When you are the North Carolina General Assembly and you want to stop a string of court decisions that have declared your unconstitutional acts “unconstitutional,” then you change the judicial system in your favor. Or at least try. When you are the North Carolina General Assembly and you want to remain in power on West … Continue reading Our Schools Are Not Failing; Our Policy Makers Are : Raleigh’s Amorphous Way of Measuring Schools

Remember Michelle Rhee’s visit to North Carolina last year for a “closed-door” meeting (February 7th  ,2017) with lawmakers brokered by an educational lobbying body of business leaders called BEST NC (coupled with the NC GOP’s invitation to Betsy DeVos who had just been confirmed as Trump’s secretary of education)? It was another ominous omen of what has been … Continue reading Too Much Damn Privatization of Public Schools – Using Public Money to Make a Public Good Profitable for a Few

In 2015, Business Insider published a report from the Brookings Institute highlighting the 15 cities where poverty is growing fastest in the nation. Greensboro-High Point tied for 10th, Winston-Salem tied for 8th, and Raleigh tied for 3rd…with Charlotte. In 2016, the Washington Post published a study by the Southern Education Foundation that found an incredibly high number of students … Continue reading Imagine Them Apples, North Carolina – Why Teaching Is Like Farming

In the current session, it's called Senate Bill 75. To many around the country, it's called TABOR. The TAxpayer Bill of Rights. Makes it sound like it truly benefits those in our state. It doesn’t. It’s just another catchy acronym that acts like a Trojan horse for something more destructive.   Acronyms are easy to shape and easier … Continue reading Senate Bill 75, Also Known as TABOR – A Tourniquet Around the Bloodlines of Our Republic and it Could Cripple Our Public Schools

In October, the venerable James Ford of the Public School Forum delivered the keynote address at the North Carolina English Teacher’s Association. It was more than exceptional as Ford highlighted that what hurts our schools most are external factors that are not being dealt with such as systemic poverty. Part of his presentation included a … Continue reading The Secret Algorithms of EVAAS and SAS

Everybody hurts. Sometimes. Teach for twenty years in public high schools and you become entrenched in the lives of young people. Thousands of them. Literally thousands. If you take the avocation of being a teacher seriously, then that investment in young people is not confined to the four walls of a classroom and not restricted … Continue reading “Everybody Hurts” – Prioritizing Mental Health In High Schools With Some R.E.M.

On the very day that the NC Supreme Court handed down its ruling on the lawsuit pitting the state school board against the state superintendent, both sides issued statements that declared victory. Reading the ruling from the supreme court is not as arduous as getting through War & Peace in the original Russian, but it … Continue reading Honestly, In the State Board Vs. Mark Johnson Case NOBODY WON Especially Public Schools, But…

Graduation ceremonies for my school system have been completed and at this time of year I am reminded of the iconic response to a teacher’s letter back in 2014 by Sen. David Curtis. It’s worth rereading for me in part because Sen. Davis Curtis’s response to Sarah Wiles literally started my foray into public school … Continue reading School is Never Really Over – “Summer Vacations” Might Be Another Term For “Pre-Planning”