Wilks and Dunn lies about schools exposed from the inside

Great two-part piece by Pro Publica, working with the Trib, dropped last week, about wingnut attempts to reshape public schools — from someone who was on the ground for this.

Courtney Gore is a Granbury ISD school board member who got elected because she regurgitated all the nonsense about how public schools were teaching critical race theory, offering inappropriate messages and library books about sexuality, etc. She hosts a local Christian talk radio show where she talked about this.

Then, after she got elected, she actually investigated.

And, she saw the light.

She’d examined curriculum related to social-emotional learning, which has come under attack by Christian conservatives who say it encourages children to question gender roles and prioritizes feelings over biblical teachings. Instead, Gore found the materials taught children “how to be a good friend, a good human.” 

Gore rushed to share the news with the hard-liners who had encouraged her to run for the seat. She expected them to be as relieved and excited as she had been. But she said they were indifferent, even dismissive, because “it didn’t fit the narrative that they were trying to push.” 

So, in the spring of 2022, Gore went public with a series of Facebook posts. She told residents that her backers were using divisive rhetoric to manipulate the community’s emotions. They were interested not in improving public education but rather in sowing distrust, Gore said. 

“I’m over the political agenda, hypocrisy bs,” Gore wrote. “I took part in it myself. I refuse to participate in it any longer. It’s not serving our party. We have to do better.”

She didn't shut up, though:

Gore said she feels that she was unwittingly part of a statewide effort to weaken local support of public schools and lay the groundwork for a voucher system. 

And she said that unless she and others sound the alarm, residents won’t realize what is happening until it is too late. 

I feel like if I don’t speak out, then I’m complicit,” Gore said. “I refuse to be complicit in something that’s going to hurt children.”

And, of course, it got worse after that. Granbury ISD has to supply security at school board meetings, in part, to escort her to and from her car.

Because of that outspokenness, Gore is facing backlash from the same people who supported her race. She has been threatened at raucous school board meetings and shunned by people she once considered friends. 

School marshals escort her and her fellow board members to their cars to ensure no one accosts them.

What do you expect, when the leader of the movement, the grüppenführer, Tim Dunn, is normally known by his title of "Christofascist"?

And, that leads us to Part 2, where Gore talks more in depth, and more directly, about Dunn and his partners in crime, Farris and Dan Wilks.

Cooke GOP candidate forum an eyeroll

Cooke County Republican Women had the first of two candidate forums Jan. 4. At the regional level, it featured the four contenders for Texas Senate District 30, and locally, the four for County Commissioner Precinct 1.

It was a hoot even before the forum itself, in the GOP wimmin's business affairs. A speaker said they were soliciting for thank you cards for the border, presumably for Border Patrol agents and Texas National Guard members also serving there. I imagine something like this:

Thank you cards for the border? 

“We’re glad you’re tonking a tonk!” 

So, are La Migra, and the Texas National Guard, not getting enough money? 

Why doesn’t Strangeabbott directly pay them?

Naturally, this is called an Americanism project. I tried not to laugh out loud, thinking of Alan Alda as Hawkeye Pierce mentioning exactly this on a M*A*S*H episode.

The forum? They're nutters. (I had not yet googled full bios of any of them.)

On State Senate District 30, Jace Yarbrough is, if not a full antivaxxer, then a COVID nutter. Brent Hagenbuch, like Yarbrough, is a wingnut culture warrior. Cody Clark sounded humane, but wearing a baseball cap at such a debate looked a bit off-putting. And, after his intro, he sounded like just another Republican, also mentioning “woke” and supporting book banning. Yarbrough thinks a health clinic in Denton ISD is the camel’s nose for “trans care,” though he didn’t say that. Carrie De Moor a nutter on health issues, claiming that even Republicans were trying to promote universal health care, while at the same time claiming that this was about insurance companies, too. De Moor said Arizona’s system works on vouchers. Her answer otherwise seemed to indicate she opposed standardized testing for private schools or homeschooling with voucher money. (And thus my idea that she wasn't good enough for Dan Patrick on vouchers is kaput.)

