Wednesday, May 13, 2020

CURMUDGUCATION: Biden's Education Unity Task Force

CURMUDGUCATION: Biden's Education Unity Task Force

Biden's Education Unity Task Force


Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders have announced a half-dozen unity task force thingies, one of which will be focused on education, more or less. Folks are reacting with varying degrees of freaking out on the social medias. I'm going to recommend that you take a deep breath. Here are some things to consider.

Concerns

Alejandro Adler is nobody to be excited about. He's an academic who is associated wit silly argle-bargle like this:

...to infuse education systems in these countries with skills-based teacher training, curriculum development, technology use, and, financing; to measure the impact of these interventions on youth well-being and long-term life outcomes; and to ultimately empirically inform and systematically transform education systems to advance social development



So, focused on measuring things that can't be measured and using education as a tool for social engineering. The language of pay for success. And skills. Great. Like that hasn't been a royal pain in education's butt over the past decades. Adler is the least exciting part of this group.

Maggie Thompson is an Obama alum with a background advocacy, none of it particularly associated with education. Christina Vilsack, on the other hand, taught middle school for almost twenty years, and now does a lot of literacy advocacy when weighing her own political options. Hirokazu Yoshikawa is another academic, specializing in education and globalism, with an extra focus on pre-school; he's te co-author on a CONTINUE READING: 
CURMUDGUCATION: Biden's Education Unity Task Force