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Graduation Day Edition

ICYMI: Graduation Day Edition (6/4)

Here is my neck of the woods, we're just a few hours away from high school graduation. It's definitely that time of year. Here's your assorted pieces of reading from the week. Remember to pass on the ones that speak to you. 

These Activists Want Greater Home School Monitoring

In the background, as other education debates rage, is the old set of issues surrounding homeschooling. Here's a look at activists who help the women who were homeschooled to know nothing and be quiet, because, you know, women.

Blaming and Shaming Teachers for Low-Level Tech Practices

From the vaults, Bill Ferriter with a great piece about moving beyond tech and testing and back to actual real educating.

Facts About Newark Charter Schools

Once again, Mark Weber (Jersey Jazzman) breaks down the data to get past the PR baloney and look at the truth of charter schooling.

Is the US Education System Producing a Society of Smart Fools?

In the Scientific American, a psychologist looks at what's wrong with "reformed" education in the US.

Studies That Honor Preschool Rigor Are Not To Be Trusted

About that NYT coverage of that study showing academic rigor is really swell for four year olds...

Building Better Pre-Schools

Russ Walsh on the same subject-- how should we really be prepping the littles?

A Citizen's Encounter with a Charter School

Gene Glass reports on one more specific example of how charter really work to enrich their owners and trample on parents and students.

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NPE and Charter Schools

12by Peter Greene / 2h

The Network for Public Education has issued a clear, concise and pointed statement about charter schools in the US, and it's worth your eyeball time.* The statement is useful if you have been trying to explain to friends or civilians why, exactly modern charter schools are such a contentious concern. It nails some of the fundamental problems of the charter industry: We believe that taxpayers bear

Treating Teachers The Same Way

6by Peter Greene / 2h

Marc Tucker and Chester Finn have been having a bit of a conversation about a new report about teacher empowerment. We may get to that another day, but among Finn's complaints was this old standard, explaining why the reports recommendations can't work: the teacher unions have demanded and not deviated far from an industrial model in which everyone is treated alike. This is an oft-repeated complai

ICYMI: Graduation Day Edition (6/4)

2by Peter Greene / 3h

Here is my neck of the woods, we're just a few hours away from high school graduation. It's definitely that time of year. Here's your assorted pieces of reading from the week. Remember to pass on the ones that speak to you. These Activists Want Greater Home School Monitoring In the background, as other education debates rage, is the old set of issues surrounding homeschooling. Here's a look at act

YESTERDAY

Paperwork

42by Peter Greene / 1d

Rick Hess had a good piece this week that called back to one of my favorite films-- Hess noticed that much of the ESSA planning rolling in looks suspiciously like TPS report work. But you rarely see the paper-shufflers get as much ink or as many pats on the back as you do in schooling. One of the more striking examples of this is the recent fascination with state plans for the Every Student Succe

JUN 02

US Department of Climate Education

24by Peter Greene / 1d

Trump has taken the odd step of withdrawing from a voluntary agreement; the Paris Accord is non-binding and nations can set their own goals, and Trump's statement had almost nothing to say about the actual climate change concern of the accord, so other than declaring the international equivalent of, "You can't tell me what to do! You're not my real mom!" I'm not sure exactly what Trump was hoping

JUN 01

DeVos, Democracy and Vouchers

66by Peter Greene / 2d

First came the LA Times op-ed co-authored by Randi Weingarten (AFT) and Jonah Edelman (Stand for Children). This in itself is another troubling move by Weingarten (add it to the list) because astroturfist Edelman is no angel when it comes to support of public schools. The op-ed tweaked a lot of antennae because buried in the condemnation of vouchers was a ringing endorsement of charters. Almost in

MAY 31

Angry (tl;dr)

26by Peter Greene / 3d

It's important to remember that America has seen angry, agitated times before. The Civil War, when politicians became so angry they left the country and raised armies to kill each other-- that was a fairly angry time. We've had Presidential campaigns that were hugely vicious and libelous, Hell, as we've all been musically reminded, once upon a time the Vice President of the United States killed a

MAY 30

5 Reasons I Oppose Vouchers

300+by Peter Greene / 4d

Honestly, I had thought that vouchers were pretty much dead and gone and living only in the hearts and minds of determined free market cult members. But since it looks like DeVouchers are on the fast track to Policytown, I want to just list, without a lot of fanfare or my usual gumflappery, the reasons I believe that vouchers are Really Bad Policy. So here's a quick list of five reasons to oppose

The End of May

17by Peter Greene / 4d

My Memorial Day weekend generally contains two major features. One feature is the actual honoring of Memorial Day. Here's how I finished up my morning yesterday. This is the park in my small town. On the left is a the Civil War Monument, one of the first couple put up in Pennsylvania. The large building in the back is our County Courthouse. And on the right, our band stand, where I have played sum

MAY 28

Politics vs. Ed Reform

21by Peter Greene / 6d

Derrell Bradford is the head of NYCAN (and some other CANs too), one of the reformy arms of 50CAN , a reliably reformy group . He turns up in many of the usual reformy places, including Campbell Brown's the74 site, where he recently wrapped up a three-part series about the state of the reform movement, adapted from his speech at the Yale School of Management’s Education Leadership Conference in Ap

ICYMI: Memorial Day Weekend Edition (5/28)

3by Peter Greene / 7d

The best read of the week was actually an eight-part series at Slate about cyber schooling, and that's so important that I gave it its own post. So if you haven't caught that yet, you can find the posts laid out here. And for reasons to cast a 

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