I'm at the Education Writers Association’s National Seminar this week, where Maryland Gov. Wes Moore used his keynote to make a blunt argument: the biggest thing holding his schools back isn't in Annapolis. It's in Washington.

As The Baltimore Banner reported, he said the state "cannot make up for the damage that is being done to public education by the federal administration," pointing to transportation cuts and immigration enforcement near school pickup lines. Baltimore City alone has lost 1,200 multilingual learners since last year.

What stuck with me was the exception. Even after an hour of criticizing the administration, Moore wouldn't rule out enrolling Maryland in the new federal tax-credit scholarship program, the White House's signature school-choice push that lets residents fund private-school vouchers through donations that earn a federal tax credit.

He won't "leave money on the table," he said. But he can't commit to rules the Treasury hasn't written yet: "I can't sign up for something when I don't know what I'm signing up for."

A retired superintendent once told me that two of the most controversial things she could do are to close a school or change the calendar. So it's telling that 33 of North Carolina's 115 districts, three more than last year, now plan to open before the date state law allows, according to The News & Observer. No waiver, no enforcement mechanism to stop them.

The districts aren't doing it to make a point. They want to finish first-semester exams before winter break instead of after it. North Carolina is one of roughly a dozen states that set start dates by statute, and its 2004 law exists mostly to protect the summer tourism season. So the fight pits local boards against the travel industry, with the legislature stuck in between: the House keeps passing flexibility bills, the Senate keeps killing them.

Parents land on both sides, some guarding August vacation weeks, others wanting the exam calendar fixed. And when tourism businesses have taken districts to court, they've won. That's the risk these 33 boards are accepting.

A third fight is playing out in courtrooms, and it's the one I'm most skeptical of. A husband-and-wife firm, the EdTech Law Center, has filed roughly a dozen suits since 2023 against the makers of i-Ready, IXL, Canvas, and others. Their argument, as The 74 reports, is that the decades-old premise that schools can consent to student data collection on parents' behalf has "no basis in the law."

The FTC filed a brief agreeing. It hasn't changed its own guidance, though, and the firm has yet to win a case. Its claims against Canvas-maker Instructure were thrown out last summer, with the judge calling the complaint "an ambitious pleading" and warning that plaintiffs couldn't use litigation as a "fishing expedition" for evidence they didn't have. (The case is now on appeal.)

Curriculum Associates, which says it doesn't sell student data, calls the effort an "ideologically motivated crusade to use the courts — rather than the legislative process." The worry about who controls student data is real. Whether a lawsuit settles it is, so far, unproven.

The state, the district, the parent: three stories, each about who gets to make the call.

— Thomas

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