CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION + ICYMI: Soup Party Day Edition (11/17)

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Soup Party Day Edition (11/17)

Soup Party Day Edition 

My nephew and his wife are hosting a big soup party today, which I'm pretty sure is a first for me. Kids these days. In the meantime, here an assortment of reading material from the week. Remember-- share the stuff that really speaks to you. That's how bloggers become rich and famous- okay, well, not actually. But it is how media outlets find out they should do education coverage, and it's how people hear about the things that you hear about.

LA Schools Graded F for 4+ Years Mostly Serve Low-Income Students

The indispensable Mercedes Schneider unravels how the Louisiana school grading system tells us what we already knew-- the measuring system favors schools with white, well-off students.

Betsy DeVos Might Outlast Them All

She's not beloved, but she's probably not going anywhere, either. Rebecca Klein at HuffPost explains why.

Khan Academy: A World Class Education For No One 

Alex Lochoff bends over backwards to start by saying that he's not saying that Khan Academy is terrible. Then he does a pretty good job of explaining why Khan Academy is terrible.

What's Wrong With Teacher Raises  

Adam Laats takes a look at what's wrong with taking Hanushek's Grand Bargain of greater pay for tighter accountability.

Why I Won't Be Voting For Bloomberg 

Jan Resseger has a great rundown of Bloomberg's NYC education history, and why it disqualifies him.

Ohio Catholic School Announces Mandatory Random Drug Testing For All Students

Attendance at the school, says the letter sent to parents, is a privilege, not a right.

The Wrong "Scientific" For Education

Paul Thomas looks at some of the recent uses of the S word and explains why they fail to impress.

Should A Cooperating Teacher Be A Big Fat Jerk?

Okay, I rewrote Nancy Flanagan's headline, but the idea is the same. On the topic of making life harder for student teachers.



CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Soup Party Day Edition (11/17)

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FL: Yet Another Bad Plan To Not Increase Teacher Pay

28by Peter Greene / 20h

So previously there was the Best and the Brightest program, which awarded teacher bonuses based on student test scores and the teacher's own SAT scores. From high school. It had a variety of problems (above and beyond the basic boneheadedness of the idea) and the new governor, Ron DeSantis found it "confusing." Yes, you can still buy swampland in Florida This newer, betterer plan comes along with

Betsy DeVos Accuses FBI Of Ignorance, Blames Public Education (And More)

500+by Peter Greene / 1d

Never let it be said that Betsy DeVos won't go out of her way to blame US public education for all the ills of the country, real or imagined. In retrospect, it seems like an oversight that she hadn't had a "Kids These Days" moment, but now that omission has been corrected. The young FBI agents are ignorant, and public education is to blame. That's been the headline from this speech , but there's s

NOV 15

OH: Outlawing Facts

100+by Peter Greene / 1d

The Ohio House of Representatives is ready to help students take a bold step forward into the post-fact world. Wednesday they passed (and when I say "they," I mean the s olid vote-as-a-bloc GOP ) HB 164 . It's called the "Ohio Student Religious Liberties Act of 2019" and it sets out to accomplish a few things: It removes the limits on exercising expression of student religious beliefs. The old, st

NOV 13

NAEP Board Gets DeVosian Additions

21by Peter Greene / 3d

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos just announced six new appointees (and one returnee) to the National Assessment Governing Board. These are the folks that oversee the National Assessment of Educational Progress aka NAEP aka the nation's report card aka that big standardized test that everyone tries to use to prove a point every year . So who did we get? Returnee Alberto Carvalho, plus Frank Edelblu

Pearson In Your Pants

by Peter Greene / 3d

Pearson, the edu-product giant that hopes to eat the world, just announced a new product. It's part of the overall Pearson vision-- and nobody does large-scale vision like Pearson. They see everything happening in a "digital ocean. " They have ideas about an "assessment renaissance" so huge that it took me five posts to write about it ( here's the shorter version ). And just this summer, they ann

FTC Cracks Down On Edu-Influencers

by Peter Greene / 4d

One of the small tricks that education marketers have developed is to enlist teachers as brand ambassadors. Teachers are, after all, the voices most often trusted by other teachers, so it's got to be a real boost if you can get Mrs. Teachwell to tout your product on Twitter or Instagram or Pinterest. And the beauty of it is that Mrs. Teachwell may come cheap-- some free product, box of pens, maybe

NOV 10

ICYMI: Happy Birthday, Mom Edition (11/10)

by Peter Greene / 6d

Today is my mother's birthday, so there will be cake involved later. She's a pretty swell lady, so it's a day worthy of cake. Also, if you look to the right, you'll see that I've revamped the blog list and added a section of websites of interest that aren't necessarily blogs. So you can poke through that if you like. In the meantime, here's some reading from last week. What Betsy DeVos Got Wrong A

NOV 09

Digital Curriculum And Lesson Management Is A Crock

100+by Peter Greene / 7d

Ed Tech overpromises in so many areas, but one the great lies is that implementing This Year's Great New Program is going to save teachers just oodles of time. It never does. It particularly never does when it comes to the kind of software leviathan's used to manage curriculum and lesson plans. The sheer volume of data entry for these programs (enter the curriculum, unit plans, lesson plans, all c

NOV 08

FL: Even The State Thinks Florida Virtual School Needs To Shape Up

by Peter Greene / 9d

Virtual charter schools have a lousy track record, so bad that even bricks-and-mortar charter advocates have called for them to shape the hell up. Meanwhile, Florida has implemented every reformy method of undercutting public schools that could be imagined. So it's entirely predictable that Florida would have its own cyberschool, and that it would be a mess. But a lucrative one, as under previous

NOV 07

Hanushek Offers Teachers A Grand Bargain

44by Peter Greene / 10d

If there is anything we don't lack in the education sphere, it's economists who know all about how to make education work real betterer. Two faves are Raj Chetty and Eric Hanushek, who have both pushed some super-great ideas. You probably remember the one about how the right first grade teacher can mean you'll make umpty-zillion more dollars in your lifetime , a piece of foolery that might be call

NOV 06

FL: How The State Supports Discrimination By Charters

47by Peter Greene / 11d

A Florida news station has heard from the state's department of education exactly how charter schools can discriminate against students with special needs. Part of the charter sales pitch has always been a claim that charters 

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