Watching the upcoming Worcester budget: early announcement

 If my calendar does not deceive me, the Worcester Public Schools will release their proposed FY27 budget on Friday, but we're getting an early warning via press release of something of what's in it. The Patch does their best with it here.

The Academic Center for Transition (ACT), which serves 59 elementary students in grades K-6 with individualized education plans (IEPs), will close in June. Students will be referred to the Central Massachusetts Collaborative’s Hartwell Learning Center, located in the same building at 14 New Bond St. District officials said the Collaborative has agreed to accept all ACT students and keep them in their current classroom spaces.

The Worcester Alternative School, a therapeutic program for 36 high school students with IEPs, will also close at the end of the school year. Those students will be referred to the Central Massachusetts Academy, also operated by the Collaborative at the New Bond Street location. Some students may also be placed in other district programs.

The New Citizens Center Secondary Program, which serves 37 English learner students ages 12 to 17 with limited or interrupted formal education, will not close but will move out of its standalone building at 1407A Main St. Students and staff will transition into Worcester middle and high schools.

We then get some paragraphs about increased opportunities and etc, but it's also clear that this is a budgetary decision.

Once we've waded through the spin*, to make clear what's happening here: that's the district closing two in-district special education programs, and moving those students out of district to the Collaborative. I do not know if that will actually better serve the students; that is not something I could know. I do think it for sure should raise least restrictive environment flags, as well as always the question of who we're saving our money on.

The students at New Citizens--properly, Caradonio New Citizens Center, as it was named after the former superintendent in tribute to his experience with and attention to students for whom English was a second or later language--being moved into their home (one assumes?) middle and high schools raises both the question as to how the program isn't then closing, and also if the building is remaining open and used as a school. Historically, the way in which Worcester treated with particular care their students with interrupted formal education was one of the prides of the district.

We'll be able, one assumes, to see the money saved--which I would also assume is being reallocated--in the budget this weekend. 

This goat's "what's happening here?" is my question as well.

*the degree with which every piece of information from WPS in recent months has a lot of words to try to impress us with how this is a great, amazing decision, rather than just telling us what is happening has me at the end of my patience, even more so when I reflect that we are paying for that

Things to read this week: happy May

Every decision about a school is one that *someone* cared enough to make.
I am always grateful for those who chose to ensure there are springtime flowers.
I took a second outside of a policy meeting in Millis this week to enjoy this tree,
which also smelled amazing.

I have a load of tabs open of things I'd suggest you read--so many are technology in schools, that I will work to give that its own post here!--so here's a round-up:

April 2026 Board of Ed: Safe Schools for LGBTQ+ students

 There is a document here; you can find their things here

it feels not great that this got bumped to the end

Rachelle Engler Bennett, Associate Commissioner of Student and Family Commissioner
joint effort of Department and MA Commission of LGBTQ Youth
part of DESE's Student and Family Support office
advance educational vision for all students

April 2026 Board of Ed: Teacher licensure regulations

 Proposed final regulations are here

Martinez: recommends adoption of alternative pathway; three year implementation and evaluation
"BOLD five year plan" for diversification of pipeline
Abbott, Associate Commissioner of Educator Effectiveness
maintaining teacher quality: diverse, culturally responsive, well-prepared, and committed to continuous improvement 
working to expand the pipeline; effectively prepare and license; and sustain and retain
alternative licensure pathway waiving communication and literacy skills test
available for three years as Department studies impact and student outcome

four options to fulfill requirement:

1. completion of a Massachusetts-approved Educator Preparation Program
2. License from another state;
3. Master's/Doctorate from an accredited degree program;
4. 2 years of field-based experience and attestation from school or district leader

three implementation period and annual reporting to the Board on impact and progress
will come at no cost to candidates; will be able to take applications in a couple of weeks
first report to Board next spring; spring of 2028 (licensure and employment rates); early 2029 (success in classrooms) then Board will have to consider renewal
one piece of a larger set of initiatives

also technical amendments 

West: if we adopt this, who will still take the exam?
Anyone pursuing provisional licensure who don't have any of the other characteristics above

41% of educators on a waiver would theoretically be eligible

April 2026 Board of Ed: 9/11 resources

 new 9/11 education resources in partnership with the Mass 9/11 Fund; speaker is from WGBH
WGBH works with PBS Learning Media
videos produced as part of the U.S. history collection 
series of three videos: actions on the day, short and long term impacts, memorials and remembrances, along with an interactive lesson

April 2026 Board of Ed: House Ways and Means budget update

 Look, there is a document on this! There is also a PowerPoint, which NEVER happens
This is also being taken out of order on the agenda

Martinez notes the literacy grant wasn't in the House Ways & Means budget, nor were the literacy institutes, nor reimagining high school grant (pay for AP exams) and support early college and MyCap

April 2026 Board of Ed: opening comments and Miliken Award

The Board of Ed has their regular April meeting today beginning at 9 AM. The agenda is here; the livestream will come up on their channel over here. 

flowers in downtown Boston yesterday

Today is the first meeting at which the new Secretary, Steve Zrike, will be present in that capacity. As a reminder, Zrike was Salem superintendent, though most of his appearances at the Board of Ed previously were in his prior-to-that position as Holyoke receiver. As an offhand observation, today is the eleventh anniversary of the Board voting the Holyoke Public Schools into receivership; I don't know if there's a balance to that or not. 

Also as a reminder, the Secretary is a single member and a single vote on the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (as well as the two other education boards, Early Ed and Care, and Higher Ed), serving at the pleasure of the Governor, who appoints him*

I will update this post as we go

The debate on technology on schools is ongoing

...and that means that we are due for the backlash. 

Some of us would say: overdue. As the Boston Globe wrote last week: 

Across the state people are rallying to address it — from Fall River to Winchester, Northampton to Cambridge. And pressure is coming from every direction: parents in Scituate, the teachers union in Melrose, cost-conscious administrators in Arlington.

The list of concerns is long. Young children, glued to screens, miss out on needed play and socialization; older students, glued to screens, use them to bully each other. High schoolers rely on AI to cheat. School-issued laptops, taken home, keep sleep-deprived youngsters up past their bedtimes.

Above all, critics worry that the hypnotic flicker of screens is coming between students and learning.

