CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION

CURMUDGUCATION

CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION

AND DON'T FORGET PETER GREENE ON FORBES CLICK HERE 

Eight Weeks Of Summer: Getting It Done

25by Peter Greene / 5d

This post is week 6 of 8 in the 8 Weeks of Summer Blog Challenge for educators . I've been doing this challenge because why not. I answer the prompts as my pre-tirement self. Here's this week's question: How are you planning to implement change next school year? This often depended on the change. For lots of changes, I just did it. Changing how I approached vocabulary? Just did it. Changing the r

JUL 14

ICYMI: House Painting Edition (7/14)

45by Peter Greene / 7d

Yes, we're getting the house painted. If that's not fun, I don't know what is. But in the meantime, here's some reading for you. How Did We Miss This? The story of the Indiana cyberschool collecting money for ghost students. Palm Beach Real Estate What can you do when you're a charter school entrepreneur? Sell one mansion you never actually lived in and then buy another one. Common Core Tests Are

JUL 13

The New Koch Ed Reform Rebranding Astroturducken

100+by Peter Greene / 8d

The billionaire Charles Koch has launched another adventure in astroturf, this time aimed at rebranding ed reform while still pushing reformy ideas, playing the reform greatest hits and-- well, it's a little unclear what else is going on. But every layer is more special than the last. This has been coming for a while. Back in January Koch announced that they were going to increase their level of m

JUL 12

Are These Lessons To Learn From Cyberschools?

63by Peter Greene / 9d

At this stage of the game, there's no reason to keep imagining that cyberschools are a viable option for education on any sort of scale. There's a small group of students with specialized needs that they can serve well, but mostly they've failed big time. But they are also excellent money-makers, and so we periodically find folks trying to rehabilitate the cyberschool image. Here comes another suc

JUL 11

Eight Weeks of Summer: Big Hairy Say What Now?

73by Peter Greene / 10d

This post is week 5 of 8 in the 8 Weeks of Summer Blog Challenge for educators . I've been doing the Hot Lunch Tray eight week challenge. Unlike other challenges, it does not require me to eat responsibly or beat myself up with ice water or plastic gerbils. I'm answering the questions as my old pre-retirement self. You can see what other folks are writing by checking out the #8WeeksofSummer hasht

JUL 10

Does The Most Interesting Teacher Pay Proposal Belong To A Billionaire Friend Of Trump?

by Peter Greene / 11d

Stephen Schwarzman might have an idea. Schwarzman, cofounder of the Blackstone Group , has been named a Bloomberg Most Influential person of the year more than once, and in 2007 he was one of Time's 100 Most Influential people of the year. He is a long-time friend and advisor of Donald Trump, including help set up Trump's Strategic and Policy Forum . He has given away a great deal of money and pu

Whom Do We Trust

100+by Peter Greene / 11d

One of the unending underlying challenges in education is that parents and taxpayers have to trust somebody. Back In The Day, the default was to trust teachers and administrators. That would be back when the default was to trust authority figures as a whole-- but that pendulum has swung far in the other direction (on behalf of all the Boomers, let me just say, "You're welcome"). Heck, even within

JUL 07

ICYMI: Really Really Summer Now Edition (7/6)

21by Peter Greene / 14d

Hot and steamy here, which still makes us better off than some corners of the world. Here's some reading for the day. Remember-- share the stuff that really speaks to you. The Teaching Machine Imaginary I do miss Audrey Watters, but here's a new Hack Education post that, in typical Watters fashion, links book editing, the Jetsons, teaching machines, and pigeons. Education Reformers Still Don't Und

NANCY BAILEY: Force and Flunk, Tougher Kindergarten Lead to Parental Dissatisfaction with Public Schools

Force and Flunk, Tougher Kindergarten Lead to Parental Dissatisfaction with Public Schools

Force and Flunk, Tougher Kindergarten Lead to Parental Dissatisfaction with Public Schools

NANCY BAILEY'S EDUCATION WEBSITE

When children aren’t reading according to the corporate time frame set by Jeb Bush and his ilk (non-educators who want to privatize public education), parents become dissatisfied, even angry with public school officials and teachers when their children fail.

The goal of many corporations is to end public education. They want privatization. To do this, they must make parents dislike public schools so they will not only leave them, but will buy into unproven vouchers, charters, and online programs.

But most of today’s accountability measures are enforced by corporate reformers outside of the public school. Teaching children to read is no exception.

