Jeff Murray
10.9.2026
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More division in Indy

Indianapolis Public Schools continues to propose big operational changes that they say will save the cash-strapped district money, but also appear calibrated to cause division in a city attempting to build a new paradigm of educational cooperation. The latest: Discontinuation of the district/charter partnership called Innovation Schools. Shared services between IPS and the 30 non-district Innovation schools (facility use, transportation, etc.) will begin winding down soon, after more than 10 years of partnership. Brandon Brown, CEO of the Indy-based Mind Trust organization, responded to these moves in an op-ed this week. He reminds readers that the district shares more than just classroom space and school buses with charters in the Innovation partnership—they also share test scores and report cards. “Since 2021,” he writes, “independent and innovation charter schools have achieved significantly larger English language arts and math proficiency gains than IPS direct-run schools or the Marion County average across nearly every student group. For example, Black and Hispanic students at innovation charter schools achieved ELA gains at more than four times the rate of their peers at IPS direct-run schools.” Despite this fact, Indy district leaders still seem laser-focused on the money.

More drama in Oklahoma

The next step after a federal judge decided that Oklahoma cannot deny the application of a religiously-affiliated charter school solely because it would provide a faith-based education is set to take place next week. Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School’s application to start a virtual school will be back in front of the Statewide Charter School Board on Monday. There’s lots of inflammatory detail in this coverage, but the only thing that really matters is that the board is voting. It’s likely that legal wrangling will recommence immediately afterward, regardless of the tally.

New drama in North Carolina

A group of North Carolina charter schools whose state report card results were lower than expected due to changes in the way student retests are counted are trying to get some relief. They liken the situation to “changing the game midway through,” and note that many of the schools will face consequences from their authorizers if the lower scores stand. So far, they have been rebuffed by the Department of Public Instruction, but they and the North Carolina Charter Schools Review Board plan to persist in requesting changes.

Capital

The Progressive’s Public Schools Advocate project dug into the details of ACCEL Schools’ recent unsuccessful effort to buy a defunct college campus and launch a new charter school in Washington County, Wisconsin. They conclude that it was local residents’ fear of a connection between ACCEL and foreign private equity firms that supercharged their opposition to the move—rather than typical concerns about district competition—and that their opposition scuttled the deal. Hopefully that’s true, because competition is coming anyway: FaithRidge Christian School ultimately bought the college property and they are bringing their entire operation to the new site, planning to quadruple their enrollment.

Not all the news can be bad

We end this week with a nice profile of Portage Leadership Academy, a brand-new K-5 charter school in Ravenna, Ohio. “The biggest thing we really try to focus in on,” said principal Zack Penrod, “is the concept of leadership through character.” This approach comes honestly to Penrod, a retired U.S. Army captain. And while his staff is already on board, he knows that leading students in that direction is a work in progress. “Kids are kids,” he says. “They have emotions, they have feelings, and sometimes they don't make the right decision. Which is fair. It's my job to teach, coach and mentor them.” Here’s hoping for a successful inaugural year!

*****

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Policy Priority:
School Choice
Topics:
Charter Schools
The Education Gadfly
10.9.2026
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WHAT WE’RE READING

What began as a strike at a single high school over France’s inequitable education system has grown into a national wave of protests, some turning violent and many bringing instruction to a halt. Thomas Chatterton Williams believes the violent unrest reflects nihilistic resentment more than a push for school reform:

For some time now, there has been an existential crisis at the heart of French life, rooted in a pervasive sense that the future will never equal the past, that the state cannot achieve what its citizens expect. The national pie is often seen as zero-sum, which explains why so many constituencies, from retirees to high schoolers, refuse to give an inch. Their anger accumulates, then it boils over. And the government is either unwilling or unable to contain it.

—

Parents across the U.S. are coming together to protect or expand recess time. Emily Tate Sullivan describes the current legislative landscape for recess and why many adults believe unstructured play time is a critical part of the school day. Recess is great—but is there any limiting principle when it comes to state mandates anymore?

