John Merrow shares his wisdom and makes a list of worthy recipients of your holiday giving. I’m happy to note that he included the Network for Public Education.

Categories Education Reform, Extremism, Network for Public Education, Resistance

12 Comments Post your own

Stuart Crocker says:

December 24, 2022 at 10:14 am

I surprised there has been no comment on Brook’s piece of cold last night
“ BROOKS: I just look at the schools and the effect that the long and overly, overly, overly long school closures during COVID had on school — student attainment and the lifelong prospects of a generation of young people.

I do blame a lot of different people for that, but I think the teachers unions blame — bear a share of the blame for really widening inequality, hurting social mobility, and hurting a lot of students. So, they get my coal.”

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- Ohio Algebra II Teacher says:
  
  December 24, 2022 at 10:31 am
  
  Brooks is consistently unsurprisingly disappointing. His positions on education have earned him a large source of coal to disperse.
  
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- dianeravitch says:
  
  December 24, 2022 at 11:19 am
  
  Everything David Brooks has ever written about Education has been wrong. I remember when he declared that he had found a miracle school in Harlem, proof that schools alone can solve poverty and everything else. A year later, the “miracle” school was no longer miraculous, although it did spend far more than neighborhood schools.
  
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  - dianeravitch says:
    
    December 24, 2022 at 11:26 am
    
    Brooks on the Harlem miracle school: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/opinion/08brooks.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
- Bob Shepherd says:
  
  December 24, 2022 at 2:04 pm
  
  Mr. Crocker, the press went nuts about the drop in average NAEP scores in ELA and Math, but the idiot journalists didn’t report, because they didn’t bother to figure this out or because they were serving a rightwing narrative, that the declines, 5 points and 7 points respectively, were on tests worth 500 points. So, the drops were 1 percent and 1.4 percent, respectively. Given what we all went through, that’s astonishingly GOOD NEWS. Barely a blip.
  
  Brooks has fuzz and mud for brains.
  
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- Threatened Out West says:
  
  December 24, 2022 at 7:44 pm
  
  Yeah, because we teachers unions manufactured COVID so that we could work 3 times as ha d. And in Utah, we were only put one term. We went back full time in August 2020. And the state’s scores STILL dropped. Did NAEP make the test harder to prove a point? Wouldn’t surprise me.
  
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  - Threatened Out West says:
    
    December 24, 2022 at 7:45 pm
    
    Out one term. Stupid Autocorrect.
Ohio Algebra II Teacher says:

December 24, 2022 at 10:29 am

Mr. Merrow’s persistence is gradually winning me over. Very much appreciate your change over time, Sir.

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retired teacher says:

December 24, 2022 at 10:54 am

There is zero evidence that school closings during Covid will result in a life long lag in student attainment. This statement is pure supposition and hyperbole, not evidence. As someone that has worked with poor foreign students that were severely undereducated, I can assure all the concerned media that most young people can and do overcome academic lags and deficits, if given enough time and access to quality instruction. We should not be preoccupied by student test scores as data collection is irrelevant to student achievement. We should focus on reducing student poverty and supporting students’ social and emotional wellbeing after the pandemic. These last two items would make a huge difference in students’ academic achievement long term.

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- dianeravitch says:
  
  December 24, 2022 at 11:15 am
  
  Retired teacher,
  
  I saw David Brooks on the PBS Newshour Friday night expressing his deep sorrow for the students whose lives have been irreparably damaged by learning loss. I wanted to throw up.
  
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  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    December 24, 2022 at 2:14 pm
    
    I often have this experience listening to or reading Mr. Brooks. I have often wondered whether the major problem with Brooks was mostly stupidity or mostly ignorance. Certainly, he doesn’t bother very often to do the minimal effort required to learn something about the matters he pontificates about. He’s made a career of spewing what he passes off as “common sense.”
    
    You know, common sense, that layer of prejudices laid down in small minds from the backwaters of the country before the age of 18.
- Bob Shepherd says:
  
  December 24, 2022 at 2:09 pm
  
  See my note to Mr. Crocker, above.
  
  Reply