Like President-designate Donald Trump, and his nominee for Secretary of Education, Michigan billionaire and Amway heiress, Betsy DeVos, I’m a huuuuge proponent of “school choice.” What’s more American than the freedom to choose (unless you’re a woman, and we’re talking about reproductive health choices–but I digress…)? It’s a fundamental human right to be able to make important personal choices about […]

How Courage Campaign helped put the right and ‘corporate Democrats’ on their heels As I was lining my stomach in preparation for the vice presidential debate, I saw this tweet flutter down my Tweetdeck: .@JerryBrownGov signed EVERY SINGLE BILL we prioritized this year! THX 2 our members 4 making 2016 the most #progressive yr in #CA history! pic.twitter.com/zdlnDa2dm6 — CourageCampaign […]

The charter school “debate” is no longer about charter schools vs. public schools (charters are not public schools — that myth has been exploded), or even about “for profit” vs. “not for profit” charters (the evidence HERE suggests this is really a difference without a distinction). No, the real issue here is about the true purpose of education, and whether […]

Anyone who has followed the state legislature in Michigan since Republicans assumed nearly total control in 2010 will tell you just how devastating their policies and laws have been to public education in our state. From stripping funding from schools to pay for enormous corporate tax cuts to taking away local control and handing it over to non-educator Emergency Managers […]

I used to think that anyone who rose to a position of power and prominence in the world of education had to be smart, well-informed, and have significant teaching experience. The last few years of following the education reform debate, however, has disabused me of that notion. It seems as though so many of the people who hold positions of authority and […]

I got into a bit of a Twitter tussle the other day with a self-styled “education policy expert” for a Michigan corporate education reform group. While this person has never taught in a public school, and has little background or experience in education at all, he is now the Education Policy Director for this organization. After exchanging tweets for a […]

It’s been a rough couple of weeks for the charter school industry, and it doesn’t look like things are looking up any time soon. In the wake of a devastating segment by John Oliver on the charter school business, and calls from civil rights groups like the NAACP and Black Lives Matter, the public is finally starting to question the […]

There are three things that should never be privatized and profitized. You don’t have to be an expert in public policy to know that when profits are on the line, the needs of those being served will be trumped by the desire to increase profits. The first of these things is healthcare. We’ve seen the tragic outcome of that in […]

A new report out by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) shows how Big Energy corporations paid huge sums of money in the form of political donations for up-close-and-personal access to America’s Republican Attorneys General. These AGs, whose job is to advocate for and protect the citizens of their state from crime and corruption, are prime targets of lobbyists […]

Last year, as part of the deal over road funding that led to Proposal 1 on the May 2015 ballot, a school financing report was commissioned by the state to determine what it takes to educate a child in Michigan. This week, that report was released and it shows, as anyone who is paying attention to education in our state […]

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette has been on a four-year crusade to protect corporate profits from the tyranny of keeping our citizens from being exposed to the highly toxic heavy metal mercury. It all started when he joined other tea party extremists in suing the USEPA over new regulations on air emissions that lead to utilities having to do upgrades […]