CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: An Actual Nice Weekend Edition (4/24)
An Actual Nice Weekend Edition
Well, looking out my window this weekend does not stink, so that's a plus. Now let's see what there is on the reading list for the week.
If the Florida rejection of math textbooks did nothing else, it prompted plenty of mockery. Here are three of the top mocks of the week.
Andy Borowitz in the New Yorker with "DeSantis Warns That Math Makes Children Gay"
Carlos Greaves at McSweeney's with "Math Concepts the State of Florida Finds Objectionable"
Dana Milbank at the Washington Post with "DeSantis saves Florida kids from being indoctrinated with math."
Meet the 74's all-new student council. I know-- not everybody loves The 74, but they occasionally score with a solid piece of journalism, and I read everybody (because you should). They've put together this group of teens, and I encourage you to read it for no other reason than to be encouraged that these young humans exist in the world.
Don't trust a charter school network whose objective boils down to profits. Gloria Nolan used to work for the charter school industry. In this op-ed for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, she explains why she supports the proposed rules changes for federal charter grants.
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Report Grades States On Commitment To Public Schools https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2022/04/20/report-grades-states-on-commitment-to-public-schools/?sh=56dea78e320d
I'm Not Going To Defend SELSocial and Emotional Learning is the new target of the GOP attempt to set multiple education brushfires in hopes of stampeding voters towards a Republican victory (as well as one more way for the authoritarian crowd to hammer home their central point of "Trust nobody except Beloved Leader"). The attacks range from overblown to intellectually dishonest to giant piles of bovine fecal matter to the
FL: More Book Purging Includes-- Everywhere Babies??!! Seriously??!!Oh, Florida, what a crazy place you are. Currently in the news is the Walton County School District , which just pulled over 50 books from its library. The list, as noted in a district press release , was one that came from an unnamed "outside group" and included books that group "deemed inappropriate." It also notes it received the list "along with many other educational systems." The list was q
Amazon Has Some EdTech Trend IdeasThis week, EdSurge featured some "sponsored content" (aka advertising made to look like an article). The article was written by Katie Herritage (or at least one of her interns), currently the AWS Global Leader, Worldwide Customer Innovation and Acceleration Program, and is entitled " 7 Edtech Trends to Watch in 2022: A Startup Guide for Entrepreneurs ." AWS is the sponsor. AWS is Amazon Web Servi
AZ: An Even Worse Parental Rights BillAs more and more of these rear their heads across the country, the language gets sloppier and -- well, just bad. Recently approved by the Senate and previously okayed by the House, Arizona's HB 2161 throws a new verb into the mix-- usurp. As in, no political subdivision of the state or any other government entity or any official etc (because in this phrase, the bill's writer was exactingly detaile
VA: The Attack On Frederick County SchoolsHere's a story about another form that attacks on public education can take, and why local elections matter. It's not just state legislatures that can try to micromanage schools. When Glenn Youngkin won the race for Virginia governor , he swept along plenty of GOP conservatives into office with him. That included relatively small scale races like the race for Frederick County Board of Supervisors
PA: What would charter reform save your local taxpayers?School funding in Pennsylvania has a variety of problems, and the system of funding charter schools in the state exacerbates all of them. But there are some quick, simple reforms, long backed by Governor Tom Wolf (and opposed by a GOP controlled legislature) that would make a serious improvement for local taxpayers across the state. And now there's a handy resource for telling Pennsylvania taxpay
ICYMI: Easter Edition (4/17)Finally. We await Easter in my neck of the woods if for no other reason than spring isn't here until we have at least one snow after Easter. In the meantime, here's some reading from the week. Florida rejects math textbooks over ‘prohibited’ topics Yes, Florida threw out a bunch of math books because CRT and other Forbidden Things--things so forbidden that apparently the state isn't even going to
Teacher Job Satisfaction Hits BottomThat's the headline we're seeing all over , based on the results from an Education Week/Merrimack College teacher survey The survey was conducted between January 9 and February 23 of this year, with a sample of 1,324 teachers. And the chart that everyone keeps zooming in on is this one-- --which admittedly is pretty ugly, though it needs to be said that the Merrimack survey is in its first year,
MAGA And Social IsolationIt is easy to think of MAGA in terms of everything it hates, the many things it strikes out against. It's even easy to slip into the habit of making fun of it. Sure, MAGA, go ahead and call for a boycott of Disney, because I'm sure that will totally bring that gazillion-dollar multinational conglomerate to its knees. But I'd suggest we view the MAGA anti-ness through a different frame, another wa
Choice vs. Culture BattlesSome school choice fans are pretty steadfast in their belief in free market dynamics and in the need to let all parents choose as they see fit. But as the culture debates heat up, a whole group of choicers are turning out to be less committed to choice than to other things. Note these three stories. In New Hampshire ( in a story that we've looked at before ), the Croydon community had actually in
Video: CRT Panic: What's Behind ItHere's a ten minute explainer from More Perfect Union , a left-tilted outfit that produces videos with a labor union focus. You may or may not agree with everything here, but it's a good quick job of connecting dots between the Critical Race Theory panic, and particularly benefits from the inclusion of a guy who used to work for the Goldwater Institute setting up this very sort of initiative.
Yes, Lesson Plans. But--I don't think a week goes by that I don't find someone on the interwebs arguing that writing out lesson plans is a big fat waste of time. I'm not convinced. I've worked with too many student teachers and even beginning teachers who really needed to write lesson plans. They were stepping in front of a class without really figuring out what exactly they were doing, why they were doing it, or how th
SCOTUS Will Take On School PrayerLater this month, the Supreme Court will take on the case of Kennedy v. Bremerton School District . If you have not been paying attention to this case of the praying coach, you should take a look, because once again the court is contemplating smashing holes in the wall between church and state. The case comes from Washington State, where high school football coach Joe Kennedy made a practice of t
