CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION + ICYMI: Good Lord Is Thanksgiving Really Next Week Edition (11/24)

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Good Lord Is Thanksgiving Really Next Week Edition (11/24)

ICYMI: Good Lord Is Thanksgiving Really Next Week Edition (11/24)

I find that in retirement holidays sort of sneak up on me. I suppose it's because I'm not exposed to the daily reminders from students and the school calendar. Mostly I like it, but sometimes I'm surprised. In the meantime, here are some readings from the week. Don't forget-- share what you like (from its original source). That's how the word gets out.

Rising Tide Review

Fordham released a "report" suggesting that having charters in a community improves all the schools. Yongmei Ni has a review of that report at the National Education Policy Center. Spoiler alert: Fordham's work is not entirely believable.

A Strike for Racial Justice and Democracy in Little Rock Schools

At Jacobin, Eric Blanc has a terrifically thorough look at what exactly has been going on in Little Rock, and how this is one more strike that is about the common good.

An Army of Children Toils in African Mines

Not about US education, but an eye-opening look at one of the horrifying evils that feeds our modern tech.

When Testing Trumps Teaching, the Students Suffer

Tiffany Moyer-Washington in the Hartford Courant makes a good case for what we already know. Share it with someone who doesn't get it yet.

East Lansing Public Schools Had a Surplus

All kinds of unusual in this story from the Lansing State Journal, from the surprise surplus to what the board decided to do with some of the extra money.

PA Tax Credits Don't Benefit Poor

We have tax credits in PA, and the secrets of how they are used is carefully guarded, but Avi Wolfman-Arent did figure out that private schools are not exactly filling up with voucher-bearing poor kids.

LA Federation for Children and Out Of State Money

The indispensable Mercedes Schneider takes a look at how out of state money pours into local school board elections.

Voucher Programs Hurting Rural Schools

About that whole "vouchers will help students escape failing schools" thing. Turns out it's  not entirely accurate. Patrick Redmond at the News Sun has the story.

Unequal Access and Denial of Opportunity

Jan Resseger looks at how the portfolio school reform model is just not working.

Trump's Pledge Delayed By Education Department

One not-awful Trump pledged to do  was erase the student loan debt of disabled veterans. But the ed department is stalling it. Not so much nefarious as the kin d of incompetence when someone with no administrative experience takes over an agency she wants to kill. Politico has the story.

Howard Schools Plan In Motion

The Howard district has actually tried to balance the level of poverty across it schools. They plenty of rough pushback, but they did it anyway. The Baltimore Sun tells the story of how they managed to do the right thing in the face of nasty threats.

The New Deal For Education 

Cheri Kiesecker tracks another move toward implementing the cradle-to-workplace pipeline. It's not a happy story.

2019 Bulwer-Lytton Awards

This annual competition celebrates really bad opening lines for unwritten bad works. I do love it.


CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Good Lord Is Thanksgiving Really Next Week Edition (11/24)

CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION

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YESTERDAY

President Grant and the Reconstruction That Wasn't

by Peter Greene / 21h

I've finished the biography Grant by Ron Chernow, the author who famously wrote that bio of Alexander Hamilton (and a really good one of Rockefeller, too). In the end, Ulysses S. Grant remains a little more opaque than some of Chernow's other subjects, but the history that Grant himself lived through is a striking reflection of our nation in a troubled time. He failed at business. His in-laws were

NOV 22

Booker Returns To The Corporate Fold

52by Peter Greene / 1d

On Monday of this week, Cory Booker went full charter school in an op-ed for the New York Time s, a choice that made a little more sense when I looked at my Wednesday e-mail from Whitney Tilson. Whitney Tilson is a successful hedge funder who started Democrats for Education Reform mostly because at that point, Republicans for Education Reform would have been unnecessary. The GOP was already behind

The Waltons Try To Disrupt Elizabeth Warren (updated)

