Links and Commentary 8/15/25

Welcome to Scholastic Alchemy! I’m James and I write mostly about education. I find it fascinating and at the same time maddening. Scholastic Alchemy is my attempt to make sense of and explain the perpetual oddities around education, as well as to share my thoughts on related topics. On Wednesdays I post a long-ish dive into a topic of my choosing. On Fridays I post some links I’ve encountered that week and some commentary about what I’m sharing. Scholastic Alchemy will remain free for the foreseeable future but if you like my work and want to support me, please consider a paid subscription. If you have objections to Substack as a platform, I maintain a parallel version using BeeHiiv and you can subscribe there.

As a reminder, while caring for my newborn I am going to be writing these posts day-of and without much editing because, well, I am tired. Let’s hope she gets on a better schedule soon!

Scholastic Corruption 1

The general public often assumes that public schools are corrupt. I’m not exactly sure why this is. Are they any more or less corrupt than any other part of local government? I don’t know where to begin looking for that data so at best I can only speculate as to why. For one, people tend to associate unions with corruption and teachers’ unions are powerful voting blocs in some states. Another reason people think schools are corrupt is that they pay tax dollars into the schools but are told that schools are failing. The money, they might think, is going somewhere other than to educating children. That somewhere is probably high pension obligations for all the retired teachers, but that answer doesn’t satisfy in the same way as corruption does.

One thing I like to point out on the regular is that charters, vouchers, and private schools are likely just as corrupt owing to their reduced oversight. How would you even know if, say, your private school was in the business of making family members of the school’s leadership team rich off your tuition dollars? It’s private. They don’t have to disclose anything they don’t want to disclose. Moreover, private schools are not subject to the same rules and regulations as publics, so they can engage in acts that would be illegal in a public school. Anyway.

One thing to note is that the expansion of voucher programs in many states means private schools are going to be receiving public tax dollars but without the legal oversight of public schools. Are your tax dollars going to backstop a personal loan from your kid’s private school to a school leader or their family members? How would you find out if it was? Beyond financial shenanigans, private schools receiving voucher funds are held to less rigorous academic and accreditation standards.

Seems bad! If you’re going to take public money, you have to be held to the same standards as the public schools from which that money originated. That conservatives don’t want standards or accountability is a, frankly, stunning departure from their previous three-decade crusade for standardization and accountability for public schools. It serves as a reminder that quality education for our nation’s children was never the point.

Scholastic Corruption 2

Charter schools are ostensibly public schools and for PR purposes like to be thought of as public schools. The differentiating factor with charter schools is that they’re not run by a school district but by a charter management organization (CMO) which is authorized to run the school by a charter authorizer. The state sets criteria for the charter authorizers who then decide what rules and regulations will govern the schools they authorize. In theory this provides a level of oversight, perhaps an even greater level of oversight than public schools, because authorizers can close charter schools they think are poorly run. In practice, this layer of oversight is fertile ground for corruption. In some states, the people who can authorize charter schools also own and operate the CMOs, a clear conflict of interest. In other cases, authorizers may own land and facilities that they can then rent or sell to the CMO. Arizona seems like the lead bad actor here but they’re hardly alone.

Beyond the financial shenanigans (huh, didn’t I just say that?), we have to consider the effects on children whose education is of secondary importance to the financial gain of the people running the schools. For example, Colorado Skies Aviation School, a charter school with a focus on flying and flight-related education, closed just 16 days before the school year started. They’re not the only school to close like this, with 32 charter schools closing in recent years, often without any notice given to parents. Manuel Solano, of the Colorado Times Recorder makes the case that the fault is with one of Colorado’s charter authorizers, the Charter School Institute. They appear to be an authorizer “of last resort” where charter schools rejected by other authorizers get the go-ahead anyway.

The ultimate regulatory mechanism, we used to be told, was the efficiency of the market. Colorado Skies is simply another business that failed and had to close, ensure the efficient allocation of resources away from a failing school. But, we don’t hear that message from proponents anymore. Instead, we’re simply supposed to believe charters are superior as a matter of conforming with conservative ideological agendas and ignore closures and failures. Like so much else in our country, the grift is the point.

Did I mention the one where a charter school’s results were so bad that they dragged down the test scores for an entire state? How do we know this? Because California has an oversight board that went after the schools, shut them down, and forced the entire board to resign. Even in high-oversight environments we see charters failing to live up to the hype.

We keep trying school choice alchemy and we keep getting lead instead of gold. Maybe one day we’ll wise up, but I’m not holding my breath.

Prager U

The less said about this odious curriculum product the better. Much like processed cheese that must be labeled “cheese product” because it is not cheese, we should not make the mistake of calling Prager U’s videos and school materials an actual curriculum. It is a highly processed amalgam of white supremacy, Christianism, and faux free-market propaganda extruded into the shape of a curriculum. It is a curriculum product.

Anyway, Trump proposed replacing PBS with PragerU’s “educational” materials. Their curriculum product is already platformed by 8 states. You be the judge:

Whatever happened to Live free or die: death is not the worst of evils? We’re not that country anymore?

Eh, maybe it’s okay. The kids will be using AI to complete their homework so they’re not getting indoctrinated (or educated).

Meta’s AI Wants to Fuck Your Children

I wish I was exaggerating that headline, but it appears to be accurate.

Emphasis added. Seems like just a little while back I was ranting about how we should really be cautious around exposing children to AI. I’ll reiterate that point: we are too focused on litigating the academic implications of AI in k-12 and not focused enough on the social, emotional, and psychological implications of a generation of children who will be interacting with AI that is designed to “engage a child in conversations that are romantic and sensual” among other things.

Youth Sports Ruined?

Apparently recreational sports for youth is simply not a thing anymore. Kids as young as 5 are being funneled into competitive and expensive travel-ball programs that are anything but focused on the fun of the game. Add in a private equity funded youth sports complex building boom and athletics-admissions to elite colleges and you have a recipe for disaster. Anna North at Vox has the explainer. I was never a sports guy so I have limited sympathy here. I hope my kids are band or theater or debate or robotics geeks.

Thanks for reading!