CHEERS
We said goodbye this week to Dolly Parton. Beyond her legendary contributions to the American songbook, she cared deeply about literacy and used her fame and fortune to provide millions of free books to children around the world—every month. In her honor, check out Linda Jacobson’s 2024 piece on Dolly’s Imagination Library.
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And in a new article from The 74, Patrick O’Donnell reports on how Ohio is addressing the “mismatch…between what schools offer and business want” when it comes to industry-ready credentials, and highlights Fordham-Ohio’s work on the issue:
Fordham has reported multiple times the last few years on ways some districts, notably urban, high-poverty ones where some students struggle to graduate, have large numbers of students earning low-value credentials just to earn a diploma.
“Credentials are intended to signify students’ acquisition of technical skills and help them gain an edge in the labor market, not simply be a workaround to a diploma,” wrote Fordham’s Aaron Churchill. “Ohio schools have discovered the easiest ones to attain and used them to get students to the finish line (and inflate their graduation rates as well as report card ratings).” That system, Churchill and Fordham’s Jessica Poiner reported, had more than 9,000 students earning RISE UP retail sales and customer service credentials in 2023—credentials that, combined, allow students to graduate—but were sought by employers for just three jobs statewide that year.
JEERS
Last week, Boston College professor Heather Cox Richardson used her popular Substack to create a misleading narrative about the history of school choice in America. By cherry-picking events and attributing singular intentions and perspectives to major events and initiatives—all calibrated to make her argument against parental choice—she loses the chance to teach her readers about the nation’s complex history of public schooling.
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In a post that Pangram flagged as being (appropriately)100 percent AI-generated, Dana Williams says “effort migration”—outsourcing tedious learning—is the way of the future, that “AI isn’t helping students cheat,” and that “the ability to think critically with technology will become one of the most important forms of literacy a student can learn” since that’s what employers will want in adults. Dana says we should rethink academic integrity as a result, but applying this reasoning to K–12 schools, where students haven’t developed independent critical thinking skills, is a dangerous path.
Editor's note: This was first published on Mike Petrilli's Substack, SCHOOLED, a free Substack and email newsletter restarting the education-reform conversation. Click here to subscribe for sharp analysis of the week’s biggest K–12 debates, curated commentary from across the ed-policy world, and lively discussion—including reader reactions and pushback.
