A recent article in the Detroit Free Press attempts to paint a “fair and balanced” portrait of private school vouchers, the expected lynchpin of Betsy DeVos’ agenda as Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education. The author consulted an apparently impressive array of education scholars, authors, professors, and reform leaders in an effort to bolster this argument, and, indeed, most of the […]

A recent article from EdSurge.com unveiled the newly-enshrined members of the Forbes “30 under 30 Education Leaders to Learn From” Class of 2017. While I tend to believe that most of this genre of rankings articles (Best Colleges, Best Places to Live, Best Chicken Wings–spoiler alert: they’re from Buffalo!) aren’t worth the paper they are printed on–or the bytes they occupy in cyber-space, as the […]

The education reform community’s obsession with “accountability” is based on the premise that teachers are motivated by rewards and punishments to work harder, and teach better. But this approach to accountability is predicated on the view of teachers as disengaged “workers” who are not intrinsically motivated, and must be coerced by threats and extrinsic measures. The truth is that virtually […]

Another #fakenews story is being promoted by the Great Lakes Education Project (GLEP), Betsy DeVos’s personally founded and funded school privatization guerrilla organization in Michigan. The mother quoted here, Maria Salazar, has been writing a version of this article for Betsy-DeVos-funded organizations since at least 2013: this one, from the American Federation for Children–a DeVos voucher front group–introduces us to Maria’s […]

[This post is inspired by a recent masterful piece by one of my real role models as a writer on all topics related to education: Peter Greene, the author of Curmudgication. Thank you, Peter, for so beautifully capturing the frustration that so many teachers feel about the standards and testing movement that seems to be dominating our work in the […]

The news yesterday that Bay City, MI charter school operator Dr. Steve Ingersoll had been sentenced to 41 months in federal prison after being convicted on three counts of tax evasion and conspiracy should be sending shivers up Betsy DeVos’ spine today. Because while Dr. Ingersoll and Ms. DeVos may not know one another, the connections between them are numerous, significant, and […]

Incoming Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos doesn’t just want to expand school choice, provide (unconstitutional) school vouchers so parents can use state tax dollars to send their children to private and religious schools, and privatize our public schools. She’d rather not pay school taxes at all, and was nabbed in a tax dragnet by the state of Michigan for trying to avoid paying […]

The 2016 Eclectagrog souvenir beer glass! The new 2016 Eclectagrog beer glasses have arrived. If you come to our party on this Tuesday, May 17th, you’ll get to take one home as a souvenir! Tickets to the party are $30 in advance and $35 at the door. You can buy them now by clicking HERE. (If you aren’t able to […]

Let’s begin with a tweet. This is honestly the most delusional thing I’ve ever read pic.twitter.com/H4DBai7xmy — Matt O’Brien (@ObsoleteDogma) March 2, 2016 Your delusion of the day comes from Republican consultant Rick Wilson. Wilson is one of the funnier, smarter and more honest Republicans I follow on Twitter — and I say that knowing my compliments can only hurt […]

It’s been awhile since I have written about Aubrey McClendon, the wealth oil magnate working to develop a sensitive Lake Michigan dune area in Saugatuck. Back in 2011, I shared his close ties to Congressman Fred Upton and other very wealthy, very powerful men HERE and HERE. Well, McClendon is back in the news today, this time after being indicted […]

It’s Thanksgiving week, the start of America’s favorite month­-long festival of capitalism. It starts this week with three of the biggest shopping days of the year, and no doubt many of you will be out there trying to score some bargains this weekend. If you’re headed out into the crowds or just planning on sitting at home and clicking your […]