Trying desperately to shop at small local stores, and it's a real challenge right now. And what has to be ordered comes with the special When Will It Actually Arrive suspense. Happy holidays, one and all. In the meantime, some reading....
Thomas Ultican peels back the layers on yet another assault on public education, this one out in California. Interesting to see how several groups' interests converge on one goal--dismantling public education.
I know I've been heavy on the need to get public education expertise in the department of education under Biden, but at Hechinger, Andre Perry makes a good case for other skill sets that the next secretary will need.
This piece at Edutopia leaves lots of room for debate--are the reading wars over, and is handwriting a key part of learning, and did Fordham really release a study that contradicts some of the ideas behind its beloved Common Core? But it's an interesting conversation piece of a list.
Nancy Bailey takes a look at what McKinsey, the 800-pound gorilla of consulting, has to say about the children "falling behind," and what policies they're using the big fear to push.
Hey, remember how some school systems were using foreign teachers to fill the spots they couldn't convince US citizens to take? And remember how Trump has been slowly choking off the stream of even legal immigration? Turns out those two things ran into each other. From the Intercept.
Nancy Flanagan has an exceptional gift for connecting her own personal experience to larger ideas, and that's on display here. Do we need calls for civility right now--or is something else needed to move past these Trump years?
Betsy DeVos (who will soon not be a humble servant in the education secretary's office, but will instead be a very rich lady who wants to dismantle public education) likes to compare her vision of education to the same kind of disruption offered by outfits like Uber, a comparison that many folks like to make . I've written before about what a lousy comparison that is , focusing on problems like a
Last week the New York Times decided to offer one more glowing portrait of Melinda Gates , unintentionally underlining the work of rich folk critic Anand Giridharadas and explaining, again, that she doesn't get the problem of Gates riches in education. She opens with an Emerson quote from her valedictory high school graduation speech about success being the knowledge that one person has breathed
Aaron Churchill, the Fordham Institution's Ohio research director, popped up in the Columbus Dispatch today as a "guest columnist." It's worth noting that his job is "aimed at strengthening education policy in Ohio," which is of course not the same thing as improving education and certainly not the same thing as supporting public education. Churchill's previous job was program manager at Junior A
There are plenty of reasons to focus attention and concern on President-elect Joe Biden’s choice for Secretary of Education. After all, VP Biden was part of the administration that gave us Arne Duncan as secretary, a choice universally panned by teachers. Public education advocates are hoping that Biden will give us a career educator with the leadership chops to manage a federal department that h
Compliance culture in the classroom has always, always been a problem. This is the teacher who demands compliance, in fact, grades on compliance. Most folks have a story about That Teacher--the one who wouldn't accept a paper because it was ten minutes late, or who took off a letter grade because the paper had the "wrong" heading on it. For some people, compliance is practically the whole point.
I donate locally when I can identify a need, and for a few weeks I've also been donating to teachers across the country on Donors Choose, because it makes me feel slightly less helpless in these crazy days. I've been blogging about it here to encourage you--if you can--to offer some help to someone. Maybe you know of worthy causes or programs local to you. But if you're just not sure where you can
Still trying to take care of all the places the cold gets into our house, because apparently the season is serious about things. Still counting down to the magical day when I can go many days at a time without asking, "Well, what has the President done today?" But there are still some good things to read from this week, so here's your list. How DeVos May Have Started a Counter-Revolution in Educa
So, if you need a little something to jumpkick you into the season, here's a playlist challenge for you. Yes, that's roughly 76 minutes of various versions of "Jingle Bells," carefully selected, curated and ordered for your listening pleasure. "Jingle Bells" is a curious song to become a Christmas standard, mostly because it has nothing to do with Christmas but is instead the mid-19th century anc
In some quarters we seem to have cycled back around to the old argument that the Big Standardized Test provides an assortment of necessary data with no actual downside, so let's trot those puppies out here for this already-