The 74 wrote of this as a parental backlash, but I think that's probably oversimplified. The New York Times article from last month looked specifically at a middle school in Kansas that had deliberately gone limited tech, an effort that came from educators. 

One issue not mentioned above in the Globe's list is that of student privacy; Curriculum Associates, which owns iReady, is currently being sued (for one):

In the original complaint the plaintiffs allege the company “creates and extracts reams of personal information from K–12 students.”

“Using that data, Curriculum Associates creates detailed data profiles of students that are used to predict and influence their behavior and guide decision-making about them. It further uses that information for commercial purposes, including developing, marketing, and delivering its own products,” the complaint said. “Curriculum Associates also allows numerous third parties to access the information it obtains from K–12 students for the commercial benefit of both Curriculum Associates and those parties.”

One of the issues at hand, according to the complaint, is that students in schools that use i-Ready are required to be in school, where they are required to use the software during the school day with no alternative, and without giving their consent about the use of their data.

And: 

 According to the complaint, the data in question may include basic information like a student’s first and last name, birthday and gender, as well as things like their race, first language, grade level, school of enrollment, their teacher, data from their responses to questions in i-Ready assessments and lessons, and data collected about the student when the i-Ready profile is set up. The complaint alleges it could also include data about the specific device students used to complete the lesson on i-Ready.

“The data Curriculum Associates generates and extracts from students who use its Products, including Plaintiffs, far exceeds what could be legally or traditionally characterized as “education Records,” said the complaint. “Even if certain data could be characterized as education records, Plaintiffs — like all students — retain significant rights over the personal information contained in such records, which are protected by state and federal law.”

Makes one long for the days of filing cabinets and manila folders.

All of that, of course, is without the looming insistence that AI be part of all of this. I cannot recommend highly enough this piece by Massachusetts writer and parent Jessica Winter in The New Yorker, "What will it take to get AI out of schools." She starts with her own family's experience: 

I don’t like A.I., and I am raising my children not to like it. I’ve been telling them for years now that chatbots are manipulative and dangerous, that A.I. image generators are loosening our collective grip on reality, that large language models are built atop industrial-scale intellectual-property theft. At times, I find myself speaking with my kids about A.I. in the same terms that we might discuss a creepy neighbor who lives down the block: avoid eye contact, cross the street when you walk past his house, and, when in doubt, call on a trusted adult. Yes, I, too, have suspected that the creepy neighbor walks on cloven hooves inside his Yeezy Boosts, but he probably isn’t going anywhere—in fact, he keeps buying up properties around town—so just try your best not to engage.

Somehow, I was not prepared for the creepy neighbor to start hanging around my kids’ schools; somehow, I thought we had until high school. In February, my son, who is in third grade at a public K-5 in Massachusetts, came home with a piece of paper in his backpack that read “Certificate of Completion,” for “demonstrating an understanding of the basic concepts of Artificial Intelligence.” He and his classmates had earned this honor, I learned, by playing a computer game produced by the nonprofit Code.org in partnership with Amazon Future Engineer, called Mix & Move with AI, in which the student “designs” a cartoon dancer and “remixes” a popular song—available, needless to say, on Amazon Music. The game is an inane drag-and-drop affair that has little to do with A.I.; the certificate, it turned out, was merely a memento of a pointless and deceptive branding exercise.

Then, in March, students at my eleven-year-old daughter’s public middle school began receiving new Google Chromebooks, and that is when I heard the tap-tap of the cloven hooves approaching our doorstep. The Chromebooks, which the students use in every class and for homework, came pre-installed with an all-ages version of Gemini, a suite of A.I. tools. When my daughter, who is in sixth grade, begins writing an essay, she gets a prompt: “Help me write.” If she is starting work on a slide-show presentation, the prompt is “Help me visualize.” She shoos away these interruptions, but they persist: “Help me edit.” “Beautify this slide.” The image generator is there, if she’d ever wish to pull the plug on her imagination. The Gemini chatbot is there, if she ever wants to talk to no one.

So many times, so many times, I warned her about the creepy neighbor. Now he reads her poems and knows her passwords. He’s always watching through the screen.

We cannot be passive. Our kids deserve better than this. 

kids.
Get it?

Bailing twine and bubble gum: school funding in the House Ways and Means proposal

 The House Committee on Ways & Means released their FY27 budget last Wednesday, and they're currently taking amendments before the House debate on the budget starts next week. 

I've been considering what to say about it since then (sorry if you've been waiting for me to post on it), and the refrain I kept coming back to is what state law says is the intent of the Legislature when it comes to school funding: 

The full section reads: 

It is the intention of the general court, subject to appropriation, to assure fair and adequate minimum per student funding for public schools in the commonwealth by defining a foundation budget and a standard of local funding effort applicable to every city and town in the commonwealth.

Ludlow case leaves in place First Circuit ruling for the district

Screenshot of Monday's orders, highlighting the relevant line
Yes, that is all that they send out!

Unless you were watching for it, you may have missed it, but on Monday, the Supreme Court denied the writ of certiorari (or "denied cert") in the Foote v. Ludlow case. That means the First Circuit decision from last February, which found in favor of the district, which I noted here, stays in place.

To quote again what I quoted from that then: 

As  this  opinion  has endeavored to illuminate,  we acknowledge the fundamental importance of the rights asserted by the Parents to be informed of, and to direct, significant aspects of their child's life--including their socialization, education, and health.  Be that as it may--as this opinion has also made effort to explicate --parental rights are not unlimited.  Parents may  not  invoke  the  Due  Process  Clause  to  create  a  preferred educational experience for their child in public school.  As per our  understanding  of  Supreme  Court  precedent,  our  pluralistic society assigns those curricular and administrative decisions to the expertise of school officials, charged with the responsibility of educating children. And the Protocol of nondisclosure as to a student's at-school  gender expression without  the  student's consent does not restrict parental rights in a way courts have recognized  as  a  violation  of  the  guarantees  of  substantive  due process. All told, the Parents have failed to state a claim that Ludlow's  Protocol  as  applied  to  their  family  violated  their constitutional right to direct the upbringing of their child.

GLAD Law, which filed a friend-of-court brief, noted the decision here. Note that among the other briefs filed was one from the Massachusetts Attorney General, along with 15 others.

No, I don't know how this aligns with the recent shadow docket decision from California, save maybe it wasn't a state law, but I don't know that we should be looking for consistency among the majority. 
UPDATE: Looks like I'm not alone in being confused.

