iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 5h

I understand this and have great respect for the decades of literacy research that has helped inform the science of reading. Your message is an important one for policymakers and folks at places like The Reading League to hear, as they have actively turned SoR into a sociopolitical movement.

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 17h

Unfortunately, the curriculums have also become sites of identity formation (like a sports team): "Amplify is the ONLY curriculum that does it all!" or "Anita Archer's Rewards is the GOAT!" Districts also have a ton invested in these curricular resources, which makes breaking up harder to do.

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 19h

That educators are a professional class who should & will accept being puppeteered by whatever slopreneur wins a culture war. Whatever the merit of DI, what Sold A Story 2 is, is an attempt to deskill teaching & destabilize public education, so as to facilitate its capture by for-profit EdTech.

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 18h

Just a reminder that none of the so-called "miracle" states has sustained their success into 8th or 11th grade because 1) the assessments (NWEA, PSAT, SAT) are not decoding assessments and require different knowledge and skills and 2) states don't care about adolescents or adolescent literacy.

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 18h

When I write critiques of LETRS, which is both resource intensive and not supported by peer-reviewed research, people swarm my mentions to tell me how great their experience was and how much more knowledgeable they feel. Are the $100 million investments about outcomes or making people feel good?

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 18h

One of the difficulties with critiquing SoR, which is primarily a sociopolitical movement at this point, is that Hanford, et. al. have made it 1) a feeling and 2) an identity. "I am a true believer working against failed systems to solve America's literacy crisis."

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Annie Abrams @annieabrams.bsky.social · 23h

it's weird that a podcast led to a federal literacy bill

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Annie Abrams @annieabrams.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

the supercategory of bad stuff is "progressive," both pedagogically and politically

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Serious question: how many people attacking Dewey have read Dewey beyond maybe some highlighted quotes or passages?

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

I'm assuming the person in the interaction has read or heard just enough (perhaps on a certain podcast!) that "inquiry" has been failing American kids. They heard their kids hate iReady, and so, therefore, it must be inquiry.

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

The direct instruction crowd has been immensely successful in getting the general public to conflate ideas and terms (i.e.., balanced literacy and whole language, discovery and inquiry). This means that anything people don't like gets lumped into one of these categories: bad = inquiry.

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

My initial answer is no, but then I think about all of the folks who ask me if they still need to teach writing after Michigan removed the SAT essay requirement, and that gives me pause.

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

I have seen JWT brag about not only the kinds of material folks read on the CLT, but also that students need to pass an oral exam facilitated by an adult in their school. Do you think building a "better" test can lead to "better" instruction? Or at least "different" instruction? Unclear!

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

I think this is a completely correct take.

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Normally, we would look to our professional organizations for support, solidarity, and guidance, but, sadly, they are often entangled (at best) or complicit (at worst) in the erosion of writing and language. NCTE is a good example. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...

insidehighered.com

How NCTE Effectively Shut Down AI Resistance (opinion)

The National Council of Teachers of English leadership delayed and obstructed our efforts to produce two critical resources on generative AI in the months leading to the dismantling of the Conference ...

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Personally, I don't think classical approaches are the "answer" either, but, like you, I think Prather's thinking and framing is worth considering. What I would endorse is kids not having to go to a classical charter academy to get "deindustrialized education." We can do that for everyone!

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

One of the things to know about Hendrick (and others in that same group) is that racism and classism exists just under the surface of their views. Hendrick's own children get inquiry, discovery, discourse, and books; your kids and my kids just get told what to do. www1.udel.edu/educ/whitson...

www1.udel.edu

Anyon: Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Decoupling school from "industrial education"--job training, corporate control, legislative overreach, standardized testing--should be the default progressive position on public education, but, instead, policymakers and groups like DFER have doubled down to preserve corporate capture of schools.

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

A couple of weeks ago, CNN interviewed Anika Prather about Hegseth's "remake" of DoD's schools, and she made an interesting comment about how the roots of classical education were an attempt to decouple school from "industrial education."

“The classical education movement started out as a way to address how industrial education had taken us away from kids just learning how to read, write, and do math,” said Anika Prather, an assistant professor at Catholic University, who is a proponent of the pedagogy. But the views supported by Hegseth, she says, have turned it into “this Eurocentric educational philosophy that is now being supported by one of the major leaders of our country.”

“They’ve hijacked it,” she said.

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Hendrick believes that public school kids "don't have any dots to connect," but that the students at a place like Alpha, where he's paid to be the "Chief Learning Scientist," should engage in true discovery learning, entirely self-guiding through AP courses to earn a "5" on the exam.

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

Corporations will force you to use a scripted curriculum with fidelity and use tech to surveil you, police you, and ensure your compliance with the specter of more violence even as your entire world is collapsing around you.

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Charles Logan @charleswlogan.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

"There are other lessons, just as insidious, just as damaging: students do not see their writing as valuable, important work. They are trained to not believe that what they are doing -- thinking, researching, writing -- is worthy of legal protection; is worthy of the effort," writes Audrey Watters.

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com

The House that TurnItIn Built

I gave this talk this afternoon at Concordia University, as part of the SkepTech series questioning education technology. Today's bird, which does not appear anywhere in the talk, is the house sparro...

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Maybe The Reading League will have something to say about it, since they claim to care so much about reading.

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Natalie Weiner @natalieweiner.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

“Education should be about exploration,” the letter reads. “We want to go to school to connect with people, discover things, and learn....We can’t now, because of the rigidity of the new lesson plans and rules makes it almost impossible to explore new ideas...”

star-telegram.com

Hundreds of Fort Worth ISD students sign petition against scripted lessons

A student-written petition has been signed by more than 900 Fort Worth ISD students as of Tuesday morning.

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

On Banned Books Week, I think it's important to remember that soft book banning is happening in school systems all over the US.

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

It's interesting to me how hostile corporate ed reformers are to the idea of students reading books in English class: 👉 "Books are nostalgia" 👉 "Books are not in the HQIM" 👉 "Books teachers choose aren't aligned to standards" 👉 "Research suggests that excerpts are good, actually"

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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 04/10/2026

“…this idea that abuse can be mitigated if there are ‘guardrails’ in place is like saying stalking can be mitigated if there are guardrails on the stalker without actually criminalizing the stalking.”

providencejournal.com

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I love many of Shakespeare's plays on their own (Lear is my jam!), but I think @mraleosays.bsky.social and @hcodymiller.bsky.social are on to something about unlocking the dialogic power of Shakespeare and putting the voices and values in his work into conversation with other texts.

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Jeffrey Austin @jaustinedu.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Despite my...complicated...history with Shakespeare (and those committed to misunderstanding my stances), this seems right to me. It's not that there's no room for Shakespeare, but that we ought to make room for other great writers that get pushed out or set aside because of perceived obligations.

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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

A huge issue is that assessment is a complete "black box" for policymakers: they have no idea how NAEP works or what SAT data means. The instructional approaches they advocate for are misaligned with the assessments used to make policy, which is why scores are declining despite massive investment.

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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

Meanwhile, organizations like the Reading League cheerlead the passage of these bills, which leads to a key question: does the Reading League really care about reading?

The Reading League’s supportive statement on the Science of Reading Act.

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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

Sounds good, bro. Thanks for checking in.

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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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