CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: The Tree's Up Edition (12/9)

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: The Tree's Up Edition (12/9)

ICYMI: The Tree's Up Edition (12/9)

The tree is up, but we're waiting to see how the board of directors does with it before we add ornaments. Tis the season. In the meantime, here's some reading from the week. Remember to share.

Cashing in Immigrant Children

The warehousing of immigrant children has been a gold mine for one business. And guess what-- charter schooling is part of the business plan.

Dora Fisher: Down The Dark Money Hole

About one of the big dark money backers of charter schools whose name you might not know-- but you should.

What Really Should Be Happening in Kindergarten

Do I seem repetitive on this subject. I'll continue to be so until we stop screwing it up.

Lawmaker Shows How To Become a Charter Millionaire in Five Steps

Short, sweet and clear-- how an Arizona cashes in on the charter laws he helps write.

You Don't Have To Like It, But The Students Talk About Us

The Jose Wilson on a major aspect of the teacher-student relationship.

Does High Impact Teaching Cause High Impact Fatigue

Spoiler alert: yes. Read more about what that looks like.

No School Needed For Politician Overseeing Florida Schools

You probably didn't miss this, but in case you did (which is kind of the point of these Sunday roundups), here's the story of the homeschooled college dropout who will head up the Florida house education committee. Oh, Florida.

Six Questions We Should Be Asking About Personalized Learning 

Ed Week is right on the money this time, with some questions we should be asking about ed reforms Next Big Thing

Don't Teach Kids Coding

Slate piece from a computer programmer who says he will not teach his kids to code, and you shouldn't either.

100 Christmas Songs Ranked

Not about education, but this ranking by Alexandra Petri is hilarious and well worth your time. Tis the season.

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: The Tree's Up Edition (12/9)

TODAY

ICYMI: The Tree's Up Edition (12/9)

2by Peter Greene / 1h

The tree is up, but we're waiting to see how the board of directors does with it before we add ornaments. Tis the season. In the meantime, here's some reading from the week. Remember to share. Cashing in Immigrant Children The warehousing of immigrant children has been a gold mine for one business. And guess what-- charter schooling is part of the business plan. Dora Fisher: Down The Dark Money Ho

YESTERDAY

KY: Setting More Bad Goals for 2019

46by Peter Greene / 20h

Oh, Kentucky. A state slowly being beaten down by the usual gang of mediocre businessmen masquerading as public servants. Big data , charter entrepreneurs , voucher fans , pension vultures , testocrats -- they've all taken a shot at grabbing tax dollars from Kentucky taxpayers with a great deal of patience and varying degrees of success, even if Kentucky's teachers did raise a fuss (prompting Gove

Inducing ADHD

100+by Peter Greene / 21h

"Maybe you should consider testing him. You know. For ADD." That was my son's kindergarten teacher. His mother and I were in for yet another conference because he was "a problem." The nature of the problem? Well, because of my schedule, he arrived 15-20 minutes before school officially started. His teacher's expectation was that he would sit at his desk, still and quiet, while she finished getting

DEC 07

MI: Baldfaced Power Grab

34by Peter Greene / 2d

Lansing is witnessing one of the most extraordinary power grabs ever attempted, and one of the targets of these lame duck Republicans is the state board of education. Several actions are being attempted by the legislature, and they include an attempt to complete supplant the constitutionally established and democratically elected state board of education . The move to overturn the democratic proce

DEC 06

The Disordered Order of Competencies

41by Peter Greene / 2d

Competency Based Education (or Proficiency Based Learning, or Outcome Based Education, or Mastery Learning, or whatever new name appears next week) is the up-and-coming flavor of the week in education, even though it is neither new nor well-defined by the people who promote it (or the people who are implementing it in name only). But the basic principle is simple and, really, fairly common sensic

Guest Post: Why Tests Are Boring

17by Peter Greene / 3d

It's Guest Post day here, and my guest is William Bryant . Bryant is currently an edupreneur with a company focused on helping students get ready for college, but he spent a decade working in test development for the folks at ACT. He has some interesting insights to offer about why tests end up the way they do; important to understand not just because of the tests themselves, but because of the t

DEC 05

Real Stupid Artificial Intelligence (Personalized Learning's Missing Link)

44by Peter Greene / 3d

Good lord in heaven. Intel would like a piece of the hot new world of Personalized [sic] Learning, and they think they have an awesome AI to help. And they have concocted a deliberately misleading video to promote it. In the video, we see a live human teacher in a classroom full of live humans, all of whom are being monitored by some machine algorithms "that detect student emotions and behaviors"

Education, Bad Leadership, and Harvard

100+by Peter Greene / 4d

We have a problem with bad management, pretending to be leadership, in this country. And it has infected education. Even in a small area like mine, the symptoms have been plain to see. A major local oil business was put under the leadership of a man who had previously run a soap company and a toy company. He was not good for the company. In my town, the mining machinery company that employed both

FL: What Competition Gets You

12by Peter Greene / 4d

Florida is supposed to be the Great Exemplar of ed reform. Charters, vouchers, ESAs-- every brand of reform under the sun runs free and unfettered under the bright Florida sun. There may be no state that has more effectively set loose the Invisible Hand or market forces and competition. And what does that get you? Well, it gets you unqualified scam artists like Eagle Arts Academy charter school ho

DEC 04

Children's Insurance Headed the Wrong Way

4by Peter Greene / 4d

From the file of Things That Are Going To Affect Education Indirectly, we get this : Roughly 276,000 more children were uninsured in 2017 than the year before, bringing the total to more than 3.9 million, according to a report released Thursday by Georgetown University's Center for Children and Families. We are far short of the disastrous high in numbers of uninsured children back in 2008, but the

College Board: Help Us Market Our Product

35by Peter Greene / 5d

Right down to its name, which sounds like some sort of non-profit official education oversight panel, the College Board has a history of marketing its product while trying not to look like a company whose life depends on its ability to sell a products. In recent years, the market has tightened up, what with the ACT competing effectively and some schools dropping the SAT as an entrance requirement

DEC 03

Florida Contemplates Putting Fox In Charge of Hen House

12by Peter Greene / 5d

As a legislator in Florida (Motto: Why sell swampland when you can just rob schools), Richard Corcoran was determined to make sure that public tax dollars were directed to enriching private school operators at public school expense. Sorry about your future, kid Corcoran pushed the Schools of Hope program , a program that allows charters to prey directly on public schools. And after asking charter

DEC 02

ICYMI: Here's December Edition (12/2)

4by Peter Greene / 7d

Oh, that month again. Here's some reading from the week. Remember to pass along what speaks to you. Common Core Creator Slammed Reading Teachers for Having a Research Gap-- How Ironic Nancy Bailey sounds the irony alert on a critique of