The following essay was written by Tina Beveridge. Tina is a veteran music educator of 17 years and is currently a 2nd year PhD student in music education at the University of Miami. It was first posted on her own blog Insert brilliant title here… Reader, I’m not going to lie. I felt an enormous weight lift when President Biden […]

If you’ve seen your teacher friends warning about the dangers of the Covid-19 pandemic providing an opportunity for unscrupulous education reformers, like US Secretary of Education and serial public school defunder, Betsy DeVos, to dismantle our system of public schools and wondered to yourself, “Now how would these people do that?”…here’s how. In the Utica (MI) Community Schools (UCS), the […]

In the aftermath of the recent Public Education Forum in Pittsburgh last week, I’ve noticed an uptick in the number of education reform related posts on social media. Unfortunately, just as with our more strictly political dialogue these days, it can be difficult to distinguish between facts and “Corporate-Reform-Agenda-Propaganda” (i.e., CRAP), or #alternativefacts. In the spirit of giving, I offer […]

Michigan, allegedly, does not permit for-profit charter schools. And yet one of the largest for-profit charter management corporations, National Heritage Academies (NHA), is headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan. And they take the “for profit” part seriously: NHA funds itself partly by charging its schools high rates. For example, the New York Daily News reported that NHA owned property in Brooklyn […]

Michael Bennet, US Senator from Colorado and presidential candidate, had what the pundits this morning are calling “a moment” at last night’s Democratic Debate on CNN. Let’s hope that moment ends immediately. Ironically enough, Bennet’s big moment came as he waxed poetic about “America’s public schools”, a topic that has received a depressingly minuscule amount of attention. Because while Bennet […]

“I wouldn’t want to be the one that tells Gov. Jerry Brown that he can’t teach a government class because he would otherwise have to go back to college,” said Myrna Castrejón, president and CEO of the California Charter Schools Association. I would. Because Jerry Brown is in no way qualified, prepared, certified, or remotely capable of being a teacher. […]

For those of us following the news, each new day brings a bevy of unbelievable and shocking stories… Reports of Russian election meddling! A national emergency (that’s not a national emergency)! Cabinet secretaries wreaking havoc on the environment, education, and human rights! Kids in cages at the border! The Mueller Report! And in the middle of each of these stories? […]

The New York Post recently published an eye-catching headline (“Case closed: Charter schools deliver more education ‘bang’ for the buck“) about a new “research study” (more on that in a bit…) from Corey DeAngelis and Patrick Wolf, from the Walton Family Foundation-funded “Department of Education Reform”, not to be confused with an actual school or college of education, that…you know…prepares […]

A lot of public school advocates have become pretty disillusioned trying to find a politician from either party who seems to actually “get it” when it comes to public education. So many teachers and parents are yearning for a candidate who supports traditional public schools, recognizes charter schools as an expensive, unnecessary, and dangerous distraction, and reject all efforts to […]