After soooo much drama about how the royal family was a bunch of meanies, English people were racist, the British press was hounding them, the government wouldn’t give them enough protection, and a million other grievances, they are going back. Kindly disregard that Oprah interview, the tell-all memoir, and the Netflix special. It’s all good. Harry and Meghan are going back.

This big news was announced across all the major news channels yesterday, and then it fell flat. It seems that nobody really cares after all. Which is probably why Harry and Meghan’s ventures have failed.

In the end, nobody cared.

It’s actually a tragic tale worthy of a Matt Damon epic. This couple was so convinced of their awesomeness that they walked away from a golden lottery ticket. They wanted more. Meghan wanted to be Lauren Bezos or Kylie Jenner with a billion-dollar lifestyle. Instead, after too many missteps, they have to return to the King for help.

The Money Woes

As always, the best commentary comes from people with connections to California’s entertainment industry. The Hollywood insiders have known for a long time that Meghan began planning to translate royal pixie dust into casheroo even before the wedding and then overplayed her hand. It turns out, Meghan was too difficult and talentless to turn a profit on podcasts, fashion, or strawberry jam. Without a castle, she was boring.

Harry’s huge legal fees are putting pressure on their situation. He sued the local media, saying that they must have done something illegal to know X, Y, and Z about him, but he had zero evidence. So, he lost and has to pay the legal fees for both sides.

He also sued the government to get an armed police escort and six vehicles with blacked-out windows that took him and his wife to various engagements in England. They said no. More legal fees.

Harry and his co-defendants in the media case may owe as much as $50 million. With the combined cases, Harry may owe as much as $67 million. That’s a lot of money for anything, but Harry also has other expenses.

Their home in Montecito is hugely expensive. The property reportedly has around 18,000 square feet of living space, nine bedrooms, 17 bathrooms, an ocean view, a swimming pool, a tennis court, and extensive grounds. The operating costs of the home are probably about $650,000 per year. The good news is that the property will probably sell for quite a bit more than they spent.

Subscribe now

How Will It Go?

The move is imminent. The kids are already enrolled in schools in the UK. With everything that has been said, will they be able to repair relationships? Are they back to being royals?

Harry called Camilla, his father’s wife, dangerous and evil. Will Daddy forget? Probably not. At the same time, many think that he has forgiven a bit too much. Sure, he wants to know his grandkids, but his son and his wife said unforgivable things about his loved ones.

William, heir to the throne, made it very clear that he wants nothing to do with his brother and his wife. Tom Sykes of The Royalist says that allowing Harry to come home has caused a real rift between William and Charles. Family gatherings will be very awkward indeed.

Will Harry and Meghan live private lives in England or will they demand attention and headlines? What are they going to complain about next? Are they going to drain the royal coffers with their expensive tastes and lawsuits?

Drama is pretty much guaranteed, so I’m psyched.

Subscribe now

Related

When you think about a private school, you probably think of an ivy-covered gothic building with an old-money name — Phillips Academy Andover, Phillips Exeter Academy, Choate Rosemary Hall, and Eton College. The students wear uniforms and spend their summers in Nantucket. Their next stop is Harvard or Williams.

Maybe you think about your local Catholic schools, Our Lady of Immortal Miracles or St. Gabriel’s. Those saucy Catholic girls with their plaid skirts rolled high are heading to Georgetown or Boston College.

There are new kids on the private school playground — Alpha, Flex, Fusion Academy, BASIS, Avenues, and more. Housed in new suburban office buildings, these schools are multiplying quickly, using corporate scaling models powered by AI and catering to high-income families who prioritize sports and alternative education.

Benefiting from vouchers, tech, and the weakening of public education, the private schools market is mutating quickly. The new schools offer an alternative to the traditional public and private school systems. Will these new systems create new opportunities, or are they another way for the tech bros to screw up the world?

The Numbers

According to the latest federal data, private schools educated approximately 5.1 million K–12 students during the 2023–24 school year—an increase of nearly 8 percent from 2021–22. Roughly one in ten American students are enrolled in private K–12 schools with most —about 75 percent — attending religiously affiliated schools.

Several forces have contributed to this growth. During the pandemic, private-school and homeschooling enrollment increased, particularly among children in kindergarten and the early elementary grades, because private schools offered in-person instruction while many public schools remained remote. Others were attracted by smaller classes, greater flexibility, or more individualized instruction. Research from the Urban Institute documents this pandemic-era movement away from public schools, although it is too soon to know how many families will remain in private education permanently.

More recently, the expansion of vouchers, education savings accounts, and tax-credit scholarships has begun to reshape the market. Participation in universal school-choice programs across ten states increased by nearly 40 percent in a single year, rising from approximately 584,000 students in 2023–24 to more than 805,000 in 2024–25. The first set of voucher recipients were already in the private school system, but private school administrators believe that these programs will attract new students in the coming years.

Subscribe now

The New Private Schools

Many of my clients have children who fit the twice-exceptional (2E) profile — high IQ, high neurodivergence stuff. They might have a genius-level IQ, but the local public school doesn’t know how to handle their quirks. Maybe these kids ask too many questions in class, or maybe they don’t talk at all. All too often, the school puts these 2E kids in a self-contained classroom with students with cognitive disabilities, because they can’t manage the quirks. So frustrating.

I’ve been chatting with alternative schools looking for placements for these kids. Some of these programs can educate students in a one-on-one setting, while managing their OCD, anxiety, or ADHD. For certain neurodivergent students, this system is a welcome alternative to the special education system.

These programs also appeal to kids who have an Olympic-level sports schedule. Students cram in the education in the morning, and then spend the afternoon training on the soccer field. They also appeal to kids with celebrity parents, who have security concerns and an international lifestyle. Parents who want an education that is tightly tailored to their students’ interests and abilities are also interested in these programs.

These programs aren’t perfect. They are costly. They don’t accept students with higher support needs. They don’t offer the full array of activities — orchestra, Japanese, debate club — of a larger school. They are not economically diverse. By design, they can only educate a small number of students. Still, it’s an interesting option for those with specific needs and a large bank account.

Subscribe now

Alpha Schools

No private school chain causes more swooning in education circles than Alpha Schools. Using AI and a mastery-based model (will explain in a minute), students concentrate their learning to two hours a day. For the rest of the day, they work with teacher-coaches on projects, like starting their own sneaker company, or they leave the school to train for pro-level sports.

They have campuses in Austin, San Francisco, Miami, LA, Washington, DC, Dallas, and other metropolitan areas with more locations launching soon. The LinkedIn Bot has started poking me to help run the schools that are opening in my area. They offer a yearly salary of $200,000 to help run their facilities department.

Fun side note. After clicking on the job ad on LinkedIn, the website sent me to another website: Crossover, which uses AI to connect educators with six-figure jobs. They are currently advertising for a position called “Dean of Parents.” The salary for that job is $400,000, which is more than a superintendent of a small rust-belt city. Tempting.

The tuition for this program is $45,000 to $75,000 a year. The CEO says that they know they are launching this program aimed at a wealthier audience, but said that’s how business works. He hopes to lower costs over time.

Freaking out most teachers and union leaders, this model replaces licensed teachers with “guides” whose jobs are to motivate and coach students. They’re paid at least $100,000 a year.

Check out this podcast interview with Joe Liemandt, the principal of Alpha Schools. It’s long, but really interesting.

Ed Tech and Mastery-Based Learning

So, why is the private education world betting on Ed-Tech? I thought that COVID’s Zoom education showed us that virtual education was worthless. Well, Alpha schools and similar programs say that they are doing it differently.

Back in 2018, Edutopia asked me to write an article about a new movement in education that promises to revolutionize the classroom experience. So, I did a bunch of interviews with the leaders of mastery-based learning, including Sal Khan, the owner of the Khan Academy. Ignore my article’s clickbait headline about grades. The really interesting concept was mastery-based learning.

The point of mastery-based learning is to get past the old system of education, which puts 25 same-aged students in one room and gives them all the identical 60-minutes of instruction on math or reading. At the end of the year, everybody moves up to the next grade regardless of whether they actually learned anything. That’s how you end up with high school seniors taking Precalculus, and they can’t add. Yes, that happens all the time.

With mastery-based learning, students work on addition and subtraction until they master it. Only after that concept is completely mastered do they move on to multiplication and division.

Mastery-based education is based on the belief that everybody learns differently and at different paces. Some students need one year to learn how to fluently solve addition problems. Others need three years. And still others need one month. This system makes sure that students get whatever time they need to truly learn a topic.

It’s nearly impossible for one teacher to provide 30 different lessons at one time to a classroom of students. Computers make it easy. Students learn about addition, complete some practice exercises, and when they successfully pass a test on the subject, they move on to subtraction.

This technology has been around for a while and was pioneered by the Khan Academy. AI makes it even easier to tailor lessons for particular students and provide a human voice to support learning. The Alpha Schools say that they have perfected systems so students even find education fun. Students complete their learning in two hours in the morning, and then have the afternoon to socialize and work on projects.

Subscribe now

Outcomes

Is this real? A veteran educator asked me about that just last week. Are these programs the fad of the day, or is this the future of education?

Yes, these schools are definitely real. What we don’t know is whether it works.

Alpha Schools has data showing a huge growth in learning using their model, but the sample size of the research is too small and self-selected to know whether the system would work in New York City or San Francisco.

Alpha Schools responds to critics saying their schools aren’t supposed to replace traditional education. Yet. Instead, they offer an alternative to wealthy families, whose kids aren’t cut out for the elite prep schools. For that subgroup, their system works.

The concept of mastery-based education isn’t going anywhere. It makes sense, especially when college professors are complaining about their students being unable to do middle school math. (The next article).

Education nihilism has created a world of semi-educated young people who care more about making sorority TikTok videos than reading a book. Quickly approaching an Idiocracy, I think everybody is open to exploring radical changes.

So many great topics to write about this morning, so little time. Today, I’ll throw out quickie summaries of the “hot topics o’ the day.” I’ll flesh out one of the topics into a proper essay for Friday.

