What the FEOC
I’ve been doing tiktoks again, looking at districts that people request. This recent batch of districts (Sarasota FL, Bexley OH, Lake Zurich IL, and Enfield...
Contortions
I surprised myself the other day. A journalist from Denver got in touch with me to chat about the school district planning to issue certificates of...
A critical school finance syllabus
This summer I’ll be teaching a seminar on Critical School Finance at Teachers College, in the Philosophy and Education department (where I got my doctorate)....
Investment or Barbarism
The week before last, Crain’s Business Chicago published an editorial I wrote laying out a path forward for the Chicago school finance crisis using the...
Mythos for the Moment
In honor of the Memorial Day long weekend and the “beach read” days of summer that are upon us, this post is a little different. In trying to name the...
New Research: "In the Interest of Race"
I co-authored a new research article recently about racism and school bonds, which is set to be published in the journal Inquiry later this year. This week I...
Zohran's Green Schools Platform
I mentioned in a previous email that I’ve been working with the Zohran Mamdani campaign’s education policy team. One of the platforms I’ve contributed to...
Healthy School Finance
Something exciting is happening this week. In the short-term, I’m co-leading a workshop for public education advocates called Healthy School Finance with a...
Equity and equity for school finance: theories for discussion
Last week, I went to Denver for the American Educational Research Association’s annual meeting. It’s a huge conference that encompasses every aspect of...
Spinning plates
There’s too much going on. Beyond the massive shifts happening sort of everywhere, I’ve also got my eye on some other vectors that are under the radar, so...
Day of Action for Higher Education
A massive coalition is holding a “Day of Action for Higher Education” this week, on April 17th. The day features presentations across the terrain of higher...
An evening with CEC13
This week I want to write about a fascinating experience I had last month involving a local push against the Trump administration’s incursions into public...
Die, it's better
I just finished Sally Rooney’s excellent new novel Intermezzo, and I’ve also been sitting with the feeling of the moment: the lifeworld, our politics, the...
Critical school finance (the course!)
A course I’m teaching this summer on critical school finance At the beginning of this year, geographer Ee-Seul Yoon and I co-edited a special issue of the...
The hope of critical finance studies (again)
Hi again everyone, due to the newsletter bug in Buttondown, this post got sent earlier than it should have. So I’m sending it along again. *** Before the...
Bombshell in the history of neoliberalism
I’m teaching a class this semester where we analyze the present educational crisis. Each week we look at a new theme. I assign a reading and do a quick video...
Join the FUN
Dostoevsky famously wrote that “everything is permitted.” This is actually a question from Brothers Karamozov, where one brother Dmitri asks another “What...
State of play in green schools organizing (again)
Readers, for some reason Buttowndown has been sending out two posts a week from me. It’s a glitch on their end, apologies! So I’m resending a couple posts...
The hope of critical finance studies
Before the election and the current crisis, I was revisiting the theoretical frameworks I use when thinking about education finance. For years and years,...
Be like Dorothy
What the f*** is going on? I mean this in a wonky sense: there’s a gap between appearance and reality in the education policy dialectic that’s giving me and...