At the local level, in the commissioners court?

None of the challengers knocked off the king, Gary Hollowell, at least in public, on the Precinct 1 County Commissioner race. Casey Fain came closest with his repeated emphasis on a capital improvement plan. Phil Elmore was the one candidate of the four to mention being a constitutional conservative.

Florida book ban lawsuit looks fun, but likely full of trouble

Escambia County Schools (that's Pensacola, Panhandle, Redneck Riviera) is being sued by the big book publishers plus PEN for various book bans. The lawsuit looks fun. Winnable? Different.

First? Gotta loovvveee school board member Bill Slayton:

"We have been removing books that have been called inappropriate, pornography," he said. "I guess I'm a little surprised because this is going on all over the state of Florida, not just here. My reaction is our procedures are following what we have been told we have to do."

Sounds like Nazis' version of "just following orders."

Winnable? Different story.

This sounds great:

Suzanne Nossel, the CEO of PEN America, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement the freedom to read “is guaranteed by the constitution.”

But, the Supreme Court has in the past said the First Amendment doesn't fully extend to children. Hazelwood is one example, a ruling tightened in Morse, the famous "Bong hits for Jesus" case. OTOH, by denying cert, the Court let stand the Guiles ruling, which indirectly and partially goes against. It's also said the right to an education is not fundamental.

The Fourteenth Amendment grounds might sound better, but there again, there's the school in loco parentis.

American Exceptionalism crumbles in the face of coronavirus

As school districts around the country propose closing for three weeks, with two weeks of extended spring break, followed by a week of online learning, this looks like a bunch of ex post facto actions that nobody has any idea of whether they will work that well or not, either in terms of quasi-quarantine, or in terms of addressing what they're disrupting, like school attendance.

Let's start with that, per a set of tweets of mine from last night.

First, the extended spring break? That will work out how well?

Sooo .... more and more school districts are going to take an extended spring break? And during the actual second week of spring break before a third week of online classes, teens w/cars, esp. ... will ...
Go to the movies?
Do we force Cinemark to close next?
Go to malls? 1/x

— Biden Screwed Bernie's Pooch 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) March 13, 2020

Seriously. I'm not joking.

I don't know about younger students, but teens will likely go to the movies, or what's left of malls in America if they've got wheels. Are we really going to push malls and movie theaters to close? If they don't, are we going to expect capitalist corporations like Cinemark to invest a buttload of extra money into sanitary measures?

If you're a regular reader here, you know the answer to that.

And, if you DO do that, then what next? Especially with teens of the male gender, are you prepared for a rise in petty vandalism and hoodlumism out of frustrated boredom? Or are you prepared for a bunch of teen boys and girls with three weeks straight of hang-out time? Religious Right parents, are you ready for a new outbreak of preggers daughters?

Now, about that week of online classes afterward?

As for wk of online classes many school districts propose after 2 weeks spring break?
If y're a poor family wi/no home puter, you do what?
If y're a school dist, how do you fix this?
Buy them all puters & Net access? Money from??
Have group streaming? Oops, defeated purpose. 2/x

— American Exceptionalism, meet coronavirus 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) March 13, 2020

And, you know the typical school district is pretty tightly strapped. Many of them don't even have enough cheap-ass Chromebooks to pull something like this off. And, here in Tex-ass? The Texas Education Agency ain't helping out, and with an every-other-year Lege, ain't in position to do so anyway. All this is going to do is further expose the "digital divide" section of American income inequality.

And, will expose plain old inequality.

Are school districts going to give poor parents who are working during school hours money for a week or two of extra child care? Doubt that one, too. Help out if they're on free, or even reduced, lunch program? You know the answer there as well.

But, this is just symptomatic of a larger disease. If you're a regular reader, you know its name. 

