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Thursday, June 5, 2014

6-5-14 Curmudgucation Week

CURMUDGUCATION:








The NEA Wants To Organize You
Over at EdWeek Seven Sawchuk writes about NEA's new push to reverse a steady decline in membership. It's about time. Membership is down a reported 230,000 teachers over the last three years. And that's before you even start counting the "reluctant" members. As far as I know, NEA doesn't keep track of this (and is probably happier not knowing), but not every NEA member actually wants to b


FEE: A Floridian Trip through the Reformster Swamp
In twenty-one short paragraphs, Patricia Levesque of FEE (Foundation for Excellence in Education)  manages to set a new record for sheer Density of Wrong. This seems to be FEE's specialty; in the vast coal mine of Common Core Carbonized Crap, FEE demonstrates the Supermaniacal ability to squeeze the raw materials of wrong into a shining diamond of dopiness. Today's sweepstakes entry, "Student
An Open Letter To Michelle Labuski
It must have been some time yesterday that you and your colleagues discovered this post, taking you to task for your pro-Common Core post on engageNY. You responded on twitter with a simple "Not okay. And hurtful." A few of your colleagues responded in my comments section. You were all gentler, kinder, and more amenable to reason than I was in the original post. I understand how you migh


6-4-14 Curmudgucation Week
CURMUDGUCATION: Why Your Evaluation Is DumbAs you contemplate your end of the year evaluation paperwork, you are probably thinking (and not for the first time), "This doesn't make any sense." And you are correct. Current practices in teacher evaluation do not make sense-- if you assume that the purpose of these evals is to actually evaluate teachers accurately and effectively.A good eval