During the 2014 campaign in Michigan, we were told repeatedly that Republicans hadn’t cut education funding. Despite the fact that they had actually taken BILLIONS OF DOLLARS from our schools each year, the told us with a straight face that, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, they had increased funding for our classrooms. Now, just a few weeks […]

The past three weeks I have been involved in a project that is irrelevant to this discussion save the fact that it gave me time to think. The work I was doing allowed me time to clear my thoughts and to allow a stream of consciousness that maybe I didn’t realize I needed, but I did. We are a few […]

Tomorrow night, the Leonard Kaplan Education Collaborative for Critical Urban Studies will host its innaugural event, a presentation by Dr. David E. Kirkland titled “The Practice of Freedom – Understanding the Complexities of Teaching and Learning in Urban Settings”. The Leonard Kaplan Education Collaborative is a newly-formed group and is headed up by the amazing Friend of the Blog Dr. […]

The teachers in the Chelsea Public Schools system have been working without a contract since June 30, 2014. Negotiations for a new contract began in the spring and continued throughout the spring and summer. However, the Chelsea Education Association (CEA) and the school board were unable to come to an agreement. As a next step, the CEA has requested a […]

Welcome to Michigan under Republican rule Flint schools have been in financial trouble since 2011 when it first went into debt. In 2012, they eliminated 460 teachers and staff positions. In May of this year, they laid off 91 more teachers and staff and slashed benefits of the remaining teachers as an alternative to a 19% pay cut. Later in […]

In the wake of the blistering multi-day expose by the Detroit Free Press detailing the failures of for-profit charters in Michigan and the astonishing lack of transparency and accountability they enjoy, the charter school industry is ramping up its propaganda machine. Just in the past few days, there have been two op-eds in The Detroit News promoting their for-profit-with-tax-dollars model […]

I have updated the post to give details on the EMU Board of Regents meeting. See the end of the post. Today’s guest post is from Eastern Michigan University College of Education faculty member professor Stephen Wellinski. Prof. Wellinski has been a leader in demanding that EMU end its partnership with Gov. Snyder’s failed education experiment on Detroit school kids […]

This Friday, November 21st, the Social Foundations of Education program at Eastern Michigan University will hold their 2nd annual fall Social Foundations of Education Conference. This year, the title is “The Assault on Common(s) Values: Imagining and Creating Collective Responses to Neoliberalism”. As part of the conference, there will be a panel discussion at 6 p.m. titled “EAA Storytelling and […]

According to Dictionary.com, hatred is defined in this way: verb (used without object), hated, hating. To feel intense dislike, or extreme aversion or hostility. It is my firm belief that as a society we use the word hate too casually. I offer this preamble to my last shot at motivating you to vote, act, and make sure others vote tomorrow, […]

This is the fourth and last in profiling a series of women candidates running for the Michigan State House of Representatives. As voters we have an amazing opportunity to realize something special on Tuesday and that is electing more women to the State House, something I believe is essential to moving the state forward. After spending a short amount of […]

This is the third in our four part series on women running for the State House of Representatives on Tuesday. I am a big proponent of more women being elected at all levels of government and I hope that this series helps to make that more realistic for these women candidates. Stacey Dogonski is a firebrand and I mean that […]