 

good Globe follow-up on the House social media bill

I'm impressed by the follow-up article from the Boston Globe on the House's disaster of a bill passed last week.*

Civil liberties groups and organizations in favor of tech privacy — including some that are backing the bills — warn the proposals could backfire and make online activity even less private by requiring users to submit personal information to verify their ages or parental status.

Some restrictions, experts argue, would also face First Amendment challenges by limiting young people’s speech and vulnerable groups’ abilities to find community online. 

They also note that this means we're not fulfilling our responsibility to students:

 “Children need to learn how to use social media so they aren’t using it irresponsibly, and we need to learn how to use our phones,” said Max Nash, a junior at Mashpee High School who formed the Coalition for Student Mental Health to lobby for alternative tech policies. “But that requires education and not a ban.”

I appreciate Rep. Gordon in general, but this is such an odd thing to own up to: 

Representative Kenneth Gordon, who chairs the education committee, said lawmakers shaped the bill to closely follow a similar law in Florida, whose under-14 social media ban has faced court challenges for two years. 

Florida + court challenges seemed like a good path to follow?

And all of this here:

 Both the Healey and House proposals would require age verification measures that civil liberties groups and privacy experts say are excessive. All users — not just minors — could be required to give tech companies more personal information, such as photos of government IDs, to prove their age, they warned.

Healey’s proposal, for instance, would require social media companies to provide a host of age-specific data that could require checking users’ ages.

People who don’t have such IDs, or might be hesitant to provide them, could then be unable to access a wide range of online content. The bill includes a broad definition of social media sites, including nearly any platform with personal accounts and user-generated content, which opponents argue could encompass sites such as the popular information forum Wikipedia.

That ID hurdle has formed the basis of First Amendment challenges in many states, according to Paul Taske, co-director of the NetChoice Litigation Center, a tech industry-funded group that has successfully sued to have the law set aside in several cases.

“Ultimately, the laws suffer from the same core constitutional infirmity: They block or restrict access for users, particularly minors, but also adults when it comes to speech that is lawful for everyone,” Taske said.

Cybersecurity experts warn that children could bypass the checks, and hackers could seek to steal data collected. Parental consent requirements could present further security issues, with little way for parents to reliably prove their relation to a user, opening the door for nefarious actors who abuse online reporting systems.

More than 400 cybersecurity experts, including from MIT, Tufts University, and Boston University, issued a public letter last month calling for a moratorium on online age verification laws they said “might cause more harm than good.”

“This policy will inevitably massively reduce privacy online by forcing users to reveal more information to service providers than they do nowadays,” the group wrote.

The age verification measures could also run counter to the goals of a separate date privacy bill the state Senate passed last fall and is backed by the ACLU of Massachusetts and other groups. That legislation would allow companies to collect only “reasonably necessary” personal data and permit consumers to opt out of data collection. Companies would also be barred from selling children’s data.

Plus, of course, there are those who have positive uses for social media that would be barred by this bill: 

Advocacy organizations also raised concerns about other First Amendment violations, including for users who might face the most repercussions from verification measures and social media restrictions.

Such a law, some argue, could limit teenagers’ abilities to organize political activity, hear the latest news, express themselves creatively, or find community online.

Teddy Walker, a 21-year-old Bostonian who is trans and a leader of a group organized to protect trans rights, said he was isolated and depressed as a teenager until he found solace in Instagram and YouTube trans communities.

“It really helped give me the language and understanding for who I am,” Walker said. The proposed parental restrictions could “lead to trans youth and trans kids being less safe, being less able to access that content online that was so life-saving and life-affirming for me.”

Sing it with Noah Kahan, all: 

you're a mess, you're a mess, good God, you're a mess!

__________________________________________________________________

*And how often do I say that? 

Here comes the MA voucher push

 Because OB3, Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill" has a provision for vouchers by state in the language, you knew that others would join the Boston Globe's editorial board in pushing for them in Massachusetts. Thanks to Yawu Miller's coverage of a recent panel at the JFK Presidential Library*, we now know not only that this is happening, but who the players are and what their talking points are going to be:

“Covid relief money is gone, inflation is bad, buses are expensive, special education is expensive,” former Massachusetts Education Commissioner Jeff Riley told an audience of about 200 that filled an auditorium at the museum last Wednesday. “We have an opportunity for this new pot of money to help us with things like expanded learning time, high dosage tutoring, special education services. This seems like a time when people should get together.”

Yes, taking time away from his fulltime job of trying to get schools on the AI bandwagon, our former Commissioner is all in our vouchers, but we're going to frame it as public school assistance. Also involved: 

The National Parents Union is spearheading the local coalition which aims to pressure Gov. Maura Healey to adopt the tax credit program. So far, the group counts 124 organizations in support, including The Pioneer Institute, The Boston Foundation, the Lynch Foundation, 45 individual Catholic Schools, 18 Montessori Schools, 13 Jewish day schools, the umbrella organizations supporting those types of schools and dozens of YMCAs and Boys and Girls Clubs.

NPU will surprise no one, nor will the private schools, but the outside of school organizations no doubt have this sold to them as after school dollars that could be coming their way.

Miller does---as always--an excellent job of framing the issues with the push, very much including that they don't actually work. But he also notes that Governor Healey, whose decision this is, so far has been silent on this issue. That is very concerning. There will be an effort to frame this as a "ed reform" issue, and she has some close to her that are in on that.

Oh, and incidentally: the list of things that Riley includes largely are not things on which the vouchers could be used: 

Despite promises that the scholarships could cover special education services, among other school-related expenses, Fliter said that wouldn’t be true for public schools. The way qualified education expenses are defined by the federal government only includes things for which schools bill parents.

“Unfortunately, when you dig into the text of the statute and what the regulations are from the IRS and from others, it becomes very clear that a qualified education expense, as it’s referenced in the Internal Revenue Code and by the Coverdell Education Savings Account, does not include anything like special education expenses,” Fliter said.

Read Miller's coverage, and then keep an eye out on this one.  

*who maybe don't exercise a say over this, but one does question the venue choice

A collection of things to read and review

•  The back-and-forth in last month's House hearing on undocumented students' right to a public education revealed their using stats on English learners, which is not the same group at all
  
  
• The Wall Street Journal takes up the topic facing many Massachusetts towns this spring with a look at South Hadley's tax override (that's a gift link).
  
