religion cases (Trinity Lutheran, Espinoza, and Carson v. Makin—the latter two being school-specific). Some people see this case as the logical next step, and that path seems clear from a legal perspective. Others think it will be a bridge too far for Roberts or Kavanaugh, because it truly crosses the Rubicon for the Court. Since Justice Barrett is recused, it’s an eight-vote case. So assuming the three progressive justices stick together, four votes would be enough to put the brakes on.
A second way to look at the case is from the perspective of differentiation and branding. As we’ve discussed, charter schools are at some risk due to their blurred branding. Many charters pivoted from a brand focused on high expectations and no-excuses for adults to a blurrier identity. Steven Wilson has a new book this month touching on some of this; it should occasion discussion. This would add yet another caveat or asterisk to what was once a straightforward description of charter schools—and a substantial one.
A third way to think about it is the political trade the case represents. Again, at a time when Democrats are facing intra-party pressure and the perennial debate over whether elections are won in the center or on the margins (it’s the center), charters are at some risk and not a broadly supported position among Dems. A trade that allowed charters to recapture some former Democratic support while holding Republican support would be a good one. This case, however, is mostly the opposite trade. It wouldn’t appreciably change the Republican calculus but could make charters politically toxic among Democrats. Expect moratoriums and other efforts to curb growth in the wake of this. One piece of evidence: the near silence from teachers unions, who are in “when the other guy is shooting himself in the foot, stay out of the way” mode. They see this as a charter school problem—not an existential threat. For charters, this is a bad trade.
Across the landscape, there are already plenty of ways for parents seeking a religious education at public expense to get it—and more are emerging all the time. I don’t think one more is needed. This is bad for charter schools and will pave the way for a bevy of additional claims that could ultimately redefine how we conceive of public education.
Stay tuned.
In The 74, Dan Goldhaber, Ashley Jochim, Robin Lake, and I laid out some ideas for a path forward on IES cuts and what a more agile IES might look like:
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A few thoughts on the Department of Education restructuring that’s been happening in earnest since Wednesday. Mike Petrilli also offered some good ones.
First, the human aspect. As we’ve discussed, civil service shouldn’t mean absolute insulation from reform, but restructuring should be done respectfully and carefully. Government should be predictable. This isn’t much of that. And given how they’re doing it—to circumvent civil service rules—it’s also possible the Trump team is creating an adverse selection problem: losing people they should keep and keeping people they shouldn’t.
The Powell Doctrine applies here: you break it, you own it. All those issues that were frustrating people—special education case backlogs, FAFSA, student loan processing—well, the Trump team now owns those. The media generally doesn’t do base rates, so all those problems will be laid at the Trump team’s feet, not credited to previous administrations. I’m surprised they’re not more attentive to the politics of all this.
Because they’re doing this with a meat cleaver, they’re setting themselves up for substantive problems. For instance, moving NAEP to NAGB isn’t a crazy idea. But it’s not a good idea if it’s not done with staff, contractor support, and the technical infrastructure needed to make NAEP work. Administering NAEP is more involved than just sending an assessment to some schools. Rinse and repeat on a host of technical data issues.
Overall, the cuts to IES, NCES, etc., are going to backfire.
They have a plan. I don’t agree with parts of it, but the Trump team has a plan for how to do this. If you want to win this argument, learn about and engage with the plan—not the rhetoric. (Pay attention to the case David Cleary makes in this 74 article.) Wild claims don’t help the case—for instance, Becky Pringle saying this will raise class sizes? There are plenty of reasons to be concerned about what’s happening, but that’s not one. What’s going to raise class sizes is the irresponsible use of federal COVID relief dollars. You didn’t hear much about that…
And as we’ve discussed, part of their plan is a tech-sector-style approach to turnarounds and restructuring. I’d argue that’s a poor fit for government. You may not like the logic or agree with it, but there is a logic to engage with.