Here’s an example.

Due to former Governor Jeb Bush’s push for flunking, 19 states now make children repeat 3rd grade if they don’t pass a test.

Strong research indicates flunking is harmful, and that there are other viable solutions to help children learn to read. Most parents and teachers recognize this. Here’s another list of better solutions.

It’s difficult to believe Jeb Bush and his corporate friends have not heard about this CONTINUE READING: Force and Flunk, Tougher Kindergarten Lead to Parental Dissatisfaction with Public Schools

Peter Greene: What Does 'Personalized Learning' Even Mean?

What Does 'Personalized Learning' Even Mean?

What Does 'Personalized Learning' Even Mean?

Personalized learning is all over the educational landscape these days, even though nobody can offer a clear and consistent explanation for what it might be. The field encompasses everyone from teachers designing more effective methods to businesses with a new edu-product to sell. Assuming for the moment that there is no solid, universal definition, let's consider the different aspects of instruction that could be involved when someone is pitching personalized learning.

Pace

Personalized learning can refer simply to pace. All students cover the same materials in the same order, moving at whatever speed seems to best suit them. If you're old enough to remember doing SRA reading exercises out of the box in your elementary classroom, you have experienced this type of personalization.

Timeline

A more extreme version of pace. Some versions of personalization involve flexible time, with the student allowed as much (or as little) time as is required for them to show mastery of that particular unit. This often requires changes to the traditional rules in order to CONTINUE READING: What Does 'Personalized Learning' Even Mean?

JEFF BRYANT: Why won’t the charter school industry acknowledge its failures? | Salon.com

Why won’t the charter school industry acknowledge its failures? | Salon.com

Why won’t the charter school industry acknowledge its failures?
Nationwide, the litany of charter school outrages continues to grow. Why won't the industry reform?

News broke recently about what may be the single biggest charter school scam ever in which an online charter school organization is alleged to have bilked the state of California for $80 million by enrolling tens of thousands of students into their programs, often without the students’ knowledge, and charging the state for nonexistent education services and bogus expenses related to operating the schools.

Nationwide, the litany of charter school outrages continues to grow — the Network for Public Education tallied 43 negative reports on charter schools from local and national news outlets in June alone. After a recent report I coauthored with NPE executive director Carol Burris found a federal government grant program had likely wasted as much as $1 billion on charter schools that never opened or were viable for only short periods of time, Burris and her colleagues followed up with yet more research that found $1 billion is likely an underestimate.

Charter advocates continue to dismiss these scandals as products of a few “bad apples,” but negative news about charter schools is landing blows to the industry’s image in California and nationwide.

Charter-friendly candidates in the Golden State have been trounced in recent elections, and in the Democratic Party presidential primary, campaign rhetoric surrounding the schools has been uniformly negative.

The charter industry is feelinga growing anxiety about public opinion turning against their schools. But recent developments both in California and at the national level show that rather than taking up an honest conversation about real reform, the industry is responding to criticism with behind-the-scenes CONTINUE READING: Why won’t the charter school industry acknowledge its failures? | Salon.com

Shawgi Tell: Charter Schools Fetishize Parents and “The Kids” While Ignoring the Role of Education in a Modern Society | Dissident Voice

Charter Schools Fetishize Parents and “The Kids” While Ignoring the Role of Education in a Modern Society | Dissident Voice

Charter Schools Fetishize Parents and “The Kids” While Ignoring the Role of Education in a Modern Society

The role of education in a society is to consciously pass on the accumulated knowledge of humanity to the next generation so that society keeps moving forward.

This is especially true in a modern society based on mass industrial production where all sectors of the economy are interdependent and large-scale in character.

Millions of highly-educated and skilled people are needed today to operate, organize, and develop a modern society and economy. Education is indispensable to the extended reproduction of society and the economic system, and goes beyond parents and “the kids.”

One of the key ideological devices used often by charter school advocates who embrace individualism, consumerism, competition, and Skinnerian ideology is that schools are mainly, if not entirely, about parents and “the kids.” Parents and “the kids” occupy center-stage in charter school discourse. It is as if nothing else exists or matters. There is little or no mention of the necessity for education to serve the economy, the nation, and the broader society. A big-picture view of education is generally missing. Charter school advocates rarely talk about education from the perspective of the general interests of society and a modern large-scale industrial economy. This is why charter school supporters constantly and self-servingly over-use the rhetoric of “empowering parents,” while saying nothing about the broader and deeper reasons for education in a modern society. CONTINUE READING: Charter Schools Fetishize Parents and “The Kids” While Ignoring the Role of Education in a Modern Society | Dissident Voice

A defining moment for democracy - AFT Voices

A defining moment for democracy - AFT Voices

A defining moment for democracy

Teachers have always had a huge responsibility for the next generation: To teach and nurture students so they have the opportunity to live fulfilling lives. To make our classrooms and schools safe and affirming. To help young people develop the skills, confidence and sense of responsibility to be engaged citizens.

