StickWithANose

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 [...]

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 [...]

With all of the media hoopla over the astroturfed Tea Bagger movement poised to return the uber-crazies to power and the benevolent oligarchs driving public policy, such as entitlement and education reform, it is important to remember that many of the folks funding these “movements” aren’t the kind of people you’d really want to hang [...]

One of the most frustrating aspects of our current push for high academic standards and achievement [masquerading as a push for educational equality] is the expansion of ’schooling’ to the early years of childhood and with it the increasing fetishization of assessment. It is now commonplace for policy-makers and politicians to establish their educational street-creds [...]

Despite my propensity for publishing posts that take, let us say, a bleak view of education policy, economic issues, and politics, I really don’t consider myself to be all that cynical. [Although my friends might beg to differ...] I find joy in the small stuff like enjoying the roar of cicadas in the early evening [...]

Well, it looks like the Sherrod incident has brought the issue of race back into the spotlight of popular discourse and [predictably] the same old narratives are surfacing to obscure and dismiss the racial character of American culture. This week Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia offered up more boilerplate opinions that race is no longer [...]

Ed continues to offer some of the most thoughtful [& profane] critiques of modern American culture to be found on the inter-tubes. In this post, he tackles an issue that appears to be taboo for the “family values” crowd…
Parenting is miserable in part because we make it miserable. Other countries have a year of paid [...]

While it is easy to dismiss the craziness that is Glenn Beck, it is important to see him for what he is… a manifestation of the generative character of political power. As the new super-pundit of cable news and talk radio, Beck is a pedagogue in the truest sense of the word in that he [...]

A couple of weeks back I had an odd encounter with an old acquaintance on a social media outlet in which I tried to have a conversation with him about a video he had posted. Let’s just say that it didn’t end well… What struck me about the whole episode was the degree to which [...]