It's that time again. Put away your white, set out the grill, and try to remember that the labor movement in this country created a whole lot of things that we now take for granted. Once a year seems hardly often enough to take that out and look at it.
In the meantime, here's the reading list for the week.
School vouchers are conservative billionaires’ Trojan horseJosh Cowen's new book The Privateers is about to drop, so he's doing press and talking to people and getting the word out about vouchers and the culture panic. Here he is talking to Maureen Downey.
Laurie Roberts of AZCentral tells the story of how dune buggies became an educational expense (the occupational therapist said so) and were initially paid for with voucher money. The state board has reverse that decision, but the whole mess is a look at how the vouchers are really working in Arizona.
Larry Cuban looks at the dream of taking human touch our of human service.
Alec MacGillis at The New Yorker takes a deep dive into the closing of a Rochester school and the larger issues racing towards us over school closings.
Maurice Cunningham at the Bucks County Beacon reminds us just who partners with Moms For Liberty, and what the goals are.
The Independent reports on yet another M4L attempt to stamp out reading Naughty Books. Only this time it's not going over so well.
At their big gathering, M4L leader tell Huffington Post that there is no such thing as a transgender child. It goes downhill from there. Turns out that "safe and welcoming" are danger words at a school.
With schools, money does indeed matter; so does how we spend it
Teens are losing interest in school, and say they hear about college 'a lot'
From the Seattle Times, a piece that pushes back on the continued assertion that money doesn't matter (so schools shouldn't get more of it).
Paul Thomas reminds us that diagramming sentences doesn't help develop writing skill (it does not-- don't @ me) and quotes some expertise from 70 years ago.
Make of them what you wish, but NPR writes up some results from a major poll of students, and some things are not looking up since last year.
Addressing some of the myths surrounding AI. "Most concerning is the illusion that LLMs are retrieving information rather than constructing word associations within a broad corpus." Excellent AI read.
Jennifer Berkshire writes for The Nation about how Harris-Walz could (finally) be a course correction for the Democratic Party.
Nancy Bailey looks into the details of the Harris-Walz education proposals.
Youngkin’s Privatization Team Makes Its Move on Virginia’s Public Schools
Having had a chance to see how school takeovers pretty much never work, Virginia is ready to try their hand. Cheryl Binkley at 4 Public Education.
Mark Hlavacik and Jack Schneider at Kappan break down decades of schools-are-failing coverage and how they have affected discussions about public education.
Missed this last week, but here's Sue Kingery Woltanski's breakdown of the Moms for Liberty candidates fared in Florida (spoiler: not well).
Benjamin Riley takes a look at an AI guide that actually brings a little sanity to the discussion.
Oh, South Carolina. Steve Nuzum examines the new wave of anti-reading activity.
States want to reduce qualifications for teachers. That’s a huge mistake.
The Center for American Progress is emblematic of Democrat wrong headedness about public education. But Paige Schhoemaker DeMio of CAP is on point with this op-ed. Deprofessionalizing teaching is not a solution for anything.
It's Williamsburg, of all places. But there's a lot to see in this Politico piece about how to discuss difficult topics with sensitivity towards all audiences.
TC Weber builds a great piece out of reaction to my post about calling students by their names. He also says many nice things about me, making me both grateful and embarrassed. But the post is a good one.
From The Dispatch, by Joe Pitts. I don't think about "masculinity" as a thing nearly as often as I think about "humanity," but I found a lot to chew on in this essay about the non-toxic version of masculinity.
At Forbes.com, I looked at two reports-- one suggesting that teacher strikes do, in fact, work, and one warning about some hazards of AI in the classroom.
Please join me on substack, where you can get all of my stuff right in your email--for free!
Really good NPR article about teen interest in school: “Care about me as a person." That’s what teens value most in teachers. “Know who I am, know what's important to me, know what my goals and dreams are, and help me understand what I have to do to reach them.”
ReplyDeleteRebecca deCoca