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Sunday, November 1, 2020

CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION + ICYMI: Dear God Let It Please Be Over Soon Edition (11/1)

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Dear God Let It Please Be Over Soon Edition (11/1)




Dear God Let It Please Be Over Soon Edition

 Of course, it probably won't be. This is probably going to drag out for weeks. But we can hope that we're, as they say, turning a corner this week. Hope you en joyed that extra hour. Happy All Saints Day. In the meantime, here's some stuff to read. 

A Voting Rights Battle In A School Board Coup    

In Georgia, the battle over voting, schools, and race, surfaces in yet another battle. New York Times reporting.

The fight for the suburbs started in schools   

EdWeek also travels to a part of Georgia where te white folks just don't want uppity Black voices on their school board.

One Teacher's Black Lives Matter Lesson Divided a Town  

Or at least revealed divisions that were there. Newsweek has this not feel good story.

Charter Double Dipping

Carol Burris and Greg Leroy in the Daily News explaining how charters engineered a relief fund windfall.

NC Candidate Backed by anti-teacher millionaire  

If you're in North Carolina, you want to pay attention to this race for state superintendent.

We Couldn't Find It  

How bad can the for-profit college sector be? How about a school with no students or faculty. USA Today has the story.

Death by a Thousand Cuts    

Teacher education programs are taking continued hits, and the teacher pipeline is getting narrower and narrower. From Inside Higher Education.

How an education crisis is spurring a tectonic shift in Arizona politics

What has to happen for voters to support both Trump and increased taxes for public ed? Arizona is forging a whole new path. Jennifer Berkshire reports on this odd political shift.

DeVos will let religious groups apply for charter grants  

Surprising absolutely nobody except some pro-charter Democrats who were sure that the charter movement was all about social justice, Betsy DeVos took the next step in shifting taxpaer dollars from public to private religious schools. Here's Matt Barnum with his take at Chalkbeat.

DeVos on the Docket  

Here at the Institute we've taken many shots at the74, which started out aspiring to be an anti-union player for ed in 2016. But nowadays they do some actual legit journalism, like this pioece breaking down the record-setting lawsuit total racked up by Betsy DeVos.

Bad Leadership Creating School Crisis  

Jeff Bryant is at the Progressive laying out te details of a national shortage of capable school district leaders.

Teachers Struggling To Pull Students Out Of QAnon Rabbit Hole  

Buzzfeed with an interesting look at the challenge of having students in your classroom who have adopted bananas beliefs.

Betsy DeVos's Scary Story   

If parents know best, what's wrong with this guy in a DeVosian scare story. The indispensable Mercedes Schneider breaks down this Halloween 




The National Review Vs. Evil Teachers Unions
39by Peter Greene / 21h
Upon first reading " Teachers Unions and the Myth of 'Public' Schools " at National Review, my immediate impulse was to just mutter "fatuous bullshit" and move on. But this piece is a fine distillation of a current genre of writing--the piece that blames current school closures on the self-serving teachers' unions, who see distance learning as a great way to pursue their dream of being paid for d
Psychic AI and Plagiarism Detection
by Peter Greene / 2d
Artificial Intelligence is used to sell a lot of baloney. It would be bad enough it were used only to teach badly and provide poor assessments of student work, but AI is also being hawked as a means of rooting out plagiarism. For an example of this phenomenon at its worst, let's check in on a little webcast from Mark Boothe at Canvas Learning Management System . He's talking to Shouvik Paul at Co
DeVos New NAEP Baloney Sandwich
91by Peter Greene / 3d
Betsy DeVos would like you to know--again, some more--that public schools are failing. Her exhibit this time is the newly-released NAEP results for 12th graders in 2019. And as usual at NAEP time, her brief exhortation is riddled with baloney. America is the greatest country on the face of the earth, and we should deliver our rising generation the greatest educational opportunities possible. Sadl
Another Skills of Tomorrow Pitch
by Peter Greene / 3d
Matt Barnum of Chalkbeat has made a small hobby out of tracking one of the pervasive made-up statistics of education-- "65% (or 80% or what-have-you) of the jobs that this years kindergartners will fill don't exist yet." Well, the folks at the World Economic Forum have another variation on this kind of crystal ball data theme-- "50% of all employees will need reskilling by 2025." Fortunately, I g
Is It Time For The Internet To Be A School-Managed Public Utility?
by Peter Greene / 5d
School has opened across the country, but in many districts that means class via internet—if those students are among those fortunate enough to have access to fast, large-capacity internet connections. How many aren’t connected? The answer is that nobody’s exactly sure. One study say s that 33 million citizens live without the net. The FCC says that 19 million Americans lack access to broadband a
Segregation, Privatization, and Taxation
29by Peter Greene / 5d
The New York Times ran a piece yesterday about a school board voting mess in Sumter County, Georgia (that's the county of Plains, home of Jimmy Carter's peanut farm). The story itself is an instructional look at how yet another white minority is trying to keep their hands on the levers of power, resulting in a district that is 70% Black run by a board that is 70% white. But Nicholas Casey has dow
Ed Department Produces Advertisement For Computer-Based Education
25by Peter Greene / 6d
Even as Betsy DeVos has been demanding that public schools get their doors opened and their teachers back in the bricks and mortar classrooms, the department has announced its release of a slick "guide" to computer-based edu-flavored products. It's a nice package of marketing materials for the folks working the digitized street corner of the education privatization neighborhood. From the Office o
ICYMI: Fake Spring Edition (10/25)
by Peter Greene / 6d
It was beautiful here most of the week, which served in part as a reminder that pandemic winter is going to suck so very much. Here are a few pieces to check out from the week. The Perfect Trap Paul Thomas with some good insights about teaching writing and the power of redrafting. Neoliberal Education Reformers Have Found A New Way To Scapegoat Teachers At Jacobin, Josh Mound talks about that awf
Did Covid-19 Destroy The Case Against School Choice?
35by Peter Greene / 8d
Betsy DeVos repeatedly insists that the current pandemic A) shouldn't in any way interfere with the normal operation of public schools and B) makes it "more clear than ever" that school choice must be a thing, toot de suite. The two prongs of her argument belong to two entirely different pitchforks, but many folks with more coherent debate tools have picked up that second point. One of those is R
VA: Teacher Ejected From Board Meeting For Live Covid Demo
56by Peter Greene / 9d
Henrico County Public School District is a Virginia school district that sits right beside Richmond. For the first part of the school year, they have been using distance learning, and finding it just as unsatisfactory as pretty much

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