CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION + ICYMI: Off To A Great New Year's Start Edition (1/5)

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Off To A Great New Year's Start Edition (1/5)

Off To A Great New Year's Start Edition (1/5)

Marking the new year always strikes me as a bit odd-- we draw an arbitrary line in the chronological sand, then get all excited about examining it. Humans are fun.

In the meantime, this week's list is loaded with some exceptionally good readings. Remember to share the ons that speak to you. Amplifying voices is what the interwebz are all about.

The Surprising Source of the NPE Data
The pushback against NPE's report on charter waste and fraud has been considerable, but here Carol Burris provides a measured and detailed response. And guess where some of the data in question comes from...

The Dangers of Disinformation
Last Sunday I failed to do due diligence on one of the posts and recommended something from an untrustworthy source (the post is no longer on the list).  The up side is that it prompted this thoughtful post from Dad Gone Wild.

The Democrats' School Choice Problem
Jennifer Berkshire breaks it down for the Nation in a thoughtful take that spins off the Pittsburgh education forum. It's a good look at some of the political dynamics involved.

The 100 Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade
This Audrey Watters post is the bomb, and if you somehow haven't read it yet, then stop procrastinating. It's a horrifying stroll down memory lane.

Teachers "Never Broke The Law"
Remember when Matt "Sore Loser" Bevin tried to throw some laws at teachers who walked out? It's one more bad policy that his successor has reversed.

Closing the Minority Teacher Gap
Bill Tucker at the St. Louis Post Dispatch takes another look at this continued problem. There's lots of good stuff here, including this sentence: "Teachers are known for working for less pay and respect, but that is a big ask for a minority student, whose family has been underpaid and not respected." There's also another look at the issue in the Washington Post this week.

Novelist Cormac McCarthy paper writing tips 
McCarthy has been helping faculty and students at Santa Fe Institute with editing. Who knew? Here's a distillation of some of his writing advice.

School Grade Cards Gotta Go
The editorial board of the Toledo Blade argues for an end to Ohio's letter grade policy for schools.

Why the Charter School Proposals by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren Shouldn’t Be Controversial
Gotham Gazette has this piece from a former charter teacher and a former charter parent (the parent involved in an infamous Success Academy discipline scandal). Clear and compelling.

Lies, Lies, and More Lies
In the Troy Daily News, a former Ohio superintendent has some blistering words for Ohio's ed reform. He may be late to the party, but he is not holding back a bit.

Economists Ate My School 
Steven Singer looks at the damage done by imagining that teaching is simply one more transaction .

The Greatest Ed Tech Goof of All Time
Ed historian Adam Laats takes us back to an early example of terrible tech ideas for education, showing once again that hardly any modern innovations are actually innovations.

Montessori schools embrace kid-tracking devices  
What would make Montessori schools even better? How about constant student surveillance. This is your hate read for the week.

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Off To A Great New Year's Start Edition (1/5)

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The Ed Reform Glossary You Need

68by Peter Greene / 1d

If that Amazon gift certificate is burning a hole in your pocket, I have a few suggestions. Let's start with this one. In 2006, education historian Diane Ravitch published EdSpeak , a glossary of education policy jargon to help those folks who found it all, well, jargonny. But the education world has shifted around just a tad since 2006, and it is time for a brand new version of the critical guid

Michelle Rhee Has Been Robbed

500+by Peter Greene / 1d

As the various lists of faces, names, moments that defined the education policy debates of the last decade have been tallied up, one name has been, I think, unfairly overlooked-- Michelle Rhee. No, really, bear with me. The very fact that I don't really need to review her story makes part of my point. Rhee was the previous decade's best-known public face of education reform, culminating in that in

New Report: Charter Fraud And Waste Worse Than We Thought

47by Peter Greene / 2d

Last March, the Network for Public Education released a report showing that the federal government has lost a billion dollars to charter school waste and fraud . But the organization had not stopped sifting through the data. Their follow-up report , “ Still Asleep At The Wheel: How the Federal Charter Schools Program Results in as Pileup of Fraud ands Waste ,” reveals that the situation is even w

I Have One Good New Years Story

46by Peter Greene / 3d

New Year's Eve is not one of my favorite holidays, and some of them have been downright unpleasant, but I have one good story. It involves the Olympic torch. This was the route. I wasn't kidding with "circuitous." Back on New Year's Day of 2002, the Olympic flame was on its way to Salt Lake City, and on its long circuitous route out West, the flame passed through Erie, Pennsylvania, which is just

OH: Ohio Excels and the Hostile Takeover of Education

95by Peter Greene / 4d

Ohio is one of many states in which business leaders have appointed themselves education overseers. The most recent version of this phenomenon is Ohio Excels , a lobbying group that believes that Ohio's education system owes them better meat widgets for job fodder. "improving the quality of education will give students a better chance to succeed and will help Ohio businesses grow and innovate, fue

The Ground Level Ed Reform Decade Retrospective

37by Peter Greene / 4d

Yeah, it's time for everyone to do decade lists (including "Ten Reasons The New Decade Doesn't Start For Another Year") from the list of education faces that Alexander Russo is doing on Twitter to this absolutely-the-only-list-you-need-to-read from Audrey Watters, " The 100 Worst Ed Tech Debacles of the Decade. " I'm not going to try to sum up the decade in education. Or rather, I'm going to sum u

The Height Of A Dead Salmon

94by Peter Greene / 6d

A while back someone sent me an article with a striking lead : The methodology is straightforward. You take your subject and slide them into an fMRI machine, a humongous sleek, white ring, like a donut designed by Apple. Then you show the subject images of people engaging in social activities — shopping, talking, eating dinner. You flash 48 different photos in front of your subject's eyes, and ask

ICYMI: Almost A New Decade Edition (12/29)

by Peter Greene / 7d

Yep, soon anything from the 1900s will be "a long time ago." But we can meditate on how experience fades into the dim past some other day. Right now we'll just worry about last week. Here's some of the worthwhile reading; it's a short list because holiday time. Remember to amplify the stuff that speaks to you! How Ibram X. Kendi's Definition of Antiracism Applies to Schools If you don't know Kendi

Dana Goldstein's Common Core Ten Year Tale, Annotated

74by Peter Greene / 7d

Dana Goldstein's NYT ten year retrospective of Common Core has been sitting on my desktop since it was published, making me grumpy. It's yet another example of how the stories we are told about modern disruptive education reform are subtly sugared and carefully crafted to avoid discussing some of the larger issues. I don't know-- after all, Goldstein is a published book author and writes for the A

VA: Ideas About How To Recruit and Retain Teachers

200+by Peter Greene / 8d

As squawking about the teacher "shortage" many states have developed methods to either take advantage of the situation ("Now we can finally break the teachers union and public education by letting any warm body stand in front of a classroom because, hey, there's a shortage") or try to figure out a way to actually solve the problem. In Virginia, a coalition appears to be t aking a shot at the latte

Big Brother U & The Surveillance State

63by Peter Greene / 9d

If you missed this article at Washington Post about on campus surveillance of students-- well, congratulations on having one less troubling thought in your head over the past week. Because the surveillance is continuing its slow, 

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