Sunday, August 1, 2021

CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION + ICYMI: August Already Edition (8/1)

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: August Already Edition (8/1)



August Already Edition

Well, that was quick. But here we are, counting down to a new school year. In the meantime, here's some new reading from the week.

Will fewer Black students come back to school this fall?

Adam Laats in the Washington Post provides some useful historical perspective on this question.

Why school boards are now hot spots for nasty politics

Stephen Sawchuk at Ed Week looking at the spreading network of anti-"crt" politicking groups and money.

Excellence vs. Winning

Nancy Flanagan takes a look at some of the attitudes and ideas that have surfaced as everyone offers an opinion about Simone Biles.

Industry lobbying firm rushed to defend charter schools that think of children as a business

Jeff Bryant has dug into the folks pushing for more charter funding, and there are few surprises there. 

Thank You, Tucker Carlson

John Merrow comes out of retirement to look at Carlson's support for the idea of putting a camera in every classroom in order to catch the evil indoctrinatin' teachers.

Why white journalists need to stop focusing on 'learning loss'

Ray Salazar guest posts at The Grade and lays out why white journalists really need to get off the learning loss train.

Pandemic learning loss reports that sell online programs are harmful for students with disabilities

Nancy Bailey looks at how the ongoing marketing push behind learning loss are bad news for students

Bob Moses and the Enduring Education Injustice

There have been many good pieces written about Bob Moses and his unique legacy; I recommend this one by Jose Luis Vilson is especially worthwhile.

Elites profit from "nonprofit" charter schools

Carol Burris sits for an interview with Jacobin and talks about how nonprofit charter schools actually are quite profitable.

Please Correct the Highlighted Section

Blue Cereal Education talks about the experience of being on the receiving end of standards and requirements and remembering to be empathetic with students.

This will be our last post together

Russ Walsh is hanging up his blogging hat, and his voice will be missed. I wish him well in his continued work in the meat world.



There’s New Data On Last Year’s Student Learning Loss. Let’s Not Draw The Wrong Conclusions. - https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2021/07/28/theres-new-data-on-last-years-student-learning-loss-lets-not-draw-the-wrong-conclusions/?sh=7891df465daf by @palan57 on @forbes

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=17f20b717a3e by @palan57 on @forbes

USA Today Offers Ed Tech Baloney
by Peter Greene / 16h
This morning USA Today dropped this thing from freelance writer Matt Alderton , serving on this occasion apparently as a PR flack for tech companies. I'm responding to the piece here so that you can have a handy reply for your aunt when she sends you the article which, unfortunately, will get wide distribution through the platform. Alderton starts by citing data about teachers considering leaving

Toxic Toughness
by Peter Greene / 1d
There is something to be said for toughness, for sucking it up and getting the job done, for stepping outside of your comfort zone and braving unknown (or known) challenges. We expect it from certain professions where, like fire fighters, the job is to run toward what everyone else is running away from. It helps to be tough. Human beings are often driven by fear, and the best way to deal with tha

Contactless Education
by Peter Greene / 2d
The push for contactless life continues. I can order food from a restaurant or a grocery store and have it delivered quietly to my porch, as if it descended magically from the sky. I can go sit and a sit-down restaurant and barely have to interact with my server at all, and of course my local fast food places have all completed their redesigns to look like large boxy food vending machines, where I

Can We Close The Billionaire Learning Gap?
by Peter Greene / 3d
Imagine you had a student in your class, for some reason, for ten, fifteen, even twenty years. Imagine that you gave that student multiple opportunities to learn some central concepts for your course. And yet, somehow, these students remained absolutely impervious to the learning. What would you do? It's only a slightly hypothetical situation. Let's talk about the billionaire learning gap. Let's
The Loneliness of Tiny Gods
by Peter Greene / 3d
The Week featured an essay earlier this summer by Damon Linker, " The politics of loneliness is totalitarian ." It's an intriguing take that reaches back to the work of Hannah Arendt , a great writer to turn to when contemplating the mid-20th-century turn to totalitarianism in Europe. Here's Linker summarizing Arendt: In her view, totalitarianism is a novel form of government for which the men an

ICYMI: Back From Vacation Edition (7/25)
by Peter Greene / 7d
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 offic

at