If we can afford to give the Kochs $1 billion a year, maybe your kid’s teacher shouldn’t have to drive an Uber at night Around 125 teachers and their supporters marched from Oklahoma City to Tulsa this week to demand the state restore funds to the state’s starved schools. The Guardian’s Mike Elk reported that the marchers were met with […]

In April of 2012, control over Muskegon Heights schools was handed over to an un-elected Emergency Manager, appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder. By July, Emergency Manager Donald Weatherspoon had signed a contract to turn the entire public school system over to the for-profit charter school operator Mosaica. Two years later the district was still insolvent and having to borrow almost […]

Despite state spending of nearly $80 million to improve early reading skills in Michigan school kids, reading scores have actually gone DOWN since 2014 in our state. Not even the threat of being held back a year by state law was enough to frighten and threaten these children into learning to read better. Michigan’s Republican Attorney General, a man who […]

I became a journalist almost 17 years ago because I wanted to dig for the truth and tell important stories, especially in politics. In the decade-plus I’ve spent in Lansing, I’ve watched most of my Capitol press corps colleagues retire, leave for better-paying jobs or get laid off. There are so many issues to cover and stories to tell — […]

Elizabeth Green, the founder of “Chalkbeat,” an online education site, is out with a fawning, sycophantic puff piece on Eva Moskowitz, the leader of the Success Academy network of charter schools in New York City. Some of my favorite edubloggers have already responded with their thoughts (Peter Greene, aka Curmudgication; Mercedes Schneider here), so I’ll make my comments on this […]

Remember when U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos scrapped the Obama administration’s guidelines on campus sexual assault because they were “confusing“? Remember how some Very Serious People, even liberals, praised this as a good-faith effort? (Some folks seem to believe that there’s an epidemic of really good guys being falsely accused of rape and this is the worst thing in the […]

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos made headlines this week at Harvard University. I’m still confused as to why Harvard invited her to speak at an event allegedly focused on public education–she never attended a public school, never sent her own children to a public school, never studied education, and has never taught anyone anything–and the reaction to her talk suggests […]

The bad news is that Betsy DeVos and her corporate pals are spending incredible amounts of money to convince parents that public schools are “failing”. The good news is that it’s not working. A new poll out this week shows that, despite efforts by corporatists like Sec. of Education Betsy DeVos and others to push for-profit charter schools under the […]

If you’ve been watching the ever-increasing demonization of teachers in Michigan over the past decade, you probably have asked yourself at one time or another, “Why the hell would ANYONE want to be a teacher in Michigan?” It’s a fair question. Republicans in our state legislature have cut their benefits, based their advancement on student progress when much of what […]

It’s becoming an all too familiar news story in Michigan these days: A “failing” public school system faces “competition” from a charter school that sucks even more resources and students away from the traditional schools and then, when they can’t make enough money, the charter school closes and things are worse off than they were before. For example, it happened […]

I’ve been working on teacher evaluation for most of my career as a teacher, administrator, and teacher educator; first being evaluated, then doing the evaluation as an assistant principal and subject area coordinator, then helping design a state-wide beginning teacher evaluation initiative. After nearly 40 years in education, all I can say is that the current system is the worst […]