The education reform community’s obsession with “accountability” is based on the premise that teachers are motivated by rewards and punishments to work harder, and teach better. But this approach to accountability is predicated on the view of teachers as disengaged “workers” who are not intrinsically motivated, and must be coerced by threats and extrinsic measures. The truth is that virtually […]

Any vote to repeal is a vote to uninsure millions and sentence America’s sick to untold misery Add America’s sick to the top of the list of those who will most be directly threatened by Donald Trump and the GOP. If the next Republican Congress guts the funding for the Affordable Care Act next month, which it almost all but […]

Apparently things are just fine in Michigan because Republicans here have resorted to (a) making something illegal more illegal and (b) to restricting local municipalities from passing local regulations for their community. So much for “local control”. The first bill makes the sale of fetal tissue resulting from abortions more illegal. I say it makes it “more illegal” because it’s […]

If you think our biggest problem is that the super rich aren’t super rich enough, the GOP is fighting for you Take a look at this: Watch the income distribution in America change pic.twitter.com/WS80BT2UlT — Conrad Hackett (@conradhackett) December 18, 2016 If you look at this, you’d think that one of the biggest problems in our economy — if not […]

After Attorney General Bill Schuette’s bombshell charges against two former Flint Emergency Managers last week, Flint is back in the news and, as usual, is a complete embarrassment to our state. First, we have news this morning that an Assistant Attorney General in Bill Schuette’s office signed off on an administrative consent order that led to the charges being filed […]

Another #fakenews story is being promoted by the Great Lakes Education Project (GLEP), Betsy DeVos’s personally founded and funded school privatization guerrilla organization in Michigan. The mother quoted here, Maria Salazar, has been writing a version of this article for Betsy-DeVos-funded organizations since at least 2013: this one, from the American Federation for Children–a DeVos voucher front group–introduces us to Maria’s […]

Dems need to pick a fight, and it must start with Tom Price’s confirmation hearing In a must-read New York Times‘ op-ed “The Quiet War on Medicaid,” Ann Arbor-native and Clinton/Obama administration veteran Gene Sperling sounds a warning that needs to be blasted out at high volumes at all hours. Republicans are definitely coming for Medicaid. And if they’re aren’t […]

“Two North” is a story about one Christmas when my mom was spending time on the psychiatric ward of our town’s hospital after trying to commit suicide to escape a physically-abusive husband. I was thirteen. It was a cataclysmic event in our lives but it brought us together into a two-person tribe like no other event ever has in my […]

[This post is inspired by a recent masterful piece by one of my real role models as a writer on all topics related to education: Peter Greene, the author of Curmudgication. Thank you, Peter, for so beautifully capturing the frustration that so many teachers feel about the standards and testing movement that seems to be dominating our work in the […]

The following guest post was written by Ron Bieber, president of the Michigan AFL-CIO. You can sign up to receive legislative action alerts from the Michigan AFL-CIO HERE. You can also follow them at facebook.com/miaflcio, twitter.com/miaflcio, and twitter.com/ronbiebermi. Enjoy. Lame duck sessions are when bad bills happen to good people. That’s been true in Michigan after every major election since […]

Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, John’s 22-year-old son remained covered under his insurance, just when they needed it most. It wasn’t your typical nosebleed. When John came home from his job as a union tradesman one day in August, his son had a “gusher” of a nosebleed, he says. John immediately saw his son needed to be in the […]