Sunday, September 19, 2021

CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION + ICYMI: Tech Sunday Edition (9/19)

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Tech Sunday Edition (9/19)



Tech Sunday Edition

Yes, I'm directing a community theater production again, and in the time of covid it's quite the adventure. This time it's the Wizard of Oz, and today we enter the final run-up to performance, so if I don't seem to be logging as many hours at the Institute, that's why. But we have reading for today.

Ida's Wild Ride

The indispensable Mercedes Schneider keeps us updated on her Ida-related adventures, and how education in her classroom will prevail.

Separate and Unequal

Bruce Baker and Mark Weber have done some important research about funding and education in New Jersey.

Steve Bannon hopes homeschooling moms will be his new shock troops

The Daily Beast has been watching this political storm brewing. Take with a grain of salt, but pay attention.

Big money in selling charter schools

Carol Burris over at the Washington Post lays out a crazy pants story of how one charter group is all about making big real estate dollars.

How republicans turned school choice into a losing issue

A Jennifer Berkshire piece at The Nation takes us to the Pompeo/DeVos choice pep rally in New Hampshire. I told you this was coming, but she actually went. 

Black educators silenced from teaching America's racist past

Melinda Anderson takes a look at some effects of the CRT panic

School boards and other political targets

Nancy Flanagan takes a look at the current wave of attacks on school boards.

Our Faculty Success Initiative Redefines Everything You Thought You Knew about "Faculty" and "Success"

McSweeney's scores with yet another darkly comic look at education baloney.






State Task Forces Want To Root Out Indoctrination In Schools. How’s That Going? - https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2021/09/17/state-task-forces-want-to-root-out-indoctrination-in-schools-hows-that-going/?sh=1780172f2edb by @palan57 on @forbes

Ron DeSantis Just Trashed More Jeb Bush Policies. Is That Good News For Education In Florida? - https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2021/09/15/ron-desantis-just-trashed-more-jeb-bush-policies-is-that-good-news-for-education-in-florida/?sh=7d302a985a09 by @palan57 on @forbes





School Choice Isn't Uber. It's LulaRoe.
by Peter Greene / 1d
I didn't mean to watch; I really didn't. But my wife started in on the LulaRoe documentary and I was sucked in. Mostly because the founding couple, DeAnne Brady and Mark Stidham are such truly awful people, but they were awful in a way that immediately rang a bell. There are some superficial similarities. In particular, the multi-level marketing pyramid scheme aspects of LulaRoe, where the focus
FL: The Big Standardized Test is dead. Long live the Big Standardized Test!
by Peter Greene / 2d
As widely noted, Florida's Governor Ron DeSantis has had a testing epiphan y. "More learning and less test prep," he says, and his right hand education man Richard Corcoran says, gee, testing really is a waste of as lot of time (he only just noticed this during the pandemic BS Test suspension period). Man, that Big Standardized Test is bad news, says the top guys in the state that wrote the book
How To Undermine The Teaching Of Reading
45by Peter Greene / 4d
No, this is not yet another salvo in the reading wars, because I don't care where you fall on the pure phonics -- just take your holistic guess continuum, you have to believe in the power of content knowledge. There's plenty of evidence of the importance of content knowledge, though I'm partial to the old baseball experiment , in which it turned out that students have a higher reading comprehensi
What's Too Controversial for the Classroom
by Peter Greene / 5d
John Wallis was a fresh new teacher, hired to teach drama, world mythology, and speech and debate at Neosho Junior High in southwestern Missouri. He hung a gay pride flag and a sign saying "In This Classroom, EVERYONE Is Welcome." He was told a parent complained, so he took the items down. Students asked why. He explained, said the flag did not represent what he would teach in his class, and went
ICYMI: 9/12 Edition (9/12)
by Peter Greene / 7d
9/11 was one thing; what started to happen in this country on the twelfth is something else entirely, but we don't have national days of remembrance about that. Meanwhile, there's plenty to read about in the world of education. NH "education freedom" accounts cost soaring NH implemented vouchers; now it's turning out to be way more expensive than advocates promised. Proctorio's awful reviews disa
Arne Duncan and Pedagogical Badger Hats
by Peter Greene / 9d
Arne Duncan was at it again, popping up on Fareed Zakaria's CNN show to talk about post-covid education (looking kind of Herman Munster-ish on his Zoom screen). Much of his shtick was predictable. Students are months
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