EXTRA CREDIT:

Chad Aldeman, “Philanthropy Once Built Schools. Today, It Could Build a New Way to Learn Math”

Thomas Arnett, “Why AI Tutors Aren’t Transforming Education”

Kirsten Baesler, “Stronger States, Stronger Outcomes: Building the Capacity for States to Lead”

Jeb Bush, “Trust in Education Has Fallen. It’s Time to Bring Back Strong Accountability”

Jay Greene, “School Choice, Not Test Scores, Produces Real Accountability”

Rick Hess and Ian Rowe, “Why Don’t We Talk More About Family Structure in Schooling?”

Colleen Hroncich, “Give Choice a Chance in West Virginia”

Joel Klein, “Nikole Hannah-Jones vs. Randi Weingarten”

John Moscatiello, “The Decline and Fall of Rigor in Advanced Placement”

Allison Dulin Salisbury and Sara Allan, “The Big Bets Education Needs in the Age of AI”

Megan Schopp, “The Other AI”

Andy Smarick, “Does Education Reform Have Regrets?” (and see Chris Stewart’s response below)

Isobel Stevenson, “Invisible Classrooms: What We’ve Learned About Education News Since the Nikole Hannah-Jones Essay”

Chris Stewart, “The war that ended multiracial ed reform”

Paul Vallas, “School Choice, Not Reparations, Is the Ticket to Success for Chicago’s Minority Families”

Rajiv Vinnakota, “Civic Skills Are Job Skills”

Natalie Wexler, “Yes, Writing Does Advance Thinking”

Daniel Willingham, “When Everyone Makes Sense and Nobody Learns”

Matthew Yglesias, “Why Schools Need a Phonics-Style Reckoning for Math” (repeated from last week but now without a paywall)

—

P.S. Want even more for your to-read pile? Our compilation of responses to the Nikole Hannah-Jones article is up to over 100 articles!

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.

The Education Gadfly
10.9.2026
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CHEERS

According to newly released data from the Congressional Budget Office, inflation-adjusted household incomes have steadily increased for decades. Reason’s Eric Boehm highlights how “poorer Americans have seen the largest relative gains over the past few decades—a fact that is particularly inconvenient for populists on both right and left.” He’s right that rising incomes are worth cheering, though they make our lackluster student achievement trends look even worse.

—

Ohio’s Department of Education and Workforce is seeking more power to intervene in chronically underperforming Title I schools. Districts and the teachers unions may not love it, as the Akron Beacon Journal’s Kelli Weir reports, but over half of the approximately 230 schools on the state’s comprehensive support and improvement list have sat there since 2022. My Fordham Institute colleague Aaron Churchill points out that “when local control has failed, the state has an obligation—on behalf of students—to take more aggressive steps to turn around a low-performing school.”

JEERS

“After the New York State Education Department denied a request from U.S. News for AP scores, perennially top-ranked schools plummeted,” explains Matthew Haag in the New York Times. Jeers to the state for its lack of transparency—especially if the point was to deny Success Academy its well-earned bragging rights.

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.

Aaron Churchill
10.9.2026
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Earlier this summer, Ohio policymakers unveiled a revamped industry credentials framework that—if implemented well—will encourage students to attain credentials of value. The new system was created in response to data indicating that schools were pushing students to rack up questionable credentials as a workaround to the standard graduation requirement of passing state math and English exams. This was a blatant abuse of the state’s alternative pathway, and it robbed students of both essential academic skills and the rigorous technical training needed for living-wage professions.

We at the Fordham Institute supported the much-needed overhaul. It introduces an objective method to value industry credentials based on third-party data about employer demand and wages associated with the credential. Informed by the valuation results, a committee responsible[1] for approving graduation-eligible credentials culled the approved list from a whopping 738 to 126 credentials. The credentials making the cut are linked to good-paying jobs in manufacturing, construction, healthcare, information technology, and transportation.

The revamp’s long-term success, however, hinges on holding the line on quality. As we warned in an earlier piece, this work could quickly unravel if the committee falls prey to political pressure and low standards:  

The list of credentials could balloon yet again if policymakers are not careful. … Vendors and industry groups with financial interests and schools looking to maintain sky-high graduation rates could urge the committee to approve their favored credential or pressure it to set a low bar.

Regrettably, this caution is proving prophetic. At the committee’s first post-overhaul meeting in September, it approved two eyebrow-raising “bundles” of retail-based certificates that open the floodgates to another round of gaming and abuse. Here’s what the committee did and why its actions raise such serious alarms.

