CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Ignoring St. Patrick's Day Edition

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Ignoring St. Patrick's Day Edition

ICYMI: Ignoring St. Patrick's Day Edition

The Irish contribution to civilization is huge and their history in America is instructive, but don't get me started on the wearing of the green. At any rate, I have your weekly reading list handy. Remember to share!



Southwest Key Schools, Charters and Immigrants

How to make money from the misery of children, and how charters tie to the detention of immigrants. A charter operation makes millions, but students eat in the gym.

Portfolio Model Explainer

Matt Barnum puts together a pretty decent explainer of the whole portfolio system. I'd correct a few points, but if you're trying yo figure out what it's all about, this is a good primer.

Education Reformers Keep Pushing the Same Stuff

Nancy Flanagan pulls apart a Mike Petrilli piece and finds the same old same old hiding inside.

The Chicago Charter CEO Gets A Raise-- But Not A Big One 

One more example of charters operating like a business-- a bad one. This charter is just struggling to meet minimum standards. Must be time to give the CEO a raise.

Remember All Those Anti-Tenure Lawsuits? One Just Died In Minnesota

Sarah Lahm follows another of those Campbell Brown-spawned lawsuits designed to strip teachers of job security. It hasn't gone well for reformsters.

State Leaders Rip Takeover Law 

Ohio legislators are waking up to how big a mess their state takeover law (proposed and passed in just one day) is making, just as it is poised to gut some of the state's major districts.

Who Pays for the Education Writers Association

Laura Chapman takes a look at who exactly foots the bill for the EWA. It's not a list to inspire confidence (and I'm not just bitter because bloggers can't join).

The Cost of Ignoring Developmentally Appropriate Practice    

It can't be said too much-- pushing the littles in the hopes that they can somehow be made smarter faster sooner is not just dumb, but is actually destructive.

And for a non-education policy moment of beauty, check out the=is Van Gogh painting rendered into a 1.2 acre field of plants and landscaping.



CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Ignoring St. Patrick's Day Edition

OK: The Four Day Week

40by Peter Greene / 1d

Oklahoma has been a great demonstration of what happens when state leaders decide that they just don't want to spend money on education. Oklahoma has led the nation in education spending cut s, and schools and teachers have paid the price. But Oklahoma performed an interesting little experiment, one that is apparently about to end. The path was cleared by a rule that measures the school year in ho

MAR 15

Micro-Credentials 101: Do We Need Badges?

by Peter Greene / 2d

Micro-credentials are one of the hot rising ideas in the education space. To understand the basics, go look at your child's Xbox or PlayStation. For most of the major games, there is an accompanying set of achievements, or badges. Every time a player achieves a particular task (kill 50 zombies without reloading, drive over every tree in the enchanted forest, smash every Lego fire hydrant, etc.) t

MAR 14

Maybe We Should Talk About College Readiness Again

200+by Peter Greene / 3d

College and career ready. College and career ready. College and career ready. How long have we been reading and listening to that magical phrase, quietly at first and now omnipresent as the euphemism of choice for people who no longer dare say "Common Core." It is a hollow phrase, completely empty of meaning. It never, ever, comes with a list, description, or quantification of what "college ready"

MAR 13

OH: Beating Back School Takeovers

93by Peter Greene / 3d

If there is any benefit at all to the complete hash of the takeover of Lorain City Schoo ls, it's that it has brought renewed attention to Ohio's terrible takeover law and renewed energy to attempts to bust that law. There are actually two proposals floating around currently, both bipartisan. State Reps. Kent Smith, D-Euclid, and Steve Hambley, R-Brunswick, announced House Bill 127 this week. The

NY: Rochester, Mayoral Control, Vultures, and the Problems of Democracy.

23by Peter Greene / 4d

It has been almost a decade since a mayoral school coup was a hot topic in Rochester . Mayor Robert Duffy wanted to implement NYC style mayoral control. There seemed to be support for the move; the superintendent even had a nifty portfolio plan whipped up and ready to go . But Andrew Cuomo tagged Duffy as his running mate for governor, and Duffy was out of Rochester politics about a year after he'

MAR 11

Gigging, Progress, and the Unmaking of American Work

72by Peter Greene / 6d

This is not really about education, and it is totally about education. Over at The Nation, Malcolm Harris has written a review of Sarah Kessler's Gigged: The End of the Job and the Future of Work. It's a thoughtful and worthwhile read, even if you decide not to tackle the entire book. Harris opens with the cautionary tale of failed start-up Webvan, and notes the lessons that the founder Peter Rela

MAR 10

Bug-In-Ear Coaching: Why Is This Still A Thing?