  
• I thought Jacobin's angle on the LA teachers strike (that didn't happen) being connected directly to the resistance to AI was interesting. This would of course be very much in line with the actual Luddites.
  
  
• I recommend subscribing to Benjamin Riley, but if you don't, please have handy his Illustrated Guide Resisting to "AI Is Inevitable in Education"
  Also, he was kind enough of share his family's really disturbing experience with his late father's resisting treatment because of what he received from AI; here's a gift link to The New York Times piece. 
  
  
• Speaking of AI, analysis finds that Google's AI overview is providing misinformation "on a scale unprecedented in human civilization"

daffodils, even

Keeping an eye on federal grants

 DESE sent this update out late last week:

DESE has received some additional projected figures from the federal government that have allowed us to refine the Title I projections we shared last month; we’re also able to anticipate statewide totals from other major ESSA programs (Title II-A, Title III-A, and Title IV-A), as well as from Perkins. Again, these numbers are still preliminary. DESE receives final awards from the federal government on July 1st. 

Title I – Updated figures from the federal government show that MA will experience about a 7% reduction overall, not a 10% reduction overall as we projected last month. DESE has revised the FY27 Title I Warning Chart accordingly. These district-level projections are likely more accurate than last month’s projections, but it bears repeating that they are subject to change. Districts will receive final numbers in July. 

Title II-A – Similar to Title I, preliminary figures from the federal government show that MA overall will likely experience about a 7% overall reduction from last year. We do not have district-level projections for Title II-A, which could vary greatly, so we encourage districts to budget conservatively. 

Title III-A – Preliminary figures from the federal government show that MA overall will likely be level-funded for Title III-A. DESE will provide district-level projections for Title III-A in several weeks when we issue the Title III-A Intent to Participate application in GEM$. Until then, we encourage districts to budget conservatively. 

Title IV – Preliminary figures from the federal government show that MA overall will likely see about a 6% increase in Title IV-A. We do not have district-level projections for Title IV-A, which could vary greatly, so we encourage districts to budget conservatively. 

Perkins – Preliminary figures from the federal government show that MA overall will likely be level-funded for Perkins. 

can we stop considering Sal Khan an expert now?

 I very much appreciate Matt Barnum's piece this week on how it turns out---color me shocked--that Sal Khan's whole forecast on how AI in education was going to work out is not. 

Three years ago, as Khan Academy founder Sal Khan rolled out an AI-powered tutoring chatbot, he predicted a revolution in learning.

So far, the revolution hasn’t happened, he acknowledges.

“For a lot of students, it was a non-event,” Khan told me recently about his eponymous chatbot, Khanmigo. “They just didn’t use it much.”

Khan gives this analogy: Imagine he walked into a class, sat in the back of the room, and waited for students to seek out help. “Some will; most won’t,” he said. That’s been the experience with AI tutoring, he said. It doesn’t necessarily make students motivated to learn or fill in gaps in knowledge needed to ask questions.

And in a particularly "we could have told you that" bit: 

 Kristen DiCerbo, the organization’s chief learning officer, said AI can only respond to students based on what they ask. And it turns out, she said, “Students aren’t great at asking questions well.”

Right, because asking good questions is part of learning which is a thing that has to be taught.

I really can't do better than Audrey Watters on this: 

 It's a change from the sweeping rhetoric of Khan's 2023 TED Talk in which he proclaimed that, "We’re at the cusp of using AI for probably the biggest positive transformation that education has ever seen." Invoking the highly questionable (that is to say utterly un-replicated) findings from the classic "2 Sigma Problem" paper by Benjamin Bloom – a paper first published in 1984 and invoked now by decades of ed-tech evangelists – Khan claimed that “the way we’re going to do that is by giving every student on the planet an artificially intelligent but amazing personal tutor.”

Amazing. Or ... not.

She observes that inevitably, the response of the rejection is to then given students (and teachers, often) no choice but to use whatever the new hip tech thing is that is around, which is, of course, just what Khan Academy has done; from Chalkbeat:

Now Khanmigo is incorporated directly as a way students can get advice as they’re working through specific problems. A spokesperson said the organization made this change because “students were not seeking out Khanmigo’s help as much as we had hoped.”

Four things I would have preferred the House do this week

1.  Move forward the bar on religious exemptions for vaccinations. Just this week, the West Virginia bar withstood a federal appeals challenge. Just today, the AP is noting that babies too young for the MMR vaccine become "sitting ducks" in an outbreak. Given the anti-vaccine push by the federal government (as much as the courts are doing what they can), we cannot afford cracks in our community immunity. 
   
   
2. Do literally anything at all about Massachusetts being the only state in the country that has Democrats in charge of both chambers and the Governor's office and has a 287(g) contract with ICE. 
   Seriously. Anything at all. You could even pass a bill to make it illegal, like Maryland or Virginia, as that's the whole reason we have a legislature: making laws. 
   
   
3. Pass legislation protecting our immigrant neighbors from being preyed upon by the federal government, like the PROTECT Act, which passed out of committee two weeks ago, yet somehow was not seen as being as urgent as that bill on cell phones. I have been told they passed this? That missed my radar. One hopes it receives half the urgency from the rest of the process that this appears to have
    
4. Move forward the legislation that updates how inflation is calculated in the foundation budget, and make it effective for FY27, better aligning the foundation budget with district costs (and perhaps keeping us from the mistake of digging even bigger hold harmless aid holes).
   
   

please enjoy these pansies from my walk to work in Boston

The House passed the most draconian social media ban in the country

From State House News Service this evening:  

The House on Wednesday put Massachusetts on track to join a handful of other states in placing restrictions on children’s social media use – an issue that is playing out in courts across the country. The House passed legislation on a 129-25 vote, largely along party lines, prohibiting social media use for children under 14 and requiring that social media platforms obtain parental consent for users aged 14 and 15. Representatives said the legislation closely follows a similar law in Florida, which is still being challenged in court two years after it was passed. The legislation leaves many of the regulatory decisions surrounding how to enforce the policy amid an ever-evolving online landscape up to Attorney General Andrea Campbell. Reps added language to the bill that limits some parental monitoring of social media usage "to protect certain vulnerable populations," Rep. Peisch said on the floor, and adds further protections for 14- and 15-year-olds related to the "addictive nature" of some platforms. The bill also bans students from using their cellphones throughout the school day. The House dispensed with almost all of the 29 amendments filed on the legislation through two consolidated amendments.

"on party lines" means it was Democrats who voted to violate young people's privacy, Democrats who voted to make them less safe in school, Democrats who voted to require that we all turn our information over to social media companies.  

I cannot even.

Update: here’s the vote:

"risk eroding the very human capabilities they are meant to support"

Is there bad AI news this week?
Friends, there is ALWAYS bad AI news!

Two things to review: 

• A paper released by Cornell University looking at the "consequences of AI assistance" using mathematic reasoning and reading comprehension (that is, two of the core competencies of education!). They found: 
  

  AI assistance reduces persistence and impairs independent performance: After brief AI-assisted sessions (~10 minutes), participants were significantly more likely to give up on problems and performed significantly worse once the AI was removed, compared to participants who never had AI assistance.
  Effects are concentrated among users who seek direct solutions: Persistence costs were concentrated among participants who prompted AI to solve tasks for them directly. Using AI for hints or clarifications did not produce significant impairments.
  Effects generalize across domains: Effects replicated across fraction arithmetic and reading comprehension, suggesting it is a general consequence of AI-assisted problem solving, not specific to any particular task.

  Their conclusion?
  

  These findings raise urgent questions about the cumulative effects of daily AI use on human persistence and reasoning. We caution that if such effects accumulate with sustained AI use, current AI systems — optimized only for short-term helpfulness — risk eroding the very human capabilities they are meant to support.

  I found this page which gives visuals for their findings very accessible; I include one below. 

  
  

• Sam Altman, the head of OpenAI, is the subject of an in-depth profile in The New Yorker . It reads almost as a parable of hubris: you can trace the loss over time within the company of values expressed early on.
  That he has as much power as he does is horrifying.

Visual from "AI Assistance Reduces Persistence and Hurts Independent Performance"

paying attention to dual language in Worcester

 I've only occasionally been paying attention to what's going on with the Worcester Public Schools¹, but a sequence over the past week has me paying attention. 

Samuel Adams in the U.S. Capitol
Because I am feeling a lot like that about this.

One of the things that is very close to my heart, both personally and professionally, is Worcester's dual language program. Over my transom last week came the following message that had gone to parents in the dual language program: 

on the cell phone and social media bill before the Mass House

 Tomorrow, the Mass House is voting on a bill on social media and cell phones for youth that includes, as the post from WBUR puts it: 

...prohibiting social media use for children under 14, requiring platforms to obtain parental consent for users ages 14 and 15, and banning students from using cellphones in schools.

The Boston Globe adds that it also would share information posted with the parents of young people between the ages of 14 and 15. 

This is terrible in so many ways!

I sent the following email off to my state rep John Mahoney yesterday:

 John,

I am writing to urge you to vote against the proposed bill regarding social media and cell phones that will be before you this week.

Young people in marginalized communities very frequently find support on social media platforms, in many cases, support that they cannot find in their own families and communities. Barring them from those platforms, and, at under age 15, pushing anything they submit to their parents is not only an inappropriate violation of their privacy (which, yes, they have); it may well endanger young people. The rates of rejection and abuse of young people who are gay and trans is high, even in Massachusetts. 

Doing age checks requires ALL of us to submit OUR data to social media companies; this is not something I wish to do, and it is wildly irresponsible for the legislature to expect that of us.

Young people who are currently endangered by the federal government also should not have their communication devices (which also include cameras) [taken] from them at the schoolhouse door. That is the opposite of supportive.

This is, top to bottom, a bad bill, John. Please oppose it.

Thank you,

Tracy Novick 

_______________________________
Do I need to remind you again that my blog posts are just from me as me? Here's that reminder. 

Remember: on the federal budget, this is just the opening round

 You might be concerned or confused by headlines that came through over the weekend like this: 

Did we just DO a federal budget?
We did, but that one was overdue (thus the shutdown) and was the current federal fiscal year budget, 'though it funds next school year.

Now we're starting NEXT fiscal year, FY27, which for the federal government starts in October, which will funding school year 2027-28.

With me?

Now to the alarming headlines: you might remember that we also had alarming news from the initial proposal from the Trump administration for the current fiscal year, too. The House proposal was also alarming, and then the Senate put their feet down and we got a largely level funded federal budget.

So pay attention, but don't panic. 

Yay, SCIENCE!

 Artemis II is off to the moon!

And then a discussion about school committee authority broke out

 Something happened at last Tuesday's Board of Ed which doesn't happen at 99.9% of Massachusetts Board of Education meetings¹: someone not only mentioned school committees, but there was even a smidge of a discussion about them.

This came in response to a (properly posted) update from the Commissioner on Fall River. You may have seen that the Fall River School Committee recently moved to fire their superintendent without cause; she resigned. At the request of the Mayor, the Department is completing a targeted review of district governance.

Fall River Public Schools had their last comprehensive district review in 2025, as required by MGL Ch. 15, sec. 55A, under state regulations 603 CMR 2.03. Those regulations, passed by the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, require that the review include: Leadership and Governance, alongside Curriculum and Instruction; Assessment; Human Resources and Professional Development; Student Support; and Financial and Asset Management. Those are always the areas reviewed for every district.²

Within that last report for Fall River, released in November 2024, within the Governance analysis, DESE reported the following: 

According to focus groups, working relationships between district leaders and school committee members are still in early stages and are sometimes tense. As mentioned above, the superintendent is new to her role and began leading the district in July 2024 and, as such, a formal evaluation has not yet been completed. According to interviews, the superintendent is still working through her formal entry plan into the district and trying to “build a little bit more of a network and relationships with the school committee.” However, district leaders also reported that the current superintendent faced opposition from several members of the school committee upon her promotion to superintendent from her previous role as assistant superintendent and chief academic officer. Currently, there are still reported tensions between the school committee and the district superintendent, and both agreed that there was occasionally “strain” in the relationship regarding the best way to collaboratively fulfill their responsibilities and benefit the district. Despite this, in interviews and focus groups, both parties reiterated their commitment to Fall River and their desire to collaborate effectively to improve the district and outcomes for all students. Building rapport between both parties is an area for growth in Fall River.

