Power in numbers
I was interviewed on the progressive podcast Have You Heard last month. I talked about a bunch of district budget struggles and some organizing fights. So...
"First Person Shooter"
Before I get to today’s post, an announcement: If you’re in the NYC area, consider attending this amazing event on Green Schools and Labor put on by a bunch...
Nothing never happens
This is pretty exciting: My book As Public as Possible: Radical Finance for America’s Schools (New Press) is coming out in a couple months. That means we’re...
Weak link policies
If you didn’t see it already, sign up for this Back to School Finance Workshop that’s happening this week! I’ll be co-leading a training on how to start...
Back to school finance
Back to school finance training I’ve been making tiktoks about school finance from a left perspective. About two years ago, I started getting requests to...
Is it simple to be a marxist in school finance?
Last year, a colleague Lucas Pellisari from Brazil got in touch with me. He was putting together a collection on education and modes of production, focusing...
Five things to read
Over the last month, articles by comrades and colleagues have come out that I want to put on your radar. Here’s a link and the abstract for each: Indebting...
Roiling magma
I’m so mad. What’s happening out there is fascism, plain and simple, and it’s just unfolding in front of our eyes. I read a piece in the Financial Times...
BARB wire?
Zohran won. The feeling of that victory in the recent Democratic primary for New York City mayor was unlike any other political feeling I’ve had recently....
A cooperative public education bank
Public schools need more money, but they lack it everywhere—particularly when it comes to infrastructure. In the United States, public schools have to pay...
Breathing, bad for prices
There’s an amazing piece of research from last year that I want to write about this week. Barbara Biasi and colleagues, who do some of the best economic...
School Finance Regimes
In my years of studying school finance as a socialist, I’ve had a lingering question: how do other countries do it, exactly? To answer that question, I’m...
The Problem of Educational Power
This past March, I gave a general session at the annual meeting of the Philosophy of Education Society (PES). This small but cool conference is the event of...
Investment or Barbarism (again)
Crain’s Business Chicago published an editorial I wrote laying out a path forward for the Chicago school finance crisis using the framework of fiscal...
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...