CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: My Wife's Birthday Edition (9/15)

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: My Wife's Birthday Edition (9/15)

ICYMI: My Wife's Birthday Edition (9/15)

Happy birthday to one of the best people ever to walk on the face of the earth! But you can have cake and read some worthwhile education  pieces as well. So here you go--

AI in Education Hype

John Warner takes a look at one more technological product in search of a problem to "solve."

Effects of the Flipped Classroom

An Annenberg working paper suggests that there are no big benefits to flipping, and that it may even make some gaps between students worse.

America's Newest Outsourced Job

Vice might be a little late catching on to this trend, but they offer a nice piece from reporters who "embedded" with some Filipino teachers hired by Chicago schools.

What Statistics Can and Can't Tell Us About Ourselves 

The average person has one breast and one testicle. The limits of Big Data (and the AI systems that depend on it) and why it is lousy at personalization. From the New Yorker.

Should Grades Be Based On Classwork?

Alfie Kohn appears at EdWeek to look at some questions that are, in fact, the wrong questions to ask.

AI In Education Hype

John Warner at Inside Higher Ed takes a look at another alleged AI breakthrough and explains why it's no breakthrough at all.

 If You Want To Fill the Teacher Bucket, Fix the Holes

Dad Gone Wild weighs in on the great teacher shortage debate.

Where Did 3,000 Students Go?

Hey look! Turns out that UPSTART, the completely wrongheaded online preschool program launched in Utah, is having some trouble keeping accurate counts of its students, thereby costing the state an extra million dollars.

The College Board Book and The College Board's Many Failures (and Obfuscations Thereof)

Chalkbeat has one of the better reviews of Paul Tough's book showing how the College Board is a sneaky mess.

Want To Do Business in Silicon Valley? Better Act Nice.

Jason Palmer is a money guy who had the nerve to say out loud that the Zuckerberg-backed AltSchool was going to be the big failure it turned out to be. Nellie Bowles at the NYT tells the story of the price he paid for his candor.

What The New Reading Wars Get Wrong 

At EdWeek, a good explanation of why this round of the long-running reading wars is, once again, not worth our time.  

Play vs. Reading

A great Nancy Bailey take on the flawed thinking behind some reading advocacy.

Embracing Public Schools as the Very Definition of the Common Good

A great Jan Resseger piece reminding us why public schools matter.

When School Safety Becomes School Surveillance

NPR takes a look at the issue that is continuing to make life miserable for some innocent students.

Turning A Profit Through Nonprofit Charters

Nonprofit Quarterly offers yet another explanation of how the profit vs. nonprofit distinction is a distinction without a difference.

Opinion: Ralph Abraham and his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad education reform ideas

Come for the rollicking first sentence, and stay for the fact that this critique of LA ed policy is written by a 19-year-old college student.

The Cruel Assertion That Your Five-Year-Old is Falling Behind

Nobody stands up for the littles like Teacher Tom

NJ Teachers: A Failure To Achieve Diversity

Part of a Jersey Jazzman series looking at the state of teaching in the state of New Jersey. As always, real research presented in real language.

The World of Competitive Rock Skipping

Nothing at all to do with education, but a plug for my small town and one of our many events. This year a freelance journalist did a WaPo story about the event. I'm a judge every year; in the photo I'm the fat guy in the Hawaiian short on the left.



CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: My Wife's Birthday Edition (9/15)

CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION

AND DON'T FORGET PETER GREENE ON FORBES CLICK HERE 

DeVos Saying The Quiet Parts Out Loud

500+by Peter Greene / 1d

Betsy DeVos will be kicking off her "Back To School" tour next week. And it will start by announcing loudly and clearly what her preferred goal for education is. No reading between the lines will be necessary. The announcement notes that she will head to Milwaukee, "home of the first-ever education freedom program that allowed parents, no matter their income, to select the school that was the best

Dammit, Chan-Zuckerberg! Not Elmo, Too! (And Not Philanthropy, Either.)

100+by Peter Greene / 1d

If you haven't been paying particularly close attention, you may have missed the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative slowly inserting its hyper-wealthy proboscis into a hundred different corners of modern life, using its not-quite-philanthropy LLC model to follow in the Gatesian footprints of wealthy technocrats who want to appoint themselves the unelected heads of oh-so-many sectors. One of those sectors

SEP 12

Does Social And Emotional Learning Belong In The Classroom?

82by Peter Greene / 2d

Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) has been gathering traction as a new education trend over the past few years. Back at the start of 2018, EdWeek was noting " Experts Agree Social-Emotional Learning Matters, and Are Plotting Roadmap of How To Do It." But as we head into the new year, many folks still haven't gotten far beyond the "it matters" stage in their plotting. I'm here to teach you how t

SEP 11

Education and Remembering

100+by Peter Greene / 3d

It's 9/11, and social media is plastered with a thousand variations on a single theme-- Never Forget. Well, of course we'll forget. First of all, we don't can't even articulate a shared version of what it is that we're remembering . That somebody once successfully attacked us? That we subsequently lost our national shit and chewed through a variety of civil liberties in hopes that Benjamin "Those

SEP 09

Online Pre-K Continues To Spread Like A Big Stupid Plague

400+by Peter Greene / 5d

So this article pops up on my screen-- the Hechinger Report's Bracey Harris asking " Can 15 minutes a day of online preschool help prepare a child for kindergarten? " I might have suggested a rewrite on the headline, something along the line of "Why in the name of all that's holy are you putting a four-year-old child in front a screen and subjecting her to kindergarten prep software!" Stop farting

SEP 08

Privatization and the Weather

30by Peter Greene / 6d

Like many Trumpian flaps, the recent Alabama hurricane flap du jour directed our attention to things we probably should have already been paying attention to-- in this case, the drive to privatize the US Weather Service. Barry Myers was the top lawyer for Accuweather, the weather service founded by his brother Joel. This article from Bloomberg Businessweek chronicles the thirty or so years that My

ICYMI: No Teacher Shortage Edition (9/8)

by Peter Greene / 7d

So about forty-eight hours ago I put up a post at Forbes.com that has been blowing up. It's an interesting study in the vagaries of the interwebz-- the post ( why it's important to recognize that there's not a teacher shortage ) makes some points that I have made before many times, and several other bloggers have made before, but somehow this time, it found an audience. It's a reminder to keep plu

SEP 07

The College And Career Ready Scam Continues

500+by Peter Greene / 7d

ESSA requires schools to pick another measure of success, and many have gone with some version of gauging college and/or career readiness, but the results, as described by EdWeek, are a "hodge podge." But here come the folks at Achieve , the same folks who brought us all the beloved Common Core, with a state by state hodge-podgy guide to just how states are measuring the Common Core compliance col

SEP 06

What Should Be Our Hot Topics For The New Year?

by Peter Greene / 9d

It's the beginning of a new school year, and a good moment to take stock of the major policy issues, controversies and problems that we can expect to be (or ought to be) wrestling with in the coming year. Which issues are on the rise,