As they were doing a report early on in a new superintendent administration, this is a measured, but early warning, view of what the Department saw then. Then the Fall River School Committee underwent an election last fall in which three of the six seats changed (the seventh member, the mayor, stayed the same), with the above being the outfall.

What I found most odd about the above bit of discussion in the meeting, beyond it happening at all, was the common concern of Chair Katherine Craven and Vice-chair Matt Hills: they were very concerned about the Department's relationship with the "democratically-elected school committee."

While I agree that the lines of authority are always³worth keeping an eye on, it's very odd to hear this from the Board leadership, which in its tenure, has not expressed all that much concern about the very removal of school committee authority that state receivership is. The school committees in receivership districts are also democratically-elected, and yet it has been from the successor of Commissioners after Jeff Riley that the impetus has come to return them to local authority. That could have come from this chair and vice chair at any time in their tenure. Instead, it took Russell Johnston as acting receiver to finally move. That, mercifully, has continued forward. 

The Commissioner is appointed by and evaluated by the Board. If "democratically-elected" school committees having authority was this much of a concern, Craven and Hills had ample opportunity and reason to speak earlier. They did not. 

Interesting time to speak up. 

¹I have been to almost every one for fifteen years. Take it from me.
²You can find the list of district review reports on the Department's website here. They are not always right (in my view) but they are always worth reviewing.
³not just in the 0.1% of the time they deign to remember that school committees exist, let's say.  

Flashback

 from this WBUR coverage of the Boston Public Schools before their City Council: 

Boston Public Schools could have fined its school bus vendor $1.5 million for missed rides, but chose not to do so. The admission outraged parents and Boston City Councilors at a Tuesday hearing.

WBUR first reported that the district had not exercised its contractual right to fine vendor Transdev $500 for each instance of a “blown trip.” That's when a bus is more than an hour late for pickup or "uncovered" — as in, no driver or vehicle is available for the ride.

March Board of Ed: midyear report from State Student Advisory Council

 This is from Isabella Chamberlain, Hudson High School, who is the SSAC chair
focusing this year on student wellness, especially emotional wellbeing; bullying and harassment; and nutrition and school nutritional environment

using state data in working through this

Chamberlain: there is a concern that recommendations are made to the Board and nothing is really done with that
midyear is so that it is while there is work being done on it
hope is that this allows a feedback loop on their work
Fisher: more than half of Black or Asian students being treated badly, you're not going to be engaged
Department's push for culturally sustaining curriculum, make sure we actually live that mission
Rocha: how can we engage just beyond the presentation
Fisher suggests members going to regional meetings
Chamberlain: want to ensure students are creating the focus
give the students the data and say the focus area has to come from that; up to them to do it
connection between Board and students but keep freedom there

March Board of Ed: virtual schools

 Memo is here. This is the certificates being up for renewal

Greater Commonwealth materials here

TECCA here 

There is a preference (in response to question from Hills) for students who are medically compromised in admissions

passes

March Board of Ed: teacher licensure and preparation

 Hills: "a really good Board conversation broke out" when it was proposed 
anyone having an issues, we should postpone the vote until April
"and no, individually answering questions is not the same as the Board discussion"
yeah, there is an uncomfortable amount of offline discussion...

Martinez: good intentions within the law
part of a larger initiative
"this by itself will not solve it all"
make sure we're doing research on it, monitoring it

memo is here; summary of public comment is here 

March Board of Ed: school counselor of the year

 Henry Wan, School Counselor of the Year, from Harrington Elementary in Lexington

Wan: incredible honor to be before this Board
would like to include a song
He sings part of "Man in the Mirror"

so students can take charge of their realities

"as an Asian man in the field...that largely does not look like me"
"even I as a son of immigrants have something to contribute"
"every single child has the potential to contribute meaningfully and powerfully to this world"

March Board of Elementary and Secondary Education: opening comments

 The Board of Ed meets today at nine. Their agenda is here; the livestream is here. 

I'm joining this one remotely, as I spent yesterday at the Fordham Education Law Symposium, which was great, and maybe I will write about that here at some point. 

going in the mail: letter to ASBO on AI

 I sent the following handwritten letter to the ASBO International Executive Director today.

March 22, 2026

Dear Mr. Rowan,

I had every intention of responding to your invitation to “join the AI user community” via email, but I have hope that my taking the time and care to write by hand may make you take notice. I realize there is a certain irony to that hope, given the topic.

As an ASBO member who is not a school business official, who works with school boards on school finance issues here in Massachusetts, I have found these past years of increasing hype on AI use in school finance not only deeply distressing, but entirely contrary to the values the profession of school business officials are defined by.

In both my ten years on my local school board and the now eleven years I have served in my current role, it is the unimpeachable integrity of the school business official on which our school board members depend to make their decisions on school finances. I note “integrity” is even the first principle to which the ASBO Board holds itself, a principle which speaks of the “ethical responsibility” with which they “uphold trust.”

How then is it that ASBO has and continues to advocate for members to use a system founded in intellectual property theft? One cannot use generative AI systems without using the uncited works of millions, work they did not assent to the use of.

Where is the integrity in using work that is inaccurate? Every week brings another several stories of generative AI results being no better than guessing (in fact, we might guess better). This has in some cases deadly results. While we can hope this is not the case in school finance, results that are incorrect can, as we both know, be catastrophic.

Notably for school finance, it was recently brought to my attention that Microsoft itself recommends against using its Copilot function in Excel for any task “with legal, regulatory, or compliance implications.” (You can find that on the Copilot support page.) I think you and I would agree that this is everything within a school business office.

I do not know how school boards can trust what they are given by their school finance officers given such warnings within the very systems on which they operate, unless the board members know they are not being used.

I could go on at length about the the many other ways this push violates the core principles of school finance (that vast waste of resources; the horrific impacts on our students, particularly those most vulnerable; its use to kill schoolgirls in Iran; and the list goes on), but the loss of integrity in school finance, the undermining of the trust that is core to the function of the school business official, is the item to which I most wish to draw your attention.

Please end this undermining of this crucial trust.

Thank you for your attention,

Tracy A. Novick

Two from other states that may sound familiar

1.  Alaska: 
   

   My personal experience with the education system has been challenging. When I was attending Tok school, it was blatantly apparent that I would not gain the level of education I wanted. There were constant funding issues, inconsistent hiring of teachers and lowered expectations based on the background of students. This forced me to choose between the best of two bad options,” she said.
   ...
   
