CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Get a Comfy Chair

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Get a Comfy Chair:
 ICYMI: Get a Comfy Chair

Maybe it's because it's summer and I often have larger stretches for reading. But once again, I have lots of good reads for you from the last week. 

The Disconnect Between Changing Test Scores and Changing Later Life Outcomes Strikes Again

You may or may not be familiar with Jay Greene, who generally works the reformy side of the street. But he is one of those reformers who's not afraid to call BS when he sees it, and these days he is seriously challenging the assumption that raising test scores actually accomplishes anything. This is one of most important reads of the month.

A Void in Oversight of Charters

Wendy Lecker takes a look at just how messy the lack of charter oversight gets in Connecticut.

Promise Me

Kate With Keyboard writes a heartfelt open letter to the parents of her students as she sends those students home for the summer.

The Upper West Side Is New York's Latest Integration Battleground

Laura Moser at Slate looks at one more new battle over integration

On Latinos Education in America

Speaking of things we don't speak much about

Why Denver Is a Warning Sign, Not a Model

Man, do I ever appreciate people like Jeff Bryant who do actual journalism. A look at how the Denver model is to be feared, not imitated.

How To Cheat Good

One of the great things about the internet is that you can stumble across old friends here. I first read this essay years ago, and I still love it. A classic for anyone who deals with student papers.

Dr Steve Perry Sells Black Kids to the Highest Bidder

Jose Vilson reacts to Perry's proud announcement that he got a bunch of black kids to make themselves look less "black." Read this, and then read Vilson's follow-up piece here.


Feeding the Sparks of Revolution in Chicago

Xian Franzinger Barrett gives us a look at student activists on the ground in Chicago, where students now have to fight for their own educational future

Surviving Success Academy

Do you have time for one more horror story from a teacher who escaped working for Success Academy? 

Call It a Racism Tax

Bob Braun and how New Jersey taxpayers are paying more just so they can keep all those black kids away.

How We Pervert Compassion in Schools

Empathy is helpful, but pity-- not so much. 


Major: Debt

Jennifer Berkshire talks to writer Neil Swidey, who provides some powerful argument against the idea that a college education is the path out of poverty.



CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Get a Comfy Chair:

Teachers' View of Growing Problems of Teaching

Back in May, the Center on Education Policy (located at George Washington University) released their report Listen To Us: Teacher Views and Voices. You may have missed the report because it didn't lend itself to any zippy coverage or grabby sound bite. If you are an actual teacher, virtually nothing in the results will make you go, "Wow! I had no idea!" The Center's own press release (&q

by Peter Greene / 43min 

To Lounge or Not To Lounge: The Venting Question

Most beginning teachers have heard the advice-- stay out of the lounge.That advice has been echoing around the internet for the last month or so, as exemplified by pieces like this one at Edutopia. The concerns is that lounges are where the negative teachers collect, where all that venting about the terrible students occurs.Should teachers vent? Well, I would be a spectacular hypocrite to say no,

2 by Peter Greene / 2h 

Another NYC Integration Story

This week in Slate, Laura Moser covers yet another flap in New York City centered on schools, race and class.I generally try to stay away from NYC education stories, because I find the politics of the city, district and union to be absolutely headache-inducing. But there are two elements in this story that are familiar to residents of many cities.First, the well-regarded school at the center of th

2 by Peter Greene / 3h 

ICYMI: Get a Comfy Chair

Maybe it's because it's summer and I often have larger stretches for reading. But once again, I have lots of good reads for you from the last week. The Disconnect Between Changing Test Scores and Changing Later Life Outcomes Strikes AgainYou may or may not be familiar with Jay Greene, who generally works the reformy side of the street. But he is one of those reformers who's not afraid to call BS w

7 by Peter Greene / 4h 

YESTERDAY

Pearson's Cyber-Kindergarten Sales Pitch

So I stumbled across the Connections Academy blog Virtual Learning Connections (a friendly resource supporting K-12 school from home). In particular, I stumbled across this post-- "5 Reasons Why Parents Choose Virtual School Kindergarten." The piece is written by Carrie Zopf, a teacher at one of the Conections Academies. Connection Academy is the virtual charter chain purchased by Pearso

67 by Peter Greene / 1d 

Charter vs. Charter Fight Heats Up

K12 Inc is feeling grumpy.Earlier this week we looked at a report co-created by the National Alliance for Public [sic] Charter Schools, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, and 50CAN in which the bricks and mortar wing of the charter school industry took the cyber-charters to task for stinking up the whole charter sector, and very helpfully offered some advice that involved a wh

20 by Peter Greene / 1d 

Bill Gates & His Chickens

Bill Gates believes in chickens.He took to one of his blogs to extol the virtues of chickens as engines of economic improvement for the Very Poor of the world. In fact, he's pretty sure that the Poor Folks should be raising chickens; he's pretty sure it's their path to a better world.When I was growing up, chickens weren’t something you studied, they were something you made silly jokes about. It h

66 by Peter Greene / 1d 

JUN 17

A Reformster Manifesto

While they stump for all the usual suspects, the Center for Education Reform is not really a full on reformy group. They are first, last, foremost, and always, a group that pushes hard for charters.Their founder, president, and chief spokesperson Jeanne Allen  graduated from Dickerson with a degree in political science, then moved on to study political philosophy at the Catholic University of Amer

8 by Peter Greene / 1d 

JUN 16

Can Cyber Schools Be Saved?

