PA: Another Charter PR Push

The Pennsylvania Coalition of Public [sic] Charter Schools has been having a rough year, what with PA Governor Tom Wolf threatening to finally implement the charter school reforms that the heavily-lobbied legislature just can't seem to get done. So they've launched themselves another PR push to try to make their case.

Meet 143K Rising. This is ostensibly a group of "families united for charter schools," but there's no pretense here that this is a spontaneous grass roots group. As their website puts it, "The Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools (PCPCS) has created 143K Rising to give families a voice in the battle to protect public charter schools." And they are raising the alarm-- "Special interest groups are trying to rob Pennsylvania families of their rights. Let's rise up together and stop them!"

The 143K Rising site has a fuzzy handle on most of the issues it is upset about (143K refers to the number of students currently enrolled in charter schools-- no word if they plan to regularly rename the group as enrollment rises or falls). On their "issue" page (apparently there's just one issue), they say that "limiting public charter schools as an educational option" would be "devastating." They complain that "every year" there are "policies that would spell the death of public [sic] charter schools" in the state, proposed by lawmakers "listening to education special interest groups." And if by now you are wondering what, exactly, the proposals are, or who, exactly, these special interest groups are--well, 143K Rising isn't saying. You just have to take their word for it-- evil forces are coming to "take away a child's only hope for a good education."

This chicken littling appears to come in response to the governor's call for things like transparency and ethics; there's been no call for any existing charters to be shut down. But Wolf has been clear about his overall priority:

Pennsylvania must help school districts struggling with the problem of increasing amounts of school funding siphoned by private cyber and charter schools. Funding reform would increase transparency so all schools that receive state dollars are accountable to the taxpayers.

143K offers a page of "facts" that are not so very facty. Just the usual talking points.

FACT: Charter schools are public schools.

Nope. Not transparent. Not owned by the public or accountable to them. In fact, their own national group just advised them to pas themselves off as small businesses in order to get some $$.

FACT: Charter schools serve all students.

Well, it's not quite as easy for them to weasel out of this as it is in, say, Florida. But charters serve the students they choose to serve. Starting with marketing, they can send a message about who belongs and who doesn't. And unlike public schools, when a charter has a student withdraw, they don't have to pay any attention to what that student does next.

FACT: Tax money follows the student from their home school district to a public [sic] charter school.

Well, that one's true. It is, of course, part of the problem, since taxpayers have no say over or accounting of how their tax dollars are being used. And the loss of funds has a negative impact on the sending district-- the one that taxpayers pay to support.

FACT: Cyber charter schools offer the same rigorous coursework as district schools.

Nope. Not even possible. And there's that study by CREDO, a pro-choice outfit, that found cybers wildly ineffective.

FACT: Charter schools are directly accountable to the authorizing school board and the Pennsylvania Department of Education, who have the authority to renew or not to renew a school’s charter.

Directly accountable? Nope. In fact, some charters accused of misbehavior have been allowed to investigate themselves.

FACT: Charter schools are the most accountable public school systems in Pennsylvania, with the threat of closure as the ultimate accountability – unlike failing district schools, which never close.

I think what they meant to say is that charters are allowed to dump and desert their students, instead of having to live up to the promise to provide every student with a decent education. Check out the NPE report that shows that over 40% of PA charters quit after using up over $4 billion of federal money-- and that's just the federal money wasted. Fraud and mismanagement are a problem.

FACT: Pennsylvania requires all brick-and-mortar and cyber charter schools to be organized as public, nonprofit organizations.

True, but meaningless. In the state that's home to UPMC and its unspeakably rich executives, we understand that just because an organization is nominally non-profit, that doesn't mean that the people who run it aren't getting rich, like Vahan Gureghian, charter entrepreneur who built an $84 million mansion in Palm Springs, or the top execs of K-12 who made a grand total of $16.4 million. And as charters have demonstrated again and again, a non-profit school can hire all sorts of for-profit folks to actually run the operation, making the non-profit entity a kind of shell company.

FACT: Charter schools in Pennsylvania are diverse. Charter schools serve higher percentages of African American and Hispanic students than district-run schools.

Not entirely sure what the point is here, other than to bolster the notion that charters exacerbate segregation.

FACT: Charter schools receive less funding than school districts.

"Less" how? This is a long time talking point, but not often accompanied by hard numbers that account for things like the fact that the public school system runs buses. But this is late stage charter argument-- originally, "we can do more with less" was a talking point, now replaced with "give us more money."

FACT: Pennsylvania's public charter schools serve a higher percentage of special education students than school districts.

That may well be true, but it's not a good thing. Some PA charters have learned how to game the system. The school gets more money for a special ed student, so if they can round up students who have special needs that don't require expensive supports, they make out like bandits. Wonderland Charter would be just one example.

The site also features some stirring anecdotes. And their message has been pushed out into some media outlets, repackaging the same talking points, courtesy of Ana Meyers.

Meyers is the executive director of PCPCS. She has previously worked as "Director of Legislative Affairs" for LeadingAge PA (an advocacy group for aging services providers) as well as PA Field Director for Libertarian advocacy group, FreedomWorks. Before that she co-chaired the Kitchen Table Patriots, a Tea Party group in southeastern PA, and before that sales and marketing for the likes of Nickelodeon and American Airlines. Her degrees are in business. In short, she has virtually no background or expertise in education, but does have a long-standing experience in arguing that government services should be privatized. This is not new for PCPCS-- their previous chief's experience was as PR head for Westinghouse. Education expertise? Not so much.

Meyers has been a quick study in recycling the usual charter talking points, touting how they bring "innovation to education," and they are big on education that is "individualized." Also, public schools are tired and boring.

143K Rising has a Youtube channel with one subscriber and five videos that have gone up in the past couple of weeks. They have a Facebook page, in case you want to share some thoughts about PA cyber charters, and a Twitter account. Plus a bunch of sponsors-- mostly the usual suspects. All trying to make noise so that Pennsylvania can remember a state where an entrepreneur with a dream can cash in on the charter business. Great.

PA: Governor Calls Charters Private, Makes Advocacy Group Sad

When Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf trotted out his budget last month, he made it a point to note that he was raising money for public schools-- and that he had some definite ideas about which schools are public and which schools are not.

He wants to see more of those basic education dollars to school districts get distributed through the state’s fair funding formula. He also wants to address concerns related to cyber charter schools, which he referred to as “the growing cost of privatization of education in our public schools.”

And just in case that wasn't clear enough, a press release from the governor's office was even more direct:

Pennsylvania must help school districts struggling with the problem of increasing amounts of school funding siphoned by private cyber and charter schools. Funding reform would increase transparency so all schools that receive state dollars are accountable to the taxpayers.

This made Ana Meyers sad.

This lady

Meyers is the current executive director of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public [sic] Charter Schools. She has previously worked as "Director of Legislative Affairs" for LeadingAge PA (an advocacy group for aging services providers) as well as PA Field Director for Libertarian advocacy group, FreedomWorks. Before that she co-chaired the Kitchen Table Patriots, a Tea Party group in southeastern PA, and before that sales and marketing for the likes of Nickelodeon and American Airlines. Her degrees are in business. In short, she has virtually no background or expertise in education, but does have a long-standing experience in arguing that government services should be privatized. This is not new for PCPCS-- their previous chief's experience was as PR head for Westinghouse.

