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Nick Covington

@covingtonedu.bsky.social

Dad. Iowan. Former HS social studies teacher. (PFP illustrated by Farimah Khavari)

9252 Posts6655 Follower2134 Folgt
Asheesh Kapur Siddique@asheeshks.org · 20h ago

The American Enterprise Institute is the most pernicious force in education policy in this country, from K-college. asheeshksi.substack.com/p/introducti...

Why is the Center Right Attacking Higher Ed Right Now?

Yes, this has to do with AI, among other things, but also history, the economy, and democracy.

asheeshksi.substack.com

Trevor Aleo@mraleosays.bsky.social · yesterday

The only people who will benefit from Sold A Story Season 2 are Emily Hanford, the handful of DI consultants grifters partnering with AEI, and massive curriculum companies. Not kids. Not teachers. The feeding frenzy for funding has already started.

Annie Abrams@annieabrams.bsky.social · 4h ago

"While I suspect the story will come to focus more on Direct Instruction itself as a scalable teaching practice, and perhaps bring in more questionable figures, I hope listeners come away feeling the power of committed, passionate, and conscientious teachers"

Nate@jessenathaniel.bsky.social · 9h ago

I hope some politician realizes this eventually: this is the unifying political platform that would have national appeal if someone wanted to build an education platform. And the key is that this shouldn’t be partisan: if we believe education is a public good, are “school choice deserts” tolerable?

Image of an excerpt from the blog post quoted in this post: “Like stores, private schools can close without warning, even mid-school year, making parents scramble and causing students social, emotional, and academic disruption and distress. Josh Cowen found that in Wisconsin, 4 out of 10 private schools that took vouchers closed. Meanwhile, public school closings are accelerating in states such as Texas, where politicians have squeezed public school budgets while spending on charters and vouchers has ballooned. “Just as there are food deserts, there are "school choice" deserts. For most rural families, public schools are the only option; just a third have a private school within five miles. Private schools, like retailers, can choose where to locate. Another ProPublica investigation found that in Arizona, geography is deciding which parents can take advantage of the state's vouchers - only six of 200 private schools in Phoenix are in lower-income zip codes. Transportation, which private schools don't typically provide, then becomes a cost and time barrier or burden (one that is, again, borne mostly by women.)”
Anne Lutz Fernandez@lutzfernandez.bsky.social · 10h ago

Being a US consumer sucks. Not just because prices are high: Buying is harder. Food deserts, store closures, shrinkflation, shortages. Self check-outs, robots, cameras, locked shelves. Price-fixing, price surveillance, crappier products, hidden costs, onerous returns and refunds, smarter scams. 🧵

Megan Greenwell@greenwell.bsky.social · yesterday

I wrote about exactly this because I’m a reporter, not a journalist-turned-thought-leader with a lucrative agenda to push. 🫢

Stop Saying Kids Can’t Read

Everyone is talking about the reading crisis. But inside the “Mississippi Miracle,” it’s all about comprehension.

wired.com

Jeffrey Austin@jaustinedu.bsky.social · yesterday

Just a reminder that none of the so-called "miracle" states has sustained their success into 8th or 11th grade because 1) the assessments (NWEA, PSAT, SAT) are not decoding assessments and require different knowledge and skills and 2) states don't care about adolescents or adolescent literacy.

Kythra Suntamer@kythra.bsky.social · 2d ago

“Her document is not about the science that I know; it is about Lucy Calkins,” wrote the cognitive neuroscientist Mark Seidenberg, one of the critics interviewed in Sold a Story. “The purpose of the document is to protect her brand, her market share, and her standing among her many followers.”

Jack Schneider@jackschneider.bsky.social · yesterday

Sold a Story season 2 is about Zig Engelmann and Direct Instruction. Let’s take bets on whether Emily Hanford read my chapter about him in From the Ivory Tower to the Schoolhouse. I certainly interviewed him more times than she did!

From the Ivory Tower to the Schoolhouse

Why do so many promising ideas generated by education research fail to penetrate the world of classroom practice?In From the Ivory Tower to the Schoolhouse, ...

hep.gse.harvard.edu

Erin Vanderhoof@vanderhoofy.bsky.social · yesterday

I was trained in Doug Lemov–style Direct Instruction and it is...just a tool! Works really well for some teacher personalities and topic areas and not for others. Education has got to break it's addiction to "One Weird Tricks" and obvious scams! Let teachers be professionals

Matt Seybold@mattseybold.bsky.social · yesterday

That educators are a professional class who should & will accept being puppeteered by whatever slopreneur wins a culture war. Whatever the merit of DI, what Sold A Story 2 is, is an attempt to deskill teaching & destabilize public education, so as to facilitate its capture by for-profit EdTech.

Nick Covington@covingtonedu.bsky.social · yesterday

I'm convinced we've gotten discovery/inquiry completely twisted. Giving kids rulers, having them measure the sides of triangles, and asking them to inquire about the relationship between each of the sides *before* teaching the Pythagorean Theorem is not idle or unguided discovery.

Nick Covington@covingtonedu.bsky.social · yesterday

Zig's 1964 4-year old preschool had 2 hours of play but just one hour of instruction per day split evenly in just 20 minutes each of math, reading, and language. Sounds completely reasonable. So all kids should get 8 hours of bell to bell direct instruction?

Nick Covington@covingtonedu.bsky.social · yesterday

If I understand the framing of this season of Sold A Story, teachers can't be trusted to tell their own stories of what happens in the classroom…unless you're a “whistleblower” with a narrative that fits into this media package. Do I have that right?

Nick Covington@covingtonedu.bsky.social · yesterday

If I understand the framing of this season of Sold A Story, teachers can't be trusted to tell their own stories of what happens in the classroom…unless you're a “whistleblower” with a narrative that fits into this media package. Do I have that right?

Diana Laufenberg@dlaufenberg.bsky.social · yesterday

When I taught multiple sections of the same course I often had to employee different methods depending on the make up of the class... One year I had 3 sections get one version and the 4th section got the same content, just not delivered with the same approach. To pretend otherwise, please.