Sunday, August 10, 2025
The Growing Call to Rein in AFT’s Embrace of AI
Here’s how TruthDig contributor, Nolan Higdon, summed up Weingarten’s crucial role in bringing unsafe AI technology into teacher rooms and student classrooms:
. . . .Big Tech’s push into education isn’t about learning. It’s about market capture. Schools offer a captive, young audience — ready to be mined for data, shaped into obedient users and sold to advertisers. These AI companies don’t want to “teach students about AI.” They want to define AI for them — framing it as inevitable, neutral and beneficial. They certainly won’t highlight its limitations, dangers or environmental toll.
They won’t teach that AI reflects the biases of its creators. They won’t teach that “AI” today is little more than a marketing label for probabilistic autocomplete systems. They won’t highlight examples like xAI’s Grok promoting Hitler rhetoric, or how AI routinely fails basic logical reasoning. And they won’t teach students how algorithmic systems entrench inequality or why surveillance-based models are fundamentally at odds with democratic education.
As shocking as AFT’s sellout is, it’s not the first time AFT President Randi Weingarten, who spent about three years as a full-time teacher, collectively, in her career, has cozied up to corporate power. Under her leadership, AFT has backed NewsGuard, a military-industrial-adjacent “news literacy” tool, and co-hosted an AI conference between AFT and Microsoft that turned out to be a Big Tech trade show. I was there. It wasn’t education — it was marketing.
This latest deal couldn’t have happened without her. As Bahat told Time magazine,“The critical thing here is that it was led by a worker organization. Randi and the AFT really drove this process.”
Let’s be clear: Any union that signs off on corporate control of the classroom isn’t defending education — it’s selling it off. It’s not just shortsighted. It’s reckless. It undermines labor. It undermines public education. And it hands over power to some of the most anti-worker, anti-democratic corporations in existence. If the AFT stays on this path, it won’t just become irrelevant — it will forfeit the right to call itself a labor union. We can’t build a just society by aligning with the very forces hollowing it out.
Saturday, August 09, 2025
New Study Finds Racist AI Bots Used to Assist Teachers
With the acceptance of $23 million from Microsoft and OpenAI for an AI teacher training institute, we now know that Randi Weingarten has led the AFT over the cliff on AI.
Meanwhile, the news media is reporting on a new Common Sense Media study that show that AI bots regularly exhibit racial bias when asked to design learning tasks or behavioral interventions for black and white children.
Asked to generate intervention plans for struggling students, AI teacher assistants recommended more punitive measures for hypothetical students with Black-coded names and more supportive approaches for students the platforms perceived as white, a new study shows.
These findings come from a report on the risks of bias in artificial intelligence tools published Wednesday by the non-profit Common Sense Media. Researchers specifically sought to evaluate the quality of AI teacher assistants — such as MagicSchool, Khanmingo, Curipod, and Google Gemini for Education — that are designed to support classroom planning, lesson differentiation, and administrative tasks.
These findings underscore the need to halt the rush to use AI bots to “assist” teachers, especially new teachers or poorly-prepared one who have never taken increasingly-rare courses that offer guidance in how to root out bias in the classroom. Special education students are particularly vulnerable to misuse of these bots.
Thursday, August 07, 2025
Tuesday, August 05, 2025
Sunday, August 03, 2025
Putin Tutored GOP on How to Establish Dictator-Controlled Oligarchy?
Sunday, July 27, 2025
AFT, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Public School Guinea Pigs
In 2023 the AFL-CIO signed an agreement with Microsoft that both parties hoped would benefit their respective organizations. The sixty unions that comprise AFL-CIO would get a promise of neutrality from Microsoft and its suppliers in the event that workers in any of those companies wanted to join a union. Microsoft also agreed to not interfere with union efforts to organize workers.
Microsoft and companies where Microsoft has significant stake such as OpenAI would get access to those 60 unions and their members in order to proselytize for AI, create problems for AI to solve, and to train workers to use AI tools to solve them.
The first union to cash in on Microsoft’s new marketing strategy for its chatbot product line turns out to be the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), whose president, Randi Weingarten, has previously embraced Microsoft technologies developed and marketed for schools (see here and here and here and here.
On July 8 of this year, AFT, Microsoft, and Anthropic announced a deal that will provide AFT with $23 million to open an AI training facility in New York City that will be the hub for a joint project to train 400,000 teachers nationwide:
The $23 million in combined support is structured as follows: Microsoft is contributing $12.5 million over five years, OpenAI is providing $8 million in direct funding plus $2 million in technical resources, and Anthropic is adding $500,000 in first-year support. This collaboration represents a significant commitment from the tech industry to ensure educators are central to the development of AI in education.
