All Week @ THE CHALK FACE
Bill Gates Must Be Worried About Common Core Survival
Bill Gates is heavily invested in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). However, CCSS is in trouble. Even US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is desperately trying to save them. Forget the students and teachers. It’s the Standards that the likes of Gates and Duncan wish to rescue. Gates/Scholastic CCSS Survey Result ”Early Release” In order to […]
Stuck in the Middle With You
STUCK IN THE MIDDLE WITH YOU Yes I’m stuck in the middle with you, And I’m wondering what it is I should do, It’s so hard to keep this smile from my face, Losing control, yeah, I’m all over the place, Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right, Here I am, stuck […]
Gates Money and Common Core– Part VI
This post is the sixth (and final) post in a series I have written detailing Bill Gates’ mammoth purchasing of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). (Here are links to the previous five posts in the series.) In the fifth post, I mentioned that this final post would be Gates’ CCSS funding of education businesses. Then, I realized […]
Live show from DougCo Colorado today, 4PM EST
Tim and I are out here meeting with parent and teacher activists who are attempting to oust a school board that is rotten. This is actually a very interesting case study. You can understand at minimum the racism and bigotry that underscore inner city school reform. Even the white savior mentality that goes back to […]
YESTERDAY
We Gotta Get Out of This Place: Looking For A Heart of Math
Why in the world does NCTM support the Common Core Mathematics Standards? NCTM leadership fantasizes that CCSSI will accomplish what 25+ years of NCTM’s efforts failed to get done. The reality may well be that CCSS will drive the final nails into burying the progressive mathematics reforms that NCTM has supported, by associating them in […]
The Broad Foundation and Broadies: Kings of “Distruptive” and “Unreasonable” Trickle-Down Reform
A study in evil from Julian Vasquez Heilig The Broad Foundation and Broadies: Kings of “Distruptive” and “Unreasonable” Trickle-Down Reform. Tagged: broad foundation, education deform, eli broad, privatization
The Problem With Charter Schools
Reblogged from Moi Naturale: In the fall of 2008, I decided I wanted to transition from journalism to education. While I was in a master's program studying broadcast journalism at the University of Southern California, I started volunteering at a local community center called the Jackie Robinson Community Center. Through this experience, I realized I […]
OCT 03
Secretary Duncan Answers Critics
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan—who has no experience in education except through political appointments (and being a student himself)—has in the last several months chastised newspaper editors and what Duncan has labeled “armchair pundits” (who, for the record, tend to be k-12 public school teachers, teacher educators, education historians, scholars, and researchers; in other words, […]
More on LAUSD: Bond Money, Aquino, Broad, and (Again with) Pearson
Yesterday, I wrote a post on some of the conflicts of interest and obvious profiteering posed by the involvement of Deasy, Apple, Pearson, and Gates in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) iPad fiasco. In this post, I examine more of the situation as I reflect upon issues raised by the June 2013 Los Angeles Daily News article cited […]
OCT 02
Why Is the Secretary of Education Doing a Rush/Beck Routine?
“Why did you listen to that man, that man’s a balloon” “Friend of Mine” — The National A sure sign someone doesn’t have a valid point is demonstrated nearly every day in right-wing media—notably by Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Here is how it works: (1) Identify the person or event you want to […]
Dear Secretary Mister Duncan, Sir
My name is Jill O’Malley Conroy, and five months ago today I became one of those “arm chair pundits” you described to our fellow Americans yesterday. My alternate name in this “alternate universe”, or “blogosphere”, as you also dubbed it, is The Indignant Teacher. My goal as such right now is to make sure our […]
OCT 01
For New Mexico…and Every Other Bush-Bought State
This is a letter to the editor for New Mexico newspapers, but if you have a Jeb Bush lackey in your state, then perhaps you should put the pressure on your leadership as well. A recent report was released that suggested that the Federalization of public education is not doing our schools, students, teachers, or […]
Deasy, Apple, Pearson, and Gates: A Post Worth Hacking Into
Thirty million dollars is the iceberg tip for what the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) under the direction of reform-minded, unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy graduate John Deasy decided to shell out in June in the name of supporting Common Core. The purchase: Apple iPads. To date, the estimated cost of this fiasco has risen to $1 billion. This mammoth pricetag is to be paid [
The Assault on Public Education in SC Continues: More Innovation!