The AI School

Y’all know that I love AI.

Yesterday, I created a program using AI that automates the million mundane tasks that are necessary to create a webinar series for my consulting business — get the guest speaker to send a bio, create Facebook-friendly flyers, set up the ticketing system on Eventbrite, remind the guest speaker to show up.

I’m doing ten webinars between Sept and June. By automating the secretarial aspect of the job, I saved myself hundreds of hours of time. Now, I just have to lock down the guest speakers (nearly done) and moderate the talks.

Alpha Schools combines two hot trends in education — the rise in new private schools and AI.

The biggest jump in economic growth is coming from two sectors — health care and private education. Pay attention to the new education chains that are popping up in well-heeled suburbs.

Alpha Schools are a chain of schools that substitute real teachers for AI systems. It’s sweeping the country. Here’s a profile of the Alpha Miami school.

Natalie Wexler does a deep dive into Alpha Schools, a network of private schools that uses AI to teach students. She says,

Alpha’s model may work best for math and science, where the content lends itself more to right and wrong answers than to the humanities. There are, of course, right and wrong answers about historical facts and the plot elements of novels. But there’s also a lot of nuance and questions that should be up for debate—not just with an AI tutor but with a teacher and classmates.

Subscribe now

The Odyssey, Of Course

We went to the mall last week to see the Odyssey, and it was awesome. It lived up to the hype. Any nitpickery from writers is just clickbait. Go see it.

Some fun reads:

Matt Damon is Your Guy, Culture Study

An Uncomplicated Man, Emily Wilson, London Review of Books

Get the Emily Wilson translation of the Odyssey. More about Emily Wilson.

Subscribe now

The Anti-Social Generation

Prof G interviewed Derek Thompson about the anti-social generation.

A leading researcher behind school shootings now thinks that the perpetrators weren’t motivated by being bullied. Instead, the individuals were suicidal and publicity seekers. Interesting article by Jill Barshay.

Astor now believes many perpetrators are driven by a desire for notoriety. Shooters study previous massacres, learn from online communities and seek the publicity that follows a mass attack.

“Most of them are suicidal, and they decided to be homicidal so that they would be remembered,” Astor said.

Subscribe now

Trends in Higher Education

I’m not a traditional college consultant. I help families with neurodivergent children navigate the college process. For my families, it’s not about cooking up an essay that creates a unique persona to gain favor with admissions directors. Rather, I help families find a college program (or alternative to college) where their students will thrive.

While I’m not a traditional consultant, I’m a member of their professional association, attend those conferences, and read their commentary. As someone who has written about higher education for years, I adore college gossip.

Fun reads:

Colleges Don’t Want Your Little Chaos Agent, College Admissions Unfiltered

From that same Substack, I learned this little tidbit: Research shows that Georgetown has received more than $971 million from Qatar over the last 20 years.

Last night after dinner, Steve and I lingered on the back deck for a while chatting about work and weekend plans. Weekend plans include a local birthday party, The Odyssey, and a visit to my parents. Our work chat was more interesting than the usual gripes about annoying co-workers and new HR rules. We talked about how we’re integrating AI into our jobs.

I set up a new company last spring in a huge rush. I already had customers and instantly needed a website, business cards, social media, logo, invoice system, and a million other basic needs. I documented some of that journey last month, but Steve told me to stop sharing my secrets with my competition.

I used AI a lot in those first few months of business creation, which saved me months of work and money. Need a logo? AI help. Too tired to think up a Facebook description? AI to the rescue. How do I change the name of my business? AI had the answers.

Now that I have the basics set up, I’m using AI to create more than generic logos and SEO-friendly website content. I’m using it to create higher-level systems to make my business run more efficiently.

My job is to provide expert answers to very specific questions for my customers. I can save them years of research by giving them information and helping them make tough decisions. A lot of what I do is locked in my brain, but I can still make the process more efficient.

So, I am streamlining processes behind the most essential tasks that I do as a consultant. I use four different AI systems because they each have their own strengths. One system is best for finding patterns in multiple 40-page reports and extracting key data points. Another system is better at processing words.

One of my four systems did a nice developmental edit on a 50,000-word manuscript, reducing redundancy and pointing out inconsistencies in my references. I poured the words from this much-neglected manuscript into the system, and it created something better. That manuscript still needs a big rewrite — something that AI can’t do — but it cleaned up the repetitions, and it provided ballast to the last few chapters that were sketched out.

I could have hired a professional editor to do a developmental edit on my rough manuscript. It would have cost about $5,000 and taken two months. (AI gave me those numbers.) Instead, I spent $20 for a premium subscription and got a more polished manuscript in 30 seconds. Several of my good friends are in the publishing industry. Should they worry?

If I were a freelance developmental editor, I wouldn’t worry about competition with AI. Instead, I would use those tools to edit more manuscripts faster and increase the volume of customers. Customers will still want someone with expertise to oversee the process and catch errors. A book for a big publisher absolutely needs the human touch.

Also, with continued use of AI, the user creates “agents” who are trained by the human to focus on certain things, produce specific documents, and use specific language and terminology. AI gets better when an expert teaches it how to behave. At Steve’s office, workers are creating AI agents that do certain aspects of their jobs, which frees them up for higher-level work.

Subscribe now

At the end of the day, AI needs two things from humans — expertise and direction.

I couldn’t create an AI agent that would enable me to write a real estate contract, for example. I don’t know anything about real estate law, so I wouldn’t know what would need to be in the document. I assume that a contract for a personal home is different from a commercial property, but I have no idea what it should look like. I couldn’t judge whether it was drafted correctly.

To really take advantage of AI, deep knowledge is necessary.

In addition, AI needs a skilled user. You have to know how to talk to a machine and ask the right questions with logic and precision. Do this, but not that. If this happens, then add this. Maybe this will lead to a resurgence in logic and philosophy college education.

Subscribe now

Creativity still matters. Too many people are using ChatGPT to make advertising flyers for their small businesses. I did that in April (examples here), but stopped because I can spot a ChatGPT flyer a mile away. My Facebook feed is clogged with them. Gag. I’m now using less well-known systems or making my own flyers on Canva, because I’m so sick of the AI-generated flyers. When I need to make a new logo later this year, I’ll hire a human from Fiverr.

AI did not write this newsletter. I can spot AI-generated words a mile away. I didn’t even ask it to edit for me. I might ask it to write a good title, because I hate doing that. (In the end, AI liked my title better than their ideas.)

AI isn’t going to replace humans. We’re not looking at a Terminator situation. The benefit will be something much more mundane. It’s going to help real estate lawyers write better contracts, help developmental editors do faster edits, and help consultants systematize and scale up their businesses.

Rose Horowitz begins her excellent essay in The Atlantic — The End of Reading is Here — with an explanation of what happened to the Library of Alexandria, an enormous collection of books and manuscripts from the ancient world. It was the zip drive of knowledge of 200-300 BC. Yes, there was a terrible fire in 48 BC, but the biggest culprit was neglect. Bugs and mold got to the manuscripts. By 500 AD, it was gone.

Is that where we are going, Horowitz asks. Are we entering a post-literate society?

Schools don’t assign full books to students anymore. College professors can’t assign long articles anymore. Kids are glued to their phones, doomscrolling for hours.

Our knowledge isn’t confined to biodegradable paper. We’re digital now. We don’t need to actually read Plato’s The Cave in book form. We can get the bullet points from AI, and, if necessary, The Cave can be read online from thousands of different sources.

The knowledge isn’t disappearing, but at the same time, it isn’t being consumed. Not when the competition is a guy who shows us quick peaks of New York City apartments or a woman who makes her own mozzarella cheese on a Utah farm.

I love words. While I am not a hardliner about the words being on actual paper — ebooks and Substack are fine — real books and magazines offer fewer distractions and lead to deeper comprehension.

I fondly remember the days when I wouldn’t leave my apartment without a paperback to read on the subway. My husband had mastered the art of striding down a Manhattan street while reading a book. I know those days are gone.

There is no competition for the dopamine hits and the shortcuts offered by modern technology. I’m guilty, too. Honestly, I’m hooked on doomscrolling. My guess is that reading will become an elite activity, a signal of wealth and privilege. And that’s a tragedy on the scale of a crumbling library.

Depressing Links About The New Dark Ages

Six weeks into the term, I assigned my rhetoric and writing students a 20-page article. It was the same length I had assigned for five years and the same length I had read without complaint as an undergraduate a decade ago. Not one student finished it.

When I asked why, a student answered honestly: It was too long, and she kept losing track of what the paper was about. This was not a remedial class: These were students who had cleared the admissions process and written essays good enough to get them here. Yet a routine academic reading assignment had defeated them.

Every generation of professors has complained that their students cannot read. The lament is usually overblown, but data have caught up to anecdote, and what I am seeing in my classroom is no longer a hunch. There is a measurable, generational collapse in sustained reading and writing, and the academy is responding to it with improvisation and exhaustion rather than the structural overhaul it requires.

• My Students Can’t Read, The Chronicle of Higher Education

Glass doors lead to the light-filled lobby of a redbrick and limestone chapel at one end of a grassy quad, where lectures and receptions were held, and students testified about their faith.

Original artwork hangs on the walls on the way to the music department, chaplain’s office and recital hall, along with brass “leaves” listing the names of past financial boosters formed into the shape of a tree.

This visit to Trinity Christian College, in Palos Heights, Illinois, isn’t real. It’s virtual, captured just before the college closed in May so students and alumni could remember the campus, which is being sold off to repay more than $26 million worth of debt and other liabilities.

• Threats of more closings have colleges and students worrying about how to save themselves. Campus shutdowns are spurring everything from lawsuits to tuition-compensation funds to virtual-reality remembrances. Hechinger Report.

