Iserotope

Happy Thursday and welcome to The Highlighter #122. I’d like to welcome our 14 new subscribers and the entire community. Thank you for your readership! This week, I’ve chosen articles about education, school segregation, xenophobia, and face blindness. All of the pieces are worth reading, of course, but if you have time for just two, check out the first and last ones. Let’s just say that I feel lucky that I do not suffer from prosopagnosia. Enjoy!

The New Subscriber Contest has concluded! To great fanfare, a total of 85 new subscribers have joined. (Hello, new subscribers, and welcome!) This week’s winner is Abby B. Thank you for your word of mouth! The overall winner of this month’s contest, and recipient of the grand prize, is Abby P! Congratulations! Be on the lookout for a photograph soon with the lucky winners, and please keep getting the word out about the newsletter. Thank you!

Also, HHH #3 is today at Dalva in San Francisco beginning at 5:30 pm. Get your free ticket here. The Highlighter Happy Hour is a great way to meet smart, caring people and chat about the articles!

Two Schools of Thought — www.newyorker.com

What’s the best way to educate our children? For Eva Moskowitz, the controversial founder and leader of Success Academy Charter Schools in New York, the recipe is one part rigid discipline, one part progressive curriculum. Ms. Moskowitz’s combative style has rankled many educators and politicians, including Mayor Bill de Blasio, for its punitive teaching techniques in the quest for order and excellence. But parts of Success Academy’s model — rigorous reading, academic conversation, in-depth project-based learning — are considered best practice across the country. (Too bad its teachers stay only three years, on average.) ⏳⏳

Will America’s Schools Ever Be Desegregated? — psmag.com

Should we spend time and energy trying to desegregate schools, or is that goal impossible at this point? Does the average American even want their kids to attend integrated schools? This article argues that we should not abandon hope, that the dream of Brown v. Board is still attainable. Instead of making the excuse that housing segregation forces school segregation, it’s time to be creative and learn from case studies in Louisville and Hartford. One strategy is to blame charter schools for resegregation, as Myron Orfield (yes, the brother of UCLA’s Gary Orfield) is doing in a current lawsuit in Minnesota. ⏳

Who Gets to Live in Fremont, Nebraska? — slate.com

Fremont, Nebraska is a little rural town of 26,000 people. Costco wants to build a $300 million chicken plant, which would create 1,000 jobs and promote partnerships with local farmers. But most Fremonters are leery about the proposition, even though they understand that their town desperately needs economic development. The problem is that the Costco project would attract more Latinos to Fremont. Things used to be better, they say, back in the 1950s, when meatpacking earned a solid salary, before unions were busted, and before Latinos came. ⏳⏳

Face Blindness: Who Are You Again? — fivedials.com

Are you good with faces but not with names? For people with prosopagnosia, the opposite is true. The inability to recognize faces leads to embarrassment and debilitation. Read writer Sarah Lyall’s experience with face blindness, including her ways to cope, and if you’re not too nervous, take the Cambridge Face Memory Test, which is creepy even if you score well. (I scored below average.) ⏳⏳

This Week’s Podcast: Barbara Shreve is on this week’s show! An outstanding Math educator and my close friend, Barbara also has a background in journalism, which prompted her to select the Washington Post-Project Veritas article from last week’s issue. Barbara and I also trade stories about working on our high school newspaper together. If you like the podcast, encourage your friends to subscribe, or leave a review on iTunes!

Great work! You all did a fine job reading this week’s issue of The Highlighter. Share your thoughts below by giving this issue a thumbs-up or -down. Also, please welcome our new subscribers: Ana, Dana, Rebecca, Suzanne, Sunny, Namkyu, N, Jennifer, Christine, Carina, Woo, Nora, Arianna, and Cindy! Tell your friends and family about The Highlighter by forwarding them this issue, sending them a link to subscribe, or encouraging them to check out the website! Have a wonderful week, and I’ll see you again next Thursday at 9:10 am.

Hi there and welcome to The Highlighter #121! This week’s articles center on themes I’ve followed in previous issues of the newsletter: urban education, gentrification, journalism, and death. If you care about education, I highly recommend the lead article. It’s best read after listening to Code Switch’s four-part series on Ron Brown College Preparatory High School, which captivated many of you. Please reach out if you want to talk about the article.

Congratulations to loyal subscriber Jessica for winning this week’s round of the New Subscriber Contest. Great work! Honorable mentions go to Kiera, Abby P, Erik, Gail, and Omar. There is just one week left, and we’re 34 new subscribers away from meeting the goal of 100. Please think of one great person in your life who is currently bereft of The Highlighter. Rectify this situation by encouraging them to subscribe. Thank you!

Also, get your (free) ticket for Highlighter Happy Hour #3, which will be at Dalva in San Francisco next Thursday, Dec. 7, beginning at 5:30 pm. HHH is a great way to talk about the articles with smart, caring people like yourself. Extra points for newbies and returning subscribers!

What Really Happened At The School Where ‘Every Senior Got Into College’ — www.npr.org

Last year, every single graduating senior at Ballou High School in Washington, D.C. got accepted to college. Not bad, right? This exposé by NPR and WAMU’s Kate McGee begs to differ. Half of the seniors missed three months of school or more and still graduated. If you’re trending cynical about public education, this article will stoke your fire. Examples: students getting 50 percent on assignments they didn’t turn in, administrators urging teachers to pass students who rarely attended, hordes of students milling about in the gym instead of going to class, students taking credit recovery classes on computers as the norm, district officials (like former Oakland superintendent Antwan Wilson) spouting low-expectations gobbledygook. One reaction is to get angry and cast blame. Another is to acknowledge these practices happen everywhere. ⏳⏳

The Google Bus — thepointmag.com

If you live in the Bay Area, you remember the protests against corporate buses that began in late-2013. This well-written reflection by Min Li Chan, who worked at Google, offers a perspective from a tech worker’s point of view. (Ms. Chan suggests that the term “techie” is pejorative.) The piece is naïve and defensive at points, particularly at the beginning, but if you keep reading, you’ll reach Ms. Chan’s point: When protesting gentrification, othering your opponent isn’t helpful and won’t solve the problem. ⏳⏳

Long Live Journalism — www.washingtonpost.com

My high school newspaper adviser Nick Ferentinos  taught me the rights and responsibilities of the free press. The most important responsibility was making sure we got the facts right. The Washington Post passed that challenge this week as Project Veritas tried a sting operation to discredit the Post. If you haven’t seen this video of reporter Stephanie McCrummen and her professional questioning of scammer Jaime Phillips, please watch. While you’re at it, check out these 58 feel-good journalism movies, thanks to loyal subscriber Jessica. ⏳

Ushering My Father to a Good Death — longreads.com

I keep featuring articles about death (#4, #15, #52, #66, #80, #109) to remind me of the gift of life. This poignant and intimate piece by Karen Brown, of her father’s death from pancreatic cancer, captures well the quotidian events that occur in the last days of our lives. After Ms. Brown’s father chooses to end dialysis, he drinks coffee, watches TV, has Faulkner read to him, listens to birds, and snuggles one last time with his daughter. ⏳

Thank you for reading this week’s issue of The Highlighter! Share your thoughts below by giving this issue a thumbs-up or -down. Also, please welcome our new subscribers: Grace, Michele, Colm, William, Heather, Lois, Corey, Mark, Cindy, and Philippe! Tell your friends and family about The Highlighter by forwarding them this issue, sending them a link to subscribe, or encouraging them to check out the website! Have a wonderful week, and I’ll see you again next Thursday at 9:10 am.