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Facebook Billionaires Walkout on Impoverished Students

12 Aug

By Thomas Ultican 8/11/2026

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) withdrew support for The Primary School (TPS) a private school in East Palo Alto that they founded. CZI also withdrew support for the associated smaller Woodroe Woods School across the bay in San Leandro. When it was revealed that CZI support would be withdrawn, both schools announced closures at the conclusion of the 2025-2026 school year.

TPS was founded by Pricilla Chan and Marideth Liu in East Palo Alto, a poverty area in the center of opulence. Chan is Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s wife and a former pediatrician. Liu earned a BA in Economics from Dartmouth and an MBA at Harvard Business School. She is a graduate of the D.C. Public Schools and was the chief financial officer at Match Education, a charter management organization. Unfortunately, Liu died in April 2023 which probably precipitated these closures.

However, one of the more prominent reasons for pulling support according to Chan was performance. Or as Diane Ravitch put it:

“[T]hey are withdrawing their funding because they are disappointed by the school’s test scores. Test scores!”

A report from Stanford University says, “From the beginning, TPS focused on starting earlier in children’s lives, building sustained relationships with families, and aligning supports across the systems that shape development.” The tuition-free school aimed to support the “whole child” with wraparound services which included free dental checkups, early-intervention screenings and wellness coaching for parents.

What happened? Was it Boredom?

When billionaire business leaders “look at K-12 education and go, ‘Man, how hard can it be to improve this thing?’” The director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, Rick Hess replies, “Well, it’s incredibly hard.”

Here is some historical perspective. Zuckerberg announced one of he and Chan’s first major charitable gifts, a $100 million grant to Newark, N.J., public schools, on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in 2010. The Facebook billionaire thought he could pick the next superintendent and send Newark down the road to privatization. He did not understand the nature of Newark’s school district or how public education actually worked. He ended up with Cami Anderson as superintendent instead of his choice Jean-Claude Bizard, the billionaire education reformers’ hero of Rochester, who had just received a 90% no-confidence vote from that city’s teachers. Brizard took Rham Emanuel’s offer in Chicago and Zuck’s $100 million generated surprisingly little influence in Newark. (The Prize Pages 97-149)

The TPS effort was completely under CZI control. In 2015, they put up a little more than $7 million and established a non-profit entity. A board was created with five members including Director CEO, Pricilla Chan, President COO, Merideth Liu and three others including Director Diane Tavenner. Liu was the only paid board member. (see 2015 tax form 990 ID: 47-3334579)

Diane Tavenner was the founder and CEO of Summit Public Schools in 2003. It is a charter management organization that serves schools in California and Washington State. She also served in various capacities on the board of the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA). Mark Zuckerburg became aware of Tavenner’s approach to digital learning in 2013 and offered to upgrade the software she was using. Like other tech-billionaires, he wanted to prove the viability of personalized learning, meaning kids at screens. Tavenner last served on the TPS board in 2017.

Big changes came to the TPS board in 2022. Jean-Claude Bizard came on board as chair. Pricilla Chan announced she will no longer be on the board in 2023 as did five other board members. For the first time in 2021, Merideth Liu no longer served in a paid position and in 2022 she was no longer on the board. This is just supposition, but it appears the she was already sick and the entire board was aware of it.

Some of the personnel choices at TPS were bizarre. Both Diane Tavenner and Jean-Claude Bizard went through training in the Broad Superintendents academy. Broad trained administrators have a horrible reputation for hiring many consultants, stirring up labor problems, promoting school privatization and creating budget deficits. An egregious example of this is the damage inflicted in Oakland, California by four consecutive Broad trained administrators.

It looks like Merideth Liu’s illness was the likely culminating incident that led to CZI stepping away from their billionaire financed experiment in East Palo Alto.

The Primary School Enrollment

It May Have Been Working

In the Stanford study, TPS preschoolers were compared with results from The Big Lift a San Mateo County education effort:

“Although the overall Big Lift population outperformed TPS, with rates ranging from 53% to 61% across the same years, that group is generally higher income and faces fewer of the adversity factors linked to lower school readiness. When compared to the demographically similar subgroup, whose readiness rates ranged from 28% to 32% over the same period, TPS outperformed that group consistently across all four years.” (Page 28)

In grades three and up testing, the study found:

“Across both subjects, TPS consistently outperformed local East Palo Alto schools, including both charter and non-charter schools. In Spring 2025, though results varied across individual schools, 14% of local East Palo Alto students met or exceeded the literacy standard and 10% met or exceeded the math standard, compared to 26% and 25% respectively at TPS. This gap held consistently across all three years of available data.

“At the same time, TPS’s results remained below the California statewide average, which stood at 47% in both literacy and math in Spring 2025.” (Page 30)

In their conclusion, the Stanford researches stated:

“The Primary School (TPS) set out to prove that children thrive when the systems around them work together. Nearly a decade later, the evidence is clear that this approach makes a real difference for children and families, and the evidence is also instructive about what it took. Children who moved through TPS’s early childhood programs developed stronger language skills, received developmental support earlier, and entered school more ready to learn. Families grew in resilience, built social connections, and navigated systems that had previously felt inaccessible.” (Page 36)

The TPS approach to serving the “whole child” was clearly working.

Conclusion

It is very clear to me that Pracilla Chan’s low test score complaint was baloney. She was tired of TPS. She had lost her friend in the adventure and lost interest in East Palo Alto. Like the billionaire reformers who proceeded them, CZI dropped a mess on the local public school district and wiped their hands of the adventure.

The Wall Street Journal article on the closing noted that having one major backer in perpetuity hadn’t been the original plan. CZI claimed to be after a model that “could be sustained through primarily public investment.” That indicates that from the very beginning Zuckerberg and Chan were looking for taxpayers to assume the burden.

Poorly thought-out billionaire philanthropy is a too common plague on the public.

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Gifted and Talented Education Issues

22 Jul

By Thomas Ultican 7/22/2026

In California, we call them GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) students, other states have their own designations. Whatever label gifted and talented students are given, these programs are fraught with controversy. The smell of elitism bothers many people and how students in the programs are identified sparks equity concerns. There is also unease about the mental health of GATE students.

Matthew Yglesias, a cofounder of Vox whose articles have appeared in Atlantic, Slate, Think Progress, American Prospect and other publications, recently wrote about Gifted and Talented education in New York. His article was published by ‘The 74’ this July.

It was mostly a response to Katie Arnold-Ratliff cover story for New York Magazine criticizing New York City’s gifted and talented program in public schools. She broached skepticism of giftedness based on a 2019 study by Brian Bernstein, Camilla Benbow and David Lubinski on the life outcomes of intellectually precocious youth. One of their findings said that 12.3% of youths identified as gifted became eminent later in life. Eminent was defined as being a Fortune 500 CEO, leader in medicine, prestigious judge, scientist or lawyer. Arnold-Ratliff found this low percentage reason to doubt the value of GATE education.

Yglesias disagreed. He attributed this to a “dysfunctional tendency in some edu-left circles to stigmatize all efforts at measurement.” He believes Arnold-Ratliff’s critique of gifted and talented is wrong and is another part of the push to eliminate tracking in K-12 schools; which he believes to be a good idea.

