ICYMI: Book Banning Edition (1/30)

 So that kind of blew up as the issue of the week. What a whacky time to be alive! Here's some stuff to read, because reading is good.

Incidentally, if you are new around here, this is a regular Sunday feature, in which I collect stuff from the previous week that I found worthwhile and interesting. If something here strikes your fancy, I strongly encourage you to amplify it and share it through your usual channels.

What we lose when we mistake the market for the public

Jan Resseger looks at the damage created by treating education as a free market commodity, and how Ohio has demonstrated that very damage.

How picking on teachers became an American tradition

Adam Laats at Slate, providing a useful historical perspective to the new wave of teacher attacks and surveillance. We've been here before.

Idaho's Teacher of the Year calls for changes in standardized testing

And he does it in front of the state house education committee. And he gets it right.

Efforts to ban CRT now restrict teaching for a third of US students

EdWeek takes a look at a new UCLA study that gives some hard data about just how bad the new trend in teacher gag laws has become. Bad.

Gag orders for teachers are becoming our new McCarthyism

Will Bunch in the Philadelphia Inquirer talks to some folks about how bad it is out there. Informative and infuriating.

A Texas GOP candidate's new claim: school cafeteria tables are being lowered for "furries."

Yikes. From Texas Monthly, a look at just how far out these folks have become. Incidentally, the candidate in question alko "works with" the local Moms for Liberty group.

Amazon paid for a high school course. Here's what it teaches.

Vice has this story of big tech co-opting education, and it's just about as bad as you would expect. 

Students slam school board over book review order

Of all the live action responses to banning activity that cropped up this week, this is one of my favorites. This 11th grade honors student has some words.

Massive corporate tax break in PA lacks basic accountability

Like many states, Pennsylvania has a tax credit scholarship program. But there is virtually no oversight. The Philadelphia Inquirer counts the many ways that nobody is paying any attention.

Dark money fuels Michigan school privatization campaign

Maurice Cunningham, the dark money expert from Massachusetts, takes a look at the Michigan version for the Detroit Free Press

New Hampshire teachers push back against lawmakers' efforts to regulate instruction

Seacoast online looks at teacher pushing back against New Hampshire's damn fool loyalty law.

7 ways teachers aren't treated like other professionals

From Stephanie Jankowski at Bored Teachers, a list that will strike teachers as all too familiar.

The shift from CRT panic to demands for transparency

Remember how Chris Rufo explained exactly what he was going to do to use crt as a tool to attack schools (and Democrats)? Well, he's doing it again to explain why transparency will be the next weapon of choice. NBC News has this story.

Success Academy extends its 75% attrition streak

Gary Rubinstein keeps an eye on the big star of NYC charterdom and finds that one secret to its success remains chasing away every student who might make it look unsuccessful.

How to learn nothing from the failure of VAM-based teacher evaluation

Schools Matter offers a short, clear lesson in how to study something, learn that it has failed, ad draw exactly the wrong conclusion anyway.

The 850 books on the Krause list

This is a repeat, but unfortunately, as more and more districts use this list as a reference, it's worth pulling this close analysis of the 850 books out again, because it is a really bad list.

Meanwhile, in What I Wrote For Forbes, this was the week that Ed Voters for Pennsylvania unveiled what they'd learned from 3500 pages of cyber school marketing invoices. Enough money spent on marketing to run a small school district.