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 »

Students Need a Champion

Boston needs a champion who can restore the public’s faith in the schools. Struggling with long-term underperformance, the Boston Public Schools now face pandemic-induced learning losses and the looming threat of a state receivership. As she takes office, Mayor Wu has a unique opportunity to show the impact of having a mayor in charge of … 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 »

Professional Development: On the Chopping Block

Photo by U.S. Department of Education, https://flic.kr/p/r5uQ5y

I love the definition of insanity often attributed to Einstein: “Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” I think of that often when I am trying to put together one of my grandson’s new toys without success. So does this definition of insanity resonate with educators? In education, we often struggle with … Read more »

Is “For-Profit Education” an Oxymoron?

  We applaud entrepreneurs that have an idea, take a risk and strike it big. It’s the American way. So some may ask, why does government and the larger educational community look skeptically at a for-profit entity that is operating a school or college? Why can’t for-profits operate effectively in public sector arenas such as … Read more »

Is it worth investing in education?

A 2017 Institute of Education Sciences report labeled some of the school improvement models mandated under ESEA as ineffective. So, does this mean we need to stop trying to grow our knowledge on how to improve chronically underperforming schools? Do we need to stop investing in education and let market forces dictate how our educational … Read more »

How K–12 Public School Funding Works — And How New Changes May Help Close the Achievement Gap

Photo by Jacob Edward (https://flic.kr/p/oqcTnf) CC-BY-2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/)

Most Americans — including political and business leaders, and even people who work in schools — have a very limited understanding of how schools are funded. In fact, in the majority of state capitals, there are only a handful of individuals who truly understand the funding formulas. This is not because people are apathetic, but … Read more »