ICYMI: Stock Up on Edureads
Where Will All the Boys Go
Julia Sass Rubin with charts and actual data to help explain why we can say that the charters of New Jersey are running a big fat scam.
The Kids Can't Read, But They Can Read You
If you are like me, you never miss anything that Jose Vilson reads. But if you missed this, read it now.
A Shortage of Respect
Rob Miller reminds us, once again, what contributes to the ongoing teacher shortage.
My Final Evaluation, or If I Werern't Retiring, Bot Would I Be Pissed
Just an awesome first person account of being on the receiving end of one more bad evaluation process.
Dear Michigan Public School Teachers
An open letter that starts out mildly enough, but builds up a good, hot head of steam.
The Greening of American Education
Looking at the big-picture narrative of how reformsters have gone after the 650 billion dollar pile of education money.
So Who Says Competition in the Classroom Is Inevitable?
Easy to miss this because it comes under the heading of Australian education, but it's really for everyone, and hits particularly hard at US education because it addresses the assumption that competition is natural and normal and belongs in our clasrooms.
CURMUDGUCATION - http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/
CA: K12 Caught Lying and Cheating, Again
K12, one of the giants of the cyber-charter biz, has reached a settlement in California after being slapped for lying about student enrollment and student achievement. K12 and California Virtual Academies collected about $310 million in money from the state over the last twelve years (and those are largely Californis tax dollars diverted to the Virginia HQ of K12); the settlement will cost K12 $16
YESTERDAY
ALEC's Resolution for Big Brother
ALEC, you may recall, is the fun club for conservative elected officials and conservative corporate folks. They get together, cook up some "sample" legislation , and send those out as templates for various state legislatures to turn into laws. Not only are they not open to ordinary citizens, but they're pretty adamant about keeping away reporters . ALEC is interested in many, many aspec
JUL 08
FL: Rep. Brown Indicted in $800K Scam
That's the old page from the One Door for Education website, a site that isn't so active these days. The scholarship foundation was supposed to be funding education and student scholarships. But since the beginning of 2016, it has been operating under the adjective 'beleagured" That's because it turns out to be a huge scam. Back in January, the Florida Times-News has worked out some of the d
Not Okay
What do you say when you need to say something and there is nothing to say. Well, there's lots to say, but literally everything that could be said has been said, and at this point is has been said over and over. It turns out that when you have too much exposure to the banality of evil, you start having trouble with banality in the response to evil. I can't promise that this will be clear or cogent
JUL 07
Amazon Inspire Off To Rocky Start with Piracy Problems
Amazon Inspire is intended to be Amazon's entry into the teacher resource market , a place where teachers could find "tens of thousands of free lesson plans, worksheets and other instructional material," all accessed through the familiar Amazon interface, complete with searches and starred reviews. As laid out by the NYT, this venture is meant to be the point of the spear for Amazon, dri
JUL 06
Data (7/19)
I am on a two-week vacation, driving cross-country with my wife to spend time with family in Seattle. In my absence, I have dug into the archives and pulled up some reruns for you. Though what I most suggest is that you check out the blogroll on the right side of the page. There are some outstanding bloggers, and if there are some folks you've never sampled, there's no day like today. The unendin
My Election Position : The Trump Clinton Yardstick.
So today's Sign of the Presidential Apocalypse was coming across a facebook argument about whether Trump or Clinton is the more racist. That's where we are-- we're ready to elect a racist as President and all that's left is to quibble over how much of which style of racism. I am fifty-nine years old, and have read and studied history most of my adult life. I'm prepared to call this as the worst pa
Vander Ark & The Trouble with Charters
If you don't already, you should know who Tom Vander Ark is. Vander Ark has one of the oldest membership cards for the Ed Reform Club. He ran education initiatives for the Gates Foundation, then went on to work with investment capitalists, technocrats, and big-name competency based education groups like iNACOL. As reader Les Perelman noted the last time I wrote about TVA, there's a chapter in his
JUL 05
For HRC: Profit Vs. Non-Profit Charters
So this is how we're going to play it. As all the interwebs now know, Hillary Clinton got herself booed at the NEA conference today by mentioning charter schools (she also drew jeers for GOP dumpster-fire/candidate Donald Trump). But in language mimicked by the many folks who read Politico, Politico said The presidential hopeful won back the crowd by making a distinction between charter schools in
Charter Villains
It is one of the reliable tropes of the ed debates (isn't it fun that we've been at this so long we now have reliable tropes). After some negative charter publicity, some reformsters will step up to offer a smattering of defense with a side order of "Why does the media pick on us?" Alexander Russo offers a weak-sauced rendition of this old standard at Washington Monthly, where he tries t
JUL 04
PA: More Charter Christmas
PA House Bill 530 is yet another attempt to make life happier for charters in the Keystone State. As usual, it's a poop sandwich, a simple legislative trick where lawmakers include something in the bill that makes a good PR hook (This bill proposes to give the state the right to punch Mean People in the nose) with the hopes that the PR will cause folks to overlook other details of the bill (This b
