Sunday, July 25, 2021

CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION + ICYMI: Back From Vacation Edition (7/25)

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Back From Vacation Edition (7/25)



Back From Vacation Edition

The Institute staff has returned from the wilds of Maine (well, slightly wilds) and while I'm still getting back in the swing, I've got a handful of things for the reading list this week.

Let schools decide how to spend pandemic windfall

Andrea Gabor at Bloomberg offers an argument for letting decisions about pandemic dollars be made at the local school level and not by bureaucrats in front offices.

The culture war over critical race theory looks like the one waged 50 years ago over sex education

Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire put in an appearance at The Answer Sheet (Washington Post)  with a history lesson in how to use school based culture wars for political gain.

Students need to learn about the haters and the helpers of our history

Michele l. Morris with a powerful Washington Post piece about the need to push back against Moms for Liberty and their attempts to make history pretty.

House appropriations prohibits fed funds for...electric shock to students

The indispensable Mercedes Schneider has dug through the House Appropriations Committee budget proposal and finds an odd item--then she discovers, sadly, why it's necessary

The moral panic over critical race theory is coming for a North Carolina teacher of the year

Rodney Pierce is a social studies teacher and NC teacher of the year, and he has emerged as a vocal critic of the attempts to stifle teaching of US history. Good article in Mother Jones.

Who's really driving critical race theory legislation/ An investigation.

Sarah Schwartz at Ed Week breaks down the genesis of all these remarkably-similar bills.

The child tax credit, not charter schools, was the reform we needed to help kids succeed

Andre Perry at Hechinger Report about the traps that poor children really need to be released from.

Tucker Carlson goes to school. Your school.

Nancy Flanagan talks about the right-wing push to gin up some fear.

The New Broad Center at Yale

Eli Broad managed to get his fake school leadership school a sheen of legitimacy by having Yale take it on. Thomas Ultican checks in to see how that's going.

Eyeing federal infrastructure windfall, private equity courts public utilities

Another trend in the world of privatizing public stuff. Lee Harris at The American Prospect.

Nobody wants to be a serf anymore.

McSweeney's looks at that mysterious labor shortage problem.




What’s The Matter With For Profit Charter School Management? - https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2021/07/21/whats-the-matter-with-for-profit-charter-school-management/?sh=7282f8837a3e by @palan57 on @forbes

Language Lessons From Artificial Intelligence - https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2021/07/07/language-lessons-from-ai/?sh=2f13022316fc by @palan57 on @forbes



History and the Unreliable Narrator
by Peter Greene / 1d
Most English teachers have somewhere in their pocket that lesson about Edgar Allan Poe's " The Telltale Heart. " The story is narrated by a guy who's clearly in the grip of madness, and so we have to filter what he tells us through our understanding that what he's reporting is not what another observer might see. He's an unreliable narrator, a literary trick that Poe perfected, which is why for a
Why choice won't solve the CRT panic
by Peter Greene / 1d
A curious new pro-choice argument has surfaced in these days of sturm and drang, exemplified by the Cato Institute Battle Map , on which the Libertarian thinky tank tracks the public schools in the midst of some sort of battle over policy issues. The argument here, pushed daily on Twitter by Cato's Neal McClusky , is that "public schools leave people no choice but to be at each others' throats" a
Charter Advocates Chicken Littling Spending Item
by Peter Greene / 2d
The House Appropriations Committee has caused a stir with one tiny paragraph in its 198-page health, labor and education spending bill . SEC. 314. None of the funds made available by this Act or any other Act may be awarded to a charter school that contracts with a for-profit entity to operate, oversee or manage the activities of the school. Charter advocates are flipping their collective lids be
Education and the Self-Service Thunderdome
by Peter Greene / 3d
While the Institute Staff was on vacation, circumstances required me to visit one of the Walton Family's Money Collection Sites. It was... something. The Walmart was nearly empty of employees. I felt weirdly on my own, unable to ask for help in locating the product I was looking for, unable to determine of the sparse offerings on the shelves were in fact all the store had to offer. Had there been
Hiatus
by Peter Greene / 15d
The staff of the Curmudgucation Institute home office are on the road for a corporate retreat in Maine. Internet access is spotty there. Also, I am told that sometimes people actually vacation by stepping away from social media. Most years I pre-create some content (usually some greatest hits compilations) but this year I just didn't pull it off. So tonight we're in a motel in Bennington, Vermont
The Single Biggest Scourge of Education Reform
by Peter Greene / 18d
Privatization? Profiteering? Vouchers? Charters? Teacher-proof classrooms? High-stakes testing? No, these issues, in their worst forms, all have their roots in the same soil, the same fertile ground from which all rotten education fruit grows. Amateurs. The current flap flying under the banner of critical race theory panic is just the freshest example of people who really, truly don't understand
Is Teaching About Control?
by Peter Greene / 18d
I knew I was going to hate this piece as soon as I read the first sentence. In their training, teachers are taught to control the classroom. This piece appeared on NBCThink, a kind generally guest op-ed page the website runs. It was written by Peshe Kuriloff , who is a retired professor of education who is now a self-employed consultant. She's got a BA and an M.Ed from Harvard and a PhD from Bryn
A Systemic Tale
by Peter Greene / 18d
They hated tall people. They were the ruling class in this country, and they were all 5 feet tall or shorter. There were tall people among them, mostly as servants or laborers, because the short ruling class hated them and barred them from the same kind of freedoms that the short rulers enjoyed. This was reflected in many aspects of their society, including the architecture. In those long-ago days
ICYMI: Fourth of July Edition (7/4)
by Peter Greene / 21d
Here's hoping that you are busy with some combination of friends and family today that leaves no time for the weekly collection of readables. But just in case, here's the list. How Do You Fight Hot Air Tired of reading CRT pieces? Me, too. But people keep writing good ones. Here's an op-ed in Washington Post by Karen Attiah, writing about one school district leader many other folks will wish they
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