Today’s interview is with a former EAA teacher named Chris Turkaly. Chris taught at Nolan Elementary-Middle School in the EAA for awhile before moving to Mary McLeod Bethune Elementary-Middle School. During his time there, Chris struggled. He had already spent several years teaching in challenged schools in California but coming to the EAA was a completely different experience. Instead getting […]

You can’t unskew a poll this skewed up Updated twice below. Karl Rove, the man who was absolutely certain that Mitt Romney was going to pull out an astonishing victory over Barack Obama despite all evidence to the contrary, has commissed a new series of polls that say Republicans are going to take back the Senate. Michigan was among the […]

Nothing crass or pandering about that… In typical Republican fashion, Gov. Snyder is proposing an election year tax cut that barely covers one trip to the grocery store. It appears that, after doing the math, he’s determined that he can buy your vote for $75. Roughly 1.3 million Michigan taxpayers could be in line for a rebate check averaging $75 […]

Something more important going on than revelations that your district is failing Detroit students? Given the turmoil that has rocked the Education Achievement Authority since teachers have begun speaking out about the outrageous teaching conditions and learning environment in EAA schools, you would think the district’s Executive Board and Board of Directors would have plenty of business to attend to […]

This week, the Ann Arbor Education Association will be sponsoring a forum on the Governor Snyder’s failed education experiment known as the Education Achievement Authority. I will be speaking at the event and participating in the panel discussion along with Wayne State University professor Thomas Pedroni, State House Rep. Jeff Irwin, Eastern Michigan University professor Christopher Robbins, and others. The […]

All photos by Anne C. Savage, special to Eclectablog President Barack Obama traveled to East Lansing, Michigan yesterday to sign the federal farm bill into law. Last updated in 2008, the bill in its current form has been worked on for four years. Much of the wrangling was contentious and no topic was as contentious as its impact on the […]

No interview write-up today, though I’m actually doing an interview. The interviews take 2-3 hours to write up so I’m taking a break. However, I thought I’d share a few odds and ends that I’ve learned over the past couple of weeks that haven’t, at least so far, made it into the pieces I’ve done on the Education Achievement Authority. […]

Michigan RNC candidate calls for the ‘purging’ of gays from the GOP First, we had a a Republican National Committee member from Michigan saying that Vladimir Putin’s anti-gay propaganda laws were “common sense.” When Dave Agema paired that insight with an anti-Muslim post, his colleagues stopped cheering him on and realized that he could blow the millions the Kochs are […]

If you want to position yourself as an alternative to Tea Party zealot Rep. Kerry Bentivolio, maybe associating with Donald Trump isn’t the best idea. We’re judged by the company we keep, and Republican Congressional candidate David Trott is making his allegiances known. The latest report from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) shows plenty of contributions to Trott for Congress, […]

Another win for the good guys… The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan today granted a motion to reopen the lawsuit filed by the Sugar Law Center and others against Michigan officials challenging the constitutionality of Public Act 436, Michigan’s undemocratic Emergency Manager Law. From their press release: The Court’s order follows three orders from the […]

NOTE: My reporting on the Education Achievement Authority involves multiple posts. You can read all of my coverage of the EAA by clicking HERE. One of the questions that I have asked during the course of my reporting on Governor Snyder’s Education Achievement Authority (EAA) is, “Why would you create something that seems designed to fail?” One answer is that […]