A Writer’s Blog

  • Stop writing your name in Cursive. You have had Several Warnings.

    Originally posted on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé: Megan Zander at She Knows wrote a post with this headline: Teacher’s aggressive note on 7-year-old’s homework goes viral, and many of the comments are critical of teachers and schools for what the alleged teacher wrote in red ink – the title of this post. First,… Read more

  • Mercedes Schneider: Who is Roland Fryer, Jr.?

    Originally posted on Diane Ravitch's blog: I first learned about Roland Fryer, Jr., a Harvard economist, when he devised an experiment to pay students for raising test scores in several cities, which failed. Subsequently, he seemed to be involved in other such experiments where the methodology always involved incentives for teachers or students to… Read more

  • Jeff Bryant: How Jeb Bush Turned Florida’s Schools into a Cesspool of Corruption, Chaos, and Cronyism

    Originally posted on Diane Ravitch's blog: Jeb Bush is trying to present himself to the public as a moderate. Nothing could be farther from the truth. When it comes to education, Jeb Bush boasts of the wonderful transformation of the schools in Florida, but that is not an accurate portrayal of what Bush actually… Read more

  • MUST-READ: Bombshell Investigation of Charter Failures in Florida

    Originally posted on Diane Ravitch's blog: Want to get rich quick? Hurry on down to Florida and open a charter school. You don’t need any experience in education, it doesn’t matter if you failed in the past, just come up with a good idea! The Sun-Sentinel in Florida published a powerful indictment of the… Read more

  • All He Had To Say Was Thank You

    Originally posted on Elfwriter: There is an urban author’s myth of a now famous author in her undiscovered days – was it Janet Evanovich? – who spoke at a bookstore in a mall with pouring rain outside. She knew the audience would be sparse as the mall was empty, and to cheer herself up, she… Read more

  • Why You Should Thank Harper Lee for Tearing Down Your Childhood Hero

    Originally posted on gadflyonthewallblog: It’s been more than 50 years since Harper Lee published her Pulitzer Prize winning novel “To Kill a Mockingbird.” In that time, a lot has changed and nothing has changed. Our schools are still highly segregated and unequal – but we justify that with standardized test scores. Our prisons are still… Read more