We May Finally Know What It Takes to Improve Schools

WHAT WE GOT RIGHT: When we think about school improvement efforts across the United States, it’s easy to tick off the spectacular, big-budget failures. Yet, while these boondoggles made headlines and dominated air time among policy wonks, a smaller, quieter and more sustainable set of successes began teaching the field some guiding principles for improving schools.…

Some Students Can’t Afford to Leave Money Behind When Applying to College

When you grow up as I did with meager means—with a household income of less than $50,000 for a family of five—you pinch pennies, frequent…

If We Want to Personalize Learning, We Need to Rethink the Common Core

This past spring, I was proudly describing a performance assessment in which I had my ninth- and 10th-grade students map out their neighborhood using parallel…

State ESSA Plans Are Weak Tea, But Here Are 3 Things We Can Do Right Now

When federal policymakers passed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) two years ago, they hoped that states would be innovative in solving local needs and…

Bill Gates’ Education Priorities Reflect His Respect for the Field

In the last 17 years, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent $3.4 billion dollars to improve public education. Among other things, Gates helped…

Chicago’s Solorio High School Showed Me Exactly the Kind of Teacher I Want to Be

What I loved about Solorio was that I really got to know the teachers. Teachers wouldn’t talk down to us. It wasn’t lecture style. We…

Principals From Charter and District Schools Come Together to Better Serve Students

A recent article in U.S. News and World Report highlighted the importance of charter-district collaboration and encouraged the incoming Trump administration to make it a…

Do Charter Schools Really Rely on Private Money?

I was scrolling through my Facebook feed and came across this piece of news: Kipp Ignite Academy has received $100,000 through a Farmers Insurance Thank…

With Strike Three, Education For This Election Cycle Is Out

In all three nationally televised presidential debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, there were missed opportunities to address what some consider the most important…

Education Conferences Aren’t My Favorite But Here’s One Worth Going To

I have a confession to make, and I suspect I’m not alone among educators and education policy types in harboring this sentiment. I detest conferences.…