Easter greetings, CharterFolk.
I write you on a weekend when human beings are more than halfway to the moon for the first time in half a century.
That context would seem to call for the widest perspective we can muster …
… one where, at both a planetary level and a national level, a look out the window reveals patterns we might otherwise miss.
If there is anything that pushes me toward a blue-dot view these days, it is the seemingly cosmological scale of impact AI appears destined to have on our planet.
And yes, on our world of public education.
It is the last subject I took on with Andy, Mary, and Marisa before heading out on spring break.
It was a great conversation, one that inclined me to look out the window a little more.
It took the form of poking around websites wondering what Mexico’s public schools are doing relative to AI in education.
The best rendering I found was one from Harvard, published at the beginning of the year, about AI in Latin America more broadly. Suffice it to say, the starting point attitude to AI in Latin America is to see it as yet another tool likely to Abet Inequity. So approach it with skepticism.
Continuing to peer out, other countries revolve into view.
This week we saw a closely watched newsletter describe the Aggressive Investment in AI that is happening nationwide in China.
As advertised, it’s a deep dive. It is also not behind a paywall and it is worth a read if you want to see a strong contrast to what is happening in the United States.
South Africa, meanwhile, seems a combination of the two. There we see a clear recognition of existing inequity and an active readiness to embrace AI anyway.
In Europe, perhaps predictably, you see teacher unions issuing surveys suggesting the whole thing may be counterproductive for most if not all students.
Finally, the Atlantic passes below, bringing the U.S. into view.
Obviously, it’s difficult to generalize, but I found Rick Hess’s conversation with Harvard’s Jal Mehta a helpful frame.
It suggests an overall posture toward AI in the United States that could best be described as Ambivalent Incoherence.
All over the map.
Indeed, all over the globe.
Taken together, you can see three distinct orientations to AI emerging globally.
One sees AI as a risk that will deepen inequality, or perhaps even harm all students regardless of background, and so should be strongly resisted.
Another sees it as a tool that should be aggressively deployed in hopes of accelerating system improvement.
The third, most visible in the United States, is a fragmented and unsettled mix of experimentation, indecision, and contradiction.
AI is obviously not the central focus of our work here at CharterFolk. But the emergence of AI is a backdrop against which all reform, or lack of it, unfolds.
And you will not find me opining much in general terms about it, except to say that none of these postures, whether rooted in fear, overconfidence, or incoherence, seem sufficient to the moment.
Better that we have large numbers of charter school organizations going all in and working to figure it out ahead of what the broken establishment is able to do, while some smaller subset goes full-on Luddite as a counterpoint reflective of what at least some parents are going to want for their kids.
In terms of international comparisons in public education coming into view right now, I find other contrasts even more revealing.
Yes, we are dealing with declining enrollment in the United States, but nothing like what is happening in China, Japan, and Korea.
And those countries, if anything, seem to be adjusting to enrollment decline at least as successfully as we are, despite the significantly larger demographic change they face.
In Japan, rather than digging in heels to protect the existing system, the government’s desperation to encourage more people to have children is leading it to offer universal school choice at the same time that unprecedented enrollment decline is occurring.
And yes, other countries are experiencing teacher unrest.
But few countries see the intensity of teacher strife happening in the United States right now.
And nothing I can find on the global landscape even remotely resembles the level of synchronized, system-level fiscal collapse we are now seeing in many cities across the United States.
This week, the state released its audit of Memphis schools. And yes, it is as bad as people were expecting. The Controller’s colorful comments about the district’s shortcomings are certainly worth checking out if you have a minute.
Some Democrats have dismissed the whole thing as a cynical partisan effort meant to justify a state takeover.
But essentially identical findings emerging in blue states this week suggest the problems run deeper than simple partisanship.
State officials, whether they be reds in Tennessee or blues in Connecticut, are struggling to comprehend the magnitude of fiscal distress now facing large urban systems.
Elsewhere, leadership turmoil delays efforts to get to the bottom of things.
One audit generates findings concerning enough …
… to warrant an even deeper look.
An inquiry into one school district leads state officials to begin looking into others, and finding whole other reasons for alarm.
Even in blue states where state officials would prefer to look away, local watchdogs demonstrate that the problems occurring within traditional public schools are simply unprecedented in scope.
All of this is happening as employees within the system work together to secure historic gains in compensation just as districts approach fiscal cliffs.
The broken design of our nation’s school districts laid the foundation for this crisis.
Then, unlike essentially any other country, we pushed an unprecedented flood of one-time funding through that brokenness.
On the one hand, as it relates to AI, the United States finds itself in a position very much like the rest of the world. We are all trying to determine how best to orient ourselves to a new paradigm that is arriving faster than most systems are prepared to absorb.
On the other hand, the United States has created an utterly unique fiscal condition in public education that is likely to produce a period of dislocation that rivals, and may even surpass, the level of disruption we will see anywhere else in the world.
No other country on earth did what we did, CharterFolk.
None.
Not one created such a huge infusion of one-time money and then pulled it all back abruptly, like some society-wide head-fake.
On this one, CharterFolk, it is accurate to say:
We are alone.
And anyone who says with confidence they know where this all leads is clearly highly suspect.
It is why policymakers fracture into different AI orientations similar to the ones we see emerging globally in response to the rise of artificial intelligence.
Some see nearly any change as Abetting Inequity, so resist with all you’ve got.
Others see this as a moment for Aggressive Investment in new and unproven strategies.
Most common of all is the Ambivalent Incoherence we see across much of the U.S. education landscape today.
But there is, I think, an overall posture for orienting ourselves to this moment that makes the most sense.
It grows not out of ideology, nor out of unrealistic ambition.
I like to think of it in conceptual terms similar to what some of the world’s most influential economists are using to encourage progress in other realms.
They call it “marginal revolution.”
Going forward incrementally, with steady progress compounding over time.
Such that, yes, the capacity to address systemic problems actually emerges organically out of incremental change occurring over decades.
From the window of Artemis, the temptation might be to look for a moonshot.
But in public education, what makes the most sense is something steadier and more durable.
One small step, followed by another, and another such that, in the end, a giant leap is achieved.
Marginal revolution.
I know of only one force in public education today that is accomplishing what could reasonably be described in those terms.
I bet you can guess what I might say that is.
Next weekend, I’ll dive in more deeply.
Hope to see you here.