Meyers has been in the charter schools biz for just over two years, but that's plenty long enough to learn the current talking point-- "charter schools are public because they are paid with public tax dollars." This is baloney. But it's popular baloney with privatizers because it's hard to convince people that public education should be privatized-- much easier to get them to change the definition of "public." So privatizers from the Governor of Florida to the Secretary of Education are arguing repeatedly that "public" does not mean what you think it means, even as they hope you will keep believing that it means what it's always meant, because then you will assume that charter schools have certain features that they do not have.

And so Meyers expressed her sadness.

“I am shocked that you and your staff are unaware that none of Pennsylvanian’s charter schools [brick-and-mortar or cyber] are private or for-profit institutions,” states the letter signed by Ana Meyers, executive director of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools, the state’s largest organization representing charter schools.

“I would have thought that a governor who has championed public education like you have over the past four-plus years would know better. I believe that you would have a much better understanding of how charter schools operate in Pennsylvania if you took the time to visit a few of them.”

Baloney. Pennsylvania's charter schools are not public. They are not owned by the public. They are not run by elected representatives of the taxpayers. They are under no obligation to serve all students who are members of the public. They do not operate with public transparency. They are not public schools, and the governor is exactly correct to say so. Nor would visiting the actual schools reveal any of those characteristics.

Meyers doesn't have an argument here-- just an assertion. This has been the charter industry's tactic-- just keep using the word, claiming the word, demanding the word, and even getting your advocates to insert the word in the language of charter laws. But you can insist that your pig is a cow all day-- when you butcher it, you'll still be eating pork. We can have a conversation about whether or not charters are an educational benefit, whether they can deliver on their promises, and if they should be part of the educational landscape (and under what conditions). But there is no discussion to be had about whether or not they're public-- they aren't.

If you are in Pennsylvania, drop Governor Wolf a line and tell him that he got this one absolutely right, and that he is also right to ignore letters from high-paid mouthpieces who serve as advocacy professionals, but education amateurs.

School Choice Hasn't Won

There's an old saying: when you add religion and politics, you get politics.

Well, when you add culture wars and school choice, you get culture wars.

Robert Pondiscio points to the recent school choice winning streak in Iowa and Utah (and it looks like Oklahoma may well follow, though Virginia and Wyoming have decided to get off the choice train for the moment), and he attributes the success to the choice movement's embrace of the culture wars. 

He points out that the "test score" argument was never going to move many people either way, and I agree. The Big Standardized Test has been around long enough that folks aren't that impressed any more. And when he criticizes the "unquestioned assumption" that "the purpose of schools is to raise test scores" he's echoing a critique that many of us have offered for ages. 

But in the alliance between school choice advocates and culture warriors, I question exactly who is successfully using whom.

The school choice movement has always included free marketeers, folks who believe that education would best be delivered by a free market navigated by parents with freedom to choose. The free marketeer faction contains their own sub-groups, including folks who sincerely believe in the free market, folks who sincerely believe in Freedom, folks whose opportunity-tuned noses smell money, and folks who share the Kochian desire to simply eliminate government so that they don't have to pay taxes to provide services to the Lessers. For that last group, choice itself is just a tool for dismantling the public school system.

The free marketeers have made alliances before, most notably when they teamed up with the social justice crowd, pushing choice as an equity issue and giving us the claim that school choice is the "civil rights issue of today." Like the free marketeers, the social justice crowd contained an assortment of sincere believers and less-principled opportunists, plus a solid helping of right-tilted folks pretending to be left-ish (looking at you, Democrats for Education Reform). 

For a variety of reasons, that detente fell apart (Pondiscio was one of the first to point out the cracks). The two groups wanted different things, and when Trump happened, some folks found it hard to stick with the coalition, and when Obama and the Dems went away, some folks found it unnecessary to stick with the coalition. 

There's a certain irony in the choicers' new alliance with a different sort of social justice movement. Jay Greene announced it and has been pushing it ever since, even as Christopher Rufo has made himself the face of the anti-woke choice crowd.

The trouble with this alliance is that the culture warriors are not remotely interested in school choice at all.

From the attempts to suppress reading rights to the anti-LGBTQ laws and policies to the regulations coming out of CRT panic, the culture warriors have made it abundantly clear that what they want is a school system that conforms to their particular set of values and beliefs. Take back the public system and force it to conform, or set up a new parallel system in a constitution-free zone--or both. Any of those is fine. 

For those choicers who see school choice as a tool of dismantling public ed, that's great. But for folks actually interested in school choice, the culture wars are a dead end.

Bringing me the long away around to this point-- school choice hasn't won any victories in Iowa or Utah or even in its beloved paradise of Florida. Culture warriors have won victories, and used some school choice language to do it. But Ron DeSantis isn't expanding choice--he's constricting it. 

It may be that the free marketeers believe that letting the culture warriors blaze the trail will start with scorched earth and end with a thousand beautiful school choice flowers blooming. I think that's a miscalculation, that culture warriors will keep stomping on every flower that offends their delicate, narrow sensibilities. 

For those who simply want to see public education demolished, who see culture wars and school choice and any other opportunity that presents itself as a means to dismantling public education, a part of government that they'd like to see on the chopping block right beside social security, medicare, and welfare, none of these distinctions really matter as long as the fire keeps burning. But for those who sincerely want to see school choice? That's not what's happening.

I've seen that movie before. My county housed a very early Tea Part chapter, and it started out as an alliance between local Libertarian types and local religious christianist conservatives. Within a year or so (as also happened to some degree on a national level) the Libertarians were squeezed out, because when they said "Everyone should be free to choose as they wish," they meant it, but the religious conservatives meant, "Everyone should be free to make only the right choice, and we will tell you what that choice is." (Just like our forefathers the Puritans, who came here not to escape religious persecution, but to establish a place where they could enforce their own strict rules).

The culture warriors are not interested in choice or freedom; they are the embodiment of Wilhoit's definition of conservatism-- Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

So maybe Jay Greene and Jason Bedrick and Core DeAngelis and Christopher Rudo and the rest can take a victory lap. It would be interesting to know what exactly they're celebrating, because something may be on a bit of winning streak right now, but it's not school choice. 

National Politics Vs. Education

You may not read anything from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, that right-tilted, Common Core pushing, privatization-loving thinky tank, but I'm going to direct your attention there for a moment and a piece by Dale Chu. Chu and I disagree on a great deal, but in this recent piece, while talking about Rick Scott's crazy-pants (my word) plan to save America, he makes some worthwhile points, starting with this one:

What we have today is a smash-and-grab version of education reform that features a maximalist approach to securing legislative victories. The ethos seems to be: Throw the current bums out of office and get as much as we can until we eventually get tossed to the curb ourselves. Lather, rinse, repeat. Neither side has a common-ground agenda. Each tries to burn the other down. All of the incentives are organized around fealty to the “national brand,” which in the case of Scott and his role as head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee is to use an uncharacteristically inflammatory and hardline rhetoric when it comes to talking about schools.

I could quibble. I am not sure, for instance, that Democrats have an education agenda at all, having spent a couple of decades simply adapting the conservative reform agenda and now lacking any sense of how to find their way back. But the larger point is a good one--blast into power, grab what you can without any concern about whether or not it's sustainable, and gather up the political spoils while you can. It's an apt description of the politically-driven CRT panic, which contains 0% "Let's find a good and universally acceptable way to talk about our difficult history with race" and 100% "Vote for me because I helped chase away that scary Black People Stuff from the evil indoctrinatin' schools." 