A lot of this seems ill-conceived as well as semi-panicky. Doorknob forbid an actual Spanish flu hit today rather than #coronavirus.
This really is symptomatic of American exceptionalism. Pretend bad things won't happen, or good things magically stay in place after bldg. 3/x

— American Exceptionalism, meet coronavirus 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) March 13, 2020

By the "bldg" at end, I mean things like highways and bridges, sewer and water infrastructure, and so forth. On a lot of civil engineering, America is great at building stuff.

And it's atrocious at maintaining stuff.

Sprawl, white flight, NIMBY-ism and many other things contribute. But so does a part of American Exceptionalism, that, as I said, believes American shit is built tougher than Ford tough or whatever.

It ain't.

Per the issue at hand, coronavirus and control, I was asked — rhetorically — on Twitter if I have either kids or parents at home.

No, I don't. And my own age, and vulnerability likelihood, are irrelevant in a sense anyway.

Public health, and public health policy, is about  PUBLIC issues.

N=1 stories, whether the 1 is an individual or a family, are real.

They're also anecdotes, and private anecdote.

I don't apologize for being unafraid to publicly state that some over-reaction seems to be happening, while at the same time rejecting denialism. It's my take on public health and public policy about public health.

Beyond that, re the specific issue of school closures, I also have professional knowledge to relate of multiple school districts that I know of that ramped up precautionary measures weeks ago. Maybe Houston ISD and Fort Bend ISD are that incompetent. At the same time, I know of a local community college district that's already gone the panic route. (Students in college are much more likely to be wired for a week of online classes, at least.)

In addition, we're in Tex-ass. Respiratory viruses in general lose communicability in warmer weather. Colds and other coronaviruses we already have more information on tend to recede with the seasons; most infectious disease experts believe the same is likely (though not known for sure) with COVID-19.

But, it's not just Texas. Denver is closing its schools for this time period. So is all of Ohio and all of New Mexico. Panic? Yes, given that the normal isolation time is 14 days, not 21.

That said, IF school districts had better prepared in advance, this wouldn't necessarily be a bad idea. It might even be good to very good. But that's a counterfactual.

That's on top of New Mexico banning all public gatherings of more than 100 people. Really? You gonna arrest people in Santa Fe, Taos and elsewhere a month from now when they gather to watch Penitentes over Holy Week? Have fun with that.

But, let's move back to the big picture, per my fourth Tweet in the thread:

Then, when the eggshell of #AmericanExceptionalism crumbles, as it did after 9/11 just as with the #CoronavirusPandemic say "oh shit" and engage in ex post facto actions that may or may not work that well.

Off to blog. May add to thread. 4/x

— American Exceptionalism, meet coronavirus 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) March 13, 2020

And it did crumble then, and is crumbling today, in something not a lot stronger than a light breeze.

We can point to Trump being a Republican as well as an idiot, and to Bush being a Republican and a semi-idiot. But, despite Obama having some now-gutted preparedness issues in place, who knows if the same hysteria, overall, wouldn't have happened when he was president? Or 50 percent of it, at least? And, state and local governments aren't Trump or Obama. And all have had months to think of something since China, and several weeks since Iran and Italy.

I haven't even touched on the bullshit of the Fed's $1.5 trillion quantitative easing plus.

That's because nobody inside the duopoly would support my idea of nationalizing the shit out of some companies.

Meanwhile, as I note in a second post, there's plenty of science and math illiteracy among the general populace, and there's even more irrationality, not because some people are idiots but because lack of rationality really is default human nature.

And, in a third post, I talk about medical lying and Chinese nationalist conspiracy-mongering, all part of Xi Jinping Thought.

TX Progressives look at police politicization, school finance, nature, more

The Texas Progressive Alliance hopes everyone enjoyed the three day weekend provided by the labor movement, and fights for its future, as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff reported on a busy week at the State Supreme Court, which heard the school finance appeal as well as a case involving the city's of Houston's anti-pollution ordinances.

