I learned yesterday that Susan Ohanian included Borderland on her list of Featured Resources. I’ve had a link to Susan’s website in my sidebar for a long while - maybe since I began writing here, and her resources offer opinion, research, and background information that is both useful and interesting. Susan offers inciteful commentary in an interesting take-no-prisoners style. For example, from her article published in Phi Delta Kappan, Capitalism, Calculus and Conscience, Susan wrote:

Dismissing children’s vomit and tears and anger as “only anecdotal,” these thugs and the pollsters who ask them how things are going are conspicuously silent about the child abuse that concerns resisters. In defending the MCAS, Massachusetts Commissioner of Education David Driscoll told the Boston Globe that he knows fourth-graders are crying, but “that’s the way the world is.” There it is — the difference between a teacher and a Standardisto: teachers stop for a 9-year-old’s tears. Of course, if they stop on testing day, they risk losing their jobs in Tennessee, New Jersey, and Florida, to name just three states where teachers are forbidden to talk to students — or to look at the test they are making students take.

Susan is a straight shooter, and she speaks right from the heart.

I’m honored to have this blog included as a resource on her site. If you have any interest in educational activism you owe it to yourself to visit her website and follow some of the links she has listed. Plan on spending some time, because there is a lot there.