CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Finish Those Taxes Edition (4/14)

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Finish Those Taxes Edition (4/14)

ICYMI: Finish Those Taxes Edition

Personally, mine are already mailed in. My circumstances changed so much this year I have no idea whether I took a bigger hit or not. But regardless of your tax status, here are some pieces from the week for your edification. Take a read, and support these writers by passing on their stuff. Remember-- when you amplify a news media piece about education and it garners more hits, you help convince editors that it's worth their time to cover education.

Most Vouchers Go To Students From Wealthier Districts

This is not a new piece, but it's a reminder that in Arizona, where vouchers have bloomed, they are rarely used by poor students to "escape" terrible schools. Good to keep in mind as vouchers enjoy a new push across the country.

The Plot Against America: Inside the Christian plan to "remodel" the nation. 

A deeper dig into the UDSA Today piece about copy-paste bills. And it does get to education and vouchers.

If We Don't Work On Pedagogy, Nothing Else Matters   

Not sure I agree with every single word of this essay from Robin Pendoley, but it's at the very least a place to start a discussion.

Betsy DeVos Can't Be Bothered 

Mary Sanchez at the Orlando Sentinel has kind of had it with the typical Betsy DeVos Congressional hearing performance.

The Toll College and Career Ready Education Has Taken On Students

Nancy Bailey talks about the damage done by this policy obsession.

LeBron James Opened a School That Was Considered an Experiment

Remember how King James was going to throw his weight and money behind a public school? Erica Green takes a measured, thoughtful look at how that's going. Worth reading not just for the work of the school, but to remember what journalism that is neither puffing up a miracle school nore tearing down an edu-disaster looks like.

DeVos's Staff Blocked Researchers

Jan Resseger looks a little more closely at how the department tried to thwart research about their spending on charter schools.

Beverly Cleary's Birthday

Not strictly an education story, but the woman turned 103 this week. Damn! Here are some nice birthday pieces from Oprah, Southern Living, and Scary Mommy.

Ron Desantis Has Big Hairy Audacious Goals For Florida Education

An excellent overview of just how very much trouble public education is in in Florida.

Betsy DeVos Quietly Making It Easier for Dying For-profits To Stick It To Students  

DeVos remains a fan of business; of students bilked by business, not so much. Here's one small, quiet way she's looking out for the former by sticking it to the latter.

Benchmark Assessments Don't Actually Do Any Good

Some thoughts about repeatedly weighing the pig.

Softly Killing Public Education

Add the St. Louis Dispatch to the list of newspaper editorial boards that have figured out that the push for vouchers is a push to kill and replace public education.

Bad Ideas and Educational Scripture  

Should we listen to the experts or to teachers (trick question).

Putting The Pieces Together   

The Momma Bears connect the voucher push of guys like Governor Lee to the drive to kill public education.


CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Finish Those Taxes Edition (4/14)

Obstacles To Building Better Writers

by Peter Greene / 1d

Writing well is one of the great uber-skills, a quality that will open an infinite number of doors in a student's life. Unfortunately, we are living through a golden age of bad writing instruction, driven by high stakes testing and shrunken, meager ideas about the very purpose of education. In 39 years, I had some success in teaching students to be better writers. If you are a teacher intent on b

APR 12

DeVos Pushes Questionable Charter Research

100+by Peter Greene / 1d

The New York Post headline is pretty definitive: " Case Closed: Charter schools deliver more education 'bang' for the buck. " Writers Patrick Wolf and Corey DeAngelis are plugging their new paper, and Betsy DeVos is on Facebook plugging it some more . DeAngelis we've met befor e. He's a Fellow for the Cato Institute , policy adviser for the Heartland Institute, and a Distinguished Working-on-his-P

APR 11

AZ: Kelly Townsend Wants To Shut Teachers Up

81by Peter Greene / 2d

Arizona's #RedForEd movement was long overdue. The state has been one of the nation's top playgrounds for charter profiteers , but at the same time, they have starved public schools for resources, with low and stagnant teacher pay along with the worst level of per pupil spending in the country. The state was lucky that its teachers walked out en masse last year , because they were already walking

