Andy Borowitz at his best today.
He has figured out what ALEC really wants in Florida and everywhere else.
Archives for category: Humor
Please read this. THE ONION GETS IT!
When you become a joke in THE ONION, the end of school deform is in sight.
The article begins:
“ATLANTA—One year into its founding as the purported “bold next step in education reform,” administrators on Monday sang the praises of Forest Gates Academy, a progressive new charter school that practices an innovative philosophy of not admitting any students. “We’ve done something here at Forest Gates that is truly special, combining modern, cutting-edge pedagogical methods with a refreshingly non-pupil-centric approach,” said academy president Diane Blanchard, who claimed that the experimental school boasts state-of-the-art facilities, a diverse and challenging syllabus, absolutely zero students, a world-class library, and the highest faculty-student ratio in the nation. “Thanks to our groundbreaking methods, we’ve established a structured yet free-thinking environment where the student is taken out of the equation entirely, and in fact is not allowed on school property. And the results, we think, speak for themselves.”
Satire alert!
Diana Senechal tries her hand at satirizing the Danielson rubric, which seems to have taken the nation’s schools by storm.
Join her as she ventures into the Low Inference Room.
Now that the National Council on Teacher Quality has ranked nearly 2,000 teacher education programs without actually visiting them or meeting their faculty, bigger challenges are ahead.
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NCTQ to Tackle Syria and Obesity Next
By Isaac Prilleltensky, Dean of the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Miami, Florida
The National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), an organization much loved by Deans of Education around the country, is poised to tackle Syria and obesity. After fixing education in this country through their report on teacher preparation programs, NCTQ is ready to tackle other global problems.
The report, universally acclaimed for its high scientific and ethical standards, has drawn great praise from the former superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools, The Plumbers Association, and Bernie Madoff. The report raises the bar on scientific approaches to social problems; so much so that President Obama is going to replace the Chief Scientist at the National Academies of Science with an NCTQ intern. Meanwhile, Kate Walsh, president of NCTQ, is rumored to head the Expedited Ethics Board, a new federal agency designed to protect the rights of lobbyists in Washington.
When asked about her data collection methods, Walsh replied that they used drones to gather data from Colleges of Education that refused to cooperate. She went on to describe how telescopic technology was used to read course syllabi that students would discard in the toilet after final exams. To assess the quality of programs, they obtained NSA data provided by Edward Snowden. Mr. Snowden, who was busy teaching an ethics course in Hong Kong, could not be reached for comment.
Democrats and republicans alike praised the techniques used by NCTQ to solve education in this country. In a rare bipartisan statement, John Boehner and Harry Reid wrote: “We have so much gridlock in Washington. It is time to take an entrepreneurial approach to education. When we ask the National Academy of Science for answers on policy issues, they usually tell us they need to conduct randomized controlled trials and go through lengthy ethics reviews before they can do anything. NCTQ is a model of policy entrepreneurship: fast and decisive. They never equivocate on their decisions. None of this on one hand, but on the other hand nonsense.”
Critics observe that the exclusive focus on teacher preparation may divert attention from social issues such as poverty. When presented with data that instruction accounts for only a quarter of student outcomes, Walsh replied that “the methods used by researchers in the social sciences are highly flawed and antiquated.” She further accused those focusing on poverty of acting on behalf of Fidel Castro and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Given the success of NCTQ in collaborative approaches, they are going to assist the UN in mediating between rebels and the Syrian government. NCTQ developed a secret algorithm for bringing parties together that proved very useful in dealing with intransigent schools of education. Their toolbox includes paying for informants, shaming the other side, and bullying. These techniques, developed by NCTQ staff, “will be very appropriate in the Syrian context,” officials with the UN say.
On the domestic front, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is asking NCTQ to tackle bullying in schools. Duncan believes they have the necessary experience to identify with bullies and understand their point of view. “It takes one to know one,” the Secretary said.
Meanwhile, Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, has also reached out to NCTQ to help her with the obesity epidemic. Sebelius is interested in learning what families actually eat. According to Sebelius NCTQ has the technological capacity to learn about people without ever talking or interviewing anyone. “They can tell us a great deal about what is going in people’s kitchen. Just as they discovered what is going in people’s Colleges of Education without ever talking to anyone, I’m sure they can tell us what is inside people’s fridges.”
The NCTQ report is going to be very useful to prospective students of education. For example, the report found the best teacher preparation program in Kishinev, Moldova. John Kerry has already ordered the US embassy there to be ready for an influx of American students going to Moldova for their excellent teacher preparation programs. Walsh said that she would not recommend any teacher preparation program in the United States. To supply new teachers to schools she would look to paragons of efficiency and honesty, like the mortgage industry. She would create an incentive program to recruit former mortgage dealers to teach math for the common core curriculum.
As for Deans of Education, she recommended retraining in Siberia.
