CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION

CURMUDGUCATION

CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION

Charter Lessons From Democracy Prep

63by Peter Greene / 1d

I was as unimpressed as anyone when education privatization fan Campbell Brown launched the 74 site as a platform for the same old "Charters schools rule, public schools drool" song and dance. But since that launch, and particularly since Brown stepped away from the site, the straight journalism side of the operation has done some commendable work (though the propaganda side is still frying up its

APR 26

Another Free Market Lesson

100+by Peter Greene / 2d

Even as Florida continues its race to become the first state to completely do away with public education and replace it with a free market free for all, lessons abound in why that's a lousy idea. This frickin ' guy. At Tarbell, Simon Davis-Cohen takes us on a trip to I owa where an ALEC governor privatized Medicaid. Former governor Terry Branstad was a founding member of the American Legislative E

APR 25

Is AI A Game-Changer For Education (International Edition)?

60by Peter Greene / 3d

Sometimes it's informative to see how some of this stuff is playing out in other settings. A post on Entrepreneur India makes the claim that " Artificial Intelligence Can be a Game-Changer for Education, Here are 5 Reasons Why " and its five arguments are, well, intriguing. The post is from Vishal Meena from the start-up MadGuy Labs , an Indian on-line test prep company that promises to prep you f

APR 24

Using Cultural Competency To Sell Personalized [sic] Learning

60by Peter Greene / 3d

Over at EdTechTimes, a site that for a consulting group that clearly is interested in pushing personalized [sic] learning, I found a podcast by Mariel Cariker entitled " Cultural Competency: Finding Ways To Bring Equity Through Personalized Learning. " (It is accompanied by a transcript.) The podcast is sponsored by TeachPlus. Like many of the arguments being used to push PL, it's an odd little mi

APR 22

Guest Post: The True Cost of College

200+by Peter Greene / 6d

I've known Beth Pfohl for years. She was a top student in my Honors English class, and years before that I cast her as Annie in our community theater production. When she was a senior, I installed her as editor of the yearbook. She's an exceptional human being. Beth is currently finishing up her college education at Miami of Ohio, and it is from that vantage point that she wrote the following pos

APR 21

ICYMI: Easter Edition (4/21)

73by Peter Greene / 7d

One of my favorite holidays is today, but whether you celebrate or not, here's some reading from the past week to feed your brain. Against Metrics: How measuring performance by numbers backfires . Not directly tied to education (though the subject comes up), this piece takes a look at the problems of people who think numbers are magical. If we don't work on pedagogy, nothing else matters . One of

APR 20

When Local Control Turns Toxic

100+by Peter Greene / 8d

I am a fan of local control for school districts, but I'm not going to pretend that under the wrong circumstances it won't produce some terrible results. EdBuild has just issued a report on a troubling phenomenon-- the secession of wealthy communities from larger school districts . This issue has been reported on before , but this is a report that collects instances of attempts across the nation.

APR 19

KY: DeVos, Bevin, Loving Vouchers, Hating Teachers

79by Peter Greene / 8d

Betsy DeVos took her Education Freedom Voucher Tour to Kentucky, and things went just about as well as you could expect. Secretary of Education DeVos has been crisscrossing the country in an attempt to sell her $5 billion voucher plan . Her latest stop was Kentucky, a state that has achieved a sort of choice limbo ; there's a charter law on the books, but the legislature has so far refused to fund

Creating More Defective Children

300+by Peter Greene / 8d

This has always been a dangerous side effect of educational certainty. If I'm absolutely certain that my program is awesome, my pedagogy is flawless, my materials are on point, and classroom is just generally perfect-- and yet some students are not learning-- well, there's only one possible explanation. The student must be defective. The defect effect appears to be cropping up in a new place. As r

APR 18

Why DeVos Doesn't Care About Charter Closings

100+by Peter Greene / 10d

During the recent House hearings, Betsy DeVos was confronted with some of the results of the Network for Public Education study of federal dollars going to charters, a huge number of which have closed or never even opened. She was unmoved : Let me first comment on the study you’re referring to. I’m not sure you can even call it a study. We’re looking more closely at it of course, and anything that

APR 17

The Charter Effect On Teachers

80by Peter Greene / 10d

Unions, we have been told, have a deleterious effect on teachers, forcing them to accept lousier deals than they could get in a free market where they each negotiated their own deals. In such a market, schools would compete for teachers, bidding up the salary offers. Teachers could negotiate from a place of strength. No teacher would ever want a union ever gain. I confess that there was a time whe

APR 16

Guns Headed For The Classroom

500+by Peter Greene / 11d

Of all the bad ideas. I know there are folks who believe in their heart of hearts that arming teachers will make schools safer, or that putting armed police in the building will be helpful. But there are so many bad signs. I want to believe that school resource officers can be helpful. Earlier this month, a school shooting was likely averted just up the road because students at the school felt com

Melinda Gates Achieves Peak Epic Cluelessness

500+by Peter Greene / 12d

Sigh. Melinda Gates seems like a nice lady who means well, but her recent interview at the New York Times Magazine is a master class in how living in a very wealthy bubble can leave you out of touch with the rest of the world and an understanding of your place in it. It starts in the very first paragraph. “There are absolutely different points of view about philanthropy,” says Melinda Gates, who,

CURMUDGUCATION

California’s Public School Chief Says Education No Place for Competition - GV Wire

California’s Public School Chief Says Education No Place for Competition - GV Wire

California’s Public School Chief Says Education No Place for Competition

Tony Thurmond seems to be exactly the man that his most loyal backers hoped (and his opponents feared) he would be.

by Ben Christopher
CALmatters

“If it were not for the education, my cousin who took me in, countless mentors, that I would easily have ended up in California state prison instead of serving as California’s superintendent of public instruction. We owe this to all the students in our state.” — Tony Thurmond

In a discussion with CALmatters’ education reporter Ricardo Cano at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club in March, he talked about how his mother, an immigrant from Panama, died when he was 6, leaving him to be raised by a cousin he never met. He says his family benefited from many government programs to get by, but that “a great public education” was the most vital.

