Christi Martin

Can Danielle Allen Save Academe From Itself? chronicle.com/article/can-da…

Legal education is about to change. Today, we’re launching the Legal AI Scholars Program in collaboration with leading law schools. AI is becoming a core part of how legal work gets done. Graduates need to understand how to use it effectively, responsibly, and in real workflows. Together with faculty, we’re developing a curriculum focused on applying AI to legal tasks, understanding its strengths and limitations, and developing the judgment required to use it well. The program is already rolling out across select schools, with more to follow in key jurisdictions over the coming months. I can't wait to help shape a generation of lawyers better equipped to navigate how the profession is changing together with all of our great partners. Full story: legora.com/newsroom/legor…

NextEra secures land in Texas for giant gas plant to power data centers, CEO says. boereport.com/2026/03/23/nex…

For @the74, I wrote about an under-discussed commonality among Southern states that have made major literacy gains— around the same time in the early 2010s, they all started making huge investments in quality early childhood education.

And it's a blockbuster! All the papers in the session are both interesting and important. Hope to see you there.

The failure of Reading First in the Bush years wasn’t just a matter of program design or technical acumen. It reflected a more fundamental challenge. Policy can make people do things, but it can’t make them do them well. That’s why policy works reasonably well if the task is issuing Social Security checks. It’s much shakier when the action is more nuanced, like changes in instruction, curriculum, or classroom culture. The failure to appreciate this has tripped up a slew of seemingly sensible K-12 reforms, from teacher evaluation to school turnarounds. In education, bets on policy are safest when dealing with “musts” and “must nots,” as with things like compulsory attendance, annual assessments, class size limits, and graduation requirements. These tend to be clear-cut and quantifiable. If you want to require that high schools offer career apprenticeships, there’s no substitute for policy. Policy is far less reliable when it aims for complex endeavors concerned more with how things are done than whether they are. Compulsory attendance doesn’t mean students will learn anything. High schools can “offer” apprenticeship programs without providing meaningful placements or supervision. So, what it’ll take for “science of reading” to deliver in would-be Mississippis?

Over the past decade, The City of Austin, Texas has permitted more housing in a typical year than the entire Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In 2022 alone, Austin approved 24,227 units, about 1.5× the number permitted across Massachusetts that year.

Sssgfi in DC l think d cc y. L

There are lots of juicy findings in Capita's new report that I co-authored with @IvanaDGreco, "The False Divide Between 'Working' and 'Stay-at-Home' Parents." One that I think is especially relevant is the fact that voters of all political persuasions told us they would be MUCH more likely to back child care legislation and candidates' proposals -- and almost no one's backing would go down -- if they actively support stay-at-home parents *alongside* (not instead of!) high-quality, affordable licensed care options. An inclusive approach to family policy isn't only the correct move on the merits, it's a political no-brainer -- and now we can prove it. Read more about this finding and other conclusions in the full report, linked in next tweet!

Important context from the creator of Claude Code.

@data_atx Yay!!

good for south Austin, the north Austin classic Bartletts is opening a location on riverside

Who knows about the golden trainable in TEXAS? The explosion in this area is insane and it’s only the beginning.

“Chat bots in education are cheat bots.” If you haven’t been paying attention, then you might be surprised to hear that’s a quote from @mackenzieprice, founder of Alpha Schools and 2 Hour Learning (or Timeback), the AI-Powered school network and its learning platform. They have garnered broad national attention for the results they have allowed students to achieve in less instructional time—and the extracurricular opportunities students are able to seize with the time back—but she made it clear in a conversation with me and Diane that chat bots are not part of their model.

This report from the @CatoInstitute is worth reading. They separately evaluate the effects of all immigrants, low-skill immigrants and illegal immigrants. In each case, the fiscal effect is *beneficial*. There are reasons for limiting immigration and making sure its legal. But contrary to common claims, the budget is not one of them.

RT @evanasmith: new population of Texas, per @uscensusbureau: 31,709,821. once again, by a mile, more new residents year over year than any…

Mid-career Leonard Cohen lyric

A Mega-Whip-Around: The 10 R’s Reshaping Public Education charterfolk.org/a-mega-whip-ar… via @CharterFolk

"A large share of American teenagers are neither thriving nor in crisis, but languishing. They’re not playing sports. Not in band. Not working. Not volunteering. Many spend hours each day scrolling on their phones, often alone, often late into the night." thenext30years.substack.com/p/languishing-…

The Long-Run Effects of Consequential School Accountability journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/73… "increases in income/skill/attainment...labor market effects are insignificant...does not support concerns about teaching to the test....more likely beneficial than harmful for human capital."

How In-School Supervised Ed-Tech Support Produces Massive Learning Gains: A Khan Academy Field Experiment in India nber.org/papers/w34683 "treatment schools received lab-in-charges to ensure high-fidelity implementation...Math achievement rose by half a SD over 31 weeks"