Not the corporal punishment kind, but the canoe kind. I’m joing my wife and kids in a last-ditched effort to squeeze a little more summer out of the mountain air. I’ll be out of the pocket for a few days, canoeing through the St. Regis Canoe Area, one of my favorite spots on the planet.
I’ll be back in a couple of days, but in the mean time, check out:
— UFT President Randi Weingarten’s long post on Eduwonk about unions and charter schools. I think the general topic is even more interesting than either Weingarten or the strongly anti-union charter supporters make it sound. For example, what if you have charter schools that do prize teacher voice/involvement and which make concerted efforts to pay well and provide good benefits, a fair workplace environment, etc. Is an old-style, industrial union still necessary? Conversely, since the charter school movement generally sucks when it comes to playing politics, is there anything to be gained, politically, by some sort of grand bargain with organized labor? Would charter school leaders ever recognize ANY role that unions can play in charterdom? Would teachers unions ever support (politically) teachers who want something different than the unions presently offer, or is the union more imporant than the teacher? Great debates to be had on this topic, methinks, especially if we get more people into the mix.
— Leo Casey’s post on EdWize about right-wing knocks on Hillary Clinton because she – gasp – studied Saul Alinsky as an undergrad. I dig Alinsky, and happen to agree with Leo that the argument is absurd. Was just thinking that if more conservatives had studied Alinsky, they might have actually accomplished a few things the last couple of decades.
— Cristo Ray as a charter school? Paul Vallas gives it a mention in a recent Q+A about the opening of school in New Orleans. Makes you wonder: can religious schools where the missionary zeal to teach kids to read, write, etc. outweighs the zeal for actual religious instruction end up serving an important public purpose? Why do I have a feeling this is going to become an important intellectual, legal, and policy issue? Disclosure: I was briefly kidnapped by beer-guzzling Jesuits when I was an undergrad.
And, hey… let’s be careful out there.