Category / election 2026

by nflanagan

Labor Day. Happy Birthday to Me.

So—I just had a birthday. A big, round-number birthday.

All my life, my birthday has taken place in and around Labor Day weekend, and—fairly often—happened on the first day of school. For my entire elementary school career, my new school shoes, binder and pencil box were ‘birthday presents.’ (Sad trombone.) Kindergarten:

But I didn’t mind. The whole Labor Day weekend–in my experience–represents the new year, academically and seasonally, a fresh start. One year older, one year wiser, roll up your sleeves. A day to honor my personal antecedents, who were Dutch farmers and hands-on laborers. Country builders. People who truly appreciated the respite of a long weekend and family barbecue.

When you turn 75, your past divides neatly into thirds (and lets you plan, as Gloria Steinem did, to live to 100). Although neither of my parents (58, 73) celebrated their 75th birthday, my grandmother (also named Nancy) made it to 103, so a century does not seem out of reach.

I do not remember most of my birthdays. Who does? But I do—clearly—remember #25 and #50. Thinking about them is a good way to reflect on what I’ve accomplished and what I have left to do.

I turned 25 in Aspen, Colorado with my then-boyfriend, now husband. I had already been married at 19 and divorced, returned to school to finish the degree and started my first big-girl job as a middle school band director, although it took at least two dozen humiliating interviews followed by rejections. Mostly because who ever heard of a woman band director?

It was a fun birthday, camping at Maroon Bells in the Snowmass Wilderness area. On my birthday eve, we went bar-hopping in hippie-town Aspen. Things are a little blurry, but we had five days to drive across the country and get back in time for teacher report day, the Tuesday after Labor Day. It felt as if my life were finally falling into place. Adulthood. In Colorado:

The chunk from 25 to 50 was all about family and professional goals. We were married, had two children, and I learned what it meant to be fully engaged in both motherhood and putting equal energy into becoming an accomplished teacher. We bought a house and lived there for 10 years. Then we bought another house and lived there for 20 years.

I both earned (National Board Certification) and won (Michigan Teacher of the Year) some awards for teaching. Early on, I completed a master’s degree in education at Michigan State. We took some amazing vacations, seeing at least 20 National Parks. A month before I turned 50, we went to South Korea for two weeks and Maui for another week.

I turned 50 on September 2, 2001, just nine days before 9/11. My sister and brother, spouses and kids came for a Labor Day weekend picnic. My sister wrote a snarky poem about how old I was, and there was a paper crown.

But 9/11 was a turning point. I had been teaching for more than 27 years, same job, no formal advancement (teachers everywhere, I see you nodding your heads). I felt restless. I took a Teacher in Residence job with the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards for two years—then, because the grass isn’t always greener, went back to the same school district.

I was welcomed back with open arms by parents and my colleagues. But not administrators, who suddenly saw me as Too Big for my Band Director britches. I got politically involved. I helped plan the Save Our Schools rally. I got bounced from job to job in the school district; I was a person who could no longer be trusted to put her head down and cooperate.

This third quadrant of my life has been—creaky knees excepted—by far the best and most rewarding. I retired, and launched into a PhD program in education policy. I did the coursework, but stalled, ABD, when my advisor (a famous educator) blocked my proposed dissertation topic. Instead of diligently working through this conundrum, I thought about how much more I knew, having been a target of education policy for 30+ years, than my doctoral cohort of 20-something Teach for America dropouts.

So I quit, something I hadn’t allowed myself to do for 60-odd years.

Since then, we have moved to paradise, aka the Little Finger of the Michigan mitten. I’ve had a half-dozen part-time jobs teaching, writing and directing church musicians. We have traveled every year, and spend February in Arizona. We attend lectures and go to concerts.

Best of all, I have been able to pursue the thing that got me into college, the first in my family to do so: music. I play in multiple community groups. I have time to practice. My new friends are mostly musicians.

And I muse about the maiden/mother/crone sequential archetypes in the lives of women—I am now the third, the wise woman who cares little about what others think, pursues important goals, advocates for long-term change. Also: hangs around the house, drinking wine and binge-reading.

In the past month, three of my role models have died—Dolly Parton, Wendell Berry and Gloria Steinem. It was Steinem who got me out of that first, disastrous marriage, by starting MS. Magazine, a revelation to me, and my first magazine subscription, because it was not available at the drugstore.

