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Sunday, September 8, 2019

CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: No Teacher Shortage Edition (9/8)

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: No Teacher Shortage Edition (9/8)

ICYMI: No Teacher Shortage Edition (9/8)


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 plugging at the point you want to make (even if you feel like you're repeating yourself). And for our purposes here, it's a reminder of how important readers are to the whole process. I didn't really do anything in this post that I haven't done before; what made the difference was not me, but the readers.

So when I ask you every week to pass along the posts that speak to you, I really mean it. That's what gets these pieces out into the world.

How Charter Schools Won D.C. Politics 

Rachel Cohen is at City Paper, laying out the ugly, infuriating story of how lobbyists are spending our tax dollars to keep charters happy and unregulated.

Come As You Are   

Jose Vilson with some important start-of-year thoughts.

Almost No Education Research Is Replicated 

Inside Higher Ed reports on one more reason to remain unexcited about what education researchers report.

Enemy of Public Schools

Infuriating. One guy is traveling around the country running anti-bond campaigns because he's sure God hates public education. Really.

How Big A Mess Is the PA Charter Sector?

Big. Carol Burris at Washington Post breaks down the details of my home state's miserable charter situation.

School District Secession Deepens Segregation

Look at a Penn State study that shows the problems behind school district secessions.

Why Don't We Have Enough Teachers  

Tim Slekar is on Wisconsin Public Radio explaining why there is no teacher shortage.  I told you I'm not the only person beating this drum. If you'd rather read than listen, try this one.

The Parable of the Teacher and the Experts

Rick Hess often gets it wrong, but this EdWeek piece is pretty fun and painfully familiar for any teacher.

Why 2020 Dems Should Target Nonprofit Charters

When a charter destroys a beloved local landmark. Sarah Lahm with a story at Common Dreams, showing how there's big money for charter nonprofit operators-- and big losses for communities.

ALEC Legislator Retires As Charter Millionaire  

Lawmaker plus charter guy equals big bucks. From the indispensable Mercedes Schneider.

No, We Cannot Look Everything Up  

From eLearning, a reminder of the reasons that the internet doesn't excuse us from actually know stuff.

Who Gets To Use A Single Classroom 

Charter versus public school for space-- and it gets ugly.

For Teachers, the Money Keeps Getting Worse

At the Atlantic (with their shiny new paywall limiting you to only five free articles per month), a very depressing look at teacher pay.

The Walton Plan for the Little Rock School District 

More infuriating news, this time from the Arkansas Times, in which we learn that the Walton forces have all sorts of bad ideas in mind.

Schools In Arizona Crippled By Ransomware 

Not everything is about ed reform. The problem of hackers holding district IT systems hostage is growing, and now it's shutting down school districts. From The Hill.

Excess Teacher Responsibilities Are Stealing Bonding Time With Students 

From Bored Teachers, talking about all that extra piddly baloney that gets in the way of the better parts of the job.

How To Practice Best Practices

McSweeney's comes through again with the absurdly recognizable. And for more fun, check out McSweeney's First Faculty Meeting of the Year Bingo.




CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: No Teacher Shortage Edition (9/8)


CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION







The College And Career Ready Scam Continues

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?

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, which have lost a little steam and which should we be addressing? Common Core For years, the Common Core Standards were the hot button issue. Widespread pushback, f

SEP 05

Harry Potter and Vouchers

The Harry Potter books were back in the news for the six zillionth instance of a ban placed on the Rowling classic novels. The books have been repeatedly banned since they were published , usually because conservative religious folks think the books will normalize wizards and warlocks and witchcraft, but Reverend Dan Reehil, a pastor at St. Edward Catholic School, cites that classic argument, but

SEP 03

What I Know About The Reading Wars

Lord save us from the unending arguments about reading instruction. I started a Twitter thread just after Christmas and that thing was still flopping around six months later. Emily Hanford has somehow milked one not-very-new observation ("Use phonics") into a series of widely shared articles, which in turn has stirred up all the articles that people wrote the last time phonics was being praised as
Please, No Learning Engineers

If Ben Johnson is as good as his word, right now, out in Utah, a bunch of teachers are having to put up with being called "learning engineers. " Johnson is the executive director at Treeside Charter School (K-6) in Provo, Utah. This is actually Year 2 in that job; previously, he's been a world languages department chair in Tyler, the president of his own consulting group, a principal, a learning c

SEP 02

Life Sized Teaching

Like many teachers, I mostly hate movies and tv shows about teaching. There are too many about hero teachers, larger than life pedagogues who singlehandedly change the world and dramatically shift the course of entire lives (though they generally only teach one prep a day-- seriously, did Mr. Kotter or Mr. Feeney ever teach any other students?) It's enough to make ordinary mortals feel inadequate.

