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S3E4 – What’s so special about special education?
Special Education remains opaque to too many Americans. This episode aims to get past the stereotypes and explore the workings, history, and philosophy behind special education programs in US schools.
Sources for this episode.
Next episode will post on Friday, September 25th.
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Season 3, Episode 3 – Going the Distance: A history of remote learning
Remote learning is not a new development in education. In this episode, we review the history, practices, pitfalls and potential future of remote learning as we enter a school year where the majority of U.S. students will be engaged in some form of distance education.
Sources for this episode.
Next episode will post on Sept 18th
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:18 — 48.7MB) | Embed
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Season 3, Episode 2 – How it all began, Part II – Common for whom?
We continue our quest to locate the origin(s) of public education in the United States, from Horace Mann’s Common Schools to the fight for racial equity in schooling.
Sources for this episode.
Next episode will post on September 18th, 2020
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:30 — 56.1MB) | Embed
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Season 3, Episode 1 – How it all began, Part I – Satan, Jefferson, and Dictionaries
How did we get here? We start off the third season of Ed Infinitum with a two-parter about the origin of public education in the United States…or…origins, plural? Things aren’t so simple, as we’ll soon see.
Sources for this episode.
Next episode will post on September 4th, 2020
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 11:22 — 26.0MB) | Embed
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S3E0 – There are no best practices
Special Episode: How will in-person teaching and learning be conducted in a pandemic? What are the arguments for and against this practice, and where, if anywhere, is the roadmap for executing it?
Sources for this episode.
Next episode will post in mid-August as Season 3 begins.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:58 — 66.3MB) | Embed
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S2E14 – School for Scandal, Pt 3 – The Inevitable Corruption
We wrap up our three part series, as well as Season Two entirely, by looking at the sordid underbelly of the school accountability mania of the 2000s, the resulting scandals and even criminal prosecutions, and ask if any meaningful changes emerged in the way teachers and schools are assessed.
The podcast will be going on hiatus for a few weeks while I start planning and recording Season#3. Next episode should air some time in mid to late August, at which point we’ll resume our original biweekly release schedule.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:05 — 55.1MB) | Embed
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S2E13 – School for Scandal, Pt 2: Value-Added Messes
In part two of our series on the nationwide test cheating scandals of the late 2000s, we take a look at “Value Added Measurement” of a teacher’s impact on student learning, and how this deeply flawed construct lay at the heart of the malfeasance that followed.
Click here for the list of sources used.
Next episode will post on Friday, July 10th.
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S2E12 – School for Scandal, Pt 1: The Bee-Eater
Public education suffered a cascading series of scandals at the end of the last decade, when teachers and principals in towns and cities across 40 states were discovered to have cheated state accountability measures by altering student test results. We begin a three-part series exploring this national catastrophe with this week’s episode, where we focus on Michelle Rhee, controversial Chancellor of the Washington DC public schools, whose famous take-no-prisoners approach to student testing outcomes may well have set this saga in motion.
Click here for the list of sources used.
Next episode will post on Friday, July 3rd.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:27 — 46.8MB) | Embed
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S2E11 – Principals of power: Fannie, Annie and Nannie
In this episode we celebrate three groundbreaking and influential principals – Fannie Copland, Annie Cooper and Nannie Boroughs. All three are African American women who were either from, or spent most of their time in, Washington DC, and all overcame great odds to make their marks on American public education.
Click here for sources.
Next episode will post on Friday, June 26, 2020
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:20 — 64.9MB) | Embed
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S2E10- Race and justice in the classroom
In a time of sustained worldwide demonstrations for racial justice, conversations about race and equity are becoming more pervasive than they’ve been in decades. We continue one of those conversations this episode, by exploring what “culturally responsive teaching” is, and some specific ways in which it attempts to address issues of race in school classrooms.
Next episode will post on Friday, June 19th