Libby Shaw at Texas Kaos and contributing to Daily Kos is disgusted by the right wing's politicization of a horrible tragedy in Houston. Harris Co. (Houston) TX Needs a New Sheriff.

SocraticGadfly, having edited photos from last month, shares National Parks' geographic beauty, wildlife, history and astrophotography, in photos, narrative and photo album links from his most recent vacation.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme thinks Bexar County Sheriff Susan Pamerleau should be ashamed of herself for inviting death threats and hate on the TV station that broadcast video of her deputies shooting a man.  Now we're supposed to trust her investigation of the incident?

PDiddie at Brains and Eggs finished posting about Houston's citywide races on the November ballot with At Large 4, At Large 5, and the controller's contest.

Looking for a balance in a complicated world, Neil at All People Have Value visited the place were Deputy Darren Goforth was killed in Harris County and the location in Prairie View of the incident that led to the police death of Sandra Bland. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

================

And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

Scott Braddock explains how Texas Republicans are sending mixed signals to business interests.

Better Texas Blog is ready for a school finance solution.

TransGriot gives you some reasons to fight for the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance.

The Texas Election Law Blog fears that with redistricting still unsettled, the 2016 primaries could be a mess.

Newsdesk looks back at the Austin smoking ban, ten years after its implementation.

Grits for Breakfast, in an apparent exclusive, takes an in-depth look at some new issues in forensic DNA evaluation.

Fascist Dyke Motors starts a rumor she's having an affair with Huma Abedin. Katy, did you get any secret emails out of it?

Texas GOP sees #mandate for further slashing — schools face new knife

My header should offer enough explainer for this press release by state Sen. Charles Schwertner:

Today, Senator Charles Schwertner, MD (R-Georgetown) filed SB 134, also known as the Small Business Tax Relief Act.  If passed, SB 134 will establish a permanent $5 million total revenue exemption from the state's business franchise tax and provide critical tax relief for tens of thousands of Texas businesses.  

"Today, I'm proud to file a landmark tax cut for the hard-working small business owners that create jobs and drive our Texas economy," said Schwertner. "For many small and medium-sized businesses struggling to make it, the state franchise tax represents an unreasonable and unnecessary tax burden that only serves to limit job growth and stifle new investment. 

The Texas Comptroller's Office estimates that the Small Business Tax Relief Act (SB 134) would provide over $440 million in annual tax relief, while exempting over 65,000 small businesses that would otherwise pay the state's business franchise tax.  These small businesses represent over 55% of all entities required to remit payment under the current franchise tax structure. 

Unlike past proposals to eliminate the franchise tax entirely, SB 134 won't generate a multi-billion dollar budget shortfall and can be achieved with modest impact to state revenue.  The Comptroller's Office estimates that raising the exemption to $5 million would result in a 9.17% decrease in overall revenue collected by the franchise tax.
"This fiscally responsible approach provides meaningful tax relief to the small businesses who need it most, while still maintaining a balanced budget," said Schwertner. "It just makes sense." 

Small business advocates have consistently argued that the franchise tax disproportionately affects small to medium-sized Texas businesses -- particularly in those industries marked by high gross receipts but marginal overall profits.

Let's work through this baby.

First, is paragraph 2 correct? Along with the last graf, probably, in part.

Is Schwertner's answer the right one?

Not at all, without getting higher end business to pay more.

And, no, a $440 million tax cut is small potatoes to a multi-billion tax elimination, of course.

So, Schwertner comes off tries to come off looking like a kinder, gentler Republican.

Wrong!

$440 million is $440 million, period. 

It's "only" a couple of hundred dollars per each child in Texas public schools.

And, beyond that, every time a Texas Republican tries to perform actual math on the Texas franchise tax, they get it wrong, and the cuts are worse than claimed, to boot.

