Reflecting on how one becomes the person she/he is offers a clarity that both brings into focus and distorts how our history shapes us. But for me, it is undeniable that who I am as a student, teacher, writer, and scholar was profoundly influenced by the coincidence of my becoming a comic book collector in the 1970s.
Directly, buying, reading, collecting, and drawing from comic books reinforced my fascination with science fiction and helped me come to recognize (after setting aside my ambitions as a comics artist) that I am a writer. The most obvious outcome of that realization is my own book on comics and graphic novels [1], but I also have 

Metaphors simplify yet they can reveal complexity. Over the years, I have used different metaphors (see here, here, and here) to capture the complex interdependence among reform-driven policymakers, practitioners, parents, students, academics, business and civic leaders during times when strenuous efforts are underway to improve schools.   At times like this, policymakers decide to expand online instruction in K-12 schools, adopt Common Core Standards, expand charter schools, base evaluations of teachers on student test scores, or introduce other ventures that promise to improve classroom teaching and learning. But moving from policy to practice in schools (or other human improvement institutions like health care, religion, psychotherapy, organizational development, social work) is hard, problem-ridden work.
Sometimes to capture the complexity of work in such organizations, using simple images can help. To grasp the complexity of moving from policy to practice in school systems I have used the metaphor of links in a command-

There’s an Op-Ed in today’s Washington Post in which the New America Foundation’s Maggie Severns urges states to rethink teacher preparation in light of our country’s ongoing shift to a minority-majority nation. As Severns explains, immigrant youths and the children of immigrants are among the lowest-performing groups of students in U.S. public schools, AND they will account for virtually all growth in the workforce over the next 40 years.
Severns lauds the work in Illinois, where teachers are being given special training to meet the needs of bilingual learners, something preschool teacher Christina Gomez appreciates: “Before, I felt like I was kind of in survival mode,” she explained, “just trying to get them through. It’s not just a challenge for monolingual teachers but for 

The popular rising against high-stakes testing grows larger every day.
In Texas, more than 500 school boards have endorsed a resolution opposing high-stakes testing.
A coalition of organizations and individuals prepared a national resolution against high-stakes testing. Hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals have signed it. (Please add your name.)
Florida parents are up in arms against the FCAT. Even editorial boards are beginning to see the sham perpetrated on students using tests of dubious quality.
Parent groups around the country are organizing to resist, as they see the unnecessary pressure applied to their children. The issue is personal, not theoretical. They may not have read the policy briefs, but they see their own children spending weeks preparing for the state tests, weeks in which there is no instruction, just test prep.

Don’t Believe the Romney Hype

A colleague of mine who works as a home and hospital school teacher for those sick and disabled children who cannot make it to school, told me he is required to test all of his students, regardless of the severity of their illness or injury. In most cases, disabled students are given testing accommodations according to their individualized educational plans (IEPs) but he teaches one boy who was, just weeks ago, paralyzed 

Thieves fall out over Springfield pension heist

Soon after Wisconsin's Gov. Scott Walker moved to crush the state's teacher unions, he called on Michelle Rhee for help. While she declined to actually come to Wisconsin and stand behind Walker in the face of angry teacher protests, Rhee did come to Walker's rescue on more than one occasion.

Mother Jones writer Andy Kroll gleaned this from some of Walker's newly released internal emails.

Rhee did defend some of Walker's anti-union measures twice on television soon after he announced his plan. "The move to try to limit what [public-sector unions] bargain over is an 

Matt Lander, a key policy and research aid to Jeb Bush, referred to “teachers and their unions” to Hitler’s forces in an ALEC paper this summer. His intellectually flawed and dishonest work  received just due this week. rom Teresa Stepzinski in the Florida Times-Union:

He likely won’t be showcasing the award in his office.
But Matthew Ladner, a senior advisor of policy and research for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education, has received inaugural “Get a Life(time) Achievement Award” for bunkum from the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
The NEPC Bunkum Awards are “presented for the most compellingly lousy educational research 

In the past four months, the Canadian province of Quebec has become a hotbed of Occupy Wall Street-style protests—marches with hundreds of thousands of protesters, and battles with tear gas throwing, pepper-spraying police. And it all started over proposed tuition increases at Quebec's public universities.
Indeed the Quebec Spring first blossomed in February when the government proposed hiking tuition from $2,168 to $3,793 over the next five years. Thousands of students went on strike and the government, led by Premier Jean Charest, decided to play hardball and crack down with the now-infamous Bill 78, a law that limits protest rights.
Since then the protests and student boycotts have only grown. Nearly 200,000 students across the province have gone on strike. And the situation has revealed deeper frustrations with the government’s willingness to bail

At Penn State, a Former Frat House Becomes an 'Ideas Incubator'

Get ready for the SOS National Convention! 

Join education activists from around the country this August 3-5 in Washington, DC for the Save Our Schools National Convention! 



Parents, students, and people of all professions and persuasions are encouraged to attend and assist with crafting a progressive set of principles regarding what we expect from public education and how it should function to serve every type of child. Once completed, we will present these principles to both political parties in time for their upcoming national conventions.

The Save Our Schools Convention is scheduled for August 3-5 and will be held at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, 2660 Woodley Rd NW, Washington, DC. There is a $150 per person registration fee to help pay for the convention. Please use this link to register. 



You can also join the SOS Early Childhood Webinar Friday June 1, 9 pm EDT. Deborah Meier and Nancy Carlsson-Paige will lead the discussion. Details here.

When the news came that the pension bill would not be voted on this session I headed over to the Red Line Tap.
If ever I needed a drink, it was last night.
Two Loyola college kids were over in the corner nursing a couple of beers.
And Tony was at the bar.
“Dodged a bullet?”
“Big time,” I said. “Why don’t you buy this time?”
“Nope,” said Tony. “That would ruin my reputation.”