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By Thomas Ultican 8/11/2026 The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) withdrew support for The Primary School (TPS) a private school in East Palo Alto that they founded. CZI also withdrew support for the associated smaller Woodroe Woods School across the bay in San Leandro. When it was revealed that CZI support would be withdrawn, both schools […]
By Thomas Ultican 7/22/2026 In California, we call them GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) students, other states have their own designations. Whatever label gifted and talented students are given, these programs are fraught with controversy. The smell of elitism bothers many people and how students in the programs are identified sparks equity concerns. There is […]
By Thomas Ultican 7/5/2026 Like the above title indicates, I was quite taken by Thomas Courtney’s book, Dystopian School Tales. I liked it so much, I went to Amazon to write a glowing report for the book and found that they will not accept book reviews on it. The book is published by The Educator’s […]
By Thomas Ultican 6/18/2026 A new report from the Network for Public Education (NPE) documents the ongoing demolition of public schools. For more than a century, public education has provided the means by which the diverse American public became naturally homogenized. At the same time, they have made the US’s vast population the most well-educated […]
By Thomas Ultican 6/9/2026 STEM educators at the University of California (UC) are calling for re-implementing standardized testing for enrollment. This move would be great for the people cashing in on students and for maintaining elitism. However, it is financially harmful to families and undermines equity. Multiple research efforts show that high school transcripts and […]
By Thomas Ultican 5/19/2026 Recently both the New York Times and the billionaire propaganda rag ‘The 74’ ran articles about the National Assessment of Education Progress’s (NAEP) declining scores. For more than a decade reading and math scores have been declining and the authors of both articles postulated that the cause is either social media […]
By Thomas Ultican 5/4/5026 ‘The 74’ was created by billionaires in 2015 to accelerate privatizing public education. Lately, wealthy people have been buying established media with excellent reputations. These acquired media of course do not exclusively concentrated on education like ‘The 74’ but they do cover it. Last November, former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan […]
By Thomas Ultican 4/20/2026 School districts throughout America are being pushed to spend huge dollars to implement artificial intelligence (AI). This Silicon Valley oligarch plan is much more about profits than good education. It is true that AI has great potential but for schools the known downsides are much larger than its present benefits. Education […]
By Thomas Ultican 4/10/2026 Trump’s billionaire education leader, Linda McMahon, claimed on Fox News, “We’re doing terribly, I mean, our education system’s failed our kids.” Like a typical oligarch, she bolstered her point by mischaracterizing NAEP assessment levels stating, “only about 30% of high school and eighth graders can read proficiently or do math proficiently.” […]
By Thomas Ultican 3/22/2026 Twenty-six American states have a mandatory third-grade retention policy for students who do not pass the state’s reading exam and Maryland is set to implement that policy in 2027. According to researchers, this is bad thinking based on intuition not science. Writing for Education Trust, Brittney Davis declared, “The research is […]
