Wealthy, White People Are Still in the Business of School Segregation

What’s causing school segregation? Some people say charter schools—I say it’s White people.   Before y’all get upset, I’m not saying it’s all White people—just…

Hosting the Super Bowl Is Nice But Atlanta’s Kids Need a Champion of Excellent Schools

As the mother of 11-year-old twins, I spend every day planning, supporting and coordinating their lives. I have also worked in their school, sat on…

How Kentucky’s Superintendent of the Year Got Autonomous Schools to Adopt the Same Curriculum

Understanding that the content we put in front of children matters, 50CAN, a nonprofit network of citizen advocates, recently held a session on the importance…

Mississippi’s Children Are Getting Shortchanged

Children in Mississippi’s capital city are getting shortchanged. The Mississippi Department of Education had been investigating the Jackson Public School District, and recently released a report which…

Do I Really Have to Live in an All-White Neighborhood for My Kids to Get a Good Education?

I grew up in Queens (St. Albans), New York, and attended Andrew Jackson High School in the early ’90s. My family, who migrated to New…

Stop Scapegoating Charter Schools and Fix Schools That Are Really Failing Children

There is a crisis in California’s public education system. According to teachers unions and the NAACP, the crisis involves an attempted takeover of the public…

Thought Charter and District Schools Couldn’t Work Together? Newark Has Found a Way

It’s often noted that the original vision for charter schools, championed by legendary teachers’ union leader Al Shanker and others, was that they’d be “laboratories…

Coffee Break: Denver Charter School Leader Bill Kurtz on Finding the Right Brew of Quality, Access and Integration

Denver’s DSST charter schools are one of the nation’s premiere secondary school networks. Led by longtime CEO Bill Kurtz, DSST has expanded steadily in Denver…

Yes, You Should Use Social-Emotional Learning With School Discipline, But It’s Not Easy

There is an escalating debate about the role of social-emotional learning (SEL) in education. Proponents of SEL believe it’s correlated with positive outcomes for students,…

It’s Going to Be a Lot Harder to Shade Newark Public Schools With These Graduation Rates

It’s easy to be skeptical about improvements to Newark Public Schools (NPS), given its sordid history of corruption, desultory oversight, and—most critically—poor student outcomes. But…