Covid Forces Vermont to Split Childcare from Teaching

The change may improve both in the long term.

Yesterday Vermont Governor Phil Scott announced a plan to use fed More...

Defunding Teachers for Better Education and More Equal Educational Opportunity

Like policing, schooling is essential and must be available to all. Some of what police do and the funds which pay for that work, can be better assigned to other professionals. Much of what teachers do today (or used to do before the pandemic) can and should be done by others. A silver lining of More...

Defund Teachers During the Pandemic

The police are willing to work.

Beyond the ludicrous argument that we don’t need law enforcement, there are sensible reasons for moving some functions and the funding to accomplish them away from police departments and to those who are More...

Should K-12 Schools Reopen?

And should teachers be furloughed where they don’t?

Opening K-12 is not a danger to kids. Not opening obviously hurts their academic, social, and emotional development.

In Vermont, where we have been fortunate More...

An Old Dog, Scratch, and Python

As a programmer I’m a very old dog – been doing it since 1962. Lately I had to learn some new tricks: Scratch for my grandkids and Python to manipulate some astrophysical data with my son. These days communities grow up More...

A Good Use of One-Time Funds

Vermont Governor Phil Scott has proposed using one-time funds from various sources to fill a $58 million gap in the state education budget. Normally using one-time funds to paper over a problem in a spending program which has grown beyond affordability is a bad idea. However, Scott’s proposal is More...

Tough Love in China

Recently I visited my 18-month old grandson and his parents in Lanzhou, China. The sign below is from the playground school he goes to a couple of times each week.

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Fast Off the Mark in China

In the US we have countdown timers on green lights to tell us how long we have left to get across the street. In China the red lights count down so you can be fast off the mark when the light turns. More...

If You Can Get Level Funded, Take It

In the bad old days of inflation, level funding a government program was a way of reducing the real dollars it had to spend without "cutting" – something politicians don't like to do. In deflationary times, level funding is actually an increase in spending power. However, the various constituenci More...

Being Globalization Ready

The generation of kids who are now in high school could be hurt by globalization.  More...