Skip to content
Guest Thinkers

CASTLE Round-Up – Week of June 1

This is a quick round-up of what happened on the CASTLE blogs last week… 


Edjurist

Scott Bauries discussed how the No Child Left Behind Act has introduced some new angles into school finance equity lawsuits. Scott also shared some initial thoughts about the burgeoning movement toward national curriculum standards.

Justin Bathon highlighted some issues related to a parent’s request to read the Bible in her son’s kindergarten class.

LeaderTalk

Kimberly Moritz wants to know: Why do we do it this way? She answers: Fear of reproach is how we end up closing the doors to our classrooms and offices and doing the same things year after year.

Mark Stock also asked a question: What does school reform look like when the National Education Association agrees with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce?

Ryan Bretag said, “In this day and age when content is available anytime, anywhere, and to anyone, classrooms can no longer be tethered to the content-driven, physical spaces defined by 20th Century methodologies.”

Jayson Richardson highlighted some generational differences. Apparently I’m part of the Nike Generation.

Dennis Richards noted that 98% of kindergarteners were classified as geniuses when it came to divergent thinking (which is what you do when you are not forced to conform…).

Dangerously Irrelevant

I gave an update on the CASTLE Summer Book Club and I posted three quotes from Richard Longworth’s absolutely brilliant book, Caught in the Middle: America’s Heartland in the Age of Globalism:

  • Any job that does not require face-to-face contact with a customer can be outsourced
  • They are totally unqualified for any job other than the ones they just lost
  • Biosciences will hire no dropouts
  • I also wrapped up my series of quotes from Michael Port’s The Think Big Manifesto:

    • We are the biggest obstacle
    • We are squandering the gifts of the universe
    • Get comfortable with discomfort
    • Finally, I reinstated the Not So Irrelevant feature of this blog, which I use to highlight various links of interest from around the Web. School administrators are busy. Hopefully I can steer them toward some online resources that will be informative and helpful. This time I’m limiting my selections to just 5 links per day. Last week I posted 25 links:

      • Not so irrelevant 015
      • Not so irrelevant 016
      • Not so irrelevant 017
      • Not so irrelevant 018
      • Not so irrelevant 019 (I think this one’s the best)
      • Happy reading!


        Related

        Up Next
        Michael Port says… Revolution is about one person at a time experiencing their own personal empowerment against an existing, deficient (small thinking) system. (p. 13) We are the biggest obstacle […]