I so admire Nancy Bailey for getting her feet in the turbulent waters of the reading wars (I set my metaphor mixer to "stun"). If some of what's been circulating lately feels kind of familiar, here's some explanation.
A few years ago I reported on the business of hacking and ransoming school data. As Steven Singer reports, that trend has only accelerated, with tough consequences for districts around the country.
You may not read a lot of what is written by folks on the reformster side of modern corporate reform these days, but you probably should. First, it's important to understand what they're thinking these days. Second, there's a heck of a lot of nuance out there, because what we think of as reformsterism is actually several different groups working for several different motivations. Third, there is s
To launch the fast food industry, owners and operators refined and adapted an industrial model, with every kitchen an assembly and every employee an easily-replaced meat widget, performing unskilled labor on a job that was employee proof. In the last couple of decades, some education reformsters have tried to adapt that McModel to education, creating teacher-proof content delivery systems that wou
Some days I look at the landscape of educational issues, and I think that all our educational problems boil down to one, simple, two-part problem. 1) We don't spend enough money on education because 2) We don't want to. We could erase the pockets of educational underserving, by spending the money necessary to fix the buildings, provide the resources, support the students, create a safe and effecti
A study released in February shows that poorer school districts are bearing the brunt of funding Pennsylvania's cyber schools. The study was published in the American Journal of Education, and you can tell it's serious because its title is painfully dull: Cyber Charter Schools and Growing Resource Inequality among Public Districts: Geospatial Patterns and Consequences of a Statewide Choice Policy
The title of the 2019 Phi Delta Kappa Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools of " Frustration in the Schools, " and the focus in much of the coverage has been on the results about teacher morale. 75% of teachers say schools in their community are underfunded. 50% of teachers have considered leaving the profession. 48% of teachers feel less valued by the community. (10% say they
If you aren't in California, you may have missed this special little variation on the charter school business model-- homeschooling charters. It's a curious note in the recent big money charter scam in California , which we'll get back to in a moment. This is what you get if vouchers and charters had a baby and it was raised by homeschooling wolves. Homeschoolers "enroll" their students in a "scho
Last fall, the Palm Beach County schools taxpayers voted to increase their taxes so that they could bring their public schools up to speed, specifically in terms of building security and teacher pay. And they specifically earmarked the money from this four-year tax for public schools. Some charter schools in Palm Beach County were upset, believing that the law entitles them to a cut of any tax dol
Here we go. Time for me to watch my household partner get back to her gig. But while I'm adjusting to a new routine, there's still reading to do. Remember-- sharing makes the word go round. Why Teachers Are Walking Out I'm not so sure about some of the gender discussion in this post on the Known cast, but the basic idea is on point and the discussion is interesting. Vandalism at Ed Department If y
From the moment you read the title, you know this article from Inside Higher Ed by Ray Schroeder is going to be a corker-- Affective Artificial Intelligence: Better Understanding and Responding to Students . Schroeder opens with "As a longtime professor of communication, I am fascinated with the cognitive characteristics of artificial intelligence as they relate to human communication," and that's
You've had to miss a day of school, so you cross your fingers and put in for a sub. You prepare a whole lesson, run off materials, tag everything, put them in neat piles and arrange them on your desk. The day after your absence, you walk through your door and get a sinking feeling--the stacks of planned materials have been pushed to one side on your desk, but are otherwise untouched. "Oh, yeah," s