Gifted Education History

October 6, 1971, Commissioner of Education, S. P. Maryland, sent a copy of a congressionally mandated report on the status of gifted and talented education in the country to Vice President Spiro Agnew and House Speaker Carl Albert. The report included:

“Gifted and talented children are those identified by professionally qualified persons who by virtue of outstanding abilities, are capable of high performance. These are children who require differentiated educational programs and/or services beyond those normally provided by the regular school program in order to realize their contribution to self and society. Children capable of high performance include those with demonstrated achievement and/or potential ability in any of the following areas, singly or in combination:

    1. general intellectual ability
    2. specific academic aptitude
    3. creative or productive thinking
    4. leadership ability
    5. visual and performing arts
    6. psychomotor ability” (Page 8)

In it, there is an estimate that 3% to 5% of students fit this definition. The report also claims, “Gifted and talented children are, in-fact, deprived and can suffer psychological damage and permanent impairment of their abilities to function well which is equal to or greater than the similar deprivation suffered by any other population with special needs served by the Office of Education.” (Pages 10-11)

The study was planned, coordinated, and directed by Jane Case Williams, Office of the Deputy Commissioner for Development (Page 19). Jane began her government career at Head Start in the Office of Economic Opportunity. She transferred to the U.S. Office of Education (now the Department of Education) to plan and direct the mandated study of gifted education. The paper is known as the Maryland Report.

Another major effort for gifted education was the 1988 passage of the Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Children and Youth Education Act. It was named after Republican Senator Jacob Javits who was America’s first Jewish senator. Javits died in 1986 but his long-time commitment to gifted education caused his former colleagues to name the act for him.

The Javits program is unique in its emphasis. Through a coordinated mixture of scientifically based research and demonstration projects, the Javits program researches how to identify and foster underrepresented gifted students, and how to implement this research in elementary and secondary schools. Generally, the Javits program embraces in-depth research, demonstration projects, and school training to better serve the educational needs of gifted students.

Criticism Mounts

Typical of gifted education criticism is an article in Psychology Today, “The Embarrassing Secret About Gifted Programs,” by Doctor Jenny Grant Rankin. She calls for changes noting:

“Students are significantly less likely to receive gifted services if they are African American or Hispanic than if they are white, particularly when they have white teachers. For example, black students are half as likely as white students to be labeled gifted, even when their test scores are comparable (Grissom and Redding, 2016).”

In 2024, Natalie Calero wrote “Dissecting the Gate Program: A deep dive into the good, bad, and ugly.” The paper was her Liberal Studies Capstone at Chico State University for Dr. Maris Thompson. Chico State is sometimes derisively called “drunken state” but it is actually a very successful school in the California state system. Interestingly, two of Ronald Reagan’s key staff members graduated from there; Mike Deavers and Ed Rollins.

Calero noted, “My findings suggest that the Gate Program unintentionally promotes social segregation and burnout amongst exceptional students.” She cites research showing students feeling isolated and lonely once put in the program and being mocked by peers. Students felt because of the label teachers expected them not to need help. (Pages 2 and 8)

In one school she studied, students were pulled out of class for English and Math but were in their classes for everything else. In this case, student felt the program was fun and gave them more say in their education. They were no longer bored in class and did not feel isolated. It was the conviction of students that this was a superior system and that they would not want a full-time program. (Pages 11-12)

Calero concludes:

“There is a hope to continue these programs but make them more equitable. I do not believe this is a viable option as having these programs continues to promote segregation within the education system. This leads to my second limitation which is my personal bias, that these programs are not salvageable.” (Page 15)

Conclusions

My personal experience in the classroom leads me to side with Katie Arnold-Ratliff’s opinion. I met many precocious students but only one student in 15-years that I felt was truly gifted. From discussions with other teachers, I heard about two more students at our high school that were likely gifted. In other words, I believe that less that 0.1% of students are truly gifted. The rest of that 3% cited in the Maryland report were probably excellent students but not gifted.

Matthew Yglesias has confidence in testing to identify gifted students. While clearly good students can be identified by standardized testing, the problem is that equally gifted students are missed by these tests.

I think a better approach to dealing with gifted students is differentiation. Good students should be given challenges to work on while in the same class that has students who may be struggling to read. It can be done and money for gifted education should go toward training all teachers how to differentiate instruction and to developing strategies and lessons for this purpose.

I can certainly relate to Natalie Calero’s conclusion that gifted and talented programs “are not salvageable.” However, I do disagree. I feel our approach needs to change and the practice of isolating students needs to be abandoned. Remember gifted students are still children and they still need socialization.

Unfortunately, it is clear that we have not figured out how best to deal with our brightest students. This discussion need to be expanded.

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Excellent Book: “Dystopian School Tales”

6 Jul

By Thomas Ultican 7/5/2026

Like the above title indicates, I was quite taken by Thomas Courtney’s book, Dystopian School Tales. I liked it so much, I went to Amazon to write a glowing report for the book and found that they will not accept book reviews on it. The book is published by The Educator’s Room out of Atlanta, Georgia which is a relatively small publishing company with a teacher friendly positive history. Why Amazon has locked the book from anyone commenting on it is a bit of a mystery. I would not expect any fraudulent malarkey to be perpetrated by this writer-educator or his publisher.

The book is subtitled “12 Visions of an American Education, Dismantled.” Courtney has been an elementary school teacher for the past thirty years and is a surprisingly gifted and creative writer. He has written 12 fictional stories that are scenarios depicting possibilities that could develop in the next few years. At the end of each of these stories, he documents what has happened, what is happening and what might happen in a future related to the sketches.

I found this structure to be very imaginative. The stories are short engaging tales which at their conclusion allow the author to cite Supreme Court actions, news accounts, history, plus local, state and federal actions relating to the yarn.

Mrs. Foster’s Loyalty Test

This is the title of the second of the twelve dystopian stories. In order to give readers a sense of the book, I picked one story to write about. The main reason for picking this story is a comment in Courtney’s notes at the end of the book. He discusses how difficult it was to finalize the collection writing, “On several occasions, I had to rewrite entire portions of these tales, because what I’d thought was dystopian, had already happened.” (Page 259)

Courtney continued:

“For example, I wrote the story, Mrs. Foster’s Loyalty Exam while I was on a fellowship in Costa Rica. At the time, I had no idea that there could actually be such a thing given to teachers. I had no idea that such an exam had begun to be used for teachers new to the state of Oklahoma from places like my state, California.” (Page 259-260)

Mrs. Foster is depicted as a woman interviewing for a teaching job in Oklahoma. Her interview is conducted by a woman from the Oklahoma Department of Patriotism and Family Values (ODP). When inquiring about who sees her responses to the ODP questions and how they are maintained, she is curtly informed that in Oklahoma they protect children from wokeness. The ODP examiner declares, “Since 2025, the great state of Oklahoma has screened potential teaching candidates from woke states like California and in your case, New York.” (Page 20)

“Question twelve, Mrs. Foster, do you recognize the ten commandments as a source of societal good?” (Page 18)

“Question thirteen, Mrs. Foster, should you be selected for employment, are you willing to state under oath that there are only two genders, male and female?” (Page 20)

The final inquiry says, “Please give an example of radical leftist ideology that you have reported to the New York Department of Education before arriving here in Oklahoma.” Mrs. Foster says she never filed a report in the seven years she worked there. (Page 21)

“What about DEI, or gender confusion?” No. (Page 21)

“In all of the years you taught in New York, you never once saw a Title nine violation of gender confusion in your school? You never once saw a Title 1 violation of DEI?” No. (Pages 21 to 22)

Past: Courtney shares that the loyalty test tale is more than dystopian it is also an experience from American history. He recommends as a reference Many are the Crimes; McCarthyism in America by Ellen Schrecker amongst other books. (Page 23)

Another data point from Courtney is the Waldorf statement. In 1947, the heads of the motion picture industry met at the Waldorf hotel in New York city to denounce the Hollywood Ten who were being held in contempt by the US Congress. They said in part, “We will forthwith discharge or suspend without compensation those in our employ, and we will not re-employ any of the 10 until such time as he is acquitted or has purged himself of contempt and declares under oath that he is not a Communist.”