I hope this gets brought up in the state's appeal of Judge John Dietz's ruling that Texas' school finance system is unconstitutional. Gov-elect Strangeabbott has claimed to see nothing wrong with it, and now, his minions want to cut school finance even more.

Why Texas' debthole could be well over $27B

Why? Why might the nominal two-year deficit of the state of Texas, set at $27 billion if the GOPocrats actually wanted to maintain the current level of services, potentially be much worse than that?

Because the crunch in the housing market may not have bottomed out yet in Texas, that's why.

Proof? Foreclosure rates for 2010 in all of Texas biggest metro areas climbed well above those of 2009.

Houston was up 26 percent, the highest percentage increase in top 50 metro areas. Austin up 22 percent. Dallas-Fort Worth up 16 percent from 2009. San Antonio up about 13 percent.

That said, this is still all relative right now, as none of the cities' foreclosure rates cracks the top 100 metro areas for 2010. But, it could foreshadow more problems in 2011, which the Texas Legislature had better consider on things like school funding.

I've already said I wouldn't be surprised if the state faced yet another lawsuit over school funding issues. With it likely, in my estimation, that foreclosure rates in Texas metro areas will get worse this year than 2010, the likelihood of that lawsuit increases.

And, here's more on why those numbers might increase.

“Deep fault lines of risk remain and could potentially trigger more waves of foreclosure activity in 2011 and beyond,” RealtyTrac Chief Executive Officer James J. Saccacio said.

The number of U.S. homes receiving a foreclosure filing will jump 20 percent this year as unemployment remains high, RealtyTrac said earlier this month.

The 10 cities with the highest foreclosure rates last year all had fewer filings than in 2009, the company said today. Six of them -- five in California -- also had declines from 2008. Still, filings “remained five to 10 times higher than historic norms in most of those hard-hit markets,” Saccacio said.

Further thought that, even as the subprime bubble in the Southwest starts to deflate, it could keep up in Texas.

One reason for this? A number of SoCal residents retired, sold out, and moved to Texas rather than California. In many cases, their investments may have gone south, payments on the houses they sold (or rented out) may be in disarray, and so forth.

I expect foreclosure issues to get significantly worse in 2011, followed by modest to moderate improvement in 2012.

If, with that, school districts win a funding lawsuit, the debthole is probably more like $40 billion.

Hey, buddy, can you spare $15B in fees?

Yep, the Texas Lege is going to pass a balanced budget that will close a $27 billion gap (NOT $15 billion, you have to allow for natural growth in programs) without raising taxes or touching the rainy day fund.

Well, the GOP's backdoor taxes, otherwise known as fees, won't do it, no matter how laughably transparent they are.

Here's the one I love:

State employees and retirees who smoke would pay a $30-a-month "tobacco user monthly premium surcharge," raising an estimated $42 million for the budget.

Yep, that's from the same Rick Perry and GOP legislative wingnuts who want to "get government off the people's back."

I guess that doesn't include spying on state employees, let alone retirees, to see if they're smoking or not.

An "electronic filing of documents fee"? The state already charges you to renew a car registration online. So, are we going to get fee double-dipped?

Short answer? Of course we will.

You know what's coming?

You know how colleges, starting a couple of decades ago, started charging more and more activity and user fees?

Well, if you're sending a kid to public school ... don't be surprised if you get stuck with some fees. But, what about kids already on free lunches? Ahh, well, social Darwinism says they probably shouldn't be in school anyway.

Oh, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, are you really sure you want to get rid of your state's income tax and lean on sales taxes? (And double-dipping fees?)

And, do you want to base your optimism on such a revenue structure on nutbars such as former Texas Rep. Talmadge Heflin?

Those who had claimed a massive Texas budget shortfall made assumptions about future spending that do not square with the realities of the legislative budget process. Agencies present legislators with optimistic or inflated requests, and legislators almost always pare those back to fit within the available revenue. The paring is much more aggressive during revenue difficulties.