Americans, once members of a proudly literate society, read much less than they used to. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, which conducts the most comprehensive survey of the nation’s reading habits, fewer than half of all adults reported having read a book of any kind in 2022. Only 38 percent read a novel or short story. A study analyzing 236,000 responses to the American Time Use Survey found that the proportion of Americans who read for pleasure on any given day fell from 28 percent in 2004 to 16 percent in 2023. (The study looked at people who had read a book, magazine, or newspaper; listened to an audiobook; or read an e-book.) Gambling has become a more common leisure activity than reading a book: Last year, 57 percent of Americans placed a bet.

• The End of Reading is Here, The Atlantic

After working for a non-profit for a year, I’m back to being a solopreneur, and it’s sweet. One perk is that I’m free to write this Substack newsletter in the middle of the day, in between a business meeting with a special college program, signing a contract with a parent, and learning more about a new employment program for neurodivergent young adults in North Jersey. I like a messy life that combines personal and work.

Because of the nature of my business, I can be a solopreneur. If I expand in the future, I would have to hire others to help. In the meantime, I’m enjoying my solo lifestyle. I’ve been working my ass off for two months, but it’s all on my terms, and I own my work.

New research shows that tools like Stripe have enabled more solopreneurs to build thriving businesses that earn more than $100,000 per year. AI is also helping fuel that trend.

I’m in the midst of a four-part series on how I used tech tools and AI to build a thriving consulting business in two months for around $500. Links below.

Links

There Are 2 Types of Grade Inflation. Students’ Learning & Earnings Are at Risk — Aldeman: New research finds that giving a D rather than an F can help. But pumping up averages lowers graduation rates, college attainment & future income.

What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity — Human-written essays offered up to eight times more new ideas than those produced by A.I.

A record 25 million adults under 35 are living with their parents

Shopping: We put in a new back deck this summer, so we’re loving the backyard lifestyle. We bought an outdoor projector and screen so we can watch a FIFA match outside during our Saturday BBQ. We’re hanging string lights, too. Don’t forget it’s Amazon Prime Day Sale.

Watching: Rewatching Game of Thrones from the beginning to the end.

Doom Scrolling: Paulina Cee, an introvert with a crazy skin routine. Addictive.

Travel: Four days in Miami

Photo: Downtown in my Jersey town. Miami.

The Solopreneur Series (Two of Four)

This is the second part in a short series about my entrepreneurial efforts this spring. In Part One, I explained how I set up the basic operations for domain names, including the EIN, phone system, and accounting. Today’s installment is about marketing.

Marketing is essential if you want clients to make appointments. Word of mouth isn’t sufficient to bring a steady stream of new folks knocking on my door. They won’t come a-callin’ if they don’t know you exist.

However, marketing isn’t something that comes naturally to me. I’m a Gen Xer whose parents didn’t hand out participation trophies. Compliments were rare, and self-promotion was publicly mocked. So, marketing, when it’s self-puffery, goes counter to my entire upbringing.

To promote myself and my business, which are really the same, I have to trick myself. I don’t call it marketing. I call it spreading the word. I’m very self-conscious that I don’t want to bother people; I only market information that I genuinely believe is unique and useful. I never spam.

The curated approach to marketing not only works for my personality. It works for my clients. They know that won’t send them shit. I value their time too much to fill up their mailbox with daily AI-generated messages. It doesn’t work anymore.

On top of providing quality content, I also lean into technology. Y’all know that I’m comfortable with tech. After I produce something useful, I share it everywhere — social media, websites, blogs, newsletters, LinkedIn. I info-dump across multiple platforms.

I also do tons of face-to-face interactions with potential clients and network with other service providers. I’m going to call that Outreach and discuss that another day.

Logo

After I picked my domain and business names, the next step was designing logos — step one of any branding effort. I used two different AI systems to design logos. The initial designs were pumped out instantly. I nudged AI to make some changes. Eventually, the logo was put on the websites, email, flyers, business cards, and social media.

• Logo costs: nothing, technology: AI

Read more

I have two boys, one with ADHD and the other with autism. So, the odds that I’m neurodivergent are pretty high.

Another indicator that I’m wired differently than others is that I started three businesses in three years — two for myself and one for someone else. I’m a serial entrepreneur who craves novelty, and the dopamine hits from watching a new business take off.

Dude, if this is ADHD, sign me up. I’m having a great time.

In April, after spending a year helping someone else start their business, I decided to leave and create my own gig again. Once I made that decision, everything happened quickly. I knew what I wanted to do and was ready to implement it immediately.

Launching this operation took less than $500. I spent more on extras like a conference, but the extras weren’t essential to the start-up of the business. Because I already had clients, I spent that first month dealing with basic stuff. I was writing a website, at the same time that I was scheduling meetings and answering questions. It was all a bit chaotic. There were a few 80-hour weeks in there.

My consulting company helps autism parents make decisions about therapy, school, college, government paperwork, and more. I’ve been doing this work professionally and as a volunteer for years, so there was no learning curve on how to help parents. I know how to help them. But there was a ton of work to set up the business itself and create new ways to help clients.

Consulting is a great business to start, because the primary resource is my brain. I don’t need a physical office. I don’t need other workers. I don’t need raw materials. My brain doesn’t charge rent, so my start-up expenses were minimal.

My work in the first 30 days involved:

• creating a new professional brand and marketing myself.

• establishing new ways to help parents, so I could increase efficiency and quality.

• protecting myself legally.

• devising new ways to invoice clients efficiently and manage my business expenses.

How I Did It (Operations Tasks)

Domain Name

Creating a domain name was one of the first tasks of this business. It determined the name of the company that was put on the website, government taxation forms, business cards, Facebook — everything. I could have had the best name for a company, but if the domain was taken, the great name was useless.

Read more

Autism therapy is under the microscope.

• The New York Times did a big expose on ABA therapy (gift link) last week.

• Derek Thompson is tweeting about the exploding number of autism workers.

• Today’s Wall Street Journal talks about the explosion of the Autism-Therapy business.

I’m not a huge fan of those articles; they miss all the subtleties of a complex situation. There should be a rule — no reporter should write about autism or ABA unless they have a child with autism. As it turns out, I have a kid with autism. And I just spent a year helping families with Medicaid get access to ABA therapy. I must have talked to 500 families and 100 ABA providers in the past 16 months.

So, let’s chat.

What is ABA?

Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is a form of therapy for children with autism. It’s very time-intensive; it’s recommended that children with high support needs get about 40 hours per week of therapy.

BCBAs (lead therapists with Master’s Degrees) oversee a team of ABA technicians who go into people’s homes and reinforce good behavior and try to eliminate behaviors that are disturbing to others. Complex tasks are broken down into small, easily teachable steps (often called Discrete Trial Training).

When a child has a tantrum, they try to determine the root cause in the environment — are they hungry? Do they have a toothache? It’s really hard to figure out why a non-verbal child is having a meltdown. So, they keep data on when the child has a problem and hope the data will tell the full story.

Over the years, critics have said that ABA is too strict. It turns autistic children into robots who perform tricks for treats like a pet. Some autistic adults have said that they have PTSD because of therapists who punished them for stimming and other harmless autistic traits. More modern versions of ABA are much less militant about their methods.

So, the New York Times article finding that an ABA company didn’t let a child take a long nap was a big yawn for me. That’s what many ABA companies — even blue-chip ABA schools — do. The kids are on a regimented schedule. It’s a workday for them. Some parents get upset about those methods and gripe about their providers. Like all online reviews, some comments are valid; others aren’t. “Is ABA right for my child?” is a big topic in suburban moms’ groups. Despite these debates, most parents opt for this kind of autism therapy for their children.

Research shows that intense, high-quality ABA does improve outcomes for children with autism. However, other methods, if provided in the same time-intensive manner with trained staff, may be equally effective. Other experienced autism parents have always told me that the key was the time and the quality, not the ABA philosophy itself.

Subscribe now

Why is ABA expanding?

ABA is expanding for a lot of reasons that have NOTHING to do with grift, private equity, or any other boogie man.

ABA is meeting the demand. More kids are getting diagnosed with autism than ever before. One in 31 children has an autism diagnosis in this country. The definition has changed, so higher-functioning kids are getting the label. Now, they are autistic, not “weird.” Also, some lower-functioning kids are getting an autism diagnosis rather than a vaguer diagnosis like “global developmental disability.”

ABA is the entry door to therapy after a diagnosis. For the kids under five, ABA is the first option. Maybe, after a year or two, some of the lower needs kids transition from ABA to speech therapy or social skill groups.

Also, unlike other kinds of therapy, ABA is covered by insurance and by Medicaid. When given the option of having someone help their very difficult children for FREE for 40 hours per week, most parents will say, “Yes, please.”They can drop off their children at a center and get a break from kids who don’t sleep, don’t talk, and break things. They can work and maintain some sanity.

Of course, ABA is taking off. There are no other options for families that are having a very, very tough time.

Subscribe now

The Costs, The Grift

All that insurance-covered therapy brings in a lot of money. And where there’s money, there will be grift.

Private medical insurance will pay about $150-$200 per hour for a BCBA, and the New Jersey Medicaid rate is $80 per hour. For a therapist with lower credentials, it’s $100 per hour with private insurance, $60 per hour with Medicaid.

One child with full-time ABA could cost Medicaid about $150,000 per year. For one child receiving 40 hours of ABA therapy per week, the full billed rate for private insurance ranges from $172,800 to $249,600 per year.

Nationwide, ABA is a $10 billion industry.

Because of those nice profit margins, the ABA industry has exploded with new companies opening every day. Some companies provide excellent help for children. Others don’t. And a handful of agencies are grifters. They might send parents to doctors to write false autism evaluations; others don’t provide any therapy at all, but still send the bills to Medicaid. Yes, it totally happens.

The system is cracking down on the grifters. Insurance companies now require a doctor’s signature and a thorough exam before approving ABA services. There should be more oversight of operations by state regulators.

In my private practice, I created a tool for parents to find an ABA company near them and to leave reviews — ABA Options. We might be able to crowd-source quality through my free app. I’m slowly assembling a website of information and downloadable flyers, so parents can make more informed choices.

