Curmudgucation Week
CCSS Myths That Won't Die, Already
You may think that certain Common Core bunk has been debunked so many times that it would finally crawl back to the PR cave that it crawled out of and, if not die, at least spend the weeks eating twinkies and watching AMNTM marathons. But no.Here comes Cynthia Dagnal-Myron over at HuffPost with an article that looks as if it were written in the summer of 2013. But no-- August 1, 2014. It's a sober
Writing News Re: Me
I have a bit of news to share.You may have heard that Anthony Cody I leaving behind the world of Education Week blogging to pursue other projects and spin "Living in Dialogue" onto some new platforms. That should be going live sometime this week. You can stay caught up with his progress at the Living in Dialogue page on Facebook. I think that whole enterprise is going to be pretty cool.I
Accountability vs. Responsibility
Folks keep demanding accountability in education. I'm pretty sure what we want is responsibility. We often use the terms as if they're interchangeable, but they aren't.Accountability is about giving an accounting, reporting, proving to someone that you have done what they require of you, and proving it in the manner of their choosing. Responsibility is about having a duty, a personal requirement t
How Lovable Is New NEA President?
NEA president-elect Lily Eskelsen Garcia is, if nothing else, much more lifelike and good with words than her predecessor. We don't have to rehearse the sad story of how Dennis Van Roekel lost my love; the question I'm asking now is, can I be wooed by the new boss?My initial reaction was not full-on delight. LEG has an unabashed love for the Common Core, and consequently extends her love to the Ga
Pushback from the Little People
Campbell Brown's appearance on the Colbert Report included one of the popular reformster mini-themes-- the desire to be insulated from any manner of dialogue.Granted, this is not exclusive to reformsters-- there are many groups of people in American society who have trouble distinguishing between being disagreed with and being oppressed. But among the privileged there seem to be some folks who jus
JUL 31
What Ever Happened to Learn More Go Further?
In honor of Throwback Thursday, I decided to follow up on one of my favorite reformy intiatives. Mounted by way of Jeb Bush by way of FEE, and the US Chamber by way of the Higher State Standards Partnership, "Learn More. Go Further" was going to set the grass roots ablaze with Common Core love.I first wrote about LMGF back at the end of March (the media program launched March 19), noting
JUL 30
Conservatives Backing Away from Reform
Stephanie Simon's Politico piece "Mom's winning the Common Core war" includes a sort of second breath rededication of purpose from Michael Petrilli at the Fordham Institute and Wes Farno at Higher State Standards Partnership, a group that we've met before working hand in hand with Jeb Bush's FEE and the US Chamber of Commerce. Both Fordham and HSSP are big-fans of the Core (or, at least,
BATS and Arne
There's not a lot for me to add to Mark Naison's account of the meeting between six BAT representatives and several Department of Education reps, including Arne Duncan. You should be giving that a read, if for no other reason than it represents a moment when the USDOE paid attention to teachers that they themselves hadn't chosen to talk to.There are just a couple of moments that I want to highligh
The engageNY CCSS Primer
In which engageNY provides a brief explanation of why the Core is baloney That one-stop-shopping for fully sliced Core baloney, engageNY, has a simple chart that can be used to see why the Core is, along with all its other flaws, not particularly necessary."Pedagogical shifts demanded by the Common Core State Standards" is a handy list of twelve shifts (six math, six ELA) that teachers i
JUL 29
One True Path
In the midst of celebrating Coleman's awesomeness at Aspen, the architect of Common Core explained that he would keep aligning the world to the coreso that we are clearly showing kids and teachers that there's a path to college that extends from Kindergarten through twelfth grade.This is one of the fundamental articles of faith for reformsters-- there is One True Path to a good life, to happy, hea
JUL 28
David Coleman Is Superman!
Politico dipped into the David Coleman at Aspen Ideas festival file and pulled out a quote in which Coleman admits that “I think then we make a great mistake by caricaturing the opponents of the standards as crazies or people who don't tell the truth." They call this "a big takeaway." They also catch Coleman admitting that it's no sign of great paranoia to be concerned about how ind
Seasoned Teachers Not Getting Filthy Rich
In other news, scientists anticipate the sun rising in the East tomorrow morning.Okay, this might actually be news to some folks. To listen to the merit-based pay crowd, you would think that we are currently throwing bales of teachers based on years of experience. But an issue brief released last week by the Center for American Progress suggests that in many states that's simply not true."Mi
JUL 27
Why Teachers Should Be Paid Less ??!!
Over at the Federalist, Jason Richwine has produced a spectacularly bad piece of thought leadership entitled "Why We Shouldn't Raise Teacher Pay." (h/t to Curmudgucator Shannon Jenkins). It's just as bad as you think it will be.So why should we look at it.Often, the bad arguments circulating the world of thinkiness are tucked away, hidden in the midst of not-entirely-stupid things. They
Pearson Set Cut Scores for NYS
Over at lohud, actual journalists like Gary Stern have been working long hours trying to pry loose some facts from the state of New York, and it's worth the while of folks from all states to see what they've dug up because it's a bright red warning flag about how the CCSS-linked testing program actually works.Gannett Publishing had to pry open the state with a large, legal-sized crowbar just to ge
JUL 26
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.