No, not ed tech. It's tech Sunday, the kickoff of show week for the local theater production of The Producers that I'm directing. So I may be a little more scarce this week, but I've still collected a few things for you to read.
The Case Against High School Sports
Need to start a big argument? This article should do the trick-- but it's also some things to think about.
Learning from What Doesn't Work in Teacher Evaluation
Audrey Amrein-Beardsley shares some of the lessons of bad teacher evaluation (cough cough VAM).
Finding the Holy Grail in Poverty Mining
More scary news from the world of digital balls and chains. How exactly can the rich profit from poverty and data?
Bring Me a Higher Love
Jose Luis Vilson reminds us again of the place of the L word in teaching.
13 Things I learned While Blogging
Nancy Flanagan remains one of my blogging heroes-- and she's pulling up stakes at Ed Week and moving out on her own. Her tenure remains one of the great runs in edublogging; I look forward to reading her without a paywall.
Rep Eddie Farnsworth makes a killing in AZ charters
Arizona remains one of the great places to run a charter school scam, particularly if you're a legislator there. Here's how one guy has played the game and made himself rich while pretending to be interested in education.
Behind Closed Doors
Sarah Blaine has been quiet on the blogging front for a while, but she returns with a vengeance, looking at a New Jersey legislator's insistence that the decisions about the future of PARCC should be made far away from the prying eyes of parents, educators, and taxpayers.
Who Is Behind Leaders in Education PAC
The indispensable Mercedes Schneider once again does the research to peel back the layers of a reformster group and discovers the same old rich folks.
The Educational Outcomes Fund
A plan for using education to strip more money from Africa and the Middle East.
A Teacher's Thoughts at 2 AM
An honest and open reporting by Cori Anderson-Lais of her inner dialogue struggling with several school issues.
The Atlantic article about sports makes a lot of good points, but ends up ruining itself with typical rephormy framing. If we didn't have sports, think how much better America would do on PISA and how many more AP classes kids would be taking. Sigh. Both of those are actually arguments *for* sports, if those are my only choices. Typical definition of academic "performance" equating to high test scores (one test was referred to as a "test of critical thinking", which isn't even possible). And then there was the shout out to BASIS "public charter" schools [sic].
ReplyDeleteIn any case (as the article does basically agree, in fairness), it's not sports per se that are the problem. It's the obsessive focus on winning and basing a school's reputation (and the jobs of the coaches) on winning. It would be a shame if schools gave up sports entirely so kids will spend more time in a seat prepping for tests. It's just that sports should be part of the many offerings of a school, not the main focus.
I loved the post by Cori. It brought tears to my eyes.
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