Author Archives: educationalchemy

(click on image to make it larger) WHILE THE INFORMATION HERE IS FREE AND OPEN TO ANYONE-REPRODUCTIONS OF THIS CHART MAY BE MADE ONLY WITH PERMISSION BY MORNA MCDERMOTT A SPECIAL THANKS TO KAREN BRACKEN FOR THE SERIOUS TIME AND ENERGY SHE PUT INTO (RE) CREATING THE COMMON CORE CHART AS A POWER POINT (perhapsContinue reading “Advancing the Quality of The Common Core Flow Chart”

  My friend and partner in crime, Peg Robertson, alerted me to a document published about the Common Core in her state of Colorado    published by Achieve in partnership with a group whose name I had yet to be acquainted with: U.S. Delivery Institute (EDI). I prefer to think of them as the Ministry ofContinue reading “Oh, What Fresh Hell is This? Meet EDI”

I am leaving for my annual summer vacation tomorrow. We go every year at this exact time. Two years ago at around this time, someone whom I only knew through email exchanges on a list serve (Peggy Robertson) asked me and four others to join her to form a group whose mission would be toContinue reading “How Has Education Activism Changed You? In Honor of United Opt Out”

All multinational corporations use the same playbook to push privatizing a public good– whether it’s a human resource like clean drinking water or food; or a public service like education. The similarities between the various industrial giants aren’t coincidental. Each stage in their endeavors is part of their shared ideology, and their strategies, therefore, parallelContinue reading “EDUCATION REFORM TAKES NOTES FROM THE MULTI-INDUSTRY PLAYBOOK ON CORPORATE OWNERSHIP”

This is a companion document connected to the video I made entitled Walking the Labyrinth of the Corporate Owned Common Core found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvUMk1ro27E The following is the transcript of the narrative from  that video. (Note: I’ve added additional items I forgot to mention in the video in italics, and have inserted NOTES with extended informationContinue reading “A Labyrinth of Corporate Interests in Common Core”

As ALEC descends upon Chicago it might be good to take an ALEC refresher course. In spite of its more recent protestations against the Common Core, it’s finger prints cannot be fully erased. The other anti-teacher, anti-union, anti-public education policies are more evident. But don’t be fooled. They stand to benefit from their ruse ofContinue reading “An ALEC/Common Core Refresher Course”

  Those of us following the news that slithers out from beneath the rock of the Common Core initiative know names like Bill Gates and David Coleman. Another person to watch very closely is Lou Gerstner. Why? He’s a man of many talents, and powerful positions from which he has launched his own vision forContinue reading “PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN”

(the State-bred/corporate-fed monster) In recent months debate, opposition, and divisiveness have been ramping up over education reform policies, and more specifically the Common Core state standards (CCSS). For me, the confusion began over a year ago when after having spent diligent hours identifying the myriad of ways that I believed that ALEC had its handContinue reading “The “Nothing in Common” Anti-Common Core Struggle”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has sold out to Monsanto. The U.S. Department of Energy has sold out to the fracking lobbyists. And the U.S Department of Education has sold out to Pearson. Most of us fighting corporate education reform are already familiar with the weight and influence that Pearson wields in education policy. ForContinue reading “Pearson Follies Part II: How did we get here?”