Sunday, October 27, 2019

CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Nearly Spooky Edition (10/26)

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Nearly Spooky Edition (10/26)

 ICYMI:  Nearly Spooky Edition (10/26)

Here's the reading for the week. Remember to pass it on.

School Choice Has Not Cured Philadelphia's Ailing System  

The Inquirer takes a look at choice in Philly and the various problems it hasn't fixed.

The History of Privatization

Talking Points Memo takes a look a privatization across a series of articles, including public education.

Teach For America Will Not Save Us 

Larry Lee blogs about one of the "solutions" that will not help with Alabama's teacher shortage.

How To Reduce the Toxicity of Teen Girl Social Media Use 

Some good ideas for blunting the impact of social media on teens. Pretty sure this would work for boys, too.

Could Betsy DeVos Cost Trump the Election

Jennifer  Berkshire has made a few trips to Michigan, and this time she brought back an interesting angle on 2020 elections for the New Republic. To know DeVos is....well, not to love her, exactly, and that could well be cutting into the GOP base.

College Board Under Fire for Selling Student Data

No this isn't an old article from one of the other six zillion times the College Board has caught grief for monetizing young humans. This time it's Non Profit Quarterly noting their well-earned troubles.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn Pushes for USED To Move To Tennessee 

Okay, it's not going to happen, but it's an intriguing little proposal.

DeVos Held In Contempt By Court

Yes, you've already heard about this. But don't you want to read about it one more time?

City Fund Looking To Buy Elections 

Chalkbeat reports that one of the newer reformster groups is throwing large piles of money at local school board elections. Because democracy is just so damned inconvenient.




CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION


Taking Back Teacher Evaluations

100+by Peter Greene / 20h
There's a slowly-rising tide of writing out there focusing on principals and evaluations, quietly returning focus to the idea of making evaluations meaningful. It's a welcome change, because the status quo for the past over-a-decade has been the junk that disruptors stuck us with, in which teacher "evaluation" meant "slap some Big Standardized Test scores together and call that the teacher evaluat

OCT 25

Betsy DeVos Enlists Help Of Kellyanne Conway And American Enterprise Institute To Sell $5 Billion School Choice Program

200+by Peter Greene / 2d
At the beginning of this month, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway sat down with Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute to make one more pitch for DeVos’s Education Freedom Scholarships. The program seems unlikely to succeed on the federal level. What Is She Selling? The EFS are what’s known as a tax credit scholarship. Several states have them, a

OCT 24

NC: When Charters Become Orphans

33by Peter Greene / 3d
The TeamCFA website promises that the foundation exists "to promote the academic growth and success of each student in each TeamCFA school as well as the growth of the entire network. Each school in the TeamCFA network receives long term, meaningful partnership and oversight from the TeamCFA Foundation, with specific regard to academics, business, and governance through the Affiliate Agreement." B

OCT 23

NYC: Testing Is Still Not Teaching

30by Peter Greene / 3d
People say dumb things when they're trying to defend bad policy decisions. Alex Zimmerman at Chalkbeat reports that New York City schools are going to hit third and sixth graders at 76 schools labeled "low performing" by the state with three more tests per year. This is part of a plan to start testing the crap out of students doing formative assessments four times a year. Chancellor Richard Carran
CT: Another Way To Privatize Education

60by Peter Greene / 4d
To read press accounts, one must conclude that Ray and Barbara Dalio are not exactly like other billionaire dabblers in education. He is a successful hedge fund manager and the richest guy in Connecticut. She immigrated from Spain fifty-ish years ago and worked at the Whitney before settling into the mom-and-kids track. He has announced that capitalism is not working, and that income gap is a huge

OCT 22

Vouchers And Federally-Supported Discrimination

38by Peter Greene / 5d
School voucher programs are becoming one of the major fronts in a federal battle to safeguard discrimination by religious organizations. Some flaps created by private religious schools seem minor, like the pastor at a Catholic school who banned Harry Potter books because he believes the books contain “actual curses and spells.” But earlier this year, the Catholic Archdiocese of Indianapolis touch

OCT 20

ICYMI: Why I Write Day Edition (10/20)

by Peter Greene / 7d
I have an easier time understanding why some people write than I do understanding why so many people don't. Doesn't everybody need to? But then-- there are many things I don't fully understand, like why some people hate candy corn. While I'm pondering, here are some pieces of writing from the week for you to read and share. Murdoch-Funded Anti-Gerrymandering Group Raises Questions Not about educat
Shame

100+by Peter Greene / 7d
The most shocking and disturbing thing that I saw on line this week had nothing to do with politics. It was a post by a teacher explaining her school's disciplinary system. As with many systems, students have a color-coded behavior level monitored and adjusted throughout the day. Unlike any school I'd ever heard of before, students at this school receive a colored card for their behavior level tha

OCT 18



What Ever Happened To Rebecca Friedrichs?

66by Peter Greene / 8d
You remember Rebecca Friedrichs. She was the face of the union-busting lawsuit of 2014 . Supreme Court Justice Alito signaled that he was ready and willing to hear a case that would revisit the issue of union free-riders, and the 
at