The NYT called Steinem “the personification of the Women’s Movement”—and I think that’s right. I read all her books, checking them out of the library. Revolution from Within was my favorite, but each of them reminded me that my voice mattered. And also that I deserved to have a credit card and my own checkbook.

I was born on the same day as Mark (still delicious) Harmon. Chrissie Hynde turns 75 today. There are plenty of us still kickin’ and taking names. And—it has to be said—trying to get us out of the ugly morass we find ourselves in. I hope to be part of the movement that sees him and his sycophants gone, although I know it will take more than 25 years to cleanse and re-direct the nation.

Here’s Steinem, again:

Four days after Donald Trump’s second inauguration, she wrote an entry called “Staying Hopeful: One of the uses of a long life is remembering when things were worse, and also remembering that when bad times do come, so does an outpouring of community and energy amongst those dedicated to justice.”

Amen. (Below, Porta Nigra in Trier, Germany.)

by nflanagan

Unsubstantiated Things People Say about Public Education

There are plenty of unsubstantiated clichés people have traditionally expressed—and probably believe– about education: Private schools are better than public schools. Sports keep kids in school who would otherwise drop out.  We should flunk 3rd graders who struggle with reading. Public education is broken, and choice is the only solution.

I could go on. And on. One of the problems with improving schools—and every school could serve students better—is the time-worn observation that because everyone’s been to school, they think they accurately recognize the problems in public education and know what would fix those problems.

Nine years ago, in the summer of 2017, I was part of a project that canvassed Democrats, Lean-Dems and Independents in the county where I live. We knocked doors and asked folks about the 2016 election—what their issues were, and what they’d like to see Democrats focus on in the 2018 midterms. We didn’t ask who they voted for, but plenty of them told us.

One very elderly gentleman we visited invited us into his spotless home and offered us coffee. When asked about issues, he mentioned that his grandson was a senior at the local public HS and had never taken shop class. He was genuinely outraged, and that was his primary education issue—the local HS didn’t even offer shop class anymore!

I explained that the regional CTE Center now offered two dozen courses in machining, auto repair, welding and building construction. All public school students in the county could access a half-day of up-to-date instruction in the hands-on trades, for free.

He was not impressed. When he went to school, they had shop class, in the building, and it was the best part of his day. He pointed to his kitchen cabinets, which he’d built by hand in the 1960s. He also told us he’d voted for Trump. Maybe Trump could get shop class back in schools, because the woman he ran against certainly would not care what boys learned in public high schools.

Imagine my surprise at seeing the candidate for Senate in Michigan, Mike Rogers, advance pretty much the same argument as a centerpiece of his education plan.

Rogers titles the piece “Education Crisis is the Civil Rights Issue of our Time,” a direct rip-off of Obama Ed Secretary Arne Duncan’s catch phrase. He also references Martin Luther King a few times, as if that could erase his tight connection to the most racist president in modern history.

The rest of the piece reads like it was written in the1990s. There are a few menacing statistics from a literacy organization in Australia, re: how many kids will end up in prison because they can’t read, and the phony assertion that nobody teaches phonics anymore—’Getting kids reading again also means going back to the basics: teaching phonics to help students understand how letters and combinations of letters sound.’

Well. We’ve been trying to get kids “reading again” for decades, via a range of strategies including phonics, dude. (See: Dolly Parton.) Rogers also misinterprets the NAEP “proficiency” caption (which, to be fair, lots of education journalists don’t fully understand—it doesn’t mean grade level). And he’s completely onboard with flunking third graders until they learn to read, damn it.

And then Rogers comes down hard on the need for shop class:

 “Putting shop classes in every high school can make a real difference. Shop not only exposes students to skilled trades and high-paying jobs, but it also gives them a reason to apply math outside of the classroom. Measuring materials, calculating angles, and working with fractions help students apply math skills.“

Rogers mentions fractions (and the inability to read a measuring tape) multiple times in the column, which makes me wonder if he’s been in a public school math classroom since he graduated from Howell High School. My 7th grade math students—back in 2005—were using graphing calculators and doing single-variable equations. All of them, not just the advanced track.

And shop class, like a lot of other coursework, has been streamlined. Exit the birdhouse, and enter home construction, from rough carpentry to wiring and plumbing. Not to mention courses in cyber security and aviation, and so much more. I checked, and both the MI county where Rogers has just moved, in time to campaign, and the county where he’s lived for the past decade, in Cape Coral, Florida, have extensive career and technical education offerings in their public schools.

