Recently there has been a different type of crisis rhetoric around education. This “the sky is falling” event concerns “the OpenAI, ChatGPT interface [that] is now capable of producing convincing (though uninspired) college student quality writing to just about any prompt within seconds,” explains John Warner. The freaking out has…

A powerful but often harmful relationship exists among research/science, mainstream media, and public policy. One current example of that dynamic is the “science of reading” (SOR) movement that is driving reading legislation and policy in more than 30 states (see HERE and HERE). Mauren Aukerman, who has posted two of…

As a long-time fan and collector of Daredevil, I have expressed my concern about the current storyline that has included Daredevil and Elektra as king and queen of The Fist as well as Daredevil announcing, “This is God’s plan.” With Daredevil 6 (v.7), Chip Zdarsky appears to be shifting the…

The “science of reading” (SOR) movement consisting of the media, parents, and politicians has painted itself into a corner. And like cornered animals, they often react with anger: The SOR self-inflicted corner is demanding a narrow use of “science” for everyone else but not following that demand themselves: It is…

I am not a high-profile journalist with platforms at APM, Education Week, and the New York Times. So I have to imagine that hearing from teachers and parents raising concerns about how the “science of reading” (SOR) movement isn’t representing them and even silencing and bullying them is only a…

My nephew realized during our texting the other day that he had failed to tell me about a sudden memory. While eating gummy bears, he wasn’t paying attention as he popped one after the other into his mouth until he really liked one. He stopped chewing and checked the half-eaten…

As a teenager, I was a huge John Belushi fan, beginning with Saturday Night Live, of course, and then his series of successful and now iconic films such as National Lampoon’s Animal House and The Blue Brothers. Few movies for me have been as relentlessly quotable as The Blues Brothers…

Having been an educator in South Carolina across five decades, starting in the early 1980s, I have witnessed dozens of challenges by parents concerning assigned books, topics discussed, and controversial ideas raised in class discussions. In the first years of teaching, I had assigned John Gardner’s Grendel, a retelling of…