Say what else you like about them, but the charter school industry has a pretty keen sense of where its own vulnerabilities lie, and at the moment, there is no underbelly softer than the virtual charter sector-- what the rest of us call cyber-charters. Multiple studies have made it clear-- cyber charters do not deliver much of anything except giant truckloads of money to the people who operate the

13 by Peter Greene / 2d 

Eli Broad's Bloodless Coup

I don't think there's ever been anything like it.Well, maybe Teapot Dome, kind of. Back in the early 1920s, the feds had special oil reserves set aside for the Navy. One was near Teapot Dome in Wyoming, and during the administration of Warren G. Harding, some folks engineered the oil reserves at Teapot Dome being handed off to the department of the interior. But since Secretary Albert Bacon Fall h

100+ by Peter Greene / 3d 

JUN 15

Houston Slams VAM (Plus: All About SAS)

As a Pennsylvanian teacher, I am paying particular attention to the news from Houston, where VAM just suffered another well-deserved loss. I'll get to that in a second, but let me set the stage and tell you a little story of how we arrived here.Houston and Reformsters The Houston Independent School District has always been out in front of education reformsterism. It was Houston where Superintenden

37 by Peter Greene / 3d 

PA: School Funding Emerges from Time Warp

Pennsylvania now has a formula for distributing education dollars to school districts.You will notice that I didn't say "new formula." That's because, contrary to what rational human beings might assume, Pennsylvania hasn't had a formula for decades. Well, that's not exactly true. The formula has been Y times some-percent-usually-less-than-two of Y, with Y equalling "whatever you go

21 by Peter Greene / 4d 

JUN 14

TeachLivE: Robot School in the Uncanny Valley

A few days ago, I quoted Thomas Kane's bizarre observation about teacher training:Surgeons start on cadavers, not on live patients.I observed that it would be hard for teachers to start working with cadavers, but a couple of regular commenters reminded me that, in fact, there are teachers out there working on not-exactly-live students. Ladies and gentlemen, it's TeachLivEThis particular example co

28 by Peter Greene / 5d hide  //  save

JUN 13

Jeb Bush's Education Vision

After his attempt to be the New Coke of GOP Presidential politics, Jeb Bush has retreated to his signature issue-- privatizing education. He's back at the head of his advocacy group the Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE), and he's even back to cranking out magazine copy about his vision of a better tomorrow for US schools.The National Review has given Bush a platform with "Saving Am

23 by Peter Greene / 6d 

An Educated Person

A while back, blogger Starr Sackstein took a whack a two part question-- has the definition of an educated person changed, and should our education delivery system change with it. My gut reaction, my visceral answer, is "Not really, and not really." But I didn't really have anything to back up my gut, so I've been mulling over this for a while. What were my viscera thinking when they pas

35 by Peter Greene / 6d 

Schools Matter: The 10 Page Common Core Report Card

Schools Matter: The 10 Page Common Core Report Card:

The 10 Page Common Core Report Card

Introducing the latest pile of bullshit from the Common Core technotwits--a report card that parents can't understand and that tells children nothing they need to know--all in a forest-devastating 10 pages of itemized, um, standards.  If you believe that everything children need to learn in school can be reduced to mountain of discrete infobits, then you are soon to be the winner of an schooling system based on children becoming "competent" in those infobits long enough to click the correct  screen item, thus demonstrating as much. 

Education based on an sea of sequential competencies that students can push through individually as if they were mowing an endless prairie?  Sounds enticing, doesn't it.  No teachers, no buildings, no worry: Phoenix Elementary, Phoenix Middle, Phoenix High, and of course, the University of Phoenix.

But privileged parents should not worry.  Real schools with real human teachers and assessments will always be available for the "top income tenth" who will be the required designers of our brave new education future. 

By Kathy Boccella, Staff Writer
POSTED: May 23, 2016

As a lawyer, Dennis Weldon has to make sense of tortuous legal papers. But a year ago, the Plumstead Township resident opened a nine-page document that left him flummoxed.

It was his child's report card from Gayman Elementary School in the Central Bucks School District.

