po·lit·i·cal – /pəˈlitikəl/ – adjective: of or relating to the government or the public affairs of a country Updated with video of Rachael Siemen asking her question. Yesterday at a forum at the Michigan House Office Building, the Mackinac Center brought in a representative from another notorious corporatist front group, The Heritage Foundation, to spew propaganda regarding the raising of […]

Back in 2012, Pontiac Emergency Manager Louis Schimmel signed an agreement with Oakland County to manage monies from a substantial HUD grant. That turned out to be a nearly disasterous decision that would have resulted in a loss of upwards of $800,000 per year for Pontiac. Thankfully, Congressman Gary Peters stepped in a saved the day (and the money.) At […]

I’ve received word that a substitute bill to expand the EAA in Michigan is being rushed through the state Senate with a vote to come as early as today. The bill is, according to my sources, being championed by Republican Senator Bruce Caswell with the goal of getting it passed quickly before the Senate goes on it summer break in […]

NOTE: Updated to clarify the restriction on unions using official school emails to conduct business. NOTE 2: This post has been updated HERE. The anti-union corporatist group the Mackinac Center is using public school email systems to encourage teachers to leave the Michigan Education Association, one of two major teachers unions in the state. I have confirmed that at least […]

Next Saturday, June 14 the Partnership for Music Education Policy Development will host a Music Education Policy Summit from 9:30 a.m.-3:00 p.m. on the campus of Michigan State University at the Cook Recital Hall in the MSU Music Building. The purpose of the Summit is to examine the most pressing needs regarding music education policy in the state of Michigan. […]

I had planned to write about the sad closing of the Catherine Ferguson Academy, a high school for Detroit girls who are pregnant or who have young children that gave them a second chance they can get nowhere else. However, Rachel Maddow covered this last night so much better than I could have so I’ll just let her take the […]

In Ipswich, Massachusetts, a group of sixth graders, led by their teacher, had a novel idea: send a bill to the corporation who used them as guinea pigs to test their newest standardized test. Two sixth grade math classes lost an entire week’s worth of instruction taking a trial run of a new test and now they want payment for […]

Last month, the for-profit charter corporation Mosaica announced that it was breaking its contract, signed under an Emergency Manager, to run the entire Muskegon Heights school district. Why? Because they couldn’t make a profit off of running a school system in an economically depressed community. I know. You’re shocked. “To be brutally honest – they had to be brutally honest […]

Michigan Republicans want to move authority over K-12 assessment testing to the Department of Treasury. It’s a move that tells you all you need to know about how Republicans feel about schools. Currently, the responsibility for school assessment lies with the Department of Education. That’s exactly where you’d imagine it would be and where it has been for years. It […]

Correcting one more bad decision on top of so, so many others Bowing to public outrage, officials at the Education Achievement Authority — Republican Governor Rick Snyder’s failed education experiment with Detroit students — have reinstated fired teacher Tiffani Eaton. Eaton was fired for breaking up an exceedingly violent fight in her classroom by whacking one of the kids on […]

NOTE: this story has been updated HERE. When Tiffani Eaton stopped a violent classroom fight between two strapping high school boys by whacking one of them with a broom, she was fired by the Education Achievement Authority that runs Pershing High School in Detroit. EAA administrators defended her firing saying that she violated state corporal punishment laws; that it amounted […]