SEP 01

Third Grade Reading Retention Does Not Work (Example #6,288,347)

The idea of retaining third graders who can't pass a standardized reading test has its roots in two things: 1) a bunch of research of varying degrees of trustworthiness and usefulness (see here , here , here and here for examples across the scale) and 2) dopey policy makers who don't know the difference between correlation and causation. What the more reliable research appears to show is that thi


ICYMI: Here's September Edition (9/1)

Here we go-- it's an actual new month after August (which always seems about 5 days long). Here are some things to read from this week. Share! A College Reading List for the Post-Truth Era From Forbes, an interesting batch of books 
CURMUDGUCATION - http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/

DIANE ON A ROLL TODAY - Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

DIANE ON A ROLL TODAY 


Shani Robinson Speaks About Her Trial in Atlanta

Shani Robinson is one of the teachers who was convicted of cheating in the infamous Atlanta case. In her absorbing book None the Above: The Untold Story of the Atlanta Public Schools Cheating Scandal, Corporate Greed, and the Criminalization of Educators , Robinson makes a convincing case that she was railroaded by an over-zealous, unscrupulous and racist prosecution. In this brief video , she ex
District of Columbia: Rachel Cohen Explains How Taxpayers Fund an Army of Charter School Lobbyists

In an insightful article in the Washington City Paper, Rachel Cohen describes how the charter industry in the District of Columbia has organized campaigns to prevent any accountability , and has arranged that taxpayers fund their lobbying efforts, with the help of a few billionaires. It takes money to persuade politicians to vote your way, and the charter industry has figured out how to get the p
Wall Street Journal: Schools Invest Zillions in Technology, Parents Push Back

Technology in the classroom has become so ubiquitous that the use of papers and pencils or pens seems innovative. The Wall Street Journal published a front-page story about the high-powered push to buy technology and the growing disillusionment of some parents and teachers. When Baltimore County, Md., public schools began going digital five years ago, textbooks disappeared from classrooms and pap


New Yorker: Did Jeffrey Epstein, Sexual Predator, Persuade Bill Gates to Donate $2 Million to MIT Media Lab?

The New Yorker magazine published an expose of Jeffrey Epstein’s connection to the MIT Media Lab and its efforts to conceal the connection. After the story appeared, the director of the Lab resigned. The article: The M.I.T. Media Lab, which has been embroiled in a scandal over accepting donations from the 
Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

New Yorker: Did Jeffrey Epstein, Sexual Predator, Persuade Bill Gates to Donate $2 Million to MIT Media Lab? | Diane Ravitch's blog

New Yorker: Did Jeffrey Epstein, Sexual Predator, Persuade Bill Gates to Donate $2 Million to MIT Media Lab? | Diane Ravitch's blog

New Yorker: Did Jeffrey Epstein, Sexual Predator, Persuade Bill Gates to Donate $2 Million to MIT Media Lab?

The New Yorker magazine published an expose of Jeffrey Epstein’s connection to the MIT Media Laband its efforts to conceal the connection. After the story appeared, the director of the Lab resigned.
The article:
The M.I.T. Media Lab, which has been embroiled in a scandal over accepting donations from the financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, had a deeper fund-raising relationship with Epstein than it has previously acknowledged, and it attempted to conceal the extent of its contacts with him. Dozens of pages of e-mails and other documents obtained by The New Yorker reveal that, although Epstein was listed as “disqualified” in M.I.T.’s official donor database, the Media Lab continued to accept gifts from him, consulted him about the use of the funds, and, by marking his contributions as anonymous, avoided disclosing their full extent, both publicly and within the university. Perhaps most notably, Epstein appeared to serve as an intermediary between the lab and other wealthy donors, soliciting millions of dollars in donations from individuals and organizations, including the technologist and philanthropist Bill Gates and the investor Leon Black. According to the records obtained by The New Yorker and accounts from current and former faculty and staff of the media lab, Epstein was credited with securing at least $7.5 million in donations for the lab, including two million dollars from Gates and $5.5 million from Black, gifts the e-mails describe as “directed” by Epstein or made at his behest. The effort to conceal the lab’s contact with Epstein was so widely known that some staff in the office of the lab’s director, Joi Ito, referred to Epstein as Voldemort or “he who must not be named.”


The financial entanglement revealed in the documents goes well beyond what has been described in public statements by M.I.T. and by Ito. The University has said that it received eight hundred thousand dollars from CONTINUE READING: New Yorker: Did Jeffrey Epstein, Sexual Predator, Persuade Bill Gates to Donate $2 Million to MIT Media Lab? | Diane Ravitch's blog