Skip to content

Category Archives: politics

policy and regulation

On Getting Back to Normal

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

I’m on vacation, busy with summer for a month already, spending time outside biking, hiking, and hacking away at the woods with a chainsaw. I got a pin for 25 years of service at our last day’s assembly, which made me stop and think just a bit. How could it be that I’ve stayed with [...]

Also filed in borderland, education | | Comments (7)

Lost Offshore Oil Rig Blues

Sunday, May 30, 2010

We hear, now, there are giant plumes of oil rolling around beneath the surface of the Gulf, and that BP, not the Coast Guard, is running the show. We’ve also learned that we can expect it to get worse in the near term, despite the best efforts of BP and the Obama administration to reassure [...]

Also filed in borderland, commonplaces | | Comments (4)

Standing Up for Common Sense

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Every once in a while, there is good news: Alaska opts out of Race to the Top school grants TOO MUCH CHANGE: State leery after failures of the No Child Left Behind Act. By Jeremy Hsieh The Associated Press While many states have accepted an educational reform challenge in the federal Race to the Top [...]

Also filed in borderland, commonplaces, education | | Comments (2)

It’s the News Media, Stupid (again)

Monday, April 26, 2010

When I first heard Glenn Beck on the truck radio (following Barack Obama’s election) I thought I was listening to a ridiculous caricature of a revolutionary. Here was this obviously white, pin-headed fear monger, using a national broadcast medium to pretend that he was a threatened underdog. Part comedy, part horror show. And now, since [...]

Also filed in borderland, social class | | Comments (2)

Unfinished Business – A Pedagogy for the Planet

Thursday, April 22, 2010

It’s still Earth Day here along the the northern rim of the planet, near the eastern edge of the international date line. Spring is here at last; it is brown and muddy and beautiful without any snow. This was my 30th winter in Alaska, and I still look forward to the regular changes, no matter [...]

Also filed in borderland, education, literacy | | Comments (0)

Capitalism : Bottled Water : : Democrats : Education Reform

Sunday, April 11, 2010

The Obama administration’s education reform policy is a scam, just like bottled water – a capitalist scheme to manufacture markets through the privatization of public wealth. Race to the Top and the ESEA Blueprint are education “reform” mechanisms that use test scores to label schools as failing, thereby creating incentives for states to relax charter [...]

Also filed in borderland, commonplaces, education | | Comments (6)

We Are In Deep Doo Doo

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Lois Weiner, who has been documenting the global neoliberal assault on teachers, posted a critique of Diane Ravitch’s new book on her blog today that is worth every public school teacher’s attention. Weiner: The publicity for Ravitch’s book has certainly put her incisive critique of the reforms (privatizing education; using standardized tests to measure everything; [...]

Also filed in borderland, commonplaces, education | | Comments (13)

Central Falls – could be ANYWHERE

Friday, February 26, 2010

“Teaching really is not a job. I don’t teach; I’m a teacher. I’m a teacher. That’s who I am.” … but, obviously, it’s a hell of a long way from Wall Street: Mr. Dimon said he did not know whether he would have taken the $25 billion that the government lent to JPMorgan during the [...]

Also filed in borderland, commonplaces, education | | Comments (3)

This is Not A Test

Saturday, February 13, 2010

After noting the disappearance of Marc Dean Millot’s post from Alexander Russo’s TWIE (Scholastic Inc) blog, I got an email from Millot asking if I’d be interested in providing him with some blog space to explain what happened. I said OK, and he says he’ll submit something here in the next few days. In the [...]

Also filed in borderland, literacy | | Comments (7)

In Case You Missed It

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Earlier today, Marc Dean Millot at TWIE, published a report, Three Data Points. Unconected Dots or a Warning? which seems to have been deleted. Millot reported: I have now heard the same thing from three independent credible sources – the fix is in on the U.S. Department of Education’s competitive grants, in particular Race to [...]

Also filed in borderland | | Comments (5)