Texas. The Ponzi State.™

If it's mandatory, it's not volunteer

At school districts, that includes not just students who have required community service, which goes against the spirit of that type of service, but also includes parents, mainly moms.

And now, parents are pushing back against school demands, even as budget-strapped school districts redefine "volunteer":

As local and state economies continue to struggle, budget cuts to rich and poor school systems are increasing the reliance on unpaid parent help. The need is so great that some school districts, like a couple of specialty schools in Prince William County, Va., have made it mandatory to commit to a small amount of volunteer time, and others are considering it. In San Jose, Calif., one elementary school district has been discussing a proposal that the families of its 13,000 students commit to 30 hours of volunteer work during the year.

I say good, not just for parents' sake, but for states' sake. Maybe this will get states to be more progressive in their taxation. That said, they're going to need the help of the federal government against ... Tea Party/red/GOP/Southern-Texan type states.

Schools kids get back bit of civil liberties

The Supreme Court has found unconstitutional the strip search of an Arizona girl who had been believed to have “illicit” ibuprofen on her person.

That’s problem No. 1 — the portion of the inane “War on Drugs” that plays out on school campuses, so inane that Advil and generic equivalents are an “illicit drug.” And, a fellow student ratting her out?

And, shock me that Clarence Thomas would be the only person to dissent from the 8-1 ruling. I think he’s let his own mom be strip-searched for driving while black.

Tha said, Justices Stevens and Ginsburg did want the principal of the school in question to be held liable to suit, which the rest of the court rejected; only the district can now be sued.

Time for a HEALTHIER free school lunch

Chef Alice Waters makes the case for getting Big Ag’s often unhealthy crap, often little better than decried fast food and vending machine food, out of school cafeterias.

Longer school day should be priority No. 1 to improve education

Over at Kevin Drum’s post about the latest in school improvement attempts, a public school teacher agrees.

I partially agree and partially disagree with Drum’s take on the new story by Emily Bazelon over at the NYT about school integration issues in light of last year’s Meredith SCOTUS case.

Kevin’s take is that it’s fine to focus on getting a better class/income-based distribution of students in districts, whether or not racial integration is explicitly targeted along with that.

But, it’s about impossible to do in many central cities without mandatory suburban participation, Drum notes.

Bazelon’s original story notes that addressing the poverty of families, even more than having class-based integration, would be the No. 1 socio-economic issue.

So, what’s needed, then, is more public housing in suburbs. Kevin despairs of class-based redistribution. Except for the rich of both “liberal” and “conservative” persuasions who will dodge it, I think Kevin’s too pessimistic.

With high gas prices, middle-class flight is going to slow down more; it may even reverse in some cases.

But, is a direct approach the best way to tackle that, even? How addressable is that, even? And, are even schools in richer districts still open to plenty of improvement?

The single most important way to improve school performance, comparing individual schools to themselves, would be a school year of 200 days or longer, per almost all other Western countries. Better teacher pay for the longer year. That said, the type of money this would require would also probably address class-based issues.

Nationalizing school systems rather than balkanized local/state standards is also needed.

In other words, part of the problem with NCLB, besides its well-attested other problems, is that it doesn't go far enough.

No wonder our school kids are science-ignorant

Our teachers aren’t teaching it.

One-quarter of public school science teachers teach either open creationism or stealth creationism, aka intelligent design, in their classrooms. And 50 percent of them, or one-eighth the total …

called creationism a “valid scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations for the origin of species,” and the same number said that “many reputable scientists view these as valid alternatives to Darwinian theory.”

What’s the solution?

The study's authors note that courtroom victories — classroom creationism has consistently been struck down in U.S. courts — is apparently insufficient to guarantee an accurate depiction of evolution. Nor will rigorous state science standards, like those recently passed in Florida, do the trick. Instead they recommend teacher certification requiring the completion of an evolutionary biology course.