“If it were not for the education, my cousin who took me in, countless mentors, that I would easily have ended up in California state prison instead of serving as California’s superintendent of public instruction,” he said. “We owe this to all the students in our state.”

That philosophy, he said, informs his fairly dim view of charter schools, which he characterized as benefiting certain students as the possible expense of others.

“I think there’s a role for all schools,” Thurmond said, including charters—publicly funded but privately managed schools that supporters say offer valuable educational alternatives to children, but which critics say undermine traditional public schools. “But I do not believe that the state should ever open new schools without providing resources for those schools. I do not believe that education is an environment for competition.

Newsom Asked Thurmond to Put Together a Task Force

“Here’s my concern: you cannot open charter schools and new schools to serve every single student in our state,” he continued. “If you take the competition approach, that means some students, a lot of students, will be left behind. And again, I don’t believe that that’s what our mission is. I believe that the promise that we make to each other in society is to provide opportunity to get an education, to live a better life, to be able to acquire what you want through your hard work for yourself and your family. So for me that means that competition is OK in some environments, but when it comes to education we’ve got a responsibility to make sure that every single student gets an education.”

In the 2018 campaign, Thurmond and challenger Marshall Tuck tried to convince voters that they were not as extreme as their opponents sometimes portrayed them to be.

Tuck, with a background in charter schools and over $30 million of charter-backing dollars behind him, stressed his progressive credentials, while Thurmond, supported by teachers’ unions, insisted that he would not be beholden to organized labor.

Related Story: ‘Common Sense Regulations’ or ‘an Extended Middle Finger’? How Far Will ...

Thurmond won by 2 percentage points.

Following the teachers’ strike in Los Angeles, where charter school growth has exacerbated tensions in the district, new Gov. Gavin Newsom asked Thurmond to put together a task force to study the fiscal impact that charters have on school districts. Because schools receive state funding on a per-pupil basis, charter skeptics argue that when students transfer to a CONTINUE READING: California’s Public School Chief Says Education No Place for Competition - GV Wire

Larry Lee Interviews Film-Maker Mark Hall About His Interest in Gulen Charter Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Larry Lee Interviews Film-Maker Mark Hall About His Interest in Gulen Charter Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Larry Lee Interviews Film-Maker Mark Hall About His Interest in Gulen Charter Schools

This is a fascinating interview in which Larry Lee, an educator in Alabama, asks film-maker Mark Hall about how he became interested in school reform, charter schools, and the Gulen charter schools.

Mark Hall made the documentary “Killing Ed” about the Gulen charter schools, which he has shown in dozens of communities.

Lord knows he didn’t do it for the money.

He become interested and had to track down what happened and why. Why did a Turkish imam, living in seclusion in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, create a large chain of charter schools, staffed mainly by Turkish teachers?

If  you google the film, you can contact Mark Hall and arrange a screening in your community.

Larry Lee Interviews Film-Maker Mark Hall About His Interest in Gulen Charter Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Big Education Ape: KEEP UP/ CATCH UP WITH DIANE RAVITCH'S BLOG | A site to discuss better education for all - https://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2019/04/keep-up-catch-up-with-diane-ravitchs.html

The California Charter Schools Lobby Masks Influence And Effect Through Myriad “Independent Expenditure Committees”, As Difficult To Follow As A Shell Game – redqueeninla

The California Charter Schools Lobby Masks Influence And Effect Through Myriad “Independent Expenditure Committees”, As Difficult To Follow As A Shell Game – redqueeninla

The California Charter Schools Lobby Masks Influence And Effect Through Myriad “Independent Expenditure Committees”, As Difficult To Follow As A Shell Game

The Charter industry lobby has expended a total of $91.4 million dollars in California between 11/18/08 and 12/31/18, according to political financial information stored online by the Secretary of State through “Cal-Access”.

This figure is likely low but its variability is hard to calculate. For example the figure could erroneously include administrative replicates, but it may also include double-billing or distinct filings indistinguishable due to cursory reporting requirements. The figure omits Cal-Access “late filings”, imprecisely integrated into “regular” filings, and thereby potentially significantly under-estimates the true total.

Evolution in name alone

What is so confusing is the multi-stage process by which the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) lobby dispenses its largesse. There is a direct process and a derivative one. Over this time period CCSA has opened 25 distinct “Recipient Committees”, entities raising contributions from others, nine of which have been subsequently terminated. These 25 Committees have operated under 54 different names. Some of this multiplicity is reasonable because the lobbying effort is state-wide and different Committees will make expenditures to different local issues and candidates. But some of it is a succession of evolving names associated with a specific Committee. Sure, it all traces back to the same ideological pot of gold so while the zeitgeist shifts, the named Committee can just get a slight upgrade in verbiage since the spigot is unchanged. But it feels shifty in intention too, as if the Committee-As-Palimpsest were a deliberate effort to overwrite and obscure the group’s underlying, persistent and singular, special interest. (table 1).

Fewer than half of the numbered Committees have any expenditures associated CONTINUE READING: The California Charter Schools Lobby Masks Influence And Effect Through Myriad “Independent Expenditure Committees”, As Difficult To Follow As A Shell Game – redqueeninla