Governments want you ignorant and compliant. They need you ignorant or you won’t be compliant for the simple reason that governments do not have your best interests at heart.

It took me far too long to understand that. I used to believe that the political parties each had different visions for what would work, but that both wanted what was best for everyone. I no longer believe that. I think most politicians only care about themselves and their close associates. So best to keep you in the dark and feed you BS.

There are a lot of reasons why your ignorance is so necessary, and not all of them are related to any bad will toward you. More often than not bureaucrats simply don’t care about you at all. They have a vision for how the world works or should work, and if they have to steamroll over you that is your problem. Most large organizations are like this, actually; the closer anything is to a monopoly the worse they will treat you. And government is the biggest and most enduring monopoly there is.

We’ve all experienced this. Wait in any line at a government office and you can see the indifference to your suffering. I am genuinely surprised when things go well dealing with a bureaucrat. It does happen occasionally. But it is rare.

Occasionally people fight back, and when they do stonewalling is one of the most effective tools at the disposal of the bureaucracy. You may have the regulations and the law on your side, but bureaucrats can drag things out, hide information, and make holding them accountable nearly impossible.

That is what Department of Education officials in California have been doing in fighting a lawsuit charging that their school policies during COVID harmed children.

One of the key contentions in the lawsuit is that disadvantaged students were disproportionately harmed by the policies–this is clearly true since lower-income parents have few options besides government schools and little access to resources for tutoring. Just look at the statistics and it is indisputable that all kids were harmed, and that the least prepared kids were harmed the most.

Stanford University researcher Tom Dee has been compiling education statistics and his work clearly demonstrated that the worst educational impacts of pandemic policies have fallen on these students, and is preparing to testify to that fact in court. In response, the California Department of Education threatened to fine him $50,000 for doing so.

Tell the truth and we will fine you, Dr. Dee.

Thanks, California Department of Education.

Their argument? The information he was using came from the Department of Education. He shouldn’t be allowed to share his research with the court because using the department’s own information is somehow wrong.

Apparently the department buries in its agreements for sharing data a provision that prevents it from being used against the state. This, in itself, is ridiculous on its face. The government is not some private entity entitled to preserve proprietary information. It is, supposedly, there for the public. (Yeah right!).

But the bureaucrats want to cover their own butts, so they put a gag order on their information sharing. Even worse, in this case, Dee didn’t even use information that he got from the Department. They want a blanket gag order on anything that could conceivably hurt their case.

California has threatened a Stanford University researcher with a lawsuit and up to $50,000 in fines after he testified on behalf of poor families suing the state over pandemic school closures.

Thomas Dee, who has studied academic outcomes for 11 years at Stanford, submitted testimony last month in support of the families’ claims in a 2020 lawsuit that the state harmed vulnerable children when they shut down classrooms and effectively stalled instruction. Within days, the California Department of Education sent him a letter claiming that because he works with taxpayer-funded data from the agency, he could not criticize the state in court.

The agency alleged in its letter that he breached an agreement he signed on behalf of a Stanford research project that uses state data, and has warned that they may yank the project’s access and fine Dee $50,000 unless he immediately works to “mitigate further damage.” Dee said in court documents that the agreement is completely separate from the testimony he offered for the lawsuit.

“It’s a gag order,” said Williamson Evers, a senior fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland and a former federal education official under President George W. Bush. He added that it’s “extreme” for the state to try to hold public data hostage in order to control what researchers say.

The threats worked on one researcher–he opted not to testify because he didn’t want to drop $50,000.

Ahead of Dee’s testimony, Department of Education officials warned both Dee and his Stanford colleague Sean Reardon—who was also set to testify—that they could face sanctions if they spoke against the department in the case, said Michael Jacobs, a partner at the law firm Morrison and Foerster which is helming the parents’ lawsuit.

Reardon, who helped with a major research project on learning losses from school closures, ultimately opted not to testify because of the threat. Reardon did not respond to a request for comment sent through Stanford’s Center for Education Policy Analysis.

It’s hard to blame Reardon, even though his decision was disappointing. You can’t fight city hall, they say. Not all of us have that kind of money–or the ability to pay the necessary legal bills–so I get his reluctance.

Luckily Dee decided to fight the gag order from the Department of Education, and they had to back down. The chances of winning a challenge were pretty slim they decided. If Dee hadn’t gotten outside counsel that worked for free, he would have been gagged.

California drops effort to block researcher from testifying in education case https://t.co/dae2Q518SJ via @politico

— Blake Jones (@jonesblakej) August 18, 2023

The state’s Department of Education had threatened to sue Thomas Dee, a nationally prominent education researcher, over his plans to testify against the CDE in a suit criticizing the state for failing to adequately help low-income students and students of color recover from setbacks they suffered during protracted pandemic school closures.

The CDE had argued that an unrelated research agreement giving Dee access to department data prevented him from testifying in the case, even though he only cited public data in arguments criticizing the state’s response. But attorneys for the department effectively dropped their bid to block his testimony Wednesday night, telling several university researchers in a letter that a provision of their agreements limiting “testimony adverse” to the state would no longer be enforced.

The victory in this one case is obviously a good thing, but it is ridiculous that a policy exists at all that limits access to government data based on whether that data can be used for the benefit or detriment of the state and its bureaucrats.

That amounts to a demand that everybody who gets access to public data become a cheerleader for the government, or at least shut up if it makes government officials look bad.

Censorship is now the default in the United States. If you are seen as a danger to the reputation or power of government officials, they will try to shut you down. Whether it is on Facebook, Twitter, or now even in a court of law they will do everything they can to keep any critic quiet.

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