Pistol Betsy! The Local Control Unicorn Is Spotted Again. TX Spec Ed, SALT And Scholarships, And A New Game From Bellwether…Violet Grohl…More!

Jason Weeby on some interesting Chicago lessons.

At Bellwether we do a lot of work on disconnected youth and we’ve built a game to help drive home the challenges – and the range of solutions to them – these students face. Join us for the launch in DC.

Betsy Get Your Gun:

So everyone is up in arms about Betsy DeVos’ plan to arm teachers. And the “Trump-DeVos plan to arm teachers” is an excellent talking point. Except it’s really not her plan, a few states asked if they could use federal funds for this (probably a useful thing to FOIA those SEA’s about by the way). I don’t know what the Department of Education will decide in the end, but the whole episode is sort of nuts.

I’m on record as saying this is idea of arming teachers is an especially dumb one in a sea of pretty lousy ones lately. And don’t take my word for it, most of the people who think it’s a good idea are the couch commando wannabe types. Real commandos think it’s insane, too. But, it is the law and practice in some places now. That’s a fact on the ground.

That’s why…this is local control folks. You can’t be for local control except when locals want to do things you don’t like. That’s not being for local control or listening to what educators’ want, it’s for being for people doing what you want. And it’s more or less everyone’s position. It’s human nature. And stuff like this points up just how much local control is a relative and positional value, not a real one. Everyone is for it and romanticizes it…until people want to do stuff they don’t like.

We’re talking about guns here, but we could be talking about any range of issues. Hard to miss though that no one really gets up in arms any more about local control when it means underserving historically disadvantaged groups in education – just about stunts like this.

In other news, a lot of money being thrown at school security.

School improvement networks are going to be a hot thing – here’s a lit review.

Those tax credit scholarship programs are in the crossfire of the back and forth with states and Treasury on SALT. Also one more example of where the Trump Education Department and the Trump Treasury Department are misaligned as well.

Keep an eye on this Texas special education situation – more complicated than it’s been made out to be. Over-identification as a big an issue as under-identification.

Virginia kid and his daughter make great music.