The Education Show

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.”

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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

Device bans, screentime restrictions, and age limits for social media are deeply misguided attempts to address intrusive and ineffective tech, says User Mag’s Taylor Lorenz in this new interview.

“How it’s being discussed is pretty bad, I would say,” she says about the current backlash. “I think we’ve lost the plot on so many issues.”

“We need to take back control — and that means passing comprehensive federal data privacy regulation — really cracking down on big tech’s business model,” says Lorenz.

“But a lot of people are just falling for this tech propaganda,” by which she means screentime limits, device bans, and age screening.

Watch the interview or read the transcript above (or on YouTube).

Listen to the conversation on Spotify or Apple.

Key quotes

“I think we’ve lost the plot on so many issues. It’s really frustrating.”

“I think it’s a topic that inspires a lot of emotion. And so I think sometimes it’s hard to talk about.”

“I think there can be a place for technology. I just think we also have a lot of bad actors in this.”

“It’s just a lot of actors, a lot of different incentives at play. And I think anytime you’re talking about sort of technology that affects children, emotions are running high.”

“The people that are usually worth listening to are the ones without the big social media presence, without the the newsletter that they’re trying to sell… "You kind of want to find not not the loudest voices in the room, which makes makes things harder, of course.”

“I’ve reported extensively on technology bans. I’ve written even about the pager bans back in the nineties, which these laws are modeled on. We know what happened.

“We know what happened with the beeper bans: it led to kids of color being targeted, hundreds of kids ending up with criminal records because they were actually arrested for having beepers on school campuses.”

“I was talking to a mom in Los Angeles recently whose child goes to a sort of more urban school here, and a lot of the kids do shift work, a lot of the parents do shift work and not being able to communicate has been a complete disaster. These kids are missing shifts, their parents are missing shifts, it’s caused a lot of problems. And so I think we just have to find, you know, more tailored solutions.

“Cell phones exist in the world. So we can’t go back to the nineties, right? Cell phones exist and they’re integrated into our world. And so I think we need to find smart ways to ensure that low-income students are not missing shift work, that they can check a message if their parents are gonna pick them up at a different time without having the them sort of able to sit and scroll all day during class.”

“These companies profit off harvesting our data. They want to harvest data on children… These companies, they are tracking your children from the time they are in your womb — I am not kidding. They are building data profiles on your children, and that data will be used against you, your family, against your child.”

“If you think your kids are addicted, quote unquote, to social media, that is because these companies have been harvesting massive and massive amounts of data to hyper-target them with the most engaging content.”

“I think it’s even worse than the recycling example. It would be like if we were saying, ‘Hey, recycling is really bad. So now we’re actually mandating that in order to drink water, you have to purchase it in disposable plastic bottles’.”

“These are always far-right policies that actually groups like the Heritage Foundation or Morality and Media, now known as as ENCOS, have been trying to push since the internet began. But only in the past few years have liberals got on board, primarily through Heritage Foundation collaborator Jonathan Haidt, who has said very horrible things about LGBTQ people but has been able to position himself in liberal circles and has gotten liberals on board with these policies that I would argue are sort of antithetical to democracy. I mean, Western leaders were very against this stuff until recently. and now I think they’ve, yeah, gotten on board.

“They give a lot of self-interested answers and a lot of them have not been able to point to benefits. You know, are are there benefits to their technology? I think a lot of it we’re seeing probably maybe no.”

Previously from The Grade

Education, technology, and the media

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What a pleasure it was to speak with Lee Gaines, who’s emerged as an essential national journalist on schools and AI and the larger reconsideration of edtech.

An education reporter for almost a decade now, Gaines started out as a newspaper reporter and then worked for Illinois Public Radio covering prison education and then the pandemic response and special education as a member of the staff at WFYI Indiana public media.

Most recently, from her perch as an Omidyar Network reporter in residence, Gaines has been able to produce a string of stories on AI in schools that have been published by NPR as a series called Learning in the age of AI.

Of all the journalists I’ve spoken to recently, Gaines may be the most doggedly even-handed. In this new interview, she describes the immense value AI can provide to engaged students, the role journalists’ antipathy towards AI has played in the current backlash, mixed feelings about at least one of the stories that she’s produced, and her own use of AI to assist her reporting.

“If you are interested in covering ed tech and if you are interested in covering AI, I think you have a responsibility to familiarize yourself with those tools,” says Gaines — a familiarity that might also help journalists maintain an open mind.

