CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: What? May Already? Edition (5/2)
What? May Already? Edition
That whole April thing seemed to slide by quickly. What could come next?
I'll remind you (as I haven't in a while) that sharing is your power as a reader, and that if any of these really speak to you, the best gift you can give the writer of your favorite piece is more readers. Share.
I'm a Chicago principal. This round of testing won't tell me anything that matters.
Chalkbeat lets Seth Lavin explain why there's more to being a god student than getting a test score up to desired levels. How many of these sorts of articles do you think actual educators would have to write to be heard?
Bill allowing charter schools to circumvent districts becomes law without Gordon's signature
In the More Bad News department, Wyoming's legislators just rammed through a bill that lets charters become authorized without the approval of the school boards elected by the taxpayers who will have to foot the bill.
TC Weber at Dad Gone Wild joins the ranks of people making a powerful and personal case for not freaking out over Learning Loss.
David Epstein was at Slate to share a piece from his book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, a copy of which I now need to buy. There are many good thoughts here, leading up to this final sentence: "Development is not linear, and diversions that set you back in the short term frequently become powerful tools in the long term."
AI Is Neither Artificial nor Intelligent
At Wired, an interview with Kate Crawford who says, among other things, that we have a regulation emergency, and that we need less research focus on ethics, and more on power.
One of the more challenging pieces that Nancy Flanagan has ever posted. Plenty to think about in terms of what values are actually associated with race.
At EdSurge, of all places, Torrey Trust and Robert Maloy argue that teacher loss and burnout is a bigger problem than "learning loss" (a phrase they say has become as widespread as "you're on mute").
If you haven't seen this clip yet, here's the teacher roasting his board on his way out the door. "If you respected us, you'd listen to us."
McSweeney's comes through again, but you have to be old enough to remember the music that goes with these lyrics.
CATCH UP WITH CURMUDGUCATION
Dammit, JoeSo up on my screen pops the headline "Biden says K-12 education isn't working--calls for fgre pre-K to 'grade 14' " The good news is that the headlines is, as headlines will be, a bit inaccurate. The bad news is everything else. Starting with this lede: President Joe Biden on Wednesday praised the nation's K-12 education system for fueling America's economic growth for almost a century. But, he s
Guest Post: Dispatch from Beleaguered PA DistrictI've been following the story of Chester Upland School District in Pennsylvania. It's a long history featuring every imaginable problem that could afflict a school district. Currently the district is facing a charter takeover and a mysterious stack of vanished money . The following post was sent to me from inside the district and written by a teacher who prefers to remain anonymous. It provides a
Falling Behind In An Actual ClassroomThe chicken littling about Learning Loss is just never going to stop. Today I came across yet another article (that I won't link to) warning that the Learning Losses from the pandemic pause will haunt students for the rest of their lives. The worst of the Learning Loss panickers are revealing too much about what they don't understand, but what they especially don't understand is what goes on in an
Heutagogy (Because We Need New Education Jargon)There are, apparently, three siblings in the Gogy family-- pedagogy, andragogy, and heutagogy. Pedagogy you already know, at least in some vague way. Andragogy is the method and practice of teaching adults. Heutagogy--well, heutagogy is a made-up word. Miriam-Webster hasn't heard of it . The word was coined in 2000 by Stewart Hase and Chris Kenyon "to describe self-learning independent of formal
FL: Private School Says No Vaccine For StaffCentner Academy (Miami's premiere private school for the leaders of tomorrow) has informed parents by letter that the staff and teachers are not to get vaccinated for Covid-19. The letter indicates that "we ask any employee who has not yet taken the experimental COVID-19 injection, to wait until the end of the school year." That sounds almost mild, until a few sentences later we arrive at "It is
ID: Lt. Governor Forms Indoctrination Task ForceI am not making this up. Idaho Lt. Governor Janice McGeachin has announced the formation of a Task Force to Examine Indoctrination in Idaho Education. You can go to an honest to God state website page where you can turn in an educator who is doing Naughty Indoctrination Things. “One of our primary goals with this task force is to give concerned citizens a voice regarding education in Idaho,” said
ICYMI: Car Shopping Edition (4/25)Only slightly more fun than a root canal. But I needed a new project. In the meantime, here are some good reads from the week. State of Siege: What the Free State Project Means for New Hampshire’s Public Schools Have You Heard welcomes Matthew Honglitz-Hetling, author of A Libertarian Walks Into A Bear, a book I just finished, so I was pretty pumped to have the HYH crew interview him. Oh, New Ham
VA: Is This The Path To Math EquityVirginia is working on a new "math path," and conservative news outlets have gone off. The initiative itself is loaded with the usual bureaucratic argle bargle, like Through collaboration with other stakeholders across the Commonwealth,
