Taxes Are Done Edition
Yes, we all got extensions, but I'd rather have them done and gone, and this was a pretty easy year. Now we can move on to other swell things. In the meantime, let me remind you that you, too, can amplify voices in cyberspace. If your thought is "Hey, people should read this," well, then, you know people. Send them some this to read.
My Learning Loss Formula: Read, Write, Share
Russ Walsh doesn't blog enough these days, but when he does, it's choice. This is some nice, simple advice for dealing with the dreaded Learning Loss, rooted in the actual world that real human beings live in.
Former lobbyist details how privatizers are trying to end public educationOver at Valerie Strauss's education column for the Washington Post, Carol Burris is interviewing Charles Siler, former lobbyist and PR flack for the Goldwater Institute, and he has some observations about what, for some on the right, education reform is really all about.
I'm not always a fan of Hooked On Innovation, but this particular post is a nice example of how to view the dreaded LL a little differently.
The indispensable Mercedes Schneider has been looking at the latest edition of the education department's covid handbook, and she found that "stabilizing" the educator workforce is one of their goals. How, she wonders, does that fit with their devotion to the Big Standardized Test?
Trick question because, as authors Derek Black and Rebecca Holcombe note, it's already happening in Florida. But with plenty of choice bills across the country, is it about to get much worse?
Just in case you needed it, Matt Barnum is at Chalkbeat with some research to underline the obvious--crappy school buildings stand in the way of student learning.
At NC Policy Watch, Rev. Suzanne Parker argues that the plan to expand the voucher program is a bad idea and a flawed plan.
Well, in PA, where private Catholic schools are consistently sports powerhouses, we could have told you. One side effect of a school choice system is going to be schools that recruit, build the school around the sports program, and destroy the public school sports system. In North Carolina, some legislators are starting to catch on.
The charter group keeps spending way more than the state allows for administrative costs, and not always doing a great job of reporting, either. Example #423,177 of How Charter Operators Get Rich.
This is, of course, always the plan. Kick off your voucher program by selling how it will help the poor and the specially needy, then once it's set up, just start cranking the limits. So here comes Indiana with a shot at giving six figured families little rebate on their education expenses
Nick Morrison at Forbes.com shows that the surveillance state hasn't done much to stop old big problems, but it turns out to be a great tool for busting students for every damn piddly thing that can be caught on camera.
Jan Resseger offers a good compendium of all the ways the secretary's stances on the Big Standardized Tests have not exactly calmed the waters.
At Ed Week, Rick Hess interviews Sam Wineburg, a Stanford professor who's doing some great work in teaching folks how to evaluate websites. Cool stuff, and while you, as a reader of this blog, are undoubtedly wise enough to stay unfooled, this could be useful for your friends and students.
The headline here in the Philadelphia Inquirer is that Philly schools lose more money to tax breaks than any other district in the country. That points us to a study that shows school districts lost $2.37 billion in 2019 to tax subsidies.
A Search For Common Ground: A Worthwhile Conversation About Education - https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2021/04/13/a-search-for-common-ground-a-worthwhile-conversation-about-education/?sh=6ce8294a4333 by @palan57 on @forbes
Why Standardized Tests Won’t Measure What Students Learned During The Pandemic - https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2021/04/10/why-standardized-tests-wont-measure-what-students-learned-during-the-pandeimc/?sh=50883b3b22cd by @palan57 on @forbes