Morgan Polikoff

So excited to be launching this request for proposals on state policies to improve k-12 educational outcomes at Arnold Ventures. I'm stoked to be supporting the team in carrying out this RFP. Take a look, share, and send in an LOI www.arnoldventures.org/stories/what...

Wherein I do not mince words about my feelings about AI in the college classroom www.yahoo.com/news/us/arti...

Sad story illustrating a lot of complex challenges facing urban school districts like LAUSD as enrollment declines and competitive pressures heat up www.latimes.com/california/s...

The number of prospective student emails I get that are like "I really value your research on [X thing that I study]. My proposed research would focus on [Y thing that is not even in the vicinity of what I study]" is really something.

did any of these people google the countries they were moving to

As I'm doing final edits on my book I'm replacing as many parentheticals (which I am prone to) with em-dashes (which I am also prone to)--so I guess everyone now will think the whole think was written by Claude.

This is true even in matters as seemingly mundane as education policy. A new Chilean government Minister of Ed networks with Milei in Argentina who reaches out to Sir Nick Gibb in England who travels with Carl Hendrick to Austin to visit Alpha School. Ask me how I know. (Don’t, actually, busy)

I will just note as USC undoubtedly considers buying out Lincoln Riley for something like 70 million that some tenured full professors at the university have recently had their pay slashed by 50% or more!

Terrific reporting from @jillbarshay.bsky.social on the wave of (seemingly junk) meta-analyses claiming benefits of AI in education. hechingerreport.org/proof-points...

Book number 2, headed to a shelf near you soon!

Wild that the Trump family is very clearly in the pocket of multiple(!) foreign dictators and apparently nobody even cares. This used to be the stuff of taut thrillers, now it's just oh there's Jared doing bribe stuff again

🚨🚨 We've launched the Stanford Childcare Model, estimating supply and demand in the early care and education market, with a dashboard comparing effects of several different childcare policies. We hope it's useful to those working on childcare affordability, access, and quality! 🚨🚨

Why is this student so upset about the mushroom, though? What could it have done to make her protest across the whole continent

Only human-generated slop allowed!

Declining enrollment is the issue that everyone is talking about, but somehow not enough people are talking about. How to deal with this at school, district, and state levels is one of the top 2 or 3 more important policy issues of the coming years www.the74million.org/article/just...

I'm signal boosting this because the authors deserve to be heard out on their own terms, even though I don't agree that the response addresses the core issues raised in my post.

"Updating My Grading Policy Because You're All Using AI All The Time" Dan Meyer, man...

My latest @nbcnews.com investigation dropped this morning -- We analyzed the YouTube watch histories of 11 students to look into how some students end up viewing over 5,000 YouTube videos in class, on school-issued laptops, in a single school year www.nbcnews.com/specials/hoo...

This is a profoundly racist, corrupt, and lawless government. There is no bottom to their anti-constitutional and immoral ambitions. Two weeks. Enough is enough.

Twenty states now require teacher candidates to pass a certification exam in the Science of Reading. Do these exams screen on who will be better at teaching reading, or just shrink the teacher pipeline? My job market paper answers this with data from Texas a 🧵 edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1615

One of these is not like the others...

Apologies for the Zapruder level of quality, but was certain for awhile yesterday you were singing in our church choir.

For those interested in the politics of education policy, this will be a must read! David gives the most complete treatment to date of how education became so partisan over the last several decades.

As someone who 1) thinks AI is a tremendous threat to education for a variety of reasons and 2) shared this paper by quoting its abstract without reading it, I really appreciate Brendan's careful deconstruction of it here. If only I had asked AI to critique the paper before sharing it ... ;)

Upon reviewing this article, my confidential letter to the editor begins "I don't mean to be rude, but what is the point of this paper?"

Firmly in the “actually, college football is bad” camp

"What they told me was striking and perhaps surprising. Among the dozen parents I spoke to, nearly all of them praised the school’s staff, programs, and communication. Most parents hadn’t heard that the school was in the national news." www.chalkbeat.org/2026/10/15/p...

"Among sections of the same course, AI tutor access reduced final grades by 0.37 standard deviations and learning management system participation by 0.90 standard deviations. Participation declines ... were greater among first-generation students." edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1598

Friends don't let friends believe in learning styles. doi.org/10.1037/edu0...

This is the nicest thing any university administrator has ever said about trustees and student activists.

The Department of Education's research arm appears to have gotten essentially all its funds out the door in FY26. This must have been tricky to report on given the number of people who didn't want to talk or go on the record with reporters.

The campaign of educational censorship sweeping Texas and other GOP-governed states in the name of “free speech” and “diversity of viewpoint” in many ways exceeds the worst of the McCarthy Era (gift link obvs) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/1...

My man ended USAID, condemning millions to death

There’s still time for them to rename this hurricane in the Gulf Hurricane Ditka

"Woman accusing Sherrod Brown of forcing trans surgeries not Ohioan, didn’t have procedure as minor" ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/10/06/w...

Well the important thing to remember when the White Sox blow this series is that no one expected us to do this well!

“If you surveyed education policy professors in the state of CA about the shift, I would be surprised if more than half of them could accurately describe what the change was,” [Polikoff] said. “So I think the average parent or voter has absolutely no idea.” www.the74million.org/article/firs...

Good lord the "sex changes for minors" ads during the baseball game. What the fuck.

I am a bit more concerned about this than most of those interviewed!

Bill Gates Is Right About the AI Gap. The Fix Lies Elsewhere. edpolicyhub.substack.com/p/bill-gates...

Interesting explainer about comprehensive support from the Bipartisan Policy Center. Would be great if there were more research on this topic, including studies to track impacts by state and understand factors associated with better and worse outcomes bipartisanpolicy.org/explainer/ar...

interesting that conservatives were militantly “we must reward hustle” when the target was affirmative action at elite universities and now, when faced with the success of south asians and other groups, it is “i think we are too meritocratic”

Interested in being funded under Arnold Ventures' K-12 State Policy RFP? Join our webinar next week to learn more about our priorities and have the opportunity to ask questions! arnoldventures.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Hoping there’s no one connecting from Irkutsk on this flight to LA from Sacramento.

I feel very happy for White Sox fans who have definitely earned some joy.

AI writing is present in almost a third of STEM PhD dissertations. www.nber.org/papers/w3585...