Isaac Prilleltensky is of the School of Education and Human Development and
Erwin and Barbara Mautner Chair in Community Well-Being at the University of Miami, Florida
EduShyster has gotten to the root cause of all our education problems, most especially those in the inner cities of the action. The answer, she has discovered, is missionaries. Yes, there are too many teachers from the local communities. They lack the youth, the vigor, energy, and the sheer excellence of missionaries.
As she explains:
“If you are a member of the fastest (and best funded) congregation in the nation, the First Church of Education Reform, it will come as no surprise to you that the crisis of low expectations and skill-less-ness that once afflicted our failed and failing public schools has been solved. It turns out that the solution is as obvious as the golden plates that once presented themselves to Joseph: replace the native, homegrown teachers, also known as LIFO-lifers or “non believers,” with fresh young missionaries.”
I am still waiting for Gary Rubinstein to post his brilliant and funny speech last night at the Skinny awards in Néw York City. These awards are conferred by Class Size Matters, the city’s leading voice for public education.
Fortunately, that great blogger G. F. Brandenburg transcribed Gary’s remarks here.
It is, as you will see, a hilarious riff on corporate reform rhetoric. The audience loved it. He hit the target.
Blogger Alexander Russo interpreted Gary’s remarks to mean that bloggers are the charter schools of the media. So he tweeted. But there is a big difference. The mainstream media, which Gary satirizes, are not publicly owned. They are private, for-profit enterprises. Dissenting from them is the vital role of bloggers, who create room for dissent and freedom of thought, who are free of corporate control and free to criticize the grand poohbahs and titans of the media.
Bloggers are indeed, as Gary said, incubators of innovation. They seek not to quash public institutions but to allow room for dissident voices to be heard in a world where profit and power dominate the media.
Last night, I attended the 5th annual Skinny awards, hosted by Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters. A large and enthusiastic crowd cheered this year’s winners: teacher bloggers Gary Rubinstein and Arthur Goldstein.
Gary Rubinstein teaches at Stuyvesant High School. He was honored as a great blogger, with special mention of his deconstruction and demolition of NYC’s “teacher data reports.” Gary showed that they were random and worthless.
Here is his latest post: http://garyrubinstein.teachforus.org/2013/06/17/wisdom-from-a-2012-cm-it-doesnt-matter-what-their-scores-are/
Arthur Goldstein teaches at Frances Lewis High School. He blogs at http://nyceducator.com/.
Arthur writes with the most amazingly sardonic wit. He has roasted the Powers-that-be to well-done in a thousand different ways. I used to think I was first to say that VAM was “junk science,” but Leonie said that a careful review demonstrated that Arthur beat me to it. (Apparently Michael Simpson of the Office of General Counsel at the NEA was truly first in the world to label VAM junk science, in an article titled “L.A. Story: How the Los Angeles Times used junk science to malign an entire city of teachers).
I would have an impossible time picking out his best blogs. Here are a few recent ones. Here you will read about the most perfect mayor ever of all time and any place, whose reforms have transformed NYC into utopia. Here is his latest on our state commissioner John King, who is referred to sometimes as Reformy John, as here, but sometimes as King John. And here he shows the genius of both. And those are only the latest. He has been skewering the mighty for years and has been an inspiration to people like me.
Surprisingly, when these two accepted their awards, they switched roles. Arthur, the wit, spoke briefly and modestly. Gary, the serious mathematician and data cruncher, delivered a hilarious spoof. He used reformer language to describe the terrible crisis stalking the land: mediocre education journalism. He explained that bloggers emerged to save readers trapped into failing mainstream media. He said that scientific evidence conclusively demonstrated….something about three times in a row or three times as much.
Watch the video (luckily, Norm Scott was there to tape the event). I hope Gary prints his speech on his blog. If you have trouble hearing him, it is because the audience was laughing so much.
EduShyster offers free career advice to those who worry about being unprepared for the new economy or being fired.
She takes her cues from the New York Times columnist Tom Friedman. The first tip is to make a point of rooming with Tom’s daughter at Harvard.
The second tip is to learn who Kanye West is and start tweeting about him.
Her other tips are equally valuable. You should not miss this one.
In this post marking the one-year anniversary of her blog, EduShyster interviews herself.
She answers such pressing questions as:
Do you really consume wine by the box?
Will the education reform movement survive the coming Zombie apocalypse? (I promise you will love this one, especially the illustration.)
If you were an education reform group, which one would you be? (Love the photo.)
Arthur Goldstein is at his satirical best as he paints a darkly outrageous vision of the future, after the testing and privatization movement has finally achieved all its goals.
All the teachers have been fired (except for the Gates-funded “Educators for Excellence”), charter operators have taken over the New York City school system,, and Walmart happily trains all the students who couldn’t pass those rigorous new tests. And the new mayor eliminates term limits and elections.
Diane Ravitch's blog 