Subscribe now

Baby and the Bathwater

This isn’t the first time that I’ve written about autism grifters. It’s a real problem. However, autism families need a lot of help, and I want to bring the focus back on them.

Imagine living in a studio apartment in Newark with twin four-year-olds with severe autism. Maybe the boys can’t talk, punch holes in the sheet rock, and don’t sleep. Maybe there’s no father, or maybe he has autism (happens all the time). Maybe the extended family has other issues.

Outside of ABA, there is very little help for that family. Any reduction to those services will have a massive detrimental impact on families. The news media should not focus on the handful of grifters, but rather on the millions of families who are in very tough situations.

Related

I’ve worn many hats over the years — professor, writer, blogger. Every career change involves a new conference, each with its own norms and bad dinner offerings. Over the years, I accumulated a conference uniform with comfortable, yet stylish shoes. I always get a blow-out the day before, so I don’t have to deal with my unpredictable curls. I keep hydrated and have a protein bar waiting back in the hotel room. Because I have the shelf life of a tuna fish sandwich at conferences, I do an Irish Good-bye at all conferences after two days.

Earlier this week, I attended a conference for education consultants. While I’m not a traditional college counselor who ghostwrites essays for Ivy League-bound students, I do teach families with autistic kids about college disability services and about specific programs that might be best tailored to their kids’ needs. There were plenty of alternative colleges and speakers at the conferences who specialized in my niche. I mostly stayed in my lane in the conference, attending sessions about twice exceptional kids and kids with POTS.

The big luncheon session included two speakers who spoke to the general audience about themes that kept coming up in side conversations during my two-day stay. One speaker talked about the high level of anxiety among students. She emphasized that excellence is stressing out kids. Young people are miserable in their perfection. The other speaker talked about the impact of AI on the job market and college majors. These topics have been much discussed here and elsewhere.

Sometimes the most interesting conversations happened after a drink with colleagues.

I compared notes with other consultants about the awkwardness when we have to break the news to parents that their child’s report card of A’s is meaningless. The families will probably need a $5,000 private evaluation, which will find that their child reads at a third-grade level and won’t pass the community college entrance exams.

It’s widely accepted that student quality is down, mental health issues are increasing, colleges are closing, and COVID made everything worse. So, the questions are about how parents, colleges, and consultants can help kids with this grim reality. Some had ideas, but most didn’t.

Despite the apocalyptic aura, it was a lovely conference with kind people. I met up with old friends and made new ones.

Subscribe now

The Day Job

I recently started a new private consulting company. I built a whole company in a month — business cards, webinars, flyers, conference, exhibits, clients, two websites, social media, QuickBooks, EIN, URL, Canva flyers, email address, MailChimp newsletter, Hubspot, blog, Facebook, Instagram, and more.

I’m almost done with the foundational stuff, and now I’m focusing on helping my clients.

Dude, I rule. And so much of what I do is because of blogging. I can write fast and am super comfortable with technology. Check out one of my new autism tools — ABA Options. I made that with AI. Nice, right?

The New York Times ABA Article

The New York Times has a viral article on the ABA industry. I need a day to respond to it. I promise something soon. It’s some right and some wrong.

Everybody Needs a Doctor

Zarna Garg came up on my Instagram feed about a year ago, during some late-night doomscrolling. Her schtick is that she’s a pushy, New York-area Indian who is obsessed with getting her children into good colleges and careers. Love her.

@zarnagarg🪓

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

About a year ago, I had an idea for a website. I can make a basic website, no problem. Having a basic knowledge of WordPress has turned out to be a huge advantage when starting my autism businesses. I made websites for local volunteer organizations and non-profits. I can make a website with an embedded calendar, blog, event page, donation page, and more.

But there’s a limit to what I can do on my own. I’m not a programmer. So, my great idea, which was more sophisticated than a WordPress website, probably would have cost $100,000 to build.

Last month, I started fooling around with an AI computer programming website out of curiosity. I plugged in my website idea, and the AI agent made it. In less than five minutes. It’s damn beautiful. I’m not sharing it yet, because it requires some human effort to make it perfect. I need another week on that.

AI is truly a shortcut for creative people.

Another story…

Steve does the contracts for a Wall Street investment bank. He started this work over 25 years ago, when it became obvious that there were no history professor jobs, and he took a temp job as a secretary at an investment bank. He’s now a big shot with lots of workers and responsibilities. It’s funny how life turns out.

Steve attended a conference this week, where these Wall Street types talk about forms and compliance and all things that make my eyes roll back into my head. This year, he said that most of the panels discussed how AI would replace much of the work on Wall Street. Including trading. The traders will soon be replaced by AI agents that work 24/7. The stock market may always be open.

As management, Steve’s job isn’t in jeopardy; lower-level workers, however, will be replaced soon. He said that there were hardly any young people at this conference, because companies aren’t even hiring new people.

So, we all know that change is coming. And it’s coming fast. And with it comes both good and bad.

This month, I used AI to write computer programs, design a company logo, and fine-tune content for a website. When I was struggling with tough career decisions, ChatGPT was my 3 am best friend who gave me pep talks and direction. I used ChatGPT to design a new back deck for our house.

Yet, 20-somethings are entirely screwed. They are underemployed across all demographics and college degrees. New jobs and industries will arise because AI will lower the costs for startups, but more jobs will be lost than will be created. Those unemployed people will require a Universal Basic Income (UBI) to survive.

Subscribe now

As part of my autism consulting job, I help parents fill out government paperwork for disability services. 80 percent of people with autism, even those who finish college, are never employed, so they need SSI and state benefits to survive. The paperwork takes three years to complete and is not user-friendly. There are a lot of ways to make errors, which boot you out of the system and require a lawyer to file an appeal. Folks pay me a lot of money to do the paperwork for them.

7.3 million people (ChatGPT gave me that figure) currently receive SSI, which is the government support system for low-income disabled people. It’s not a ton of money — about $600-$700 per month for the basic system. It’s possible to boost that number by another $300 if you create a rental agreement. Disabled adults earn significantly more from their state Medicaid systems, but they need SSI to access those systems.

Families use those funds to cover expenses at day programs for adults with greater needs. For those with fewer needs, the funding covers the living expenses and a caregiver. Once you get through the entrance system, it works fairly well.

A UBI would work the same way. There would have to be some system to prove that you’ve tried to find a job, but couldn’t get one. There would be a system to determine outputs and regulate spending. If the government gives out the money, it expects it to be spent on the right things.

A UBI will require an army of social workers to help families complete the forms and another army of bureaucrats or poorly regulated third parties to distribute the money. While we need fewer traders and programmers, we’ll need more social workers, at least initially. Right now, the system is managed so poorly by humans that I think that everyone would cheer if robots took over.

Society isn’t set up for post-employment. It’s so worrisome, but that’s a topic for next week.

Related

Last weekend, we drove up to my son’s college for Parents’ Weekend. We made the long drive up to Vermont to check on Ian and to soak in two days of rah-rah neurodiversity presentations. It’s beyond lovely to be in a place where we feel like we belong.

They put on a nice spread for parents. My oldest child attended New Jersey’s flagship public college, which had no budget for a fancy Parents’ Weekend with presentations or events. They handed out free hot dogs on a football field. Ian’s college had a nice reception where parents mingled with staff.

Ian has been “in the system” for disability services since he was two and didn’t meet his milestones for speech. Later, he was diagnosed with autism at age five, when he ignored the neurologist’s questions and instead read the small print on the side of a water bottle. In total, I endured 19 years of IEP meetings until we finally left the public school system when he was 22 years old. This weekend was an antidote to two decades of discouraging evaluations, marginalization, and pessimism.

Subscribe now

Because he had unusual strengths and weaknesses, Ian didn’t fit into any existing program very well. He was in seven different schools or programs in total, none of which was perfect for him. His failures and the rationalization for school changes were outlined in yards of paperwork for the school district.

An IEP is a document drafted by the school with parental input, outlining how the district will provide a free, appropriate education for a student with disabilities. Sounds great, right? Typical students don’t have rights to an individual education, so you would think that an IEP would be awesome. In reality, IEP meetings and the whole special education process are torture for families.

IEPs focus on a child’s deficits because those problems are what qualify him for special education. Nobody gets an IEP because they can memorize the multiplication tables after glancing at them once. (Ian did that.) A forty-page document that outlines all of your baby’s deficiencies and the school’s half-hearted attempts to create steps towards improvements is an exercise in misery.

If the school doesn’t want to educate your kid, a hollow document isn’t going to force them to do it. There are no incentives to do it properly. It’s expensive to create a system with the right support for teachers and students. Administrators would rather fund an extra AP class than a social skill group. Many school leaders don’t believe that our kids have a real future and see their role as babysitters until adulthood.

We had to fight to keep our son from being isolated in inappropriate classrooms. I read education law. We paid for an expensive evaluation at Yale showing that he had a high IQ. We supplemented his education with tutors for math, private speech therapy, private social skill groups, and special camps.

When I couldn’t find a social group that was a good fit for Ian, I organized my own group for him. I spent years escorting groups of boys with high-functioning autism to bowling alleys and video game arcades.

Subscribe now

When he was finishing high school, the social isolation of COVID and medication reactions from suddenly getting epilepsy set him back. He wasn’t ready for high school or college, so I kept him in the system until 22. If you want to get into the weeds with that process, you can check out my newsletter, The Great Leap.

After three years of transition programs, the school district happily cut him loose. That summer, I sent him to a program at an autism college in Vermont. (Google it.) It was a six-week program in a dorm — his first time away from home. As an autism mom, I am trained to prepare for all scenarios — you never know how things will work out. So, we kept our weekends free in case we had to get him.

After four weeks, we got a phone call from the college, but not with a problem. He wasn’t being ejected because he told the professor that he was dumb. Rather, they invited him to apply to the college as a full-time student in the fall. We needed a little time to organize the funding, so we deferred admission until the spring semester.

