I have written about this before at this blog: John Proctor, in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, nearly bends to signing a false confession, but then has a moment of clarity and proclaims: “Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am […]
Saving DC Schools with Catastrophe Innovation!
June 5, 2013 By 17 Comments
Emma Brown in The Washington Post offers an important window into school reform occurring (ad infinitum) in Washington DC: D.C. Council member David A. Catania plans to announce wide-ranging legislation Tuesday that could substantially reshape the city’s public education system, as he seeks to increase funding to educate poor children, give more power to principals, […]
Celebrity Losing Popularity?
May 22, 2013 By 2 Comments
George Parker looks at celebrity, building on the renewed interest in The Great Gatsby: What are celebrities, after all? They dominate the landscape, like giant monuments to aspiration, fulfillment and overreach. They are as intimate as they are grand, and they offer themselves for worship by ordinary people searching for a suitable object of devotion. […]
Schools as Prisons
May 17, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Please read my new piece at Truthout connecting education reform with the New Jim Crow Era: Education Reform in the New Jim Crow Era There are significant parallels between the war on drugs and market-oriented education reform, and both create an underclass – especially among African American males, according to Thomas, who traces the history.
Lessons from Finland and Wisconsin
May 15, 2013 By 6 Comments
Many of us who are lifelong educators find clinging to our optimism a difficult challenge. But two recent pieces may signal hope, a light at the long and dark tunnel of corporate education reform built on false claims and flawed solutions. While I urge you to read and share widely the two works below, I […]
Beneath the Surface: More Public School Dismantling in SC
May 5, 2013 By 2 Comments
My home state of South Carolina is a poster child of disfunction, a self-loathing mutt of myopic bible-thumping, state-rights’ libertarianism mated with historical and systemic poverty born out of racism and the lingering burden of slavery. SC voted for Newt Gingrich in the 2012 Republican presidential primaries and now stands as the home of former-governor turned […]
Why Are We in “the Age of Infinite Examination”?
April 27, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Within the perpetual education and education reform debates, the topics of poverty and testing are central themes (poverty is no excuse, and better tests are always being promised), but we too often are missing the key elements that should be addressed in the dynamic that exists between poverty and testing. Please read the full discussion […]
The Manufactured Support of the Marginalized
April 26, 2013 By 9 Comments
A prisoner stands before a court and is told to make a decision between execution and amputation. The prison chooses amputation. Imagine using this situation to claim that amputation is the right thing to do for a generalized population because the prisoner chose it. Now, consider Michelle Alexander in her The New Jim Crow: Yet […]
Action, Not Tributes and Rhetoric
April 18, 2013 By 2 Comments
Political tributes and rhetoric allow one existence for the power elites while preserving an entirely different existence for everyone else. In education reform, this is calling for and implementing policy for “other people’s children” that is unlike what those in power secure for their own children. Read the full post HERE.
The Ignored Arm of the Commons and the Invisible Hand of the Market
April 17, 2013 By 3 Comments
Education Week has posted a new report on charter school funding, the blog titled “Charter Schools’ Funding Lags, Study Finds”: Charter school students receive about $4,000 less in per-pupil funding than their regular public school peers according to an analysis of five regions across the U.S., a new report has found. The report, conducted by […]
CCSS, Communism, Cursive…and Pods
April 16, 2013 By 2 Comments
In 2013, two ideologies are intersecting—not unlike SF and horror—the progressive and often liberal education community and the libertarian and populist rightwing commentators and public. The common demon? Common Core State Standards (CCSS). While the progressive education community tends to reject CCSS as yet more of the failed accountability, standards, and high-stakes testing paradigm (the insanity […]
Rhee’s “Gravy Train” of Hypocrisy
April 14, 2013 By 9 Comments
“Former Washington, D.C., schools chancellor Michelle Rhee had trouble recalling the names of South Carolina’s ‘key players’ after a quick visit to the State House on Wednesday. But state lawmakers may want to take note of hers,” reports The State (Columbia, SC). But in a rare moment of candor and even more unusual modesty, when asked to […]
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