Seasonal Allergy Edition
Achoo!
Photo by Mohammad Hosein Safaei via Unsplash license
We are blessed to live in an age where traveling all over our beautiful country (and the world, for that matter!) is easy, quick, and inexpensive. This allows me to live and work in multiple states, cities, and towns over the course of any given week, which I fully realize is an amazing privilege. Since the last issue, I have been to TN, DC, NJ, MD, NC, CT, NY, and RI (with multiple stops in some of those states). The work is going well, and it has been great to see so many family and friends.
However, the sequencing of the trips means I am chasing the worst parts of spring allergy season around the Eastern third of the country! Tennessee’s early spring hit my allergies hard, and just as I came out of them, I went to DC (where pollen was just starting), then over Easter the northeast, where it was just starting.
So it has been a sneezy, eye-watering stretch! But the team is finishing up lots of cool projects, and several more are just getting off the ground. I look forward to sharing this work with you over the coming months.
Something Short
I have a few short pieces in production but nothing new at the moment, so I’m going to point you to some resources on the Oklahoma religious charter SCOTUS case. The Supreme Court heard the case this morning, and its ruling on whether Oklahoma can fund religious charter schools has the potential to cause a huge earthquake in American education. If the Court rules that OK can fund religious charters (essentially affirming that charters are not public schools), it will be the biggest shock to K-12 education in years. I suspect this is how they will rule.
Backing up a bit, charters were sold to the public as low-regulation, innovation-driving, public schools. Most don’t have attendance boundaries, making them engines of public school open enrollment (full disclosure: I’m a big fan of open enrollment). But about a decade ago, during a conversation with some colleagues, I mentioned in passing that charters are accountable to the taxpayers because they adhere to public school accountability systems in their states. All but one colleague nodded. That colleague was Preston Green, an education law expert who focuses on charters. He noted that many charter school operators do NOT see themselves as public institutions, but rather private schools receiving public money (he’s written extensively on this topic. Here’s a representative piece). I scoffed at the time - not at Preston but rather at the craziness of that argument - but this attitude among many charter folks has been well-documented in the ensuing years.
The OK SCOTUS case is going to be the definitive test of this theory. From my perspective, charters have not been big innovation drivers; if they also aren’t public schools, then what are we doing here? There is a growing panic on the right that a “charters are private” ruling will cause many states to reduce or even eliminate charters. That feels unlikely but is also well within the realm of possibility. This is definitely worth following!
Something a Bit More Involved
This issue I’d like to point you to the work of my colleague Joshua Brown. He recently joined us at Hopkins and has been a great addition to our faculty. His new book, Capitalizing on College: How Higher Education Went from Mission Driven to Margin Obsessed, was published by Oxford University Press in April.
Josh is a great, provocative thinker, and the book does not disappoint. He spent a year interviewing leaders and professors on eight non-elite college campuses (all religiously-affiliated), and he presents their stories within a compelling framework and narrative. Josh’s primary goal, as I interpreted it, was to examine how leaders at the eight institutions navigated the delicate balance between innovating educationally and balancing largely tuition-driven budgets. How do we keep our eyes on the prize (student learning and growth) in a highly competitive market with tremendous financial pressures.
He proposes a framework of four different strategies for funding innovation (traditional, pioneer, network, and accelerated) and presents his case studies of the eight universities within chapters devoted to each of the strategies. I found myself nodding along to many of the quotes, having either thought or heard colleagues utter similar sentiments. The relatable character of the book is one contributor to its readability.
I will admit that I came away from the book with many more questions than answers, which was probably Josh’s goal. I’ve never attended or worked at a university that was largely tuition-dependent, but many of the book’s observations were applicable to my experiences. This was further cemented in my mind when I read last Sunday’s New York Times story on Harvard’s endowment, provocatively titled, “Harvard’s Endowment Is $53.2 Billion. What Should It Be For?” The story deals with many of the same issues that Josh tackles but comes at them from a very different perspective.
One especially cool feature of the book is an “outtakes” section after the final chapter, where Josh shares interview quotes that didn’t make it into the book. I enjoyed the outtakes so much that I read them twice! That’s a clever strategy for getting extra insights into a book (for this type of project, you always have much more material than you end up sharing in the text). I’m also going to have my students read the methodological appendix, which struck me as surprisingly interesting and full of insights about how to conduct such an expansive study.
Josh also has a great Substack newsletter, which you can explore here.
As you can tell, I really enjoyed the book. My expectations were very high going into it, given my respect for Josh and his work, yet this book exceeded those expectations. If you have any interest in higher education, I strongly recommend this book.
Some Recent Things that Intrigued Me
Rebuilding national education data. Data systems are not the most exciting topic, but building and maintaining them is critical across a range of industries and fields. Education is no different. For decades, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) was the keeper of the country’s education data. NCES was subject to some reasonable criticisms, but those became moot when the Trump Administration essentially wiped it out in March. Lots of experts have opined that we need to build back better (ahem), but no one has offered concrete ideas for how to do it. That is, not until my colleague Paul DiPerna at EdChoice offered a two-part overview of what a new system could look like. I strongly favor the Education Commission of the States option that Paul describes in the second piece; regardless, these thoughtful posts are worth a quick read.
