Rush Limbaugh announced that he will leave New York rather than abide the new tax increases on high earners. On Saturday, April 4, the Working Families Party will host a “Bon Voyage Limbaugh” party to celebrate the passage of fair share tax reform — and to send Rush off in style.

Having once undertaken and completed the marathon known as “the dissertion,”  I fully understand the decision of Jennifer Jennings [Eduwonkette] to turn over the keyboard to that task. But academia’s gain is the education world’s — and the edublogosphere’s — loss. Here’s hoping it’s temporary, and that the ability to impact on the real world of schools continues to inspire that masked woman.

Even before its launch, the Obama presidency is larger than life. There’s no arguing its symbolism is the bearer of its own legacy. The world’s nations, regardless of their histories or systems of government, have put their ancestral loathings on hold and are sharing the exhilaration. It’s like the whole planet is an athlete high on endorphins. It is spectacular for Americans especially as we have by this election distanced ourselves just a step from the morally felonious exclusions of the past. By our votes we have repented the bonds of history. Let’s luxuriate in what our nation has overcome and work to ensure that Obama’s victory is not a token, novelty, or fluke of history but rather will make perfectly plausible the election of other racial and other minorities in the future. More »

A redesigned WhiteHouse.gov has launched, including a new blog.

“Tell me what to believe and I will believe it sincerely.”

The pull to socially conform is a riptide that can alter individual perception and maybe even overwhelm a person’s conscience. More »

When teachers are summoned for jury duty they should postpone their service until their vacation and take it then. That would demonstrate professionalism and save the taxpayers money. This proposal, which doesn’t even rise to the level of an April Fools’ Day joke, comes from the City Council, which has otherwise been on the right side on so many issues concerning teachers. More »

Jay Greene’s [of the United Cherry Pickers] idea of intellectual discourse?

“My blog is bigger than your blog.”

Don’t worry, Jay. We happily cede the adolescent male demographic to your blog.

Thanksgiving Day stands alone among American holidays. Its inspiration is timeless and universal and it lends itself to teaching across all curriculums and cultures. There’s nothing about that holiday that is irksome to anybody regardless of national, political, or religious ideology.  And its original meaning has not been eroded by entrepreneurs or braggarts of any stripe. More »

Eduwonk’s Andy Rotherham has posted a commentary which links the right of marriage for gay men and lesbians to school choice, on the grounds that both are expressions of liberty.  In Rotherham’s view, those who support the right of marriage and yet oppose school choice are inconsistent in their application of the principle of liberty. Interestingly, he  does not make the converse case, that those who oppose the right of marriage and yet support school choice are similarly inconsistent: his fire is directed at the left, not the right, side of the spectrum.

While we support both the right of marriage and public school choice, the subsumption of the two concepts under a common rubric of liberty, the creation of a political and legal equivalence between the two concepts, obscures far more than it clarifies. More »

Education International, the largest global union federation, representing teachers and education workers around the world, has released an urgent appeal on behalf of an Iranian teacher and trade unionist sentenced to death after an unfair trial. The AFT is a constituent member of EI.

According to EI, Farzad Kamangar, a 33-year-old teacher and human rights activist from Iran’s Kurdistan Province, was convicted in February of “endangering national security” and “enmity against God.” The death penalty, handed down by the Tehran Revolutionary Court, was later confirmed by the Iranian Supreme Court. More »

[A computer in Ohio swallowed the end of the original post. I have rewritten that part.]

In the late 1970s, at the height of New York City fiscal crisis and before many of today’s teachers were born, the law governing the pensions of New York City public school educators was changed for the worse. New tiers with diminished benefits were created, and new teachers had to teach for thirty years or until age 62 before they could retire without a reduction penalty in their pensions.

This last week the UFT achieved the high point of a decades long struggle to bring equity to the pension tiers with legislation that restored the pre-1975 benefit — the right to retire at age 55 with 25 or more years of service — to all educators in service. More »

Call me a kill-joy, but who is the City Hall genius who decided to hold a ticker tape parade for the (New Jersey) Giants on primary day?

Traffic and the subways will be loused up all day, starting just a few hours after the polls open.
More »

The Iowa caucuses tonight, kicking off the Presidential primary voting. The AFT endorsed Hillary Clinton back in October. Brave New Films has live coverage starting at 7 pm EST and featuring a host of commentators so you can follow along from home (hat tip to the The Huffington Post).

We’re now well into the fourth month of the Democrats for Education Reform, established and financed by four Wall Street hedge fund operators.

Joe Williams, who first entered into the blogging world on behalf of the anti-union New York Charter School Association [NYCSA], has been blogging for DFER. What’s interesting is that despite a steady stream of criticism against Democrats of every conceivable political stripe, including all of the leading Democratic presidential candidates, Williams has yet to find a single Republican worthy of criticism. The sole mentions of Republicans on the blog — Tom Carroll of NYCSA and recently turned independent Michael Bloomberg — have been positive. Perhaps this is what the Sun was getting at in their headline to the story announcing the arrival of DFER, “How New Generation of Reformers Targets Democrats on Education.” More »

In an op-ed in Sunday’s New York Times, our friend Rick Kahlenberg reflects on the controversy over the Kahlil Gibran International Academy [KGIA]. The task of public schools, he argues, is to teach what it means to be an American. Citing the authority of Al Shanker, he suggests that a dual language school such as KGIA, with a special curricular focus on a second language and its associated culture, would be more inclined to adopt an uncritical approach to that particular experience. Further, with its special focus on the particular culture, it would be more apt to neglect the teaching of what we Americans have in common.

We agree with Kahlenberg — and Shanker — that the preeminent purpose of public schools is the education of the next generation of American citizenry. But we do not believe that dual language schools have proven to be any more susceptible to failure at this task than other public schools with different curricular themes and foci, from enterpeneurship and math to social justice and core knowledge. Every public school faces the challenge of teaching students how to think critically, about their own particular history and culture, about the larger American cultural mosaic and its historical evolution, and about our place in world history and culture. Every public school has to figure out how to focus its teaching on our common national purpose — what we Americans hold in common that is the foundation of our collective well-being. More »