Just when you think the masters of the universe who run the corporate reform movement can’t be even more clueless, you catch wind of the newest effort to turn education into a profit-generating endeavor–this time, a hare-brained scheme to evaluate student teachers, by…and I swear I’m not making this up…observing them as they pretend to teach…wait for it…a fake “classroom” […]

One small section of a 798-page bill titled the “Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2017” was clearly written by lobbyists for the forest products industry. Buried on page 366 is this statement: To support the key role that forests in the United States can play in addressing the energy needs of the United States, the Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of Agriculture, […]

Inventing new ways to punish the vulnerable to pay off the rich This week we’ll find out how much crueler the House version of Trumpcare has become after Michigan Republican Fred Upton enabled the bill to pass by signing on to its provision to let states opt out of guaranteed health benefits and protections that prevent insurers charging Americans with […]

Trump just gave us a chance to save health insurance for 24 million Americans Thanks to Donald Trump’s decision to step on every available rake in front of him, there is now a special counsel investigating the president’s possible collusion with Russian meddling in our election, which obviously happened because you watched much of it happen on TV. Now someone […]

Welcome aboard for our first weekly email where we humbly present three actions you can take this week, usually while wearing your underwear. Subscribe to 3 Asses to Click TrumpCare Still Cometh– Contact your Senators about ACKaH NOW History is about to repeat itself  Let your Senators know that they must do everything they can to slow down TrumpCare so […]

The Hartford Courant recently published a stunningly uninformed editorial on the Connecticut State Board of Education’s decision to eliminate the use of student test scores in teacher evaluations–a move widely praised by most of the education community. The Courant’s position was clear–and a blend of equal parts ignorance and arrogance: The state Board of Education recently agreed not to include […]

Trump is letting conservatives play out 50 years of sick fantasies We’re nearing the point of no return. The firing of James Comey as an obvious means of obstructing a Russia investigation that had been picking up steam (and hoping to pick up more prosecutors) was met with slightly peaked “concerns about the timing” from a few Republicans. But most […]

Gov. Rick Snyder is determined to prove that privatizing critical state services is a big money saver for the state. What his spreadsheets and dashboards fail to take into account are the unseen and unbudgeted prices paid when those private for-profit groups fail to act professionally. First it was Aramark who got busted for: Running out of food Making unauthorized […]

As bad as things are in Flint, Michigan – and they are REALLY BAD – in the past couple of weeks, they’ve gotten far, far worse. With the state of Michigan no longer subsidizing the city residents’ water bills having declared the water there now “safe” (it’s not), the city has now started charging residents again. Keep in mind that […]

A recent blog post by Morna McDermott at Educationalchemy.com connects the dots between the recent surge in popularity of the new “Gig Economy” and unsavory influences from the usual suspects in the corporate education reform agenda, ALEC and Pearson. McDermott points out the K12 aspects of this connection (i.e., Competency Based Education (CBE) as an “alternative” to actual classroom learning, […]

What happens when the evidence showing that vouchers do not improve student learning, or “fix failing schools”, becomes too obvious to ignore? Well, if you’re Betsy DeVos, you just flip the rhetoric (i.e., lie). Just as Ms. DeVos and President Donald Trump are poised to dump $20 billion into a federal voucher program, a new study shows that students receiving […]