The First 100 Days. This Free Press feature is the best summary of perspectives on the administration’s first 100 days that I’ve stumbled across. Perspectives range from far-left to far-right, with lots of people in between.
Tech tends to get worse as it gets better. An irony of our modern age is that we are making stupendous technological advances on a regular basis, but existing tech quality tends to degrade over time. An oft-cited example is Google search. Remember when it was awesome? Now you can get a page of ads before you get to your results. GPS mapping apps haven’t seen innovation in years. I rarely use Facebook now, but when I do, my feed is often 100% ads and posts by people I don’t know. The journalist and novelist Cory Doctorow has labeled this “enshitification,” when tech platforms attract users with a high-quality experience, only to degrade that experience in an effort to squeeze every last cent out of the technology. This recent article in Psych Today by Jeff Greene made me wonder if we have more control over the situation than I previously assumed. It doesn’t have any great answers, but it’s worth considering.
Removing a University’s Tax Exempt Status. The President often threatens to remove the broadcast licenses for insufficiently supportive TV networks, and he recently threatened to remove Harvard’s tax exempt status. It’s hard to imagine the courts ever allowing anything in this realm, for first amendment reasons alone. But in reading about this lately, I’m not so sure that Harvard’s defense is ironclad: Compare the only previous time a university lost tax exempt status with the findings of the Harvard Antisemitism Task Force (released just yesterday). I doubt the President will pursue this and doubt even more highly that his team would do a good job with the case if they did (ham-handedness is their M.O.), but a good team of lawyers could probably make a convincing case that Harvard has a big civil rights problem.
Gen Zers are easy marks. My operating assumption over the past decade has been that Gen Zers, being digital natives, were inoculated against the rampant misinformation and propaganda that floods social media. However, research over the past couple years has changed my mind: To the contrary, growing up in an immersive environment of garbage information makes them especially susceptible to fake information (I’m not implying that it isn’t a problem for all of us over time, just that Gen Z isn’t as immune as we thought). On a related note, how on earth is TikTok still available in the U.S.?
An Age of Human Excellence? Luiza Jarovsky has one of the best newsletters on AI issues. I subscribe to the free version, which points me to lots of helpful links and provides interesting perspectives. Luiza recently reacted to Bill Gates’ rather morose predictions about humanity; I’m still not sure how I feel about this issue, but it’s been great food for thought:
Some Things I Found to be Cool
Nature’s Own bread, Part II. Last issue, I raved about the world’s best bread, Nature’s Own Perfectly Crafted Thick Sliced Multigrain Bread. Well, I was in New England over Easter weekend and bought a loaf at the local Stop & Shop. It was very good, but it was not as good as the same bread in Tennessee! I suspect they use a different bakery, and the northeastern Nature’s Own team has not yet matched the perfection of the southern team. The southern version is more airy, so it grabs your butter and jam more effectively and results in a more satisfying, if delicate, crunch as you bite into it. This observation is based on a small sample size, and I will try again later this month when I'm back in the northeast. I am not yet ready to modify my bread recommendation … but regional differences may apply here!
Van Gogh in Boston! I can’t wait to see this exhibit, which sounds fantastic. His Roulin Family portraits brought together - probably for the first time since Vincent painted them. This WSJ review got me pretty excited to see the exhibit! It ends September 7th, so make a point to reserve tickets if you’re passing through Boston this summer.
Mets! We were in the nosebleeds at Citi Field when this happened. LGM!
Jade Plant of the Month
HUGE SCANDAL ALERT!!! I stumbled across these two beauties at the United States Botanical Garden last week. The USBG is nestled at the foot of Capitol Hill, and if you’ve ever been in DC, you’ve almost certainly walked, biked, or driven past it. The entrance is hard to find, and the hours are lousy, so not many people visit. It has a world-class orchid collection. But that’s not the scandal.
As you can see in the second picture, the jades are labeled as crassula obovata (watch chain plant) when they are clearly crassula ovata (standard jade). At a botanical garden! At our nation’s botanical garden! If I ever meet a U.S. President or Speaker of the House, this won’t be the first thing I bring up, but you can bet your bottom dollar it’s on the agenda. (But seriously, these jades were impressive - look at how big they are given the shallow pots!).
Also, the USBG has the most over-priced gift shop in DC. Go for the orchids and jades, skip the gift shop.
Some Events to Consider
Just attended the AEI webinar, Grading Trump’s First 100 Days on Education. The panel discussion was excellent, lots of insights from across the political spectrum. It’s an hour long but flies by. Highly recommended.
Where to Find Me
http://Amazon.com/author/jonathanplucker
www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanplucker
Man! You packed a lot into this one! Any thoughts about Jade marmalade on toasted multigrain? How about charter schools founded by peyote eaters or by snake handlers?
Fascinating read — thank you for the insights!