Curmudgucation Week
College Students vs. Faux Journalism
HuffPo recently ran what could be called a graphics-rich story (basically two big graphics plus captioning) that is sure to have some folks sounding the alarm bell, and there's no question that the data are striking.The basic takeaway is this-- in no states in the US do the majority of students finish college in four years. Virginia is up top with 46%, with Nevada and DC bringing up the rear at 8.
YESTERDAY
How Much Money Is Tenure Worth?
Economist Allison Schrager is quoted over at Yahoo putting forth the idea that tenure is worth cold hard cash.Certainly this is not the first time the idea has been introduced. She Who Will Not Be Named tried in DC to introduce a plan to have a non-tenure big-buck track. This failed to get traction, perhaps because it's hard not to see trading tenure for big bucks as being synonymous with trading
Memo to Three-Year-Old Slackers
To: American Three-Year-OldsFrom: America's Education Reform Thought Leaders'Re: Get to work, you lazy slackersIt has come to our attention that your older brothers and sisters have been showing up to Kindergarten completely unprepared for the requirements of a rigorous education. It is time to nip this indolent behavior in the bud. You probably don't even know what 'indolent" means, do you?
No Shocking News About Principals In Study
In all of public education, is there a job that has gotten worse in past years than that of principals? And yes-- there are many, many truly terrible principals out there. How surprising is that, really? Who would want to sign up for a job that provides all of the responsibility with none of the power and the absolute guarantee that somebody in your district will be hating pretty much every decisi
JUL 24
Racing to the Bottom: The New School Leadership Challenge
As the assault on public education continues, school leaders face an unprecedented challenge-- how to win the race to the bottom without being too obvious about it.Occasionally, somebody notices that a district is becoming too successful in trashing its own mission. Just this week in Indianapolis, members of the school board noticed that about 200 teachers-- almost 10% of the entire teaching staff
Mean What You Say
One of the surreal features of the reformster world is the degree to which words simply don't match actions. It's as if someone sold you a can of pop clearly labeled "cola" and when you opened it up, it was filled with furniture polish.Suppose somebody said, "This is the most important new program we've ever rolled out. It will revolutionize the industry."Imagine what would com
JUL 23
My Doctoral Thesis
I've been following the problems of Dr. Terrence Carter in Connecticut with some interest. It seems that the Dr., "hand picked by Arne Duncan" might not have an actual PhD. Not even a super-easy PhD, but a PhD he just bought. Faked the whole thing. And he's not remotely alone in this.How can somebody do that, I wondered. Seriously, how do you do that?Turns out the answer is, "Very e
Campbell Brown Can't Connect Dots
Monday, Campbell Brown, the new face of the attack on teacher job security, tried to "set the record straight." I suppose she did, a little, in the sense that she made it even clearer that her proposed lawsuit makes no sense. But I'm guessing that's not what she had in mind.The tenacious New York parents who are challenging the state in court have one goal in mind: ensuring that all of o
JUL 22
NY Poll Delivers Bad News For CCSS
Sienna College Research Institute conducted a poll of 774 likely registered NY voters regarding the upcoming elections. Most of the results are predictably unremarkable. Actually, all of them are unremarkable if you've been paying attention. But if, like David Weigel at Slate, you'd bought the storyline of Common Core opposition as a "fringe" position, then there is news for you in this
How To Win Hearts and Minds for Charterdom
My esteemed colleague at Edushyster has scored an awesome little handbook straight from the world of charter school marketing-- the Charter School Messaging Notebook. Prepared by the Glover Group for the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools, this handy guide tells you everything you need to know about launching your successful foray into the lucrative world of pretending to run schools. So
The Hole in the Bucket of Teachers
Many news outlets reported on a study from the Alliance for Excellent Education, which as you might guess from the buzzy name, is a DC based advocacy group that thinks CCSS is swell and aspires to have all students graduate with 21st century skills. Also, rigor.What does the study say? The study focuses on the attrition rate for teachers, and didn't provide much new information about those figures
JUL 21
Time Political Reporter Flubs CCSS Story
At Time, Alex Altman has written a piece about Common Core's new role as GOP election kryptonite. He gets the kryptonite part right. The Common Core piece, not so much.Over the past several months, the state education standards developed by a bipartisan group of governors and educators have become one of the conservative movement’s biggest bugbears. Common Core is now “radioactive,” as Iowa GOP Go
CCSS and Esperanto
Why don't we speak Esperanto?You know Esperanto. It's a constructed language created in the late 19th century by a young man who was very interested in languages and who thought he might come up with a neutral language that transcended all the biases and baggage of previous languages. Ludwik Lazarus Zamenhof became an opthamologist, so he wasn't technically a language expert, but that shouldn't ma
Honesty, Sass, and Public Ed
I have had this piece from Peter DeWitt open in a tab for days, trying to formulate a response. DeWitt, as he sometimes does, is pondering the problem of trying to be a calm centrist in the ongoing debate about American public education.He believes there are people of good intent on both sides, but worries that they are being drowned out by strident, sarcastic voices that are dominating-- loudly--
JUL 20
Joe Klein's Non-comprehension
There are lots of things Joe Klein doesn't get, and many of them are related to education. In the process of railing last week about a de Blasio "giveback" of 150 minutes of special student tutoring time in New York schools, Klein managed to trot out a whole raft of misconceptions and complaints. Here he gets himself all lathered up.He said that the program had been “inflexible” and “one
Zephyr Teachout Is for Real
When the Washington Post ran an essay by Zephyr Teachout, they prefaced it by observing that she is "to say the least, not the kind of person you'd expect to run for office."That seems fair. Teachout is a Vermont-born law professor. In profiles of her by those who know her, she comes across as humble. In her own writing and speaking, she comes across as supremely capable. And she is shak
JUL 19
Picking Your Fights
"It's easy for the AFT to tell teachers not to shop at Staples. It would take guts to tell teachers, 'Don't give the tests!' How can you condemn the tests--and continue giving them? Wasn't 'just following orders' soundly discredited long ago? "—Susan Ohanian, Hemlock on the Rocks, July 14, 2014This quote has been bouncing around the eduwebs for almost a week, and it has engendered quite
Going into Gates Territory
Over in Seattle center you'll find fun things like the famous space needle, the EMP (a sort of SF museum housed in a 1950s vision of what 1990 would look like), and across the street from the EMP, an unassuming little building that houses the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Visitors Center. I sometimes tell you that I've read or watched something so you don't have to. Well, this time, I visited
Charter Conversations
Over at the Fordham Institute blog, Andy Smarick dissects and critiques the current state of dialogue regarding charter schools.What's the problem?He starts by observing that there are really two conversations going on.The first "presupposes (or, at minimum, concedes) the legitimacy of chartering and then explores how to make it better." Smarick believes that these nuts-and-bolts, sizzle