ICYMI: June Is Busting Out
Here's edu-reading to kick off your June.
How Five Lost Minutes Altered Our Class Culture
A look how even a small shift in how time is used can have a huge impact on the classroom.
Boston To Protesting Students: You're Not Worth It
Jennifer Berkshire takes a look at how Boston reacted, or didn't, to student protests about massive budget cuts.
The Assault on Public Education in North Carolina
Valerie Strauss runs a piece from Stuart Egan that provides a one-stop collection of all the ways North Carolina's citizen-hating legislature has worked to dismantle public education.
Failing the Test
Capital and Main runs a series of pieces looking at the charter industry. This will take you a while to work through, but it's worth it.
Chester Uplands: Exhibit A for Broken Charter Law
The most effed-up funding mess in Pennsylvania, highlighting everything that is so deeply wrong with how we handle charter schools in this state.
English Teacher Re-Titles Classic Poems as Clickbait
One more shot fired in the battle to make classic lit appealing in the internet era. Fun times.
The LA Times Editorial a Distraction
This week the LA Times was apparently hit on the head and ran an editorial critical of the charter industry. Nancy Bailey reminds us of all the reasons we shouldn't get too excited.
Trump University Shows Why For Profit Motives Don't Belong in Education
Probably the only useful thing there is to learn from Trump U-- just how bad naked marketeering looks in education.
Oklahoma's Teacher Shortage: Not Just Salaries
Oklahoma is 49th in teacher salaries, and working hard to drop that lost spot. They started the year with 1,000 unfilled teaching jobs and handed out 1,000 emergency certificates to, well, anybody with a pulse. This is the first of a three-part series considering some real ways to address their shortage. Lessons for everybody here.
Third Way or the Highway
Jennifer Berkshire went to the latest Massachusetts education profiteer confab. What she found there.
What I Hope To Tell My Kids about Muhammad Ali
Jose Vilson reflects on what to tell his students about the death of one of America's great-- and imperfect-- athletes.
CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: June Is Busting Out:
Give the Democratic Party Your Two Cents
Yes, there's every reason to believe that the Democratic Party is pretty thoroughly run through with corporate shills, oligarchic toadies, and neoliberal tools. It is also true that a party platform is like the line-up for an all-star game-- hotly debated one day and completely forgotten a month later.However. Sometimes it takes a hundred hits of the hammer to crack open the stone. Sometimes it ta
Does High GPA = Low Creativity?
In April, research was released that suggests that students with higher grades are actually less innovative than their lower-graded peers.The research comes from Matthew Mayhew, assoiciate professor of higher education at New York University, working with grad student Benjamin Selznick. The two surveyed over 10,000 undergrad and grad students at colleges and universities in four different counties
Norms vs. Standards
I've found myself trying to explain the difference between norm and standards reference multiple times in the last few weeks, which means it's time to write about it. A lot of people get this distinction-- but a lot of people don't. I'm going to try to do this in plain(ish) English, so those of you who are testing experts, please forgive the lack of correct technical terminology.A standards-refere
JUN 03
Moskowitz Schadenfreude
Eva Moskowitz, the super-well-paid queen (almost a cool half million) of Success Academy, finally had more than just a lousy day. She flat out lost one. I know it's not nice, but let's share a little schadenfreude over the defeat of a woman whose defiant hubris has been a bamboo shoot under the fingernails of educators all across Ne York.The plan has been to expand the SA empire by adding Pre-K. B
JUN 02
How To Blackmail a Teacher
This is not a post about some reformster program or educational policy. This is about just how low someone can go. This is about one of the worst websites I have ever come across.TeacherComplaint.com is a site that looks clunky, but makes an offer that seems appealing:TeacherComplaints.com - A Unique Web Site which allows Students & Parents to take control of what goes on in school!Do you feel
JUN 01
Death Notice for Neoliberalism?
Neo what? You may not be paying enough attention to political labels and categories, particularly when they don't seem to fit any of the standard Dem-liberal vs. GOP-conservative model.Neoliberalism was born in the thirties in Europe (where it was also known as the "Middle Way" or the "Third Way"). Its central tenet is that private corporations ought to be free to do whatever t
The New Teach for America-- Now With Less "Teach"
Teach For America likes to reinvent itself from time to time, searching for whatever is currently the sweet spot in the market. And as Emma Brown explains in yesterday's Washington Post, TFA has stepped into the transmogrifier once again, and has emerged with a bit of mission creep.The latest shift is prompted by a notable drop in TFA's recruiting juice. As Brown reports, applications are down 35%