- The Columbia Journalism Review ran a good takedown by Alexander Russo of some unconscionably lazy reporting from the national media on the political controversy surrounding the rollout of Common Core-aligned tests. Esteemed outlets like the Washington Post, PBS NewsHour, and the New York Times have made a rampaging giant of the anti-standards pygmy, forecasting a nationwide revolt against PARCC exams that just hasn’t materialized. Hey, we get it: Conflict moves more newspapers (or, uh, pixels) than consensus. And those parents and teachers irresponsibly keeping kids from participating in the assessments absolutely deserve to be called out. But let’s try have a sense of proportion.
- Amazingly, though, the opt-out movement isn’t the most overblown education nonstory in recent memory. That dishonor belongs to the absurd Pearson kerfuffle. Some parents had a cow this week over the news that the testing company monitors social media for potential security breaches (if a student shares exam materials over the web, it could compromise assessments across the country and, by extension, the vital school-level information we glean from them). But this is an industry-wide best practice—companies are trawling through publicly available data for instances of very real cheating, not installing listening devices in our cheese. The whole episode makes you wonder: If these anxious parents are so concerned about their kids’ privacy, why do they let them have Twitter accounts? And do they not understand the concept of “social” media?
- In an apparent instance of an April Fool’s gag that went live a week early, the Wall Street Journal brings us the story of a group of New Yorkers indulging in the fantasy of adult preschool. Supervised by a so-called “play concierge,” (which is evidently a real job in an age when the honorable video store clerk must walk the bread line) the class of thirtysomethings spends a night each week making crafts and having Show and Tell rather than wearing pants and having self-respect. Maybe these guys could take the money they’ve ploughed into this farce—a five-week course costs as much as $999—and put it towards a fund for low-income and minority kids who would actually benefit from pre-K.