Present: Courtney notes that Politicians wanting to circumvent constitutional rights can do so with oaths or by requiring exams. These can be used to filter out non-Christians, liberals or homosexuals. In 2025, Oklahoma hired PragerU to create a test designed to eliminate “radical woke ideology.” (Page 26)

Future: Without a Department of Education to enforce the rights of students and teachers, aren’t more exams like those in Oklahoma inevitable? With the failure of the Supreme Court to uphold student rights, states are free to use these types of application questions to simply deny those teachers whose politics they don’t like. Today, that means those who are: not MAGA enough, not Christian enough, not straight enough. (Page 28)

Final Thoughts

I read most books about education. Often teachers and former teachers like myself write about terrible education policies like the billionaire financed privatization of public schools. They describe the harm being done to communities and students all driven by either a profit motive or a religious agenda. The books are important and they highlight important things but they are often quite grim.

I give Thomas Courtney high marks for his clever approach to the issues plaguing public schools, students and teachers. His twelve fictional stories are entertaining and far from grim and they add levity to the undermining of public education. However, in reality, the attack on free universal public education is also an attack on American democracy.

Ronald Reagan began the attack on public education with the publication of the polemic, “A Nation at Risk.” This set the table for more disingenuous attacks. At the same time, Reagan gave the fringe lunatic, Milton Friedman, legitimacy. He had written a mostly ignored 1955 essay calling for the privatization of public education and for government to get out of the education business.

Courtney’s book takes on the education policies pushed by the soap scammers from Michigan in a way that I hope the public can read and digest. Without mentioning Charles Koch or the Walton family, he uses his creative short stories to bring their destructive agenda to light.

I think everyone who reads Dystopian School Tales will enjoy it and get a much deeper understanding of the crisis facing America.

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Billionaire Thinking has Harmed Public Schools

10 Apr

By Thomas Ultican 4/10/2026

Trump’s billionaire education leader, Linda McMahon, claimed on Fox News, “We’re doing terribly, I mean, our education system’s failed our kids.” Like a typical oligarch, she bolstered her point by mischaracterizing NAEP assessment levels stating, “only about 30% of high school and eighth graders can read proficiently or do math proficiently.” Maybe that sounds bad, but the reality is those numbers indicate that 30% of students are achieving at a high B or low A grade-level which sounds pretty good to me.

McMahon was promoting her nonpartisan “History Rocks!” tour. The sponsors of the tour are certainly not nonpartisan. They include America 250 Civics Education Coalition, led by pro-Trump America First Policy Institute which is composed of right-wing organizations such as Turning Point USA, Moms for Liberty and the Heritage Foundation.

However, even though standardized testing is a terrible method for evaluating schools and students, it is notable that the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) results have been falling since 2013.

The NAEP data plotted above is for all tested US students in 8th grade and 4th grade reading. Around 2013, results started dropping. Data for math also shows this same trend. Because education has so many variables, establishing a solid cause and effect relationship for this decline is impossible.

Based on my personal experience in the classroom and my years of observing education outcomes, I have developed a theory that at least partially explains the decline.

Education Technology

In the 1990s, I worked in Silicon Valley researching friction problems associated with computer equipment. Part of my assignment was to develop software that ran testing devices, gathered massive data sets and loaded them into a Microsoft data base which created reports that I shared with customers. Once the testing was setup and started, everything from then on was automated. I loved pushing technology and making it do things no one else had.

In 1999, I got tired of Silicon Valley. That is when I returned to San Diego and sought a teaching credential. At the time, I imagined being able to use my technology expertise in future classrooms. I had become genuinely excited about education technology (edtech).

I wish I could say my expectations were met but I cannot.

I discovered that instead of edtech driving exploration, it was aimed at controlling and replacing teachers.

As part of the master of education program at UCSD, we were sent to local schools to work with students. I went to a local high school to work with struggling math students in a recovery class. Students were assigned to work on computer presented math problems which were then graded by the computer.

As the education technology critique Audre Watters has observed:

“Just because it’s a worksheet on an iPad doesn’t mean it’s transformational or exciting. It’s still a worksheet.”

In retrospect, this experience was an early effort to replace teachers with computer screens. Instead of working on making edtech an exciting addition to education, the effort was pointed toward putting kids at screens instead learning from teachers. The technology industry was promising to reduce the need for costly teachers.

Physics Lab Class

This picture shows an example of using technology to engage students in authentic learning. Two photogates affixed to the ramp were accurate to + or – 0.001 seconds. Here the students were adjusting the ramp to achieve constant velocity when a marble rolled down the ramp. The photogates provided data including the time for test object to roll through the gate and the time between gates. Since students new the diameter of the test ball and the distance between the gates, they were able to calculate three velocities. Once the three velocities were all equal, they changed to a test ball with identical geometry but significantly less mass. They were then able to observe that the mass of the ball did not change the velocity which accorded with Galileo Galilei’s 1589 experiment testing mass and gravity.

Unfortunately, only small companies were working to develop engaging technology for learning. Larger companies were developing school management systems that gathered large data sets on all students and teachers. Or they were creating schemes where teachers created lessons on their platforms which then claimed ownership of the lessons.

The school district I was in bought every student an I-pad and then three years later replaced those I-pads with laptop computers. Because these devices were such a classroom distraction, teachers often required students to put them in their backpacks and store them under their desks.

It was worse than a waste of money. It was undermining learning.

 In my AP physics classes, students were not working through the assigned problems. They discovered that almost all physics problems had a worked-out example on line. I was getting the most beautiful work I had ever seen but the students were clueless when tested.

It seems fair to identify edtech as a possible cause for declining test scores. Artificial intelligence will likely make — not working or thinking — an even bigger problem.

Science of Reading

The Orwellian labeled science of reading (SoR) is not based on sound science. In 1997, congress passed legislation calling for a reading study. Establishment of the National Reading Panel (NRP) was a doomed effort from the beginning. It was a massive undertaking, conducted by twenty-one unpaid volunteers over 18-months. NRP fundamentally did a meta-analysis in five reading domains, ignoring 10 other important domains. They did not review everything and there was no new research. Their report is the basis for SoR.

In Fact-Checking the Science of Reading, professors Robert J. Tierney and P David Pearson share that science is a natural commitment to modesty “is always provisional; ever-ready to be tweaked, revised, or replaced by the next theoretical insight or empirical findings.” As Reinking, Hruby and Risko (2023) stated “settled science is an oxymoron.” In the case of SoR, not only is it not settled science, many literacy researchers believe it is a substandard approach to teaching reading.

