On Chevron deference: nothing is guaranteed and chaos is a ladder
The Supreme Court of the United States and its super-conservative majority are at it again. There was a slurry of decisions that ‘came down’ last week that...
Don't be mean, Bloomfield Hills!
I’ve been getting a lot of awesome feedback and comments on my work looking into district budget crises by request on tiktok. This week I’m looking at...
New research published: Critical School Finance
I’m really excited to share a paper I co-authored with the historian of education Esther Cyna called “Critical School Finance.” It’s the result of several...
Race, class, and high school volleyball
We've been spending the year in Brooklyn and while I knew that our neighbor Mike was a high school teacher and a volleyball coach, I only found out recently...
The art of closing
Imagine waking up one day to an email saying that your 130 year-old college is closing in a week. That’s what happened recently with the University of the...
OPEB in Braintree
A couple weeks ago I looked at a budget crisis request I got on tiktok from Hingham, MA, and learned a lot about the Massachusetts terrain. I got another...
District dialectics in Olympia
The tiktok requests are coming in fast these days. This time, someone asked me to look at Olympia, Washington. What I found is a great example of the...
Debt Collective: a very brief youtube history
On Wednesday this week, the Debt Collective is organizing a national action in Washington, DC called FUND EDUCATION NOT GENOCIDE. I’ll be headed there on the...
Notes on disclosure and divestment
As the student movement against genocide in Palestine continues around the world, one of the key demands made by activists and their coalitions has been...
As Public As Possible: the book!
I have some exciting news: I wrote a book using the material from this newsletter, and it has a cover with a web page, release date, and everything. You can...
Patricia Ann Conway
[Content warning: this post is about self-immolation and protest] I taught a class this semester on power and privilege in higher education. One of the...
MOU money MOU problems in Hingham
This is my second school budget crisis request from TikTok. It’s from Hingham, MA. Apparently, as of March, the size of their budget deficit issue is at most...
Educational erosion in Long Beach
I got a request on TikTok to look into a budget crisis situation in Long Beach City School District in Nassau County, Long Island. Apparently the budget vote...
Critical theory and K-12 capex
Announcement: The American Educational Research Association (AERA) organizes the biggest education research conference I know. Within the conference are many...
Students over bondholders!
There's an interesting situation with the University of California's bonds going down that I wanted to pass along. Basically: bondholders are having a...
A question I don't know how to answer
I've always picked books up off the street when people are giving them away. It's one of the many small joys of life. In college one time I picked up a book...
Higher education finance?
I work in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE). It's a network of old normal schools and land grant colleges peppered throughout...
Just say no to performance-based budgeting
A bunch of colleagues and I published an op-ed today in the Bucks County Beacon about Governor Shapiro's vision for public higher education in Pennsylvania,...
The money-changers at Temple
Organizers at Temple University got in touch with me recently to ask what I thought of their campus's supposed 'budget crisis'. I did a little digging around...
Two public school solar financing policies: public and private
The other day policy researchers from the Center for Public Enterprise (CPE) got in touch with me. I'd met one of them on twitter and at that time he told me...