As quick context, the original September meeting agenda made no mention that any credentials would be up for approval. In fact, in its meeting notice, the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce emphasized that the committee “will not be evaluating new credential applications.” Rather, the meeting was supposed to focus on standards setting—e.g., establishing minimum point values that allow a credential to be considered for approval—which was an unsettled policy question going into the meeting (draft rules are here).

But when the committee convened—according to the meeting minutes—it immediately shifted gears and handed the mic to a DC-based representative of the National Retail Federation, which creates and sells the RISE UP credentials (more on them later). He gave a presentation and, without question or discussion, the committee approved the credentials for graduation. 

This political power play calls into question whether Ohio can maintain control over its credentials list. If the retail federation can get its credentials accepted through lobbying, why not others? And if interest-group politics ends up being how the list is developed, what does that mean for the state’s impressive data-driven valuation framework? Does it become irrelevant?

Perhaps the procedural mess could be forgiven if the retail certificates include rigorous training and yield significant economic benefits for students. But a closer look at these credentials casts doubt on both counts. Note also that schools have already used one of them (Customer Service) as a common workaround to graduation under the prior credential system.[2]

Table 1 displays the first of the two retail bundles approved by the committee. It consists of three credentials that, taken together, likely require around 35 to 40 hours online to complete—less than half of a standard year-long academic or technical course that amounts to roughly 110 hours.[3] There are also certification exams, but unlike state exams—where there is extensive reporting and technical documentation—almost nothing is known about their content and rigor, test security, or passing rates. One might argue that certificates should not be judged against the standards of typical academic courses or state assessments. But remember, this bundle can substitute for high school math and English competency demonstrated on a state exam for graduation purposes.   

As for economic outcomes, Ohio students who have earned the RISE UP certificates have median incomes three years after high school of roughly $25,000. That is barely above the annual income of a full-time worker in a minimum wage job ($23,000) and far below a living wage standard of $44,000 for a single adult. The composite scores from the state’s valuation framework for the retail credentials are also substantially below the average credential in the state’s valuation database (44.7). The Google Analytics certificate gives the bundle a slight boost, but even it yields relatively little in terms of wage potential.

Table 1. Summary of the first bundle recently approved by the credentials committee

Credential

Program

Exam

Median income of credential earner

Valuation score

(0–100)*

RISE UP Customer Service and Sales

Online, est. 14 hours; modules cover, e.g., sales and customer service

Online exam with unlimited retakes (see sample questions); passing score/rates unknown

$25,340

24.3 and 32.7

RISE UP Business of Retail

Online, est. 14 hours; modules cover, e.g., store operations and marketing

Online exam with unlimited retakes (no sample questions found); passing score/rates unknown

$24,015

30.9 and 40.2

Google Analytics Certification

Online, no est. time found; 4 modules cover analytics and data reports

Online exam (no other information found)

$29,634

50.3 and 51.2

Sources: National Retail Federation, Maine JobLink website, which has accessible information about RISE UP program specifications, and Ohio Department of Education and Workforce for composite scores and median annual incomes. Note: (*) The same credential can apply to multiple career fields and thus generate a different composite score in Ohio’s valuation framework.

The other credential bundle approved by the committee does not look much better. The programs in the bundle likely require no more than 40 hours of online coursework. The median income of an Ohio student with the RISE UP credential is below $25,000, and the credential has a weak composite valuation score. The Forklift Operation certificate bolsters the bundle, yet it still consists of just six online modules and an online exam.[4] Finally, the OSHA-10 certificate is added to the mix, but it is a basic job safety certificate that—while necessary for some jobs—does not signal the acquisition of specific technical skills.

Table 2. Summary of the second bundle recently approved by the credentials committee

Credential

Program

Exam

Median income of credential earner

Valuation score

(0–100)*

RISE UP Supply Chain, Inventory and Logistics

Online, est. 11 hours; modules cover, e.g., merchandising and inventory.

Online exam with unlimited retakes (no sample questions found); passing score/rates unknown

$24,281

29.9 and 36.0

Forklift Operation

Online, no est. time found; 6 modules cover, e.g., forklift safety and regulations

Online exam with unlimited retakes (no sample questions found); passing score of 80%.

$35,684

68.5 to 75.1

OSHA – 10 Hour Training

Online, 10 hours

Online exam; passing score of 70%.

