Forty years ago, Americans learned of A Nation at Risk, the troubling and mostly bogus report by the Reagan administration claiming public schools and teachers failed to produce students who were capable American workers. Berliner’s and Biddle’s The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America’s Public Schools disproved the report, but it still […]
Raising the Bar on Kindergartners: A Nation at Risk Lives On
History is not kind to idlers. ~The Reagan administration’s A Nation at Risk (1983, p.7) In What Happened to Recess and Why are our Children Struggling in Kindergarten, Susan Ohanian writes about a kindergartner in a New York Times article who tells the reporter they would like to sit on the grass and look for […]
10 Years Later: The Continuing Intentional Unraveling of America’s Public Schools
School reform continues to privatize and destroy public schools. August marks ten years since I began blogging. Within that time I have written two books and co-authored a third with Diane Ravitch. I’m proud of all this writing but Losing America’s Schools: The Fight to Reclaim Public Education is the book title that especially stands […]
When One School District Falls: HISD is a Preview for All Schools
I think there is a likelihood that we will be seeing more state takeover of districts. ~Kenneth Wong, education policy researcher and former advisor to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, March 28, 2023 Houston faces harsh public school reforms, a sad example of the continuing efforts in America to destroy all public education and […]
Sen. Bernie Sanders or V.P. Joe Biden: Who is the Better Presidential Candidate for Education?
Public schooling is one of the most important issues of our time. Without great public schools, how will America’s children grow up to find their strengths, seek the paths that bring them joy, and create a better world for themselves and future generations? Our world faces many problems, and it will take engaged students, who […]
The Summit for Corporate Reformers vs. Teachers Who CLIMB Summits
A summit is defined as the highest peak of a mountain. It’s also a meeting of high-level officials. In education, corporate politicians and reformers promote themselves as child experts. Yet they are far removed from the classrooms where teachers climb mountains every day to help students learn. Chicago teachers recently fought for paraprofessionals to have […]
35 Ways They Dumb Down America: Still, There’s Hope!
They took all the trees And put them in a tree museum And they charged all the people A dollar and a half to see ’em Don’t it always seem to go That you don’t know what you’ve got ‘Till it’s gone They paved paradise And they put up a parking lot ~Joni Mitchell, Big […]
How DeVos & Co. Use Special Ed. to Privatize Public Schools and End Student Services
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and her corporate friends are about dumping civil rights protections regarding IDEA. Special education has become a means to transform public education into choice and charter schools while ending student services. This is done by defunding special education and convincing parents that services don’t matter. Dismantling services in public schools shouldn’t be allowed. […]
How School Reformers Try to Convince Us You Can Fly a Plane Without a Real Pilot
Spending time studying how to teach and how children learn has been replaced with fast-track programs that breed future workers. These people know little about children, but they follow the script. They will keep children focused on their computer lessons, and collect data on their progress. It’s like getting on a plane and learning the […]
Who Arne Duncan is Today Speaks To His Past Role as Education Secretary
Former Education Secretary Arne Duncan recently stepped away from his ventures to discuss his new book How Schools Work: An Inside Account of Failure and Success from One of the Nation’s Longest Serving Secretaries of Education. Few teachers were impressed with Duncan in this role. He never worked in a school. He’d never been a […]