"Containing the public messages, speeches, and statements of the President", 1956-1992.

If all humor does indeed come from pain, then American educational policymaking has been a petri dish brimming with hilarity. Even before Betsy DeVos ascended to her perch atop the U.S. Department of Education, her predecessors had offered up an excruciating decade of fodder for satire. Ably assisted by a bevy of billionaires, foundations, and advocacy think tanks, these policymakers unleashed a torrent of rhetorical gibberish and evidence-free “innovations” on the nation’s children and their schools. Potential Grizzlies: Making the Nonsense Bearable is one researcher’s attempt to laugh instead of cry. The book will bring back memories of policymakers from more innocent times, from Michelle Rhee to Arne Duncan to Chris Christie. Sit back and relax with fond thoughts of your favorite policies, from testing to school choice to “parent trigger.” Or maybe just smile and imagine a day when policymakers turn to research evidence and knowledgeable educators to build a sound future for our children. Praise for Potential Grizzlies: Making the Nonsense Bearable: "Kevin Welner deftly skewers every phony reform fad of the past twenty years with a sharp blade, neatly removing head from body without leaving a trace. He says in a few cleverly chosen anecdotes what many of us have tried to prove in laborious tomes. The so-called "reform" movement is a hoax. Read it and laugh!" Diane Ravitch, Research Professor of Education at New York University, and author of Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America's Public Schools "During these days of grim headlines, Potential Grizzlies provides welcome relief. With clever twists about "reformers" and their projects, Welner captures the tragic hilarity of what friends of public schools have lived through for the past decades. Every time I thought I read the most hilarious "tweak" of ed reform, I would find a new favorite a few pages later. A must-read for those who have waged the fight against NCLB, Race to the Top, privatization, and of course Betsy DeVos." Carol Burris, Executive Director of the Network for Public Education, and author of On the Same Track: How Schools Can Join the Twenty-First-Century Struggle against Resegregation "Welner expertly jumbles satire, research and education reform into this must-read book, which simultaneously covers where we’ve come from, why, and where we are going with education reform. Honestly I’m angry that my blog is not as funny as this. Read it, unless you don’t have a funny bone." Julian Vasquez Heilig, Dean and Professor, University of Kentucky College of Education

This book of essays is about education and technology and the use of technology in education. I try to buck the trends in education now and for the past 30+ years. There is one book review. I hope that many people will read that book. I also critique Waiting for Superman.

This volume informs the growing number of educational policy scholars on the use of critical theoretical frameworks in their analyses. It offers insights on which theories are appropriate within the area of critical educational policy research and how theory and method interact and are applied in critical policy analyses. Highlighting how different critical theoretical frameworks are used in educational policy research to reshape and redefine the way scholars approach the field, the volume offers work by emerging and senior scholars in the field of educational policy who apply critical frameworks to their research. The chapters examine a wide range of current educational policy topics through different critical theoretical lenses, including critical race theory, critical discourse analysis, postmodernism, feminist poststructuralism, critical theories related to LGBTQ issues, and advocacy approaches.