$33,088

58.5 to 73.5

* * *

The industry credentials committee plays a key role in maintaining the integrity of Ohio’s graduation standards. While it did fine work this summer in the overhaul, the committee slipped at the September meeting. Moving forward, members must keep the best interests of the students using the credential route to graduation at the forefront. Their long-term futures will be brighter if they earn rigorous credentials with enduring value (such as those tied to the skilled trades) than collecting certificates that—on their own—yield little economic benefit.

To be clear, credentials, including retail-oriented ones, are not inherently bad. If the state required students to pair credentials with academic competency, aligned technical coursework, and on-the-job experience, the committee could likely take a more expansive approach to approval. But that’s not the policy framework (established in statute) the committee is working within. Credentials can be used in isolation to meet graduation standards—and thus may be the principal “currency” that students take with them to pursue jobs after high school. As such, the committee must take a firmer stance on credential quality.

The committee can still reverse the September mistake. It should immediately rescind these bundles, and work instead to adopt high standards for credential approval. Once established, all potential credentials and bundles should go through the same rigorous and fair approval process.

[1] The director of the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce appoints the committee members. The current committee includes nine members, seven of whom are representatives of business groups as well as representatives from JobsOhio and the Governor’s Office of Workforce Transformation.   

[2] In recent years, schools have paired the RISE UP Customer Service and Sales and RISE UP Retail Industry Fundamentals to push students to graduation. In the class of 2025, they were the second and fourth most-earned credentials statewide, with CPR First Aid and the OSHA-10 certificates rounding out the top four.

[3] 40-minute class period x 165 school days = 110 hours.

[4] The forklift certificate is currently the 14th most-earned credential in Ohio. The complete forklift certification process does require hands-on training. However, it’s unclear whether students must complete the hands-on training to be counted for the credential (by federal law, one cannot operate a forklift until they turn eighteen), or whether they are counted after passing the online exam, which generates a certificate.

Policy Priority:
Standards & Accountability
Topics:
Career & Technical Education
Jeff Murray
10.9.2026
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News stories featured in Gadfly Bites may require a paid subscription to read in full. You have been warned.

  1. On the upside, student attendance is on the rise in Princeton City Schools. On the downside, their transportation troubles seem destined to grind on into a third week. On the upside, further negotiations are planned for today. On the downside, these negotiations are between the drivers and the third party private contractor with the district and its families entirely powerless to solve the problem—or even to influence the process—themselves. (Local 12 News, Cincinnati, 10/7/26)

  2. As an antidote to the above, here’s a great story from East Cleveland City Schools. We’ve been touting their genuine academic improvements for some time now. Today, Signal Cleveland is touting their efforts to reduce chronic student absenteeism. There’s lots of great details for you to read here, but the two highlights for me is that a) all the attendance work stems back to the improvement plan the district put in place to earn their way out of academic distress status, and b) the same leader who created and implemented that plan—Superintendent Henry Pettiegrew II—says out loud and on the record that “Someone has to own attendance” in order to get it back on track. And when he says “someone”, he means himself. So good. (Signal Cleveland, 10/8/26)

  3. Back to bad news: Cardinal Stritch Catholic High School in suburban Toledo announced yesterday that it would close in December, having found no viable path to remain open even for the full school year. (Toledo Blade, 10/8/26) Students interviewed by the Blade for this piece were understandably upset immediately after the announcement, but it seems wrong to assert that the school and the Diocese dropped this “surprise announcement” on them at the “last minute”. School officials have two months to work with impacted families to find new options, and I am sure that they will do so. There is no shortage of choices in the Toledo area. As to the “surprise” factor? Any non-district high school with only 69 students is not long for the world. This is not a surprise. (FYI, Blade folks: You should lead every Stritch story with that enrollment number; not bury it at the end.) (Toledo Blade, 10/8/26)

  4. Actually, my main takeaway from the bad news story above is that the student enrollment pie in Ohio—especially in our urban areas—has likely been sliced as thinly as it can. We don’t actually need more choices of any kind. Which is good news, because we can now focus on making all the options we have great ones. I can’t tell yet whether Portage Leadership Academy is a great one, but this profile of the brand new charter school in Ravenna sounds promising. (News 5 Cleveland, 10/7/26)

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Policy Priority:
School Funding
Topics:
Governance
Marguerite Roza Maggie Cicco
10.9.2026
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Over the summer, Edunomics Lab predicted that, once up and at scale, the federal tax credit scholarship (FSTC) could generate some $1,000 per public school student. However, now that Treasury has released its long-awaited draft regulations, we’re downgrading that prediction.