APR 10

IN: Go Ahead And Shoot Teachers

500+by Peter Greene / 3d

When the story first broke that teachers at Meadowlawn Elementary School in Monticello, Indiana had been shot with pellets--execution style--as part of an active shooter drill , I decided not to get in to it here. The sheriff's department had agreed to knock it the hell off, the legislature had already moved to ban the practice, and the whole business was so clearly over the line, so obviously unn

Five Reasons Your District's Strategic Plan Failed

96by Peter Greene / 3d

Somewhere in school district offices all across the country, there are beautiful strategic planning documents, carefully bound, sitting on a shelf, gathering dust and having absolutely no effect on how the school district functions from day to day. They have utterly failed. Honest. I am absolutely a horse. It doesn’t have to be that way (read Andrea Gabor’s After the Education Wars for examples o

APR 09

Freedom and Indignity

by Peter Greene / 4d

The ed reform movement has always had a language problem, starting with the word "reform," which does not really adequately describe a movement built on privatization and corporate takeover. There have been other casualties along the way. I've railed long and fruitlessly about the continued use of "student achievement" and "teacher effectiveness" when what we really mean is "high scores on a narro

APR 08

WV: Lukewarm Charter Baloney and The Questions To Ask

100+by Peter Greene / 6d

West Virginia remains one of the untapped market for the ed reformster business, and privatizers are determined to keep hammering away. The most recent attempt involved a little bit of legislative extortion, as lawmakers tried using teacher raises as the sweetener in a bill intended to finally open West Virginia to both charter schools and education savings accounts (aka vouchers). West Virginia t

APR 07

ICYMI: Hello, April Edition (4/7)

by Peter Greene / 7d

It's practically like spring here in Northwest PA, but I still have some-- well, many-- choice items to share this week. Remember, these writers depend on you to boost their work, so if something here speaks to you, help push it out into the world! I Asked USED Three Questions Jeff Bryant just had three questions for the Betsy DeVos Department of Education, but they "created havoc" for the staff.

APR 06

Don't Be Fooled By This Proposal To End Testing

100+by Peter Greene / 7d

Tom Vander Ark has a long and checkered past in the ed reform biz , and he is ready to cash in on the next big thing (he's been ready for a while), which is why we find him at Forbes proposing an end to standardized testing . Just to be clear from the jump-- that's not a good thing. The article comes in two parts-- a pretty good take-down of the Big Standardized Test, and a pretty weak argument fo

APR 05

MO: Bipartisan Fight Against Charter Expansion

28by Peter Greene / 8d

Rep. Rebecca Roeber (R) of Lee's Summit, Missouri has proposed a bill to expand charter reach ; the state has basically confined charter schools to the Kansas City and St. Louis districts. But response to the bill has not been exactly a slam dunk. The bill would allow charters to open in communities of greater than 30,000 people or an accredited-without-provisions school district. The feelings abo

APR 04

College Board's AP Rate Hike Backlash

66by Peter Greene / 10d

The College Board, the company behind the dreaded SAT and popular AP courses has made changes to the registration for the AP exams . AP courses and the exams that go with them are supposed to provide students with a leg up on college applications. Though the changes, which amount to an increase in cost, were announced over a month ago, they now add to the conversation the nation is suddenly havin

APR 02

MT: Meat Widgets And Personalized Learning

24by Peter Greene / 11d

In Montana, the connection between Personalized [sic] Learning and vocational training has been made pretty explicit. There, some leaders are throwing support to PL not because it would be good for students or would solve educational problems, but because it would solve workforce development problem s. Solving workforce shortages one widget at a time. State Rep. Llew Jones, R-Conrad, recently show

APR 01

Accountability Beyond the Bubble

42by Peter Greene / 12d

Accountability has always been an educational buzzword, and the modern reformy era has put accountability on a high, if somewhat cockeyed pedestal. Testing? Not testing? Running test scores through models soaked in magic VAM sauce? Regular school visits, inspections and audits? Administrators an