Subscribe now

The spring of 2025 was a lot of “firsts” for Ian. It was his first time doing a full course load, in person, in a dorm, with a roommate. He already had 30 credits of community college classes, so we were fairly confident he could manage the academics in his preferred subjects — math, computers, and music. But could he do a college-level writing class? We had no idea. Again, we kept our weekends free, in case he had to come home.

He did it. Then, he completed a fall semester with a one-class overload — five classes in total. This semester, he’s getting A’s in five classes. We chat every night, and answer questions on his homework. Sometimes his questions are a reading comprehension issue. Other times, he runs into problems because he doesn’t have enough background knowledge of a topic; he never got proper classes in science or social studies.

It’s fun to work with Ian, because he’s so fast. On Friday, we figured out the interest rates on home mortgages together. He did all the computations; I translated the word problems for him. Even when the subject falls in his weak areas, he keeps learning and feels more confident in himself. Increasingly, he doesn’t even need our help, but still likes to check in with us.

Ian’s autism college provides pathways for the families to talk with faculty. At typical colleges, parents are kept far from the faculty, but this college understands that parents are often in the background of the neurodivergent children’s lives into adulthood. During parents’ weekend, we scheduled a talk with Ian’s college advisor to get some ideas about the next steps.

Our plan was for Ian to complete his Associate’s degree by the end of the year, and then look at ways to get him a job doing something with computers. We didn’t feel like he would enjoy or benefit from all the liberal arts classes that are necessary for a Bachelor’s degree.

Ian’s advisor thought that he shouldn’t finish his college education so quickly. We looked at the course requirements to get a BA at his current college. We reviewed what math and technology offerings to see if there were enough classes to keep him challenged for another two years. She suggested that he might benefit from transferring to an engineering college.

Two years ago, we hoped that Ian would stock shelves at Best Buy. Now, we’re talking about engineering colleges. Teachers gave up on my son too easily. I was afraid to dream big. I’m treasuring this moment.

More

After spending years researching pathways for my son, I started an autism-college consulting company in 2024. A year later, I was absorbed into a nonprofit agency, where I provide the same help. If you would like some free pointers on autism college, you can subscribe to one of two newsletters: The Great Leap and The Autism College Connection.

The image at the top is from local magazine that did an amazing profile of my family. I’ll upload the .pdf and share soon.

I wrote this newsletter, after my Substack note about Ian went viral with 40,000 views. Thanks to everyone who sent us kind responses.

One year ago, I began working for a new nonprofit organization aimed at helping families with autistic children. We do medical evaluations, direct families to the right resources, and provide after-school activities. The needs are endless, so our programs and offerings keep growing.

This job represents yet another career shift for me; I’ve gone from professor to writer to nonprofit leader. In some ways, this is a continuation of work that I’ve always done. I’m still teaching and writing. I’m organizing panels of speakers. I give college advice. In other ways, it is brand new. I work within a medical office, which has its own jargon and norms.

My primary responsibility is to help parents solve all sorts of autism problems. School, paperwork, special camps, therapy — I send them to the right place and hold their hands when they cry. Because this is a start up, I do much more than that. I also set up the website, created a newsletter, assembled a mailing list, created new procedures, ran a webinar series, and produced publicity materials. It’s all hands-on-deck to get this operation off the ground.

It’s been all-consuming. Start-ups are always that way. My many side gigs and hobbies were put on hold. Friends were neglected. Newsletters aren’t happening regularly. But with a year under my belt, I’m able to step back and reassess.

Subscribe now

Shifts in Perspective

It’s been good to step back and think how this year has shifted my perspectives. Things that used to make me crazy — national-level politics, gender politics, public policy, higher education, and schools. Things that make me crazy today — all that stuff, plus Medicaid, inequality, and disability issues.

I’ve always cared about kids, education, politics, and inequality, but now it’s not theoretical. Every day, I talk to moms from Newark who are on Medicaid and don’t speak English. I have a richer understanding of the challenges in those communities. Those moms have to navigate a new challenge —autism — while managing the regular challenges of poverty, poor education, language, complicated extended families, and more.

Research shows that many parents experience clinical levels of PTSD after hearing from a doctor that their child has autism. Parents know that this diagnosis will force them to reevaluate hopes and dreams for their children.

For low income family, that trauma is even more intense. They don’t have the bandwidth to provide a higher level of oversight and manage a heavy-duty therapy schedule in a studio apartment, with no means of transportation, three other children, and little income. Therapy companies have told me that their therapists won’t go into some apartments, because there are too many bugs. Families have no hope of advocating for a proper IEP, when the school can’t manage to educate any of the children in the building.

I’ve learned that poverty, language differences, and other challenges mean that I can’t lecture folks to adopt my middle-class parenting style. Research shows that autistic children benefit from 20-40 hours per week of high-quality, ABA therapy. Medicaid actually will pay for all that help, but families aren’t getting it. Low-income families cannot manage an intense ABA schedule.

While we didn’t do a million hours of ABA therapy, I quit my job to help Ian and spent countless hours helping him talk. Low-income families cannot provide their children with the same level of help that I gave Ian.

Without extra help, outcomes are less optimal. It’s a highly problematic situation. I don’t have answers.

Links

We have a loneliness epidemic. We have an overwhelmed parent epidemic. Could the two problems help solve each other? Great podcast by Celeste Davis, Matriarchal Blessing

Super depressing post by Andrew Yang about how AI is going to decimate the middle class, property value, and higher education. You should read it.

More depressing thoughts about AI from Yascha Mounk. He had AI write an academic paper on political theory for him in a couple of hours.

I need to talk about this chart.

Watching: The Pitt (so good)

Travel: Hawaii: here, here, and here.

In a week, we will reunite with my oldest son, Jonah, who has been living in hostels in New Zealand since last June. The four of us will be in Hawaii for a week, then Steve and Jonah will travel to New Zealand, where they will hike the mountain that was used as the set for Mount Doom in The Lord of the Rings. They want to rough it and sleep in Jonah’s van.

Jonah spent the past few months living full-time in a hostel in Tauranga, a beautiful city on the beach. In the shade of an extinct volcano, Jonah palled around with young people from Germany, Italy, and France. In the morning, he worked at the hostel in exchange for his bed. In the afternoon, he freelanced as an AI trainer. Between those two jobs, he had enough money for food and beer. He paid his student loans and phone bills. He even bought a van.

This experience has been life-changing for my kid. He hustled for work, increased his communication skills, and saw incredible places. (He’s here now.) When his visa is up in June, he plans to get a desk job in New York City to save up money and gain in-person job experience. After a year or two, he’ll continue to travel and work remotely.

Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jaimie Dimon, and other technology evangelists often say that AI will end the five-day work week and the need for workers to be located in a particular location. Work is going to change, for sure — the twenty-somethings are already seeing those changes; however, this transition process is going to be very painful and will require massive government assistance programs, like universal healthcare and social support programs. This is going to be a bumpy ride.

Full-Time, In-Person Work Isn’t Going Away

While Jonah is living the dream of working in paradise, Steve is back to commuting into New York City for four days a week. He spends three hours a day on a train; twelve hours per week. He paid our town $1,300 for a parking space by the train station. That’s a lot of aggravation, lots of costs to do a job that he can do equally well at home. Sure, four days in the office is better than the five-day commute that he had before COVID, but now that he knows that he can work from home effectively, office face time seems pointless.

While Musk and Dimon are pro-AI, they were also the biggest haters of remote work. Both made big statements about how workers had to return to the office. Those who control our future work environment clearly do not believe that anything productive can happen outside of the work hive.

With that in mind, it gives us some hints about how they really see the future of the workplace. If people work fewer hours, those hours will be spent in a traditional workplace, not in a hostel in New Zealand.

I doubt that the techno-barons will employ an army of part-time employees. They have never expressed an interest in increasing part-time jobs in their current workplaces. Rather than 100 part-time workers, these executives would rather have 10 full-time employees who rely on AI for the work produced by the other 90 employees.

Subscribe now

What Happens To Those Without Work

So, what happens to the unemployed 90 employees?

Work has always been the center of human existence. People were needed to hunt and gather, plow the fields, make pottery, pave streets, make widgets, and practice law. Take away that purpose, and there will be vast numbers of people sitting on the sofa, popping gummies, and playing video games. There will be significant numbers of people who commit suicide or self-combust with a machine gun on the roof of a Target.

As part of my day job, I frequently talk to families with unemployed adults with autism. The families tell me that their adult children have high test scores, but they are too autistic-y to find work. Their social skills are terrible, and they can’t get through the interview. The families tell me that their adult children are bored and miserable at home with their parents. Unemployment isn’t awesome.

In the United States, we’ve constructed a system where health insurance is tied to employment. No more jobs? Well, then we’ll need universal Medicare.

Without bimonthly paychecks, billions of people worldwide are going to need a universal basic income. Who is going to pay for that? Is everyone going to get the same amount? How much are we going to give people? Enough to survive? Too many questions there.

In a world with no jobs, the government will have to level up to provide housing, food vouchers, medical visits, and a whole new form of social-emotional-communal support. We’ll have to hire thousands of people to provide survival needs to millions of people.

Subscribe now

Should We Worry?

For me, none of this sounds good. I like working. I would very much like for both of my boys — including the autistic one — to have good jobs in the future. Jonah seems to have stumbled onto a good thing. He’s building the tools for the coming transformation. Weirdly enough, his liberal arts background is coming in handy as he instructs AI how to find information.

Ian is ironing out his autistic-y issues and loves building things. He might be one of those guys working on the electronics for the AI centers.

Surprisingly, some liberal arts degrees are going to come in handy. We need people to run government programs and administer social work services.

I am less enamored of AI than some of my peers. I never use AI to rewrite my prose. I can usually spot AI writing from a mile away. I’ve used it as a thesaurus to suggest alternative titles for presentations. I used it this morning to give some tips on what to pack for January in Hawaii. For me, it’s just one step above a regular Google search.

