When an Emergency is No Longer Emergent: How and For Whom Schools Work

As the pandemic stretches into year three, one must ask: What happens when an emergency is no longer emergent? Many school and district leaders rapidly adapted and stretched to make the best of challenging times. Despite these efforts, districts are facing escalating levels of stress. In an environment characterized by both real and manufactured controversies, … Read more »

Unlike Any Other: The School Year Ahead

An incoming first-grader shyly enters her classroom for the first time; she’s never been inside a school before. Her classmate confidently sits down at a desk; she spent the last year in-person and knows the routines. Are they both on-par for the coming school year? A ninth-grader looks around at his high school class for … Read more »

Moving from the Potential of Teacher Improvement to its Passionate Reality

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I want to make an argument for a system of support for teachers. I spent a decade in the classroom in large urban districts. During that time, I encountered many passionate teachers who worked relentlessly to improve, but often without support or direction. For the last seven years, I have travelled the country providing technical … Read more »

Arming Students Against Bad Information

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All consumers of information need to be able to distinguish fact from opinion and recognize any bias, including one’s own, that may influence the quality or depth of understanding what we are reading or hearing. For this reason, these skills are staples of the language arts and social studies curricula. Yet, with new forms of … Read more »

An Educational “Bucket List” for Parents

  For many parents the political tug of war over “transformational changes” to fix our schools is bewildering. Suppose you have a child starting school – 1st grade to be exact. Concerned that she gets the best education possible, you do your research on schools. You may even go so far as to move to … Read more »

No Tenure for Teachers: The New Education Reform?

  Eliminating tenure for teachers is the new education reform. Last spring, Vergara v. California found that the state’s tenure statutes protected teacher incompetence, disproportionately impacting students in less affluent school districts and denying them access to an equal education. Subsequently, other states are looking at what they can do to neuter tenure laws through … Read more »

Can Educators Make Choices that Bridge the Opportunity Gap?

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There is less equality of opportunity in the United States than in most other advanced industrial countries. It is so, observes the economist Joseph Stiglitz, even though Americans hold an almost “universal consensus that inequality of opportunity is indefensible.” Stiglitz further contends that inequality of opportunity in the quantity and quality of education is the … Read more »

An Open Letter to the New Congressional Leadership, Part 2

  Dear Majority Leader McConnell and Speaker Boehner, In December I wrote to you about the opportunities and challenges you now face in crafting an educational agenda to meet the needs of all our citizens. I posed the following points for your consideration: Emphasize consistency of educational opportunity; Focus on evidence-based reform; Promote the teaching … Read more »