Unfortunately for America’s public school students, AFT’s and Microsoft’s deal to get ChatGBT into classrooms comes with unknown costs for the developing brains of students. The research on the effects of AI on children and adults is sparse, and the full-speed-ahead approach of AFT is not borne out by the research that doesexist.
We know, in fact, from a recently published study, Microsoft’s own researchers found that . . . "while GenAI can improve worker efficiency, it can inhibit critical engagement with work and can potentially lead to long-term overreliance on the tool and diminished skill for independent problem-solving. Higher confidence in GenAI’s ability to perform a task is related to less critical thinking effort.”
The research was conducted with 319 adult knowledge workers, who we might expect would have a greater capacity to self-regulate than developing children and adolescents. Even so “overreliance on the tool” was noted as a significant concern.
The problem of A.I. mission creep is noted, too, by Yale poet and professor, Meghan O’Rourke, in a recent New York Times guest essay:
Students often turn to A.I. only for research, outlining and proofreading. The problem is that the moment you use it, the boundary between tool and collaborator, even author, begins to blur. First, students might ask it to summarize a PDF they didn’t read. Then — tentatively — to help them outline, say, an essay on Nietzsche. The bot does this, and asks: “If you’d like, I can help you fill this in with specific passages, transitions, or even draft the opening paragraphs?”
At that point, students or writers have to actively resist the offer of help. You can imagine how, under deadline, they accede, perhaps “just to see.” And there the model is, always ready with more: another version, another suggestion, and often a thoughtful observation about something missing.
Creepiest of all the research and reflections I have cited in this post is the recounting from Meghan O’Rourke’s guest essay for the New York Times. After a month of experimenting and utilizing A.I. bots, she found herself under a spell cast by her new assistant, which left her soothed, yet uneasy:
A month in, I noticed a strange emotional charge from interacting daily with a system that seemed to be designed to affirm me. When I fed it a prompt in my voice and it returned a sharp version of what I was trying to say, I felt a little thrill, as if I’d been seen. Then I got confused, as if I were somehow now derivative.
In talking to me about poetry, ChatGPT adopted a tone I found oddly soothing. When I asked what was making me feel that way, it explained that it was mirroring me: my syntax, my vocabulary, even the “interior weather” of my poems. (“Interior weather” is a phrase I use a lot.) It was producing a fun-house double of me — a performance of human inquiry. I was soothed because I was talking to myself — only it was a version of myself that experienced no anxiety, pressure or self-doubt. The crisis this produces is hard to name, but it was unnerving.
What’s the likelihood that children could be negatively influenced or actually damaged by these bots? What’s the rush? Oh, I almost forgot—you never pause or even walk during a gold rush. Faster, faster, before someone corners the market.
The difference between the current high tech fix for education and all the failed ones that came before is that this one has the potential to alter what it means to be human. Haven’t children been abused enough by Silicon Valley??
Saturday, July 26, 2025
OK State Superintendent, Ryan Walters, Forgets to Shut His Porn Browser
Thursday, July 24, 2025
The Fascist War on Diversity Now in Accreditation Business. Call to Action!!
From the Academe Blog:
BY MATTHEW BOEDY
Every AAUP member should be concerned about the new accreditation group recently birthed in Florida. This week Louisiana became the seventh state to say it was joining.
While only for now targeting states in the South the group’s business plan shows its strategy is to take on as clients public schools in any state. Its political strategy has been named by Governor Ron DeSantis as eliminating “woke” from schools. The governor of Louisiana said its goal was the ending of DEI-driven mandates. Its academic goals are to “streamline” accreditation so that institutions can innovate more quickly.
Whatever the words by its supporters, it would be the state controlling higher education to such a degree as to merit comparison to the era when the AAUP was founded. Whatever the faults of the accreditation system and any specific outlet, the system has stood in the way of those who want to move fast and break things such as academic freedom and shared governance.
The Florida university system was the first to join the new group. I can only assume that as boards begin to meet for the academic year, other states that initially expressed interest like mine in Georgia will officially join. And soon thereafter comes a director and board members. From there the business plan suggests six schools in those states as its first clients.
The only obstacle may be the price tag. That business plan says each founding state will give $4 million or equal labor to get the effort off the ground and into a future where it can rely on accreditation fees. It may take up to two years for the new group to get federal recognition and the prize of federal funding for its accredited schools. But the pieces will be put in place this fall. The time for faculty to act is now.