SoR is a dressed-up version of George W. Bush’s Reading First Initiative from 2001. In 2008, The Center for Public Integrity reported, “An April 2008 study revealed the general ineffectiveness of Reading First and found that students in schools receiving funds for the program had no better reading skills than children in schools that did not.”

Unfortunately, the spending on SoR by people like Laurene Powell Jobs is causing benighted legislators to mandate it. Forty states have already adopted reading education laws complying with billionaire wishes.

The real reason for promoting SoR is resting control of education away from universities and ending democratically run schools. The agenda is for all teacher education and training to be privatized. Organizations like TNTP and Relay Graduate School are substandard oligarch  financed entities with political clout. They are designed to replace public institutions.  

SoR advocates are trying to force everyone to use a reading education approach that is not proven and failed miserably in England.

Nancy Bailey opened her recent post:

“Today’s Science of Reading (SOR) was born of a right-wing conservative phonics focus. A Nation at Risk helped advance that messaging….”

“As the country mandates the Science of Reading (SOR) and invests heavily in unproven programs, marketing disputes flourish over which best align with so-called evidence. These programs control teachers’ instruction through one-size-fits-all directives, delivered with manuals or online. It’s easy to see where this is going. States could spend millions more on reading programs that don’t appear to improve learning as teachers are driven out with tech.”

Since around 2011 or 2012, the reading industry has been spending to change how reading is taught. Sarah Schwartz wrote in EducationWeek:

“The shifts in reading teaching that many states are asking schools to make go beyond simply adding a few new practices to teachers’ toolboxes. Instead, the “science of reading” asks teachers and leaders to adopt a new framework of how skilled reading develops—and what educators need to do to support that process.”

As more and more private companies produce reading materials that are mandated for use in many states, NAEP reading scores have continuously slid down. This is not a clearly known cause and effect occurrence but it does seem to be a reasonable conjecture that SoR is harming student learning.

Conclusion

The more teachers are scripted, the more they have their autonomy diminished, the more private companies are selling education reading products into schools, the more kids are put at screens to learn, the worse the outcomes. This is why I believe NAEP scores have been falling since 2013.

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Grade Retention is Bad Education Policy

22 Mar

By Thomas Ultican 3/22/2026

Twenty-six American states have a mandatory third-grade retention policy for students who do not pass the state’s reading exam and Maryland is set to implement that policy in 2027. According to researchers, this is bad thinking based on intuition not science. Writing for Education Trust, Brittney Davis declared, “The research is clear that grade retention is not effective over time, and it is related to many negative academic, social, and emotional outcomes for students — especially students of color who have been retained.”  

Economist Jiee Zhong won her PhD from Texas A&M in 2024 and is now an assistant professor of economics at the University of Miami. Last year, she just finished a very impressive study on the effects of grade retention for Texas third graders. Texas abandoned mandatory third-grade retention in 2009.

Zhong studied outcomes of third-graders from 2002-03, 2003-04 and 2004-05 school years who took the Texas reading exam that carried retention consequences. This large data set allowed her to use a fuzzy regression discontinuity design to extract many results. By 2024, the students studied were all young adults over 26 years of age. She was able to evaluate their education, social and economic outcomes using powerful math techniques.

Zhong concluded:

“I find that third-grade retention significantly reduces annual earnings at age 26 by $3,477 (19%). While temporarily improving test scores, retention increases absenteeism, violent behavior, and juvenile crime, and reduces the likelihood of high school graduation.”

For one outcome, she investigated a group of students who barely passed or barely failed the reading test. She learned that the barely failing students earn $1,682 (11.3%) less at age 23 than the barely passing students. Zhong noted that 64.2% of barely passing students graduated from high school while just 55.1% of the barely failing students graduated. She observed that both of these results were statistically significant at a 5% level.

Zhong also noticed a racial disparity. She reports, “White students experience a sharp 43.8 percentage point decline in high school graduation probability, higher than the reductions for Black (17.6 percentage points) and Hispanic students (0.6 percentage points).”

These results from 2025 add more weight to similar results that previous researchers have reported.

The Retention Illusion

In January 2025, Duke University in Chapel Hill, North Carolina published a linked series of three policy briefs concerning grade retention by Claire Xia and Elizabeth Glennie, Ph.D. The Duke researchers stated, “The majority of published studies and decades of research indicate that there is usually little to be gained, and much harm that may be done through retaining students in grade.”

They also mention the grade retention illusion is held by many community members, administrators and teachers who believe grade retention is helpful and needed. The Duke researchers stated, “The findings that retention is ineffective or even harmful in the long run seem counterintuitive.” This belief is so strong that on the 31st Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallop Poll, 72% of the public favor stricter promotion standards even if significantly more students would be held back. Other studies show the public being strongly opposed to social promotion believing low-achieving students will continue to fall farther behind.

Teachers also are susceptible to misunderstanding the effect of grade-retention. Because they only know of the performance of students in the following year, they are blind to the damage being done. The retained students seem to do well the next year and they are unaware of the long-term student trajectories after retention. Therefore, retention often looks successful to many teachers.

Teacher observations of a student’s improved achievement the second time around leads to this erroneous success belief. Xia and Glennie observe:

“These comparisons lead to the false conclusions that children benefit from retention. In contrast, studies comparing the retained student to a similar student who was promoted suggest that retained students would have made just as much or even more progress without retention.”

EdWeek reporter Sarah Schwartz shared that Professor Shane Jimerson of the University of California Santa Barbara published one of the most-cited research papers on grade retention in 2001.

Jimerson performed a meta-analysis of 20 studies published between 1990 and 1999. He concluded that they “fail to demonstrate that grade retention provides greater benefits to students with academic or adjustment difficulties than does promotion to the next grade.” In many studies, students who were retained had worse academic achievement and social-emotional outcomes than students who were not.

I did find one study funded by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation and written by David N. Figlio & Umut Özek that was very positive about Florida’s third-grade retention program. In the abstract Figlio & Özek state:

“We find that retention in the third-grade substantially improves the English skills of these students, reducing the time to proficiency by half and decreasing the likelihood of taking a remedial English course in middle school by one-third. Grade retention also roughly doubles the likelihood of taking an advanced course in math and science in middle school, and more than triples the likelihood of taking college credit-bearing courses in high school for English learners.”

Florida’s retention program required retained students to be given 90-minutes of reading instruction every day during their retained year. It seems that this remediation was successful but couldn’t these students have been passed and given that remediation in 4th grade and in summer school? It would have been better financially for the state and better emotionally for the students.

In a recent post, my friend Nancy Bailey raised a similar idea writing:

“Retention always raises questions about whether children may need more time between kindergarten and third grade to learn, perhaps being pushed to read too soon. What if they hadn’t been retained and had received intensive reading instruction throughout? Fourth grade is not an insignificant year for learning to read better.”

Conclusion

Unfortunately, third-grade retention has become politicized. It is viewed as an essential element of the science of reading which is not scientifically based but does generate profit potential.

Billionaires like John Arnold are adept at making big money, in his case with Enron, but do not understand education. Yet, they continue spending to implement often benighted education policies.

Third-grade retention is another such policy which they do not understand, but their immense wealth too often overrides education common sense.

After taking a deep dive into retention effects, I can find no way to justify it. It is much worse than I imagined and expensive. The Duke policy briefs states:

“It is estimated that nationally 5% to 9% of students are retained every year, translating into over 2.4 million children annually. With an average per pupil expenditure of over $7,500 a year, this common practice of retention costs taxpayers over 18 billion dollars every year.”

What has been widely known since at least the 1990s is that retention is harmful for students. As the title of Nancy Bailey’s post referenced above states, “Grade Retention: The Debate Had Its Day, Now End It!”

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Public School Profiteering in Stockton

21 Feb

By Thomas Ultican 2/21/2026

There is always drama in Stockton, but the public schools are doing surprisingly well. The latest tempest in a tea pot involved Stockton Unified School District (SUSD) approving the Amelia Ann Adams Whole Life Center’s $130,000 contract for student trauma counseling. SUSD Trustee Kennetha Stevens who also serves as an unpaid board member for Amelia Adams voted for the contract. Davina Hurt at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics stated, “Even when conduct is technically legal, undisclosed dual loyalties can create the appearance of hidden influence, which erodes confidence in democratic institutions.” This complaint looks a little weak in comparison to billionaires funding a multidecade long effort to privatize public education in Stockton. However, if she did not do it, Stevens should have noted her board participation at Amelia Adams.

Stockton, founded in 1849, is California’s farthest inland deep-water shipping port. It was named after famed Mexican-American War Commadore, Robert F. Stockton, and was the first city in California whose name is not either Spanish or Indian in origin. The city is located on the northern end of the San Joaquin valley and is home to about 325,000 people of surprisingly diverse races; 16% White, 11% Black, 23% Asian, 45% Hispanic, 5% Other. Originally established to supply gold rush miners, it is now where produce and grains from America’s largest agricultural valley start their trips into local and world markets.

Stockton’s Public Schools

Almost 83% of Stockton Unified’s students are listed by the state of California as “Socioeconomically Disadvantaged.” Standardized testing results are significantly tied to the economic situation of the students’ families, so it is not surprising that most Stockton Unified schools do not test well compared to wealthier communities. However, the multiple evaluations presented on the California Department of Education dashboard paint a picture of Stockton’s schools being successful in their mission.

This dashboard shows that Stockton is struggling with chronic absenteeism and they have horrible results in mathematics. On the other hand, the 25% of students who are English language learners are making good progress. Having a graduation rate of 88.9% means that over the 12 years students spend in these schools, they graduate at a rate that is 1% better than California’s average graduation rates. SUSD gets high marks for meeting all of the state’s professional standards. With their large number of language learners and socioeconomically disadvantaged students, these are results for which teachers and school administrators can legitimately take pride.

SUSD has been doing a professional job of educating students for a long time, but the district has struggled with top management turnover. Between 2012 and 2023, John Deasy was the longest serving Superintendent in Stockton. He served for two years and two weeks.

Today, it seems this administration turnover problem has been righted. The 2023 hiring of Michelle Rodriguez has put a professional star in charge. She is in the midst of her third year leading Stockton’s schools. Not only have many nagging management issues disappeared, Rodriquez has been gaining positive national notice. Last year it was reported by Stocktonia News, “Michelle Rodriguez, who has served as Stockton Unified School District’s superintendent since July 2023, took home two national awards celebrating her more than three decades as a school administrator: Finalist for Superintendent of the Year and the Power Leadership Award.”

Rodriguez studied at Chico State University and upon graduation went to Spain for further study. She is fully bilingual. Rodriguez earned a PhD from University of Southern California, was a principal in San Diego, became chief academic officer in Santa Ana and was Superintendent of Pajaro Unified School District in Watsonville for 7 years prior to accepting the Stockton job.

Unfortunately, this stellar public education district is being torn apart by ruthless billionaires.

Charter Schools in Stockton

Understanding the impact of charter schools on the local public schools takes a little digging. From San Joaquin County’s list of schools, it can be learned by checking with the state of California’s school profiles that there are 23 charter schools in Stockton. There are also three school districts operating in the city; Stockton Unified, the much smaller Lincoln Unified and four schools from Manteca Unified. Eighteen charter schools were authorized by SUSD, one by Lincoln, three by San Joaquin County and one by the New Jerusalem school district in nearby Tracy, California.

Putting all of this data together produces the following table.

The table above shows that of the 38,452 students that are served by SUSD and the charter schools it authorized there is a 17.9% charter school going rate. However, when the charter schools authorized by San Joaquin County and the New Jerusalem school district are taken into account, the percentage of charter school going students in SUSD jumps to more than 34%. In all of Stockton, the charter school going rate of students is 28% or put another way, 28 of every 100 students are attending privatized schools.

This is egregious. Many young parents in Stockton have been fooled by the billionaires funding public education privatization. Instead of enrolling their children in professionally run and stable public schools, they are putting them in risky schools that are known for instability and profiteering.

Data drawn from the state of California’s Department of Education Data Quest is aggregated above. It shows the billionaire path to excess profits. They dump the most expensive students — the students with disabilities — on the public system. SUSD educates 5.2% more disabled students than the local charter school industry. This pattern is repeated everywhere charter schools exist. They do not just take fewer students with disabilities, but some of the more profoundly disabled students are extremely costly and charter schools notoriously do not take any of those students.

English language learners harm test scores while they are mastering a new language. Charter schools that claim to have superior education proven by test scores avoid them. The table above shows that SUSD educates 7.1% more language learners than the privatized schools.

The areas where charter schools significantly outperform public schools are marketing and administrative pay.

The city of Stockton has an excellent public education system but that system is being destroyed. In Oakland, California they previously had very convenient elementary schools in every neighborhood. With the influx of charter schools, some neighborhoods in the flats have lost that easy access to public schools. This is likely happening now in some Stockton neighborhoods.

The state of California should take over all charter schools and task the local school districts with managing them. The present charter school system has become a greed infested and destructive failure.

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Bellwether and K12 Coalition Published Misleading Report

22 Jan

By Thomas Ultican 1/21/2026

Bellwether’s report is called “How We Solve America’s Math Crisis: A Systemwide Approach to Evidence-Based Math Learning.” The title signals that this is not a serious report. Rather, it is a polemic created with K12 Coalition to sell products. Just like there is no reading crisis in America, there is also no math crisis. However, if these companies can convince enough people a crisis exists, then a pathway for profits opens.

Andrew Rotherham, the founder of Bellwether, is a very energetic and engaged writer who has worked at Time magazine and US News World Report. He was a domestic policy adviser during the Clinton administration and like many Democrats of that era, he bought into the Republican ideology that claimed private business is always superior to any government enterprise. That is why they believe that privatizing prisons and public education is good policy.

Rotherham has served on many boards including The Mind Trust in Indianapolis and ‘The 74’. He has been an advisor to several companies looking to profit from education spending including Whiteboard Advisors; Upbeat, a data analytics company focused on teacher engagement and retention; ClearForce, a security and threat prevention company; and several nonprofit organizations.

Joining Rotherham’s Bellwether to write the “Math Crisis” report is K12 Coalition. The Coalition is one of more than 80 companies owned by the Private Equity firm Quad-C. K12 Coalition recently acquired Keys to Literacy and Professional Development Institute to add to its other organizations like Teaching Channel and Lavinia Group Instructional Support.

These are the companies claiming there is a crisis in math education and that they are the solution.

Not a Crisis

There is not a math crisis and to demonstrate this, let us turn to some national math data available from the federal government.