26by Peter Greene / 6d

You're a young teacher, working hard to get the hang of running a classroom, sequencing instruction, monitoring a roomful of students, tracking the clock, and otherwise managing your role as educational Boss Of The Room. It reminds you of when you first started driving, and it was taxing just to carefully monitor everything that needed to be monitored. Your hands are full and your brain is just th

ICYMI: Actually Nice Out Edition (3/10)

by Peter Greene / 6d

Here's an assortment of goodies to read from last week. I know I say this all the time, but it takes readers to make a piece of writing spread. So always share what you think needs to be shared. Everyone can amplify the important voices, and these days that is super-important. Winning At Any Cost Arkansas gives prize money to its top schools. How far did the charter Haas Hall Academy go to stay on

MAR 08

TX: Charters Don't Want To Serve All Students

100+by Peter Greene / 9d

The charter school pitch often focuses on the idea that all students deserve choices, that families should be able to explore options. Here's the CEO of KIPP Texa s, speaking about the big Texas KIPP merger: We realized our organizations wanted to improve student success across the state and we wanted to create an environment to serve more KIPPsters. And here's Starlee Coleman, CEO of the Texas Ch

MAR 07

Can HAL 3000 Take Your Class Notes For You (And Is EdWeek Starved For Story Ideas?)

by Peter Greene / 9d

Can a piece of computer software take notes for students in a K-12 classroom? No. Okay, we should be done here, but Benjamin Herold, staff writer, has posted a curious article at EdWeek. The headline (Could Artificial Intelligence Automate Student Note-Taking?) might have alarmed you if you saw it, but I'm going to explain why you can relax. Here's how he leads off: "I'm afraid I missed the part a

Why Do Teachers Have Such Lousy Parental Leave?

100+by Peter Greene / 10d

At Working Mother, Amy Sherman asks a really good question-- It's a Mom-Dominated Profession. So Why Are Teachers Getting the Shaft on Maternity Leave? Of course, we're talking about US teachers, because we rank at the very bottom of the barrel for developed (or in some cases, even semi-developed) countries when it comes to maternity leave. For all our noise about babies and motherhood and how par

MAR 06

Teacher Merit Pay Is A Bad Idea

72by Peter Greene / 10d

Florida's governor is planning to boost the state bonus program for teachers , even as Denver teachers walked off the job over their district's version of an incentive program. So it's worth taking a moment to step back and remember why teacher merit pay and bonus systems are just a bad idea. First, they can't work like a private sector bonus system. In the business world, bonuses and incentives

MAR 04

The $5 Billion DeVos Money Laundromat

200+by Peter Greene / 12d

You have read by now that Betsy DeVos is finally going to get one of her favorite policy ideas floated past Congress . But what the heck is it, and why is it a problem? To understand, we have to look first at what's been happening in some states. The financial device we're talking about is a Tax Credit Scholarship, and it's a bit of a clever dodge. Let's say I'm the State of New West Virkota. The

CURMUDGUCATION - http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/

Let Teachers Live! - LA Progressive

Let Teachers Live! - LA Progressive

Let Teachers Live!

hese are a few more thoughts about why we defended teachers in their historic strike. We heard from our union that it was not primarily about them but about the students and the quality of the education teachers are able to deliver. We may have even heard that the amount of the raise they were demanding was less that they needed to keep up with the cost of living, but they were asking for less because some of their other demands, like lower class sizes, would cost more, and that was more important. You might have even heard that early on, the district offered them a good raise, hoping they wouldn’t have to concede on lowering class size, adding nurses and counselors, and the like. But the teachers refused to be bought off, because this was all about the students.

But it was also about the teachers.

I remember decades ago, while visiting a woman friend on my winter vacation, she and her guy were teasing, playing, roughhousing, laughing. I remember my first thoughts were of, “How come they have time to play? They’re not on vacation.”

Then it occurred to me; they’re not teachers. If I had a job in a printshop, worked as a handyman, or did any other “normal” job, I would be putting in a certain number of hours at work, and then – instead of reading and responding to thirty essays, correcting thirty papers, studying the next textbook lessons, and writing lesson plans – I would come home to spend whatever hours I had left playing, talking with friends, writing screenplays, sleeping…Whatever!

So let me talk with you about Peggy. Peggy was my best co-working friend. She was raising two teenage children as a single mother while teaching at the same elementary school in Watts.

A co-worker and I were talking about how heavy was the load that the administrators kept piling new tasks onto. “Well, at least we’re not dying,”

One day after our aerobics class that she had gotten me in to taking with her, she told me she was going to have to take an evening job at the post office she had worked in before teaching. I asked, “Peggy, how can you do that?”

She said, “Carolfrances, I have no choice.”

