StickWithANose

Chutzpah defined: Washington Post
“Let me not mince words, and say that yesterday’s election results were devastating – devastating. Not for me, because I’ll be fine. And not even for Fenty, because he’ll be fine, too. It was devastating for the children of Washington, D.C.”
The problem is that she said it to an [...]

Just when you think that public discourse on education couldn’t get any crazier the Texas Board of Education comes through with another round of the stupid… TPM
The Texas Board of Education, whose decisions can set textbook standards for the entire country, is now trying to take on the “Muslim propaganda” in world history [...]

While educational discourse is dominated by issues such as the achievement gap, Aaron Pallas points us toward a far more fundamental problem in the politics of education reform… [h/t]
I’ll admit it: When I hear the phrase “charter school miracle,” my antennae go up. It’s not that I think that charter schools can’t possibly [...]

Here’s a small dose of cognitive dissonance for you… Back in June, I posted on the rising tide of discontent with the Fenty/Rhee machine and sure enough D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty lost the Democratic primary to Vincent Gray because he lost the support of his core constituency.
Despite Fenty’s defiance, his advisers were concerned about the [...]

It is tempting to comment on Team Obama’s education speech, specifically the school he chose to use for a backdrop. However, I came across this piece over at Tom Hoffman’s place that really caught my eye, because it does an excellent job of pointing out one of the more ludicrous elements of teacher accountability. It’s [...]

For some reason, I found myself engaging in the ritual consumption of coffee this morning in front of an idiot box tuned in to CNN, and I was treated to a totally un-critical celebration of the fact that Oprah Winfrey recently taped a show featuring Bill Gates [who is the devil incarnate] and D.C. school [...]

Now that a Supreme Court dominated by “strict constructionists” who are dedicated to “judicial restraint” went out of its way to reverse a century of law to allow the nation’s oligarchs and corporate masters to buy elections, we can see the future of American democracy beginning to take shape. If a pol doesn’t tow the [...]

The quasi-privatization of schooling through the charter movement sets the stage for private charter management organizations to pick and choose the degree to which they are “private” or “public”, and the result is that they are perfectly positioned to loot public treasuries while avoiding much of the accountability that comes with it. This subtle truth [...]

… Larry Summers, that’s who. The latest scuttlebutt from the White House is that Austan Goolsbee has been picked to fill the now vacant shoes of Christina Romer as the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. However, as Rortybomb notes [h/t Naked Capitalism], a quick look at Goolsbee’s academic work [pdf] demonstrates that the [...]