CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Ice Sculpture Edition (2/6)
Ice Sculpture Edition
Every year in my small town we have a mini-festival in which part of the town park becomes a showplace for ice sculptures. It has survived COVID mostly unscathed because it's outside and it's cold, so crowds don't exactly gather. Fun times. Best to go at night, when the sculptures are lit up. And you can revisit it for weeks, depending on the weather because, in one of those small towny things, nobody bothers the sculptures while they're up.
Here's your reading for the week.
Moving the SATs online won't restore them to relevance
At The Hill, Josh DeSantis argues that the SATs latest move isn't going to help them escape irrelevance
Glenn Youngkin Tip Line Update
Mother Jones has a follow-up on Youngkin's snitch line. Doesn't seem to be going well, despite refusals to honor FIOA requests.
The Highly Unqualified Teacher
Nancy Flanagan remembers when a cornerstone of ed policy was the "highly qualified teacher." Now that we've completely thrown that out the window, what could be the results?
DeVos touts voucher ballot initiative
Michigan voters have beaten back DeVos voucher plans numerous times, but this time the family thinks they may have a way to circumvent the people and just get those tax dolars flowing to private religious schools. And they are spending a ton of money on it
People are fighting. Is that news?
You may not agree with this piece, but at a minimum it may spur some thinking. Greg Toppo suggests that education coverage might benefit from more light and less heat.
Conflict entrepreneurs
I don't usually do video clips, but this two minutes with Amanda Ripley is an awesome explanation of my favorite new term.
Research points to effectiveness of tutoring and challenge of scaling it
At Th 74 (yes, I know, but some of their straight journalism is pretty useful) a look at research about tutoring and the challenge of making it big enough to help students in larger numbers.
Why there hasn't been a mass exodus of teachers
Rebecca Klein takes a look at some of the details behind that mass teacher exodus that is often touted, but rarely backed up by actual numbers.
Teachers are quitting and companies are hot to hire them
At the Wall Street Journal, an article that suggests the prospects for ex-teachers (however many there actually are) are actually pretty good.
CRT gag law map
Having trouble keeping track of how many states are trying to clamp down on teaching about race and other discomfort-inducing topics? Chalkbeat has a map.
Efforts to ban CRT affect roughly a third of US students
At EdWeek, Eesha Pendharker has done some tallying as well, and the numbers are large.
Madeline Morgan's vision for Black history in schools
A first person Chalkbeat piece from the guy who's writing the book about the Bronzeville visionary.
CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Ice Sculpture Edition (2/6)
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Parents Defending Education Targets Black Lives MatterParents Defending Education is one of the more prominent groups fueling the crt-making-teacher gag law panic; they are led by folks who are seasoned political players including Nicole Neily (Cato Institute, Independent Women's Forum, Speech First, Charles Koch Institute fan), Asra Nomani (Pearl Project, supporter of Trump Muslim ban), Erika Sanzi (Education Post), Marissa Fallon ( Coalition for T
FEB 02
AL: A Proposal To End State Support Of Public EducationState Senator Del Marsh proposed this week the "ultimate" school choice bill, the "Parents' Choice Bill," (SB140) a super-education savings account. But that's not what it really is. This is an ESA in its fully realized form -- every Alabama family gets every cent the state would have spent on educating their child (about $6,300 last year) and they can use it to pay for educational whatever--publ
FEB 01
Alarming Pre-K NewsNew research is problematic news for the world of pre-K. We've long known that a good pre-school is not a magical jump start that guarantees your kids will end up in the Ivy League, and advantages tend to fade within a few years, but new research from Vanderbilt's Peabody College suggests the reality could be far worse. One of the authors puts it bluntly : “At least for poor children, it turns ou
JAN 31
Brace Yourself: There's A Movie Coming" Parents’ School Revolt About to Get a Jolt With Groundbreaking Documentary " reads the headline, andf if that's not enough of a signal, here's the lead in the news release: The COVID-19 pandemic has at least one silver lining—revealing the truth to parents and teachers about America’s public education system. And this explanation of why this documentary had to be made. For years, most government
TX: Governor's Attack On TeachersGovernor Greg Abbott has decided that he needs to step up his attack on teachers, proposing some new rules to undercut teacher authority and autonomy, because he wants to "make clear that parents are the primary decision makers in all matters involving their children." So here comes his Parents Bill of Rights. What does that mean, exactly? Well, for one thing, that means jumping on the Krause Lis
JAN 30
Transparency As A Chaos ToolA remarkable feature of Critical Race Theory panic is that we were told, early on, what was being done, and why. You've seen this quote multiple times, but let me remind you : Well, here we go again. In a series of tweets this month, Christopher Rufo, a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute who has been instrumental in drawing opposition to racial sensitivity training, said shifting from
ICYMI: Book Banning Edition (1/30)So that kind of blew up as the issue of the week. What a whacky time to be alive! Here's some stuff to read, because reading is good. Incidentally, if you are new around here, this is a regular Sunday feature, in which I collect stuff from the previous week that I found worthwhile and interesting. If something here strikes your fancy, I strongly encourage you to amplify it and share it through yo
JAN 29
Banning Books Is DumbLet's set aside, for a moment, the problems with trying stifle thoughts and ideas and the moral and ethical issues involved, or the heavy irony of people who say they hate cancel culture but want to cancel some authors. Banning books is just dumb for some very practical reasons. Want to make something popular? Ban it. This has been true forever. Mark Twain took out newspaper ads to thank the peop
JAN 28
FL: Education Buffet of Bad BillsNationally, we're seeing a great surge of bad bills being proposed as pseudo-conservative legialtors rush to prove that they are the banniest, teacher-gaggingest legislators out there. And as always, we can find Florida providing an example of how that looks. Here are just some of the bills under consideration in America's Swampland. There is of course all the activity around Ron DeSantis's STOP
JAN 27
Ron Johnson Says It Out Loud: Other People's Children Aren't My ProblemSenator Ron Johnson started out the old-fashioned way--working at company created and funded by his father-in-law, as an accountant. In 2010, as a previous political virgin, he rode the Tea Party Wave into a Senate seat for Wisconsin (he defeated Russ Feingold). When he ran again in 2016, he was backed by the Club for Growth and won with 50.2% of the vote. He doesn't believe in climate change ( c
