THE BECOMING RADICAL
EMPATHYEDUCATES!
the becoming radical
A Place for a Pedagogy of Kindness
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U.S. and Education Reform Need a Critical Free Press
By Paul L. Thomas, Ed.D. | Originally Published at The Becoming Radical. June 19, 2014 Few things are worse than mainstream media coverage of education. Except for that sentence above, which stretches hyperbole beyond credibility. But that is exactly where the mainstream media finds itself when covering […]
Instability in the New Orleans Recovery School District – Closing Schools, Opening Schools and Changing School Codes
By Raynard Sanders, Ed.D. | Originally Published at EmpathyEducates. June 19, 2014 Public education in New Orleans has been a nightmare for parents since the state took over most of the schools post Hurricane Katrina. The Louisiana Department of Education has gone to great lengths to mislead […]
JUN 17
Tenure Is Not the Problem
By Richard D. Kahlenberg | Originally Published at Slate. June 13, 2014 On Tuesday, a California court struck down state teacher tenure and seniority protections as a violation of the rights of poor and minority students to an equal education. The decision, which will make it easier […]
Guest Post By Peter Smagorinsky: Response To The New NCTQ Teacher Prep Review
Sandy Coan does paperwork in her Van Asselt Elementary School classroom. Photo: Dan DeLong/Special To The Post-Intelligencer By Guest Post by Peter Smagorinsky, The University of Georgia c/o Paul L. Thomas, Ed.D. | Originally Published at The Becoming Radical. June 17, 2014 National Council on Teacher Quality […]
JUN 16
Fuzzy Math – Fuzzy Math – The Guesstimate that Struck Down California’s Teacher Tenure Laws
This week Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu handed the education reform movement a stunning legal victory, when he struck down California’s teacher tenure laws for discriminating against poor and minority students. The statutes made it so onerous to fire bad teachers, he wrote, that they […]
“Click, Clack, Moo”: Why the 1% Always Wins
By Paul L. Thomas, Ed.D. | Published at The Becoming Radical. June 16, 2014 [Originally posted at Daily Kos and Truthout, "Click, Clack, Moo": Why the 1% Always Wins is a powerful companion to George Saunders's Allegory of Scarcity and Slack.] October 18, 2011 As a high […]
JUN 15
Will California’s Ruling Against Teacher Tenure Change Schools?
Photograph Credit; Steven Depolo/Flickr By Dana Goldstein | Originally Published at The Atlantic. June 11, 2014 On Tuesday, a California superior-court judge ruled that the state’s teacher tenure system discriminates against kids from low-income families. Based on testimony that one to three percent of California teachers are […]
My Open Letter to Journalists: A Critical Free Press, pt. 2
Dear Journalists (especially those who write about education): After posting my U.S. and Education Reform Need a Critical Free Press, which represents a recurring effort in my public work to address the problems with journalism about education and education research/reports, I continued to interact with Juana Summers (NPR) and Stephen Sawchuk (Education Week) on Twitter. Those exchanges have sugge
JUN 19
U.S. and Education Reform Need a Critical Free Press
Few things are worse than mainstream media coverage of education. Except for that sentence above, which stretches hyperbole beyond credibility. But that is exactly where the mainstream media finds itself when covering education. Journalists, in their quest to maintain the traditional commitment to “fair and balanced” journalism [1], consistently endorse and perpetuate organizations without credibi
JUN 17
PREVIEW: New Film Opening 17 June 2014 – “NCTQ Hill”
NCTQ Hill Opening 17 June 2014 Starring Julia Roberts as NCTQ and Hugh Grant as Teacher Watch the PREVIEW!
Peter Smagorinsky: Response to the new NCTQ Teacher Prep Review
Response to the new NCTQ Teacher Prep Review Peter Smagorinsky, The University of Georgia NCTQ’s announcement of its new edition of its Teacher Prep Review predictably exalts its own role in improving public education by requiring colleges of education to raise students’ test scores through the instruction of its teacher candidates once they are members of school faculties. I will briefly respond
NCTQ: “their remedies are part of the disease”
Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease. Oscar Wilde (1891), The Soul of Man under Socialism And so: NCTQ releases yet another think tank faux-report that
JUN 16
The Very Disappointing Teacher Impact Numbers from Chetty
It appears that Raj Chetty, of the very famous and mostly hypothetical Chetty et al. study addressing teacher quality’s impact on students’ lifetime earning potential, had a big influence on the Vergara case in California: Testimony in Vergara by Harvard profs. Does anybody–other than Judge Treu–really believe these guys?! Amazing! pic.twitter.com/MvHVCEiUuj — Gene V Glass (@GeneVGlass) June 13, 2
“Click, Clack, Moo”: Why the 1% Always Wins
[Originally posted at Daily Kos and Truthout, "Click, Clack, Moo": Why the 1% Always Wins is a powerful companion to George Saunders's Allegory of Scarcity and Slack.] As a high school English teacher for nearly two decades, I came to embrace a need to offer students a wide range of lenses for interacting with and learning from many different texts, but I also learned that coming to read
JUN 15
George Saunders’s Allegory of Scarcity and Slack
The stories themselves, literally, are powerful and engaging or George Orwell’s 1984 and Arthur Miller’s The Crucible would not have endured as they have as literature people read again and again—and possibly should read again and again. However, ultimately, 1984 is not about the future (especially since we have long since passed the future Orwell may have envisioned), and The Crucible is not abou
JUN 14
Oscar Wilde on the Poor and Socialism
While I highly recommend a careful reading of Oscar Wilde’s The Soul of Man under Socialism, I also urge you to consider that this examination of the consequences of private property and how that perpetuates poverty is stunningly similar to the current education reform movement, notably: “But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the dis