This is why I am calling on all faculty senates in public colleges across the South (and beyond) to pass resolutions disapproving of the new group and urging its administration and overseers at all levels not to join.
This kind of effort must be networked and done with speed. Fortunately for traditionally slow moving senates we have a model of a quickly developing process in the Mutual Defense Compact that flew through this spring in mainly Big Ten schools. There must be SEC and ACC and Big Twelve versions.
I took the liberty of revising that initial resolution for this new use. Feel free to revise and use as you see fit:
Faculty Statement Against Political Power Grab of Accreditation
WHEREAS recent and escalating politically motivated actions by governmental bodies pose a significant threat to the foundational principles of American higher education, including the autonomy of university governance, the integrity of scientific research, and the protection of free speech;
WHEREAS state governments across the South and aligned political actors at the federal level have targeted the independence of institutional accreditation with legal, financial, and political incursion designed to undermine the accrediation process and exert improper control over academic administration;
WHEREAS these state governments have routinely undermined faculty governance and academic freedom with state laws and policies;
WHEREAS these same state governments will choose the board members of the Commission for Public Higher Education and that board will chose a director, offices that will direct the commission;
WHEREAS these same state governments will financially invest in the commission up to $4 million;
WHEREAS that money and influence will corrupt the independent accreditation process and allow states to steer colleges and universities toward policies, curriculum, hiring standards, and institutional benchmarks that will undermine higher education’s role in our democracy;
THEREFORE, be it RESOLVED that this faculty senate urges the administration of this school and its state higher education system leaders to formally declare it won’t become a client of the commission as long as it is overseen by state governments.
Matthew Boedy is president of the Georgia AAUP. He can be reached on X/Twitter and Bluesky.
Monday, July 21, 2025
Twenty Years Ago Today
On July 21, 2005 I started a blog called Schools Matter. And just a few days ago, we crossed the 20 million views threshold.
Twenty years later we are still plagued by high stakes tests and the corporate ed reform agenda. Added to these challenges, education as an idea and an institution is under attack as fascists attempt to dismantle all democratic institution and values, including facts, truth, science, art, speech, and intellectual and body freedom.
My thanks to all the writers, scholars, and bloggers who, too, thought schools mattered during the past two decades: Susan Ohanian, Judith Ann Rabinowitz, Peter Campbell, Kenneth Libby, Paul Thomas, Stephen Krashen, Doug Martin, Ken Derstine, and someone I know I’ve forgotten (please remind me). Thank you.
Sunday, July 20, 2025
Thursday, July 17, 2025
Tuesday, July 15, 2025
MIT Research on Student Use of AI Exposes Serious Cognitive and Behavioral Concerns
Slate published an important article today that explores what it's like for college students who resist the short-cuts to learning that artificial intelligence provides. It’s well worth reading and should give pause to the race to embrace these flawed robots that are erasing humans from a growing list of occupational fields, while debasing the cognitive growth of students of all ages who are allowed or encouraged to use these little-understood technologies.
Among the many links provided in the piece, I followed this one to an MIT study published last month that scientifically compared neural and behavioral functioning among groups of students who engaged in essay writing with and without computer assistance. Here is the abstract (my bolds):
This study explores the neural and behavioral consequences of LLM-assisted essay writing. [LLM refers to Large Language Models, i.e., AI tools]. Participants were divided into three groups: LLM, Search Engine, and Brain-only (no tools). Each completed three sessions under the same condition. In a fourth session, LLM users were reassigned to Brain-only group (LLM-to-Brain), and Brain-only users were reassigned to LLM condition (Brain-to-LLM). A total of 54 participants took part in Sessions 1-3, with 18 completing session 4. We used electroencephalography (EEG) to assess cognitive load during essay writing, and analyzed essays using NLP, as well as scoring essays with the help from human teachers and an AI judge. Across groups, NERs, n-gram patterns, and topic ontology showed within-group homogeneity. EEG revealed significant differences in brain connectivity: Brain-only participants exhibited the strongest, most distributed networks; Search Engine users showed moderate engagement; and LLM users displayed the weakest connectivity. Cognitive activity scaled down in relation to external tool use. In session 4, LLM-to-Brain participants showed reduced alpha and beta connectivity, indicating under-engagement. Brain-to-LLM users exhibited higher memory recall and activation of occipito-parietal and prefrontal areas, similar to Search Engine users. Self-reported ownership of essays was the lowest in the LLM group and the highest in the Brain-only group. LLM users also struggled to accurately quote their own work. While LLMs offer immediate convenience, our findings highlight potential cognitive costs. Over four months, LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels. These results raise concerns about the long-term educational implications of LLM reliance and underscore the need for deeper inquiry into AI's role in learning.
