iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The idea that no one is coming to save us is disorienting, but it also can be liberating, especially if we can build and sustain the communities to make it so.

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Tom Leonard, a former member of the Michigan House, has a series of Facebook posts about getting kids into trades early and often, but his kids go to a $10,000/year Christian academy. When politicians demand trade school for your kids, tell them to put their kids in first.

A Facebook post from Tom Leonard:

Ford CEO Jim Farley sounded the alarm today: America needs 1.7 million skilled trades workers every year through 2035. Right now, we're producing just 55 workers for every 100 needed. How do we get more young people into the trades?

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

There were members of the University's dysfunctional, regressive Board of Regents that were committed to killing this initiative from the outset. This BoR is only committed to their own personal agendas and is actively hostile to students, staff, professors, alumni, and the broader community.

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Benjamin Riley @benjaminjriley.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I want to underscore that there is an ***open and active police investigation*** related to Alpha School’s boot camp. The events in question took place more than a week ago. This is major news. Alpha can refuse to answer my questions. But they cannot refuse to answer the Sheriff’s Department.

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

When I posted about this article on LinkedIn, someone sent me a study from Kentucky with a universe of 574 students who grew slightly, they think, because their teacher took LETRS. What counts as "evidence-based" and for whom? I've been told by the SoR/CogSci crowd this isn't "real research."

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Erin Vanderhoof @vanderhoofy.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I'm increasingly convinced that having these conversations about national K-12 and not about smaller age cohorts and regions is a total waste of time

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

If your methodology requires every teacher to take a 100+ hour training course that costs $1700 per person and teach from a legislatively approved scripted curriculum with "fidelity," your methodology isn't ready for real-world conditions. SoR implementation has been about enriching vendors.

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The "Science of Reading" is so cost-effective that Michigan will spend over $100 million on the unproven, 100+ hour LETRS training for all elementary teachers in addition to providing tens of millions more for districts to buy dyslexia screeners and "SoR-aligned" curriculum from an approved list.

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

This is an under-discussed facet of reading legislation: there is no mechanism for revision in most bills. For example, IDA recently changed its definition of dyslexia--and not insignificantly--but states are still working off of the previous definitions, as they've written it into their bills.

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Even if you like content of the federal or state “Science of Reading” bills, my stance is that we should be united against legislative overreach into curriculum and pedagogy, which has served to further deprofessionalize teachers and underserve students with unresponsive curriculum and instruction.

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Melissa Johnson, PhD @ladyhistorian.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I am tired of having to pretend that the value of studying my discipline solely rests on the "marketable skills" we teach. Sometimes things are just worth knowing and doing because they make your life bigger and richer.

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Marcus Luther @marcusluther.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

There is such a profound difference between a classroom assessment where a teacher is sitting silently at their desk or "proctoring" versus an assessment where a teacher is spending the entire time circling the room supporting, checking in, encouraging, etc. (Hint: the latter is the better one!)

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

The question is not one of whether kids need explicit and direct phonics instruction early on or whether dyslexic kids need more for longer, but it's about why Louisa Moats gets to control reading in the United States and why her research unsupported program is required by law in many states.

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

This article isn't about teaching reading as much as it is about who gets to control reading. LETRS, now owned by private equity, rakes in hundreds of millions in public money to be the foremost authority on reading while no research exists on its effectiveness in boosting student outcomes.

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Critical discussions about LETRS, which is not backed by research, are difficult because a) it has been marketed to educators as a way to DO SOMETHING amid the "literacy crisis" and b) teachers feel more knowledgeable after LETRS. The realities are much more complicated. time.com/article/2026...

time.com

The Woman Winning the Reading Wars

Louisa Moats’ teacher-training program is painstaking, pricey, and decades old. It’s also the hot new thing

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Ian Linkletter @linkletter.org · 27/09/2026

According to Turnitin, AI models are only trained by data belonging to customers using its AI detection feature. Time to turn it off.

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

It's very much worth looking at state (and increasingly federal) literacy policy that has strongly emphasized a narrow, technical version of literacy over a more holistic version that encompasses and encourages robust meaning making. These policies produce gifted word callers, but poor readers.

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Don’t believe people who tell you ai can be liberatory or any other misappropriation of movement talk or justice frameworks. Find some people who are preparing to rebuild and cast your lot with them. Then read a bit more. Just keep your wits about you because they are trying to run game.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Alpha School is a particularly extreme, bleeding-edge, exaggerated version of pathologies that are present in a lot of schools in different ways. Some of them are long-standing in education and not new (hierarchical logic) while others are more recent threats (surveillance via tech systems).