Later, after she had mostly dropped out of the aerobics class, she told me that she was having to quit her night job. I asked, “How can you do that?”

I’ll never forget her exact words in response, “Carolfrances, I have no choice.”

A few years later, after we both split up to go to other schools in CONTINUE READING: Let Teachers Live! - LA Progressive

Laura Chapman: Who Sponsors the Education Writers Association? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Laura Chapman: Who Sponsors the Education Writers Association? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Laura Chapman: Who Sponsors the Education Writers Association?

Our reader, Laura Chapman, was interested in the sponsorship of the Education Writers Association, whose annual meeting will feature Betsy DeVos. No matter how odious her views, journalists should hear her and question her.

She wrote:

You have to pay $125 to attend this Education Writers Association event and do some writing on education.

It is not surprising that the Education Writers Association has selected DeVos as a major speaker. I conclude that by looking at the list of “Current Sustaining Funders”—all known for undermining public education while posturing about saving children from “underperforming schools.”

Here are the current “Sustaining Funders:”

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, The Joyce Foundation, The Kern Family Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, Lumina Foundation, Nellie Mae Education Foundation, Pritzker Children’s Initiative, The Wallace Foundation, The Walton Family Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, William T. Grant Foundation.

The Education Writers Association also invites groups to pay for programs like this one as well as its website, newsletters, blogs, and printed programs for regional meetings. Those who foot the bill are called “Sponsors.” The list of past Sponsors is a curious mix of non-profits, for-profits, and national organizations of educators. Following is my grouping and parenthetical comments on past Sponsors of the Education Writers Association.

Membership Organizations:

American Council on Education (leaders of about 1,700 accredited, degree-granting institutions); American Federation of Teachers (about 1.7 million members, all levels of education); National Education Association CONTINUE READING: Laura Chapman: Who Sponsors the Education Writers Association? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Sham Admissions and the Sham Meritocracy | One Flew East

Sham Admissions and the Sham Meritocracy | One Flew East

SHAM ADMISSIONS AND THE SHAM MERITOCRACY

In all of the hoopla about a fake meritocracy, illegal shenanigans for college admissions, legacy and other legal but questionable methods of getting in, and all the other things swirling around the internet this past week since a bunch of rich folk were busted for buying college entrance for their kids, one thing has been forgotten: The whole process of college admissions is a sham that has very little to do with the education the students might earn.

Almost any of the students involved in the scams that came to light last week can succeed at almost any American college. Admission criteria don’t keep out students who can’t make it in college, whatever college. Instead, they weed out those the college doesn’t think will reflect well on them after graduation. That’s why the children of the wealthy and of alumni are given special treatment: They are more likely to stay rich or match their parents’ accomplishments than students from more mundane backgrounds. Critically, they are more likely to give money later than will students from hoi polloi backgrounds.

There are, of course, many college students needing special support to succeed. The reasons are various: Poor high schools and trauma may be the two most common but other factors, such as learning disabilities and physical disabilities, also place students in awkward positions when they try to compete with their peers. But even these students can succeed in earning legitimate college degrees, emerging with just as much knowledge as their peers at Stanford and Yale.

I teach at an urban public university where the challenges faced by my students are quite different from those facing kids destined for selective colleges. Not only are the high schools they come out of mostly substandard “factories” processing students through to graduation based on very little accomplishment, but my students haven’t had, before college, much in the way of effective outside tutoring or test-prep. Not only that, but their parents, few of whom have graduated from college or even attended, cannot offer the support taken for granted by luckier and wealthier students. Oh yes, I should add that half of my students don’t speak English as their first language–many of their parents hardly speak  it at all.

And then there’s the trauma. I had a student some years ago who walked for five days through floods in Pakistan to reach a place where he could get a bus to Islamabad and then a flight back to New York for school. Many of my male students have been arrested or, at least, stopped and frisked, and some have spent a night or two (sometimes more) in jail. Some of them come from broken homes rife with abuse or CONTINUE READING: Sham Admissions and the Sham Meritocracy | One Flew East

Julian Vasquez Heilig on John C. Scott Show: Christchurch, White nationalism and President Trump | Cloaking Inequity

Julian Vasquez Heilig on John C. Scott Show: Christchurch, White nationalism and President Trump | Cloaking Inequity

Julian Vasquez Heilig on John C. Scott Show: Christchurch, White nationalism and President Trump

Julian Vasquez Heilig joins talk show host John C. Scott on 1030 KVOI. We talk about the Christchurch mosque shootings, White nationalism, White supremacy and the link to President Trump’s rhetoric and much more…

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Julian Vasquez Heilig on John C. Scott Show: Christchurch, White nationalism and President Trump | Cloaking Inequity