And here are the researchers' conclusions:
As we stand at this technological crossroads, it becomes crucial to understand the full spectrum of cognitive consequences associated with LLM integration in educational and informational contexts. While these tools offer unprecedented opportunities for enhancing learning and information access, their potential impact on cognitive development, critical thinking, and intellectual independence demands a very careful consideration and continued research.
The LLM undeniably reduced the friction involved in answering participants' questions compared to the Search Engine. However, this convenience came at a cognitive cost, diminishing users’ inclination to critically evaluate the LLM's output or ”opinions (probabilistic answers based on the training datasets). This highlights a concerning evolution of the 'echo chamber' effect: rather than disappearing, it has adapted to shape user exposure through algorithmically curated content. What is ranked as “top” is ultimately influenced by the priorities of the LLM’s shareholders [123, 125].
Only a few participants in the interviews mentioned that they did not follow the “thinking” [124] aspect of the LLMs and pursued their line of ideation and thinking.
Regarding ethical considerations, participants who were in the Brain-only group reported higher satisfaction and demonstrated higher brain connectivity, compared to other groups. Essays written with the help of LLM carried a lesser significance or value to the participants (impaired ownership, Figure 8), as they spent less time on writing (Figure 33), and mostly failed to provide a quote from their essays (Session 1, Figure 6, Figure 7).
Human teachers “closed the loop” by detecting the LLM-generated essays, as they recognized the conventional structure and homogeneity of the delivered points for each essay within the topic and group.
We believe that the longitudinal studies are needed in order to understand the long-term impact of the LLMs on the human brain, before LLMs are recognized as something that is net positive for the humans.
Thursday, July 10, 2025
Saturday, July 05, 2025
Thursday, July 03, 2025
Trump Sycophant, Andy Ogles, Still Under Investigation
Tuesday, July 01, 2025
Saturday, June 28, 2025
Media Fact-Checks Liar-in-Chief on Spending Bill
It is not at all surprising that the felon in the Oval Office, who uttered over 30,000 documented lies during his first term as President, would appear repeatedly to do what he does the best to promote his horrific plan that aims to redistribute wealth in the U.S. by robbing the poor to feed the rich. CNN is just one source to fact check Trump’s appearance on Thursday to roll out impressive collection of lies, impressive even for twice-impeached convicted felon.
Here’s a summary from CNN (please read the whole piece for details):
In a White House speech on Thursday, Trump falsely claimed Medicaid is “left the same” by the bill. In fact, both the version of the legislation that was narrowly passed by the House in May and the latest version now being contemplated by the Senate contain major Medicaid policy changes and funding cuts that are expected to result in millions of people losing insurance coverage.
Trump also falsely claimed that the bill includes “no tax” on Social Security benefits. The legislation would not actually fulfill Trump’s campaign promise to completely eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits, though it would temporarily give seniors a substantially bigger tax deduction. And Trump falsely claimed that “there’ll be a 68% tax increase” if Congress doesn’t approve the bill; there is no credible estimate of anything close to a 68% hike.
Trump also falsely cla
In a White House speec
Friday, June 27, 2025
Thursday, June 26, 2025
Andy Ogles Turns Christofascist Disciple of Steve Berger
Secretive D.C. Influence Project Appears to Be Running a Group House for Right-Wing Lawmakers
by Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan and Alex Mierjeski
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
For a project explicitly designed to influence Congress, Steve Berger’s operation has left a scant paper trail. The archconservative evangelical pastor, who started a D.C. nonprofit a few years ago to shape national policy, does not file lobbying reports. His group does not show up in campaign finance records.
There is a simple way to glimpse his effort’s expanding reach in Washington, however: Pay attention to who is walking out the front door of his Capitol Hill townhouse. New evidence suggests Berger may be running what amounts to a group house for conservative lawmakers, with multiple members of Congress living with him at his organization’s headquarters.
The six-bedroom, $3.7 million home is owned by a multimillion-dollar Republican donor.
Rep. Andy Ogles, a Tennessee Republican who is among President Donald Trump’s most aggressive allies in Congress, has been at the house on multiple days over the past two weeks, according to people who live in the area. Video reviewed by ProPublica showed Ogles leaving the townhouse with bags on Feb. 27. As he left, he locked up the front door and pocketed the keys to the house.
As ProPublica reported last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson is living in the townhouse. And Dan Bishop, a former congressman from North Carolina now nominated for a powerful post in Trump’s White House, appears to have lived there until recently as well.
