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 »

Vigilance Required as Civil Rights Protections Rescinded

Photo by Ryan Johnson, City of North Charleston, https://flic.kr/p/eDPrkW, CC BY-SA 2.0

  Just as most schools were closing for the holiday season, the Department of Education published a 180-page final report from the Federal Commission on School Safety. As expected, the report identifies best practices and makes recommendations on school safety issues, such as building security, active shooter response, student mental health, and professional training. With … Read more »

Has the Use-by Date for Brown v. Board of Education Expired?

Photo by Warren K. Leffler, U.S. News & World Report Magazine, Restored by Adam Cuerden [Public domain], https://goo.gl/ozzKrn

I was fourteen years old in the spring of 1954 when the Supreme Court held 9-0 that the racial segregation of students in public schools violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth amendment. But it was in September of 1957 as soldiers from the 101st Airborne escorted nine African American students through a jeering … 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 »

The Case for New Metrics

  The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) introduces a major policy shift. Responsibility is going back to the states for setting academic standards and holding schools accountable for ensuring that students are learning. With each state now determining its own metrics for gauging student success, the question arises: how can states ensure that a student … 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 »