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It was perhaps inevitable that the political moment that has given birth to the Occupy movement, pitting Main Street against Wall Street and the 99% against the financial elite, would eventually succeed in making some chinks in the armor of the 1%'s favorite feel-good hobby: the school reform movement.

It's an argument that seems to bubble up cyclically. It doesn't matter what the hot policy idea du jour is, someone is bound to assert: What we're doing right now does not serve the needs of the gifted!

Capping a yearlong political battle by the UFT and its labor and community allies for economic equity, the New York State Legislature on Dec. 6 passed legislation that brought a measure of fairness to the state tax code while providing a much-needed boost in education funding for next year.

School principals throughout the state are in revolt against the State Department of Education for imposing a system that is supposed to guarantee reliable testing for students. The leaders of the principals' rebellion charge that the system doesn't actually accomplish that. Instead, it degrades the educators in our schools. One principal, Bernard Kaplan, of Great Neck North High School on Long Island, told me: "It's stupid. It makes no sense."

A longtime friend on the school board of one of the largest school systems in America did something that few public servants are willing to do. He took versions of his state's high-stakes standardized math and reading tests for 10th graders, and said he'd make his scores public.

As 2011 draws to a close, we can confidently declare that one of the biggest debates over education is - mercifully - resolved. We may not have addressed all the huge challenges facing our schools, but we finally have empirical data ruling out apocryphal theories and exposing the fundamental problem.

Claims of failure and crisis have occurred every decade public schools have existed, suggesting that whatever the conditions are of our school system, they are simply the status of those schools-not failure and certainly not crisis. The great irony of claims of failure and crisis coming from politicians, reformers, the media, and the public is that these claims mask the genuine problems inherent in our system.

New York State math and language arts tests for elementary and middle school students will each be lengthened to about three hours beginning this April.

One of the surprising attacks on unions of late is that they try to raise wages and benefits and improve their working conditions for the sake of their members. Big secret: Just as every corporation is in the business of trying to improve their profit status and the dividends of their "members."

The education proposals in Bloomberg's State of the City address are being described as "ambitious" in the New York Times and GothamSchools. I see it differently.

Minutes after Mayor Bloomberg finished delivering his State of the City address today, reactions started flying about his aggressive slate of education proposals. The reactions ranged from withering (in the case of UFT President Michael Mulgrew) to bewildered (Ernest Logan, principals union president) to supportive (charter school operator Eva Moskowitz and others whose organizations would benefit from the proposals). Below, I've compiled the complete set of education-related reactions that dropped into my inbox. I'll add to the list as more reactions roll in.

State Education Commissioner John King spent most of his time before legislators today going to bat for Gov. Andrew Cuomo's proposed schools budget. But on one key point, he said the Board of Regents would prefer a change. The Regents would rather not hinge so much of the state's funds on a competition among districts, King said. Cuomo proposed using $250 million of a proposed $800 million school aid increase to reward districts for strong academic performance and management efficiency. King said the Regents, whose agenda is similar but not identical to Cuomo's, would slash that number by 80 percent. They would still hand out $50 million through a competition but think the remaining $200 million would be better used helping high-needs districts cover their expenses, he said.

Many of us have had extensive ongoing conversation about the Big Study (CFR) that caught media attention last week. That conversation has included much thoughtful feedback from the authors of the study.  That's how it should be. A good, ongoing discussion delving into technical details and considering alternative policy implications.

This was written by Mark Naison, professor of African and African American Studies at Fordham University in New York and chair of the department of African and African-American Studies. He is also co-director of the Urban Studies Program, African-American History 20th Century. This first appeared on the blog With A Brooklyn Accent.

Imagine our surprise. Rethinking Schools learned today that for the first time in its more-than-20-year history, our book Rethinking Columbus was banned by a school district: Tucson, Arizona. According to journalist Jeff Biggers, officials with the Tucson Unified School District ordered that teachers pull the book from their classrooms, evidently as an outcome of the school board's 4-1 vote this week to abolish the Mexican American Studies program.