Since 1990, we have been testing fourth grade math. In the early years, schools and teachers gave the tests but were not too concerned about the results. That changed in 2002 with the passage of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB). In 2003, the punishment aspect of NCLB caused schools and teachers to focus on improving scores which did dramatically improve.

Most of the gains can be attributed to improved test taking skills and a narrowing of the math curriculum to just items being tested.

In 2022 and 2024, the average scores went down a few points. This is probably the result of two COVID era phenomena. Many schools were closed which meant numerous children missed significant time from school. Once schools were all up and running again absanteeism spiked. Rand corporation recently reported, “Chronic absenteeism in the 2024–2025 school year remained above prepandemic levels.”

The National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) assigns levels to the testing scores; below basic (dark blue), basic (orange), proficient (green) and advanced (light blue). According to Diane Ravitch, basic is about the same as being at grade level and proficient is akin to an A. The advanced level is at the extreme top of the scoring range. Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institute noted, “Even students in private schools, despite hailing from more socioeconomically advantaged homes and in some cases being selectively admitted by schools, fail miserably at attaining NAEP proficiency.”

Since 2003, fourth grade math students have continuously had more than 75% of students scoring at basic or higher.

The average NAEP math data for eighth graders showed scores dropping about 7-points from the 2019 results in both 2022 and 2024. Where the fourth graders showed some gain in 2024, the eighth graders did not. A big difference between these two grades is absenteeism. Fourth graders absentee rates for both 2022 and 2024 was about 16%. The eighth grade rates of absenteeism were 23.2% in 2022 and 22.3% in 2024.

If there is a crisis in education, it is not because of the teaching. It is absenteeism which has been a more severe lingering problem since the pandemic.

The chart of eighth grade NAEP levels highlight where the drop in scoring is occurring. Basic level is almost unchanged but below basic has zoomed to levels not seen since the first two administrations in the 1990s. I speculate that the growth in below basic scores ties directly to the students who are not coming to school.

Looking at this data, it becomes very clear that there is no math education crisis in America but there is an absenteeism problem.

 The Report

The first line of the report says, “Math achievement across the United States is in crisis, with too many students leaving school without the essential math skills they need to thrive in adulthood.” (Crisis Page 2) This is followed up with their claim that effective math education has three components:

“(1) build educator and student math identity and a shared belief that math is doable, (2) balance conceptual understanding and procedural fluency while also creating meaningful opportunities for real-world application, and (3) ensure that learning progresses logically and cumulatively to deepen knowledge over time.” (Crisis Page 2)

For any math teacher from the last fifty-years and probably more, these three components are old news.

The report claims, “Data demonstrate that when high-quality materials, intentional instructional practices, and strong teacher support are combined, students’ math proficiency can improve significantly.” (Crisis Page 3) Most teachers know that whenever the term “high-quality” is broached, something fishy is afoot. Mostly it indicates marketing is ahead. Reinforcing that marketing is ahead are the following buzz words claiming good math education requires “strong instructional vision, high-quality instructional materials, curricula, professional learning and coaching, and data-driven decision-making.” (Crisis Page 3) The report reader will soon learn where all of this can be purchased.

The report authors sully themselves by stating, “Despite the importance of math, over half of America’s students are not proficient in the subject.”

The report is 34-pages in length. Page 2 which is the first page opens with the claim cited above and Page 3 introduces their three components for effective math education. For pages 3 to 22 the paper is nothing but repetition and obfuscation.

The reader is treated to statements like “The 1983 report A Nation at Risk, commissioned by the Reagan administration, highlighted that a lack of rigor in math education threatened national security and economic strength.” (Crisis Page 8) The reality is that A Nation at Risk was a complete fraud and the National Commission on Excellence in Education knew the answer they wanted before any research was attempted. They believed, with no evidence, that public schools were failing and needed reform.

Finally, we reach the purpose of the report:

“Illustrative Math and ST Math are designed to enhance math instruction with high-quality instructional materials. K12 Coalition’s Lavinia Group Instructional Support offers a comprehensive professional development program designed to help educators foster a culture of excellent math teaching.” (Crisis Page 22)

K12 Coalition and the Lavinia Group Instructional Support are in the business of selling curriculum — which they designate as high-quality — and professional development. From here to page 28, the report is nothing but advertising for these companies. The remainder of their report ends with a short conclusion and the appendix.

Conclusion

It seems alright that a company creates materials to sell its wares. What is not alright is undermining public schools and their legions of fine math educators for that purpose.

Lavina Group sells instructional support, however, the only demand for their product should come from private and charter schools. Privatizing teacher training in the public sector is a bad idea. School districts and local universities have, for more than a century, done this job very well and provided much more value than any private company can afford.

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Racist President Attacks Head Start

12 Jan

By Thomas Ultican 1/12/2026

In 1965, Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” created Head Start to mitigate the negative effects associated with children living in poverty. At the time, nearly half of the nation’s poor were young children. The initiative started with eight-week summer sessions and after developing strong bipartisan support it was converted into a year-round plan. Today, “Project 2025” calls for ending Head Start which has President Trump mindlessly attacking the program.

On January 20, 2025, the ground work for these attacks was laid in one of Trump’s many day-one executive orders, “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing.” The order states, “The Biden Administration forced illegal and immoral discrimination programs, going by the name “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI), into virtually all aspects of the Federal Government, in areas ranging from airline safety to the military.”

This claim is a total lie. There was nothing illegal about the DEI order and it was certainly the opposite of immoral. DEI is an attempt to end the ravages of racism in America. However, today’s president seems intent on implementing a Whites run everything agenda.

It is difficult to perceive the administrations move against “diversity, equity and inclusion” as anything other than overt racism. Illinois Head Start Association Executive Director Lauri Morrison-Frichtl reports that the Trump administration is requiring that anything related to DEI by removed from federal grant applications. Morrison-Frichtl claims this is a big problem because “DEI is core to our mission.”

The Heritage Foundation declares that the Head Start program affords no monetary worth as it provides “little or no long-term academic value for children.”  The National Head Start Association disputes the claim, noting that participants are 12% less likely to live in poverty as adults and 29% less likely to receive public assistance. This is an example of using testing data to support a claim that the data is not capable of discerning one way or the other.

The ultra-right has always opposed public education and will use any malarkey — true on not true — to undermine free public schooling. They believe that parents should pay to educate their own children and evidently do not perceive there is any public benefit accruing from all children being educated.

Trump Signing an Executive Order in 2025

Trump’s January 29th executive order, “Expanding Educational Freedom and Opportunity for Families”, is another misleading attack on public education. It stated:

“Parents want and deserve the best education for their children.  But too many children do not thrive in their assigned, government-run K-12 school.  According to this year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 70 percent of 8th graders were below proficient in reading, and 72 percent were below proficient in math.”

The order goes on to state, “Within 60 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Education shall issue guidance regarding how States can use Federal formula funds to support K-12 educational choice initiatives.”

The National Center for Education Statistics, a part of the Department of Education, states emphatically, “Proficient is not synonymous with grade level performance.” One of Tom Loveless’s Brookings Institute articles notes, “Even students in private schools, despite hailing from more socioeconomically advantaged homes and in some cases being selectively admitted by schools, fail miserably at attaining NAEP proficiency.” Education historian, Diane Ravich writes:

“NAEP proficient is not grade level! NAEP publications warn readers not to make that error. NAEP proficient is equivalent to an A. … NAEP Basic is akin to grade level.”

