Election Debrief Murderer's Row Tuesday Afternoon, Transgender Sports, Flashbacks On Ed Politics And Accountability.

Everyone has a plan until they are punched in the face, or apparently not it turns out...

I have additional content coming that goes beyond election aftermath. But that's where we are right now, and readership numbers indicate that it's what you people want. Posting will become less frequent soon, as I also have a day job.

In the meantime, tomorrow, Tuesday, at 4pm ET, we have a fantastic group coming together to discuss the election implications on LinkedIn Live. You can join and ask questions.

From the community level, we have Lakisha Young of Oakland REACH, Sonja Santelises from Baltimore City Public Schools, Kevin Huffman, former Tennessee Commissioner of Education, Lindsay Fryer, a former Senate and House aide, and Anna Edwards, co-founder of Whiteboard Advisors and an insider's insider.

We'll discuss national, state, and local implications and take your questions. Join us via this link.

Last week I wrote about some education election takeaways, why education leaders need to do more to understand the landscape, and suggested that you consider taking a job in the Trump Administration because while it's going to be rough and chaotic, we all have an interest in the strongest people being in those roles.

Wasn't so hard to see

Back in February, I wrote this. It seemed like good advice then and still seems relevant now as recriminations season gets underway.

This coalition of the shrilling would all be sort of amusing in its way if the stakes were not so high in November with the real prospect that Donald Trump could return to The White House. The thing for Dems is this is fixable and fixable without compromising the party's core values. People want merit, choices, and opportunity in public schools. Those are, or were, Democratic values. The idea that Black lives matter as an inclusive organizing principle, don't compromise. The political agenda of Black Lives Matter? Well, have you read it? Freedom to live your life as you want and be free from discrimination is a core commitment that should not be compromised. Playing whatever sport you want regardless of fairness or safety, teaching kindergarten students that doctors make mistakes when it comes to the sex and gender of babies, luxury beliefs about family structure—are those postmodern fads really the hills to die on? In 2024?

Are they really in any way helpful to public schools?

It's all about the kids!

From Virginia, a push to delay the state's new accountability system is gearing up. It's just never quite the time... Northern Virginia parent Todd Truitt on why that's a bad idea:

The old Virginia system had been scathingly criticized by civil rights organizations for its opacity, including for omitting a summative rating under the federal system. A Virginia Republican administration now pushing greater accountability gives the public school establishment here freedom to be openly hostile to such changes in a way the Maryland public school establishment cannot with Democratic Governor Wes Moore’s administration potentially pushing similar policy changes.

Most of the rhetoric here is primarily focused on schools, the adults, etc... hardly anyone is even hiding behind the veil that this is kids first. Yet this accountability system matters a lot to low-income, Black, and Hispanic young people in Virginia.

Here's Chad Aldeman on some of the ins and outs of the new system. Worth reading if you want to know what's going on underneath the politics and shallow coverage.

My take on the false choice of resources or accountability.

Transgender athletes

We will discuss this more at some point. For now, I keep hearing how the issue of transgender athletes didn't matter in the election. From the same people who said it didn't matter while $123 million in ads and the kind of ad flights the Trump campaign kept buying were hammering Harris and told you it did (even before we got any kind of actual analysis on voting behavior). Campaigns don't spend that kind of money on a hunch, the ads were obviously tested.

To the extent that Jenn Psaki and John Oliver signal where the orders of the day are going on the left, the pivot on this issue seems to be toward arguing it's just a marginal issue. It's a tacit acknowledgment that with 70% opposition, people are not buying it on the merits.

There are a few problems with that. First, I don't think the marginal frame helps; it probably hurts. People hear that it's only a few athletes and wonder what the big deal is then, given the overwhelming opposition. Second, fundamentally this issue is a collision of rights, and even if it were marginal, when rights are concerned, we pause to think about how to balance them rather than wish them away. Police shootings are thankfully rare, but we still focus on them for obvious reasons. Finally, that argument will get falsified. It's not as common as you might think from the Republican talking points, but it's also not nearly as rare and marginal as Democrats claim. Martina Navratilova* has been vocal on that; here she is in an interview Democrats would have been wise to pay more attention to.

The big mistake here is a category error both sides make. This becomes more of an issue as you get into competitive, elite, and zero-sum sports where not everyone can play or hit the podium. The bright lines are not nearly as bright as you might have heard in most sports at younger ages. Lots of girls play boys sports in the early years for the competition. But as sports get more highly competitive, small differences matter a lot, big ones even more. At that level, it's not random 'some people are good at sports, and some aren't' as is casually tossed around—it's systemic. That's why this is about safety, fairness, and inclusion and those have to be balanced.

What's striking is that the Biden draft guidance on this - now moot with the change in government - opened the door for some restrictions where fairness or safety was involved. It was being criticized by some transgender advocates because of that. Might have been a useful talking point? If you are going to forgo the 70% positions (respect, dignity, non-discrimination, that is federal law, and anti-harassment) in favor of the 30% one you'd better have a plan not an echo chamber.

*And when your response is that Martina Navratilova is a transphobe, you've completely lost the story.