CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION: + One Year Retireversary Edition (6/2)

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: One Year Retireversary Edition (6/2)

CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION: + One Year Retireversary Edition (6/2)

It has been exactly one year since I hung up my teacher hat, so I'll probably meditate on that today, but in the meantime, here's some good reading from the week. Remember-- if you like it, share it.

Utah Picked a Testing  Company That It Knew Sucked

Okay, so I paraphrased the really-long headline, but you get the idea. How Utah went with a company with a history of trouble-- and how that worked out.

The Perils of Treating Schools Like Corporations 

I don't often do video clips, but this is an interview with Andrea Gabor, exactly the person to address this topic. Plus this clip will remind you to get her book.

Fables of School Reform

The internet has really been missing Audrey Watters while she's been writing a book, but this piece from the January Baffler is Watters at her best, tying together a dozen different threads and reminding us that the world of ed tech is deeply full of baloney.

In NYC, as Neighborhoods Grow Whiter, Schools Don't

A new kind of white flight?

In Rural PA, a Robotics Program

A little bit of showing off; the teacher behind this program is one of my former co-workers, and he has worked his ass off to make this happen at my old school.

State Takeover Law Fails To Measure Success  

A letter to the editor of the Toledo newspaper explains one of the failures of takeover law-- it's completely inadequate definition of success.

Why Did Charter Support Dry Up? 

Jack Schneider looks at the fatal weaknesses of charter schools and their movement.

Pearson Looks To Cyber-Expand   

Pearson is planning to go after more of the cyber school market. I'm sure that can't end badly.

Undermining Florida's Public Education 

Yet another writer calling out the edu-disaster that is Florida's current governor and legislature.

America's Education Civil War

"Without a revolution seeing education as a social good to be broadly encouraged rather than property to be hoarded, lines will be drawn with consequential conflict and social impoverishment"

In The Middle

Mary Holden just spend a year in middle school. It took her till now to have enough time free to write about it.  



CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: One Year Retireversary Edition (6/2)

NH: Outsourcing and Privatizing Public Education

64by Peter Greene / 1d

New Hampshire's education commissioner has decided to push a really terrible education idea . It's called "Learn Everywhere," and it looks like a new approach to replacing public education, a kind of true backdoor approach to vouchering. It comes dressed in pretty language, but it still smells like a recently fertilized field on a warm summer day. Frank Edelblut was a businessman, venture capitali

Rewarding Failing Schools

300+by Peter Greene / 1d

One of the problems with the business oriented view of education reveals itself in the use of the word "reward." As long as the debate has raged, we can find commentators, thinky tanks, and policy makers arguing that giving more resources to struggling schools is "rewarding" them for failure. ( Here's an example , and here's another .) For many folks, this seems simple and straightforward, but it'

MAY 31

Jeb Bush: Frying Reform Baloney for Michigan

100+by Peter Greene / 1d

The Detroit News just ran a Jeb Bush fluff piece chock full of reformy baloney (reformaloney?) and an embarrassing lack of those fact thingies. It's helpful to know that the writer is Ingrid Jacques, deputy editorial page editor, and a graduate of Hillsdale College, the noted far-right Libertarian college with close ties to the DeVos family and the Trump administration (you may remember them as th

MAY 30

OH: Takeover Battle Comes To Senate

200+by Peter Greene / 3d

Our story so far: The Ohio House has passed a bill scrapping Ohio's disastrous takeover bill, HB 70. The new language was incorporated into the budget (HB 166) and, having cleared the House, must go to the Senate, where education committee chair Peggy Lehner is not particularly sympathetic to public education. So Lehner and a committee of various "interested parties" put together their own proposa

MAY 28

Can Personalized Learning Deliver

57by Peter Greene / 5d

A new report published by the National Education Policy Center looks at the current state of K-12 personalized learning and finds that there are many reasons for school districts to think twice about embracing this hot new trend. “Personalized Learning and the Digital Privatization of Curriculum and Teaching” was written by Faith Boninger , Alex Molnar and Christopher M. Saldana of the University

MAY 27

Amazon Wants To Read Your Heart

36by Peter Greene / 6d

One of the frontiers in creepy computer intelligence is the pursuit of software that can read the details of your face, your breathing, your eyeballs, and out of those details, construct a computer-generated window into your very heart and soul. Some of the attempts are laughable, like the NWEA feature that presumes to know how engaged and focused your students are based on wait time for answering

MAY 26

ICYMI: Memorial Day Weekend Edition (5/26)

25by Peter Greene / 7d

In my town, we do the whole parade and program in the park business tomorrow. But for today, here are some pieces to read and share. Did You See The Numbers? Yes, I Have. Is there a battle going on inside the NAACP over charters? Nope. Cloaking Inequality has the story. We're Already Losing the Next Generation of Florida Teachers The Orlando Sentinel has noticed that Florida is an education disast

MAY 25

PA: Free To Teach? Who Are These Guys?

300+by Peter Greene / 8d

Once again, it's time for teachers in Pennsylvania to get a nice mass mailed postcard from our friends at Free To Teach, a group dedicated to reminding teachers that they don't have to belong to that stinky union. I took a look at these guys back in 2015 , but as I look at the two postcards they sent to my home, I think it's time to revisit them. If you're a PA teacher wondering who these guys ar

MAY 24

Betsy DeVos Lets Down Her Hair

69by Peter Greene / 9d

You probably saw the quote from Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos equating US public education with Soviet East Germany. That was a good headline ( and great clickbait ), but it's worth it to go and take a look at the full context of that