I remember the day that the poor kids showed up at our school. It was in 1964. Classes had already started, and I was in second grade, surrounded by my familiar friends from my mostly white, mostly well-to-do, suburban neighborhood in North Dallas.

For a ten-year stretch in my life I was fortunate to spend every Christmas in Jamaica. In Jamaica, Christmas is a far more modest affair than it is here in […]

One good thing you can say about 2011 is that it is a year in which lots of wrong-headed undertakings finally came to their ignominious conclusions — including, among others, […]

Heard the term “edu-bubble” yet? Chances are you will soon. No doubt you’ve heard of the “dot-com bubble.” And if you’re like millions of Americans, you may be currently experiencing […]

Normally, it would be apparent to all that Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich forgot the first rule of holes when he recently doubled-down on his proposal to solve the problem […]

Getting a Republican presidential candidate to extend a compliment to Barack Obama is about as rare as getting an economist to admit he miscalculated the housing bubble. But late last […]

With the collapse of the No Child Left Behind policy that has driven American education policy for at least the past decade, one would think that our nation’s leaders would […]

Imagine you’re a parent of a seven-year-old who has just come home from school with her end-of-year report card. And the report card provides marks for only two subjects, and […]

Now that the mandate to run our nation’s schools according to No Child Left Behind has utterly collapsed, and many of the best minds are suggesting that we move on, […]

By the time that July slips slowly off the calendar, events this month — culminating with an upcoming teacher/parent-organized march on the nation’s capital — will have clarified all too […]

Back to School: Investing In Distraction My guest today is Sabrina Stevens Shupe. Sabrina is a teacher, writer, and activist who has worked with students in struggling communities in Philadelphia […]

If aliens from another planet landed in the U.S. this weekend they would likely assume that the people inhabiting this place are completely obsessed with one thing and one thing […]

So much for the “New Washington Consensus on Education”. Education policy, we were told by conservative leaders merely six months ago, was a ” redeeming feature” of the Obama administration […]

Much in the same way that September ushers in a new football season every year regaled by a bombast of armchair quarterbacks analyzing “the game,” the month also brings on […]

My guest today is Rob Levine. Rob is the founder of Cursor.org and Mediatransparency.org. He blogs about education issues and other topics at his personal blog thecuckingstool.blogspot.com. As the federal […]

Ask yourself if this is the type of school you’d like for your son or daughter: * At one charter school, an array of 48 “infractions”– such as “Lying/falsehood” and […]

Down here on the ground in public schools, what school children, parents, and teachers are experiencing are the first tremors of what will likely be seismic shifts in the reality […]

Earlier this week, when a representative of the Beltway-based

As American public education arrives at the summer of its discontent, we have to contemplate how a system that has already had over 201,600 jobs wrung from its payrolls since […]

Just as climate scientists warn Americans to brace for a long hot summer, anyone paying attention to the nation’s public schools can expect a summer of more of the same, […]

As educators close out this school year and go into planning mode for the next, what many of them truly dread is the fiscal nightmare being handed to them by […]

While America’s political leaders happily take a meat axe to our nation’s public school system, the national media continues to turn our gaze toward more pressing issues. But down here […]

Any experienced first-grade teacher can tell you how to spot the new kids in class who’ve never been exposed to books. They often don’t know where to start with a […]

Now that No Child Left Behind has become the butt of popular ridicule, and the prospect of forging a new consensus on education policy in DC seems doubtful, you would […]

To all those out there who are clamoring for “market-based” approaches to education reform, please tell me this: What kind of a business slashes inventory in the face of increasing […]

Last week, President Obama gave us a clear perspective of what’s wrong with current education policies and a positive vision for where they should be going. In a townhall meeting, […]

On Tuesday Sam Seder and I had a brief discussion during his daily web broadcast The Majority Report that touched on some points I made in my post here last […]

It’s getting really hard to look at the distorted rhetoric of today’s debate about public schools and NOT see it in the same whorish light as other political discussions of […]

Imagine taking your child to her first day of kindergarten and finding out that there won’t be a teacher for the class of 30 children until October. Imagine being a […]