My friend and super education writer Jennifer Berkshire has been on a useful quest lately, in her writings— Education is a winning issue for Democrats: ‘Democrats once preached college-for-all, and were too soft on school privatization. They need to reverse course on both these positions—and make an unapologetic case for education as a public good that benefits all kids.’

Bingo. Especially if the folks running against Democrats can’t offer anything more exciting than retaining third graders, emphasizing fractions and retrofitting schools so they can offer woodworking again.

A recent survey from the Michigan Future, Inc. concluded that what communities and parents now want as takeaways from our public schools are critical thinking skills, facility in communication, and the habit of life-long learning.

We’re not going to get those with Mr. Rogers’ outdated and unsubstantiated ideas.

by nflanagan

We Love Billionaires!

As a middle school teacher, I spent a fair amount of time talking with kids—mostly 8th graders, going into high school—about what you might call their life plans. Were they thinking about college? Or the workforce? What should they focus on, as they reached the last phase of their free public schooling?

Most of the kids I taught were going to college—their (white, suburban) parents were planning on it. But very few kids in the 8th grade are settled on a career—and if they are, it often turns out to be the Wrong Thing.

More and more before I retired, my students (mostly boys) talked about wanting to be a billionaire. Didn’t seem to matter much how they got the money—professional sports or inventing a killer app, whatever. What was important was having a lot of money. To spend on cool things.

I have to believe that this desire to be rich has not abated among adolescents, given their current role models in Congress and the White House. It’s no secret that Americans admire the rich and famous, assuming they deserve their power. A look at the accrued wealth of US Senators will confirm: money gets people into office.

One would assume that in a time of rapidly rising prices, informed citizens—yup, the kids I had a hand in teaching—would understand that wealth inequality is driving many of our most egregious economic problems.

They’re grown up now. They understand that there are more important values than being filthy rich, right? Do they know that hoarding enormous wealth is not something to be admired?

Recently, a billboard went up on a well-traveled county intersection, here in NW Michigan. People Over Billionaires, it said. Vote Blue.

And it started a furious local conversation around just what it meant–always the sign of an effective message. There were letters to the editor claiming that billionaires paid more than their share of taxes (!) and “gave back” to the community.  (Spoiler: not true.)

Billionaires were our most productive citizens, the letters said–and we needed to respect them! There were also letters that pointed out, in much calmer and more elegant language than I’m using, that this thinking was pure bullshit.

I was kind of stunned by this—who thinks billionaires are rooting for the little people to enjoy better, publicly supported lives? Elon Musk? Jeff Bezos? Larry Ellison? The Waltons? One could go on and on. The word oligarchy might be used.

Last week, there was a widely shared cartoon floating around social media: An elderly gentleman is pushing a grocery cart. He says: ‘Tell me I’m wrong, but a country isn’t doing well if seniors can’t afford groceries, after working their whole lives.’

Seemed like a straightforward critique of steady inflation, to me, without getting into the weeds about tariffs or the national debt. I get groceries, like most Americans, and I know that prices have gone up significantly, and folks of both political persuasions on fixed incomes are hurting, on several fronts. But the comments were weird.

Leaving aside the usual flotilla of “you dumocrat libtards” remarks and obvious bot observations, there were dozens of people who claimed that they hadn’t found prices going up at all. Lots of accusations about greedy seniors wanting “free stuff” and spending younger generations’ money. Imagine having 45 years to save for retirement, then not doing so. Lazy!

Well, gee. Imagine going after the folks who built the middle-class economy, rather than the ones who destroyed it.

There’s been occasional talk, especially from those who study our history, about current parallels with the Gilded Age, c. 1870–1913. Trump frequently idealizes the late 19th century as America’s economic high point, especially embracing control of the economy with tariffs. Nobody in the Trump administration talks about soaring wealth inequality, dangerous corporate influence, or rampant corruption.

What gave people the idea that a plutocracy was a viable, even desirable, way to run the United States?

A couple days ago, Heather Cox Richardson had an excellent daily letter about the manifestations of wealth inequality—lack of accessible health care, loosening of regulations to benefit the very rich, etc. As she often does, she shared an historical publication that illuminates issues we are facing today: In 1883, sociologist William Graham Sumner published ‘What Social Classes Owe to Each Other,’ concluding that the answer was: nothing.