Gone was the traditional A-B-C-D-F report from the teacher. Instead, parents were sent to their computers to click open a nine-page digital document with row after row of learning standards and success indicators for Schools Matter: The 10 Page Common Core Report Card:

Who will teach when my generation retires? | The Charlotte Observer

Who will teach when my generation retires? | The Charlotte Observer:

Who will teach when my generation retires?

A strengthening economy and education reforms are driving away both current and potential teachers. John Althouse AP

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article84478122.html?ref=yfp#storylink=cpy

Every year as the school year winds down, someone asks me when I’m going to retire. Perhaps I look especially weary that first week of June, or my hair is noticeably grayer. Often the person asking is a long-time veteran teacher, and I wonder how much the question is really for me.

I started teaching in January 1977 in a special education classroom for children labeled “emotionally handicapped.” You would have to look long and hard for another teacher as unprepared as I was, but the principal was desperate after the certified teacher left without warning.

Kay McSpadden DON WILLIAMSON

Every first-year teacher flounders a little before learning how to swim, but I would have drowned without my teacher’s aide. Classes were small – only three to five students each period – but even so, we struggled to keep order. In addition to their behavioral issues, my students suffered from being so poor that some had no running water at home and most came to school hungry and dirty.

By the end of the school year, my head was above water. I stopped crying on the way to work and back. I had some rudimentary classroom management skills, more patience, and a better understanding of the effects of poverty on children. When I think of those students now, I feel grateful that they taught me so much and embarrassed that I taught them so little.

Part of me is surprised that I didn’t walk away after that difficult first year. Nationally almost half of novice teachers leave the profession within five years. Managing students, making learning engaging and meaningful, spending enormous amounts of time off the clock planning lessons and grading papers, and getting paid poorly are some of the reasons teachers quit.

More alarming are the numbers of college students who decide against teaching at all. Despite widespread teacher shortages, especially in high school content areas such as math, science, technology, and foreign language, college students are choosing other professions.

Bill McDiarmid, who served as the dean of the University of North Carolina School of Education until 2015, told NPR’s Eric Westervelt last year that the decline in enrollment was “a steady downward line on a graph. And there’s no sign of its being turned around.”

McDiarmid cited several reasons, including a strengthening economy and the cumulative effects of current education reforms.

“The list of potential headaches for new teachers is long, starting with the ongoing, ideological fisticuffs over the Common Core State Standards, high-stakes testing and efforts to link test results to teacher evaluations,” Westervelt wrote. “Throw in the erosion of tenure protections and a variety of recession-induced budget cuts, and you’ve got the makings of a crisis.”

McDiarmid added that teachers are scapegoated by politicians and the media.

“It tears me up sometimes to see the way in which people talk about teachers because they are giving blood, sweat, and tears for their students every day in this country. There is a sense now that ‘If I went into this job and it doesn’t pay a lot and it’s a lot of hard work, it may be that I’d lose it.’ And students are hearing this. And it deters them from entering the profession.”

Hopefully, those reforms keeping potential teachers away and driving teachers out will run their course soon. The backlash against high-stakes testing and unfair teacher evaluations are widespread and growing.

Otherwise, by the time teachers my age do retire, there may not be anyone to teach the next generation.

Kay McSpadden teaches high school English in York, S.C. Email: kmcspadden@comporium.net. Who will teach when my generation retires? | The Charlotte Observer:

More charter schools closing after Ohio toughens rules | The Columbus Dispatch

More charter schools closing after Ohio toughens rules | The Columbus Dispatch:

More charter schools closing after Ohio toughens rules

Ohio could see a record number of charter schools close this year.

In the wake of a new state law designed to shut down failing schools, several charter-school sponsors are severing ties with schools they agreed to oversee. Charter schools — privately run with public dollars — can’t operate without a sponsor.

In an 11th-hour plea last week to keep its doors open, Cleveland’s OAK Leadership Institute asked the State Board of Education to intervene. The board refused, citing poor student test scores.

Out of options, OAK will be forced to close; it’s among the first affected by the tougher accountability measures.

“There will be more,” said Ron Adler, president of the Ohio Coalition for Quality Education, which advocates for charter schools. “Sponsors are feeling pressure. This is accelerating the closure process.”

Ohio Department of Education officials say they know of 19 schools that are closing this year: Eleven were dropped by their sponsors for poor performance; the eight others closed voluntarily.

Last year, 14 charter schools shut their doors. Three closed because of failing grades and six for financial reasons, according to state records. The reasons for the five other closings were unclear.

Supporters of a charter-school reform bill passed last year, House Bill 2, and of new evaluations for school sponsors say they aim to bring more accountability and transparency to a charter system that spends about $1 billion annually to educate more than 120,000 Ohio students attending 374 charter schools. For example, the new law More charter schools closing after Ohio toughens rules | The Columbus Dispatch: