The slightly-cranky voice navigating the world of educational “reform” while trying to still pursue the mission of providing quality education.
Source: CURMUDGUCATION
Sunday, December 20, 2015
ICYMI: December 20
The New Preschool Is Crushing Kids
The genre of “here’s how ugly and awful early childhood ed has become under the test-and-punish era of education” articles is crowded, but everybody needs to be reminded that this is happening and that it sucks. They need to be reminded repeatedly until we put an end to it. Here’s one more stark and painful example.
For Profit Charter Schools Are Fading and Failing
Jessica Huseman misses a few of the finer points (particularly the ways in which non-profits mirror for-profits), but on balance this is a good analysis of why the For Profit charter industry is turning out to be (surprise) a failed experiment.
Florida’s remarkably idiotic plan to give teachers a bonus for their high school SAT scores is back– and this time it wants to be permanent. A good study in how a bill that nobody thinks is smart can still end up becoming a law.
Crazy Crawfish tells us what he really thinks. Because while some reformsters are folks with a different perspective or different understandings of how schools can best serve students, some are just scruples-free rotters trying to get their hands on money and power.
I’m always amazed how, no matter how much I’ve read and explored, there are still chunks of the interwebs that I’ve never stumbled into. This is an entire website dedicated to discussing issues of how to ethically teach all the various aspects of language. Worth a look.
This week the Edublog Awards were unveiled and this post of mine about music won an award for being one of the most influential posts of the year. Like most of these sorts of awardy things, it’s a nice selection of sites and posts with which you may not be familiar. In particular I was struck by this post:
What Being Gay Has Taught Me About White Privilege
You may or may not agree with everything that the blogger at Crawling out of the Classroom has to say, but her level of honesty and openness is impressive.
Creativity Is the Key to Happiness
If you’re not familiar with the concept of “flow,” this is a simple and accessible look at it and the idea that creativity is the key to a happy life.