Technical difficulties prevent us from showing you the video interview in full, but we are going to clip as much as possible (below) and you can listen to the full audio or read the transcript (above) .

Key quotes & clips from Gaines:

Above: “My take on AI in schools from the student perspective is that if you are one of those kids that is intrinsically motivated to learn — you love learning for learning’s sake — I think you might be able to use AI in a way that enhances your learning. But if you are not one of those students, you are not intrinsically motivated — you’re just there to get the grade, the degree, to get out — I think AI can be really harmful.”

“We’ve struggled for decades to figure out how to motivate the kids that aren’t already motivated to learn. And I think that AI is just exacerbating that and making that a more complex problem, because previously it was pretty evident that these kids were struggling or weren’t learning anything. And I think AI can kind of mask that.”

“Education is this gigantic beat. And my philosophy for how to approach journalism is to find something that you’re passionate about and really focus and become the expert on that.”

“I’m very interested in the human impact above all… I’m interested in the kid at the alternative school who’s using AI to get through the day. I’m interested in that high-performing student who’s using AI to apply for college or something. [I’m also interested] in the teachers that are struggling on a day-to-day basis, maybe who are trying to figure out like, ‘Is this my student’s work? Is this someone else? Is this AI’s work?’ And also the what the school districts are thinking, doing, and spending on AI… The human stories in all of this is what really guides my reporting.

“The peril and the promise exist simultaneously.”

“I feel like I saw [the backlash] coming in the cellphone bans. There is a connection between what’s going on with cellphones, to social media, to AI. Like all of this feels somewhat interrelated to me.”

Above: “I have a lot of friends who are journalists who don’t cover AI and they are extremely anti-AI. Like, there’s a lot of people in like my personal life that are very anti-AI. And so to me, that was kind of the writing on the wall. The ed tech backlash is part of, I think, a larger cultural phenomenon, which is sort of like a tech backlash in general.”

“The tech companies have partly done this to themselves. They’ve been very explicit about their intentions to have this technology replace all of our labor.”

“I’ve been trying to use TikTok more, trying to do more direct-to-camera takes on my reporting. And I get really good engagement, despite not having any followers.”

Above: “One thing I have noticed in the comments is that a lot of teachers — a lot of professors — they are overwhelmingly negative about AI. I take that very seriously. I think there are a lot of negatives that come along with the ungoverned Wild West version of this technology that we are currently experiencing. But I also wonder if they are they drowning out the more nuanced opinions?”

“It’s hard in general as a journalist, and as a human being, to hold multiple truths at once. And I think the job of a journalist is to hold multiple truths at once. So what I’m trying to navigate is being very very open-minded to everyone’s perspective.”

“There are teachers out there that are using this technology and finding utility in it. There are students out there that are using this technology, and it’s sort of up for debate whether or not that’s going to harm or help them. And I think it’s really dependent on the student themselves. So keeping an open mind and also a healthy dose of skepticism and critically approaching everything that I cover is what I try to do. I think that there are a lot of people that might be afraid to say that they’re using this technology because they don’t want to be judged by their peers.”

“Teachers are using AI on their own for administrative work, for lesson planning, much more than they’re using AI with their students. They’re not bringing chatbots into the classroom very often — at least according to the survey that we did.”

Above: “I actually have a little bit of weird feelings around the something that I did. So the Center for Democracy and Technology came out with this survey. They came out with a report that said like one in five high school aged kids either are in a relationship with AI or know someone who’s in a relationship with AI… We did a story about this survey and I went out after we did this story — I’ve made it a point every time I’m interviewing high-school aged kids now to basically ask them ‘Do you know anyone that’s in a relationship with AI?’ and I also ask teachers this, too, like ‘Do you know any students that are in a relationship with AI?’ and the reaction I get is laughter.”

“A tool that I really like using is Notebook LM from Google. I highly recommend experimenting with that as a way to organize your sources and ask questions of your sources. I also think some of the deep research functions on the paid versions of Claude and ChatGPT are worth looking into. There are things that you can surface with those tools that you can’t — like documents that you might not be able to surface — without them. And I also just believe very strongly if you are interested in covering ed tech and if you are interested in covering AI, I think you have a responsibility to familiarize yourself with those tools.”

