Tag: Florida
The consent of the tested and punished, part 1: Florida tells Ted Dintersmith, “Educating children is like fixing a car.”
You’ve heard me write and talk quite a bit about Ted Dintersmith, an education activist and philanthropist, whose perceptions and obsessions overlap substantially (but not completely) with mine. I have particular fondness for Ted because we are in lockstep in how we see the toxic state-level educational experience imposed by the toxic Florida state government. Ted’s new book, “What School…
We must end the Test-and-Die era, part 1: You can’t untangle mass school shootings from school grades and stress-based education
This may end up as a five or six part series. Bear with me. I will get to guns and the sheriff — who has not yet made a formal proposal — in part 3 or 4. I will do so calmly and rationally. But I want to start all of this with a history lesson and a correlation that…
“Bully”: How we bury childhood suffering beneath an impossible act of administration
This is the latest installment of my “Education and the English Language” series. Previous essays are: Introducing “Education and the English Language,” a periodic series. I explain how George Orwell’s famous “Politics and the English Language” essay anticipates beautifully modern political education’s vapid use and outright abuse of language. I focus on “Failure Factories” as an example. “Union”: the only…
The line must be drawn here. Start with Level raises.
As of today, I consider it mandatory that we honor previously established Level raises (sometimes known as steps) for all Polk School District employees. It will cost us about $4.3 million. We have the money to do it. It’s a simple choice between fulfilling our core function for our community or maintaining a “growing savings account” of dead money that…
