Education in Two Worlds: Class Notes: Relationship of Education Policy to Education Research and Social Science Education in Two Worlds: Class Notes: Relationship of Education Policy to Education Research and Social Science 2005 Notes to the Proseminar: Relationship of Education Policy to Education Research and Social Science These notes have two purposes: to disabuse naïve conceptions of the role of research in policy development (if you h…

Curmudgucation: Stop Calling It School Choice Curmudgucation: Stop Calling It School Choice When framing a debate, it helps to pick just the right names. Just ask the folks who decided to call their respective sides “pro-life” and “pro-choice.”  One of earliest victories for education privatizers was to coin the name “school choice.” I don’t know if somebody cleverly designed …

Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: Can Historians Help School Reformers? Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: Can Historians Help School Reformers? Historians are divided over what can be learned from history. Some find that knowing the past can inform the present. Others say that the past has no lessons to teach those living now but it is nonetheless worthwhile to recapture what occurre…

Hullabaloo: Living History: Reggie Jackson Takes Sports Fans to School Hullabaloo: Living History: Reggie Jackson Takes Sports Fans to School “They pointed me out with the N-word…. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”Listen to “Mr. October” describe his experiences as a Black professional baseball player beginning in the mid-1960s after passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts. As Elie Mystal twe…

David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing: The Winning Ways of a Losing Strategy: Educationalizing Social Problems in the US David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing: The Winning Ways of a Losing Strategy: Educationalizing Social Problems in the US This post is a paper I published Educational Theory in 2008.  Here’s a link to the original.  In is included as a chapter in my new book, The Ironies of Schooling. In this essay, I examine the paradox …

Janresseger: Seventy Years After “Brown v. Board” Decision, School Segregation Keeps Growing Janresseger: Seventy Years After “Brown v. Board” Decision, School Segregation Keeps Growing This coming Friday marks the 70th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education. On May 17, 1954, writing for a unanimous court, Chief Justice Earl Warren declared: “Today, education is perhaps the most imp…

Nancy Bailey’s Education Website: Stuck on the Merry-Go-Round of Bad Ed. Policy for 40 Years! Nancy Bailey’s Education Website: Stuck on the Merry-Go-Round of Bad Ed. Policy for 40 Years! Can you imagine never being able to jump off a Merry Go Round? The fight over education policy is like that. It involves the same worn-out problems that could have been addressed years ago if Americans truly got behind their democratic pub…

Teacher in a Strange Land: The Return of the Tradteacher Teacher in a Strange Land: The Return of the Tradteacher Been reading about the tradwife lately? Although explicit definitions vary, the general gist is returning to a post-war conception of a stay-at-home wife, most likely with children (or planning for children), in relationships where men make all the family decisions, and contr…

Curmudgucation: Failing Charters Go Private Curmudgucation: Failing Charters Go Private Last month, Amelia Pak-Harvey at Chalkbeat Indiana ran a story about a failing charter school that had been approved for a new lease on life–as a private school. Ignite Achievement Academy was supposed to improve its “checkered academic record,” but instead the State Board of Education …

Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: Every Tech Tool in Classrooms Needs Ruthless Scrutiny (Jessica Grose) (Guest post by Jessica Grose) Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: Every Tech Tool in Classrooms Needs Ruthless Scrutiny (Jessica Grose) (Guest post by Jessica Grose) Just as school boards and administrators evaluate carefully every item placed in classrooms from the size of windows to furniture to whiteboards to textbooks, so too should the ub…

David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing: School’s Shift from Community to Competition Can Harm Our Youth David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing: School’s Shift from Community to Competition Can Harm Our Youth This post is an op-ed that Deborah Malizia and I just published in the San Jose Mercury News.  Here’s a link to the original.  It follows up on an earlier op-ed we did on the subject.   Schools’ shift from community to …

Teacher in a Strange Land: What about Homeschooling? Teacher in a Strange Land: What about Homeschooling? Families who choose to homeschool their children have never been on my negative/activist radar, as a veteran public school educator. I have had both positive and not-so-positive experiences with students who were homeschooled–from a pair of shy, well-behaved sisters who fit seaml…

Nancy Bailey’s Education Website: There’s Too Much Stuff on Classroom Walls! Nancy Bailey’s Education Website: There’s Too Much Stuff on Classroom Walls! Classroom walls for young children learning to read are often covered with words, letters, word sounds, symbols, vocabulary, and even speech therapy pronunciation mouths, which are creepy. For years, Word Walls have ruled. Bare walls are also dull and unin…

Janresseger: Press Reports Ranking American High Schools Mislead the Public Janresseger: Press Reports Ranking American High Schools Mislead the Public Here is Stanford University sociologist Sean Reardon describing in rather technical language what his research has shown for decades about a school or school district’s standardized test scores as an accurate indicator of student demographics but not a good…

Curmudgucation: Something Else AI “Teachers” Can’t Do Curmudgucation: Something Else AI “Teachers” Can’t Do “Okay, I think I see where you went wrong…” “Hmm. Can you explain to me why you took this step here…?” “That’s an interesting interpretation, but I think you might have overlooked this…” There are so many ways in which generative language algorithms (marketed as AI) can’t …

Letters from the Future (of Learning): What is Childhood For? Letters from the Future (of Learning): What is Childhood For? Did you hear? The Gates Foundation is going to focus all of its subsequent investments on math education.  That’s roughly $700 million (and growing) each year, at a time when children are feeling more depressed, anxious and rudderless than ever before; at a moment when o…

Radical Eyes for Equity: Reading Reform We Refuse to Choose Radical Eyes for Equity: Reading Reform We Refuse to Choose Since the early 1980s, the US has been in a constant cycle of accountability-based reform in education. By 2001 and the implementation of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the central role of the National Reading Panel (NRP), that education reform cycle intensified by adding…

Diane Ravitch’s Blog: Carol Burris: New Data Show That Charter Schools Increase Segregation Diane Ravitch’s Blog: Carol Burris: New Data Show That Charter Schools Increase Segregation Carol Burris former teacher, former principal, now executive director of The Network for Public Education, writes in The Progressive about the segregative effects of charter schools. Burris writes: As we approach the seventieth anniversary o…

David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing: The Fraught Connection Between State and School David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing: The Fraught Connection Between State and School This post is a new essay of mine that was published two years ago in Kappan. Here’s a link to the original.  And here’s a link to the pdf.  It is also reprinted as a chapter in my new book, The Ironies of Schooling.  The essay focuses …

Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: Real Schools Need Books, Not Laptops or Cell Phones (James Traub) (Guest Post by James Traub) Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: Real Schools Need Books, Not Laptops or Cell Phones (James Traub) (Guest Post by James Traub) “James Traub is a journalist and scholar specializing in international affairs. He is a columnist and contributor to the website foreignpolicy.com. He worked as a staff writer for The Ne…