Dr. Owens's Education Blog

Reading yet another think piece on how AI will disrupt American education and I'm convinced that the nuts and bolts of learning will not significantly change due to the technology. I DO believe, however, that the expansion of AI in education will make it easier for lawmakers to pay teachers less. First, some background on "revolutionizing" schools. Public education is not one thing. In grad school I learned about the "marble cake" of education policy: schools are governed by a mix of local, state, and federal laws and rules. There's not some centralized body that forces change, at least not in the way that people talk about k-12. We have 50 states, thousands of school systems, and hundreds of thousands of schools filled with educators that have a surprising amount of autonomy to accelerate or slow down policies. That fact makes any claims of robust transformation hard to swallow. Revolution requires buy in, and so far it's not there. Also it leads to my...

Cursive is popular among policymakers because it's educational nostalgia and it doesn't cost them anything to promote Just read this post about "cursive clubs" popping up and how kids love the script and the evidence shows it's good for kids' brains and that helps explain why lawmakers are mandating the practice in elementary schools. A few things: 1. Yeah some kids love it, a lot more of us hated it 2. The evidence supporting cursive is good! And also isn't isolated to one particular script. As in: learning good penmanship helps kids internalize things but cursive isn't necessary.  3. Lawmakers support is not the same as good policy. Even if lawmakers across the ideological spectrum are promoting something. One thing you have to know about education policy is that folks who care about schools are DESPERATE for policies that are well-regarded and cheap. Cell phone bans are a good example here. There's room for a healthy debate on the role of cell ...

On Monday (May 4) I went to the Atlanta School Board meeting and spoke against the tax allocation district (TAD) extension that the mayor's office is proposing. If you're not familiar with TADs, here's a good resource . In (relatively) short: when a TAD is created, they take a section of the city and freeze the amount of property taxes collected there. Anything collected above that amount--for the time period allotted--goes to Invest Atlanta for projects that (ideally) would revitalize the area and result in higher property tax collection than if nothing were done. That means that the city, county, and schools cannot use that future revenue. Proponents point to Atlantic Station as an example of TAD success. I would like to note that the Atlantic Station was allowed to expire. The mayor's office is proposing extending 8 TADs across the city to collect ~$5 billion to invest in neighborhoods. Atlanta Public Schools would have to forgo over $3 billion in future revenue if a...