Connecting Practitioners with the Eggheads
Exploring best ways to bridge that gulf
When I started getting involved in local schools several years ago, I quickly learned that there was a huge gulf between the real folks that run schools and the eggheads/chattering class/journalism/think tank/academic circles who write about schools.
School administrators and school board members often make major decisions with almost no knowledge of the latest research. So, they remained blissfully ignorant about the mounting evidence about the problems with remote education for way, way, way too long. They are now being forced to deal with alarmingly poor reading and math rates, when the researchers have been trying to call attention to these issues for years.
At the same time, eggheads have no idea about the realities of a school building and have never attended a local school board meeting. They haven’t walked into a school cafeteria in decades. The difficulties of balancing a budget, the fear of the angry parents, the funerals for the kids who commit suicide, the conflicting demands from the community, the college acceptance rates, and mitigating flooded sports fields are real challenges that consume local school districts.
The local folks are just trying to get through the day and do not have time to read the latest twitter war about charter schools. While the eggheads present their research in lofty conference rooms overlooking Central Park and have never had to manage a gang of warring cheerleaders or a lawsuit from a parent whose autistic son ran out of the school without anyone noticing.
I’ve playing around with different ideas about the best way to to bridge that gulf between the eggheads and school leaders — a newsletter? a podcast? an advocacy group? I’ve been talking with all sorts of people to get ideas. Last night, I talked with my friend, Erin McNeill, the amazing CEO of Media Literacy Now, to learn how she built her organization.
Meanwhile, there’s been some super interesting articles and research that came out this week:
I loved The 74 article about research that found that white parents move out of towns when Asian-Americans move in. The researchers believe that the white flight is caused, because the parents want to avoid competition with the Asian families that put a premium on test-prep classes. I need to write about the test-prep culture in Northern New Jersey, where we have the highest number of Koreans outside of Seoul.
School districts have been coasting off of covid money. When that dries up, many districts are going to face “The Fiscal Cliff.” This spring’s budget process is going to be brutal as all school districts. Expect to see a lot of pet projects on the chopping block.
The Washington Post has a great editorial on banning celling phones in schools.
“The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research offers adult learners an education opportunity at a fraction of the time and price of graduate school.”
Colleges are focusing new attention on career services, which have always sucked. Good news.
I’ll share more as I figure things out.
LINKS
I wrote about mid-ability caretaking on my disability newsletter.
It’s nice to have time to get back to all my side gigs, including my weekend book shop.
Travel: We saw the Manet/Degas exhibit at the Met last week. Tomorrow we’re heading to West Palm Beach to visit family.
Personal: Meet Grimm, the kitten. Lots of Thanksgiving pictures: here, here, and here. Dinner in the city with friends.
Gossip: I’m kinda loving all the bad reviews of the new Royal Family book. Bad books make the best reviews.
Pictures: From the Manet/Degas Exhibit at the Met.
Media: Most podcasts suck, except for Brainless.
