CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Counting Down To School Edition (8/8)
Counting Down To School Edition
Yes, the clock has started at our house. I'll be heading off to be a trombone consultant for an old friend/student's band camp starting tomorrow, and my wife's summer days are numbered. Here it comes, lurching towards us like a misaligned tractor with a flat tire and three bales of hay stuck in the wheel well. In the meantime, here are some reads from the week.
Dyslexia Industry Scores California Court Victory
Well, that's one way to commandeer a district's reading program--use the courts. Thomas Ultican has the story of the California district where students will now get an extra helping of DIBELS, among other things.
Students Say Teach The Truth
From Learning for Justice. An award winning teacher asked actual human students about the "crt" panic. I missed this a month ago, but it's still worth your attention.
"Public education sucks" is a weak argument for school choice
Yes, Robert Pondiscio is a choice fan through and through. But he's not wrong when he picks apart one argument choicers use to make their case.
A $5 million fine for classroom discussions on race?
Well, yes. That's what Tennessee has proposed, and now a Mom for Liberty is taking the new law out for a spin. From Eesha Pendharker at Education Week.
Texas teachers say GOP's new social studies law will hinder and entire generation
The Texas Tribune talked to some actual teachers about how Texas's new anti-race stuff law will diminish a generation's understanding of the country's history.
Innovation Invites Hucksters
This New York Times piece isn't writing about education, except it kind of is. Beware technology soaked in snake oil.
Machine Learning Sucks At Covid
Cory Doctorow takes a look at some AI tools, and he hits hard. I'm going to give you the lead because it's kind of awesome:
The worst part of machine learning snake-oil isn’t that it’s useless or harmful — it’s that ML-based statistical conclusions have the veneer of mathematics, the empirical facewash that makes otherwise suspect conclusions seem neutral, factual and scientific.
Completing this trio of pieces, a pair of law professors in the New York Times explain why AI is not the special magical soup it's sold as. And what Europe is doing about it.
As I've posted previously, Idaho has an education indoctrination task force, headed up by their ambitious Lt. Governor. Ed Week checks in to see how that's going (spoiler alert: very scarily).
There's innovation, and then there's innovation. Nancy Flanagan offers some thoughts about reimagining education.
Steven Singer contemplates the measures that need to be on the table for the coming fall.
CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION
FL: Bullying By MaskFlorida (state motto: Death to public education!) has been leaping to capitalize on the current COVID disaster, as witnessed by this extremely on-point headline: Florida Will Pay for Parents to Move Kids Into New Schools if They Experience ‘COVID-19 Harassment’ That's a very apt way to characterize a voucher program--the state will pay you to pull your kid out of public schools. You may have been
Raging Against Reality, Crisis, and Education's Kobyashi MaruSo here comes yet more panicky news from NWEA , hollering that Learning Loss is consuming New Jersey. It is, in many ways, baloney. First, everyone keeps ignoring the loss of standardized test prep and practice that is a factor in test results, and second, the Learning Loss here is reported based on what NWEA imagines the scores on last years test would have been had students taken them. I'm a li
Should School Board Elections Be More PartisanAaron Churchill, the Ohio research director for the Fordham Institute, this morning wants to make the case for partisan school board elections . Lots of states have non- or bi-partisan school board elections. Ohio doesn't note a party affiliation. In Pennsylvania, candidates can cross file and run in both R and D primaries, and so are listed as both parties on the final ballot. Churchill notes th
NEA and AFT are wrong on vaccinationsFred Klonsky has said this today , but I'm going to say it, too. The national teachers unions (and a few other unions as well) are wrong on vaccinations. Randi Weingarten has said it should be locally negotiated: "In order for everyone to feel safe and welcome in their workplaces, vaccinations must be negotiated between employers and workers, not coerced," Weingarten said in a statement. The NEA
Fear and Silence in the ClassroomIt comes down to administrators. States have moved from passing vaguely-worded laws about That Race Stuff and on to the penalty phase. I don't know know exactly how well the anti-CRT crowd understands what they're doing, but it doesn't really matter. At this point, it is all about scaring administrators. Tennessee has emerged as a big player in the Stifle Teachers Olympics, and they've come up wi
ICYMI: August Already Edition (8/1)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