Today the role of America’s teachers is even bigger — they are called on to be defenders of decency and guardians of democracy because, while our democracy has never been perfect, today its very existence is threatened.

President Trump has trampled rights enshrined in the Constitution. He has waged a war on truth and scoffed at the rule of law. He has incited people to fear others for absolutely no good reason. He is enamored of despots, and distances our allies. He has put commerce and greed over human rights. He has stoked America’s divisions in order to exploit them.

Our freedoms are under attack by a president who threatens to imprison his political opponents, who openly wishes he could “get rid” of journalists, and who props up white nationalism.

Our elections are undermined by widespread voter suppression, by extreme partisan gerrymandering (which was just upheld by the Supreme Court), and by open invitations to foreign interference — with Trump even joking  CONTINUE READING: A defining moment for democracy - AFT Voices

Laura Chapman on the Center for American Progress Plan to Return to the Bush-Obama Agenda | Diane Ravitch's blog

Laura Chapman on the Center for American Progress Plan to Return to the Bush-Obama Agenda | Diane Ravitch's blog

Laura Chapman on the Center for American Progress Plan to Return to the Bush-Obama Agenda

Laura Chapman has been doing research on the Center for American Progress, which the media views as the voice of the Democratic Party. This may be the most depressing thing you read today. It calls for a return to the principles of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. Both failed. CAP wants to resuscitate the worst features of both. Maybe CAP can persuade Arne Duncan to return as Secretary of Education. Then the disaster would be complete.

And here we go with the new progressive agenda for schools.

Almost every week Neera Tanden, President of the Center for American Progress (CAP) appears on television to opine about the presidential elections. Tanden is a former aide to Hillary Clinton. CAP is supposed to function as a think tank for Progressives, especially Democrats. On July 2, 2019, CAP published: A Quality Education for Every Child: A New Agenda for Education Policy.” The press release asserted: “The Next President’s Education Agenda Must Center Racial Disparities in Educational Opportunity.”

I have been studying this report. It is highly critical of K-12 education. It is also calculated to mislead casual readers. The authors claim the report is “a bold and comprehensive approach to K-12 education.” I think not. Many of CAP’s favored policies endorse two decades of federal demands for accountability. Think Arne Duncan and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (B&MGF).

CAP is on record as favoring teacher unions and higher pay for teachers, especially for those who work in low- CONTINUE READING: Laura Chapman on the Center for American Progress Plan to Return to the Bush-Obama Agenda | Diane Ravitch's blog

Laura Chapman: Who Are the K-12 Education Experts at the Center for American Progress? | Diane Ravitch's blog - https://wp.me/p2odLa-mbZ via @dianeravitch

The making you old face app. – Fred Klonsky

The making you old face app. – Fred Klonsky

THE MAKING YOU OLD FACE APP.

The Face App thing may have run its course.

You know the one. It was supposedly invented by the Russians to divert us from Trump or something. And then Trump, obsessed with attention, diverted us back away from an app that would show us what we looked like when we got old.

Some people were freaking out that this was a Russian plot to get pictures of your face.

I just didn’t get that concern.

I’m already old. Well, 71 is not that old. Except that most forms that ask demographic information stop at “65 and above.” Like being 65 and being 90 is the same thing.

I just finished a book, Elderhood, by Dr. Louise Aronson. She  looks at the issue of medical care and the elderly and at the way the medical establishment addresses the issue of aging.

The medical establishment doesn’t do it well.

I mostly love my life since retiring from regular employment and I am mostly healthy, so that’s good. We’ve planned for this and we are very lucky that our plans have worked CONTINUE READING: The making you old face app. – Fred Klonsky

Oklahoma’s EPIC Virtual Charter School: Too Much Money, Too Fast, and More | deutsch29

Oklahoma’s EPIC Virtual Charter School: Too Much Money, Too Fast, and More | deutsch29

Oklahoma’s EPIC Virtual Charter School: Too Much Money, Too Fast, and More

According to the July 17, 2019, Oklahoman, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI) served Epic Charter Schools, the largest virtual charter school chain in the state, with a search warrant; OSBI alleges that Epic’s co-founders, David Chaney and Ben Harris, have been stealing public money via inflating school enrollments.

