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1d ago

The AI vibe shift

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit alexanderrusso.substack.com In his consulting work with school districts and at his Cognitive Resonance newsletter, Benjamin Riley has been helping people think through AI and school longer than many others. A veteran of the NewSchools Venture Fund and other endeavors, Riley describes how he came to have questions about edtech effectiveness — and where he thinks things are going t…
Sep 4

A parent-led edtech takeback

If you were thinking that the folks behind the backlash against school technology were going to seem unhinged or radical, Schools Beyond Screens’ national director Jodi Carreon is going to be a big disappointment. In this new interview, Carreon takes the reasonable-sounding position that technology companies have basically taken over education in our school system, selling things to educators that aren’t helpful to learning. “In a lot of ways, our school districts have ceded local control to big tech companies,” says Carreon, who’s also the parent of a school-aged child. And for a long time, “there was just sort of this resignation that this is just the way that school is now.” Watch the interview or read the transcript above or on YouTube. Listen to the conversation on Spotify or Apple. In response, Schools Beyond Screens — with chapters in 165 school districts across 33 states — is advocating for a more intentional use of technology in our school systems — meaning “evidence-based, developmentally appropriate, and transparent.” Even now, schools are not always able to make changes that they might want to make, says Carreon, such as turning off Google AI. “A school district does not have the enterprise solution in order to turn that off. And so these products have become so deeply enmeshed in our school systems that now school districts don’t necessarily have a choice.” “What’s happened over the past decade is that we we sort of made this assumption that access is gonna be enough to build digital skills — or that students are gonna sort of pick up these digital skills through osmosis. But what we’re seeing is that has certainly not happened. There’s a lot of students graduating who don’t know how to type. They don’t know basic file structure. So what we would love to see is a more dedicated and it’s an explicit teaching of digital skills and digital literacy, and not trying to shoehorn it into every discipline where it doesn’t necessarily belong.” What does Carreon want? She wants personal devices prohibited in schools through high school, and YouTube turned off for students. She wants a prohibition on the use of personal one-to-one devices in transitional kindergarten through second grade, a shared device or a cart or a laboratory model from grades three through eight, along with more intentional, limited use of one-to-one devices in high school. What about social media? “No, there’s there’s really no reason for it.” Resources: Here’s SBS’s library of podcasts, research, and media coverage, which is kind enough to include The Grade’s edtech series. Here’s a sample petition for parents concerned about school tech. Asked after the video conversation about concerns about device bans leading to excessive discipline and that age restrictions reduce student privacy, Carreon responded by email that “restricting device access in schools should never be used as a punishment, and it’s the job of our public school districts and government agencies to protect all of our students, regardless of age.” Asked about situations in which districts have balked at parents’ requests for information and/or some sort of rollback, Carreon writes “our coalition is working hard to create and provide publicly accessible resources so parents feel confident in their conversations with resistant district leaders. Ultimately, parents and students have the right to feel seen and heard, and our public school systems must protect all students under their care.” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alexanderrusso.substack.com/subscribe
Aug 26

How tech took over

After years of feeling like she was a lone voice in the wilderness, journalist Audrey Watters says she suddenly doesn’t feel alone in raising concerns about technology in schools (and other aspects of technology). In this new interview, Watters describes how schools became so tech-infused even before the pandemic, why she stepped away from reporting on edtech during the pandemic, and what it’s like to be back on the story during such a tumultuous time. Watch the interview or read the transcript above (or on YouTube). Listen to the conversation on Spotify or Apple. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alexanderrusso.substack.com/subscribe
Aug 21

Skepticism — & nuance — needed in edtech coverage

I’ve wanted to talk with The 74’s Greg Toppo ever since the backlash against education technology started a few months ago. A veteran reporter and book author (as well as a longtime friend), Toppo has written frequently about new technology being used in schools — and he’s the author of an important 2015 book about games and learning. And in this new interview, Toppo doesn’t disappoint, sharing his views on where the backlash has come from (parents’ desire for a sense of control) and how the conversation surrounding tech sometimes makes him nervous. “When the coverage makes me nervous it’s the reporter not asking the kinds of questions that I would want to ask,” says Toppo. “Like I thought that Wall Street Journal piece about YouTube was amazing…[But] what else is happening that creates an opening? What is the thing that happened to make that happen?” Reflecting on media coverage, Toppo’s view is that journalists have — finally — become adequately skeptical of edtech hype. “I think we as an industry have absorbed Audrey Watters’ lessons,” he says. “I would in large part put myself in the group of people who didn’t really absorb that message very well. But I think I think now people have.” Watch the interview or read the transcript above (or on YouTube). Listen to the conversation on Spotify or Apple. You can follow Greg at @gtoppo, read his stories here, and find his book here. Key quotes: “It feels like we are experiencing a kind of a culmination of the past at the least six years at most, maybe 10 or 15 years of parent anxiety about technology.” “I think obviously the pandemic had a lot to do with it, putting devices in kids’ hands and that didn’t go very well. So there’s I think there’s a sense that a lot of parents have that you know they’re now kind of returning to schools and seeing, ‘Wait a minute, the devices are still here. I thought they were gonna disappear after 2022.’ I think there’s that shock of realization that kids are spending a lot of time on devices.” “The Jon Haidt ‘cellphones out of schools’ campaign showed the way, right? It showed that if you get enough parents very mad about a very specific, very kind of clear thing, that they can really make some headway. And so I think a lot of parents saw what was possible with that.” “I think that word ‘control’ is a big deal that we don’t talk about. Parents want control and I think they feel like they don’t have it — and they want to get it back.” “My sense is that every place is different, and I think we are just hearing from the worst. We’re hearing from the places where it’s where the tech is just, you know, to the roof. When you read these parents’ testimony and their interviews and their pleas, I mean, they really sound quite like grounded and reasonable and in a lot of ways, you know, they’re really like desperate pleas for people to do something different. I don’t think we can argue at that.” “Every story I’ve ever read about this problem over the past year has the same anecdote, right? A parent realizes their kid watched something in school and is just blown away by the fact that, you know, Tuesday afternoon from one to three, they were watching some movie instead of attending to their schoolwork.” “To me the the bigger question though is like what is happening in that school to that kid so that that kid has uninterrupted time to watch an entire movie with no ramifications? Where’s all this free time coming from?” “I spent a lot of time like thinking about tech like more broadly and thinking about kind of how we as adults, like every generation, has this kind of weird relationship to tech — not just educational technology, but just tech in general.” “I think a lot of the stuff that’s in kids’ schools is not gamification. It’s just a word people are hearing. There’s a difference between gamification and game based learning. And I think probably there’s some gamification, I’m gonna guess, but a lot of it is not gamification. A lot of it is actually game-based learning that’s sometimes really good, really effective.” “When you get the internet, you get it all. Right? It’s a package deal. So you get, you know, you you get either get i-Ready, you get curriculum, but you also get Netflix and YouTube. You can’t separate these things out. I think that’s a really important thing in terms of the anxiety that parents are feeling to put that to put that context — that there’s a lot of nervousness about just the all-you-can-eat buffet of it.” “I feel like sometimes the the fact that it’s all consolidated into this concern about tech and this campaign to to lower the level of tech, to me that feels like maybe it’s a little misplaced.” “When the coverage makes me nervous it’s the reporter not asking the kinds of questions that I would want to ask. Like I thought that Wall Street Journal piece about YouTube was amazing. I thought the data on that was just like just jaw-dropping. But I also wanna go to a different place with it, which is like kind of the question I had before, which is like, ‘What else is happening that creates an opening?’ Like we we get the results. ‘What is the thing that happened to make that happen?’” “I think there’s a lot of cool stuff out there,” says Toppo. “One of the things that was so fascinating to me about writing about that world was that there were a lot of people who cared a ton who were trying to do something different and weird and and really succeeded in my estimation and continue to succeed.” “If you ask the people who make the cool creative stuff, they would say they don’t have the marketing or the lobbying power that the big guys do. They can’t go to state capitals during the legislative session and lobby the lawmakers to make their tool the only one that kids can use or the or get it onto the state list of approved curriculums.” “The hype cycle is fast these days. I feel like people write about something like for instance, like Alpha School. To me, almost as soon as we got gleaming stories about how amazing this was, we got stories of what a hellscape it was. And they were sometimes happening like the same week.” “I think we as an industry have absorbed Audrey Watters’ lessons. You know, years and years ago she was just kind of screaming from the rooftops ‘This s**t isn’t as all it’s said to be. These companies are not looking out for your kids’ best interests. There’s a dark side to all this.’” “I would in large part put myself in the group of people who didn’t really absorb that message very well. But I think I think now people have for for a number of reasons, number one being her just absolute persistence and kind of amazing ability to bring all these strings together. But also I think Silicon Valley’s kind of reached its Sell By date for a lot of people.” “I think if I wrote [my book] in 2026, I think it would be a slightly different book. I think we know more about how kids learn. I think I know more about a little bit of everything, and I’m a little more skeptical. I mean, I was skeptical going into it, but the way my skepticism expressed itself was I almost entirely wrote about tiny little efforts, like small studios.” “I think it’s gonna change in some places. I don’t think it’s gonna change more broadly. I don’t think we’re gonna see like lots and lots of school districts, you know, with memos in the fall saying, ‘No more Chromebooks. No more iPads.’ I think there’s still gonna be a lot of that.” “I’m gonna predict that people are on the ground are gonna be more focused on the money being spent. How is the money being spent? If anything, this has been an exercise in kind of opening opening up the process to a lot of people, opening up the books. ‘How much are we spending on iReady? How much are we spending on iPads?’ I think once that sort of revelation passes, I think maybe it’ll be a little more like data centric.” Previously from The Grade Immunizing schools from bad edtech (with Amplify’s Dan Meyer) Covering Edtech Like Big Pharma (with the NYT’s Natasha Singer) The case for i-Ready (with Curriculum Associates’ Ty Holmes) Why so many parents hate AI right now (with NYT opinion writer Jessica Grose) How one reporter latched onto the edtech backlash (with NBC’s Tyler Kingkade) In defense of education technology (with former EdSurge editor Tony Wan) Why are schools awash in YouTube? (with the WSJ’s Shalini Ramachandran) Education, technology, & the media (roundup of previous coverage) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alexanderrusso.substack.com/subscribe
Aug 14

