Curmudgucation Week
Why So Politicized?!
Education Post is beginning to look like an organization dedicated to the proposition that it takes an entire village to replace She Who Will Not Be Named. Though they have not yet announced plans to run a large urban school district into the ground, they are laboring mightily to make themselves a clearinghouse for all the top talking points for the Core and its attendant reformy barnacles.They ha
YESTERDAY
TNTP Proposes New Tenure Plan
TNTP, the Reimagine Teaching people and generators of plenty of fancy-looking reformy nonsense, have some more ideas for the post-Vergara world. They have decided to stake out a middle ground on the tenure wars, claiming that we don't need to eliminate it-- just fix it. And to that end, they have eight proposals to create "a more balanced system." It's all in this very fancy "paper,
Magical CCSS Teachers
Over at EdWeek, the Teaching Ahead roundtable is having a little debate about the Core's burgeoning image problem. I've made my own entry in the argument (feel free to check it out and like it as a way to register your CCSS love).Tucked in among the various points of view, you'll find this piece by Jessica Keigan. "Abandoning the Common Core Would Be a Disservice to Students" belongs to
SEP 11
Forever Less Than, Frederick Douglass, and No Excuses
My esteemed colleague and exceptional citizen journalist over at Edushyster has an interview up that is well worth your time to read.She talks to Joan Goodman, director of the TFA program at U Penn, about the no excuse charters of Philadelphia (among other things, the piece is a reminder that we can not knee-jerkingly sort good guys and bad guys based simply on their affiliations). The interview i
SEP 10
What Should Arne Do?
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has taken plenty of grief.He has been criticized by folks on the right who believe he is, at the very least, a hood ornament on the Great Studebaker of Federal Instrusion into education. He has been criticized by folks on the left for being the faceplate on the great machine that is dismantling the US public school system.Arne is easy to pick apart (I should know
Zephyr Teachout's Thank You Letter
Further proof that Teachout gets it. Here's the email that arrived today (I gave money to the campaign, so I'm on the list). I'm just putting it here in its entirety because it's a class act. And if you'd like a nice analysis of the results, read this piece for the New Yorker.Thank you. Last night, we exceeded all of the pundits expectations, keeping Andrew Cuomo at barely 60% of the vote, and won
Common Core 2.0?
Over at the Washington Post. Lindsey Layton is reporting on a survey by the Education Commission of the States about the Common Core. The ECS bills itself as a non-partisan research group, headed by a different governor each year, with a history stretching back to mid-sixties. They've produced a handy list that shows all the cool new names states have come up with for their states standards.Layton
SEP 09
Arne Takes Search for Clues on Road
Arne Duncan took a three-or-so day swing through the south, and along the way her reminded us about the many things he doesn't really get. Let's take a look at what comes up in coverage by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.Not Answering QuestionsAJC.com reported that in a meeting with a small, select audience, Arne was asked an excellent question by a student:Noting how often Duncan cited the criti
Adding Insult to Injury
It's a fair question. There have been plenty of reform movement imposed on education-- why is the current wave of reforminess evoking such a severe reaction among teachers. It's not just the injuries that NCLB, RttT and Waiverism (RttT Lite) have inflicted on education. It's the insults that have gone with them.First, there's the professional insult.Imagine a family member is having car trouble. Y
SEP 08
John Oliver, Student Debt, and the Edubiz Marketplace
I really have nothing to add to this, but boy do you need to see it..Okay, I have one thing to add to it. He actually missed the part where the fed bailed out Corinthian.This is what twisted market forces look like when they hit education. When the government sets up a system with the main function of using students to funnel loan dollars to education based businesses, this is what you get. You ar
The College Bias
It's not new and it's not hard to explain. After all, virtually all teachers are college educated. We're pre-disposed to a collegiate bias.Add to that the correlation between more education and more money, and add to that the manner in which DC (by way of CCSS) has institutionalized college as The Goal, and it's no surprise that in education, we have a decidedly pro-college bias.In many high schoo
SEP 07
TFA 4.0 & Minority Teachers
Teach for America is nothing if not flexible.In the oft-told tale, TFA was a targeted response to a specific problem-- inner-city schools that could not find enough qualified staff to fill their teacher positions. TFA would create an American teacher version of the Peace Corps, making it cool to put in a couple of years in a classroom before heading on to your real job.In fact, TFA 2.0 came fairly
No, Education Post Is Not About Conversation
Twelve million dollars buys you a big splash. Many of us have launched blogs; very few of us have had heavy press coverage of the launch.When Anthony Cody, a nationally known education writer and activist left the nest at Education Week to launch Living in Dialogue, a website that features work from many of the top writers in education policy today, the Washington Post did not dispatch Lindsey Lay
SEP 06
The Other Conservative Reform Argument
If you've been scratching your head and wondering why several prominent conservative ed writers and thinky tankists have been turning on the Common Core lately, we have an reminder of where a new argument could be headed.Over at SFGate, we find Vicki E. Alger, a thinky tankist from the Independent Institute (libertarian) in Oakland, presenting this article-- "American Education Needs Competit
Out Standing In Our Field
It's something that every teacher can do for all teachers. Get out into the communityI've heard the speech from fellow teachers-- "When I walk out of here at the end of the day, I don't want to see any students again until I walk back into school tomorrow." I have known teachers who deliberately bought homes well outside the district limits so that their home life would never, ever inter
Efficiency Report Is Only Mostly That Bad
The edublogonewsphere buzzed a bit this week about a report from GEMS Education Solutions regarding educational efficiency and the fact that it finds the US somewhat lacking. It is, however, a large report, and some reporters made the mistake of skipping through to just the shiny, sexy parts. I'm not sure that the report has anything useful to tell us, but I don't think it's quite as outrageous as