Elizabeth Green, the founder of “Chalkbeat,” an online education site, is out with a fawning, sycophantic puff piece on Eva Moskowitz, the leader of the Success Academy network of charter schools in New York City. Some of my favorite edubloggers have already responded with their thoughts (Peter Greene, aka Curmudgication; Mercedes Schneider here), so I’ll make my comments on this […]

We’ve been seeing a lot of posts and news pieces lately about how Roy Moore, the alleged child molester about to be elected to the Senate from Alabama, does not represent the Republican Party, Christians, or even conservatives.   Well, it’s time to call this out for the lie it is. It may make conservatives, or Christians, feel better about […]

As an academic who works in the world of words, it’s been by turns horrifying and fascinating watching Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore and his defenders try to rationalize his–alleged–history of sexual harassment, assault, inappropriate, and illegal (at the time–the statute of limitations now having expired) behavior with teenage girls. Given that Moore and most of his supporters in […]

As the saying (curse, actually) goes, “May you live in interesting times.” And we certainly do. Like many of you, I wake up every day, pour my first cup of coffee, and switch on the TV to see what outrageous thing the current inhabitant of the White House has done, or tweeted, overnight. And when I want to know how […]

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos made headlines this week at Harvard University. I’m still confused as to why Harvard invited her to speak at an event allegedly focused on public education–she never attended a public school, never sent her own children to a public school, never studied education, and has never taught anyone anything–and the reaction to her talk suggests […]

To save you from having to read this claptrap, I’m going to share the gist of a new “report” on teacher preparation programs from David Bergeron & Michael Dannenberg. Who the heck are these guys, you might ask? Well, our friend and Highly Effective Curmudgeon, Peter Greene, fills us in on their “credentials,” and it’s pretty much what we expected–they […]

In the last week or so, we’ve seen two incidents that have generated an apology, and the apology’s evil twin, the do-over.   The second, and far less troubling, was the “adorable” social media rant unleashed by Louise Linton, the wife of Sec. of the Treasury Stephen Mnuchin. For those who haven’t seen it, here’s a quick summary:   Linton […]

At this point, 3 days after Nazis marched through an American city, killing one woman and terrorizing thousands of peaceful citizens, there is nothing that Trump could say that would do him any good. It’s simply not enough to come to the American people 72 hours after white supremacists have rioted and killed an innocent human being, clearly having been […]

Someone is going to have to explain to me the “grievances” these idiots in Charlottesville are protesting about, with their Tiki torches and baseball bats. I’m white, and try as hard as I can, I just can’t come up with anything. A statue being removed? Really? When black men are being murdered for a broken tail light? When schools in inner […]

A jointly-authored article from Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and State Superintendent of Schools Brian Whiston appeared recently in The Detroit News. The article was supposed to be a defense of the state’s school reform agenda–which has been, shall we say…underwhelming…in terms of actually…you know…uh…reforming our state’s schools. The overarching theme of the article, such as it was, was that greater […]

Peggy Noonan is out with a new opinion piece in the Wall St. Journal (“Trump is Woody Allen Without the Humor”) on the daily circus that is the Trump administration, and it’s getting a lot of attention. While I rarely agree with Noonan’s “takes” on the world of politics, the thing that I found the most troubling in this essay was not […]