From the Oklahoman:

A state investigation alleges Epic Charter Schools, the state’s largest virtual charter school system, embezzled millions in state funds by illegally inflating enrollment counts with “ghost students.”

The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation alleged Epic co-founders David Chaney and Ben Harris “devised a scheme to use their positions as public officers to unlawfully derive profits from state appropriated funds.”

An OSBI agent made the allegations in a search warrant that sought evidence of embezzlement, obtaining money by false pretenses and racketeering.

Investigators reported Chaney and Harris “created a system of financial gain at Epic” when they founded the virtual charter school in 2010. The two co-founders have managed the virtual charter school through a for-profit company, Epic Youth Services, which receives a portion of Epic’s state funds. …

In its search warrant, OSBI alleged between 2013 and 2018, Chaney and Harris unlawfully received $10 million in profits from Epic Youth Services and split the total. …

“Ben Harris and David Chaney enticed ghost students to enroll in Epic by offering each student an annual learning fund ranging from $800 to $1,000,” OSBI reported in the warrant. “… The parents of many of the homeschool students admitted they enrolled their children in Epic to CONTINUE READING: Oklahoma’s EPIC Virtual Charter School: Too Much Money, Too Fast, and More | deutsch29

Rutgers–again–betrays the legacy of Paul Robeson. For $11 million. |

Rutgers–again–betrays the legacy of Paul Robeson. For $11 million. |

Rutgers–again–betrays the legacy of Paul Robeson. For $11 million.

Paul Robeson was nothing less than a “force of nature,” according to the cover article in the most recent Rutgers Magazine, an alumni publication. He lived a “remarkable life” that “stirred the world.” He left behind “an extraordinary legacy in athletics, the arts, and…the fight for human rights.”

But, no matter how powerful a force of nature–no matter how remarkable his life–no matter how he shook the world–no matter how extraordinary his legacy to athletics, arts and activism–

Rutgers simply cannot admit to its role in the destruction of the man’s reputation and his claim to honor in American history. Cannot, even now, admit its efforts to nullify that “extraordinary legacy.”

And cannot, while it continues to sell–or, more accurately, rent–the university’s own legacy to the highest bidders, concede the university’s leadership has never properly honored Paul Robeson.

Just days after Rutgers Magazine published its tribute–entitled “A Pioneer Like No Other”–the university’s leadership decided to rename Rutgers Stadium, not after its most famous football player and an internationally renowned actor and singer, but–almost comically–after an IT firm named SHI International. The rent for use of the Rutgers’ name for business purposes is something less than $11 million over the next seven years.

The adolescent jokes about the name of SHI stadium–where university CONTINUE READING: Rutgers–again–betrays the legacy of Paul Robeson. For $11 million. |

The MetWest High School Story (Part 3) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

The MetWest High School Story (Part 3) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

The MetWest High School Story (Part 3)

Here is a class I observed at the school.

From Design to Classroom:

A 27 year veteran of teaching in OUSD, Shannon Carey greets me at the door when I arrive at 8:30. She is wearing a UC Berkeley shirt (teachers that day wore clothes that advertised where they attended college) over jeans and dark ankle boots. The classroom furniture is arranged in a horseshoe with tables seating two tenth graders each facing one another across the open space in the middle of the horseshoe. There are two large couches in rear of room. The walls of the large classroom hold whiteboards in the front of the room with nearby easels showing assignments and homework.  Posters adorn other walls.

The schedule for this period is listed on the front white board:

Friday, February 1, 2019

I can reflect deeply on my strengths and weaknesses [Shannon mentions later in the lesson that this is the objective of the lesson]

8:30 Independent Reading

8:50-9:40 Non-Cognitive Variables: Self-Assessment and Interviews

Circles Today

HW [homework]

Gateway Project

–self assessment

–interview w/adult

–interview w/peer

Due Friday

As I scan the room at 8:45, everyone is reading a book or article—no devices or online reading that I see. Three students are sitting on the well-cushioned couches in the rear of the room. A sampling of what students are  CONTINUE READING: The MetWest High School Story (Part 3) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice