Stories I should probably be writing about

Thoreau has a glowing review of this book on pedagogical fads. It looks interesting though given the cost and the quantity I assume they are writing them out by hand.




The Bennett scandal continues to reverberate both in Indiana and Florida.

 Democracy Prep and its founder and superintendent Seth Andrew have been media darlings but I'm seeing some things that trouble me, both about the school and the founder, particularly when you read between the lines.


Kevin Drum addresses our old friend, peer effects.


Take a look at this school designed largely to give master's degrees to people who came through Teach for America and similar programs. As you might expect, I see some connections between this and the previously mentioned issue of grooming TFAers for leadership positions.


Which segues nicely into lapsed TFAer Gary Rubinstein's blog and its informative series of posts on a recent visit to a KIPP school in New York. He also often addresses the previously mentioned TFA cultural issues that concern me and many of his other comments (like this one) track with my experience almost perfectly.


I'm a big fan of Kaiser Fung, but the Moneyball analogy strikes me as a bad framework for an analytic approach to education reform, bad enough to cause real damage. (I see from the queue that Joseph is planning to address some of these issues tomorrow)


And, to take a break from the education beat, there's this post from Naked Capitalism on  a shadow credit reporting system.

p.s. Should have included a link to this Washington Post interview with "the world’s most famous teacher." It nicely lays out the tension between some of our best veteran teachers (in this case one of the major models for KIPP) and the education reform movement.