Yet, AI is still in its infancy. Wooden writing today might become Shakespeare tomorrow. Every day, AI is getting smarter. I can see its efforts in the traffic reports of my old blog.

My mostly defunct blog, Apt. 11D, has thousands of hits per day from Vietnam and Singapore, where there are probably AI centers that are scraping my old blog for content. AI is getting smarter.

AI is hitting some infrastructure walls. Data centers use massive amounts of water and electricity. Until they can fix those practical problems, there are limits to what AI can do. So, I think we have some time before the work apocalypse.

That buys us some time to assess the situation and strategize. There will be winners and losers in the new economy. The winners will have jobs.

There’s been a lot of buzz this past week about the high disability rate in colleges. Many speculated that the rising disability rates at college could be chalked up to rich moms who want to give their normal, but mediocre, kids an edge.

So, here’s a fun little chart that shows the disability rate across the elite colleges. Stanford’s disability rate is 38 percent. MIT is on the low side at 8 percent, which is odd because 1/3 of the students probably are legitimately on the autistic spectrum. Maybe another day, we can talk about what makes MIT different.

Anyway, the disability rates are high in college. Let’s talk about it.

Every day, I see families with nonverbal four-year-olds who hurt themselves and others. These children have severe autism. Combined with poverty and complicated extended family lives, these parents and/or grandparents are dealing with unimaginable stress. A handful of these children have multiple issues, like severe autism, Down syndrome, and lead poisoning at the same time.

If anybody tries to tell me that the American disability rate is entirely constructed or a scam by the Somalis, I will fight them. Like, I will go to their homes and fight them. And then I’ll demand they donate big bucks to help those families.

Subscribe now

Since nonverbal autistic kids aren’t going to college, let’s talk about the kids at elite universities who request disability accommodations. We don’t have evidence to determine what kinds of disabilities are being identified and whether those disabilities were fabricated, so we have to look at other numbers and more information about the actual disability services.

I wrote a lengthy newsletter talking about how college disability benefits are difficult to get and aren’t massively awesome. I wonder how many college students actually use those benefits after enrolling with disability services. My guess is that only a fraction of the 38 percent of students actually receive accommodations. Still, they are identifying as having a disability, for sure.

Even before going to university, children are being identified as having disabilities at higher numbers than ever. 1 in 31 has autism. 1 in 9 has ADHD. 1-3 million people have POTS. Since many children with autism and ADHD do not have cognitive disabilities, they end up at college needing extra help. It’s entirely legitimate for kids with diagnosed autism and ADHD to get some very minor help at college and for them to self-identify as disabled.

We also know that these college rates are comparable to the high school classification rate. In New Jersey, most of the 600+ school districts (eyeroll, a topic for another day) have classification rates between 15-20 percent. At some school districts in New Jersey, nearly a quarter of all their students have an IEP.

So, if those IEP kids end up at college, they will also need accommodations. No big deal. However, I suspect that the college identification rate includes a new group of kids that weren’t properly identified and supported in public education — those with anxiety and depression.

Subscribe now

Mental health issues, including anxiety and depression, are on the rise. According to the CDC, in 2021, 21 percent of children — 1 in 5 — were diagnosed with a mental, emotional, or behavioral health condition. The 2022-2023 data from the Annie E. Casey Foundation had the rate at 31 percent. All the indicators are that the health of U.S. children is declining at alarming rates.

Anecdotally, I hear from doctors, parents, and teachers horrific stories about teens who are so depressed that they hurt themselves. Some develop eating disorders and permanent digestive ailments. Even here, in my well-heeled suburb, severe mental health issues are so common that I maintain a referral list of inpatient psychiatric facilities.

Anxiety and depression have a huge impact on academic performance. They are crippling conditions that derail too many young people at college and in life. If we can help those students stay in school, finish their degrees, and get on with their lives, because they can take their chem exams in a quiet room, SO WHAT?

Subscribe now

So, why are so many kids crippled with mental health issues? Organized sports, COVID, and cellphones. We conducted a massive, unregulated experiment on young people. When they were young, we removed them from free interactions with peers and overregulated their lives with youth soccer and gymnastic leagues. Then we totally shut down their lives for a year and a half. We gave them devices to lobotomize them. Our schools became performative shams. We parents looked at our phones and didn’t interact with them.

We have totally fucked up a generation.

Subscribe now

In 1897, Émile Durkheim wrote about the concept of anomie. Anomie is a breakdown of values and guidance that evolves when modernity undermines an individual’s relationship with their community. Anomie, according to Durkheim, results in feelings of alienation, depression, and suicide.

With access to social media and unregulated access to the Internet, teens are more disconnected from community than Durkheim could have ever envisioned 120 years ago; yet the results are the same — depression and suicide.

Some children are born with a disability. They have autism, or they are blind. Other children become disabled by society. They shouldn’t be disabled, but they have grown up in conditions that have led to crippling mental health issues.

MORE

More evidence that cellphones and Chromebooks have destroyed learning. More evidence that writing, rather than typing, improves learning. My next newsletter is going to be an ode to textbooks.

Tangent and Parental Brag: Ian, my autistic kid, did five college classes this semester. At the tailend of finals week, he may end up with four A’s and a C- in his history class. His lowest grade in the past two weeks was a 95. Parental victory lap!! Woot!!

Watching: Still hooked on Slow Horses. Next up: Down Cemetery Road

We’re slowly preparing for Christmas without our boys at home to help. It’s so weird.

When Ian was seven, our family went to Disney Land. Disney is a rite of passage for parents with small children, an event that has to be crossed off the list.

Truthfully, Steve and I weren’t excited about this vacation. We didn’t consider ourselves Disney-kind of people. We went because we didn’t want the fact that we were Disney Delinquents to be one more item to be mentioned to a therapist in the future. Also, we heard it was a great place to bring kids with autism.

When we arrived at the park, we went to the Guest Services Office and showed them a letter from Ian’s neurologist explaining that he had autism. They gave us passes that enabled us to bypass all the lines. At each ride, the staff took us to a separate door that immediately put us on every ride. Other families waited in the hot sun for hours. We didn’t. Despite our too-cool-for-school attitude before going on this trip, we had the most amazing time ever.

Subscribe now

At this time, Ian’s disabilities were the most challenging. He was frequently frustrated. His sensory and OCD issues were tough. I was still teaching at the local college, so I was preparing lectures until 3:00 am. I was always apologizing for him to strangers. We were worn out.

By that time, I had gotten used to being treated by schools and the community as second-class citizens. He was reluctantly allowed to make his First Communion at the local church, which was run by a mean nun. He failed Kindergarten Intake at the local school, so he had to be bused to a separate school for autistic kids forty minutes away. Everything that we did was second-class.

At Disney, we were transported to a place where things were actually easier for us than for other families. We weren’t the embarrassing family with the kid who put his fingers in his ears. We were special.

Subscribe now

We still had to manage Ian’s autism. We had to avoid the super scary people dressed up as Disney characters. He was inexplicably freaked out on the “It’s A Small World” ride. I think the music was too loud. But those issues were day-to-day realities for us.

Disney’s recognition of invisible disabilities and the extraordinary privileges they provided families like ours was legendary on autism parent listservs and websites. And the obnoxious rich people found out about it. They hired disabled tour guides, so that their abled kids could go to the front of the line. The New York Post screamed about this scam and blamed “Rich Moms!”

Yes, there was a real scam going on, but the media blamed it all on “the moms.” Maybe the dads hired the disabled tour guides. Who knows? But since everyone hates the Karens, Disney cracked down.

Subscribe now

Today, Disney and Universal Studios still give disabled children and their families a special pass, but it’s much more limited. If you go to the Harry Potter ride, you can’t just sail in. They’ll give you a specific time to come back. Families don’t have to wait in line, but they do have to wait around somewhere else, drink some butterbeer, and then come back later for the ride. This is the same pass that they officially sell to rich people.

Because Disney and Universal were forced to cut down on the grifters, their disability privileges, while still a lifesaver for beleaguered families, are less robust. From this experience, I learned that any correction of corruption leads to worse benefits for the real recipients.

Two abuses of disability services made headlines this week. The Atlantic had a poorly researched article on Rich Moms — the misogynistic, ageist trope that keeps on giving — abusing disability services at colleges. Well-researched articles on the abuse of Medicaid and autism services in Minnesota by the Somali population have also received a lot of attention. Both incidents are going to lead to over-corrections and a worsening of services for those who deserve them.

More

I’ll come back to the Somali/Medicaid thing in a couple of days, because I know exactly how they did it.

Travel Our 2010 trip to Disney:

On November 19th, Rose Horowitch wrote an excellent piece for the Atlantic about unprepared college students.

But the national trend is very clear: America’s students are getting much worse at math. The decline started about a decade ago and sharply accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic. The average eighth grader’s math skills, which rose steadily from 1990 to 2013, are now a full school year behind where they were in 2013, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the gold standard for tracking academic achievement. Students in the bottom tenth percentile have fallen even further behind. Only the top 10 percent have recovered to 2013 levels.

Yesterday, Horowitch followed up with another education outrage article — Accommodation Nation: America’s colleges have an extra-time-on-tests problem. This article totally misses the mark.

Let’s start off with her lede:

Administering an exam used to be straightforward: All a college professor needed was an open room and a stack of blue books. At many American universities, this is no longer true. Professors now struggle to accommodate the many students with an official disability designation, which may entitle them to extra time, a distraction-free environment, or the use of otherwise-prohibited technology. The University of Michigan has two centers where students with disabilities can take exams, but they frequently fill to capacity, leaving professors scrambling to find more desks and proctors. Juan Collar, a physicist at the University of Chicago, told me that so many students now take their exams in the school’s low-distraction testing outposts that they have become more distracting than the main classrooms.

I am eyerolling big time. Professors struggling!!! Oh boo-hoo. All accommodations happen through the Office of Disability Services. The professor just has to send the test to the office, and their proctors do the rest. Is that super hard?