“Sumner called for a “laissez-faire” world in which those who failed should be permitted to sink into poverty and die to keep the U.S. from becoming a place where lazy people wanted a handout. In the end, such people needed to be purged from society for the good of the nation.

At the time, those succeeding in the industrializing economy nodded along with Sumner. The Republican New York Times editor wrote that even though Sumner’s “views are singularly hard and uncompromising, it is difficult to quarrel with their deductions, however one may feel one’s finer instinct hurt by their apparent cruelty.”

Apparent cruelty is what I found reading Project 2025, which has lots of–updated–language like Sumner’s.

But in the end, what will save us as a functional democracy is… people over billionaires. Right?

by nflanagan

This Guy Used to Be My Congressman

And now he wants to be my senator. Again. Meet Mike Rogers.

I spent most of my life and nearly all of my teaching career in Livingston County, Michigan—a ruby-red, rural-turning-suburban area in the ring outside Detroit. My first principal used to refer to our school district as the far edge of white flight—folks with enough resources to move to a bucolic county with lots of land for their ten-acre dream homes, an hour-long commute into the city, and a population that is 94% white and less than 1% Black.

Although I have always identified as a Democrat, I used to vote in the Republican primary, because it was the only way I had some say in who was representing me in local offices and the state legislature. Beginning in 1995, Mike Rogers was my state senator, and later, my representative in Congress. He was, at the time, very much a country club Republican—bland, moderate, uncontroversial and generally well-liked. I never voted for him, but I knew lots of people who did. I also didn’t fear him.

Rogers’ family was well-known in Livingston County. His dad was a public school administrator and football coach, and his mother ran the Chamber of Commerce. One of his brothers was in the state legislature. He won local elections by wide margins, but when he decided to run for Congress, in 2000, squeaked into office by 111 votes. It was redmap gerrymandering that made his subsequent elections ironclad.

Rogers and I lived in the same small town for most of his political career. I used to see him in Meijers and at local events, shaking hands. Once, we were both on a panel at a Chamber of Commerce breakfast where the topic was education policy. Mr. Rogers’ take on education, as a congressman, was that the feds had no business making or even influencing education policy—he was Mr. Local Control. He asked me, his designated foil, what purpose a federal Education Department served.

My answer was two-fold: First, a national Ed Department can serve as center for policy research on best practices and ideas in public education, economies of scale. Why re-invent the wheel in 50 states?

But far more important was the federal role in promoting and ensuring equity and protecting civil rights. I reminded him that the original ESEA, passed in 1965, was designed to provide resources for our neediest students, to help level the playing field for millions of baby-boomer students whose states or districts weren’t particularly interested in equity.

Not Michigan! he scoffed, ignoring the obvious example of Detroit Public Schools, 50 miles down the road, a city that many of his constituents escaped, after the auto industry built enormous wealth on the backs of immigrant laborers. But who cares about children in a city whose resources have been extracted? Not his problem.

After the panel dispersed, Rogers was surrounded by obsequious local businessmen—and I hurried back to my 3rd hour class, which a colleague was generously covering until my return.

In 2015, Mike Rogers decided not to run for Congress anymore. He launched a career in radio—a kind of mild-mannered Rush Limbaugh—and moved to Florida, where he was happily ensconced in Cape Coral for nearly a decade, starting new businesses, and serving as a defense lobbyist and National Security expert for CNN. He occasionally put out feelers to see if there was a possibility of becoming President.

But. Rogers has miraculously rediscovered his Michigan roots,and is now running—for the second time– for an open Senate seat in the mitten state. He has always been a pro-NRA, anti-abortion guy, but he’s moved hard to the ugly Trumpian right; in his last senate race in 2024, he castigated his former employer, the FBI, claiming they were on a witch hunt to take down Trump for political purposes. He called the DOJ “corrupt.” 

That, of course, was two years ago. Now, he’s All Trump, All the Time.  He’s an election denier. He’s trying to raise doubts about the MI senate election he lost, in 2024. What he said two years ago about the DOJ—well, that no longer applies. They’re good guys now.

As for public education, he’s also changed his tune, now endorsing federal influence over creeping wokeness, saying that  “schools care more now about social engineering than, as my father used to say, readin’, writin’ and ‘rithmetic.”

Expect to hear that little bon mot often on the Rogers campaign trail this fall, along with finger-pointing about DEI and the weaponization of empathy. Plus a whole lot of anti-Muslim, free-floating racism.