How much education innovation can a high-poverty state take? Apparently, according to former-general-without-a-second-of-experience-as-a-teacher Superintendent Mick Zais, just a little more. As reported by Patrick Hayes at EdFirstSC (and not reported at the Charleston Post and Courier because the P&C is all about endorsing the worst possible policies for SC public schools, such as merit pay an
SEP 30
Call me a simpleton, but I love me some Mailbox!
I just resubscribed to The Mailbox Magazine. Prior to graduate school and the whole intellectual thing, I used to love getting new issues. It always seemed like I received something right after I taught it. Now, I’m NOT liking all the Common Core alignment nonsense. And I know all of my former higher education colleagues […]
Why Poverty and Mass Incarceration Do Not Matter in the U.S. | the becoming radical
Why Poverty and Mass Incarceration Do Not Matter in the U.S. | the becoming radical.
Some “Helpful” Advice
So, today in my email, I get this little “gem” – some “helpful” advice from my BOCES Center for implementing the Math Modules. OH JOYOUS DAY!! I am SO thankful that not only has NYSED told me exactly what to say, now my BOCES Center is giving me step by step advice about implementing the […]
SEP 29
David Coleman Runs The Voodoo Psychometrics Down
A late August HuffPo article by Joy Resmovitz entitled, “David Coleman, Common Core Writer, Gears Up For SAT Rewrite,” has been making the rounds on many of the Facebook groups I follow that focus on high-stakes testing, the Common Core Standards, and other issues of concern to teachers, parents, administrators, students, and other educational stakeholders. […]
“Stupid” #commoncore Comments debunked: @WiStateJournal
Last week Wisconsin governor Scott Walker agreed that the common core might not be the best standards in the Milky Way Galaxy. So he decided to allow for hearings and public comment. This of course fired up the common core supporters that already had “common core or die” tattooed across their hind quarters. Shrieking and […]
Required viewing for all #edtech enthusiasts
Seriously. Minimize screen time, especially for the youngest. It’s a sad habit. Tagged: edtech, louis ck, screen time, technology
Petrilli’s Embarrassing Post about Poor Mothers Being “Bad”
This post is embarrassing—both for the content and the fact that Petrilli appears unaware how embarrassing it is. Single-mothers are not “bad”; they are overwhelmed. Education is not to create economically self-sufficient people (that serves the privileged who feed off the economy). Education’s goals are much BIGGER than that—self-awareness and complete autonomy, within which economic […]
SEP 28
Second Grade ELA Modules – It Keeps Getting Stupider
As I continue my ‘journey’ through Module 1 of NYSED’s scripted and paced curriculum guide, I find things that just make me want to scream. First of all, the pace is pretty much a 100 yard dash. I read to my students, they are to listen and learn. In fact, this is the name of […]
#commoncore poem by Jed Hopkins
Common core standards.Standards that are held in common.Standards that will form the core of our education system.Standards that will ensure the quality of the field of public schooling.Standards that will create a level playing field.A measuring stick.A rational tool.A no-nonsense tool.The source of important criteria.A communication tool for clarifying how teachers are doing,how students are […]
This is why the Tea Party can shove their anti #commoncore sentiment #tcot
Update: I was told this was parody. Ah well. It happens. I snicker at the folks tricked by the Onion, and here I go, snookered just the same. Tea Party zealots have been rather late to the party, actually. In only the last few months or so have they sought fit to propose anything related […]
I am “outing” myself… sort of, with the Kinder Chronicles, Part One.
Close friends and associates know me by name, Shaun Johnson. No, I’m not the gymnast. I tried as best as I could to go by a pseudonym because, well, I caught a lot of flak from my former supervisors in higher education because of my views. That is, skeptical and largely against Common Core, critical […]
How Bill Gates Views the World
Money is power. Power is money. Bill Gates has too much of both. Valerie Strauss gets it—that Bill Gates is not what education needs: “Education reform should not be driven by private philanthropists with their own agendas, however well-intentioned.” Ultimately, the problem is Gates’s view of the world. And there is no better way to express […]