This post is an essay by River Page about how we don't need more Tiger Moms, which appeared recently in The Free Press. Here's a link to the original. The point is that it's very unhealthy to promote a social and educational system that stresses high academic achievement over other competing values. Education is important but … Continue reading River Page — We Don’t Need More Tiger Moms
This post is a recent essay by Beckie Supiano from the Chronicle of Higher Education. Here's a link to the original. There's been a lot written lately about the effect that the pandemic had on student learning, and this piece picks up on some of that analysis. But what I find so compelling about this piece … Continue reading How School Reform Deformed Student Learning
Here are the syllabi for classes I taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Each syllabus includes links to nearly all course readings, tips for doing the reading, and class slides. As a result you can take the course, either individually and in groups. Feel free to share the syllabi with anyone you want. … Continue reading All of My Course Syllabi, Including Links to Readings, Reading Tips, and Slides
This post is a new piece I published several years ago in Kappan. Here's a link to the original. It's a response to an essay by Jal Mehta proposing a new US grammar of schooling, and it refers to a piece I wrote for Kappan with my take on understanding the roots of this grammar. … Continue reading The Attractions of Doing School
This is a piece I wrote as the foreword to a book by J. M. Beach — Can We Measure What Matters Most? Why Educational Accountability Metrics Lower Student Learning and Demoralize Teachers — published in 2021 by Rowman and Littlefield. For me, this was a chance to provide a brief summary of my thoughts about … Continue reading The Problems that Accountability Metrics Pose for Schooling
This post is an essay by Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider, which was published recently in The Nation. Here's a link to the original. It draws from their new book, which I highly recommend: The Education Wars: A Citizen’s Guide and Defense Manual. Their core argument is that the pressure for school choice -- "fund students … Continue reading Berkshire and Schneider — Why “Fund Students not Systems” Is a Recipe for Disaster
In this piece, I explore a major problem I have with recent educational policy discourse — the way we have turned teachers from the heroes of the public school story to its villains. If students are failing, we now hear, it is the fault of teachers. This targeting of teachers employs a new form of … Continue reading Targeting Teachers
This post is a piece I published in 2021 in Kappan. Here’s a link to the original. It is now a chapter in my new book, The Ironies of Schooling. In this essay, I explore an issue about the “grammar of schooling” that bothered me over the years as I was teaching about this subject. … Continue reading The Dynamic Tension at the Core of the Grammar of Schooling
This post is an essay by Peter Greene in which he discusses a fascination argument made by a free-market economist on why free-market approaches such as vouchers will not work with public education. The economist, Douglas Harris, shows how no fewer than six conditions that are necessary for the functioning of an efficient free-market economy … Continue reading Free Market Approaches Don’t Work for Public Education
This post is a persuasive essay by Jeremy Glazer from the latest issues of Kappan. Here's a link to the original. The core insight from this piece is that teachers cannot succeed based solely only on their own pedagogical skills. There's only so much that can be accomplished by better teacher training and professional development. Why? … Continue reading Jeremy Glazer — Teacher Expertise Isn’t Enough
David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing 