Eduwonkette. She’s Babe Ruth, Wayne Gretzky, Diane Ravitch, and Edward Murrow all rolled into one. She’s absolutely brilliant as she manages to remain cheeky and friendly, while taking on many of the specious claims connected to testing, accountability, and the powerful propaganda machines claiming great success as a result of test score obsessed reforms. The…

You hear it all the time, that schools should be accountable same as the workplace. Merit pay, determined by performance evaluations, rewards high performing employees and creates a highly competitive, successful workplace. Conversely, workers that do poorly as measured by their employee evaluations will be weeded out. It all works for the good of the…

Many people know Martin Bookspan, the long-term host of Live from Lincoln Center on PBS who retired in 2006. For those of you around long enough, you may even know Martin from his tenure at ASCAP. Janet Bookspan was Martin’s wife and I remember her today in this blog because she was one of the…

With city, county, and state tax rolls down, and expenses rising, we’re probably looking at the scenario of proposed cuts to arts education budget lines.  The following email came my way yesterday from Big Thought of Dallas. It’s a great example, from a great organization, of rolling up your sleeves to mobilize constituents against budget cuts to…

Based on some comments and emails to yesterday’s blog, I thought it might be helpful to provide a link defining the term “school choice.” It’s from none other than the foundation run by the very father of school choice, the oracle of free market school systems as well as everything else free market: Milton Friedman.…

Dagnabbit! Just when you think you did a nice blog on where the two major presidential candidates stand on arts education (and education overall), one of the candidates has to go and unveil a new education platform. Yesterday, in Dayton, Ohio, Barack Obama presented his “A New Vision for 21st Century Education.” Tops on the…

It’s true, Barack Obama has an education platform that includes arts education, and during the primaries he spoke any number of times about the importance of arts education. That being said, if you want to find his platform for arts education, be prepared to click through any number of times until you get to his…

I was inspired by Barry’s Arts Blog and Updates list of the 25 most powerful people in nonprofit arts. So, as we close out one of the quietest weeks of the year, here’s my list for the 10 most powerful people in K-12 arts education: Joel Klein, Chancellor, New York City Department of Education Ramon…

So, what is a parent to do? On one hand, you’ve got the New York City Department of Education unveiling standardized tests for kindergarten through second grade students, some of which are as long as 90 minutes. (And if you think you shouldn’t worry as you don’t live in New York City or your child…

It happens every year: summer comes to a close, signaled by The Jerry Lewis Telethon and a return to school. The public school battles will surely continue, and between testing, charter schools, vouchers, small schools, and so many other issues, it’s sometimes easy to lose track of the fundamental reason why there are public schools.…