ICYMI: Matinee Edition (7/10)

I'm delighted to be once again in a pit orchestra, this time for a local production of Something Rotten. There is a special adventure in playing for a show, where the music is in a variety of impossible keys and things come at you quickly. It's good mental exercise, but I will never get used to Sunday matinees. But that's where I am today. Here's this week's reading list.

"I'm Terrified"

The new anti-LGBTQ laws are going into effect and as Patrick Wall reports for Chalkbeat, folks are scared. Florida really is the worst.

Forest Hills shows how to poison a school district

Thanks to some local media, the story a school district being overrun by cranky right wingers is growing. Here's an example from the Cincinnati Enquirer.

How a right wing book ban took hold in Bucks County

And here's PBS coverage of a Pennsylvania example. Read these for a better understanding of how this stuff happens.

Some of Michigan GOP's concerned parents are conservative candidates

Shockingly, some of these activists are motivated by reasons other than their deep concern for the children.

Just who is behind Moms for Liberty?

Maurice Cunningham in the Tampa Bay Times, just ahead of M4L's big time convention, with some answers. 

In the name of religion, the Supreme Court has trashed religious liberty

Elliot Mincberg writing for The Hill. Another lawyer who smells something funny in recent SCOTUS decisions. 

Authentic Christianity does not urinate on the rights of others. 

The indispensable Mercedes Schneider is a woman strong in her own Christian faith who's pretty sure that Christian Nationalism isn't.

He's on a mission from God: Dough Mastriano's war with the world

From Salon. Not strictly about education, but expect me to spend the next several months reminding Pennsylvanians that Mastriano would be a disastrous choice for governor.

State money helping wealthier Arizona kids go to private schools

AZCentral makes the unsurprising discovery that the state's voucher program is mostly enriching the already rich. 

DeSantis delegitimizes social studies teaching in Florida

As Florida teachers get trained in their new Hillsdale-produced alternate history of the US, word is leaking out. The Miami Herald has some great coverage--behind a paywall. But here's a good look from Schools Matter.

Whittle suspends operations at his latest failure

Washington Post has coverage of the latest failure of a guy who is a spectacular serial failer in the education world (and yet people keep bankrolling him). 

Where contrition and closure go hand in hand

Jose Luis Vilson goes back to his old school and it results in this moving post. Good way to finish the week.

Over at Forbes this week I wrote about Idaho's crazy pants Any Warm Body law for charter teachers, and Secretary Cardona's declaration in favor of better paths to teaching (and why that's the wrong thing to emphasize).