CURMUDGUCATION: Eva & Charter Priorities

CURMUDGUCATION: Eva & Charter Priorities:

Eva & Charter Priorities

Yes, we're getting a little tired of the story of how Eva Moskowitz's Success Academy got some bad press and Eva went berserk, throwing a ten year old child under the bus in response.

But there's one more point I want to make.

After many critics cried FERPA rights violation and the mom in the case slapped Moskowitz with acease and desist letter, here comes the First Amendment argument. Roughly summarized, it goes something like this: if a person bad mouths you to the press, you have the right to violate their privacy.

It's an interesting argument, and one that I'm a little familiar with. A few years back, a film-maker "featured" our school in a film about two young men who claimed to be victimized in their school settings. It had a moment, and our school took a lot of heat for it, and it was a challenging time for us because a quick stroll through the student's disciplinary file or life after the filming would have created a much different picture. In short, we could have defended ourselves by simply opening the student's confidential files to public scrutiny. But we didn't do that-- and I'm not being more specific with you right now-- because that would be the grossest kind of violation of that student's rights as well as a violation of our most fundamental ethics as a school.

As teachers and school systems, we know things about students and their families that nobody knows, and we have a front row seat to an unending cavalcade of Youthful Indiscretions. Yes, at times it can be hugely frustrating when our hands are tied and people are playing fast and loose with the truth, but the power differential between schools, with our access to a massive amounts of personal and private information, and students, who are just children-- that power differential is so huge that our hands need to be tied, both by the law and by our own professional restraint. It can be hugely frustrating to be under attack in the public sphere from which we can't defend ourselves, but the alternative is to become an institution collecting ammo to use against our most vulnerable CURMUDGUCATION: Eva & Charter Priorities:



Staying the Common Course

I've asked (and answered) the question before-- is there any conceivable argument that a teacher could muster in favor of the Common Core? I remain certain that the answer is, "No." But I've now read one that makes a lightly better attempt.

A friend sent me a copy of a guest editorial for the Association of Mathematics Teachers of New York State (teachers belong to all the best-sounding organizations) by teacher Michael Siuta, who wants to make a case for staying the course. Siuta is in his 22nd year of teaching, which means he counts four different high school mathematics curricula in his career. And he would like not to change again.

This is the inertia argument that is often made for the Core-- we've already come so far and invested so much. It's a weak argument, like riding in a car, discovering you're on the wrong road, and deciding that you'll just keep driving in the wrong direction because you've already come so far. And Siuta echoes the worst part of that argument:

Change is not always a bad thing; change just for the sake of change, however, is never a good thing and does more harm than good. 

Yeah, I've heard that argument before, somewhere, some-- oh, yeah. From every single person who fought against the implementation of Common Core in the first place. It was supposedly a terrible Staying the Common Course