Last updated: Friday - November 14, 2008Change in public education in America has many causes; among them, discoveries in psychology (Freud, Thorndike, Skinner, Vygotsky), decisions by courts (Brown v Board of Education), and even innovations by educationists (Direct Instruction, Success for All). But the effect of these causes is secondary to the power of some more basic influences. Not only are these basic influences to which I refer more powerful in transforming education, but other re... Read Full Story

Last updated: Thursday - October 16, 2008In last night's (Oct. 15, 2008) third and last Presidential debate, the topic turned to education in the waning seconds. The debate moderator introduced the question of what each candidate would do for education in America with the ancient and widely accepted old bromide that America's public schools are among the worst in the world and threaten the nation's economic vitality and security itself. Both candidates accepted this assessment and used ... Read Full Story

Last updated: Thursday - July 10, 2008David Berliner is a better watchdog of facts about education and children than anyone I know. He sends along these facts recently published by the Urban Institute that analyzes how federal spending impacts children: "From 1960 to 2007 federal spending on children rose from just 1.9 to 2.6 percent of GDP. Spending on the big three entitlement programs—non-child portions of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—nearly quadrupled from 2.0 to 7.9 perce... Read Full Story

Last updated: Saturday - June 28, 2008I have argued elsewhere and repeatedly that one of the great tragedies of the accountability-standards-high-stakes-testing movement is that the movement grows out of a benighted concept of what education can be—not education for the development of individual talents and life-long, worthwhile interests, but education for competition in a high tech, globalized economic race. And so math and science courses are crammed down students' throats for the sake... Read Full Story

Last updated: Sunday - June 22, 2008I have argued in "Fertilizers, Pills & Magnetic Strips" that underlying so many major policy debates in public education today are two powerful influences: racial prejudice and personal avarice. Recently I discovered in the writings of George Washington an observation on the American prospect at the beginnings of the Union that--reinterpreted perhaps--seems an apt comment on contemporary circumstances. George Washington in a letter to John Hancock, w... Read Full Story

Last updated: Monday - June 16, 2008Mark Fetler observes: The last few minutes of the podcast featured a brief discussion about the nexus between home-schooling and virtual schools, particularly in California. Companies that sell on-line classes independent of the public system, and the on-line charter school vendors, are marketing themselves with some success to home-school parents. When the student turns 16 he/she may take the California High School Proficiency Exam (CHSPE), that provi... Read Full Story

Last updated on 06/11/2008. From A G Rud at Purdue UNiversity: "Comment: I listened with interest to this broadcast, as I recall Barry Lynn from a Frontline video about the Cleveland voucher case (~2000) I have shown to my unde... Read Full Story

Last updated: Friday - June 6, 2008I was interviewed by Barry Lynn on his radio show "Culture Shocks" about the publication of "Fertilizers, Pills & Magnetic Strips." Any one with an hour to kill can do it in 45 minutes on the podcast below: Podcast of Glass's appearance discussing "Fertilizers, Pills & Magnetic Strips" on Barry Lynn's "Culture Shocks" radio show, May 29, 2008 Send a Message to the AuthorRSS Read Full Story

Last updated: Thursday - May 29, 2008Casey Cobb of the University of Connecticut pointed out similarities in the arguments of Fertilizers, Pills & Magnetic Strips (FPMS) and those in Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner's Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (2005, NY: William Morrow). Specifically, Levitt and Dubner's attempt to account for fluctuating crime rates as a long-term result of demographic changes is similar to my arguments about how changin... Read Full Story

Last updated: Wednesday - May 28, 2008Naomi Klein, in her book "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism," analyzes how conservative and neo-conservative ideologues have used "crisis" as a wedge to splinter opposition and institute their favored policies—a theme explored in depth 12 years earlier by my colleague David Berliner in "The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, And The Attack On America's Public Schools." Klein quotes Milton Friedman in which the strategy of using cris... Read Full Story