We moved to America in 2015, in time for my kid to start third grade. Now she’s a year away from graduating high school (!) and I’ve had a front-row seat for the US K-12 system in a district rated as one of the best in the country. There were ups and downs, but high school has been a monster.

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If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/16/flexibility-in-the-margins/#a-commons

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  • Cory Doctorow@mamot.frOP
    1·
    8 months ago

    Students could be given extra credit for identifying additional materials that slot into existing curricular projects - Tiktok videos, new chart-topping songs, passages from hot YA novels. These, too, could go into the commons.

    This would enlist students in developing and thinking critically about their curriculum, whereas today, these activities are often off-limits to students.

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    • Cory Doctorow@mamot.frOP
      1·
      8 months ago

      For example, my kid’s math teachers don’t hand back their quizzes after they’re graded. The teachers only have one set of quizzes per unit, and letting the kids hold onto them would leak an answer-key for the next batch of test-takers.

      I can’t imagine learning math this way. “You got three questions wrong but I won’t let you see them” is no way to help a student focus on the right areas to improve their understanding.

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      • Cory Doctorow@mamot.frOP
        1·
        8 months ago

        But there’s no reason that math teachers in a commons built around the (unfortunately) rigid procession of concepts and testing couldn’t generate procedural quizzes, specified with a simple programming language. These tests could even be automatically graded, and produce classroom stats on which concepts the whole class is struggling with. Each quiz would be different, but cover the same ground.

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        • Cory Doctorow@mamot.frOP
          1·
          8 months ago

          When I help my kid with her homework, we often find disorganized and scattered elements of this system - a teacher might post extensive notes on teaching a specific unit. A publisher might produce a classroom guide that connects a book to specific parts of the common core. But these are scattered across the web, and they aren’t keyed to the specific, standard components of common core and AP.

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          • Cory Doctorow@mamot.frOP
            1·
            8 months ago

            This is a standardized system that’ss all costs, no benefit. It has no “architecture of participation” to let teachers, students, parents, practitioners and even commercial publishers collaborate to produce a commons that all may share and improve.

            In an ideal world, we’d get rid of standardization in education, pay teachers well, give them additional time they needed to prepare exciting and relevant curriculum, and fund all our schools based on need, not parents’ income.

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            • Cory Doctorow@mamot.frOP
              1·
              8 months ago

              But in the meanwhile, we could be making lemonade of out lemons. If we’re going to have standardization, we should at least have the collaboration standards enable.

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              • Cory Doctorow@mamot.frOP
                1·
                8 months ago

                I’m Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by #WilWheaton! Pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover. There’s also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback:

                http://thebezzle.org

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