Remember– Mike Rogers used to present as a country club Republican, hometown boy made good, moderate conservative, ex-FBI, and deficit-cutter.

But what happens to sort-of moderate Republicans, these days? They get primaried after one term. They get criticized by Tucker Carlson.They can’t maintain leadership in the House. Or Senate. They get the message: move rightward, appease Trump, sometimes by groveling–or get out of the way.

Mr. Rogers is perfectly willing to do whatever it takes to please The King. In 2024, he bought a tear-down lakeside cottage in Michigan, moved in with his sister-in-law in his old hometown to run his campaign, and started building a new home on the lake. Which could be his Michigan address should he win, but an easy, lucrative place to sell should he lose. No risk, reward either way.

He still owns the Cape Coral mansion.

There are lots of reasons to distrust Mike Rogers, beginning with his “go as the wind blows” beliefs and policies (and place of residence). There are lots of Republicans who fall into that camp—Tommy Tuberville springs to mind.

But I keep thinking about that Chamber of Commerce breakfast, where MY sitting congressman didn’t see why children in Michigan deserved equity.


by nflanagan

 Lay off the Democrats

Full disclosure first: I am a Democrat. I sit on my county party’s executive board. I ran for county office as a Democrat in a ruby-red district (and lost but learned a lot). I have been a Democrat since my first presidential election (George McGovern, 1972), so I have seen the ups and downs of a two-party system for ages.

Here are some things I believe about partisan politics in 2026:

  • One of the two major parties better represents most Americans, a diverse bunch if there ever was one—economically, ethnically, politically, religiously, gender-wise.
  • Having multiple candidates to choose from in a primary makes parties stronger, although it can be harrowing when primary candidates go after each other.
  • Democrats are actually the party of the Big Tent, although Republicans occasionally suggest that their tent crosses boundaries.
  • We are in big trouble in 2026 on a number of fronts; counting on well-run—free and fair—elections is no longer a guarantee, for starters.
  • We need a new generation of leadership, but the way to get those new leaders elected is not to turn on the only party likely to provide support for progressivism.

Theoretically…in the midterms, we can appreciate all flavors of Democratic candidates, from avowed Democratic Socialists to outspoken Christians—because they’re being elected statewide or locally. If primaries work the way they’re supposed to, the most popular candidate perspective *in that context* will emerge as the favorite.

Here’s the thing: it may not be your preferred perspective. Which lets you choose—stick with the party you usually vote for, or decide to cross the gulf and vote for another party’s candidate who seems better, or decide not to vote. What flies in New York City may sink like a stone in, say, Iowa.

Win some, lose some. The goal is to get strong, attractive Democratic candidates and equally attractive Democratic policy ideas—then get them in office. And, as they said in The Music Man, you gotta know the territory.

Now, I am fully aware of a new generation of Democrats rising up, reaching out for things that have been pushed aside for decades: Universal health care. Affordable housing. Fair wages and worker protections. Family leave and childcare. Policies that other first-world nations have enjoyed for decades, stabilizing their workforce and making them happier.

I want those things, too. In fact, about two-thirds of Americans want universal health care, which includes plenty of Independent voters and even some Republicans. And three-quarters of Republicans—who skew older, anyway—like Medicare. I don’t think what we’re seeing in this super-heated primary season is about policy specifics, however. It’s about a desperate hope that we can stop the right-wing mutilation of the land of the free.

It makes me—as a local Democratic leader—happy to read about young, energetic candidates, willing to take on the sacred cows (both policy and human) in Congress or their statehouse. Here in Michigan, we have lots of exciting primary races. I hope we have a record-setting turnout in August, and Democrats tell us clearly what and whom they want.

Because we’re their support system—financially and in a dozen other ways. Democrats are looking for someone to take on the guy who’s fecklessly destroying the country, with his spineless minions. People want someone to fight for them, traditions be damned. But first—that someone must run. And running demands partisan support and funding.

If you only support one Democratic candidate, and your candidate loses, so you look around for someone to blame or refuse to vote for the alternate—well, may I remind you that Texas Republicans have already lined up and opened their checkbooks for a loathsome, despicable guy they impeached a few years ago?

I spend a lot of time perusing local conversations on social media—which, I realize, represent only a subset of voters.  I have been shocked by the number of posters who support a particular Democrat but are more than willing to trash the party, and in the process, trash every other candidate for that office. My guy, or bust.

