The Board of Directors is trying soccer this spring and their first match was yesterday, in the rain. They have not yet revealed any special aptitude for the game, but it does involve a lot of running hard up and down a field, and that is their preferred sporty activity. It gets us all outside and moving around while breathing air and touching grass and just generally interacting with real things and other humans, and that seems like rather a huge win.
We have been a low-screen household since they boys were born. They have no phone, no tablet, little tech at all, and watch only a tiny bit of tv. Most of their screen time happens, as you might guess, at school. I'm at peace with that, for now, because they do need some basic computer literacy to deal with the world, and confining it to school seems like an easy way to put guardrails around it. We'll see if my old district (where the board attends school) will get more restrictive about this stuff.
The hard part of a school's tech policy is parents, so I am hoping that we don't-give-my-kid-a-phone parents will be growing in numbers (because if you want your child's school to have a policy restricting smart phone use, you could help by not giving your kid a smart phone).
Here's the reading list for the week. Enjoy it in good health.
School Vouchers Fail the Civil Rights Test. The Federal Program Is No ExceptionThe 74 invited some folks to write a response to a Derrell Bradford piece plugging the federal voucher program. Jenny Muniz, Nicole Fuller, Ashley Harrington, and Hal Smith replied with this piece that absolutely nails the point contained in this sentence--
“Choice” is a compelling slogan, but with private school vouchers, it’s the school’s choice, not the families.The Blue State Voucher Express
Jennifer Berkshire notes that Arne Duncan and the usual gang of reform-loving nominally-Democrat privatizers have decided to shill for Donald Trump's federal voucher program. Shame on the lot of them. She writes, "Ten years later, they’re back, armed with another pig and plenty of lipstick."
Jan Resseger looks at a paper from education and law scholar Derek Black.
Greg Wyman examines some of the classic pendulum swings and what the pendulum is doing to public education right now.
Well, Stephen Dyer is pretty sure they're dumb as rocks, and he uses some colorful language to explain why the guys trying to get rid of Ohio's property tax are absolutely and spectacularly in the wrong.
Rachael Gabriel is a professor of Literacy Education at U of Connecticut and co-editor-in-chief of The Reading Teacher, so it's likely that she knows what the heck she is talking about, which puts her ahead of so many people pushing the science of reading these days. So go ahead- read one more piece about SoR. This one's at The Progressive.
I did cover this story, but let Shawgi Tell zero in on it from another angle.
Oh so many ways to cash in on Florida's voucher program.
Speaking of Floridian grift, don't forget Schools of Hope, the program that allows charters schools to just take buildings from the public school system. It was supposed to only affect the low-achieving public schools, but-- surprise!
Lauren Brown offers ideas about favoring content over the vagueness of teaching "reading skills." Not sure I agree with every single word of this, but it's worth thinking about.
Well, there's no actual bloodbath, but this is the New York Post coverage of Episode #1,659,437 of Why Education Should Not Depend Upon The Kindness of Rich Guys.
Look, no school should be held "accountable" via Big Standardized Testing. But Tennessee lawmakers decided that since tests weren't showing voucher schools to be doing better than, or even as well as, public schools, the solution was to just not make voucher schools take the test. So much for accountability via an informed free market.
Hats off to Star Academy, a for-profit company run by John Alvendia. They figured out how to run an education scam and a welfare scam simultaneously!
Thomas Ultican talks about the need to avoid AI, and quotes some other folks, including Benjamin Riley, a "uniquely free thinker."
Dan Meyer writes about the misalignment between humanity and edtech companies, as well as the misalignments between people who want to teach and people who want to learn.
George Evans reached out to me to say that he had written something I might like to read and by damn he was right. This is a layered essay about the reach of teachers and the ways things come back to us later. I am always happy to find new writers that I hadn't previously found and wish more folks would send me recommendations, self- or otherwise. One thing about the interwebs and the people who write about education on them is that those writers tend to cycle through quickly. Of the people I was reading and sharing with umpty-ump years ago, only a handful are still at it. So I'm always excited to meet new folks.
Mathew Beck reports that one more Moms for Liberty chapter has quietly expired, this time in Anchorage, Alaska. Thoughts and prayers.
James Horn reports on the Pennsylvania school district that has decided that students may not opt out of screens-- even though they have an opt-out policy.
Paul Thomas shows us how to make everyone freak out with a chart (even if the chart isn't really very freak outable). With pictures.
Steve Nuzum looks at the problems with third grade retention, a policy that won't go away no matter how many times the problems are demonstrated.
Wasn't it cool when the astronauts did that astronaut stuff? Nancy Bailey reminds us that those astronauts didn't just fall of an astronaut tree.
Jonathan Kantrowitz reminds us that having small humans use devices designed for grown humans opens the door to all sorts of problems. So maybe let's rethink using those AR headsets with third graders.
Have you heard of Emily Hart, the nurse who loves God, guns, and making "illegals" go away? She's a darling of the MAGA crowd, with a huge online following. And she doesn't exist, but she is helping put through school the 22-year-old med student who created her. From EJ Dickson at Wired.
Noah Hawley writing for The Atlantic tells of his strange encounter with the very rich. And while it's all worth reading, there is this--
It’s not that the wealthy become evil; it’s that their environment stops teaching them the things that nonwealthy people are forced to learn simply by living in a world that pushes back. When you can buy your way out of any mistake, when you can fire anyone who disagrees with you, when your social circle consists entirely of people who need something from you, the basic mechanism by which humans learn that other people are real goes dark.
This week at Forbes.com I looked to Ohio, where one more school board wants folks to understand that hate does, in fact, have a home in their district. And they're getting sued for it.
Trombones and Danny Elfman-- what else could a person need.
Subscriptions are free now and forever. Well, probably not forever. But as long as I'm alive and doing this.
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