John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, writes here about a book that is important in Oklahoma history and American history. He writes: When I first read Victor Luckerson’s Built from the Fire: The Epic Story of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, America’s Black Wall Street, I was stunned by his beautiful prose. Watching Luckerson on CSPAN Book T.V., I was reminded of his eloquence. And I was even more impressed by the timeliness of the story of the communities and families who built and rebuilt Greenwood after the 1921 Tulsa Massacre, and who then had to repeatedly fight to ke ..read more

When PEN America released its latest national report on book banning, the state with the worst record was Florida. If you hear any bragging about test scores in Florida, think twice. Educated people typically don’t fear books; uneducated people do. Chris Tomlinson, columnist for The Houston Chronicle, reports that book banning is getting more absurd in Texas. Why do school board members think they can censor ideas and images that are widely available on the Internet? At the same time, the state has barred public universities from administering programs that promote “diversity, equity, and incl ..read more

Good and Bad Teachers: So Many More of the Former, So Many Fewer of the Latter David C. Berliner  Arizona State University A refereed journal article by colleagues1reported on a survey of adults, asking for their beliefs about “good teachers.” The respondents defined good teachers as those who “knew me, cared about me, and wanted me to do well; created interesting activities for us to do; praised me and other students for good grades and improvements; gave extra help or a challenge to students who ne ..read more

Ohio has experienced population decline but one city is growing: Columbus. Peter Gill of the Columbus Dispatch explains that new immigrants have fueled population growth and the local economy. He writes: Kikandi Lukambo has reinvented himself many times in his life. After war forced him, his parents and siblings to flee their home in the Congo, he became a tailor, catering to the fashionable ladies of Kampala, the Ugandan capital. Nearly a decade later, in 2015, the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program resettled Lukambo in Columbus. He quickly found a job with a perfume manufacturer, then at a dist ..read more

Despite the best efforts of the billionaire voucher lobby, the Tennessee legislature rejected vouchers! Vouchers are dead for this session, although they were Governor Lee’s top priority. Republicans have a supermajority in both houses of the Legislature. But some Republicans listened to their constituents, not the out-of-state money. Democrats have long opposed the program, likening the voucher program to “coupons” for wealthy families who already send their children to private school, and warned it could endanger funding for public schools. Dozens of school boards — many in conservative part ..read more

I recently visited Wellesley College to attend the lecture of lawyer-scholar Patricia Williams, who spoke about book banning, censorship and critical race theory. She was brilliant. Her lecture will be posted as soon as Wellesley releases the tape. She spoke as part of the annual lecture series that I endowed. At the end of her lecture, a student asked a question. The student said that she had sent out a notice to all the others in her dorm denouncing genocide. Now she wanted Professor Williams to advise her on how to respond to an older alumna about genocide in a manner that was respectful an ..read more

The propaganda surrounding COVID vaccines has led to parental uncertainty about other vaccines. This may explain recent measles outbreaks. For most of us, measles is a childhood disease that was conquered by scientists many years ago. But it’s returning. The Washington Post reports: This year is not yet one-third over, yet measles cases in the United States are on track to be the worst since a massive outbreak in 2019. At the same time, anti-vaccine activists are recklessly sowing doubts and encouraging vaccine hesitancy. Parents who leave their children unvaccinated are risking not only their ..read more

Thom Hartmann writes here about the nefarious role played by former Attorney General William Barr in his two different stints, first, when he worked as Attorney General for President George H.W. Bush, and later when he protected Trump from the damning findings of the Mueller Report about Russian interference in the election of 2016; Barr sat on it, summarized its conclusions inaccurately, and misled the public. Bill Barr was, Hartmann writes, “the master fixer” for “the old GOP.” He writes: Congressman Jim Jordan wanted revenge on behalf of Donald Trump against Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg for cha ..read more

North Carolina has a serious problem. Its GOP has controlled the state since 2010, despite having a Democratic Governor for 8 years, who was made powerless by the legislature (General Assembly). The GOP that swept the state in 2010 was Tea Party. But the top three GOP candidates in 2024—for governor, for attorney general, for state superintendent—are radical extremists. Not just MAGA, but QAnon batshit crazy. Chris Seward of the Raleigh News & Observer wrote: The woman who would take charge of K-12 education in this state has addressed her noxious trail of online posts — including calls to ..read more

Indiana blogger Steve Hinnefeld writes about what happens when charter schools go shopping for an authorizer. He tells the story of a charter school that has been dropped by a series of authorizers, but picked up by a new one each time. Why would a new authorizer step in to take responsibility for a charter school that has been dropped by others? I’m not sure about how it works in Indiana, but in most states the authorizer gets a set percentage—typically 3%— of state tuition for each student. That adds up to a lot of money. Hinnefeld writes: Trine University came to the rescue eight years ago ..read more