Horowitz doesn’t really seem to understand the process. Did she interview disability advocates, parents, or disability college consultants for this article? I think not. So, let me rewrite her article.

What is the Office of Disability Services?

Every college — both four-year and two-year colleges — has an office that provides basic accommodations for students with disabilities. The name of this department varies from school to school. At Rutgers, it’s called The Office of Disability Services. At NYU, it’s called The Moses Center for Student Accessibility (CSA). At Marist, it’s the Office of Accommodations and Accessibility.

To receive services from the Office of Disability Services, students must fill out a lengthy application and include documentation about their disability from their high school or a doctor. If they are approved, then the student is interviewed by administrators in the office. In other words, the college doesn’t make it easy to get this help.

In fact, the process for getting accommodations is so rigorous and in parent-free zones that I know several students with disabilities who couldn’t make it through that gauntlet. In some cases, this Office becomes a screening tool to weed out students with disabilities.

To receive any help from this department, the student must first be admitted to the college. They have to have the same grades, test scores, and recommendations as every other student. Students who have registered with the Office of Disability Services do not have intellectual disabilities. They are equally as smart, but need very small accommodations in order to be evaluated fairly.

Subscribe now

What Are the Accommodations?

If approved for services, students are given a menu of accommodations, which, by K-12 standards, are extremely paltry. When kids are in public school, they are protected by IDEA, which enables students with all sorts of disabilities to attend public school.

However, IDEA ends when the student leaves public education. In college, students are protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act, which is much less rigorous. Briefly, all students are entitled to a public education, but not a college education.

The typical accommodations that colleges provide students without a physical disability are extra time on tests and a quiet room. Professors do NOT change the content of their classes. Professors have no special training on neurodiversity or inclusion. Actually, they have no training in pedagogy either, but that’s a topic for another day. Students are expected to be able to sit in a class for 1 to 3 hours, pay attention, not walk around, not stim, not ask excessive questions, and not bother the other students.

In other words, those college accommodations aren’t major. They don’t give disabled students a big edge over other students. Honestly, we need more accommodations and more special programs for kids with autism, ADHD, and dyslexia. With the basic accommodations, not enough of those students graduate from college.

Subscribe now

More Hurdles

Students are responsible for getting their own accommodations. After that initial screening process, the disability office sends them a “Letter of Accommodations.” Students must forward this letter to all of their professors at the beginning of the school year. Before each exam, they must remind the professor to send their exams to the special office. For students with an executive function disability, these extra steps become another barrier to education.

Many students register for disability services, but then never take advantage of the accommodations, because they are too much of a hassle. Other parents hire consultants to teach their students how to manage these accommodations. Others hire private tutors and executive function coaches to work with their students over Zoom.

I always advise parents to have their students take advantage of Disability Support services. When done right, for the right kid, that extra help is valuable. But it’s not a game-changer. That’s why more and more college programs are cropping up all over the country that are geared towards kids with more serious disabilities. (As part of my day job, I provide college advice to families with children with autism.)

Subscribe now

Why has the Disability Rate in Colleges Increased?

Yes, the number of students registering with the Office of Disability Services on their college campus has skyrocketed.

The Chicago Maroon reported, “During the 2017-18 school year, roughly 600 students were registered with SDS for accommodations, while by the 2024-25 school year, more than 2,460 students—13 percent of the student population—were registered with SDS. In her Atlantic article, Horowitz has similar data from Stanford and other elite schools.

There are many reasons for the increasing disability rate that have nothing to do with rich parents working the system.

1. Parents and young people are increasingly “woke” about their disabilities. In late-night scrolling fests on Instagram and TikTok, I always stumble upon videos of beautiful young people identifying as ADHD or autistic or possibly both. If your favorite influencer is autistic, then you want to be autistic, too. The stigma is gone.

2. For various reasons, young people are being trained to be open about their disabilities. To get accommodations in school and the workplace, they have to self-identify. I’ve trained parents on how they should help their students with self-identification.

3. More people with disabilities are surviving public education and have the necessary skills to attend college. A good thing.

4. Parents are learning from each other and disability consultants about how to nudge their students to sign up for these services.

5. Colleges are run by very nice, left-leaning administrators who want to increase rates of inclusion and may be getting some grant money to provide additional services and programs.

Subscribe now

Education Outrage

Two things are true at the same time:

1. Standards for education have dropped, resulting in the recent crop of college students who are unprepared for a traditional college curriculum and require remedial help.

2. More college students are self-identifying as having a disability and registering with the Office of Disability Services on campus for accommodations.

The first issue — declining standards — is a real problem. The second issue — rising rates of disabilities — is not a real problem.

Earlier in the week, I cheered on the recent attention to education policy. I am modifying my thoughts. I’m okay with education outrage, but let’s target the right people and the right problems.

Subscribe now

Disclaimer: I wrote this before work. Typos abound.

For a long time, I’ve been a Cassandra about schools and kids. I’ve written about declining interest in higher education, plummeting test scores, and the damage from closing schools during COVID. Since Cassandras are hated and ignored, I often tempered my conclusions and looked for some positive note to end my articles. But even the positive filter didn’t work. My concerns didn’t get much traction with the “serious people” for many reasons.

In journalism, the education beat is a training ground for kids from journalism school. Young journalists don’t have the experience to find the faults in the system or the clout to push their editors to run a negative story. Even if they did, they wouldn’t get the top headlines because the higher-ranking journalists and pundits focus on other topics, like the economy or elections.

Politicians don’t take schools seriously either. For years, I listened to the President’s State of the Union, waiting for one or two throwaway lines on schools. Again, schools aren’t going to get the applause and the votes.

Elites from any profession don’t really worry about education, because they all hit the education lottery. Their parents either sent them to a six-figure private school on the Upper West Side or bought a million-dollar house in Scarsdale. With private schools, tutors, and an Ivy League education, they think that all schools are awesome.

In certain circles, it is considered being supportive of public education — even if it truly sucks — is part of the orthodoxy. For years, any criticism of schools put you in the same camp as MAGA extremists, union busters, and Bud Light drinkers. Shudder.

Subscribe now

Suddenly, pointing out the dis-education of American youth has become in vogue. It’s like the editors have unearthed a topic that nobody else has ever noticed before.

American Kids Can’t Do Math Anymore - The Atlantic

The signs of educational decline are now impossible to ignore: UC San Diego report shows students are not prepared for college, especially in math. — Megan McArdle, WaPo

The Stupiding of the American Mind — New York Magazine - From X:

“The world is dumber, and we all know it,” Lane Brown writes. It’s not just that children have been bombing their standardized tests or that more than a quarter of U.S. adults now read at the lowest proficiency level. It’s also that in nearly all aspects of life, we’re opting for routines, entertainment, and entire belief systems that ask less and less of our brains.”

Suburban Kids Are Getting Dumber, Too

Want some hard truths? Sure, kids in places like Baltimore and Newark are getting a suckier education than ever before; their parents stopped sending them to school during Covid, and absenteeism became the norm. Sadly, too many people accept that kids in cities will be poorly educated, but the truth is that kids in wealthy suburbs are also getting a shitty education.

A million-dollar home on a tree-lined block no longer means that your kids are leaving with the right skills to thrive in college. Suburban kids are getting dumber because parents don’t know what’s going on and because the meritocracy myth is dead. Schools are increasingly becoming empty shells for sports and extracurricular activities.

90 percent of parents think that their kids are doing great in school. Why? Because the schools hand out good grades like candy. Students have to work really hard to get a grade under a B. If you tell the average parent that their kid is doing okay, then the parent will give a thumbs up, answer emails from work, and book an appointment at the hair salon. They aren’t going to look for a problem if the school tells them that everything is groovy.

Then those kids go off to college, where they major in Beer Pong and Weed. The professors know that there are problems. Believe me, they gripe all the time about their ignorant students on social media, but then they pass them along, too, because the professors need good student evaluations for their tenure package. So, the problem of grade inflation continues into college, especially at colleges like Harvard, where nobody wants to upset the rich kids with the litigious daddies.

Some families are aware that their schools are middling. Those parents are often gunning for their kids to attend an Ivy League college, so they spend five figures on tutors. They spend $250 an hour for English tutors, physics tutors, calculus tutors, and SAT prep classes. Some families have all those tutors in their homes twice a week. They’ll spend another $10,000 on a college consultant. Basically, those kids are being entirely educated by private tutors; school is just a place for socialization and after-school sports. At some point, those families are going to walk away from public schools altogether.

Subscribe now

But even with all those tutors, people don’t really care whether their kids are actually learning how to write and think for themselves. They don’t care whether their kids know the difference between Locke and Rousseau, Bronte and Austen. They want their kids to go to an Ivy League school, as they did, so they can get high-paying jobs. And they know that if their kids can’t jump over those hurdles, they can pull strings to get them those jobs anyway.

Nothing matters.

Schools don’t care either. Teachers know that their kids are strung out on technology. They know that the kids aren’t understanding material on their Chromebooks, and that textbooks actually worked better, but the school doesn’t want to pay for new textbooks, and whiny moms will complain about back pain from backpacks. They don’t want grief from the superintendent, who only cares about school rankings and appeasing the anti-tax senior citizens in town. Teachers know that the system is becoming a hollow sham, but can’t do anything to change things.

Subscribe now

On Being a Cassandra

We have no role models. If our president is an idiot, why should any of us be smart? The Kardashians are idiots, and they’re billionaires with fake faces. People who work hard at regular jobs are depressed and feel poor even when making $100,000 per year.

Being smart is hard work. It involves reading books, overcoming failures, and avoiding excessive consumption of weed. None of that is fun. Our president and other rich people have figured out how to be rich and powerful without any of that heavy lifting. Education seems pointless.

When nothing matters, things fall apart. A dumber citizenry is never a good thing for democracies. If public education falters, then we will give up on smart, low-income kids. If meritocracy ends, then corruption and cronyism take over.

