We’re on the verge of a historic catastrophe Is Donald Trump “unhinged” or “unleashed?” And is there any difference? That’s the question that the Washington Post‘s well-sourced reporters Philip Rucker and Robert Costa are currently ruminating over: “This is now a president a little bit alone, isolated and without any moderating influences — and, if anything, a president who is […]

Repeat after me: Primaries are good. Primaries are good. Primaries are good… I used to believe that primaries were a waste of precious fundraising dollars and that they unnecessarily bloodied up our general election candidate. But in 2014, after Mark Schauer was defeated in his run for governor after facing no primary opponent, I changed my views. I came to […]

Paul Ryan warned us. If we return Walberg to DC, savage attacks on Medicare and Medicaid are coming. Since Republicans took full control of the government in 2017, their goal has been destroy the Affordable Care Act. But all they’ve been able to do is uninsure Americans and drive up their premiums. Rep. Tim Walberg voted for the version of […]

I’ve been seeing a number of thoughtful, well-intentioned posts lately from very intelligent friends, wondering how and why Betsy DeVos could be so uninformed about schools and education, and whether she could be convinced to move in better directions by talking with and listening to experienced teachers and ed policy experts. The answer is “no,” and here’s why… I understand […]

Secretary of Education and Saturday Night Live fixture Betsy DeVos is fond of saying that picking a school should be as easy as choosing an Uber or a Lyft. She bases this belief on the economic theories that buttress much of the neo-liberal and conservative approach to education reform: As economist Milton Friedman had theorized decades earlier, Ohio legislators believed […]

Seven years ago the GOP decided its existence depended on a plot to destroy the Obama coalition. It worked. In the debate over whether Democrats should prioritize persuasion or turnout, Connor Lamb may have made a decent case for at least some persuasion this week, at least in districts Donald Trump won by 20 percent. But a piece in the […]

Despite state spending of nearly $80 million to improve early reading skills in Michigan school kids, reading scores have actually gone DOWN since 2014 in our state. Not even the threat of being held back a year by state law was enough to frighten and threaten these children into learning to read better. Michigan’s Republican Attorney General, a man who […]

Speaking at a conservative political conference recently, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos called teachers and public education advocates “defenders of the status quo.” Indeed, it has become one of her favorite insults, and one she seems to use increasingly when she feels defensive or under attack–something that happens pretty frequently. The term “status quo” means “the existing state of affairs, […]

The news has been full of reports over the last few weeks on the need to “harden” our schools in response to the seemingly daily onslaught of school shootings in our nation. Many of our elected officials, such as President* Donald Trump and Secretary of Education* Betsy DeVos, have called for teachers and other school personnel to be given firearms […]

Betsy DeVos claimed last night, in her disastrous “60 Minutes” interview with Lesley Stahl, that “choice” (in the form of vouchers and charter schools) is the solution to improving public education–specifically, that when competition is inserted into the “education marketplace” it forces traditional public schools to improve. For a deeper dive into why this assertion from Sec. DeVos is just […]

Anyone who thinks age confers wisdom needs to meet Donald Trump The students who survived the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and decided to to raise up their voices to make the strange argument that we should actually do something about the 35,000 gun deaths that happen in America every year have inspired some inspired tantrums from the […]