“I was very interested in what schools are spending on AI detection software because AI we did a story about AI detection software not being reliable. And I was able to ask, I use Chat GPT’s Deep Research. I had to have the paid version to access this. I said, can you surface contracts between US-based public K-12 districts and these specific companies. And it was it went — without me even telling it to do this — it went into BoardDocs, which if people aren’t familiar, that’s the repository for for school board agendas and associated documentation, and it found a contract between Broward County Schools in Florida and Turnitin, which previously was famous for plagiarism software, but they’ve now gone into AI detection. It was a contract worth half a million dollars. Would I have found that without Deep Research? Maybe, but it certainly would have taken a lot more time to do that.”

“I’ll never allow AI to write for me because I think that’s a betrayal of my my responsibility to the audience, but also that’s the part of the job that I like… That’s the part of the job that must stay human. That is the part of the job that is creative, that requires my judgment — that that only I feel like I can do, and I wanna keep it that way.”

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If Karina Elwood’s name seems familiar, that’s because she was until recently a local education reporter at the Washington Post.

Now she’s back, editing a new project featuring firsthand coverage and student voices.

Called Firsthand, it’s a national spinoff of The Bell and its NYC-focused efforts.

“My take on the state of education journalism right now is that we need to have more student voices,” says Elwood in this new interview.

“Education journalism is always better when it is elevated by student voices — whether that’s in your own reporting or helping other students do the work. The more students [are] represented, the better the work usually is.”

While excited about new voices and new platforms, Elwood is still a traditional journalist at heart.

“I’m open to non-traditional journalism in the way that we package our journalism, but I do I I do believe in first understanding the basics of traditional journalism,” she says. “You have to understand the ethics of journalism and all of the standards — all of the basics of fact-checking and neutrality that journalism is built on.”

Like many other journalists, she’s dipping her toe into social video. “I’m trying. I’m trying. It is it is difficult to do,” she says. “I’m just a journalist who wants to get work in front of people, and I’m open to trying new things.”

So far, Firsthand has received dozens of submissions from across the country, according to Elwood. They continue to accept pitches on a rolling basis and are re aiming to publish 20-25 stories toward the end of the year.

Watch the interview or read the transcript above (or on YouTube). Listen to the conversation on Spotify or Apple. You can follow Elwood on TikTok & Instagram.

Previously from The Grade

Remote reporting doesn’t work, either

How to report from inside a school — without access to the school

Student voices missing in coverage of NYC specialized schools debate

‘Better stories’: student-centered schools coverage in Las Vegas

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I had the chance to moderate a panel on education journalism a little while back, thanks to the good folks on the FINN Partners education team, featuring K12-Dive’s KaraArundel, EdWeek Market Brief’s Emma Kate Fittes, Chalkbeat Indiana’s MJ Slaby, and freelancer Chad Aldeman.

I asked FINN Partners for permission to share the video replay because it’s not often enough that folks get to hear how education reporters think and work — and some of the insights shared are especially timely and useful.

Some highlights from the hour-long event:

“Super-providers” like the merged NWEA / HMH are on the mind of EdWeek Market Brief’s Emma Kate Fittes right now:

Federal changes, microschools, and preventing cyber attacks are on the mind of K-12 Dive’s Kara Arundel:

Substacker Chad Aldeman doesn’t like social video and so he’s not producing any of it — a common sentiment despite the massive popularity of the short video format:

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To be honest, I was pretty skeptical when folks started telling me to talk to Dan “Mathworlds” Meyer about education technology, given that he’s so closely involved. He developed a much-admired math program called Desmos. He works at Amplify. He gives talks at ASU+GSV!

But it didn’t take long for Meyer to convince me that he’s more aware than most of the perils of ineffective edtech on kids and schools — and might even be relieved that parents have finally raised the alarm enough to win media attention.

“A lot of the systems surrounding kids have not been doing a good job of filtering out lousy ideas, which has led to a lot of ‘sickness’ inside that system,” says Meyer in this new interview. “Kids are using tools that don’t work, that are cognitively de-skilling them. And then these parent communities have said, ‘Okay, this is not working.’”

“We have not, as an industry, had a perspective on what works and what doesn’t,” says Meyer, who describes the current backlash as a belated immune response.

And the mainstream media — Meyer praises the Times’ Natasha Singer and EdWeek’s research center — has only recently brought sufficient attention to concerns that he, Ben Riley, and Audrey Watters have been writing about for years.

“I’d love to see those outlets be ahead of the curve and not behind the curve,” says Meyer. “But I’m glad that they’re they’re somewhere on the curve right now.”

Watch the interview or read the transcript above (or on YouTube). Listen to the conversation on Spotify or Apple. Follow Dan at @ddmeyer, subscribe to Mathworlds, or check out his pre-2021 blog, DY/DAN.

