Go for the jugular, not “politicization” as a process attack
I’ve been going back and forth a bit on Twitter with David Cohen and Rachel Levy about the term “politicization” when applied to education policy, with Cohen and Levy arguing that the high-stakes accountability policies they dislike represent politicization. As an historian, I’m skeptical of the term “politicization” in policy discourse for two reasons: first, […]
The Baumol fallacy, from an historian’s view
Time to hike up my trousers and wade into some intellectual flotsam. In my entry on the politics of Scott Walker's anti-unionism, there's a comment demi-thread about the Baumol "cost-disease" argument started by Glen McPhee that I want to bring into a main entry, because the fallacy embedded in it is similar to Tyler Cowen's argument […]
The Loeb Rule and pugilistic anti-unionism circa 2011
In the 1910s, the Chicago Board of Education cut the legs out from under the first successful teachers union, the Chicago Teachers Federation (AFT Local #1), by forbidding teachers from joining unions. The Board of Education fired dozens of teachers (about half of whom were CTF members), and the CTF pulled back its membership from […]
Why Sherman’s blog is scarce this month…
Blogging has been interrupted by life and the metastasizing of work. I assure you, this isn't my preference (in terms of not having time to blog). But I am overdrawn from my account at the Bank of Chronos, and the bank has usurious interest rates. (Yes, the entry title scans to a certain Pat Cooksey […]
Larry Cuban honors David Tyack
Anyone who has read Tinkering toward Utopia may recall Cuban's language in today's blog entry as familiar from the prefatory material in Tinkering. David Tyack retired a number of years ago, as did Cuban, and he was honored at last fall's History of Education Society meeting at the end of the presidential address by Jon […]