A true story about age and wisdom...

About a week ago I noticed a leak coming from under our furnace. The water was pooling up around the unit's housing and I couldn't see an obvious spot from where the water was coming. (1/20) So I called the company that installed the furnace for us, and scheduled a time for a repair technician to come out and take a look. Later that day the first repairman came to the house--let's call him Dean. Dean was a young guy, probably in his mid-20s. (2/20)

Vouchers are deeply unpopular with the American public. It takes “rebranding” and #alternativefacts to get voters to approve these measures, and even then, vouchers aren’t effective in terms of student learning.
eclectablog.com/2017/02/privat… Rather than being a tool of positive social change and student empowerment, vouchers are a key factor in increasing school segregation. Vouchers are helping to create a caste system in American education; a system of separate yet unequal schools for our nation’s children.

Here's the difference between reasonable persons and the gun lobby...
I love peanut butter. So do my kids. We eat it all the time. Crunchy, smooth, doesn't matter. Reeses Cups are our favorite candies at Halloween because of the peanut butter filling. (1/8) Love me some peanut butter.
And it was difficult when we were asked not to send the boys to school with peanut butter sandwiches when there was a child in their classes with a severe peanut allergy. It meant we had to get more creative with packing their lunches, (2/8)

Here's my talk at the MSU Student Protest at the Capitol today...it wasn't easy addressing a room full of MSU students, faculty, state representatives, and US Senator Debbie Stabenow. (1/20) But the resolve in the room for effecting positive change in our state was so visible today...and it was an honor to speak to the group.
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My name is Mitch Robinson; I’m a parent of two MSU students, a professor of music education, (2/20)

Sarah Huckabee Sanders is trying to kill public education in Arkansas, and gaslighting by saying she's trying to improve the schools.

Don't believe her...
arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/… 1. Voucher schools can kick out kids who "fail to meet academic standards"--in other words, the choice here is for the voucher school, not the kid or the family. And good luck if your child has a learning disability, or is dyslexic.

So much for zip codes...

I'm still trying to figure out how the "parental rights activists" can look at the past 2+ years of schooling--during a global pandemic--and blame *teachers* for any struggles their children experienced during that time.
As a teacher, (1/4) it has *never* crossed my mind to blame *parents* for any challenges students have encountered during 2 years of "emergency learning". I've assumed that every parent wants the best for their kids, (2/4)

With the release of the recent NAEP results I'm sensing a resurgence of posts about "learning loss"--so here's a gentle reminder about what was lost and what was not lost... (1/10) Am I the only one who finds it pretty ironic that none of the people complaining about "learning loss" ever uttered a peep about schools cutting music, art, PE, and other subjects out of the curriculum in favor of more testing and "test prep"? (2/10)

Let's talk about "porn in school libraries," the newest imaginary issue from the Republican Party.

I taught high school music for 10 years, and have been helping prepare future teachers for nearly 30 years at this point in my career. I never--not one time--saw any porn (1/19) in a school library. And when I ask my current students, most of whom graduated from public high schools, if they saw these kinds of books in their school libraries when they were younger, I'm greeted with peals of laughter and rolled eyes.

So what's really going on (2/19)

I happen to know a fair number of ceramic engineers, so when I learned that @TudorDixon's "small business got crushed during the pandemic," I was intrigued. Here's what I learned...

Dixon's business, Cornerstone Foundry Supply, manufactures nothing--it's a reseller of (1/5) imported ceramic parts from the Czech Republic and Italy. It's also *really* small--around 3 employees in total.

So what does CFS actually do? A person with 30+ years of experience in this industry gives this summary of the company:

"Kind of sleazy, but it’s a US firm (2/5)

I’m hearing a lot of folks complaining about President Biden’s plan to forgive some student loan debt today. Predictably, conservatives are framing it as a “handout”, with very little context as to why or how college tuition has become so expensive over the years. (1/11) So here’s a brief explainer…

Higher education funding has essentially “flipped” since the 1980s;
* The ratio of state aid to tuition was 70/30 in 1979; that is to say that the state provided 70% of the cost to attend a state or public university, (2/11)

When I was a high school teacher we had a school board member who ran because he didn't want the school to build a pool. That's it--no other reasons. Just the pool.

The pool was built.

https://twitter.com/LOLGOP/status/1562513130894241793

Then there was a budget cut, and he demanded the pool get filled with concrete instead of remaining open.

It got filled with concrete.

Moms for Liberty is coming for your books…and much more

Moms for Liberty (M4L), an astro-turf group that is probably not actually many moms and definitely not about liberty, has moved on. While they didn’t seem too afraid of a deadly virus that killed almost 6.5 million (1/41) people around the globe—as evidenced by their increasingly dramatic and dangerous anti-mask and anti-vaccine protests at school board meetings across the country—they are positively terrified now of a new danger to our children, a danger posed by a perhaps unlikely (2/41)

Let's talk about "parental rights"...

Cultural conservatives are trying to make the midterm elections about education in general, and the (phantom) issue of “parental rights” specifically. As someone who has been a teacher at various levels for the past 40+ years, (1/23) I’ve not seen any evidence of a widespread lack of parents’ abilities to guide and influence their children’s schooling.

To be sure, there will always be instances of parents disagreeing with a teacher’s decision about a student’s grade, (2/23)

Just watched Gov. Abbot's presser about the Texas school shooting, and I have some questions...

1. It's hard not to see this as a comprehensive indictment of Greg Abbot's tenure as governor of Texas. He helpfully outlined all of the "school hardening measures" he has implemented in the state, and that none of them were even remotely useful or helpful. Maybe because doors and windows are not the problem here, Greg; it's the guns.

@brianstelter Am I the only one who finds it pretty ironic that none of the people complaining about "learning loss" ever uttered a peep about schools cutting music, art, PE, and other subjects out of the curriculum in favor of more testing and "test prep"? @brianstelter Now those same people are clutching their pearls about how kids are suffering from depression and anxiety, without connecting the dots to curriculum narrowing and leaving kids with an impoverished learning experience that's obsessively and narrowly focused on math and reading.

I am so tired of nimrods like Aaron Rodgers refusing to get vaccinated mostly because they don't believe anyone should be able to tell them what to do.

Because they have never been told "no." Because they think they always know best. Aaron Rodgers, who thought that reading the blue note cards on "Jeopardy!" made him the smartest guy in the world, when it really just meant that he could read.