Previously from The Grade

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

It’s always good to talk directly to the folks who are the center of a controversy, even if you don’t learn quite as much from them as you’d like. That was my experience speaking with Curriculum Associates CIO Ty Holmes, who has been quoted recently in Chalkbeat, NBC News, and WFAE public radio.

However, the conversation did unearth a few useful tidbits.

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, i-Ready is the unlikely poster child for the current backlash in which parents complain that edtech has swamped their kids’ school experiences.

In this new interview, Holmes explains that there are a confusing number of different services and programs that have the i-Ready name, including an assessment and a supplemental program called My Path that’s meant for only 30-49 minutes of student use a week.

Holmes also shares that while i-Ready will be affected by district decisions regarding screen time, such as in LAUSD, it won’t be immediately affected by AI bans or pauses since AI has been piloted but isn’t baked into the current program.

“Nothing is ever going to replace a live teacher,” says Holmes.

I still don’t understand exactly what i-Ready does — I’ve heard it described as “digitized practice worksheets” — or whether it’s central to the current ed tech problem or more of an innocent bystander, or even how many districts have non-renewed or shortened their contracts in light of the current controversy.

Recent news reports suggest that at least one district (Charlotte Mecklenburg) has shortened its contract. Curriculum Associates has attempted to set the record straight via the Fordham Foundation website — an interesting choice. In California, some parents are suing the company over data privacy.

Watch the interview or read the transcript above (or on YouTube). Listen to the conversation on Spotify or Apple. Who should be my next interview?

Previously from The Grade

In defense of education technology (Tony Wan)

How one reporter latched onto the edtech backlash (Tyler Kingkade)

How to cover ed tech hysteria (Holly Korbey / The Bell Ringer)

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I knew I really wanted to talk with the New York Times’ Jessica Grose when I read her recent story, America’s First A.I. High School Is Great. But Not Because of A.I., but I didn’t know that Grose, who writes for the Opinion section, would share so many other interesting thoughts and observations about other topics.

As you’ll see, she doesn’t blame schools for marketing themselves to AI-interested parents. But she’s thoroughly skeptical about the use of AI in elementary and middle school especially. And she thinks current backlash has been so strong and fast-moving because of the overuse of edtech during and since the pandemic — and the current rush to bring AI into schools.

“I think most parents feel like it has happened completely without their consent or understanding.”

She also shares some of her favorite journalists, including some who aren’t traditional, her favorite places to get education ideas, including Reddit, and what she likes and loathes about being a journalist in the current era.

Watch the interview or read the transcript above (or on YouTube). Listen to the conversation on Spotify or Apple.

Check out Friday’s Secret Bonus Section for free: Techlash Week 26

Selected quotes

“I think public schools are understandably feeling under a lot of pressure, a lot of criticism from families, a lot of competition from charter schools, from private schools, from homeschools. and so they need to differentiate themselves in some way.”

“Every time I write about this topic, I get a broader, more politically diverse, economically diverse, religiously diverse group of people who are upset about screens in schools… I mean, you see the backlash towards AI data centers, that is certainly not among the elite.”

“What I saw there were really great schools that I would be happy to send my children to [But] there did not seem to be as much AI as I was led to believe by their glossy marketing brochures.”

“My feeling about AI and its use in K through 12 is that I think it has basically no place in elementary school. I don’t think it should be anywhere in elementary school. Maybe you can talk about its existence in elementary school and how to possibly think critically about images that you may see that are not real and deepfakes and all of that. You can start learning that maybe later in elementary school, the technology itself should not be in elementary school.”

“I think in middle school, maybe [AI could be] limited to a tech class. but maybe only in later middle school. I don’t really think that there’s any reason for middle school kids to use it. I think in high school it should be used with serious guardrails. There should be a really well-defined use case for why you’re using it, why it is the best method of getting the information or research or outcome that you want, and that there should be really clear guidelines at the school district level about appropriate use.”

“It should be really clear to teachers, students, parents, what is appropriate use. Are kids still gonna cheat using AI? Absolutely. The horse is out of the barn on that. But I think it’s just if you wanted a shorthand: very intentional usage, basically only in high school.

“I don’t really worry so much about the tech companies more than I worry about the schools and the and the perverse and pretty much terrible incentives created by the tech companies. I really don’t blame public schools for doing what they kind of perceive that they need to do to stay relevant.”

“In terms of the tech backlash that parents are feeling, all we you know, my kids were three and seven in 2020. And having every child have to learn virtually was a disaster. I just don’t think that anyone can look at what happened in 2020 and 2021 and be like, ‘That was great. Let’s have more of that.’ And so I think that really set the stage for a much deeper skepticism towards the ubiquity of screens in schools.”

“Anyone who’s paying attention, not just to their own kids, but to the trends and test scores and attention spans — all of that — has every right to be worried, not just about, you know, ‘Is my kid gonna have a decent future with AI maybe taking a quarter of all, you know, entry-level jobs?’ but what’s it doing to their brains and their relationships?”

“I think just living through the events of the past decade as a parent, I think you’d really have to be pretty out to lunch to not be concerned about the presence of screens in your children’s live lives. And you know, I think there’s a range of attitudes about what to do about that and how to react to that. And then there’s social media. There’s just so many sort of different aspects of this. AI is just the newest one to contend with.”

“I think the AI backlash is more profound than previous backlashes because it has happened so fast. And I think most parents feel like it has happened completely without their consent or understanding. So you recently saw there was an AI high school planned for New York City and it got delayed or possibly canceled because of parent protests. And I think you’re just gonna see more of that happening because people are just skeptical. They’re they’re understandably skeptical because we were all told, you know, ‘Everybody needs a laptop. They’re gonna fall behind if they don’t all get a laptop.’ And I don’t think that you can say that that was an effort that was really successful. And so now we’re we’re sort of getting the same message again. And I think people are appropriately looking a little sideways at that.”

“People understand the Pandora’s box of the internet. And yes, they want their kids to be prepared for the future. I think everybody wants that. Everyone wants their kids to be able to get jobs after they graduate from school…I don’t think that that is the province of only working-class people or upper-class people. I think that this is a pretty wide concern.”

“I don’t have to go to the makers of AI and the people who make ed tech products with AI and give them a fair shake and say, ‘Tell me, what your aims are.’ I don’t have to have that sort of both sides have been given an equal say. I certainly consider the other side and I air those arguments in order to dismantle them because I think if you’re not considering the other side’s arguments, your argument is going to be weak.”

“I don’t think that the newsroom would ever let me report on AI because I have a pretty clear skepticism towards the technology in general, especially when it comes to education. So I don’t think that I am coming to the topic with no bias. There is a bias… But that doesn’t mean that I [don’t] go into this as an honest broker.”

“I read actually a lot of Reddit because that’s where teachers are… That’s kind of where issues are bubbling like might bubble up that I wouldn’t see otherwise if I’m not on the ground in schools all the time… I think hearing teachers talk in their own sort of communities is is always important. And so I think anywhere on social media where teachers are congregating, I’m always lurking there.”

“[Non-traditional journalists] have no incentive to join traditional journalism the way that they did 15 years ago because there’s hiring, right? There’s more of ability to monetize your own Substack, your own TikTok, your own whatever… We have more to learn from them in terms of presentation, then they necessarily… I mean, I’m sure many of them would want a a steady, well-paid job, but how many of those are left in journalism?

“I can’t tell you how many school boards I’ve sort of looked into and then been like, ‘Well, you know, this has to have national significance for me to write about it.’ I never want to sort of like put a small district on blast, unless me it’s telling a bigger story… I get so sort of tired of just like ‘And here’s another culture war story.’ Like,who cares at this point? Like not who cares, they really mean a lot, but like in terms of you know, my writing and where I think I can actually be helpful just writing yet another story about the culture war, about X is tearing this community apart. Like I just don’t think that that’s helpful anymore.”

“I would love it if there were a bajillion jobs in education journalism. I think it is one of the most under-covered topics, considering how many students are in this country and how different every state is, and how different the experiences of rural Americans, of urban American. I mean, I actually think it’s a tragedy that there is not more traditional education journalists and journalism being funded.”

'“Doing short-form video truly make me wanna die. I keep trying to learn how and I just feel so stiff and weird and I don’t like doing it. But I think that to reach more people it is really important to do. So I’m personally torn about that. I think my time on this mortal coil is limited and I unfortunately wish that I wanted to spend it making short-form video, but at least right now I don’t. So I think that you should do that. But like I don’t like to give advice that I myself am not taking.”