The executive order is clearly about privatizing public education; not improving it.

Child Care Cliff

October 4, 2025, the remainder of Biden’s American Rescue Plan containing $24-billion in child care funding was due to expire. According to the Biden administration this funding allowed 80% of child care centers to stay afloat. It was the largest investment in child care in US history.

In addition to this big loss, child care is facing other large headwinds in 2026. Trump’s budget bill signed into law July, 2025 significantly cuts Medicaid and SNAP benefits. The cuts shift costs for these programs to the states. If states decide to makeup for the losses, they will need to find other areas of cost savings; meaning they will need to pull back on other services like child care support. Head Start is a significant component of child care in America and it will be fighting for survival.

Intensified immigration enforcement is also hitting child care. One in five early educators are immigrants and in large urban areas the rate approaches one in two. New America released a report in December which found that between February and July, 2025 there were 39,000 fewer foreign-born child care workers than the same period in 2024. “Immigration enforcement, to me, right now, is the number one disruptor both to parent behavior and provider behavior,” claimed Natalie Renew executive director of Home Grown. “It is hugely disruptive.” 

On December 31, 2025, the Public Broadcasting Service reported, “The Trump administration has said it is freezing child care funds to all states until they provide more verification and administrative data about the programs in a move fueled by a series of fraud schemes at Minnesota day care centers run by Somali residents.” All 50 states will be impacted by the review, but Trump is focusing most of his ire on Minnesota and its Somali (not White) community.

January 6, 2026, CNN reported that the Trump administration is freezing $10 billion in funds for social services and child care in five Democratic-led states. The freeze will impact California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York, according to the department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Reporting for Reuters, Nate Raymond shared that on January 8th five states sued over Trump freezing $10 billion in childcare and family assistance funds. California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York filed in Manhattan after HHS on Tuesday said it had restricted their access to the funds pending further review. The lawsuit alleges the agency lacked ⁠a legitimate justification for the freeze, provided no evidence supporting fraud concerns and infringed on the ‌Constitutional power of Congress over spending.

Will 2026 be Worse than 2025?

The lunatic in the White-house is a racist who only cares about his fellow billionaires and enriching himself. The attacks on Head Start and child care in general are more proof of this. The only thing to be done now is loudly demonstrate and in November take away the protection he is getting from spineless Republican legislators.

The truth is the Somalis are a wonderful addition to the American mosaic. Of course, Trump is disgusted by the color of their skin; they are not white. Anyone who disagrees with Trump’s self-centered agenda is not a radical leftist that hates America. Many of us are war veterans who, unlike dear leader, put our lives on the line to protect the American democracy he has set out to destroy.

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The EdReports Scam

19 Dec

By Thomas Ultican 12/19/2025

In order to monetize public education, billionaires started creating both for-profit and non-profit businesses to advance their agenda. ‘The 74’ recently wrote about changes at one of these organizations. EdReports was established in 2014 by Bill Gates associate, Eric Hirsch, and was fully funded in 2018. It masquerades as an independent non-profit that evaluates curriculum materials. It rates these materials based on their fidelity with the common core state standards and the science of reading (SoR).

During the Obama administration, billionaires became frustrated because teachers and friends of public education were destroying their messaging on social media. To counteract the success teachers were having, the super wealthy started creating new on-line media and liberally funding them. Their biggest success has been ‘The 74’ established by former CNN news anchor, Campbell Brown, and Michael Bloomberg’s education advisor, Romy Drucker. Its original funding came from, the Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation, theWalton Family Foundation, the Doris and Donald Fisher Fund and Bloomberg Philanthropies, all of which are owned by multi-billionaires.

Education focused organizations are given legitimacy when ‘The 74’ writes puff pieces about them. A recent example is the October 2nd article, “Eric Hirsch, EdReports’ Founding CEO, to Step Down – The next decade, one expert said, should consider the role of AI in curriculum and making materials more useful.” It is a glowing account of how Eric Hirsch was able to “change the way school districts and parents think about curriculum.” The mention of AI in the sub-title is a timely promotion of the technology industries latest harmful edtech offering.

Eric Hirsch and EdReports

Hirsch earned a bachelor’s degree (1992) in political science and government from Tufts University, a medium sized liberal arts and research school in the greater Boston area. He went onto the University of Colorado in Boulder where he obtained a master’s in political science and government (1997). His first job out of college was in Denver working for the National Conference of State Legislators from 1997-2002.

After 4 years there, he went to work at the Alliance for Quality Teaching in Denver as executive director for a year and a half. He then spent four years in North Carolina as executive director of the Center for Teaching Quality. From there, he went to Santa Cruz, California for seven years working as chief officer, external affairs at the Bill Gates established New Teachers Center (NTC). His total earnings during his last year in Santa Cruz (2013) was reported to be $175,000 (TIN 26-2427526).

In 2014, Hirsch left NTC and traveled to Durham, North Carolina to found EdReports. It is unknown how or if he was paid. During the first four years from 2014-2017 EdReports (TIN 47-1171149) filed non-profit tax form 990N which indicates they had less than $50,000 in revenue which only required a post card tax filing. In 2018, EdReports took in over $15 million in contributions. They had to file an IRS form 990 and Hirsch’s declared income and benefits were reported exceeding $300,000.

EdReports claims it is:

“funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, Gates Foundation, Heising-Simons Foundation, Overdeck Family Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Walton Family Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.” The 2018 donation of $15 million included giving by Carnegie (TIN 13-1628151) $200,000, Overdeck (TIN 26-4377643) $390,000, Gates (TIN 56-2618866) $1,500,000 and Schusterman (TIN 73-1312965) $5,689,700.

It is very clear that EdReports, based on its funding, is a billionaire sponsored organization.

EdReports rates curricula for their alignment to Common Core and (SoR). In 2021, they gave both Lucy Calkins’s Units of Study and Fountas and Pinnell’s reading curricula, which were the most widely used reading curricula in America, its lowest ratings.

The National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) is another billionaire funded organization selling SoR. Among their 5 action plans they highlight EdRepors in plan four. NCTQ claims it addresses “the use of high-quality curricula aligned to the science of reading.” They advise schools to sign on with EdReports which reviews reading materials and lets client schools know about their alignment with SoR.

The NCTQ report declares that “only nine states require districts to select high-quality reading curriculum materials” (HQIM) and noted that forward-looking states, like Arkansas, partner with EdReports. This is a really strange claim. Arkansas students were 42nd of 52 states in fourth grade reading on the 2024 NAEP testing and their 8th graders were 37th of 52. Nothing wrong with these scores but they do not scream “forward-looking.”

For the billionaires this is all about monetizing education and controlling the source of curriculum. A key driver for this corporate takeover is their creation of “High Quality Instructional Materials” to be certified as such by EdReports. Whenever the words “high quality” are used to promote something in education, it is a good bet that swamp land is being sold.

Amplify is an edtech company controlled by billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs. On the Amplify website the HQIM rating is described:

“States and districts across the country are focusing on materials that have been rigorously reviewed and deemed high-quality by EdReports.org, the leading third-party curriculum reviewer (or, in Louisiana, by a Tier 1 designation). EdReports defines high-quality instructional materials as materials that are closely aligned to rigorous standards and easy to use.”