Also pay attention to the various legal fights around this plan. Even as I was talking with Carl Cannon yesterday, a court was putting a halt on some federal layoffs. It’s going to be fast-paced and chaotic for a while.
If we’re being honest, some of this stuff won’t be missed. Half the people complaining about the Department of Education’s regional offices being cut didn’t know the department had regional offices until Wednesday. You didn’t hear this kind of enthusiasm for IES or its predecessor OERI before the cuts. There’s some dissonance between the public rhetoric and what people are saying privately—and what they’ve said historically. Also, some frustration that Democrats didn’t get in front of this by building a stronger case for the agency when they were running it for 12 of the last 16 years, or doing more on reform.
Likewise, the AP wrote an incredible article the other day about Trump’s apparently unprecedented politicization of the department’s Office for Civil Rights. Frame it. That’s museum-quality presentism. I happen to think OCR plays an important role, but it’s hard to defend some of its actions over the past decade just on civil liberties grounds—don’t take my word for it, federal courts found some actions indefensible. It’s not just politicization when people do things you don’tlike.
All of that—and Trump’s mostly education-ineffective first term, too—is what brought us to this moment. The era of the big Washington ed-scene might not be over, but it’s definitely going on pause for the foreseeable future. You may not like what’s happening, but the sentiment of either support or indifference is a lot greater around the country than the Washington edububble seems to grasp. This is the new reality. We can debate the reasons why—pandemic, choice, toxic edu-politics, Musk, it’s a long list—but things are changing, fast, and the salad days are gone for now.
That brings us to the Democrats. The response so far has been pretty weak soup—and again, too focused on the adults. Democrats need to get back to being a party of reform, an on the front foot forward-looking party of opportunity and potential. There’s a strong case for national and federal leadership on education, R&D, competitiveness, and, yes, equity—equal opportunity regardless of zip code or family income. But that means taking a mend-it-don’t-end-it approach to the Department of Education and education policy more broadly. Dems are struggling with the “mend,” for obvious institutional reasons. The silence around pandemic school policies, the squandered federal recovery dollars, the FAFSA debacle, and the way schools antagonized parents in the name of DEI all carry a cost. Dems need to pivot hard and redefine themselves with their own vision for change—or there’s more of this to come. In other words, more Rahm, less Randi.
Finally, yes—there are clearly people in and around the administration who want to abolish the Department of Education and would if left to their own devices. I think that’s wrongheaded, given the challenges the country faces, and I suspect they’ll struggle to get 60 votes in the Senate (and possibly even 218 in the House, depending on how long this drags out). Some ideas strike me as counterproductive—for instance, moving IDEA to the Department of Health and Human Services. That’s debatable, but IDEA is an education program—and there are good arguments that Head Start should be moving from HHS to ED instead. Any substantial IDEA changes will be a tough sell in Congress; those parents are organized.
I’m a reformer, and I do think the Department can do more with less—something most everyone acknowledged until a few weeks ago. But I still believe a hollowed-out, atrophied ED is a greater risk than a dismantled one. That risk existed even pre-Trump, for anyone paying attention.
Wait, those weren’t deep political commitments?
Shocking news: CZI is backing off DEI. Fetch the smelling salts! Of course, this means nothing to 99% of Americans, but it’s a big deal in this sector. If you’re the kind of person who actually thought big corporations and their adjacent entities were deeply invested in this stuff—and the scales are now falling from your eyes—then I guess, at a human level, I’m sorry for you. Disappointment sucks. But seriously? (Also, don’t worry—when the pendulum swings back, they’ll be back. So save those buttons and pins.)
I don’t mean to sound cynical about it, but as someone who got grief—and more—for saying that a lot of this felt performative and often seemed like professional white people using Black people as instruments of their own careerism (which is its own kind of revolting objectification and dehumanization), this is a weird moment. It’s at once disappointing—America clearly struggles with structural barriers to opportunity—and validating—because most of the efforts in this sector to address those issues were performative and guilt-alleviating, not structural or substantive. Good on those who pointed that out.
