Teaching & Learning Blog

View From the Cheap Seats

Peter Greene, a veteran high school teacher and writer in Northwest Pennsylvania, authored the popular Curmudgucation blog and can be followed on Twitter at @palan57. The posts on this blog were exclusive to Education Week Teacher. This blog is no longer being updated.

Education Opinion The Charleston Syllabus
In the wake of a truly terrible act of racism, the internet has birthed a powerful community and an invaluable resource.
Peter Greene, June 24, 2015
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3 min read
Education Opinion Curmudgucation Digest (June 21)
Touring some states, privatization, defending TFA, and trying to understand monsters-- plus, what the New York Times doesn't know about education!
Peter Greene, June 21, 2015
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1 min read
Education Opinion Mirage: 5 Reasons Nevada's New Choice Law Is Not Good News
Charter-choice fans are ecstatic. Nevada's GOP legislature has decided to go all in on a state-wide voucher program.It will not be awesome. Here are five reasons that Nevada's imagined future of choice-driven most excellent unicorn farming is just a mirage.
Peter Greene, June 18, 2015
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6 min read
Education Opinion Supply, Demand, Charters & AEI
Balancing the Equation: Supply and Demand in Tomorrow's School Choice Marketplaces offers a more nuanced view of a charter-choice landscape than the freemarket acolytes at AEI have presented in the past, but it still reads like an exercise in unicorn farming.
Peter Greene, June 10, 2015
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6 min read
Education Opinion The Summer Opportunity
It's time for the beginning of summer break. That means a time of opportunity for teachers, ranging from the personal to the professional. But the greater availability of teachers also means that summer is a time of opportunity for policy makers and education deep thinkers.
Peter Greene, June 3, 2015
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4 min read
Education Opinion Curmudgucation Digest (May 31)
Charters, data, oxymorons, writing, Wisconsin suckage, sad cybers, and more kerfluffling in New Jersey.
Peter Greene, May 31, 2015
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1 min read
Education Opinion Showing Up
Teaching is a relationship, and the first rule of relationships is that you have to show up. You cannot maintain a relationship through proxies, in absentia, on autopilot, or by wearing a big, thick mask. You have to be present. You have to be honest. You have to show up.
Peter Greene, May 27, 2015
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3 min read
Education Opinion Curmudgucation Digest (May 24)
Charter boosting in PA, discord in NJ, and poker for the rich and famous-ish in NY.
Peter Greene, May 24, 2015
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1 min read
Education Opinion Shame
You cannot shame people into excellence. You can not make them stronger by making them feel weak. You do not help them stand up by knocking them down.
Peter Greene, May 20, 2015
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3 min read
Education Opinion Curmudgucation Digest (May 17)
Charter fraud, Arne speaks on Pre-K, testing, and the hot new Honesty Gap!
Peter Greene, May 17, 2015
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1 min read
Education Opinion The First Hurdle
Watching a roomful of students slog through Pennsylvania's algebra-flavored Big Standardized Test today, I'm reminded of one of the many flawed assumptions of test promoters.
Peter Greene, May 13, 2015
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4 min read
Education Opinion Curmudgucation Digest (May 10)
Teacher week, charter school week, and the continued push for the Big Standardized Test. Happy Mother's Day!
Peter Greene, May 10, 2015
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1 min read
Education Opinion Turning Around Is Hard (and Other Observations From the Federal Department of Obvious Conclusions)
The main question of the report is this: In 2009, the feds threw $3 billion dollars of stimulus money into School Improvement Grants in order to goose intervention models and generally get a bunch of failing schools to turn around. How did that turn out? Answer: Not all that well.
Peter Greene, May 6, 2015
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5 min read
Education Opinion Curmudgucation Digest (May 3)
Traveling to the Network for Public Education convention in Chicago last weekend threw me off my weekly routine, but I still have select cuts for you from this week at Curmudgucation, from NPE reports to the problems of being a reformster booster and the disaster-in-the-remaking of NY teacher evaluations.
Peter Greene, May 3, 2015
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1 min read
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