A strange attribute of the EdReports saga is they are good at making pretty reports but do not have nearly the expertise many districts have for evaluating curriculum. Besides districts, many university education departments are much more qualified to evaluate curriculum. Here in my hometown, San Diego, we have at least three universities whose education departments fit the bill, but when there is enough money behind a company, reality becomes less significant.

One big problem facing public schools is people like David Steiner of Johns Hopkins University. He knows better but purposefully misleads people to sell HQIM. For example, in his recent article in ‘The 74’, he wrote:

“In 2022, 26% of eighth-graders performed at or above proficient on the NAEP in math, and 31% in ELA. While NAEP standards are more demanding than those in most states, what this means (conservatively) is that more than half of the students in an average American public-school classroom lack grade-level skills and content knowledge.”

By implying that a proficient score which generally is seen as equivalent to B+ or A- is grade level instead of basic which is about the same as a C, he claims “that more than half of the students in an average American public-school classroom lack grade-level skills and content knowledge.” In addition, he says that is a conservative estimate. The NAEP tests actually show more than 70% of America’s students are at or above basic which is grade level.

Some Final Words

David Steiner was supported into a leadership position in New York by billionaire Merryl Tisch. While at Hunter College, he was instrumental in establishing Relay Graduate School and served on its board of directors.

All of these billionaire lapdogs, support SoR. The reality is there is no science involved with science of reading. It is based on a 1997 document search that did not include any original research and did not include all of the known reading domains.

SoR is mostly about privatizing and controlling curriculum.

Eric Hirsch in addition to leading EdReports (he plans to leave in July 2026) sits on the board of TPI-US. It is a private company selling teacher preparation as well as SoR. Their web site links to Emily Hanford’s 2022 “Sold a Story” here.

This is only a small slice of the billionaire spending to undermine and monetize public education.

We have a big problem in America. Billionaires have shown themselves unable to rationally, democratically and wisely administer their extraordinary assets. We need some form of tax driven redistribution of wealth if America is going to remain a democracy and save its treasured institutions like free universal public education. I suggest the top tax rate be raised to at least 65% and a wealth tax be applied; 5% (over $500 million in assets), 10% (over $1 billion in assets), 15% (over $50 billion in assets) and 20% (over $100 billion in assets). 

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Just Finished Diane Ravitch’s New Book

25 Nov

By Thomas Ultican 11/25/2025

An Education; How I Changed My Mind About Schools and Almost Everything Else, is highly recommended especially for the thousands of us who consider her a friend. Diane is a very generous person with both her time and resources. I first met Diane through her blog in 2014, then in person at the 2015 NPE conference in Chicago. It was in this time period that she started posting some of my articles on her blog while simultaneously informing me about who was working to destroy public education. At the time, I did not realize what a privilege this was. Her latest book is an intimate memoir that introduces us to Diane Rose Silverstein of Houston, Texas born July 1, 1938. It tells the story of a Jewish Texan from of large struggling family becoming politically influential and a national treasure.

On a page following the dedication page, she quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and devines.”

I knew that Diane had made a big change and reversed herself on test based accountability and other school reform agendas driven by conservatives and neoliberals. However, the courage this change took and the depth of her reversal were profoundly illuminated by reading this book.

Although growing up in a Roosevelt supporting family and being a registered Democrat, she became deeply conservative. Diane served on the board of the Thomas B. Fordham foundation, contributed to the Manhattan Institute and was a member of the Koret Task Force with the likes of Eric Hanushek and E. D. Hirsch Jr. Her best friends personally and politically all supported the ideas she abandoned. By reversing herself, she walked away from professional security and long held personal friendships. It was courageously principled but must have been a personally daunting move.

Me and Diane

The best part of “An Education” for me was Diane’s recounting growing up in Houston and going to a segregated public school. Her experience was just so relatable. She liked all the music my oldest sister liked. Cheating was rampant in her school just like mine and like her; I let my classmates copy my work. My rural Idaho school was kind of segregated but that was because only white people and a few Mexican families lived in the community. The Mexican kids were very popular in our school. I never met a Black person until I was a senior in high school and had only seen a few through a car window when vacationing in Kansas City. It was wonderful to find some commonalities.

I had studied engineering, worked in Silicon Valley and pretty much ignored education. But I did hear from Diane and her friends about what a failure public education had become. By 1999, I became tired of hearing about people becoming rich off their stock options, working on the next greatest hard drive or dealing with the atrocious San Jose traffic. I decided to return to San Diego and do something to help public education by enlisting in a master of education program at the University of California San Diego (UCSD).

The UCSD program was oriented toward constructivist education which I really liked. I read books by Alfie Kohn and papers by Lisa Delpit and was ready to revolutionize public education. Then I got to my first job at Bell Jr. High School and discovered that the teachers there were well informed pros with lots of experience. By comparison, I was not nearly as competent as most of them.

It was then that I started to see that I had been bamboozled about how bad public schools were and began looking for like minded people. Two books, David Beliner’s and Eugene Glass’s “50 Myths and Lies that Threaten America’s Public Schools” and Diane Ravitch’s “The Death and Life of the Great American School System” were like water for the thirsty. Soon after that, I found Diane’s blog and joined the Network for Public Education (NPE) along with many other public school advocates.

I saw Diane at the 2015 NPE conference in Chicago’s Drake Hotel. It was an absolutely inspiring event with a keynote by the amazing Yong Zhao. Although we started communicating a little by email, I did not meet Diane personally until NPE 2016 in Raleigh, North Carolina. It was there that the Reverend William Barber gave a truly inspiring speech.

Tom Ultican and Diane Ravitch in Raleigh (by Ultican)

Over the years since, I have developed an ever growing admiration for this woman. She outworks everyone and never gives up. In 2021, Diane had a really difficult open heart surgery. In the book, she notes going into surgery on April 7 and waking up a week later. I wrote her that my chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo for her health and recovery had saved her life but she foolishly gave some credit to the other hundreds of people who were sending prayers and to her skilled doctors.

A year later, we had an NPE conference in Philadelphia. Diane was there and leading the proceeding but she was still weak. It was hardly noticeable but when she went to conduct an interview with Little Steven Van Zandt, he had to help her negotiate the two steps up to the platform.

Diane and Little Steven Van Zandt (by Ultican)

During my several trips to NPE conferences, I have met a Baptist preacher from Texas named Charles Foster Johnson. Charles has been a tireless fighter protecting public education and has developed an organization called Pastors for Children. I remember asking Diane if she ever thought she would be a friend and political ally with a Baptist preacher? She said, “No, never!” Earlier this year at NPE 2025 Diane and Charles asked me to take their picture. So there it was a Buddhist, a Jew and a Baptist working together and sharing friendship.

Diane Ravitch and Charles Foster Johnson 2025 (by Ultican)

Conclusion

Like I noted above, I had not paid any attention to public education so when I became aware of Diane, her blog and her book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System”, I was surprised to find how much seasoned educators despised Diane and could not trust her. Still to this day, I see education professionals taking shots at her and NPE. It is impossible for them to believe she changed her mind which brings to mind the words of Emerson, “Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds…” They just cannot accept new evidence.

I really enjoyed Diane’s latest book and encourage everyone to read it. She probably thinks this is her last book a sort of swan song. Somehow, I don’t think so. She is relentless and will almost certainly want to teach all of us about something in the future. I expect that in two or three years we will see another powerful book by Diane Ravitch.

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