well, maybe that title is getting a little ahead of itself. maybe i won’t actually get anotherdegree. but in any case, i AM back in school. or i will be, starting next tuesday. i’ll still be working the same job i have been; i’ll just be taking a couple classes each semester on the side. something to keep the ol’ grey cells happy. you know how it goes.

i’ll be getting a degree in education, with the aim of getting into policy and reform. not teaching. i know a lot of people think that education administration should be enacted by teachers, but i don’t want to teach. i tried it once for a short while, and it was fun—but i have bigger changes in mind, bigger grievances i want to see worked out. ideally, i’d get this degree and then get to work for the dept of education and try and bring about systematic evaluation and reform. i think we have a lot of great teachers in this country—i have benefited from them personally—but something about the system cripples them. so let’s fix the system. i don’t think you have to be a teacher to do that. i think you can be a parent, an investor, a researcher, a student, an adult, a child. yes, teachers need to be part of the process, but creative minds enact change, too. if it eases your mind, think of it this way: i’ve been a student so long, i’ll bring that perspective.

studying education should be interesting since, typically, education policymakers tend to be liberal and/or democrats. and i, in case you are new to the anothernicole rodeo, am neither of those. but i think i’m open-minded, and i know i’m opinionated, so it should make for some good discussions.

at present i am most strongly against teacher unions (*ducks*) and the idea that one system will work for the entire country. when the student body in california looks like the student body in vermont we can talk about making everything the same. in the meantime, i think we should embrace our diversity and look for diverse ways to solve one massive problem. but you know me: all kinds of ideas, very little data. we’ll see how that changes as i get myself edumacated.