64by Peter Greene / 2d

Elizabeth Warren was in Atlanta at Clark Atlanta University to talk to black voters, when the rally was disrupted by a group of charter school supporters , angry about the hard line stance Warren has staked out on the charter school industry. The group of grass roots charter supporters had, they said, "come from all over the country," and if that doesn't send up a little red flag, then perhaps the

The One And Only Lesson To Be Learned From NAEP Scores

100+by Peter Greene / 2d

It has been almost a month since the NAERP scores have dropped, and some folks are still trying to torture some sort of useful insights from the numbers (here's Mike Petrilli at Fordham writing a piece that should be entitled " What to learn about being better a hitting the wrong target "). The world of education is a fuzzy one, with some declaring that teaching is more art than science. But then

NOV 21

Yes And

81by Peter Greene / 3d

Why do I see such a profound lack of “yes and” in education conversations? “YES we can criticize bad data AND advocate for preparing students for the jobs of the future.” “YES we can advocate for abolishing the the tests AND argue to improve education.” — Akil Bello (@akilbello) November 13, 2019 This tweet (shared with permission) really hit me where I live. Because defenders of public education

NOV 20

David Osborne Tells The Big Charter Lie

35by Peter Greene / 3d

Somewhere on the other side of the Wall Street Journal paywall, David Osborne is bloviating about why charters are swell and Democratic candidates should stop telling "big lies" about them. The WSJ undoubtedly considers this a real stroke of some kind because Osborne is nominally a Democrat, the kind Arne Duncan hugging , Al Gore assisting Democrat who loves him some charters just as deeply as any

NOV 19

PA: Charter Drains Public Schools, Now Wants To Absorb Them

72by Peter Greene / 4d

This week the Philadelphia Enquirer ran the story of a charter operator that wants to take over all of a district's public elementary schools. This is perhaps a logical next step in a district that has been steadily and methodically starved over the past decade. Once you've sucked out the blood and consumed the flesh, what is there left to do but feast on the bones? The school district is Chester

NOV 18

PA: Vouchers Are One Step Closer To Ugly Reality

100+by Peter Greene / 5d

HB 1800 , the bill intended to pilot vouchers in Pennsylvania, made it out of committee today . The vote was 13-12, with two GOP representatives (Rosemary Brown and Meghan Schroeder) voting no. The precipitating excuse for this bill is the school system of Harrisburg, a system that has suffered from financial mismanagement and so was put in financial receivership, a sort of state takeover, last J

Pondiscio: Success Academy Is Better And Worse Than You Think

37by Peter Greene / 5d

Robert Pondiscio is a senior fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a thinky tank steeped in conservative ed reform and staunch advocates of school choice, so one might expect that his book about Success Academy, the famous/infamous charter chain in New York City would be something of a puff piece, one more example of founder Eva Moskowitz’s broad and endless PR campaign. Indeed, the title Ho

NOV 17

ICYMI: Soup Party Day Edition (11/17)

by Peter Greene / 7d

My nephew and his wife are hosting a big soup party today, which I'm pretty sure is a first for me. Kids these days. In the meantime, here an assortment of reading material from the week. Remember-- share the stuff that really speaks to you. That's how bloggers become rich and famous- okay, well, not actually. But it is how media outlets find out they should do education coverage, and it's how peo

NOV 16

FL: Yet Another Bad Plan To Not Increase Teacher Pay

44by Peter Greene / 7d

So previously there was the Best and the Brightest program, which awarded teacher bonuses based on student test scores and the teacher's own SAT scores. From high school. It had a variety of problems (above and beyond the basic boneheadedness of the idea) and the new governor, Ron DeSantis found it "confusing." Yes, you can still buy swampland in Florida This newer, betterer plan comes along with

Betsy DeVos Accuses FBI Of Ignorance, Blames Public Education (And More)

1Kby Peter Greene / 8d

Never let it be said that Betsy DeVos won't go out of her way to blame US public education for all the ills of the country, real or imagined. In retrospect, it seems like an oversight that she hadn't had a "Kids These Days" moment, but 

CURMUDGUCATION