Sources, scoops, & soaring audience

A few years ago now, Jenny Abamu left the education beat — and journalism — for what she thought was going to be forever. On her way out the door, she gave The Grade a frank interview about her experiences on the job — an illustration of her insight and candor that remains valuable to this day. Eventually, Abamu returned to journalism — this time as a politics and government reporter — and last year she launched a TikTok to supplement her coverage and published a piece about why she was making the move. A year later, Abamu is back to talk about the challenges and — mostly — successes that she’s experienced making vertical videos as part of her coverage. She’s got nearly 14,000 followers on TikTok, and her most popular videos have generated tens of thousands of views. Watch the interview or read the transcript above (or on YouTube). Listen to the conversation on Spotify or Apple. Among the many lessons that Abamu shared from her experience: People want to know what you’ve found out; they just don’t want to have to look elsewhere for it. Daily or near-daily videos help build momentum and community. Vertical video helps win readers and generate new sources and story ideas. Ninety seconds is a good length for vertical video — not too long, not too short. Original stories work a lot better than roundups. Writing a script takes time — but it also can save time (and prevent mistakes). Putting something out on social media can help generate tips, sources, and inform the final product. Set a time limit for working on each video or you’ll edit it all night. Don’t worry about being scooped; it doesn’t happen (or matter) as much as you may think. Be prepared to be recognized in public, and maybe even hugged? Don’t start with fancy equipment or try to make too many edits. It’s OK — or even good — to be doing something else (cooking, walking to the car) while you’re talking to your audience. People want to feel like they know you through your videos. Think about vertical video as telling a story to an interested friend, not the anonymous masses. If you want to get fancy, pull in a screenshot of the story you’re talking about — or a meme you find relevant and amusing. The first few seconds of your video are the hook that determines whether folks stay or keep scrolling, so pay attention like you would to a good headline. The initial awkwardness of recording yourself on camera can turn into a kind of intimacy with your audience. Your videos will generate sources, tidbits, and scoops. Previously from The Grade Why I finally joined TikTok (and you probably should, too) Star reporter Jenny Abamu explains why she left journalism — and ways to fix education news Mandy McLaren, the education beat’s TikTok star This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alexanderrusso.substack.com/subscribe
Aug 12