Building education policy for the long run matters, because the long run is what teachers and schools are here for. Every teacher who's been in a classroom for more than five years has mastered the New Policy Eyeroll--some administrator breezes in and brandishes a shiny new game-changing program, and teachers deploy the eye roll because they know with a year or three, both the administrator and the policy will be gone, shoved aside by the newest shiny thing.

Remember when you were learning to drive? You learned that if you focused on the road a few feet in front of the car, you'd wander all over the pavement. To keep the car steady and the journey safe, you focused far ahead on your destination. That's what teachers have to learn to do.

Schools and teachers have to play a long game; when politicians start playing a short game, a smash and grab game, that works directly against the health of schools and education. But as Chu points out

...neither national Republicans nor national Democrats seem to show any interest in being a majority party when it comes to getting our kids back on track. Instead, both sides have cynically employed conflict engineers to dictate the strength and direction of our education fights, resulting in today’s zero-sum playing field.

Chu thinks the answer is in state and local leadership. Well, maybe. He's looking at ways to forward the reformster cause, and I suppose a state like Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis and his administration have just about finished burning public education to the ground, looks like a fine example. It looks to me as if smash-and-grab politics are fully installed in many state capitals which are, in fact, where the CRT panic is playing out. Meanwhile, the GOP has been working hard to install that same philosophy on the local school board level. 

Chu thinks the "silent majority" should speak up about "the need for schools to focus their limited bandwidth on education recovery," but that ship has sailed in many communities, where Moms for Liberty, Parents Defending Education, and a host of other conservative astro-turf groups have screamed their way to the front of the conversation; in some cases, the silent majority has been chased right off the board.

Chu wants to see intra-party coalitions motivated by the "calamity" of low test scores for BlPOC students, but I'm not sure low scores on the Big Standardized Test is anybody's idea of a Top Ten crisis in education. And the intra-party coalition was largely the result of Democrats embracing a version of the right-tilted reform ideas; that coalition broke down under Trump, and the right has since concluded that it doesn't need Dems for anything. 

But Chu is right in a larger sense-- if anybody in the political world would stop asking "How can education be used as an issue to create political advantage" and start asking "How can we help schools with the mission of educating children," we'd get better education policy. As it is, one of the things that makes teaching a dispiriting activity in the 21st century is realizing that public education has no champions among either party, and whenever a politician looks at education, it's not to see how they can help, but how they can smash-and-grab something for their own benefit. 

What To Read (2018 Edition)

At the NPE gathering, I received many requests to repost (and update) my list of people worth reading, so here we go. This is in no way all-inclusive; I'm going to miss somebody and every day I find new writers I didn't even know about, which means tomorrow I'll find out about someone I don't know about today. There are also bloggers who are worth reading, but if they've been silent for many months, I may leave them off this list. Caveats offered; here we go.

A Dog With a Bone   
Audrey Hill is a 30+ year English teacher. Sometimes the posts are brief and poetic, while some dig deep into a particular item.

A Teacher's Life For Me    
Michael Soskil was a PA teacher of the year. He has a good eye for the places where Big Ideas and Actual Classrooms intersect.

Accountabaloney
I'm a sucker for a good name, but this Florida blogging duo includes a graphic designer, so it looks good, too. The good fight in Florida is a barometer for reformy messes elsewhere, and these folks have a good eye for malarkey.

Alfie Kohn 
Kohn doesn't post often, but when he does, you don't want to miss it. This is what actual education reform ideas look like.

Annie Tan, An Angry Teacher
This fiery teacher has a big activist streak, and she'll tell you all about what is making her angry at the moment.  

Andrea Gabor
Gabor is a journalist and author (The Capitalist Philosophers, Einstein's Wife and After the Education Wars) who is frequently doing exceptional work looking at charter schools.

Answer Sheet 
Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post is the only big media journalist doing regular, daily coverage of education. Get national news, a public ed perspective, and answers from the kind of people who will ignore bloggers like me, but answer the phone when it says "Someone from the Washington Post is calling."

Automated Teaching Machine
Adam Bessie is a cartoonist who works the education beat. For those of you who like visuals.

Badass Teachers Association 
The activist group, best known through their facebook page, also has a blog featuring an assortment of voices.

The Becoming Radical
Paul Thomas is a college professor comfortable blending references to ed research, race issues, poetry and comic books. A good pair of eyes for seeing beneath the surface of many issues in the ed realm.

Big Education Ape 
One of the best aggregators of edublogging out there. If you only have time to make a couple of stops, BEA will get you up to speed. And as a bonus, you get some fairly hilarious paste-up illustrations.

Blue Cereal Education
Snappy, funny and pointed writing about issues in education. Recently transplanted from Oklahoma to Indiana. "Everything I say is so wise even I can hardly believe it. Feel free to concur."

BustED Pencils
BustED Pencils is a webcast (I've been a guest and it was fun), and it is also the host to regular blogging from Morna McDermott, Peggy Robertson, and others, as well as regular features like What Would Matt Damon's Mom Say. It is unabashedly progressive and activist.

Bob Braun's Ledger 
Long-time New Jersey reporter who has covered politics and education for decades. Regional and national stories with a hard-eyed reporter's view.

Bright Lights Small City
Sarah Lahm covers Minneapolis schools, policy and politics. As with many of the regional bloggers, her writing gives a good look at how the bigger issues play out on a smaller, specific stage.

Charter School Watchdog 
Longstanding clearing house for news of charter school shenanigans.

Children Are More Than Test Scores 
Jesse "the Walking Man" Turner's blog. Personal, heartfelt education activism.

Chicago Public Fools
Julie Vassilatos blogs in and about Chicago, but watches national stories as well.

Cloaking Inequality
Julian Vasquez Heilig has been a visible and vocal part of the pro-public ed movement, covering a wide range of national topics.

Dad Gone Wild
A father in Tennessee who has educated himself in the issues and done some activist work as well. Another regional blogger with national lessons for all of us to learn.

DCulberhouse
Generally Really Big Picture thoughts about transformation, leadership, and how it relates to organizations like schools.

Deustch29 
I don't call her the indispensable Mercedes Schneider for nothing. Schneider blogs almost daily, generally on topics for which she has done research and digging-- she comes up with the facts about the reformsters and their organizations that nobody else had discovered.

Diane Ravitch's Blog
The chances that you read me and don't know about Ravitch are zero-to-none. But this list would look odd without her on it. This blog is like the pro-public education town square where everyone passes through at some point.

Disappointed Idealist
A British blog focusing on education and politics.

Eclectablog
The primo source for progressive coverage of all things Michigan. And they've now got Mitchell Robinson blogging about education for them. Essential regional read if you want to understand the state that spawned DeVos.\

Ed in the Apple
A teacher in NYC focusing on "the intersection of education and politics."

Education in the Age of Globalization
The website of Yong Zhao, an international writer and thinker about education. The best man to put China's educational "achievements" in perspective.

Education Opportunity Network
One of the places to find the work of education writer Jeff Bryant. Always well-sourced and thorough, a grown-up voice for public education.

Educolor
Educolor is a movement, a network, a hashtag, and a voice for equity in education. This is a place where you can start to get activated.

Filling the Pail
The website of Greg Ashman, a teacher in Australia.

Finding Common Ground

One of the family of EdWeek blogs. Peter DeWitt is a former principal and a bridge-builder who is almost always entirely reasonable and thoughtful when discussing issues of policy or managing a school.