I totally, 302,875,106,592,253 percent agree. (That’s 13 to the 13th power; what could be more anti-superstitious than that?)

See here, at PLoS, for full survey of teachers.

Good teachers admit bad teachers hard to dismiss

Why the problem?
1. Tenure;
2. Quick annual reviews by harried principals, assistant principals or district staff;
3. Inflated evaluations because principals think tenure means they can’t do anything.

But, this can be counteracted. Classroom walk-ins by principals on a regular basis are one way.

Peer reviews, rather than by principals, are another:

In recent years, some educators have been looking to Toledo, Ohio — a district served by about 2,000 teachers — for ideas on how to make evaluations meaningful. There, experienced teachers evaluate first-year teachers and also help determine the fate of seasoned teachers who get poor reviews from their principals.

That said, the story notes increasing pressure from No Child Left Behind to “teach to the test” doesn’t help in weeding out bad teachers.

‘In the first place, God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made School Boards.’

That Mark Twain quote sums up why national control of education probably would be a pretty damned good thing, as compared to our current, mythologically hagiographied local control of local school districts.

We’re the No. 1 spender on education of any country in the world, and although that’s in fair part because of our outstanding university system, we’re still No. 2 in K-12 spending, and what do we get? Not nearly as much as we should.

As for local school boards? We’re about the only major country in the world that doesn’t have at least a quasi-national school system.

Miller is off on one thing, though, in my opinion — the alleged power of teachers’ unions. That may be true in blue states in particular, and more urban areas in split states, at least, but in the small towns and suburbs of the heartland, it’s a different story.

Anyway, with that caveat, it’s a good analysis of how effed up, in many ways, local control leaves our schools.

The bloom is fading from public school laptop computers

The New York Times reports that more and more school districts have become disenchanted with school-purchased laptop computers for students.

Why? Well, here’s problem No. 1 (and if anybody wants to forward this to Lancaster, Texas superintendent Larry Lewis, feel free):

The students at Liverpool High have used their school-issued laptops to exchange answers on tests, download pornography and hack into local businesses. When the school tightened its network security, a 10th grader not only found a way around it but also posted step-by-step instructions on the Web for others to follow (which they did).

School districts with laptops have other problems, such as maintenance costs, a fair amount of which are not covered by insurance, down time, needing a “lab” room for repair work if it’s done on-site, trying to teach to a class where some students laptops are working and others’ aren’t, and more.

Throw in teachers having to reorient lesson plans, complete with some concerns about “teaching to the computer,” vs. the old “teaching to the test” with standardized tests, and you can see some of the issues involved.

And here’s not a problem, just the empirical evidence:

“After seven years, there was literally no evidence it had any impact on student achievement — none,” said Mark Lawson, the school board president here in Liverpool, one of the first districts in New York State to experiment with putting technology directly into students’ hands. “The teachers were telling us when there’s a one-to-one relationship between the student and the laptop, the box gets in the way. It’s a distraction to the educational process.”

Such disappointments are the latest example of how technology is often embraced by philanthropists and political leaders as a quick fix, only to leave teachers flummoxed about how best to integrate the new gadgets into curriculums. Last month, the United States Department of Education released a study showing no difference in academic achievement between students who used educational software programs for math and reading and those who did not.

Those giving up on laptops include large and small school districts, urban and rural communities, affluent schools and those serving mostly low-income, minority students, who as a group have tended to underperform academically.

In one of the largest ongoing studies, the Texas Center for Educational Research, a nonprofit group, has so far found no overall difference on state test scores between 21 middle schools where students received laptops in 2004, and 21 schools where they did not, though some data suggest that high-achieving students with laptops may perform better in math than their counterparts without. When six of the schools in the study that do not have laptops were given the option of getting them this year, they opted against.

No, that’s not to say that laptops may eventually find some place in more schools. But, let’s not consider them some magic cure-all for getting kids into Harvard or whatever, or even into a decent state university.