American schools are fine, says Freddie deBoer

The first thing you need to know about Freddie deBoer, the enfant terrible of Substack, is that he’s actually quite friendly in person — or at least he was to me when I had the chance to interview him. If deBoer’s name sounds familiar, there’s a reason for that. He’s got a very popular Substack. He is eloquent and vulnerable on many topics, including mental health and masculinity. He is frequently and fascinatingly wrong on education, at least according to me. He once took great exception to a piece I’d asked him to write then killed. Watch above or on YouTube. Listen on Spotify or Apple. The occasion for our late-June conversation was No, American schools aren’t failing, deBoer’s recent Boston Globe oped arguing that schools are generally doing much better than we think they are — with the exception of communities that are so marginalized that improving schools will not alone do much to help. “Educational outcomes are dominantly the product of on the group level, socioeconomic and cultural factors that schools and teachers can’t control — and on the individual level, individual talent differences between individual students that schools and teachers can’t control.” On the topic of media coverage, deBoer’s main complaint is what he describes as liberal incoherence about what schools are supposed to accomplish. “The New York Times is not what I would call a staunchly anti-union or or pro-firing sort of place, but they exemplify a certain kind of incoherence,” says deBoer. ‘The Times will talk about like ‘better’ or ‘worse’ schools, but sometimes they think that the best students should go to the best schools, and sometimes the worst students should go to the worst schools.” You can subscribe to Freddie’s Substack here. You can read about his forthcoming book here. Previously from The Grade Journalism should help debunk the education myth it created (Jim Shelton) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alexanderrusso.substack.com/subscribe
Aug 7

Charlie Barone: The school reform nobody sees

The conventional wisdom is that school reform has been dead for about a decade now, for better or worse. But the National Parents Union’s Charlie Barone has a different take, which is that a lot of different things are happen even if they aren’t national and bipartisan. That being said, NPU has just launched an effort to pass a national literacy law, beginning with the bipartisan introduction of a new bill. Watch the interview or read the transcript above (or on YouTube). Listen to the conversation on Spotify or Apple. KEY QUOTES “In the past we’ve gone through periods where there are very predominant policy initiatives going on that are nationwide — that everybody’s debating. This isn’t so much one of those times.” But that doesn’t mean reform isn’t happening — far from it. “There’s a lot of different things going on in different places and not one national zeitgeist. You have in the red states a big push toward choice right now…Another national conversation we’re having that isn’t happening everywhere, but is happening a lot of different places is literacy.” Unlike others, Barone takes a broad view of what constitutes “reform” that includes literacy, choice, and edtech. “I would put in the category of ed reform anything that’s asking people to do something differently than they’re doing now… I always think of reform in terms of give some resources but ask them to do something in return. And that would be my definition of reform. Because almost anything that you ask people to do differently than they’re doing now, you’re going to get resistance.” Based on his own personal experience, Barone gets the sense that tech makes teachers sit back. “I have two kids that are in a public middle school, they’re rising eighth graders, and I do see it in their classrooms. I can tell you from personal experience, there’s a little bit of hangover in their classrooms where there’s a tendency for teachers to wanna give them an assignment at the beginning of the class and then have them work independently at their desks on their Chromebook and complete assignments. And then the teacher just sort of sits back… But then like, what’s the teacher’s role, right?” On the issue of reform, Barone and I agree that the old days aren’t coming back — and that’s a good thing. “I mean on the NCLB question, there is some nostalgia. I think that’s in large part driven when people look back at the data and see a drop off in student achievement beginning around 2013. And that was right after the Obama administration began backing off of accountability and offering offering state waivers… But you know, we’ve learned some things since then.” “What we are seeing working in in some states is addressing capacity and resources tied to some evidence-based policy — particularly around reading and somewhat in math, where it’s basically a tiered system of support. So unlike ESSA, you’re not waiting for schools to fail. You’re saying on a statewide basis, here is Tier One, what we think every school should have access to: high-quality instructional materials, reading coaches, those kinds of things. And then you drill down to to Tiers Two and Three that’s more specialized, where you’re providing extra resources to either schools that are lagging or to students that are lagging, things like high impact tutoring. And so I think we can return to a time where we could see nationwide improvements in student achievement, but I don’t think the way to get there is to go back to NCLB.” “And look, other things are important than student achievement. NCLB was all about student achievement. It was great that we refocused the system on that, but you’ve gotta incentivize other types of outcomes for schools and students.” Asked if the time for a big push is now, Barone demures. “I don’t think we’re at that moment. I think the obstacles are on the right, this push toward choice and this idea that choice solves all your accountability problems.” A few red states have decided not to put all their eggs in the private school choice basket, says Barone — Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee — but others are all in on choice. “On the left, I think the primary obstacle is Democrats don’t have permission from the education establishment to talk about outcomes. They are discouraged from talking about outcomes. If you want to improve outcomes, the first thing you gotta do is start talking honestly about where you are. You know, I still watch a lot of hearings in Congress. I will tell you like Democrats have a really hard time bringing up outcomes because they’re discouraged from doing it because it’s seen as bad-mouthing the current system, and the current system is already under attack. So why do you want to further attack the system with you know negative talk about outcomes when it’s already under attack? That’s a recipe for things never getting any better.” “I have seen that change though, and I think what’s happening with reading is helping change this dynamic. Just over the last six months in watching hearings, I’ve seen more Democrats willing to talk about reading outcomes… My impression is that there’s a higher comfort level because just the level of awareness that’s been raised around student literacy is making it more comfortable for Democrats to bring this up. Now you gotta do something about it, right? Eventually. I think that’s the first step, and I see some progress on that first step being made these days.” “I think one of the things that’s made doing accountability hard is people feel like they’re being blamed or shamed because of the low student outcomes, and it makes them defensive and they feel like they’re working hard — and in most cases they are working hard, right?” “Back when I worked on the Hill for Congressman George Miller, we tried to push teacher prep reform — which I know you did with your boss, Jeff Bingaman — and we worked together on some of those things. And you know, one of Miller’s primary talking points were that students in schools of education were being short-changed. They were being cheated, sold a bill of goods that if they completed these programs, they’d be prepared to teach in a classroom. And then when they arrived in a classroom, most of them will tell you they weren’t. They weren’t taught how to teach reading. They weren’t taught how to manage a classroom. They weren’t taught how to develop a curriculum and a syllabus and those kinds of things. So I think that’s a big part of it.” “I think the coverage overall is pretty good. I I think a lot of people on the national beat are getting the story right. They’re asking the right questions… Sometimes the coverage though is a little simplistic. I brought this up at the EWA, where I feel like the the role of civil rights and disability groups in accountability is being underreported. You know, they they played a big role on ESSA in 2015. I’m not saying ESSA is the pinnacle of accountability, but the fact that ESSA has any accountability at all is largely due to civil rights and disability groups. And I don’t feel that was well covered.” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alexanderrusso.substack.com/subscribe
Aug 5

