CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Goodbye, Rose Edition (2/26)
Goodbye, Rose Edition
My wife's grandmother passed away last week, a ripe and well-aged 90 years old. She was a feisty old broad in the best sense of the word. Salty, sassy and a constant reminder to live your damn life. Her memory will be a blessing.
And now for this week's reading.
Jargon may have turned parents against social and emotional learning
Javeria Salman at Hechinger with a theory about why there's such a disconnect between what people want and the SEL that delivers it.
Who is writing the model bills against CRT?
Jan Resseger traces the roots of the many, many nearly identical gag bills being floated coast to coast
Choosing to end Public Education
Thomas Ultican takes a look inside the new anthology of essays about public education
I Got a Voucher Only to Find No Private School Wanted My Son
If you have not yet checked out the website Public Voices for Public Schools, here's a good post to start with, reminding us that school choice is too often school's choice.
When your body is telling you you're carrying too much stress, listen. From Eduhonesty.
Nancy Flanagan looks at how poor "freedom" has been put through the mill.
I was a little late coming across this gem, but here's a tale from the front lines of the current book banning debates.
The Alabama version of this stuff, advertised as a "compromise"
We've looked at this before, but it deserves to be revisited regularly. Matt Barnum, the Chalkbeat reporter we most appreciate here at the Institute, takes a look at what's at stake and what some of the outcomes could be.
Megan Megansky reporting in Harrsiburg, PA, covers one of the less-covered aspects of the pandemess--teachers who are also parents. Several great quotes, but I'll give you this one
“We really have to get to a point where people in charge stop telling us to take care of ourselves and instead take some of this off of our plates," middle school band director Shanna Danielson said.
Sarah Darer Littman with the story of how to fight an attack on board members.
TC Weber has a good look at the various shenanigans involved in Tennessee Governor Lee's plan to change up how schools are funded (or not).
One more story (this time from Erica Meltzer at Chalkbeat) to remind us that the big secret for charter success remains carefully curating your student body.
Every once in a while I write something and feel as if I've nailed an important point, and then nobody much looks at it. That happened this week, when I pointed out the evidence that some choicers really aren't choicers at all, and they're saying the quiet part pretty loudly these days. Here's the piece.
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IN: Barring Teachers From School BoardsOn the national level, it really has become death by a thousand tiny cuts for the teaching profession. This proposed amendment in Indiana is by no means the most egregious, but it is just an unnecessary swipe at teachers and school employees. HB 1130 is mostly about making sure that school boards get a full hammering from the public-- each public member in attendance must be given at least three m
Tax Credit Scholarships and Education Savings Accounts: A PrimerTax credit scholarships and education savings accounts often travel together and end up as two sides of the same policy. It's easy to get them kind of confused (here at the Institute we might have suffered from that confusion ourselves on occasion). But here's a quick, simple explainer to help you figure out what particular policy is being pushed in your state. Education Savings Accounts ESAs are
PA: District Settles BLM Lawsuit For 45KHere's a story from Pennsylvania showing that you don't even need to have a state gag law to cause expense and headaches for a school district. It also has plenty to say about what is motivating some of the protestors. Maureen and Christopher Brophy filed a lawsuit in June of 2021 on behalf of their son and daughter, two students in the East Penn School District (Emmaus, Lehigh Valley). This laws
Classroom Proposals (Don't Be Gay)Just last week there was another one. You know--one of those heartwarming stories about somebody proposing marriage to a teacher in her classroom. This time it was in Dover, New York . A third grade teacher's boyfriend not only proposed in the classroom, but enlisted the students to help out by holding the proposal signage. These crop up regularly; sometimes there's touching video and the whole s
Charters Can't Escape Gag LawsOne of the big selling points of charter schools is supposed to be that they can escape and avoid all sorts of bureaucratic meddling and red tape that plague public schools. But it turns out that some conservatives are perfectly happy to extend red tape to charter schools if it's their preferred red tape. Essence Preparatory was all set to launch in San Antonio, a school with a mission for high q
John Oliver on Critical Race TheoryI could not have done this any better myself. I don't really have anjything to add, but I don't want you to miss this.
FL: How To Make "Don't Say Gay" Bill WorseFlorida's HB 1557 is a truly terrible bill that clamps down on any mention or discussion of LGBTQ topics though Kansas actually has a worse bill which would forbid any mention of LGBTQ topics of any sort at all. Perhaps that is what inspired the sponsor of the Florida bill to make matters worse. Last week the bill picked up 15 proposed amendments , most of which were attempts to mitigate the dama
Privatization CostsWe've talked before about Donald Cohen and Alen Mikaelian's book The Privatization of Everything, but it's worth returning to in order to underline yet another point. One of the arguments often pushed to promote the idea of privatizing, of having government farm out a function to private operators, is that it will be a money saver. But time after time, that turns out not to be true. The challenge
ICYMI: Van Gogh Edition (2/20)Yesterday, as our Valentine's Day outing, the CMO (Chief Marital Officer) and I went to see the Van Gogh immersive art thingy, Pittsburgh edition. Much of what I know about Impressionism I learned by reading my daughter's college papers, because she is the art whiz in the family. It was an unusual and beautiful experience. Very cool. The reading list is a little short this week, but still worthwhi
MySpace and What Corporations Really WantThis is an old story, but a revealing one. I missed it at the time, but it's worth revisiting. Back in 2016, Time Inc acquired Viant, an ad tech company--and that was mostly exciting because back in 2011, Viant had purchased MySpace. If you are of a Certain Age, you remember MySpace as a visually alarming website created for fledgling bands to share their stuff, but which morphed into a -proto-Fa