It all comes down to an onerous requirement that public school participants prove they are not super rich.

You see, the law was written such that nearly every school-aged student is eligible. The sole exclusion applies to families earning more than triple the average income in their county (a.k.a. super rich). (Apparently the law’s drafters worried about the optics if people like Elon Musk got scholarships for their kids.)

In practice this excludes kids from families making over $400,000 in places like D.C., Seattle, and Boston, or above $300,000 in cities like Chicago, San Diego, and Minneapolis. Because many of these high-income families already opt for private education, we estimate that over 97 percent of all public school students qualify for the program.

With near-universal eligibility, we anticipated that districts could use FSTC to raise revenue on behalf of all their students. We suggested that school districts could set a fee for all students for access to a “bundle of enhanced services” that might include access to field trips, enrichment programs, and mental health supports. The district would then go to the scholarship granting organization (SGO) to cover that fee for their entire student body (save for the handful of super rich outliers).

That model is made much more difficult by one onerous regulation: Treasury put the burden on the 97 percent to prove they are not part of the 3 percent. Students must produce W-2s, pay slips, alimony records, or similar documents all to cover the fee for a field trip, flute rental, or Chromebook. That’s a stretch. Families can log on to verification apps, but those start at around $50 a pop. Even in a case where parents sign off to authorize a match with tax records in cooperating states, there would still be swaths of students who need to be independently verified.

Treasury knows it’s a burden and created narrow “safe harbors” for some of the neediest students. Foster students and those enrolled in SNAP or other welfare programs needn’t document their income. Still, of the roughly 48 million public school students who qualify, at best only one in three falls into a safe harbor category. That leaves some 31 million kids who must clear a heavy administrative hurdle just to access a program that they are legally entitled to use.

How much of a burden is documenting income? Just ask high school seniors who completed the legacy FAFSA forms. With FAFSA, at least the promise of massive college tuition aid kept motivation higher. Under proposed FSTC rules, we’ll have fourth graders nagging their parents to unearth tax documents every year just to join the robotics club. 

Beyond the administrative friction, exchanging this volume of personal financial data introduces serious risks of data leaks.

There is a better option. We advised Treasury to accept family attestation of income eligibility for scholarships or fees up to $3,000. For the vast majority of public school students, this would simply mean signing a form attesting that your family makes less than $300,000 (or whatever the upper threshold is in your county). Anyone seeking larger scholarships—which would include most private school applicants—would still undergo full income documentation.

What’s the risk? Perhaps somewhere a rich public school parent would lie, but even that is doubtful. Our guess is that wealthy families would prefer to pay a minor fee out of pocket rather than falsify a document.

Where districts hope to augment their basic programs, they’d need all (or nearly all) of their students to participate. We assumed this “bundle option” was possible when we predicted that FSTC could generate some $1,000 per public school student. Permitting income attestation would ensure this option remains on the table.

Treasury has a chance to get this right in the revisions. Let’s hope they do.

Policy Priority:
High Expectations
Topics:
School Finance
Governance
Private School Choice
Teachers & School Leaders
Jordan Posamentier
10.8.2026
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Editor’s note: This essay is an entry in Fordham’s 2026 Wonkathon, which asked contributors to answer this question: “What rules should govern the uses of digital technology in schools—and who should set them?” Learn more.

Code can be just as hazardous as concrete or steel. But just as we don’t ban buildings, we shouldn’t ban software. Here is an elegant, time-tested way to let digital technology continue in education while making it safer, more ethical, and more responsible: apply state premises liability principles to ed tech used in schools.