Covering edtech like Big Pharma

Perhaps no other journalist is closer to the center of the current reckoning over education technology than the New York Times’ Natasha Singer, the technology reporter who’s been covering edtech for years now and has a new book coming out next month on the topic. You may recall some of her recent work on schools that have put Chromebooks back in carts and parents’ successful efforts to rein in edtech, as well as her recent appearance on The Daily podcast to talk about the perils and promise of AI in schools. In this new interview, Singer — who officially writes for the business section of the Times — describes how technology companies make schools feel like their kids are going to be left behind if they don’t have the latest gadget or app — often without much hard evidence of effectiveness. “It feels like collective amnesia to me that each time there’s a new big tech hype cycle in school, we have to get the latest tool into the classroom,” says Singer. “I think journalists also have collective amnesia sometimes.” Watch the interview or read the transcript above (or on YouTube). Listen to the conversation on Spotify or Apple. As you’ll see, Singer compares covering edtech to covering medical device companies selling products to doctors and hospitals. And she urges everyone to think carefully about the language and the messages that the tech companies are using — which is often full of presumptions and speculation. It’s clear to Singer that many parents have become extremely concerned about the manner and extent of edtech adoption. “The scale at which parents are now voicing their concerns and reaching out to their school boards and their principals and their legislators and to journalists like me and many others, I’ve never seen this response on this kind of scale before.” But at the same time, Singer calls on skeptical parents and others to focus on benefits to kids, not simplistic metrics like screentime. She reminds us that districts and school vary enormously in how much tech kids are getting. And she thinks that some edtech is promising. You can follow Singer on Twitter/X @natashanyt. Her new book “CODING KIDS: Big Tech’s Battle to Remake Public Schools” is coming out in September. Her NYT stories appear here. Previously from The Grade How edtech lost its inevitability Education reporting in the age of AI (with Omidyar Fellow Lee Gaines) We’ve ‘lost the plot’ on edtech (with tech reporter Taylor Lorenz) The case for i-Ready (with Ty Holmes) Why so many parents hate AI right now (with NYT opinion writer Jessica Grose) How one reporter latched onto the edtech backlash (with NBC’s Tyler Kingkade) In defense of education technology (with former EdSurge editor Tony Wan) Why are schools awash in YouTube? (with the WSJ’s Shalini Ramachandran) Education, technology, & the media (roundup of previous coverage) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alexanderrusso.substack.com/subscribe

Taking a Closer Look at Education News alexanderrusso.substack.com

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Alexander Russo's The Grade
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