I have even seen candidates—viable candidates with large followings—trash the Democratic party that they’re counting on to support them, should they make it through the primary. That boggles my mind. It’s like turning your back on family.

Robert Reich had a great column yesterday on the Common Goods we have enjoyed as Americans:

  • How we deal with disagreement
  • Truth
  • Trust
  • World leadership
  • Understanding what we owe each other as Americans
  • Political equality

Going after your preferred party damages these things. If you’re on the side of those who believe the ship can still be righted, please stop.

by nflanagan

Dirty Pool and other Metaphors

I was going to title this blog American Cesspool but then Public Notice beat me to it. And when all the good titles are taken, you know you’re talking about a national obsession.

Like all other left-leaning Americans, it seems, I feel a sense of outrage over the Reflecting Pool. Which, upon some deep reflection (get it?), isn’t perfectly rational. The Reflecting Pool is only one of dozens of strikingly memorable landmarks in Washington D.C., and it’s over a hundred years old. It’s been rebuilt and repaired numerous times, including other occasions when algae marred its surface. Maintenance of aging monuments is normal and expected, part of why we pay taxes.

What is there about the current Reflecting Pool debacle that has captured national attention? There’s the no-bid contract corruption, of course.  And the current President’s lies about vandals, somehow, causing chunks of its epoxy liner to break off—rather than acknowledging the job wasn’t done right, and needed to be done over:

‘The Reflecting Pool fiasco is of a piece with other major Trump corruption cases of the moment: the Kennedy Center renaming, the $1.8 billion slush fund, and the Epstein files. Each of these four breakthrough scandals follows the same autocratic playbook: abuse power, make a mess, then dodge accountability.’

The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool’s current state is a metaphor for something done wrong, under fishy circumstances, ordered by someone who should be a trusted leader. The reason so many people find this particular example worth commenting on—and I confess to posting a few swamp monster “photos” myself—may be because of its limited, concrete (literally) parameters.

It doesn’t impact our national security. It’s not a war. It doesn’t address our dangerous economic inequality or inflation. It’s not the result of congressional malfeasance, or the damage to free, fair and trusted elections. It’s not the obliteration of democracy. All of which are currently Big Issues, but far more complicated, both to understand and address.

The Pool is something that everyone understands can eventually be fixed. Because it’s been fixed before. Democracy, on the other hand…

Jonathan V. Last just posted a remarkable piece about what the Trump base thinks about democracy. Based on a national ethnographic study, it goes some distance in explaining why campaigns (like Kamala Harris’s) promoting constitutional values make no impact on a significant chunk of Americans:

‘14 out of 21 participants in this study had an immediate negative reaction when asked about democracy. The people in the study describe a remarkable consistency about why they dislike democracy. It’s not that they’re misled, or mistaken. They have a coherent worldview.

It’s just not very nice.

They believe that there is a cultural schism in America, with good, God-fearing people like themselves on one side and the wicked majority on the other. They detest this imaginary majority and fear that “democracy” would allow that majority to gain political power.

They very explicitly do not want majority rule.

They want minority rule.’

It’s a great piece. Recommended. Worth repeating: They fear that democracy would allow the majority to gain political power. And democracy, done right, is a complex, multi-layered concept, difficult to define or comprehend. So the President’s fearful fan club go back to mysterious underwater vandals slicing a 350 foot gash into a pool liner, requiring the National Guard and 4000 feet of wire fencing to protect our national honor.

Or something like that.

 I now know more about pool liners, adhesion, and how to nurture single-cell organisms than I did last month. Because—like half the people in this country– I’m caught up in the simple, low-hanging fruit of yet another administrative failure, laughing at social media memes. But also knowing that the pool will eventually recover, unlike the East Wing or trust in the media.

As a veteran educator, I’ve seen this many times: Take a many-faceted problem with school organization or student learning, and reduce it to a single cause or solution, one that’s easy to understand and talk about. Then cling to that limited explanation for test scores going down or up 2-point-something percent. Or whatever.

Kids in 3rd grade not fluent readers? Well, it must be the reading curriculum, plus the outdated teachers teaching that curriculum; fix it with Science! Or—better yet—threaten kids with failing the third grade, a public humiliation that some of them never recover from. Just two of those silver bullet solutions to a far more complicated and actually important issue: creating literate citizens.

