Demanding a Seat at the Table

In the days of yore, I used to digitally accost education beat writers and other reporters for the way they covered issues impacting schools. Way too often in discussions about education policy, students and teachers are the subjects of the reporting but absent from it. When writing about legal matters, reporters quote attorneys. When writing about medical matters, they cite doctors or medical researchers. But when it comes to education, the voices of practicing teachers are almost always absent. 

Instead, they talk to economists, legislators, even hacks like Liv Finne at allegedly “non-partisan” “think-tanks” (I put both terms in quotes because non-partisan ≠ non ideological and because the amount of thinking that goes on at the Washington Policy Center is debatable). Ideologues get column inches but teachers aren’t worthy. That paradigm never sat well with me and being the (occasional) brute I am, I’d make it my business to call it out.

My Twitter fingers have been quiet for a minute now but I am asking you to call this nonsense out whenever you see it

You’ll never get what you don’t ask for—each one of those resulted in a response from the publication. The Seattle Times story about the Tacoma strike was updated to include quotes from local teachers; Crosscut added State Teacher of the Year, Lyon Terry, to the panel at their event; The Times later published my op-ed offering a differing perspective about pending teacher evaluation legislation.

If I took the time to go for people’s necks about excluding teacher voices in the past, it makes sense to give flowers when they’re due today. Anne Helen Petersen, wrote this week about the burden of school spirit days and themed dress weeks/months in elementary schools. As a teacher in high school much of this was (thankfully) foreign to me. I don’t have a dog in the fight—I can’t be bothered with dressing up for Halloween, forget about the “100th day of school” or “Bling in the Holidays.” It all  sounds exhausting and a distraction from the business at hand. But I’m bringing this up to highlight how Helen Petersen covered the issue. In setting up her story she wrote the following:

Still, I knew my annoyance was missing some vertical and horizontal contextualization…. I also knew that these days were meant to engender community, infuse the school day with some level of joy, and incentivize attendance — all things most schools are desperate for, particularly post-Covid shutdowns….

For today’s post, I asked educators to offer that context. The sampling you’ll find below comes from 150 responses from all corners of the country, in all types of schools, at all different levels, and with different levels of animus or apathy towards these days.

Look how easy that was: she saw an issue in schools that she knew was fraught in some circles. She sought input and context from educators and then shared their stories. If we can do this when it comes to themed dress days, then we can do it around compensation, evals, authoritarian book bans, and the myriad other issues facing schools. It’s a matter of taking the time and valuing teacher voices.

Publications and individual journalists respond to pressure. It’s often an oversight, rather than malice. If you find yourself reading a story about schools but ignoring the people who work in them, I encourage you to call it out.

The Feds Were Asleep at the Switch for Crypto, AI Could Be Much Worse

An annoying part about getting older is that you realize how cyclical things are and that much of life is the same hustles and hassles with new names and labels. Whatever your thoughts about cryptocurrency (I'm a skeptic but also own a small amount), it's indisputable the sector is rife with scams, rugpulls, and unregulated securities. As a result, billions were lost in crypto hacks and scams over the last two years (see table below). This isn’t counting the firms like FTX, Celsius, and Voyager that went under, wiping out an additional 200 billion dollars from retail investors and people who trusted the shadow banks called crypto exchanges.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) finally woke up from its multi-decade slumber this month and issued massive fines against several crypto exchanges and the influencers shilling for them. Retired NBA star Paul Pierce was fined 1.4 million dollars for promoting a token called Ethereum Max. EMax was a pump & dump scheme where new investors were served up as exit-liquidity for the founders. EMax currently trades at $0.00000000099 per worthless token. Kim Kardashian was fined a similar amount for touting the same token in December. Regulators have stablecoins in their sights. Crypto exchange Kraken agreed to a 30 million dollar fine and agreed to shut down their staking program (if you don’t know what crypto staking is, you’re probably better off that way). Kraken’s rival Binance is expecting a massive fine as well.

2022 was a record year for hackers in crypto - Source: Decrypt, data from Chainalysis

The handwriting was on the wall for years about crypto scams but federal authorities waited over a decade before acting. In the interim millions of people were harmed. A regulatory framework for crypto exists and has existed since before the first token came to market. We can't afford to wait fourteen or even four years for the government to set the ground rules for AI. The potential for society wide harm is incalculably larger. 

