It remains to be seen whether NJ Governor Chris Christie will be able to avoid having his political career crash and burn.
Category: Education
Closing Bridges While Building Bipartisan Bridges for Corporate-Backed 'Reform'
A recipe for building social movement teachers unions – and fig cake too
There’s no strict recipe we can follow to build social movement teachers unions though the process will require some indispensable ingredients, robust democracy for one. Another element is creating relationships among people who inhabit very different social spheres. While the principles on which we organize are key, so are the ways we struggle together, creating friendships.
Duking it out with Weingarten on Common Core
One of the most confusing aspects of the last decade’s education reforms is that a reform that will do great harm often contains an element that’s useful, even progressive.
Liberals, race(ism), and ed reform – a NJ fairytale
From Doris Mercado-Melon
Union City, NJ had a brief minute in the sun as the liberals’ example of good school reform.
Thanksgiving and “identity politics”
Nasty exchanges about “identity politics” in Left circles on FaceBook I’ve glanced at recently haven’t seemed very relevant to my work as a teacher educator or union activist. This is curious because I know one reason education is so contested is that schools reproduce (or change) the beliefs that underlie the society’s political and economic arrangements. Schools and teachers convey how we make sense of our identity, as a society and as individuals. So why does the debate seem tangential to me?
What do "social movement teachers unions" look like?
One question I’m frequently asked is what “social movement teacher unionism” looks like and how to get there.
Should we “play nice” with the NEA and AFT?
The teacher activist blogosphere has been buzzing about the perfidy of the AFT’s and NEA’s endorsements of teacher evaluation tied to students’ standardized test scores and a new national curriculum, the Common Core. Both policies are key to the neoliberal dream of a national, privatized system of public education that will synchronize educational outcomes with an economic reality of growing joblessness and underemployment. (I know these are strong claims and I refer readers who want further verification and explanation to my analyses in New Politics and book.)
Christie's coast to victory was not inevitable
It was clear from the start that teachers had an uphill battle explaining why NJ Governor Christie’s educational policies, his vicious bashing of teachers, were harmful to kids and the state. One of the most serious obstacles is that media are captive to neoliberal propagandists. Conveying a different message requires concentrated, savvy use of social media.
Mediocrity in teacher education?
Bill Keller’s op/ed piece in the NY Times about the mediocrity in teacher education deserved a political rebuttal that responses in the “letters” section didn’t provide. My letter, rejected, slipped in my doctoral work at Harvard and my book on urban teaching, which in the past has allowed my radical critique to pass as credible.
Connecting the dots: The "new mindset" we confront
One of the most deceptive aspects of neoliberal reforms in education is that destructive policies often contain one element that is seductive for progressives who care about inequality in schools. When the Dems and Republicans rewrote federal aid to K-12 schools in No Child Left Behind (NCLB) many liberal researchers were dazzled by the legislation’s requirement that schools and states report data on student achievement broken down (disaggregated) by race.
Wasting money on educating the masses and "fear of elitism"
When I speak to teachers and education activists about my research, I am often told that the vast, well-organized project I describe could not exist without our knowing about it and that what I am describing sounds like a conspiracy. No, it’s not a conspiracy because conspiracies are, by definition, secret.
What can retired teachers do to help?
Welcome news: The strike last week of England’s two largest unions was highly successful, gaining strong favorable publicity on social media and rallies. (Mea culpa: I was corrected by a Scottish comrade about my use of “UK” – Scotland has an independent government and educational system. Wales didn’t strike because its government nudged a bit on contract issues).
Far more than a struggle over pay and pensions: Why the Oct. 1/17 UK teacher strikes matter
Both teachers unions and headline-writers seem to agree that the NUT (National Union of Teachers) and NASUWT (National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers) joint strikes that start Tuesday 1 October are over pay and pensions. They’re wrong.
Here's why UK teachers are striking
UK teacher Rob Price explains in this FB post why we should care about and support the upcoming joint strikes of the country’s two biggest teachers unions. (My post tomorrow will discuss why this is a strike over much more than pay and pensions.) You can tweet messages of support to @nutonline with the hashtag #teacherroar.
Media, TFA, and the Vietnam War "body counts"
During the war in Vietnam, I heard Frank Bardacke (honored recently for his wonderful book on union democracy in the Farmworkers), give a short speech at a rally laying out how all three national TV networks and major newspapers had carried exactly the same analysis of a battle.
Stalin, the Soviet science wars, and “junk science” selling marketizing of education
One of the most glaring contradictions in policies being foisted on public schools (charter schools are generally exempt from these regulations) is that research on which they are based is fundamentally flawed. Ethan Pollock’s examination of “Stalin and the Soviet science wars” (Princeton University Press, 2006) teases out the complex relationship between science and ideology.
Back to school, with New Politics
Starting this week, I’ll be blogging at NP every Wednesday, expanding the range of topics on which I write to include issues of teaching and learning, as well as sticking with topics that seem more “political,” like teachers unions, school reform, and labor.
Flipping burgers and school reform
Fast-food workers are striking today throughout the US. Tweets are flying with new hashtags announcing strike actions.
How (not) to push back on the power elite's destruction of public education
A former PR apparatchik in the US Dept. of Education (DOE) in Obama’s first term, Paul Cunningham, has penned a snarky attack on Diane Ravitch, the best known liberal opponent of the bipartisan “reforms” of public education that are destroying it.
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