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 […]

The bad news is that Betsy DeVos and her corporate pals are spending incredible amounts of money to convince parents that public schools are “failing”. The good news is that it’s not working. A new poll out this week shows that, despite efforts by corporatists like Sec. of Education Betsy DeVos and others to push for-profit charter schools under the […]

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 […]

In the past couple of days I’ve seen a number of troubling statements about education and policy-related issues, like standardized testing, from a variety of political leaders. And I keep coming back to the same word to describe how I feel after reading their ideas about the state of public education. Disappointed. One of these statements was from a hopeful […]

The following essay was written by Mitchell Robinson and is cross-posted on his most-excellent blog at MitchellRobinson.net. Robinson is associate professor and chair of music education, and coordinator of the music student teaching program at Michigan State University. Follow Mitchell on Twitter at @mrobmsu. His essay is reposted here with permission. Enjoy. A major plank of most education reform agendas […]

The ultimate expression of running government like a business Earlier this month, I reported about a new approach being taken by Gov. Rick Snyder when it comes to taking over schools with unelected overseers. Because the term “Emergency Manager” is now a national expletive, he has changed the title to school district “Chief Executive Officer (CEO)”. The first school district […]

With Emergency Managers now a four-letter word in Michigan, the Snyder administration has come up with a new way to take over public schools without having to invoke the epithet. In their on-going effort to “run government like a business”, they have appointed a “School District Chief Executive Officer (CEO)” for East Detroit Public Schools: A chief executive officer will […]

The following guest post was written by Amy McKeever, a Pontiac School District teacher and the President of the Pontiac Education Association. Enjoy. While much attention has been focused on the horrendous condition of Detroit Public School buildings, the health and safety concerns are no less dire in the Pontiac School District, where the majority of buildings are over 50 […]

A recent report shows that Michigan higher education is a failure; a failure to the point that our state gets a letter grade of “F”. We are not alone, of course, but that doesn’t matter in the least. As a state, we have continued to fail the young people who have been told since they could comprehend anything related to […]

I have two items of interest regarding Gov. Snyder’s failed experiment on Detroit students known as the Education Achievement Authority. The first is (not exclusive) news about EAA teacher Tiffani Eaton who was fired from her job for breaking up a fight using a broom handle last year. Once details of the event came out, including video, the public hue […]

With Brighton Area Schools deciding not to consider chartering a new charter school in their district, the group trying to open a tea party-led school in Brighton has had to turn their attention to other places. Pasquale Battaglia, the brainchild behind the project and self-described “landlord” sent a letter to Dr. Craig Douglas, the Director of the School/University Partnership Office […]