It’s also not hard to understand why people—those who were, for instance, cashiered out of professional opportunities by the “ride or die with Ibram X. Kendi” crowd literally months ago—are now feeling some schadenfreude as everyone cowardly runs for the exits on this stuff. You don’t have to be red pilled to get it. The same people who did all that, enabled it, or just stayed quiet are now furiously scrubbing any mention of diversity or equity from what they do. It was feckless then; it’s feckless now.
Use your words.
On this issue, Rick Hess interviewed himself here. (Rick, stop, you’ll go blind!) One aspect of it points to a broader debate:
A few years ago, Bellwether put out an analysis that, among other things, looked at the explosive growth of DEI consultants and suggested that quality control problems were going to be inevitable. It’s how we went from a reasonable focus on representation to bizarre Okun-style trainings that claimed deadlines, math, and perfectionism were “white” characteristics—at leading nonprofits, no less—almost overnight, with little awareness of how much that sounded like exactly what David Duke would say. And in the process, basic ideas about liberalism, viewpoint diversity, and all of that were submarined. As we’ve discussed, the sector’s leaders might reflect on how all this spread like wildfire—along with the lightning-fast cave.
One reason, as Conor Friedersdorf notes here, is that this is, in no small part, a problem of rampant vagueness. (Here’s must-read Orwell on this very problem.)
I could not agree more, and wrote about that here in 2023:
Ironically, President Trump’s recent executive order about DEI is running into trouble in the courts for this exact reason – it’s too vague and consequently raises First Amendment questions.
So be specific about what you’re talking about and up to, answer questions with more questions in order to be sure.
I’m getting asked about Rick’s question a lot, ‘should we scrub our website of mentions of SEL and DEI?’ Here’s the freemium version.
You should say what you mean by the terms and words you use. I wouldn’t say “SEL”—why do you want to own everything people are doing under that banner? Instead, name the specific skills or dispositions you want children to learn. Everyone knows “cultural competence,” for instance, is a code word and a constantly shifting political standard. Say what you mean, and stand behind it.
On DEI: If you mean diversity and a commitment to difference—the idea that heterogeneous groups are better at solving complex problems, spotting bias, and are less likely to adopt extreme positions—then say that. If you believe equity and inclusion mean equal opportunity, broad agency, and upward mobility, then say that.
Otherwise, it’s not unreasonable for people to assume these terms are coded signals—because they have been coded signals for elite political ideas. “Equity,” for instance, has been taken to mean limiting advanced opportunities for students in order to standardize outcomes. Policies to that effect have been proposed and enacted. Does “anti-racism” mean you’re against racism—or are you signaling a more coercive and reductionist Kendi-style worldview?
It’s fine if you are—it’s a free country, and debate is healthy. But be clear. And if you’re not, then you should be even more clear about that and put some distance between yourself and ideas you don’t actually embrace.
Meanwhile, yes, “DEI” became unrecognizable because of politics and vagueness. But if you’re not willing to stand up for the value of diversity in America in 2025, inclusion broadly speaking, and access to equal opportunity (which sometimes requires differential resources), then you probably shouldn’t be working in this sector—given the point of education, learning, and human flourishing. Also, maybe not if you’re the type to cut and run as soon as those ideas are under pressure?
Friday Fish Porn – Ice Ice Roza
I have a backlog of fish pictures, here’s an end of winter one with Marguerite Roza, her husband, and daughter ice fishing in Wisconsin. (Roza can be found at Edunomics Lab at Georgetown and Whiteboard Advisors.)
‘Friday fish, wait, what?’ First timer? Yes. Here are hundreds of pictures of education types with fish – including multiple ones of the Roza family over the years, kids, buff husband, The Commodore herself – in this one of a kind archive, that also includes Fish Pics as appropriate. And it’s always fish pics if you get Eduwonk via Substack to keep emails out of the spam filters.
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