It begins.

Tomorrow is the first day of classes. You may have noticed that I'm no longer The English Teacher. This year I'll be teaching three classes of Honors World History, one class of Theory of Knowledge, and one class of Creative Writing. So just call me The Teacher. If they want me to teach math, I'll teach that, too.

I start the year by thinking about an opinion piece by Robert Samuelson. It begins:

As 56 million children return to the nation's 133,000 elementary and secondary schools, the promise of "reform" is again in the air. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has announced $4 billion in "race to the top" grants to states whose proposals demonstrate, according to Duncan, "a bold commitment to education reform" and "creativity and innovation (that are) breathtaking." What they really show is that few subjects inspire more intellectual dishonesty and political puffery than "school reform."

And it ends:

Against these realities, school "reform" rhetoric is blissfully evasive. It is often an exercise in extravagant expectations. Even if George W. Bush's "No Child Left Behind" program had been phenomenally successful (it wasn't), many thousands of children would have been left behind. Now Duncan routinely urges "a great teacher" in every classroom. That would be about 3.7 million "great" teachers -- a feat akin to having every college football team composed of all-Americans. With this sort of intellectual rigor, what school "reform" promises is more disillusion.

That about sums up the education reform movement. If you want the details in the middle of his piece, you can find them at Real Clear Politics.

All—despite the reign of lunacy—is not lost. I live in a city whose teacher's union may have been the first in the nation to beat back the education reformers. Our superintendent is on the Board of Directors of the Broad Foundation, one of the funders of the reform movement. Despite the superintendent's attempts to shove "reform" down our throats and control public opinion, our union outsmarted the district at the bargaining table. In the end, the district gave up almost all of its demands, and the union conceded very little.

Of course, this is not over. But if we can fend off the reformers in our city, others can do it elsewhere. On to the new school year!