We are all drawn to the small and the specific—the problem that can be solved, or at least made fun of. Right now, however, we’re facing a host of massive, thorny problems, many of which have emerged in the past year and half. It’s not about the pool—the pool is just a metaphor for the real trauma.

Keep your eyes on the prize, not the pool.

by nflanagan

I Read the News Today, Oh Boy

When I first heard about influencers, I thought—in my predictable Baby Boomer way—that the whole idea was ridiculous. People whose ‘career’ was influencing other people, paid for by subscriptions and sponsorships? Shallow people, famous for being famous, possessed of zero actual expertise, espousing fake ideas and images to make (lots of) money?

But it turns out that influencers are in it for something more than money: actual influence.

In politics, they have become ‘an infestation’:   “The internet is teeming with thousands of micro- and nano-influencers looking to make a name for themselves. These smaller influencers still have very engaged and loyal followers—making them important communication tools for campaigns. But they often lack an understanding of how politics works—or, more specifically, an appreciation for the tradeoffs that often must be made—and tend to spread content that revolves around conflict and misinformation.”

That’s what happens when you try to buy clout. You get what you pay for.

Over the past couple of years, I find that I have mostly stopped watching or reading the daily news in its conventional forms—newspapers, television, radio. I’m still consuming huge quantities of news, op-eds and information, but I like to think I’m paying for the most credible and valuable online content, verified facts and analysis.

Are my curated news providers giving me reliable information, and multiple trustworthy perspectives? Or are they just trying to influence me?

Here’s an example, from one of my daily reads, Bridge Magazine, a centrist, Michigan-focused news outlet:

“Schools are in trouble. Test scores don’t lie: Michigan ranks 44th for fourth-grade reading; less than 1 in 3 high school graduates are considered ready for college.”

First of all—it should be ‘fewer’ than one in three graduates. And that figure is erroneously measured by the SAT scores of all the HS juniors in Michigan, who are mandated to take the test whether they’re college-bound or not. Those scores are then compared to a subset of seniors in other states who are preparing to attend colleges that require a good SAT score for admission. Apples and oranges.

More importantly—test scores do lie, all the time. They’re also misinterpreted by journalists, some of whom probably mean well, but are being paid to make a particular point. Influencing your average reader to believe that Michigan public schools are failing, for example, tossing off context-free “data” as if it were God’s honest truth.

I am old enough to remember the first time I watched Fox News and began thinking about a future where there was no mainstream POV, and ordinary Joes could purchase the media stream that fit their beliefs. It seemed shocking at the time—but look. Here we are. At a point in history where the President of the United States gleefully posts an AI-generated video of himself wearing a crown and flying an airplane that drops shit on his constituents.  

“Republicans are known to be far more aggressive at paying off social media influencers than Democrats. Pay-for-post schemes have been rampant throughout the conservative commentariat during the Trump years (as studiously documented by Will Sommer). One reason being that there is just a lot more money at play.”

What do educators do when the students whose intellectual growth they are entrusted with believe things that are false and dangerous—because the influence of the internet has led them there? When the most important content and character-building discussions in school are suspect—or banned?Or when, God help us, the President’s “Special Advisor” suggests that we shouldn’t be teaching undocumented students at all?

What is our moral obligation to the kids we teach, when it comes to truth—and how they form their own opinions and civic engagement?

There’s a growing movement to expose lies and fact-check what gets circulated via social media. But how do we teach our students to be wary and cautious, to look at the background and motivation of those who put content out into the universe we share?

Also this: some influencers are doing good, sharing content that mainstream media is prevented or discouraged from programming. Some of my Facebook friends have had an amazing impact on my tiny northern Michigan community, simply by sharing their anger over what’s happening in the White House. There are days when I think we may get through this yet, just on the strength of local truth-tellers and people who act as social connectors.

Thoughts that make me feel better about where we get our news and how we interpret that news, both national stories and education stories:
“A funny thing happened on the way to the erasure of American history in favor of a whitewashed authoritarianism. The American people began to preserve the truth of who we have been.”                                Heather Cox Richardson

“You need to tell your story. If you are not telling your story, someone else is telling your story for you.” In an era where school choice has increased competition in K–12 public education, that statement has never been more relevant or more urgent.                                                                        Greg Wyman

What are you reading? Who do you believe?

by nflanagan

Hate Definitely Has a Home Here

If there’s one question on the minds of my friend group these days—old friends, fellow teachers, new acquaintances, anyone paying attention—it’s this: How can anyone, let alone a third of the population, look at current events in the United States in the past year, and believe that we are on the right track, doing OK, making our people and nation stronger?

