CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: BBQ And Blues Edition (6/15)

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: BBQ And Blues Edition (6/15)

ICYMI: BBQ And Blues Edition (6/15)

Today in our city park you can listen to jazz and blues all day while sampling a variety of barbecue offerings. Now don't you wish you lived near me?

In the meantime, here is some reading for you. Remember to share.

Better Schools Won't Fix America

Another wealthy reformster figures out that ed reform is on the wrong path.

She Left The Education Department For Groups It Curbed; Now She's Back 

Yet another fox lands a sweet henhouse gig. Hoping Americans we'll be defended from predatory for-profit scam colleges? This lady is not going to help.

Churn and Burn 

Turns out that charters run through staff far more than public schools do.

Are Charters Hurting School Distracts 

Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat runs some numbers and finds that (suroprise) charters do damage the districts they come from.

Cyber Accountability

Testimony day in Harrisburg, PA, becomes a little heated when cyber charter boosters come out to defend their businesses from ac tual educators.

Betsy DeVos, meet Ralph from Comcast.

Betsy DeVos, meet Ralph and find out what fuss about predatory privatized college looks like on the ground.

Charter Schools and Buying Double 

Steven Singer looks at duplication of services and the extra costs of charter schools.

White Home Buyers, Black Neighborhoods, and the Future of Urban Schools  

Another invaluable episode of Have You Heard, looking at gentrification in an interview with Yawu Miller.

One State Sets Out To Rethink Charter Oversight 

Jan Resseger takes a look at some important results from California's charter study.

What About ALICE?

One more creepy technocratic program for managing and profiting from the Lessers. Wrench in the Gears has dug up details.

Comics Resources   

Like to use graphic novels, comics, etc in your classroom and you need some backup for the practice? Here's a list of some resources you can use.


CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: BBQ And Blues Edition (6/15)

Winners Take All, Education Edition

77by Peter Greene / 1d

Every so often you come across a book that unpacks and reframes a part of the universe in a way that you can never unsee. Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas has been a book like that for me. Giridharadas is writing about "the elite charade of changing the world," and while he is taking a broad look at the way the Betters are trying to influence our country and our world, the connections to edu

Winners Take All-- Read This Book (Excerpts)

80by Peter Greene / 1d

Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas might be the most important book you read this year. It is not directly aimed at education or education reform, and yet it has everything to do with education form. I 'll address that in a separate post going up the same time as this one . But here I just want to share some important quotes from the book as a means of encouraging you to buy it and read it, b

Eight Weeks of Summer: Professional Growth Plans

by Peter Greene / 1d

This post is week 1 of 8 in the 8 Weeks of Summer Blog Challenge for educators . This is a little blogventure put on by hotlunchtray.com; for eight weeks they invite teachers to respond to a prompt about how they actually spend summer. I am a sucker for A) busting the myth that teacher summers are all unicorns and pina coladas and B) a prompt. I am, of course, a retired teacher, but I'm just going

JUN 14

Magical Money And School Choice

77by Peter Greene / 2d

Pennsylvania's legislature is currently having Version 2,433,672,127 of the same argument that emerges every five minutes in the places where charter schools and public schools bump up against each other. The PA legislature just passed a suite of charter school bills addressing a variety of issues, but not the single issue that folks on all sides want to have addressed: Absent from all four bills

JUN 13

The Trouble With The College Board's New Adversity Score

86by Peter Greene / 2d

The College Board has for years been trying to rescue its floundering flagship, the SAT. The newly announced adversity score is just the latest unforced error from the testing giant. Just keep telling yourself that For almost a decade, the company has been fighting for market share. In 2012 , it hired David Coleman, fresh from his work as architect of the language portion of the Common Core Stand

JUN 12

PA: Voucher Expansion Goes To Governor

100+by Peter Greene / 3d

The Pennsylvania GOP-controlled legislature is continuing its assault on public education, this time taking a page from the Betsy DeVos Big Book of Voucher Love. HB 800 worked its way through the House a while back, and it has just cleared the Senate . The bill is a big wet kiss to the business community and to private schools, particularly religious ones. The Catholic Church loves this bill, as d

JUN 11

FCC To Throttle School Internet

98by Peter Greene / 4d

It looks like a bunch of kerfluffling about more of those oddly-named, obscure gummint programs, but the news from the FCC is ominous for schools. According to edscoop , the FCC has filed a notice of proposed rulemaking intending to cap the FCC's Universal Service Fund. That fund subsidizes broadband infrastructure and access for schools, libraries, and rural communities. It includes the E-Rate pr

JUN 10

Can SEL Learn From Common Core

100+by Peter Greene / 5d

At the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Michael McShane (EdChoice) recently took a look at what the nascent social-emotional learning movement for education could learn from studying the checkered history of the Common Core . It's an interesting paper both for what it says about SEL and for what it gleans from the story of the Common Core, operating as it does from the reliably free-market lov

JUN 09

ICYMI: Time For Summer Edition (6/9)

100+by Peter Greene / 7d

Summer break has arrived in my neck of the woods, which means the Board of Directors will no longer have me outnumbered!. In the meantime, here's some reading from the week. Remember-- sharing is how you amplify the voices that you think need to be heard. Bloggers and journalists can write all day, but we all depend on readers to help put us in front of our audience. Robots Are Not Coming For Your

JUN 08

The Twins Are Two

500+by Peter Greene / 8d

The Board of Directors celebrated its birthday this week. Okay, they're two, so "celebrate" might be a bit of a stretch, because they didn't really know what exactly was happening other than it involved cake and ice cream and some new toys. This is not my first parenting rodeo; I have two older children and a trio of grandchildren who are, in my completely unbiased opinion, geniuses. You know the

JUN 07

Talking Point Update: Focus on Fit

58by Peter Greene / 9d

This has been going on for a while, but just in case you've missed this rhetorical shift, I want to highlight the tweaking of a reformy talking point. Complete this sentence: "We need school choice because____________________" The classic answer has been "because students need to escape failing public schools." Or "because the quality of your education shouldn't be determined by your zip code." Be

JUN 06

WV Senate Can't Seem To Hear Teachers

100+by Peter Greene / 9d

It would be funny if it weren't so angrifying. But West Virginia's legislature is at it again. Back in February of 2018, the teachers of West Virginia were fed up. Low pay. Lack of support. Lack of respect. They were fed up enough that they staged an illegal wildcat strike that shut down every school district in the state . The governor and legislature backed down, and in short order, the teachers

JUN 05

A Spectacular Charter Scam

100+by Peter Greene / 10d

You may skimmed past reports of the San Diego indictment of charter scam artists thinking, "Ah, just another charter fraud story." But this $50 million scam is worth a closer look because it highlights several of the problems with modern 

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