Fourth Generation Teacher
Claudia Swisher is yet another Oklahoma blogger and advocate who provides a good look at what advocacy looks like on the ground out west.

Fred Klonsky
Progressive union-loving activist with a clear direct tell-it-like-it-is style, writing in Chicago.

Gadfly on the Wall
Steven Singer blogs about national issues from a fiery progressive perspective. You won't find anyone more passionate about the issues.

Gary Rubinstein
Former TFA-er who keeps the pressure on that organization as well as other reformsters in New York and across the country. A prodigious debunker of miracle schools.

Gene Glass
A senior researcher at the National Education Policy Center and co-author of 50 Myths & Lies that Threaten America's Public Schools. Smart man with a wide grasp of the actual research behind policy debates.

Grumpy Old Teacher   
"Generations of public investment in a quality public education system should not be thrown away."

Hack Education
Nobody knows and understands the past and present of ed tech better than Audrey Watters. She's a really smart lady and a very snappy writer.  

Have You Heard
The website for the podcast by Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider. Berkshire is one of the best interviewers around, and Schneider is a great education history scholar. Together they talk to some of the most interesting and compelling folks in the education debates.

I Love You But You're Going To Hell
Not only my favorite blog title, but a great blog for unpacking religious conservatives for everyone else, respectfully yet clearly. Also, school stuff.

Jan Resseger
She's a strong and insightful voice in the push for a progressive public education system.

Jersey Jazzman
There's no better place for plain-language explanations of the wonky data behind policy debates. I've learned a ton reading this blog.

The Jose Vilson
A consistently decent, human, humane, and personal perspective on teaching and race. Pretty sure this is one of the major teaching voices of a generation.

Keystone State Education Coalition 
A great roundup of links to news and commentary regarding Pennsylvania education.

Living in Dialogue
Anthony Cody, a co-founder of the Network for Public Education, has long been one of the steady progressive blogging voices in education. This site continues his own blogging work along with contributions from other strong voices for public education.

The Merrow Report
John Merrow was a top reporter for decades. He's retired, but he hasn't stopped finding and commenting on some of the important stories in education.

Mitchell Robinson
Heads music education for Michigan State University, as well as being a long-time policy wonk. Great lively writing about national issues. You'll also find him at Eclectablog.

Momma Bears
If you're going to talk about public education activism in Tennessee, you have to talk about the Momma Bears, digging deep and laying bare the tools of the reformsters.

Mother Crusader
New Jersey mom who became a powerhouse public education advocate.

Mr. Anderson Reads and Writes
Reading, writing and policy, digging deep for details, from a classroom teacher.

My Two Cents
Mary J. Holden was an English who left the classroom and became an education activist-- then she went back to the classroom. Located in Nashville, she's busy in one of the flagship states of reforminess, so there's lots for us to learn from her.

Nancy Bailey's Education Website
Former special ed teacher with a Ph.D. in educational leadership, Bailey tackles national issues with both fists. Smart as hell.

NYC Public School Parents 
Leonie Haimson and Class Size Matters are among the heroes in the defense of public education. They thwarted a big data incursion into NY, and they continue to have a sharp eye on what threatens public education in this country. 

Othmar's Trombone
Politics, reform and English teaching in the UK.

Politics K-12
Alyson Klein and Andrew Ujifusa cover the political side of education at EdWeek and are a reliable source of what's happening in the halls of power.

The Progressive-- Public School Shakedown
The Progressive magazine is about the only news magazine with an actual commitment to public education, and that is shown through this ongoing project featuring eleven outstanding national writers (plus me).

Russ on Reading
Russ Walsh focuses on reading instruction, but sees the connections to larger education issues. Incidentally, Walsh has published the definitive layperson's guide to what's going on in ed reform.

Save Maine Schools

Emily Talmage is based in Maine, but she has been one of the voices out front in spotting and opposing the personalized competency based computerized learning trend.

School Finance 101
Bruce Baker manages to make sense out of the twisted labyrinth that is school financing. More interesting and important than you may imagine. Sometimes he shouts.

Schooling in the Ownership Society
A blog focusing on the moves to privatize public education with corporate reform.

Schools Matter
A roster of writers that includes Doug Martin, who wrote the book on Indiana Ed Corruption, and Jim Horn, who takes no prisoners and makes no compromises, but he knows his stuff. An aggressively anti-reform site.

Seattle Education
Another regional blog with a national take on ed reform, filtered through the unique perspective that comes from living in the shadow of Bill Gates' money.

Susan Ohanian
Ohanian had started to figure out what the hell was going wrong long before some of us had even started to wake up. Do not be put off by the design of her site, which can be... well, challenging. Trust me that it's worth it to dig in.

Teacher in a Strange Land
Nancy Flanagan has moved out of the EdWeek gated community, so there's no longer any excuse for missing any of her great posts. She's not as obviously combative, sparkly or full of fireworks as some blogs on this list, but she is smart and funny and honest and always worth the read.

Teacher TomTom teaches at a pre-school co-op in Seattle, and his perspective (and that of his students) is always a welcome breath of cool air.

Truth in American Education
An anti-common core, conservatively angled website with a variety of contributors.

Tultican
Thomas Tultican keeps an eye on national stories and the bloggers who cover them.

What Is Common Core
These ladies in Utah are from the conservative wing of The Resistance; they pay close attention and do their homework, and they've been doing it for over four years, making them oldsters in this game.

Wrench in the Gears
A blog focused on the multinational machine driving the data mining of society. You may at times feel as if you fell down the rabbit hole, but this woman has done her homework.

VAMboozled
Audrey Amrein-Beardsley is one of the top experts on Value Added Measures and their general use and abuse. An excellent source for your VAM-related concerns.

The Other Side
That link will take you to a post I wrote about reading Reformsters, which I think is generally a good exercise.

Also, while I'm tossing up links, if you're interested in living green and mom stuff, let me recommend Sunshine Guerrilla, my daughter's blog. She's got a great big heart and writes awfully well.

The Only True Charters

Pity the charter school movement. They have been splintering all over the place for about a year now as they have faced first, the tension between Free Marketeers, Choice Crusaders, and Social Justice Advocates. Then Trump reared up and let the voucher crowd back into the room, as well as creating terrible cognitive (or at least PR) dissonance among people who claimed to be Democrats but who had spent years supporting the very policies that Trump now championed.

Greg Richmond, president and CEO of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, popped up in EdWeek today as the latest charterizer trying to settle the whole swirly mess. He recaps that story right up through the point that Steve Zimmerman (Coalition of Community Charter Schools, NY) cried, "God save us from our friends," and Jeanne Allen (Center for Education Reform) began to nearly pee herself with joy.

Richmond wants to clear things up by articulating exactly what it is that charters stand for.

Choice, autonomy, and accountability.

Previously, we've heard autonomy and accountability. Richmond is expanding that so that he can clearly delineate between True Charter Advocates and everyone else.

As with most attempts to sort this out, Richmond's version requires a rewrite of history. Richmond, like other critic-fans, tries to use accountability as the wedge between True Charter Advocates and Those Other Guys, but of course a lack of accountability has been a selling point in charterdom for the last couple of decades. States like Florida and Betsy DeVos's MIchigan have fought hard to keep accountability rules far away from charter operators. The truest of true blue Free Marketeers have argued, as DeVos did Wednesday at Brookings, that the Free Market will provide all the accountability necessary. Charters have been pitched as a great way to create schools that don't have to play by the rules that public schools do-- that's kind of the entire point.

Richmond tries to thread the needle and say, "Well, of course, we don't want charters to operate under all the exact same rules as charters," but the fact remains-- if he wants to say that being anti-accountability makes someone Not a True Charter Advocate, he has to disregard half of the charter operators in half of charter history. It's like claiming that a true car is a convertible and all those other faux cars are just out of step with true carness.

For charter schools to succeed, educationally and politically, we must be faithful to all of the principles upon which the charter idea was built, not some at the expense of others. Charter schools without autonomy have no ability to innovate and excel. Charter schools without accountability will simply become a parallel system of failing schools.

Charter schools have innovated and excelled by aiming at select groups of students, abandoning the whole goal and purpose of public education. Where accountability has been lacking (aka almost everywhere) they have in fact delivered nothing new or effective.

But then, we don't need charters to have choice, autonomy and accountability. Good public schools offer choice, and all under one roof so that a child who wants to switch her goal from scientist to jazz musician can do so with out having to withdraw entirely. Good public schools also offer the parental choice of calling up your elected board member or administrators and telling them what you want to see. And why would public schools need to have less autonomy than charters? They don't. And we already know we can slap them with accountability measures until the cows come home, dragging their test scores behind them.

As always, I'm wondering why we need charter schools at all. What can they do that public schools can't? I mean, out of these three principles-- I know they can find ways to bar problematic or expensive students, grind teachers down into McEduworkers, craft a school around the principle of making money, and allow amateurs free reign in fields they know nothing about. Sometimes they also educate-- in pretty much the same way that public schools do. But of choice, autonomy and accountability, what is there that a charter can do that a public school cannot?

Not that it matters. Twitter snark from other charteristas has already been directed at Richmond and I don't think his column will go down in history as The Moment That Charter Advocates All United Under the Same Set of Principles. But it may build some odd bridges of understanding.

Right! When I visit great charter schools I always think,"Thank God for accountability measures that force these lazy bums to educate kids." https://t.co/3lcfRBagUg

— Robert Pondiscio (@rpondiscio) March 30, 2017

Which, oddly enough, is what most of us in public education thought when we met Common Core and Big Standardized Tests and a raft of other reforms that were supposed to make us lousy lazy public school teachers stop holding back the secrets of success and finally get to work. So maybe charter fans will still have trouble talking to each other, but some of the rest of us may have something to chat about.

ICYMI: Memorial Day Washout Edition (5/26)

No parade tomorrow, which is a bummer, but the incoming weather has spooked the parade's organizers. Won't feel quite right without the annual march down our main street, but sometimes the weather just can't be ignored. Have a good weekend, and here's a whole big lot of reading for you.

The Texas School District That Provided the Blueprint for an Attack on Public Education

From the New Yorker, by Jessica Winter. I'm reading Mike Hixenbaugh's book about Southlake, and you should, too, but in the meantime, here's a quick overview of the events that turned out to be the cutting edge of the new wave of culture panic.

Segregation Academies Still Operate Across the South. One Town Grapples With Its Divided Schools.

For ProPublica, Jennifer Berry Hawes travels to Camden, Alabama to remind us that that thing we like to think we don't do any more, we absolutely still do.

Tacoma teachers, students demand school district take care of 'rodent infestation' 

A reminder that sometimes the issues of education on the ground are not big, deep policy questions.

FAQ: Education Savings Accounts and private school tuition in Iowa

Last month Jason Fontana and Jennifer Jennings published a working paper showing that vouchers led direction to tuition increases in Iowa. That was followed by a bunch of privatizers complaining, "but-but-but..." So here are the answers to all of those objections.

Evidence That KIPP Is Still Abusing Students

At Schools Matter, James Horn points to a new case that suggests KIPP hasn't entirely cleaned up their act.

If You Give The Moms A Majority…

In Florida, Sue Kingery Woltanski with a close-up look at one district where the board has gone off the rails, thanks to Moms for Liberty and their good buddy Ron DeSantis. 

Columbus school board members at odds over leaked task force document

If your plan is to screw over your teachers and gaslight your constituents, maybe you shouldn't write the plan down.

A Meaningless Education

John Warner in Inside Higher Education writes about the student search for meaning and for money. Fun tidbit: "selling out" is no longer a thing.

They're still not like us

Jose Luis Vilson on math and society and much more.

How Arizona’s school voucher program turned into a tax break for the wealthy

Copper Courier with a simple, brief overview of Arizona's voucher boondoggle.

Horticulture, horses and ‘Chill Rooms’: One district goes all-in on mental health support

Javeria Salman visits Pittsburgh's Northgate district for Hechinger. A look at a big time investment in mental health supports for students.

Black Teachers Matter. Why Aren’t Schools Trying to Keep Them?

Shariff El-Mekki addresses the issue of retaining Black teachers and offers some resources.

Conservative groups stand in way of governor’s private-school vouchers

Sam Stockard for Tennessee Lookout describes the terrain in Tennessee when it heads into the next round of headbutting over vouchers.

Feeding La. Gov Landry’s Universal School Voucher GATOR

Louisiana has its own push to expand and extend vouchers (plus a snappy name). The indispensable Mercedes Schneider has the story.

Moms for Liberty to spend over $3 million targeting presidential swing state voters

Somebody (they'd rather not say who) has given M4L a cool $3 million to go help the GOP win swing states, further fulfilling their role as conservative political operatives.

Vouchers undermine efforts to provide an excellent public education for all

From the Economic Policy Institute, a pretty direct analysis of what vouchers do and do not do.

Under Ryan Walters, Oklahoma lost federal funding to help schools respond to tragedies

Walters continues to be not good at his job.

Ryan Walters’ PR Contract Should Be Banned, GOP Lawmaker Says

Meanwhile, members of his own party think maybe taxpayers should be bankrolling his personal PR campaign.

How a Lancaster charity linked to a private Christian college influences public school policy in Pa.

Here in PA, the Independence Law Center has been the one stop shop for districts that want to ban books and make culture panic policy. Here's one piece of the puzzle of where they get their money.

Pennsylvania Treasurer candidate pledges to “fight” school vouchers

1) She articulates an absolute hard stand against vouchers in PA. 2) Look, vouchers are an issue in a non-education state race.

How Community Schools are Transforming Public Education

In The Public Interest with a look at the community schools movement and what's going on these days. It would make a good model for true public education.

‘Scary’: public-school textbooks the latest target as US book bans intensify

From The Guardian. Now they're coming after chapters in textbooks, like the chapters about vaccines and climate change.

The Schools Where the Western Canon Is King

Kiera Butler for Mother Jones takes a look at the classical schools movement and its ties to certain brands of conservatism.

Broad Coalition of Religious and Civil Rights Organizations Condemns Use of Chaplains as Public School Counselors

The movement to use "chaplains" to sneak Christianity into schools has stirred up opposition among actual chaplains. Jan Resseger has the story.

On your mark, AI is set. Go?

Benjamin Riley's substack Cognitive Resonance is a new addition to the Curmudgucation Institute blogroll, with lots worthwhile to say regarding AI in education. Plus in this one he quotes me.

My dying high school writing teacher has one more lesson. Don't wait to say thank you.

Rex Huppke with a personal piece in USA Today. I agree. Don't wait.

A Reporter's Guide To The New Apostolic Reformation

You'll see NAR pop up more and more, a dominionist hard-core far right christianist movement. This guide from Religious Dispatches covers the basics.

Clarence Thomas attacks Brown v. Board ruling amid 70th anniversary

Want something else to worry about for the future? How about a Supreme Court justice who thinks Brown v. Board is a mistake that needs to be reversed.

A Message From Your Child’s New ChatGPTchr©

Jay Wamsted envisions a whole new first day of school.

I was busy this week. Not one, but two pieces about a new report from Ed Voters PA showing waste in PA's cyber charters. A nice focused one for Forbes, and for Bucks County Beacon, a deeper dive that looks at the historical context of cyber-shenanigans.

Also for Forbes, in Idaho, the attacks on libraries has led to at least one public library becoming adults only. 

Join me on substack. It's free and easy!

ICYMI: A Quick Calm Moment Edition (12/4)

Christmas is still far enough away that the Board of Directors are not yet losing their mind, but at age 5 they clearly understand Christmas in ways they previously did not. Just hang on.

I'm going to remind you that this weekly post is all about amplification. They way people get heard on the interwebz is to be shared, far and wide, again and again. Every single person who can click can help out with that. So if you read something here that speaks to you, share it. Post it (from the original source) on your Facebook or Tweetster or whatever platform you hang out upon (which is important, because as folks spread out across various platforms, it takes a little more work to get the word to them all). 

Sharing really is caring, and the bigger your personal audience, the more amplification you can provide. Okay, here we go.

Erie students get an A+ for academic growth

The story of Erie is encouraging. A school district that at one point seriously considered closing all its high schools has put together a remarkable coalition to lift it up out of the ditch. Yeah, I don't think much of test scores as a measure, but several measures, something is going right up there.

What do we owe the children of the pandemic

Nancy Flanagan with a heck of a post asking some of the important questions that most NAEP panic coverage is missing. 

Conservative states are blocking trans medical care. Families are fleeing.

Politico offers some reportage on how things are working out for some families in Texas and Florida.

"Groomers"

A post about the political machinations of the anti-LGBTQ crowd in South Carolina.

The Science of Reading and the Media: Is Reporting Biased?

From Maren Aukerman at the Literacy Research Association, an excellent rundown of what's going on in the current iteration of the Reading Wars.

After a bruising Michigan election, what’s next for Betsy DeVos and her education agenda?

Chalkbeat Detroit considers the DeVos fortunes after their shellacking-by-proxy in Michigan's elections. 

Election Reflection

Teacher activist Nicole Wolff in Arizona reflects on an election that was exhausting and not entirely encouraging in its results.

The System is Just Not Built That Way

TC Weber with some things to think about considering relationships and canned SEL programs

Former area teachers say they left profession feeling exhausted, unsupported

From Fargo, a look at teachers who have been worn down by problems with student behavior and a lack of support in dealing with them. 

Cynical MAGA censors are damaging public education

Always interesting to see how these things look to people outside the education bubble. Here's nominally-conservative Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post offering her take on the reading restrictions movement.

NC Baptist: On book bans, Moms for Liberty sure has a narrow view of liberty

And here's a take on book banning from a card-carrying Baptist in the South. 

And then there are the pensions!

Jeff Waid continues his series with a look at the arguments being made to reduce pensions for teachers.

Pursue School Improvement Through Persuasion, Not Vilification

Yes, this is a decade or two late, and yes, Rick Hess has been pretty close to the problem he's critiquing. But he's not wrong. At Ed Week.

Elsewhere, a piece I wrote is in the official magazine of the official superintendents' association. It's about the connections between small towns and their schools.

Over at Forbes, I looked at some standards movement fans spinning their wheels and still not understanding where they went wrong, and then I picked up on Oklahoma's stated intent to require taxpayers to fund religious charters. 

And here's your weekly reminder that you can get all of this stuff via substack--free and delivered straight to your inbox. 

ICYMI: Fall Back Edition (11/5)

Enjoying your extra hour? Or is this just a sneaky plot to leave us groggy and disoriented when elections roll around on Tuesday (in PA, anyway). Either way, I have some reading for you from the previous week.

I've Been To Over 20 Homeschool Conferences. The Things I've Witnessed At Them Shocked Me.

Heather Stark has a girl empowerment book series that she pitches at homeschooling conferences. She writes for Huffpost about the stuff she has encountered ("I am 20 minutes into the presentation when a woman interrupts me. 'When are you going to talk about God in all of this?' she asks.")

Moms for Liberty and Bible “Porn”

The indispensable Mercedes Schneider takes a look at Moms for Liberty's relentless opposition to naughty books, and holds it up against one book with many naughty bits.

Moms for Liberty unexpectedly finds itself at the center of a heated suburban Indiana mayoral race

Speaking of the Moms, Isabella Volmert reports for the Associated Press on how they've turned up in a mayoral race. I'm not sure how unexpected it is, but the Democrat in the race is using his opposition to the Hitler-quoting chapter to improve his own chances.

School Choice is Becoming Involuntary Tithing

Anne Lutz Fernandez looks at how states have started to "separate taxpayers from more money on behalf of churches." I do like "involuntary tithing" as a way to describe it.

The Undead "Invest In Kids" Act Creeps Back into the Capitol

Illinois's voucher law is scheduled to lapse soon, and so lots of voucher fans are doing their best to keep it shambling about in undead form. Julie Vassilatos writes about it. 

What are "evidence mills?"

Let's say you need some evidence so you can call your new program product "evidence-based." Is there a handy place to order up some evidence? Why, yes, yes there is.

Neenah school district will raise taxes by nearly 4% as cost of voucher program jumps 44%

This particular example is from Wisconsin, but it's the same old story-- more vouchers = higher local taxes and/or fewer local services.

What Happens When Teachers Aren't Valued?

You already know, but Andy Spears lays it out here.

Texas tried to fix its teacher shortage by lowering requirements − the result was more new teachers, but at lower salaries

At the Conversation, the unsurprising news that when you lower standards, pay goes down, and when pay goes down, people don't to meet rigorous standards, and your clever solution to a teacher :shortage" just makes things worse.

How Teacher Apprenticeship is Changing Teacher Preparation

Here's a thing they're trying in some places.

A Texas Billionaire’s Associates Are Trying to Sink a School Tax Election via Their Dark Money Nonprofit

Your list of rich guys trying to mess with education should include Tim Dunn of Texas. Here's just one example of his special brand of shenanigans, from ProPublica

Mike Miles has some explaining to do. Great teachers HISD shouldn't be afraid.

The editors of the Houston Chronicle like some of Mike Miles moves for his school takeover, but even they have noticed there are problems when you install a culture of fear.

School Board Elections Could Make (or Break) Our Democracy

From The Progressive, a reminder that elections have consequences--even school board elections. Please pay attention.

Truth & Liberty Coalition expands culture war to 30 Colorado school boards

Steve Ravey at Religion News reports on the advance of Christian Nationalism in Colorado.

This Extremist Group Calls Itself A 'Parental Rights' Org. Now It's Targeting School Boards In 1 Key State.

Nathalie Baptiste breaks down Moms for Liberty's attempt to get a foothold in Pennsylvania. (I'm sure it has nothing to do with Pennsylvania's being a swing state for 2024.) I hope people are paying attention next Tuesday.

Will Adding Even More Vouchers Improve SUFS’s Customer Service?

Florida's voucher program is starting to collapse under its own weight. Sue Kingery Woltanski doubts that adding more weight will be a big help. 

Same Monkeys At the Wheel

TC Weber breaks down the latest school evaluation monkeyshines in Tennessee.

