“Are you fighting, or are you playing?” “Are you fighting, or are you playing?” “Are you fighting, or are you playing?” I had to ask the 7th grader this question three times before he stopped pushing his classmate, looked at me, and answered me with a smirk: “I’m playing.” Whatever was happening, or about to happen, was over, and the… Read more →
It’s comforting to learn that the feds (i.e. The U.S. Department of Education run by Secretary Betsy DeVos) has some serious concerns about Illinois accountability plans. When I first saw Illinois’ plan, I concluded that it fell far short of its goals around equity and transparency, and wrote about those failings here and here. Illinois was among the first states… Read more →
A former North Carolina Teacher of the Year, James Ford recently joined a small group of accomplished educators to meet with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and talk about teacher retention. An education activist and nonprofit program director, Ford has been a frequent critic of the administration and DeVos’ appointment. He writes here about his experience here at the meeting. As I arrived at… Read more →
As school reforms go, it’s not sexy, it’s not new, and it’s not at all controversial. So it probably won’t get as much attention as Betsy DeVos being voted Donald Trumps’ worst cabinet member by readers of the New York Times, which is really saying something given that she’s in the same gaggle as Scott Pruitt of the Environmental Protection… Read more →
The School Improvement Grants program poured $7 billion down the drain between 2010 and 2015, as a recent Washington Post article pointed out. One of the Obama Administration’s signature efforts in education, which pumped billions of federal dollars into overhauling the nation’s worst schools, failed to produce meaningful results, according to a federal analysis. Test scores, graduation rates and college… Read more →
So Betsy DeVos is our new Education Secretary, a job she secured by the skin of her teeth thanks to a historic tie-breaking vote by Vice President Pence. Her shaky approval weakened her in a department already weakened by a major change in K-12 education law that relegated nearly every meaningful accountability decision to states and local districts. Yet it was… Read more →
To President Trump: I was one of the 470,000 women who marched on Washington Saturday, the day after your inauguration, holding a sign that was earnest but not angry, focused on the aspirations I have for my young adult daughters. In a million years I couldn’t have imagined I would ever be writing you a letter (let alone putting the… Read more →
Listening to the hearing for Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s choice for Education Secretary, I thought of the 50 million preK-12 children she will affect in her role, as well as the millions of college students . Then, as we so often do as human beings, I went from the macro to the micro. I thought of loved ones and friends… Read more →
I’ve been procrastinating about writing this post. Why? Because while I believe all people should speak their truths, I’m cautious about doing so when it comes to school choice and my kids. Let me be frank: My truth is that of a white, passing-as-privileged suburban mom (my husband and I are self-employed – so we’re honestly not as privileged as… Read more →