I don’t really have to spell it out, although I am mindful of Rachel Bitecofer’s principle: repeated negative messaging works in elections—because voters will  only be mad about what we tell them to be mad about.

So here’s the bottom line: we are in real trouble, as a nation, on dozens of fronts, beginning with the fact that we are being lied to—vicious lies, filthy lies, heedless lies—on the regular. Even teaching the truth about history and science in ordinary classrooms, museums and national parks has been explicitly forbidden, plaques removed, educators silenced.

Teaching has never been easy, but it’s really a miracle that so many fine teachers are still in the classroom and finding some satisfaction in their work there. According to an EdWeek Research Center survey on teacher morale, teachers described their feelings about teaching as a very lukewarm positive—a +13 on a 200-point scale, ranging from -100 to +100.

Last year, teachers were slightly more positive, at +18, but that’s hardly a ringing endorsement of the world’s most important and rewarding profession. Interesting nugget: teachers in Arkansas reported the highest morale (+24); Pennsylvania, the lowest (+1). Make of that what you will.

Which is why I loved reading Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America by Beth Macy.  Macy, who also wrote Dopesick, a book that helped me understand opioid addiction, travels to her hometown of Urbana, Ohio, once a thriving town with good schools and a solid middle class. She was looking for reasons that people there voted—three-quarters of them—for Trump.

Among her heroes, the people who are still seeking to preserve what’s good and healthy in a failing Midwestern town, are teachers. The teachers she interviews, and whose work with and dedication to Urbana’s public school students is fierce and clear-eyed, are one of the last walls between kids making headway in life, and disaster. 

Macy also remembers the teachers who helped her get away from a working-class background with the help of Pell grants, talent and a lot of luck. Her siblings were not so lucky—one of the most painful parts of her narrative are conversations with her brother and sisters, and her niece who suffered from a stepparent’s abuse.

It is through these conversations and seeing how despair and the empty promises of preachers and politicians impact the down and out, that I began to understand who votes for powerful liars, and why.

It also helps explain why Americans hate each other:
The Pew Research Center finds that 53% of American adults describe the morality and ethics of our fellow citizens as “bad” (ranging from “somewhat bad” to “very bad”). In the 24 other countries polled by Pew, most people called their fellow citizens somewhat good or very good. At the opposite end of the spectrum from the United States is Canada, where 92% say their fellow Canadians are good, while just 7% say they’re bad.

Macy does a superb job of weaving anecdotes and memoir about growing up in a town that feels very familiar to me, also a Midwestern girl. She analyzes just what went wrong, much of it having to do with international trade, the dangerous equity gap, decades of negative political messaging about welfare queens. The demise of empathy, and the rise of right-wing pole-barn churches with fundamentalist men at the pulpit. Greed. Racism. Sexism.

Although the book won a number of awards (and was one of Barack Obama’s favorite books in 2025), I found the comments from readers enlightening. Either people loved it, finding that it deepened their understanding of just what is happening in the forgotten little towns across the country—or they hated it, believing Macy is encouraging people to talk to the enemy.

Which is a strategy that has not worked, commenters say. Unless we fight back—the “pound the negative message” model—we keep losing ground. Forget people in your past, your family. They’re the ones who voted him in. The enemy.

Who’s right?

I looked for a photo of Beth Macy and discovered she’s running for Congress in a ruby-red district in Virginia. It’s apparent to me (if not to her readers) that she’s willing to fight hard against the damage to our democracy.

She’s also right about teachers—especially those with the courage to stand up for truth, for the kids they serve, no matter their prospects. Donation sent.

Here in northern Michigan, an elderly gentleman who’s spent his life working for progressive causes was so upset about seeing Barack and Michelle Obama portrayed as apes that he called his neighbor, offering to fund signs to place around our small county, saying HATE HAS NO HOME HERE. She honored his request, designing and ordering signs.

During this process, the gentleman died. The signs will be ready next week, and planting one at the end of my driveway will be both advocacy and memorial. What I’d really like to see is a couple of those signs posted around our local school. Because that’s one of the few places where hate speech and hate actions are actively discouraged and prohibited.

Read Paper Girl.  If you’re like me, you’ll love it.