A Reflection on the Network for Public Education’s 10th Anniversary Conference

Jan Resseger presents some highlights from the Network for Public Education conference.

Grade Retention is Unnecessary!

Nancy Bailey looks at the ever-popular bad policy of retention for students who fail a reading test.

SC Superintendent of Education Ellen Weaver Addresses School Librarians

Steve Nuzum looks at South Carolina's ed chief's address to school librarians, in all its counterfactual threatening awfulness.

A Tennessee high school let a Christian preacher lead the basketball team in foot-washing

Oh boy.

What Happens When Young People Actually Read “Disturbing” Books

A new study (admittedly a bit narrow) sees what happens if you just let middle schoolers just pick whatever they want to read.

Right-wing fake history is making a big comeback — but it never went away

A quick guide to some of the common themes of fake history.

The Great Social Media–News Collapse

At the Atlantic (beware the paywall) an analysis of what readers and big tech have done to news reporting.

At Forbes this week, I looked at a really interesting free market argument against vouchers, and a group out there trying to combat Moms for Liberty. 

Sign up for substack, and get all my education stuff for free in your inbox. 

AI Makes Strange Bedfellows

There's that weird little feeling you get when you find that you kind of agree with someone you don't generally agree with. So here I am nodding my head to M oms for Liberty, Ron DeSantis, and National Parents Union because they are talking about AI.

In their newsletter, M4L proudly announced that Tina Descovich was "at the table" for the regime's AI in Education Task Force (pretty sure that's not an A1 task force). 

Representing parents across the nation, she expressed support for the responsible use of artificial intelligence as a tool to enhance educational outcomes, while also emphasizing parents’ serious concerns about rushed implementation without appropriate safeguards and guardrails in place.

Well, yes, that's...um...correct. 

Meanwhile, Politico's Andrew Atterbury covered Ron DeSantis's very crabby opposition to AI. 

“Let’s not try to act like some type of fake videos or fake songs are going to deliver us to some kind of utopia,” the governor said Dec. 18.

He notably has taken aim at data centers sprouting up across the country by attempting to slow their growth in Florida, siding with local communities opposing the massive developments. And DeSantis frequently raises fears of how AI could ultimately upend the economy by displacing countless workers. The Republican rails against what he calls the “mindless slop” AI creates and warns deepfakes and manipulation could pose “a potential existential crisis for self-government.”

“The idea of this transhumanist strain, that somehow this is going to supplant humans and this other stuff, we have to reject that with every fiber of our being,” DeSantis said Dec. 15 during an AI event in Jupiter. “We as individual human beings are the ones that were endowed by God with certain inalienable rights. That's what our country was founded upon — they did not endow machines or these computers for this.”

 Okay, a little christiniast nationalismy for me, but basically, I think he's right.

And here's NPR, running the Ai resistance banner up the flagpole that is Keri Rodrigues, the leader of the astroturfed National Parents Union. She found her son interacting with the chatbot on his Bible app. He was asking deep moral questions about sin and stuff. Author Rhitu Chatterjee sets her irony ignorer on stun and writes

That's the kind of conversation that she had hoped her son would have with her and not a computer. "Not everything in life is black and white," she says. "There are grays. And it's my job as his mom to help him navigate that and walk through it, right?"

She's not wrong (she's just a bad spokesperson for moral complexity and nuance). 

It feels a little reminiscent of the Common Core days, when the opposition include a coalition of people who were against the Core because they wanted to defend public schools and those who were against the Core because they considered it the ultimate example of everything Terrible and Wrong about public schools. 

And just to ramp up that sense of deja vu, here comes the AFT to team up with our AI overlords to spend $23 million on teaching teachers to use AI. Or maybe you caught AFT chief Randi Weingarten's Christmas posts on the twitter and ye blue skye-- some lovely arts from the plagiarism and lies machine. Sigh. AFT has displayed some caution about AI in classrooms, and Weingarten has been crystal clear about her opposition to Trump's order to keep states from passing any sort of AI rules.

Lots of smart folks are predicting (even more) AI backlash in 2026, so maybe the right wing outrage crowd is simply angling to get in front of what they believe will be the next big fifteen-minute wave. 

Whatever the case, these folks who are so reliably on the wrong side of so many education issues are, on this issue, are better on AI, or at least are saying some of the right words. Can they keep it up even as Trump continues to argue for unfettered, unregulated AI, including a federal attempt to forbid states to exercise their rights to regulate a business. Because if Dear Leader can do anything, it's sense where a whole lot of money is about to be thrown around so that he can insert himself into the transaction. States' rights? Who cares. 2026 could be an interesting year. 

Read These Writers

There are a lot of good people in the edublogosphere, and if you've made it to this blog, you probably know many of them already. But for those of you just getting into the business, here's a quick reference list of some of my favorites with a capsule over-simplified explanation. Do sample and read and share-- amplifying voices is one way to make your point in the world. [Also, I didn't think this needed to be said, but I guess it does-- I read a wide variety of people with a wide variety of viewpoints because it's the only way to get a full picture of what's going on and what people are thinking. Does that mean I endorse every single word that every single one of these people post? Of course not, and neither should you. If you are looking for someone you can follow thoughtlessly 100% of the time, you are doing this whole thing wrong.]

I could try to organize these by geography or by how fiery or how funny or how progressive or some other issues play out, but ultimately this will take me a while to type out anyway, so let's go with the alphabet.

There's no doubt I've missed some folks (there are over 200 bloggers in the Education Bloggers Network alone), and that's before we even get to people like Wendy Lecker and Alan Singer and John Thompson who all are worth reading but who don't have a "home' I can link to. If you have other suggestions, feel free to add them to the comments. In the meantime, sample. It's vacation. You've got the time. Do some reading.

A View from the Edge

Rob Miller (@edgeblogger) is an Oklahoma educator who has done all-- marine, teacher, administrator. He brings a light sense of humor to national and Oklahoma stories.

Accountabaloney

I'm a sucker for a good name, but this Florida blogging duo includes a graphic designer, so it looks good, too. The good fight in Florida is a barometer for reformy messes elsewhere, and these folks have a good eye for malarkey.

Alfie Kohn

Kohn doesn't post often, but when he does, you don't want to miss it. This is what actual education reform ideas look like.

Andrea Gabor

Gabor is a journalist and author (The Capitalist Philosophers, Einstein's Wife) who is frequently doing exceptional work looking at charter schools.

Answer Sheet

Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post is the only big media journalist doing regular, daily coverage of education. Get national news, a public ed perspective, and answers from the kind of people who will ignore bloggers like me, but answer the phone when it says "Someone from the Washington Post is calling."

Automated Teaching Machine

Adam Bessie is a cartoonist who works the education beat. For those of you who like visuals.

Badass Teachers Association

The activist group, best known through their facebook page, also has a blog featuring an assortment of voices.

Big Education Ape 

One of the best aggregators of edublogging out there. If you only have time to make a couple of stops, BEA will get you up to speed. And as a bonus, you get some fairly hilarious paste-up illustrations.

BustED Pencils

BustED Pencils is a webcast (I've been a guest and it was fun), and it is also the host to regular blogging from Morna McDermott, Peggy Robertson, and others, as well as regular features like What Would Matt Damon's Mom Say. It is unabashedly progressive and activist.

Blue Cereal Education

Another Oklahoma blogger focusing on national issues. "Everything I say is so wise even I can hardly believe it. Feel free to concur."

Bob Braun's Ledger

Long-time New Jersey reporter who has covered politics and education for decades. Regional and national stories with a hard-eyed reporter's view.

Bright Lights Small City

Sarah Lahm covers Minneapolis schools, policy and politics. As with many of the regional bloggers, her writing gives a good look at how the bigger issues play out on a smaller, specific stage.

Charter School Watchdog

Longstanding clearing house for news of charter school shenanigans.

Chicago Public Fools

Julie Vassilatos blogs in and about Chicago, but watches national stories as well.

Clemsy's Corner

For a more militant take on the education debates and national policy, read Michael Lambert, who posts mostly when he's cranked up.

Cloaking Inequality

Julian Vasquez Heilig has been a visible and vocal part of the pro-public ed movement, covering a wide range of national topics.

Dad Gone Wild

A father in Tennessee who has educated himself in the issues and done some activist work as well. Another regional blogger with national lessons for all of us to learn.

Daniel Katz

Katz is the head of the Department of Education Studies at Seton Hall and a former HS English teacher. He presents a well-researched, thoughtful take on what's going on nationally.

DCulberhouse

Generally Really Big Picture thoughts about transformation, leadership, and how it relates to organizations like schools.

Deustch29

I don't call her the indispensable Mercedes Schneider for nothing. Schneider blogs almost daily, generally on topics for which she has done research and digging-- she comes up with the facts about the reformsters and their organizations that nobody else had discovered.

Diane Ravitch's Blog

The chances that you read me and don't know about Ravitch are zero-to-none. But this list would look odd without her on it. This blog is like the pro-public education town square where everyone passes through at some point.

Eclectablog

The primo source for progressive coverage of all things Michigan. And they've now got Mitchell Robinson blogging about education for them. Essential regional read if you want to understand the state that spawned DeVos.

Education in the Age of Globalization

The website of Yong Zhao, an international writer and thinker about education. The best man to put China's educational "achievements" in perspective.

Education Opportunity Network

One of the places to find the work of education writer Jeff Bryant. Always well-sourced and thorough, a grown-up voice for public education.

Educolor

Educolor is a movement, a network, a hashtag, and a voice for equity in education. This is a place where you can start to get activated.

Edushyster

Funny and informative, the humor content here often overshadows the actual journalism, but it's the journalism that's really most impressive. Jennifer Berkshire goes places, and talks to people, and we all get to find out how things look on the ground.

Finding Common Ground

One of the family of EdWeek blogs. Peter DeWitt is a former principal and a bridge-builder who is almost always entirely reasonable and thoughtful when discussing issues of policy or managing a school.

Fourth Generation Teacher

Claudia Swisher is yet another Oklahoma blogger and advocate who provides a good look at what advocacy looks like on the ground out west.

Fred Klonsky

Progressive union-loving activist with a clear direct tell-it-like-it-is style, writing in Chicago.

Gadfly on the Wall

Steven Singer blogs about national issues from a fiery progressive perspective.

Gary Rubinstein

Former TFA-er who keeps the pressure on that organization as well as other reformsters in New York.

Gene Glass

A senior researcher at the National Education Policy Center and co-author of 50 Myths & Lies that Threaten America's Public Schools. Smart man with a wide grasp of the actual research behind policy debates.

Jersey Jazzman

There's no better place for plain-language explanations of the wonky data behind policy debates. I've learned a ton reading this blog.

Keystone State Education Coalition

A great roundup of links to news and commentary regarding Pennsylvania education.

Living in Dialogue

Anthony Cody, a co-founder of the Network for Public Education, has long been one of the steady progressive blogging voices in education. This site continues his own blogging work along with contributions from other strong voices for public education.

Marie Corfield

The teacher who got yelled at by Chris Christie in that video. Now she's a strong voice for public ed activism in New Jersey.

Mitchell Robinson

Heads music education for Michigan State University, as well as being a long-time policy wonk. Great lively writing about national issues.

Momma Bears

If you're going to talk about public education activism in Tennessee, you have to talk about the Momma Bears, digging deep and laying bare the tools of the reformsters.

Mother Crusader

New Jersey mom who became a powerhouse public education advocate.

Mr. Anderson Reads and Writes

Reading, writing and policy, digging deep for details, from a classroom teacher.

My Two Cents

Mary J. Holden was an English who left the classroom and became an education activist. Located in Nashville, she's busy in one of the flagship states of reforminess, so there's lots for us to learn from her.

Nancy Bailey's Education Website

Former special ed teacher with a Ph.D. in educational leadership, Bailey tackles national issues with both fists.

NYC Public School Parents 

Leonie Haimson and Class Size Matters are among the heroes in the defense of public education. They thwarted a big data incursion into NY, and they continue to have a sharp eye on what threatens public education in this country.

Politics K-12

Alyson Klein and Andrew Ujifusa cover the political side of education at EdWeek and are a reliable source of what's happening in the halls of power.

The Progressive-- Public School Shakedown

The Progressive magazine is about the only news magazine with an actual commitment to public education, and that is shown through this ongoing project featuring eleven outstanding national writers (plus me).

Russ on Reading

Russ Walsh focuses on reading instruction, but sees the connections to larger education issues. Incidentally, Walsh has published the definitive layperson's guide to what's going on in ed reform.

Save Maine Schools

Emily Talmage is based in Maine, but she has been one of the voices out front in spotting and opposing the personalized competency based computerized learning trend.

School Finance 101

Bruce Baker manages to make sense out of the twisted labyrinth that is school financing. More interesting and important than you may imagine.

Schooling in the Ownership Society

A blog focusing on the moves to privatize public education with corporate reform.

Schools Matter

A roster of writers that includes Doug Martin, who wrote the book on Indiana Ed Corruption, and Jim Horn, who takes no prisoners and makes no compromises, but he knows his stuff. An aggressively anti-reform site.

Seattle Education

Another regional blog with a national take on ed reform, filtered through the unique perspective that comes from living in the shadow of Bill Gates' money.

Susan Ohanian

Ohanian had started to figure out what the hell was going wrong long before some of us had even started to wake up. Do not be put off by the design of her site, which can be... well, challenging. Trust me that it's worth it to dig in.

Teacher in a Strange Land

If you are unpaid viewer at EdWeek with only so many views per month, make Nancy Flanagan's blog your first priority. She's not as obviously combative, sparkly or full of fireworks as some blogs on this list, but she is smart and funny and honest and always worth the read.

Teacher Tom

Tom teaches at a pre-school co-op in Seattle, and his perspective (and that of his students) is always a welcome breath of cool air.

The Becoming Radical

Paul Thomas is a college professor comfortable blending references to ed research, race issues, poetry and comic books. A good pair of eyes for seeing beneath the surface of many issues in the ed realm.

The Jose Vilson

A consistently decent, human, humane, and personal perspective on teaching and race. Pretty sure this is one of the major teaching voices of a generation.

The Merrow Report

John Merrow was a top reporter for decades. He's retired, but he hasn't stopped finding and commenting on some of the important stories in education.

Troy LaRaviere's Blog

LaRaviere was a principal in Chicago, and refused to buckle even when the school system and Rahm Emanuel came after him. He's still paying close attention.

Tultican

Thomas Tultican keeps an eye on national stories and the bloggers who cover them.

Wait What?

Connecticut blogger Jon Pelto has been fighting corporate control in politics and education.

What Is Common Core

These ladies in Utah are from the conservative wing of The Resistance; they pay close attention and do their homework, and they've been doing it for over four years, making them oldsters in this game.