Delusion and Negligence: The Two-Party System in the U.S.
With Twitter, texting, and hundreds of cable stations surrounding me, my goal last night was a Herculean one: Avoid at all costs the waste that was the so-called presidential debates.I've now crested...
View ArticleLance Armstrong: All-American Bull$#!@
DISCLAIMER AND SPOILER: If you are a Lance Armstrong advocate, please relax and read on. This isn't really about Lance, but it is about you, and you, and you, and the good ol' U.S. of A.In August, The...
View ArticleSave Unsuccessful Charter Schools (SUCS), Now!
Increasingly over the past decade, children and their parents all across the U.S. are choosing to enroll in or are being chosen to attend charter schools that are average or failing. Since these...
View ArticleThe Polonius Chronicles: The Invisible Hand and the King Imperative
PrologueLike Jane Goodall among the chimpanzees, I ventured briefly into the role of anthropologist several years ago, listening most days for extended periods of time to a national radio show host to...
View ArticleArmstrong's Invisible Hand: The Strong Arm of Corporate Sponsors
Professional cycling is a sport rich in tradition. One such tradition is personified by Bernard Hinault, known with equal parts respect and disdain as le Patron (the boss of the peloton). On the road,...
View ArticleThe MLK Imperative in an Era of "No Excuses"
My father was a hard-ass, a Southern version of the Red Forman-type made popular in That 70's Show. I grew up, then, in a "no excuses" environment rooted in the 1950s work ethic my father...
View ArticleTwo-Headed Dragon of Education Policy
Recently, I posted a chart highlighting that current “No Excuses” Reform (NER) claims and policies are no different than traditional problems and policies in public education.The great ironies of NER...
View ArticleThe “Naïve Expert” Problem in Market Paradigm and Education Reform
In a letter written to Charles Thompson in 1787, Thomas Jefferson stated: "The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees, in every object, only the traits which favor that theory." The...
View ArticleDivision of Labor: Conquering the "Public"
Anthony Cody, in his Living in Dialogue blog, has recently addressed the strategy common among "No Excuses" Reformers (NER) using a corporate playbook to render all that is public private: Cody...
View ArticleMisreading Customer Satisfaction, Compromise in Education Reform
I am sick for the second time in about a month—and I am rarely sick, having accumulated a rather robust immune system over almost thirty years of teaching.While sick, however, my rational self wilts...
View Article"Value Added" Offers No Value for Education Reform
U.S. public education has been mired in a technocratic paradigm—a narrow pursuit of efficiency through metrics-based science—since the early 1900s (Kliebard, 1995; Kincheloe, Steinberg, & Hinchey,...
View ArticleThe Etymology of "Miracle": On the Politics of Lies
My doctoral work was a trifecta of marginalized scholarship since I attained an EdD (shunned second cousin to the PhD) by preparing a qualitative dissertation (closeted step-cousin of the sainted...
View ArticleThe CCSS Stampede: Trampling Why, What, How We Teach
Officially yesterday, everyone I know even casually has now shared with me a video of Sir Ken Robinson or some very similar TED video. The sharing always includes, either directly or implicitly, the...
View ArticleThe Ignored Lessons of Education Reform
Michael Petrilli’s charge that the recent elections confirm “[t]eachers unions remain the Goliath to the school reformers’ David” is neither a brave claim to make in a paper serving a right-to-work...
View Article"Miracle" Schools Redux
Throughout the decade since the implementation of No Child Left Behind, the accountability reform movement has been driven by two powerful and connected narratives: claims of "miracle" schools posed as...
View ArticleClones, Assembly-line Capitalism, and Wage-Slaves
Beyond its flair for the fantastic, science fiction (SF) almost always offers the allegorical. In SF, humankind literally masters cloning and produces not quite human slaves, facilitating some sort of...
View ArticlePreaching for (Teach for) America
What do the following have in common?• Three high-quality teachers in a row can increase student achievement and even life-long earning. [1]• Teachers are the single-most important factor in student...
View ArticleMourn, Reflect, Act
I agree with Diane Ravitch who combines her intellect, her scholarship and her inspiring humanity in a blog today: "Today We Mourn."I have been a life-long teacher, and yesterday's killing of children...
View ArticleLife among the Ruins
Adrienne Rich's The School Among the Ruins [1] confronts the intersection of school and violence, poems written in the time designated as the turn of a century:"Rich cited another catalyst for 'The...
View ArticleFailing Children: "They're All Our Children"
It should not have taken the killing of 20 innocent children and 6 dedicated educators in a school, but I will not belabor that point.At a prayer vigil in Newtown, CT, on the evening of December 16,...
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