Originally posted on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé: Reading Dana Goldstein’s book was a journey of discovery that I wished I’d taken in 1975, before I ended up teaching for thirty years in the embattled and often abused public schools. About the time I reached page 100, I e-mailed an old friend and told… Read more

Originally posted on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé: Sunday, I walked downtown to see The Purge: Anarchy, and while watching the film and walking home afterwards, I couldn’t stop thinking about the unnamed New Founding Fathers mentioned at the beginning of the film—who were in their ninth year as the leaders of the United… Read more

Originally posted on Diane Ravitch's blog: John Ogozokak, a high school teacher in upstate New York, ponders here which is the more meaningful task: to clean a septic tank or to grade a standardized test: About a half dozen years ago the septic tank lurking beside our old farmhouse went kerflooey. I dug out the… Read more