Neoliberalism

  • Problem/Solution

    I found this interesting chart that shows how education reform is directed toward solving the education problems experienced by kids marginalized by the larger society. Suggests why the phrase 'education reform' in its current usage is oxymoronic (Source):        

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  • Jerry Brown on the Common Core

    MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Gov. Jerry Brown blasted the notion of government-imposed standards for public schools, saying he opposed efforts from Washington and Sacramento to dictate education policy. Using "data on a national or state level I think misses the point — that learning is very individual, very personal," Brown said during an onstage interview with The

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  • In Other News about the Common Core . . .

    The Pearson Foundation has agreed to pay $7.7 million to settle allegations that the nonprofit broke New York state law while attempting to profit from Common Core-aligned products. An investigation by New York state Attorney general Eric T. Schneiderman revealed the charitable side of Pearson spent years wooing the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in hopes the

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  • Technocratic v. Humanistic Education 3: Contra the Common Core

    I am localist when it comes to education. I think parents and teachers know best what is in the interests of the particular children in their care. The main job of principals, superintendents, and legislatures is to support teachers and parents, not to prescribe for them in top-down paternalistic fashion what they think is in

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  • Socialism v. Neoliberalism

    Corey Robin recently in a post entitled " Socialism: Converting Hysterical Misery into Ordinary Unhappiness for a Hundred Years" In the neoliberal utopia, all of us are forced to spend an inordinate amount of time keeping track of each and every facet of our economic lives. That, in fact, is the openly declared goal: once

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  • The Logic behind Vouchers, Charters, and Privatization in General

    Today’s American right is an uneasy coalition among libertarian plutocrats and working-class and middle-class whites who depend on Social Security and Medicare and can’t afford to send their children to expensive private schools.  The need to win white middle American votes means that the right can’t simply promise to abolish public services, leaving the mass

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  • Third Way vs. Elizabeth Warren

    Alex Parene: [Third Way is] not afraid that Warren will run for president, they’re afraid that she’ll be so popular that other senators to start acting like her. They’re worried that she’ll have money to direct to candidates who share her views. They’re worried that Warren might embarrass Democrats into passing stricter bank regulations. They’re

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  • Douthat on the Leftist Pope

    But the church’s social teaching is no less an official teaching for allowing room for disagreement on its policy implications. And for Catholics who pride themselves on fidelity to Rome, the burden is on them — on us — to explain why a worldview that inspires left-leaning papal rhetoric also allows for right-of-center conclusions. That

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  • Sawant on Boeing

    “If Boeing executives want to leave the state, they are welcome to do that,” she told a cheering crowd at Town Hall Seattle in 2012. “The fact is, the workers are here. The factories are here. … We are therefore calling for the democratic, public ownership by workers and by the community of the workplaces

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  • Why Broad Consensus Is a Phantom

    An article in Salon this morning about polling that shows how most Americans are to the left even of positions taken by the mainstream Democrats: With such a profoundly self-contradictory practice, it should not surprise us that the poll was even more misleading than Pareene described. Polarization in some sense is real — and yet also partial,

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