After-the-fact debates are biased toward the expansion, rather than limitation, of a practice. In 2016, the city of Dallas had to reckon with the question of whether they would allow police to kill a barricaded shooter with a remote operated drone. They decided "yes" this is an acceptable use of force. Unfortunately, they decided it retroactively, months after the police had killed their target (with a Remotec Androx Mark V A-1, manufactured by Northrup Grumman). The police department refused to release documents related to the decision to use the robot and the city absolved the chief and the entire chain of command after the incident. The police chief, David Brown, now runs the police department in Chicago and there’s now a precedent regarding the use remote operated robots to kill people.

As venture capital abandons crypto projects, opting to fund cowboy AI projects, policymakers can't be passive. The potential harm from AI in journalism, financial markets, deep-fake aided scams, and law enforcement use of force have the potential to do far more damage than the crypto bros. Letting the DARPA and Boston Dynamic chips (see video) fall where they may is societal malpractice. If my concerns here seem alarmist to you, imagine trying to explain in-flight wifi to someone in 1994.

We can't wait to make the decision about the limits we will put on the use of AI until after they’re deployed. If you don't think there's people in law enforcement salivating to deploy AI robots and drones in low-income and Black neighborhoods, you don't know American history.

Three Nights in the Land of Fire - A Travelogue

February in Abu Dhabi means temps in the 80s, but February in the land of fire means winds strong enough to knock you off balance and evening lows below freezing. Walking across an open area, like a plaza or square, elicited several “okay, we can do this” intra-group pep talks as we traversed old town. This is my second recent trip into “real winter.” The trip to the Hague was a good dress rehearsal because those Azeri gusts don't play. 

This plaza features wonderful dining and is an absolute wind-tunnel after dark

The Skinny on Azerbaijan - With a population of four million people, Baku, the capital, is as beautiful as any city I've visited. Its legacy as a major stop on the Silk Road gives it a deeply historical feel, like Xi'an or Istanbul. Two vestiges of the Silk Road come together in Azerbaijan: the trade routes brought Islam further to the east and brought dumplings from China westward into Slavic and Turkic cuisine. 

The country is 96% Muslim but due to the imposed atheism of the Soviet era, the government and broad culture are secular. All the mosques we saw in the city were built in the classical style, but we learned they were of recent vintage, mostly built after the collapse of the USSR. Like we saw in Georgia, the architecture fell into three main buckets: ancient AF (classical), Soviet AF (brutalist), or futuristic AF.

Azerbaijan was on the business end of several historical  conquests, having previously been a part of the Persian Empire, Russian Empire, and Soviet Union. The people are Turkic, like the people of Central Asia, Turkey, and the Uighers in China’s Xinjiang Province. But I noted they don't make the Turkic/Turkish distinction we make in English—our guides repeatedly called their countrymen "Turkish people." To that end, the Turkish flag is often displayed alongside the Azeri flag in the country. I've read elsewhere that Azerbaijan is culturally and politically Turkey's little brother. That largely checked out but leaves out the Soviet/Russian Empire thing. 

Speaking of Russia, their relationship with Azerbaijan is complex. Azeris share a border with their colonizers. Students in primary school are taught the language and Russian is widely spoken by Azeris in the streets. Russian tourists fill the historical sites. But Azeris are apprehensive about their relationship with their northern neighbors. I heard the phrase “we have to keep Russia happy” no fewer than six times when discussing events in the Caucasus Region.

The Heydar Aliyev Center, the Presidential Museum, and center for explaining the Azeri side of their conflict with Armenia

Generally, I was struck talking to Azeris by their sense of pride in their country, their Islamic faith, and the ways in which the government provides for the people (from their oil & gas profits). Azerbaijan is a post-communist state but dodged the neoliberal shock doctrine and IMF structural adjustment bullet, that stripped many states of generous public benefits over the last thirty years. Put differently, the legacy of communism there is a fairly generous social welfare system, rather than a stripped down neoliberal shell of a state. They provide well for their people, especially for a country with a per capita GDP that ranks between Barbados and Albania:

• Azeri workers get roughly a month of paid time off each year

• Public university tuition is free for students who are academy qualified based on national exams 

• Tuition is also free (public or private) for people seeking employment in essential careers: doctors, pilots, etc.

• They enjoy more or less zero out of pocket health care for basic and preventative care services

• Typical rents run between $200 to $300/per month in the city

• The government pays a subsidy to new parents, a one time baby bonus 

• They pay roughly $30 per month for utilities and the country subsidizes energy bills in the winter for all citizens 

That’s quite a list. 

Places that have less than the US seem to offer their citizens more but we somehow call them developing states.