University Heights High School in the Bronx borough of New York City may become collateral damage to the current economic crisis. I have visited the school and spoken with students. It is too good of a program to be sacrificed. We need to find ways to organize and save it....

As a social studies teacher, a political activist, and a historian, I am a big fan of Howard Zinn, and I very much enjoyed watching The People Speak on the History Channel Sunday night. Well-known and not so well-known actors read speeches, letters, and other primary source documents from the...

No, this is not a spoof headline from the satirical newspaper The Onion. In his 2009 annual letter to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Gates did something unheard of for an American billionaire. He admitted that one of his proposals for changing education in the United States did...

Ballad for Americans

I think the nature of political blogs is that the primary focus is on the negative. I know in my own posts I tend to do a lot of complaining about people in power. This post is very different. It is a report on a wonderful student...

Headline, the New York Times, November 26, 2009, page 1. "Mayor to Link Teacher Tenure To Test Scores."

Brian (or Amir, or Jose, his name does not really make a difference) failed the 9th grade math level one Regents. The mayor says, "Fire the teacher!"

Brian had seven other teachers...

President Barack Obama just got back from visiting the Pacific Rim. While he did not solve the trade imbalance with China or Japan or win any allies for continuing the war in Iraq or expanding the war in Afghanistan, the good news is that at least he discovered a model...

In capitalism, what's good for the goose (individuals) is not necessarily good for the gander (governments; society at large).

Proponents of unregulated capitalism (they prefer to call it free-market capitalism but we all now that nothing in this world is free) argue it is a self-regulating system that autocorrects...

What do the New York Yankees and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg have in common? My answer is at the end of this column.

I like art, music, theater, and dance. I believe they enrich our lives. I believe they belong in the schools at every grade level because...

In the movie Jerry McGuire, football wide receiver Rod Tidwell demands that his agent, "Show me the money!" Some people who responded to recent blogs wanted me to provide more evidence to support my claims. Here it is.

Is Michael Bloomberg buying votes? You be the judge. According to...

I find numerous similarities between the Bloomberg regime in New York City and the Obama Administration in Washington DC, especially in their attitudes toward teachers and public schools. Obama sends his children to private school. Bloomberg sent his daughter. Both Obama and Bloomberg value smarts and believe the key to...

New York City politics is often the politics of the absurd - and that is on a good day. The Democratic Party Candidate for Mayor (former school board president William Thompson) and Republican candidate (Hizzoner Mayor Michael "Moneybags" Bloomberg) are now arguing over who was against social promotion in the...

I recently attended the Atlantic Antic street fair in Brooklyn. A Bloomberg campaign worker handed me a button. I asked him "How much?" He said it was free. I asked him "How much will they pay me to wear it?"

An Open Letter to Mayor Moneybags

Dear Mayor Moneybags,

You...

I've received some amazing responses emailed to me directly to my initial postings on the Huffington Post. Some of them are included here. There is a great posting on the site by one of Pablo Muriel's students. Everyone should read it. It would be great if teachers could have their...

Bizarro Bloomberg Beware - Resistance has Begun

This is my third posting on Huffington Post. The original article was sent to me by Nick Santora, a middle school teacher in Queens.

On October 5, Sadia and Gideon, five-year old twins from Brooklyn, joined the guerrilla underground. They baked forty cupcakes...

I intended to post a weekly blog, but there is just too much going on in Bizarro Bloomberg's New York. Let's call this a special edition.

I have known Pablo Muriel, a social studies teacher in the southwest Bronx (his school is about two miles from Yankee Stadium), for more...

This is my second posting. My plan is to post once a week on Mondays so look for a new posting every Tuesday.

I was just contacted by a first-year New York City teacher asking for advice who feels like he has entered the bizarro world where...

This is my first entry on the Huffington Post. Most of my blogs will address school related issues in the New York metropolitan area. I am a former New York City high school teacher, a graduate of New York City public schools, a parent of three children (now adults) who...