Premises liability begins from a basic principle: People who control a physical environment owe their visitors a duty to exercise reasonable care against foreseeable hazards. For example, a school must repair a broken stairway or warn students of the danger. Students are invited (compelled?) as visitors into a learning environment that the school selects, manages, and requires them to use. That environment now includes digital spaces as well as classrooms, hallways, and playgrounds. Just as schools are responsible for broken staircases, state law should recognize that schools’ protective duties extend to the technology they deploy and that ed tech companies may share responsibility when their products create or conceal foreseeable risks. States should make clear that ordinary premises liability principles apply to the digital school environment.[1]

Digital products have incorporated variable-reward systems, infinite scroll, predictive recommendation loops, and features that may expose children to predation. When those design choices foreseeably undermine student well-being or impede learning (i.e., academic and cognitive development), treating them as hazards within the school environment offers a practical way to establish a baseline duty of care to students.

Just as a school must take reasonable precautions against dangerous conditions on campus, technology companies should be expected to build safety into products designed for school use. Recent Meta lawsuit settlements, though not based on premises liability law, reinforce the broader premise that product design can create foreseeable risks. But those cases do not squarely address educational harm. State tort law generally defines a hazard by its capacity to cause foreseeable harm. In schools, educational harm could entail cognitive fragmentation or distraction, for example, which measurably interfere with learning and development. Policy should make clear that digital hazards that impair learning can trigger protective duties, too.

A digital premises liability framework should entail shared responsibility, allocating duties between ed tech companies and schools according to their control over the relevant risk. Once a company has adequate notice that its product architecture is causing foreseeable educational harm, it should be required to correct the problem. A company that responds promptly and effectively should receive some immunization from liability.

Schools, as managers of the learning environment, should bear a corresponding duty. Their responsibility should arise when they know—or reasonably should know—that inadequate firewalls, vendor screening, or data-security protocols are exposing students to harm. Schools that identify and reasonably address those risks should likewise receive protection from liability.

A digital premises liability framework offers several advantages. First, it focuses on product design and the reasonable management of the school environment rather than speech, reducing potential conflict with the First Amendment or Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act, which shields platforms from certain claims based on third-party content. The premises liability issue focuses not on what people say inside the proverbial room, but rather whether the digital doors, windows, and locks were designed and managed responsibly.

Second, it preserves room for innovation. Policymakers cannot always predict the full costs and benefits of a new school-based technology before it is deployed. This framework would allow experimentation while requiring action when foreseeable harms emerge.

Third, it supports continuous improvement. Legislatures would not need to return again and again to micromanage each new product or feature. Technology changes quickly; a durable duty to identify and mitigate foreseeable harm can evolve with it.

Put otherwise, it is better than some competing policy approaches because it avoids blunt bans and rigid design mandates, adapts as technology evolves, and ties accountability to actual control over foreseeable harm.

Finally, the approach does not treat technology as categorically different from other features of the school environment. It applies the same basic principle to digital and physical hazards: adults who create or manage a foreseeable danger to children have a duty to address it. That seems fair to me.

What would this proposal not solve? It would establish a floor, not a summit. Preventing harm is not the same as creating the conditions for educational flourishing. Safety alone does not prepare students to navigate digital environments competently or ensure that those environments are high quality. (That is the business of my organization, Committee for Children, which focuses on developing students’ human skills.) Readiness and quality are additional policy concerns—beyond the scope of this Wonkathon entry—that require us to identify, fund, expand, and replicate technologies that prepare students for an increasingly digital future and genuinely improve learning. The immediate task of my proposal is simpler: take bad bets off the table while preserving space for good ones.

The proposal probably would also not resolve broader concerns about screen time or in-school phone use as readily because screens and phones do not, by themselves, necessarily create an unreasonable risk of harm.

Schools have accepted known digital hazards—and the resulting cognitive and mental-health costs to students—as collateral damage. Having states apply premises liability principles to ed tech would begin to correct that imbalance. It would recognize students as visitors entitled to reasonable protection, require technology companies to build safer products without shutting down innovation, give schools clearer protective duties, and nudge the classroom toward its central purpose: learning.

 

[1] My proposal does not conflict with Bill Gates’s recent rejection, heard on The Ezra Klein Show, of tort liability for managing technology risk. Premises liability addresses predictable, localized physical injuries where victims can be compensated after an accident occurs. The mechanism creates a deterrence effect on the market. Gates is arguing that tort liability won’t work against immediate, catastrophic, uncorrectable risk—that it is insufficient as a deterrence mechanism and requires more regulatory oversight than tort law can offer. I believe our points can be complementary.