Berger has said his goal is to “disciple” members of Congress so what “they learn is then translated into policy.” He has claimed to have personally spurred legislation, saying a senator privately credited him with inspiring a bill.
Berger, Bishop and Ogles did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for Johnson previously said the speaker pays fair-market rent for the part of the townhouse he occupies but didn’t answer questions about the specific rate. He said Johnson has not spoken to the pastor about “any matter of public policy.”
Ogles is in only his third year in Congress, but he’s drawn attention for his bombastic displays of fealty to Trump. He recently introduced a resolution to amend the Constitution so that Trump could serve a third term as president. He’s filed articles of impeachment against multiple judges who’ve ruled against the new administration. (Last week, Elon Musk posted a video of Ogles touting his impeachment efforts, set to the beat from the rap song “Shook Ones, Pt. II.”)
Ogles’ short tenure is also notable for the pace of scandal that’s followed it. He has faced allegations that he inflated his resume, claiming alternatively to have been an economist, a member of law enforcement and an expert on international sex trafficking, NewsChannel 5 in Nashville reported. (Ogles has acknowledged at least one mistake on his resume but said that “my body of work speaks for itself.”)
Last year, the FBI seized his phone during an investigation and obtained a search warrant to review records associated with his personal email address. Federal investigators were seeking evidence related to potential campaign finance violations, according to a court filing. The scope of the FBI investigation remains unclear.
Perhaps no one is more responsible for Ogles’ rise in politics than Lee Beaman, the Tennessee businessman who owns the Capitol Hill townhouse. When Ogles announced a short-lived Senate bid in 2017, Beaman said he planned to raise $4 million to support the run. Beaman, whose wealth derives from a large car dealership chain, then served as campaign treasurer in Ogles’ successful 2022 run for the House.
Beaman and Berger have publicly advocated together for numerous specific policy changes, in areas including foreign affairs, fuel efficiency standards and removing barriers to firing federal employees. After the 2020 election, they both signed a letter declaring that Trump was the rightful winner and calling for Congress to overturn the results. (Beaman did not respond to requests for comment. ProPublica could not determine whether he and the pastor have discussed policy issues with Ogles during his time in Congress.)
In sermons, Berger has devoted long stretches to attacking the separation of church and state, as well as COVID-19 vaccines. The pastor used violent language to describe his disdain for “LGBTQ+ Pride” parades and “drag queen story hour” during an interview for a podcast in 2022, according to unpublished footage obtained by ProPublica.
“If I was left to myself, I’d take a baseball bat and beat the hell out of every single one of them. And not feel bad about it,” Berger said. “I have to go, ‘You know what? That’s probably not the will of God, is it?’ And obviously it’s not.”
Beyond his ownership of the townhouse, Beaman’s role in the pastor’s influence project is unclear. After Beaman purchased the house in 2021, a lawyer sought to change it from a single-family dwelling to a “boarding house/rooming house,” according to Washington, D.C., property records. Around that time, Berger’s nonprofit group, Ambassador Services International, registered the home as its address.
Members of Congress are allowed to live anywhere, as long as they pay fair-market rent, experts said. Discounts on rent are generally seen as improper gifts and prohibited by House ethics rules.
Beaman has said he got to know Ogles when Ogles was the Tennessee director of Americans for Prosperity, part of the Koch brothers’ political network. Beaman and Ogles joined forces to fight a mass transit project in Nashville and reportedly worked together on a successful effort to repeal the estate tax in their home state. After leaving the Koch network, Ogles served four years as the mayor of a Middle Tennessee county with a population of roughly 100,000. He held that role until 2022, when he was elected to Congress.
Ogles’ 2022 campaign was the subject of a blistering House ethics report released this year. The nonpartisan Office of Congressional Ethics concluded that there is “substantial reason to believe” that Ogles’ campaign had accepted illegally large donations and then falsely reported that the funds had come from Ogles himself. Ogles has said he is “confident that any reporting problem was at worst an honest mistake.” (Beaman was not named in the report and has not been accused of wrongdoing.)
The report said that Ogles refused to cooperate with the investigation. It recommended that the House Ethics Committee issue a subpoena to the congressman.
Do you have any information we should know about Steve Berger, Rep. Andy Ogles or Speaker Mike Johnson? Justin Elliott can be reached by email at justin@propublica.org and by Signal or WhatsApp at 774-826-6240. Josh Kaplan can be reached by email at joshua.kaplan@propublica.org and by Signal or WhatsApp at 734-834-9383.
