Yes, it's Christmas day, but I am a creature of habit, so for those of you who, for whatever reason, have some time on your hands, here's this week's list of read-worthy writing. Have an excellent day!
Allie Gross was going to teach in a Detroit charter to make a difference. What she found changed her mind. This piece is from 2014, but it's yet another good look inside the charter machine.
Reuters continues to be teh go-to source for journalism about the SAT. Here's a closer look at how China maintains a thriving cheating industry for the venerable test.
An editorial from Evansville, Indiana takes a cold hard look at which school grades actually tell us (hint: not how good the schools are) CURMUDGUCATION - http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/
In October, a bit over 500 registered readers of the EdWeek website took a survey about the Core . The results from these elementary, middle and high school teachers are not earth-shattering, but we might tease a few conclusions out. You want me to do what??!! First, it's worth noting that using EdWeek registered readers means a certain amount of self-selected bias. While I'm not particularly put
Joseph Natoli has a piece at Truth-Out has a piece that's well worth reading, but for all the explication and coverage of the deliberate destruction of Detroit school " The Great Unwinding of Public Education: Detroit and DeVos " has some keen insights into the underlying pathologies fueling the privatization movement. Here's the line that reached out and whacked me right between the eyes: We have
Yes, it's Christmas day, but I am a creature of habit, so for those of you who, for whatever reason, have some time on your hands, here's this week's list of read-worthy writing. Have an excellent day! When It Comes to Charter Schools, Facts Matter Wendy Lecker's interview with Robert Cotto, Jr. about some of the claims being made by charters in Connecticut (and elsewhere) Anatomy of a Failure: Ho
Here's hoping today is a great day for you and yours. For your listening pleasure, here's an assortment of traditional and not-so-traditional holiday music. May today be an excellent day!
There's a message that has been delivered loud and clear for the last decade-- only two subjects in school matter. Only reading and math affect a school's rating. Only reading and math scores factor in teacher evaluation. Only reading and math come with state-approved Official Standards. Only reading and math are on the all-important Big Standardized Test, now believed by an entire generation of s
Like giving students standardized tests, evaluating teacher is one of those things that the vast majority of people believe that you do because, well, of course you do. Reasons. You know. Federal policy has required it, and required it with fairly specific provisions, for the past few administrations. Reformsterism focused for quite some time on collecting teacher data in order to fix education. M
Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post turned up a 2015 speech from billionaire heiress and Education Secretary Designee Betsy DeVos in which Devos lays out her six "inconvenient truths," the guiding principles by which her vision of American education is powered. Ed Patru, a self-identified spokesperson for Friends of Betsy DeVos (so I guess that's a thing-- damn), indicates that the speech is a
I have libertarian friends (it's true). And one of them posted this particular meme Now I don't think either of these statements is accurate on its own; if something is a right, it's a right and there is no "should be," and libertarian "no one has a right to your labor" talk stops the moment money changes hands, thereby buying the right to that labor. But that's beside the point. Health care and e
Do you want to see just how bad data mining + gamification + creating a data-based profile for every citizen, just how terrifying this idea is? Meet Sesame Credit -- and realize that Big Brother was an absolute pliant wimp by comparison. Just watch this. I don't even know where to begin, but you need to watch this.
Pundits and the commentariat may not be able to say what exactly will happen to education under Herr Trump, but at least one group thinks they have a pretty good idea-- investors. Molly Hensley-Clancy covers business for Buzzfeed (yes, that's apparently a real job) and she reports that since election day, investors have been expressing some exuberance about K12 , the infamous major player in the c
The Christensen Institute is devoted to "disruptive innovation," or as a five-year-old might put it, new and creative ways to kick over the big stack of blocks. For the big stack of blocks that is public education, Christensen has the big boot of personalized computer-driven education-favored product. And a new part of their pitch is the recently released report/PR prospectus, " Teaching in the Ma
Once again I'm reading a spate of charter fan fiction in which charters are lauded for out-performing the rest of the schools in their city. That one right there near the center is where I've been smacking my head "Out-perform the rest of the
