The Problem of Public Schools in a Liberal Democracy: Insights from Albert Hirschman’s “Exit, Voice, and Loyalty”

Exit, Voice, and Loyalty – a book you can't get out of your head – was written Albert Hirschman, a political economist and total mensch (read his obituary). I find his framework is immensely useful in thinking about schools. The core argument is that political and economic organizations are responsive to different kinds of customer … Continue reading The Problem of Public Schools in a Liberal Democracy: Insights from Albert Hirschman’s “Exit, Voice, and Loyalty”

An Uneasy Relationship: The History of Teacher Education in the University

This post is an essay I wrote about the history of the uneasy relationship between American teacher education and the university.  It was published in 2008 in the 3rd edition of the Handbook of Research on Teacher Education (edited by Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Sharon Feiman-Nemser, and John McIntyre).  This is a PDF of the original. Here's … Continue reading An Uneasy Relationship: The History of Teacher Education in the University

David Frum: Democracies Fail in the Absence of Strong Conservative Parties

This post is a piece by David Frum that was published in 2017 by Atlantic. Here's a link to the original. There has been a lot of talk lately about the threats to democracy, brought on by the disaster of the Trump administration and other shifts toward populist autocracy around the world.  In this essay, … Continue reading David Frum: Democracies Fail in the Absence of Strong Conservative Parties

Pluck and Luck

This post is a piece I published two years ago in Aeon.  Here’s the link to the original.  I wrote this after years of futile efforts to get Stanford students to think critically about how they got to their current location at the top of the meritocracy.  It was nearly impossible to get students to consider … Continue reading Pluck and Luck

Policy Dialogue with Sara Goldrick-Rab

This post is a dialogue I had last winter with Sara Goldrick-Rab, which covered a wide range of topics surrounding higher education policy in the US.  It was just published online by History of Education Quarterly.  Here's a link to the original.  It's part of a series of such dialogues that the journal has been … Continue reading Policy Dialogue with Sara Goldrick-Rab

Sermon on Educational Research

This is a piece I published in 2012 in Bildungsgeschichte: International Journal for the Historiography of Education.  It draws on my experience over the years working with doctoral students in education.  The advice, basically, is to approach your apprenticeship in educational research doing the opposite of what everyone else tells you to do: Be Wrong Be … Continue reading Sermon on Educational Research