Education should be on the front page of the newspapers. All the Cassandras need to be heard.

LINKS

Why America’s Debate Over Which Children Are ‘Gifted’ Won’t Go Away: Gifted programs could be shutting out millions of high-performing Black and Latino children from low-income families. Can districts fix their advanced education problem?

The Autism Diagnosis Problem, The Daily — I have so much to say about this one.

I also have a lot to say about the Somali Autism Grift. Oh, I know how that happened.

Thanksgiving: I hope everyone had a great one. Here are some obligatory pictures of family and food. Overall, we had a great weekend. On Sunday, we spent most of the day in the car, driving Ian up to his college in Vermont and then back home to Jersey. Had a nice lunch in Vermont and listened to many podcasts.

Shopping: If you are going to buy something on Amazon, please use this link.

Watching: Slow Horses

It’s hard to focus on just one salacious bit of gossip for today’s newsletter. There are too many scandals. Perverts, idiots, and buffoons are everywhere. Let’s chat!

Epstein, the Smartest Man in the Room, Laughs From Hell

20,000 Epstein emails are the biggest news of the past couple of weeks. Prince Andrew and Fergie were de-crowned. Larry Summers is retiring from public life. Trump is getting pummeled by his former supporters for trying to bury his relationship with Epstein, even though it seems that he never participated in the most seriously problematic behavior.

The Epstein emails give us a glimpse of the excesses of the international super-wealthy. They truly believe that laws and morés that constrain our actions do not apply to them. Money buys personal planes and hair plugs. It is also a hall pass for pretty much any kind of behavior.

I’m also fascinated by Epstein himself. He collected secrets, which then became bargaining chips for more power and money. In his emails, we can see the traps that he laid for political leaders and CEOs, hoping that their missteps would become his next payday.

Some of his targets were easy prey, like Andrew and Fergie. Dumb and greedy, they were perfect marks for Epstein. Trump was more elusive. Epstein never got the hard dirt on him, even though he seriously tried to get some leverage over him.

In emails about Trump, we get the best assessment of Trump’s personality. After all, Epstein was probably the smartest guy in the room. Epstein was convinced that Trump was dumb and insane.

“I told everyone from day one. evil beyond belief, mad, ” Epstein wrote of Trump in March 2018. “he feels alone. and is nuts !!!”

Right now, Epstein is laughing loudly from his basement apartment in hell. The dashed-off thoughts of a pedophile are probably the best assessment of our President.

Trump’s critics actually give him too much credit for having a political agenda. Trump doesn’t give a shit about fascism or any political ideology. He wants people to salute him. He wants lots of gold things on the wall. He wants his enemies destroyed. He has one or two pet issues, like tariffs, but mostly he doesn’t give a shit about politics and policy. He’s in the White House for the glamour.

He’s also motivated by his plans to build up an even bigger pile of gold nuggets for his kids. The Trump family will be rich forever because of Trump’s low-energy presidency. I doubt any of them will run for office. That’s Vance’s next move. The Trump kids will perch on the gold nuggets and get more facelifts.

Subscribe now

Frozen Faces and Ice Cream Scoop Boobs

Speaking of facelifts, let’s talk about Kris Jenner’s 70th birthday party.

Have you seen Kris Jenner’s latest facelift? Dr. Frankenstein rearranged her features so she looks younger than her daughters.

She had a big party for her 70th birthday to celebrate the new decade. The party was held at the Bezos mansion. Guests included Hollywood power players and rich dorks. Bill Gates, Beyonce, Mark Zuckerberg, Snoop Dogg, and Oprah drank champagne and had a small Ozempic meal of one green olive and a carrot stick.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle even showed up, and later caused a big splash because they insisted that the Kardashians delete their pictures from their Instagram feed.

The world is in the toilet, and we’re talking about the imbeciles at the Kardashian party.

But maybe we should be talking about the Kardashian party because it’s emblematic of the shallowness of the international elite. There is absolutely nothing interesting about any of those people. They are rich because of luck and a couple of good decisions. The origin story of the Kardashians’ billions was Kris Jenner’s decision to turn Kim’s sex tape into gold.

Authenticity

All that money. All that power. And in the end, it’s all being squandered by imbeciles on utter crap. At least the robber barons from the past used their money to build libraries and museums. Sure, those projects were also ego-trips — all philanthropy is narcissism to a certain extent — but those projects have had lasting value that has benefited millions.

And the more that we get to know the present-day elites through their splashy parties and exposed crimes, the more that we hate them. Diddy, anyone?

I want more people doing great things without the ego-trip, without the big budgets, without the Botox. We need new leaders, new idols, new priorities.

At the same time, I love the dirt. More Epstein memos are on their way. Can’t wait.

LINKS

Shopping: Loving the Black Friday sales on Everlane.

Travel: Two weeks ago, we visited Ian in Vermont. We roamed around Putney, Quechee, and Hanover, NH. Saw glass blowers at Simon Pearce, checked out Dartmouth, and ate good food.

Last Saturday, we went to Ohio to visit Steve’s family. Because we just finished binging Death by Lightning and because we’re a little geeky, we decided to check out Garfield’s mausoleum at Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland. While we were there, we visited Steve’s grandparents and other extended family at that cemetery. We also had a fabulous lunch in Little Italy. Great weekend with history and family.

Subscribe now

The race for the governorship of New Jersey is tight. Yesterday’s USA Today reported a margin of error race.

A new poll shows a tight race for the New Jersey governor’s mansion as former President Barack Obama is set to speak at a Nov. 1 rally for the Democratic candidate.

Democrat Mikie Sherrill had a slight lead over her Republican rival, Jack Ciattarelli, in the AtlasIntel poll released Nov. 1. The poll of more than 1,600 likely voters in New Jersey from Oct. 25 to Oct. 30 showed Sherrill getting 50.2% of the vote compared to Ciattarelli’s 49.3%, with a 2% margin of error.

Sherrill is a moderate Democrat with serious mom vibes, who should have been a shoo-in for this race. I’ve been following her since 2019, when she ran a series of awesome ads and won a local Congressional race. This is Ciattarelli’s third race for governor, and he has MAGA ties, which don’t really work here.

Why are things so close in this New Jersey race for governor?

Don’t underestimate the power of an Italian last name in New Jersey. 13% of residents here are paesan with strong opinions on soppressata and roasted red peppers. Jack’s last name probably gives him a 3 percent edge, which doesn’t hurt in a tight race. But that’s not the real reason that Sherrill doesn’t have the obvious lead.

To really understand this race, you have to know Jersey. And anybody who knows this state will tell you — everything is fucked up.

Housing is tight. The schools are overrated. Too many local officials are inept narcissists. Taxes are high. We’re jammed into tight spaces with congested highways. We actually have too much government; it's just not an effective government that has any interest in solving those problems. As a result, nothing works well here.

Subscribe now

Shit Happens Here

When political scientists rank states by levels of political corruption, Jersey is always at the top, along with Louisiana and Rhode Island. New Jersey’s corruption stems from its highly localized political culture. People never say that they are from Jersey. Instead, they say they are from Ridgewood, West Orange, North Bergen, or Secaucus. They identify with their towns, not the state.

These towns are run like families. And families aren’t democratic. Political officials prioritize protecting their followers. Nobody is paying attention because there is no local media in Jersey, so… shit happens.

In 2014, a local official in my town stole 1.8 million quarters from the parking meters and only got five years of probation. Our former Senator, Bob Menendez, is currently serving eleven years in prison. The Montclair school district just lost $20 million and had to fire 100 employees.

Subscribe now

Local Government Maze

On top of corruption, the structure of our government is designed for waste. New Jersey is one of the smallest states in the country, but it is densely populated and divided into 564 municipalities. Some of these towns are so small that they don’t have enough students to create their own schools. Still, those towns will have their own town administrators, police departments, and fire trucks that they proudly march down Main Street on Memorial Day every year.

Thanks to the strong unions, our civil employees are paid very well. On average, cops are paid $93,000 per year, not including overtime. A police chief can make $300,000, retire at age 55, and then take another job with a full pension. Our generous state pension system gobbles up a big chunk of the state budget.

There are hundreds of others employed by these towns to mow the grass in the parks and empty the trash cans in the downtown. Those jobs often go to relatives of town officials. Since nobody attends school board meetings, school spending is a big question mark.

We actually need less government in New Jersey. Fewer towns, fewer government employees. Instead of a county with 70 police chiefs, maybe it just needs one. A county-wide system for local administration would reduce costs and decrease inefficiencies. But that’s never going to happen, because there are too many people benefiting from the status quo.

Subscribe now

Not Enough Housing

So, we are bleeding money in taxes for all this redundancy. Some families leave for states with lower taxes as soon as their kids finish high school. But most stay, which means that there aren’t enough houses to go around.

Real estate prices are crazy. Around the corner from us, a house that had been badly damaged in a fire sold for $850,000. The real estate ad called it a “diamond in the rough" with burned walls everywhere. “Opportunity knocks!” It sold for the asking price in two weeks. My sons will not be able to buy a house within 300 miles of here.

Despite all those problems, Jersey is a nice place. It’s close to the city, the country, and the beach. The food is the best in the country. (You can fight me on that one.) There are jobs, colleges, and entertainment. It’s diverse and immigrant-friendly. So, the state keeps growing in numbers, getting denser, more complicated, more expensive.

This is what people are mad about. National politics don’t really matter in this race. It’s local, personal. Jersey politics is a family business, and outsiders don’t get it. People are voting for the person who they think has better answers to our Jersey headaches.

Links and More

This is the longest writing break that I’ve taken in twenty years. And I’ve been miserable. Writing is what I do. So, I’m back.

Watching: The Diplomat, Only Murders in the Building, Lowdown, King & Conqueror

Travel: This week — West Village Halloween Parade, Easton BaconFest. Next week, we’ll be in Vermont to visit Ian at college. The following week, we’ll be in Cleveland to visit Steve’s folks. In January, we’ll meet up with Jonah in Hawaii.