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AP Stylebook @apstylebook.com · 23/09/2026

Artificial intelligence systems do not think, feel, want or understand. Avoid language that gives them human characteristics.

apnews.com

https://apnews.com/article/openai-safety-ai-framework-089e75b95bc935af092da7b79d92706d

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

To enroll in Alpha, parents and students need to sign away their privacy rights. The school's handbook basically tells students and parents to assume they're being surveilled. Alpha is a digital panopticon; it provides a blueprint--a proof of concept--for policing without police.

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Prisonculture @prisonculture.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Something we have to talk more about is that event organizing post 2020 has become more expensive, more challenging at every level, and attendees have turned into Door Dash consumers. This will mean even less opportunities for gathering in the future. It was always thankless but is more so today.

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Kashana @kashana.blacksky.app · 20/09/2026

Americans: oh, look, a systemic issue. I will solve it individually

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Zach Czaia @zachczaia.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Such a rich, substantive, and heartening discussion on reading from @jaustinedu.bsky.social and @marcusluther.bsky.social. Nothing wrong with techniques but we're losing sight of VISION when it comes to our schools. And reading at the heart of it all: thebrokencopier.substack.com/p/why-the-co...

thebrokencopier.substack.com

Why the conversation about reading matters

a conversation with Jeffrey Austin

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Marcus Luther @marcusluther.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I think higher ed coverage/discourse is disproportionately driven by voices from elite institutions (Ivy League, etc.) and that is not a good thing. But I also think K-12 coverage/discourse is disproportionately driven by voices from independent/private schools and that is also not a good thing.

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Legislation mandating curriculum developed by private equity that teaches kids to be word callers rather than meaning makers will fix everything. The Dems assure us we're just one great decoding or morphology lesson away! Your kids are perpetually learning to read, their kids are reading to learn.

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John Warner @biblioracle.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

The Dean of Harvard College has been on a PR tour defending the institution's approach to AI and writing, but student testimony from inside the institution suggests that the school is retreating from human exchange as central to the learning experience. www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

thecrimson.com

I’m a Writing Tutor at Harvard. The College is Failing Us. | The Harvard Crimson

The Writing Center’s dismantling evokes a broader pattern of institutions treating human learning and connection as costs to cut, not values to protect.

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Marcus Luther @marcusluther.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I am starting to wonder if this decade in education is going to be known as the decade where the disconnect between decision-makers in education and people actually in classrooms got so wide that something was permanently broken. This just isn't sustainable.

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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 10/09/2026

Some folks will claim that this is hyperbolic, but what I wish people would understand is that tech initiatives like this serve as a means of eroding consent and lower the barrier for the persistent capture of people’s image, voice, data, or whatever else a gadget can glean.

pcmag.com

Apple's New Siri Recap Turns Every Apple Watch Into a Mass Surveillance Nightmare

Apple's always-listening AI feature promises neat summaries of your daily conversations, but it forces everyone around you into a nonconsensual recording experiment.

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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

if it took you 5 seconds of contemplation to think of an alternative you should take at least another 5-10 to at least consider the possibility that it at least crossed the minds of 1 or 2 of the people who dedicate their lives and research careers to dealing with the problems we post about on here

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Nick Covington @covingtonedu.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

"What exactly is the central pedagogical project of Alpha School? Academic achievement for what? Life skills for what? If the science of learning can’t answer those questions, who can?" My latest - "Crush Academics" & the Contradiction of Alpha School: substack.com/home/post/p-...

substack.com

“Crush Academics” & the Contradiction of Alpha School

The product for sale at Alpha School is four hours a day of exactly the kind of education its own learning scientists have spent their careers arguing doesn’t work.

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Benjamin Riley @benjaminjriley.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

The emphasis is particularly striking given that Alpha School has engaged Dr. Carl Hendrick. a vocal critic of discovery learning — in 2020 he co-authored How Learning Happens, a book that includes a chapter titled, “Why discovery learning is a bad way to discover things.”

Pic of the book "How Learning Happens" authored by Paul Kirschner and Carl Hendric

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Benjamin Riley @benjaminjriley.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Thank you Jeffrey. There's no question AI has been used. There's also new evidence Alpha School is monitoring and directing student tweets (see update to my thread). But I conducted an extensive investigation on this, there are real kids tweeting via these accounts.

