Politics are Crushing the Standards

The recent news that Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin signed a bill to, in the parlance of the times, repeal and replace the common-core standards in her state was surprising, to say the least, notwithstanding a legal challenge to the repeal filed in the Oklahoma Supreme Court by parents, teachers, and state board of education members on June 25. Before Gov. Fallin was against the standards, she supported them. [excerpt

Maybe It\u27s Time to Put Betsy DeVos in \u27Receive Mode\u27

By now you have probably heard about Betsy DeVos\u27 big day out recently. She tried to visit a middle school in Washington but found the front door blocked when she showed up. This led, of course, to the publication of an already-infamous cartoon suggesting that DeVos is actually a modern-day Civil Rights warrior, and to the suggestion that protesters blocking DeVos at the schoolhouse door was the functional (if not moral) equivalent of preventing black children from attending segregated schools in the 1950s and \u2760s. It\u27s an argument that is morally wrong, historically stupid, and patently offensive. [excerpt

Looking for a Cure for Educationl Exhaustion

Whoa, folks! An entire month got away from me there. Ever had that happen to you? If you\u27re a teacher I\u27m guessing it probably has. I wish I could say that there was a good reason I hadn\u27t written anything at all on this blog in the past few weeks, but the sad truth is that I haven\u27t really been any busier than usual. Every semester becomes a slog at some point—that right there might be a topic for another post soon; maybe I could write two in a month!—but that hasn\u27t stopped me before. I had some extra responsibilities this year, but usually that just provides more material to write about. The truth is that I stopped writing because I was exhausted—not physically, but mentally. For a good part of the past month I had no real interest in thinking about schools or politics or education policy at all. (excerpt

Why Is Mulvaney Opposed to Feeding Poor Kids at School?

Folks, you\u27ve got to get a load of this guy Mick Mulvaney. Just looking at his name conjures images of a character from a gangster novel set during Prohibition, but he\u27s actually the Trump White House\u27s director of the Office of Management and Budget. That means he\u27s the hatchet man—the guy responsible for making sure everything Trump wants to cut gets cut. And it means he\u27s a real human, too. Allegedly. Case in point: Mulvaney has been producing amazing sound bites lately to explain the contents of Trump\u27s proposed federal budget. [excerpt

These Testing Obsessions Are Getting a Little Weird

This morning, as she was getting ready for work, my wife noticed something unusual about our son, who is in third grade. He was quietly eating breakfast, like he always does, but something about him was different. He was wearing a plain white t-shirt. He must have noticed that she was looking at him, because he looked up and said: Do you think it\u27s okay if I wear this shirt today? His wardrobe normally consists of about five t-shirts that he cycles through, one after the other, and sometimes tries to wear twice in a row if we don\u27t catch him.[excerpt

Students at Kansas Newspaper Prove Democracy Isn\u27t Dead Yet

In May of 1897, Mark Twain was in London finishing up an around-the-world speaking tour he had started two years earlier. He got there right after his cousin, James Ross Clemens, who had fallen ill while visiting London a couple of weeks earlier. In a letter he wrote on May 31, Twain addressed rumors saying that he had fallen deathly ill and had even died. I can understand perfectly how the report of my illness got about, he said, adding: I have even heard on good authority that I was dead. It was his cousin\u27s illness that was ascribed to Twain; in fact, Twain had never been ill, and was certainly not dead. The report of my illness grew out of his illness, he said, referring to his cousin\u27s bout with bad health. The report of my death was an exaggeration. [excerpt

It\u27s Like They\u27re Building the Airplane While It\u27s in the Air

One of the things I was most concerned about when I left the classroom to become a teacher educator was losing my credibility. Everybody knows the rap on teacher educators: they\u27re out of touch, too theoretical, disconnected from the everyday life of the classroom teacher. Of course, sometimes criticism is like a good joke. It\u27s only funny because it\u27s true—sometimes. [excerpt

Teach Your Students Well: This Land Is Their Land

Most people know Woody Guthrie as the author of the song that\u27s often called our second national anthem, This Land Is Your Land. Not everyone knows that it\u27s a protest song. In the winter of 1940, Guthrie was hitchhiking his way east to New York City at the invitation of Will Geer, an actor best known later in his life for playing Grandpa Zebulon Tyler Walton on the show The Waltons. At the time, Geer was a stage actor and political activist who saw something in Woody Guthrie that he wanted to share with the rest of the world. Guthrie, for his part, was a down-and-out Okie with limited prospects and four mouths to feed besides his own. He had been spending time traveling back and forth between California and Texas trying to stir his fellow Americans out of the slumber caused by the Great Depression. He had already written hundreds of songs but he wasn\u27t done yet. (excerpt

No, Education Isn\u27t the Civil Rights Issue of Our Time

George W. Bush said it as he warned us about the soft bigotry of low expectations. Barack Obama said it. So did Mitt Romney, Arne Duncan, and John McCain. And now Donald Trump is saying it, too. In his first joint-session address to Congress, President Trump promised that our children will grow up in a nation of miracles and added the familiar kicker: Education is the civil rights issue of our time. He said it right before he announced his plan to ask Congress to pass new legislation supporting school choice. His idea of a school reform miracle, apparently, is to convince America to accept choice, rather than equity, as the controlling idea in public education. (excerpt

Should We Give Betsy DeVos a Chance? I Don\u27t Think So

Jennifer Steele, who teaches at American University, has made a heroic attempt to convince us that Betsy DeVos actually deserves a lot more credit than she\u27s been getting for her performance as secretary of education so far. While I appreciate the sentiment—everybody deserves a fair shake, and should be judged on what they actually do, not what we think they might do—I have to say I\u27m not convinced. [excerpt