Martin Weller on The Ed Techie, “The MOOC Wars”:

So Clark dismisses the impact of early MOOCers, claiming it was Khan that caused it all: “It took a hedge fund manager to shake up education because he didn’t have any HE baggage.” Why? Because it appeals to the narrative to have a saviour riding in from outside HE to save education. If you acknowledge that these ideas may have come from within HE then that could look like venture capitalists latching on to a good idea in universities and trying to make money from it. That doesn’t sound as sexy and brave.

The original Canadian developers of the MOOC (now dubbed the “cMOOC”) are being written out of the history books. Martin has a good idea why.

Leo Casey of Shanker Blog, “America’s Union Suppression Movement (And Its Apologists), Part Two”:

Similarly, in discussing teacher evaluations the Fordham/ERN report focuses entirely on matters of seniority layoffs, tenure and dismissal. There is no discussion of whether evaluations provide meaningful feedback and professional supports to teachers, thus improving the quality of teaching and learning across the board. The notion that tenure and due process could provide good teachers with the necessary protections to speak out when students are not being properly educated or are being unfairly treated is not even contemplated.

Shanker Blog does some great work, and this is a great criticism of a report put out by the Fordham Institute that basically started with a premise and wrapped the info around it. Good takedown.

Grant Wiggins , “20 years later: the immorality of test security, revisited”:

As I have long written, I have no problem with the state doing a once-per-year audit of performance. But what far too many policy-makers and measurement wonks fail to understand is that if the core purpose of the test is to improve performance, not just audit it, then most test security undercuts the purpose. Look, I get the point of security: you can get at understanding far more easily and efficiently (hence, cheaply) if the student does not know the specific question that is coming; I’m ok with that. But complete test security after the fact serves only the test-makers: they get to re-use items (and do so with little oversight), and they make the entire test more of a superficial dipstick, using proxies for real work, than a genuine test of transparent and worthy performance.

This is really kind of a basic thing: tests are being used as audits, doling out rewards and punishments, rather than as a tool or method for helping teachers and schools improve.

Larry Cuban, “Are There Lessons from the History of School Reform?”:

The current crop of school reformers have a full agenda of Common Core standards, test-driven accountability, expanding parental choice through charters and vouchers, spreading virtual teaching and learning, and ridding classrooms of ineffective teachers based upon students’ test scores. These reformers have their eyes fixed on the future not the horrid present where schools, in their charitable view, are dinosaurs. These reformers are allergic to the history of school reform; they are ahistorical activists that carry the whiff of arrogance associated with the uninformed.

Interesting to note that edreformers suffer from the same lack of historical perspective as the Silicon Valley hype machine.

Alfie Kohn, “Poor Teaching for Poor Children…in the Name of Reform”:

Deborah Meier, the educator and author who has founded extraordinary schools in New York and Boston, points out that the very idea of “school” has radically different meanings for middle-class kids, who are “expected to have opinions,” and poor kids, who are expected to do what they’re told. Schools for the well-off are about inquiry and choices; schools for the poor are about drills and compliance. The two types of institutions “barely have any connection to each other,” she says.

Alfie points out one of testing’s insidious impacts: it shapes the curriculum taught much more in schools where they’re struggling to meet standards, resulting in limiting the curriculum to solely to what’s on the test and cutting out class time for test prep, and those schools tend to be impoverished and minority schools. High stakes testing is a civil rights issue.

Dean Shareski, “Overcoming Digital Dualism”:

This is still someone abstract until you begin to understand, value and appreciate what these connections look and feel like. Most educators and students don’t know what it’s like to forge connections with people youve never met. For me, face to face interactions for many of my professional colleagues supplement my online interactions. The notion of digital dualism is largely the crux of what holds education back from valuing these connections. This doesn’t suggest we can’t discuss manners and norms but it also can’t be shrouded with superiority or nostaligia. Those two perspectives will always remain so long as folks only see their connections as supplement or a second choice.

The idea that the ‘offline’ is more authentic than online is a major barrier for the use of technology and social media in the classroom. For those of us who use those technologies to connect with people every day, those connections feel just as ‘real’ as offline connections. They’re not less meaningful unless you fail to cultivate meaning from them.

Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic, “Proving a Conservative Caricature of Boston Bombing Coverage Wrong”:

Generally speaking, “mainstream” outlets have been diligently reporting out the story and gathering that evidence. The conservative press has done very little reporting. Its been busy cherry-picking liberal dissents from the jihadist theory of the Boston bombing, treating those dissents as if they’re representative of “the liberal media” generally, and needlessly worrying about a supposed unwillingness to confront radical Islam. “The chances are that we will learn nothing important from Boston about the enduring terrorist threat against our country,” Rich Lowry writes. “When the next attack comes, and it will, we will again scratch our heads and wonder who could do such a thing, and why?” I think he’s been reading too much Steyn, and that when the next attack comes, the mainstream media will thoroughly report on the people behind it too.

Surprise, surprise – conservatives live in a bubble.