Top education news stories of 2015, to an historian
This was a very busy year for education news: twenty major news stories follow, and I am restricting myself to the United States. The Every Student Succeeds Act passed at the end of the year, ending many of No Child Left Behind’s straightjacket rules and putting limits on the federal Department of Education. This is […]
Gnostic utterings for academics
For a period of years, my friend Gwen Knighton had entries in her blog she called gnostic utterings, which were comments about the world prompted by some-distance-removed events, and to which she appended the warning, “If you think this is about you, you are probably wrong.” Each entry was a collection of statements she did not utter […]
Charter-school narratives and presidential-election politics
Charter-school expansion advocates have responded quickly and energetically to remarks Hillary Clinton made at last Friday’s televised Democratic candidate forum in South Carolina: The original idea behind the charter schools… was to learn what worked and apply them in the public schools. And here’s a couple of problems. Most charter schools, I don’t want to say every […]
Duncan’s legacy: The cold take
The Conversation has just published a short piece on Arne Duncan’s legacy by ASU doctoral student Amanda Potterton and me. Below is the full text and then some comments on the writing process and what we left out: Arne Duncan’s legacy: growing influence of a network of private actors on public education Sherman Dorn and Amanda […]
Raising Arizona’s children — a newcomer perspective
As a newcomer to Arizona since June 2014, and with an absorbing job that has been my focus for the last 15 months, I have largely stood back and watched the state’s education politics. For a small (-population) state such as Arizona, it has been an eventful 15 months: The (former) incumbent state superintendent was […]