   “When the BSA stays frozen while the cost keeps rising, it feels like my generation is being asked to carry the burden. It feels like our future is being cut at the knees before we even had the chance to stand. Mt. Edgecumbe is my home away from home, and my last option for a fruitful education,” she said. “Please consider this when you make the decision whether or not to fund Alaskan futures.”

   
   

2. Wisconsin:  
   

   possibly we wouldn’t even have to go to referendum if they had kept up even with half the amount of inflation,” Donich said. “We wouldn’t be in this situation at all.”
   

Do we want kids to pass reading tests, or do we want them to be able to read?

 ...because, as The Hechinger Report notes (adding to what I shared last week from Linda Darling-Hammond), that "Mississippi miracle" which is getting laws passed and policies changed across the country, does not achieve the latter: 

“Mississippi moved a mountain in fourth grade,” said Dan McGrath, a retired federal education official who oversaw the NAEP assessments. High- and low-achieving students both made gains. But when these fourth graders reached eighth grade, their progress stalled. By 2019, more eighth graders were scoring at the bottom than in 2013. Scores dipped further during the pandemic, and by 2024, only higher achieving eighth graders recovered a bit.

“When should we see the Mississippi miracle reach eighth grade? Why haven’t we seen it yet?” McGrath asked.

The piece makes a number of suggestions, but, as a former high school English teacher, I think this one tracks: 

 Researchers and literacy advocates point to a common answer: Early reading reforms focused on phonics, which helped students decode words, but decoding alone is not enough for proficient middle school reading, where the words are longer and the sentences are more complicated.

Timothy Shanahan, a veteran reading researcher and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said reading instruction must continue after students learn to read. “It’s not phonics exactly,” he said. Teachers need to break down multisyllabic words, teach word roots and odd spellings, and find time to read extensively to build fluency with complex texts.

Shanahan thinks schools should teach students how to read grade-level texts, even if they are challenging, and provide guidance on vocabulary, syntax and sentence structure.

Warding off vaccine rollback

 Yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy halted the rollback of federal vaccine schedules and other policy changes. Per NPR: 

The judge ruled that Kennedy and his committee had made arbitrary and capricious decisions, ignoring a long-used, well-regarded scientific process for developing vaccine policies. He wrote in his ruling, "the government has disregarded those methods and thereby undermined the integrity of its actions."

The Washington Post: 

 “History is littered with once-universal truths that have since come under scrutiny,” the judge wrote. He added that even though science is not perfect, “nevertheless, science is still ‘the best we have.’”

The U.S. District Court judge from Massachusetts, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Joe Biden, wrote that the government bypassed the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel — which is how vaccine recommendations have been made for decades — to change the immunization schedule. He called it a “technical, procedural failure” and a “strong indication of something more fundamentally problematic: an abandonment of the technical knowledge and expertise embodied by that committee.”

and:

 The judge wrote that HHS cannot circumvent the long-standing practice of getting advice from the federal panel without offering an explanation “simply because they are following the President’s orders.”

He also wrote the government removed every member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and replaced them without undertaking the “rigorous screening” traditionally used to select members. The judge noted that “even under the most generous reading,” only six of the 15 members on the panel “have any meaningful experience in vaccines.”

The advisory panel was scheduled to meet Wednesday and Thursday, but that meeting has now been postponed, according to an HHS official. The judge temporarily suspended the appointment of 13 of the 15 panel members, finding they were not appointed properly. Therefore, he noted, that this week’s meeting could not take place. “For how can a committee meet without nearly the entirety of its membership?”

The federal government is expected to appeal. But every halt is more vaccines in more people.  

To the BU School of Ed on their upcoming "AI and the Future of Education"

 I sent the following email to the (now) Boston University Wheelock College of Education and Human Development, formerly the Boston University School of Education, where I earned my Master's of Arts in Teaching. I did so after receiving at least the fifth invitation over the past month to an event entitled "AI and the Future of Education."

Dear Dean Bishop,

As the College has, by my count, now invited me five times to the "AI and the Future of Education" event coming later this month, I feel I must respond: not only will I not attend, I will not be party to any event that purports to  explore how "AI can be developed and used in ways that improve learning outcomes, support educators, and benefit students." 

I know better because the Boston University School of Education taught me better. SED taught me always to see the humanity of the students before and alongside me. It taught me to beware of thinking that my teaching was in a vacuum, rather than in a larger ethical context of society, culture, the environment, and history. It taught me to be aware of myself as a worker who had both rights and responsibilities. It taught me always to be abundantly aware of anything--any work, any reading, any technology--I put before my students and of what it might and well could do to them. 

And above all, it taught me to do the reading.

It's clear in hosting such an event (and advertising it with such vigor) that those in leadership indeed have not done the reading. Just across campus, you have Woodrow Hartzog and Jessica M. Silbey at the School of Law, who in December released the essay "How AI Destroys Institutions." If in fact you wished to engage your future and current educators in the discourse around AI, you could have invited them, with similar fanfare, to discuss their work and findings. 

As an educational institution educating educators in a state in which the constitution demands we educate children "for the preservation of their rights and liberties," BU's Wheelock College owes not only alums and current students but more importantly the future students we educate that examination.

With great dismay,

Tracy O'Connell Novick (SED '95)

You will shift towards the bias in AI

 From recent research from Cornell: 

In every experiment, the researchers found that participants’ views shifted in the direction of the AI bias. The biggest surprise, Naaman said, was that mitigation measures did not work.

“We told people before, and after, to be careful, that the AI is going to be (or was) biased, and nothing helped,” Naaman said. “Their attitudes about the issues still shifted.”

The research itself is here.  
It cannot legitimately be used as a "thought partner" or even to "clean up writing" as I've heard people say even in the last day.

Don't use it. 

Talking at cross purposes on state aid

Among the recent articles covering school budgets in the past week, three caught my eye for how they nicely encapsulate how much talking at cross-purposes there are in Massachusetts education funding discussions right now.

Be cautious about buying the headlines

 You've quite possibly seen headlines touting particular states' "miracles" or otherwise having all the answers, suddenly, in student achievement. 