“I don’t think that mainstream journalists should necessarily adopt this, but I do appreciate the willingness to sort of do a story piece by piece. It’s much harder to do when you’re someplace with so many eyeballs on you all the time and so many clear standards of what we can do and what we can’t do. But just being able to sort of follow a story piecemeal as it develops rather than having to wait until you’ve done all your reporting, you’ve gotten all your ducks in a row, and then you’re, you know, you’re making the finished product — I think the ability to sort of do it sort in shorter, quicker pieces and follow a story as it’s developing in real time is is really great.”

“I think that there’s a an an immediacy to what people who are less traditional journalists can do that. We have a lot of standards and get in trouble for tweeting too aggressively. So I think there’s a there’s a a looseness and a freedom that they have that I sometimes envy.”

Previously from The Grade

Why are schools awash in YouTube? (with Shalini Ramachandran)

The 30-year delusion about schools & tech (with Todd Oppenheimer)

Covering the edtech backlash (with Sharon Lurye)

How to cover ed tech hysteria (with Holly Korbey)

Rethinking Chromebooks in Kansas (with Inge Esping)

How to cover AI in schools (with RAND’s Heather Schwartz)

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

NBC News’ Tyler Kingkade has always been an interesting presence on the education beat, and lately he’s become even more so.

Over the past six months, Kingkade has written roughly a dozen stories about the growing concerns about social media, screentime, and learning software being used in schools. They began appearing in December with Parents say school-issued iPads are causing chaos with their kids and continue with Inside Google’s AI training for teachers.

Along the way, Kingkade has refuted LAUSD’s screentime estimates, had his efforts featured in the Friday newsletter, and been recognized at least twice in The Grade’s best of the week section.

In this new interview, Kingkade talks about why he feels that the edtech backlash is much more organic than previous school-related outrages, how critics sometimes mistakenly diminish or conflate parents’ concerns, how the he convinced his editors to let him focus on school technology in addition to Trump-related stories,

“I knew pretty quickly after we published the LA story back in December that this was going to be something I was going to stay on,” he says. “But I didn’t realize how quickly it would explode.”

Watch the interview or read the transcript above (or on YouTube). Listen to the conversation on Spotify or Apple.

Featured quotes

“When I started as the higher ed reporter-editor at the Huffington Post back in 2012, ed tech was something I was very quickly bored by.”

“Last year I was covering a lot of stuff around the Trump administration and everything that it was doing and still is doing to education and about halfway through, there was actually this article in the New York Times about college professors using AI and some students feeling like, ‘Wait, you’re doing the thing you’ve been yelling at us not to do.’ …For some reason just that was a story that broke through, and they asked a couple of us, ‘Yes, pay attention to what Trump’s doing, but also AI is becoming a bigger factor — what’s going on?’”

“I was the first to report on some internal records from Google that have been filed in the big social media addiction litigation, talking about how they saw their work in schools as building a ‘pipeline’ of future users or at least tapping into one… That got a lot of attention and I think that was something that reinforced to my editors, ‘Tyler’s on to something. Let him keep going.’ Let him cook, as the kids say.”

“I had never had so many emails in response to any story I’ve ever done. And they were almost all constructive, like, ‘Hey, this is happening in my kids’ school in Kansas,’ or whatever. People were really engaged about it.”

“I knew pretty quickly after we published the LA story back in December that this was going to be something I was gonna stay on. but I didn’t realize how quickly it would explode.”

“This has already been happening for years. I mean, Utah is a good example. There’s a couple of districts where parents have been going to school board meetings for two years, complaining about the stuff that we’re hearing about a lot this year, with with Chromebooks in schools.”

“I don’t want to say all these parents are absolutely correct in everything that they complain about — that’s never the case on any issue — but it is something people should consider.”

“I think this conversation’s going to be ongoing. It’ll be interesting to see how many change things over the summer while things are sort of quiet and then just start the fall with a new experiment. But I don’t think the market’s gonna die because I don’t think like we’re gonna get rid of computers.

“I’m not saying I will never cover Alpha School, but that is if I’m being honest and a little maybe overly transparent, I’m often inclined to be like, ‘Mmm, private school, do what you want.’… I’m not as interested.”

Previously from The Grade

How ISTE turned EdSurge into slop (Stephen Noonoo)

Summer Edtech Pile-On (Secret Bonus Section)

Why are schools awash in YouTube? (Shalini Ramachandran / WSJ)

The 30-year delusion about schools & tech (Todd Oppenheimer)

Covering the edtech backlash (Sharon Lurye / AP)

How to cover ed tech hysteria (Holly Korbey / The Bell Ringer)

Education, technology, & the media (roundup of almost all of The Grade’s edtech 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