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

@benjaminjriley.bsky.social's excellent reporting on Alpha suggests, with evidence, that these are real kids, so the "they're just Sam Altman bots" crew needs to carefully understand the Alpha playbook and how they are using real people and legacy systems to advance their political project.

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

So, it turns out that a) many people on this site a) owe @annieabrams.bsky.social a full apology and b) need to educate themselves on the *actual reality* in K-12 education right now. There's too many people who *think* they understand, but are sadly and wildly mistaken.

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Marcus Luther @marcusluther.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Perhaps the most troubling "literacy issue" in US education is the misuse of the word "crisis," right?

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Benjamin Riley @benjaminjriley.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

SPECIAL REPORT Last month, Alpha School invited people to follow student social media accounts "if curious about life in our high schools." I accepted their offer. What I've found shocks me. Forget the AI and ask instead: Is Alpha Schools a cult? Follow along for a summary of my findings.

buildcognitiveresonance.substack.com

SPECIAL REPORT: My So-Called Alpha School

What is it like to be a student in Alpha School’s high school boot camp?

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

The folks in the dogpile are fundamentally misunderstanding this moment in education. Alpha and its backers don't really care about truth, but what's revealed in the "student" posts is a lesson about how they will use language to tap into the status anxiety of families to sell their products.

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Jon Becker @jonbecker.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

You might want to block this account into oblivion.

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Benjamin Riley @benjaminjriley.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Corresponding with a mother who says she enrolled her child in Alpha School so they would be surrounded by "high agency people" and when I ask what that means she sends a cut-and-paste job from ChatGPT and I just.... (gestures wildly and feels his sanity slipping further into the abyss)

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Donovan Schaefer @feelingtheory.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Bluesky report card is out

L. Simpson skeptically reads her report: "A slight tendency toward know-it-all-ism"

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Accusing Annie of being paid by Alpha is total nonsense. Again, whether Alpha's posts from "students" are fake obscures the broader issues around how Alpha markets itself to families by preying on their status anxiety. They offer more success and access for less effort.

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Whether this is fake or not is beside the point. This reveals the Alpha playbook, and the transactional, "test tricks and tips" approach is appealing to folks in the hypercompetitive world of college admissions defined by scarcity. There's literally no angle folks won't take for a slight edge.

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Nick Covington @covingtonedu.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Whole book, Montessori education for me, "cognitive science in a bottle" for thee.

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Each of the stories has a point where the CogSci influencer has to reveal they would never send their own kids to Alpha. Groshell's kid gets whole books, journaling, and drawing with a human-led, small-group learning while your kid gets repeated foundational skills instruction from a math app.

5. He builds these apps - and he did not send his daughter to Alpha

I love a twist, and Zach produced a good one at the end of our chat.

Zach separates two things that usually get bundled together: the app itself, and what a child does with the rest of the day. “Alpha” is just the name for the schools at the expensive end of this network - apps in the morning, life-skills and projects in the afternoon. But the same apps are being dropped into very different models. There is Texas Sports Academy, for the child who currently suffers through a school that cannot keep order and then comes alive at half three for sport - two hours of apps in the morning, sport in the afternoon, and crucially a model cheap enough to be heading for the US voucher system. There is Montessorium in Austin, where the mornings are unapologetic Engelmann DI and the afternoons are human-led, small-group, Montessori-style academic work.

Zach chose Montessorium for his daughter. Not because he doubts the apps - he builds them - but because she loves reading whole books, journaling and drawing, and the sport-in-the-afternoon model would do nothing for her. The apps, in other words, are not a school. They are an efficient engine for getting foundational skills into a child’s head in about two hours, and that engine can live inside whatever model fits a family’s values. The morning is the foundational skills. The afternoon is where the values actually live

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Two things: 👉A lack of assessment literacy means that misunderstandings of how tests work and what scores mean erode public trust and confidence. 👉Michigan's singular emphasis on decoding through synthetic phonics will not help students reach proficiency on tests where far more is demanded.

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Ebony Elizabeth Thomas @ebonyteach.blacksky.app · 03/09/2026

Thanks to @audieverde.bsky.social for sharing this memorial. Jennifer was a professor at Saint Louis University. Past President of ALAN (NCTE). Before that, she was a 2009 alum of the Joint Program in English & Education, University of Michigan. A peer mentor for my cohort. A dear friend to many.

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Nome @nome.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Live in such a way that this affects your life not one iota.

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