In addition to the caution that Bruce Baker (as so often) offers around how we support schools, I want to also point you to Linda Darling-Hammond's recent piece in Forbes, which cautions about hyping up only fourth grade NAEP, particularly in light of another affirmation of the long-term bad impacts of retaining students in early grades. As Darling-Hammond writes: 

In this article, I look primarily at 8th-grade NAEP scores, because there are two substantial sources of potential distortion in the comparability of 4th-grade NAEP scores across states: the outcomes of grade retention policies and the size of English learner (EL) populations.

On Title I for next year

 

Slide from Friday presentation from MASC
slides here; recording here

This week, DESE updated superintendents (slides 10-18) and then those who manage grants that Title I for the upcoming year is expected to be less for the state and for districts in Massachusetts.

As I noted back at the beginning of February, the federal budget that was passed by Congress and signed into law pretty much level funded the federal entitlement grants. As both the White House and the House of Representatives had proposed budgets that cut grants in various ways and in some cases quite severely, that level funding was a victory.

However (and again as I noted), allocations to states and then in turn to districts are recalculated each year based on the demographics that determine funding. So, while the national number is the same, the way it is divided up changes each year. 

This year--this coming fiscal year for school districts--the state has learned that the Massachusetts share of the federal poverty total has dropped by 10%. That will in turn decrease the Massachusetts share of Title I funding, and, because the Massachusetts share is made up off Massachusetts districts, the district by district allocations will also be less.

The state has recommended that districts plan for a Title I allocation that is 85% of this year's allocation. They have also shared this spreadsheet, which both gives in the final column that 85% and also alerts districts that may be on the cusp of losing particular eligibilities within Title I (thus making their losses more severe).

if putting crucial student documents into a chatbot for translation

 ....and then potentially, after review, using them concerns you, you may wish to offer public comment on proposed new state regulations 603 CMR 57. The new regulations set standards, as required by state and federal law, for translators and interpreters. 

As proposed, however, 57.05(3) reads: 

(3) Machine translation may be used to translate a document so long as the translation is reviewed and edited as needed by a School Translator before the document is provided to a parent or legal guardian with limited English proficiency.

Remember, what we're talking about here are things like IEPs, 504s, documents having to do with students' education, rights, access, and more. They often contain private information. They always contain vocabulary that is very specific to education (something recognized elsewhere by the creation of levels in translation certification).  

This would allow for such documents to be dumped into generative AI bots, with no privacy protections, to become part of the universe on which such things draw. Such programs have been created from the theft of others' work--it thus conflicts with the many mentions of "ethics" elsewhere in the regulations. And the levels of accuracy, even if checked by a human, both makes more work for the humans involved while lessening the humanity of the translation. 

You can submit comment by filling out their form or sending an email to BESERegulationComments@Mass.gov by April 24 at 5 PM. 

Two things on Massachusetts school budgets

•  The United for Our Future coalition, which includes (among others) MASC, MASS, and the MTA, sent a letter calling for increased education state education funding to cover an array of issues. The Eagle-Tribune covers that here.
  
  The letter reads in part: 
  

  The “perfect storm” of factors behind the fiscal crisis remains in place. Rising special education and transportation costs, funding lost to charter schools, the constraints of Proposition 2 ½, and technical issues with the formula that determines how our schools are funded all continue to strain local budgets, as they have for years. In addition to those challenges, many districts also face looming threats of federal funding cuts along with unanticipated declines in enrollment spurred by federal attacks on our immigrant students and families. These enrollment declines are heartbreaking for our students and school communities and directly impact funding in a school finance system such as ours that is based on per-student allotments.
   When our districts are under-resourced, our attention is forced away from developing creative and innovative ways to enhance student learning and more effectively support their social and emotional wellbeing. Instead, we are left to fight to minimize devastating cuts to programs and staff so that we can try to maintain the basic, daily services on which our students depend. We cannot accept this situation as an unavoidable reality. As champions of public education, we know what work must be done to build public schools that prepare all students for success in the classroom and beyond, but local communities cannot do it alone.

The Supreme Court endangers trans students through the shadow docket

 On Monday night, through their so-called shadow docket, in which a case isn't argued before them and they weigh in, anyway, the Supreme Court further endangered trans kids. The case is  Mirabelli v. Bonta out of California, in which parents are challenging the California law that bars school districts from outing trans kids to their parents. 

Was the school struck accidentally?

 Both Al Jazeera and NPR have looked more closely at the bombing of Shajareh Tayyebeh School in Mina in Iran.

Schools are protected by international law

 Among the first places we heard were bombed in Iran over the weekend was the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in Minab, which is in southern Iran, where as of yesterday, the death toll had risen to 165 dead, 96 injured.

The strike on school appears to be the worst mass casualty event of the US-Israeli-led bombing campaign on Iran so far.

The United Nations education agency, UNESCO, on Saturday released a statement: 

UNESCO is deeply alarmed by the impact of the ongoing military escalation in the Middle East on educational institutions, students, and education personnel. 

Initial reports indicate that an attack on a girls' primary school in Minab, southern Iran, has resulted in the deaths of over 100 individuals, including numerous students. The killing of pupils in a place dedicated to learning constitutes a grave violation of the protection afforded to schools under international humanitarian law. 

Attacks against educational institutions endanger students and teachers and undermine the right to education. In accordance with its mandate and with United Nations Security Council Resolution 2601 (2021), UNESCO recalls the obligations of all parties to protect schools, students and education personnel.

In response to those who commented that the girls' school was next to a military barracks, one should note that currently there are 161 schools on military bases in the United States. 

Eisenhower

 Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.  

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.  

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.  

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.  

It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. 

It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.  

We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.  

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.  

This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.  

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. 

Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.  

These plain and cruel truths define the peril and point the hope that comes with this spring of 1953. 

This is one of those times in the affairs of nations when the gravest choices must be made, if there is to be a turning toward a just and lasting peace.  

It is a moment that calls upon the governments of the world to speak their intentions with simplicity and with honesty.  

It calls upon them to answer the question that stirs the hearts of all sane men: is there no other way the world may live? 

From "The Chance for Peace" 
Address Delivered Before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16th, 1953 

for any who might be interested: the three F-15 bombers shot down by "friendly fire" by Kuwait over the weekend--which did not result in U.S. deaths--cost about $90M each.