Catch up with CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: More Edureading + PA: Charter Laws "Absolute Worst"
ICYMI: More Edureading
2by Peter Greene / 59min
I It's a short list this week, but still worth reading. The Annual Autopsy You know I love a good analogy. Here's one more way to look at the uselessness of "data." Education's Failure To Retain Great Teachers Another look at the sad state of teacher retention in the ed biz. Seven Things I learned from Attending a Charter School Board Meeting Nancy Flanagan went to a charter board meeting and had
YESTERDAY
PA: Charter Laws "Absolute Worst"
13by Peter Greene / 23h
States have taken a variety of approaches to the business of replacing public schools with publicly funded private charters. In states like Florida and North Carolina, the focus has been on tearing down the public system to make room for the charters. But in Pennsylvania, the emphasis has been on making charters so easily lucrative that edu-preneurs find getting rich easier than printing money. PA
OCT 07
College Digitized and Privatized
16by Peter Greene / 2d
Slice the "a" from 'audacity" and you have Udacity, the leading purveyor of for-profit, on-line college. Udacity is the dead of digitizing, the maharajah of MOOCkery. In them, we can see everything in the digitally privatized future face of higher ed that some folks love and other folks find appalling. Born in 1967, Sebastian Thrun came from Germany and found a place as a Stanford professor and Go
Bill Gates Wants Your Tax Dollars
52by Peter Greene / 2d
On his blog yesterday, Bill Gates made his pitch to get more our of our tax dollars . Gates notes that the Presidential campaign hasn't touched much on innovations (which I guess is true if you don't count innovative ways to repackage reality). Invoking the 1961 moon-shot declaration of John F. Kennedy, Gates wants to make a case for four areas in which the government can spur innovation. With mon
OCT 06
USED's Troubled Charter Love
25by Peter Greene / 3d
"Honey, you have got to break up." When a trusted member of your own family sits you down to tell you that you are in a bad relationship, it's only prudent to pay a little attention. And that is where John King's US Department of Education finds itself right now. "Dude," says the USED's own office of the inspector general. "You have got to get this whole charter school thing under control. It is s
OCT 05
The Facts Problem
48by Peter Greene / 3d
We've had much discussion about living in a post-fact society, but I'm not sure we really appreciate just how much trouble the whole business of "facts" is in. I don't mean the obvious public signs, like a national Vice-Presidential candidate who simply lies his way through a nationally broadcast debate . I'm not talking about how many of us keep our head buried in the internet bucket, listening t
NEA's Concern Trolling
27by Peter Greene / 3d
The NEA is concerned about bullying. Specifically, they are concerned about the Trump Effect, which is one more name for one of the plumes of toxic smoke curling up from the dumpster fire that is Herr Donald's Presidential campaign. There is reason for concern. Herr Donald's campaign has freed many folks from the restraint of what we could call "political correctness" or "general decent treatment
The Facts Problem
2by Peter Greene / 3d
We've had much discussion about living in a post-fact society, but I'm not sure we really appreciate just how much trouble the whole business of "facts" is in. I don't mean the obvious public signs, like a national Vice-Presidential candidate who simply lies his way through a nationally broadcast debate . I'm not talking about how many of us keep our head buried in the internet bucket, listening t
The Choices Charters Hate
71by Peter Greene / 4d
One of the evergreen arguments in favor of modern charters is that they will be laboratories of innovation. Freed from the constraints of the public school system, charters will whip up brand new educational approaches, pedagogical discoveries that somehow nobody has ever whipped up before. Once they have freed the edu-genii, they will then unleash these cool new ideas on the whole education world
OCT 04
Duncan Scolds Education Schools
8by Peter Greene / 5d
When former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan isn't busy joining another board of some education-flavored enterprise (his latest is Revolution Foods, an over-hyped cafeteria supply company), he still finds time to offer uninformed opinions about education itself. Pay me to have an opinion about school lunch? Retirement is awesome. Take for instance his open letter today at Brookings , in which Du
OCT 03
Jeb! Still Doesn't Understand
19by Peter Greene / 5d
Jeb Bush sat down with Matt Barnum for an interview that ran at Campbell Brown's pro-reform website, the 74, And in the course of the interview. Bush showed that he doesn't understand education any better than he ever did. (He also discussed the Presidential election, though he didn't explain how his oppo guys did such a lousy job fending off Donald "Dumpster Fire" Trump.) So what are the things
No Digital Leadership for the Future (and No Research Base, Either)
11by Peter Greene / 6d
"Future-Ready Schools" is emerging as the umbrella buzzword for the cluster of edu-biz opportunities emerging around the world of personalized learning, competency-based education, and the computer-driven school. There's a lot to learn about this area, and none of it is encouraging for fans of public education or the general idea of having children taught by human beings. You can read a lot about