CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Time For Summer Edition (6/9)

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Time For Summer Edition (6/9)

ICYMI: Time For Summer Edition 

Summer break has arrived in my neck of the woods, which means the Board of Directors will no longer have me outnumbered!. In the meantime, here's some reading from the week. Remember-- sharing is how you amplify the voices that you think need to be heard. Bloggers and journalists can write all day, but we all depend on readers to help put us in front of our audience.

Robots Are Not Coming For Your Job-- Management Is  

Great piece not directly about education, but a reminder that automation is not some sort of mysterious natural process.

Ohio Needs To Abandoned Failed High Stakes Tests   

The League of Women Voters comes down hard against high stakes testing as a measure of educational quality. Always nice to see people outside the classroom get it.

Schools Should Serve Humans, Not "The Economy"\

Lois Weiner makes her pitch for Bernie Sanders to reject the language of business when discussing schools. Never mind Bernie-- can we get everyone to do this?

Is Charlie Butt the New Eli Broad?

Not that we need one for anything, but her comes another deep-pocketed educational amateur with big ideas.

Millions of Kids Take Standardized Tests Just To Help The Testing Companies  

Oh, the business of field testing, wasting everybody's time.

Tennessee Achievement School District At a Crossroads  

"Crossroads" is generous, but here's the OG ASD still not getting its job done.

Let's Hear It For The Average Child  

From the New York Times.

An Anti-Racist Reading List 

Powerful and handy resources from Ibram X. Kendi.

7 Reasons We're Seeing More Challenging Behavior in Early Childhood Settings  

Rae Pica looks at some of those things that we continue to get wrong when it comes to the littles.

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Time For Summer Edition (6/9)

The Twins Are Two

100+by Peter Greene / 23h

The Board of Directors celebrated its birthday this week. Okay, they're two, so "celebrate" might be a bit of a stretch, because they didn't really know what exactly was happening other than it involved cake and ice cream and some new toys. This is not my first parenting rodeo; I have two older children and a trio of grandchildren who are, in my completely unbiased opinion, geniuses. You know the

JUN 07

Talking Point Update: Focus on Fit

58by Peter Greene / 2d

This has been going on for a while, but just in case you've missed this rhetorical shift, I want to highlight the tweaking of a reformy talking point. Complete this sentence: "We need school choice because____________________" The classic answer has been "because students need to escape failing public schools." Or "because the quality of your education shouldn't be determined by your zip code." Be

JUN 06

WV Senate Can't Seem To Hear Teachers

100+by Peter Greene / 2d

It would be funny if it weren't so angrifying. But West Virginia's legislature is at it again. Back in February of 2018, the teachers of West Virginia were fed up. Low pay. Lack of support. Lack of respect. They were fed up enough that they staged an illegal wildcat strike that shut down every school district in the state . The governor and legislature backed down, and in short order, the teachers

JUN 05

A Spectacular Charter Scam

100+by Peter Greene / 3d

You may skimmed past reports of the San Diego indictment of charter scam artists thinking, "Ah, just another charter fraud story." But this $50 million scam is worth a closer look because it highlights several of the problems with modern charters. The scammers were led by Sean McManu and Jason Schrock. McManus is Australian, but as various other operators have shown (particularly the infamous Gule

JUN 03

Teach for America: The Other Big Problem

500+by Peter Greene / 5d

Teach for America's most famously flawed premise is well known-- five weeks of training makes you qualified to teach in a classroom. It's an absurd premise that has been criticized and lampooned widely. It is followed closely in infamy by the notion that two years in a classroom are about providing the TFAer with an "experience," or a resume-builder so they have a better shot at that law or MBA pr

JUN 02

ICYMI: One Year Retireversary Edition (6/2)

30by Peter Greene / 7d

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 ou

JUN 01

NH: Outsourcing and Privatizing Public Education

64by Peter Greene / 7d

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

400+by Peter Greene / 7d

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 

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