Reopening Schools Requires More Than Vaccines, Students Need Trauma-Informed Education

Why is trauma-informed education not on the agenda at today’s National Safe School Reopening Summit? U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona plans to host panels…

Restorative Justice Isn’t Just for the Students, It’s for the Adults Too

Let’s face it: Our public schools are, in the main, alienating and repressive institutions whose function it is to provide our society with an army…

School Discipline Explained: Why It Harms Students of Color and How We Can Fix It

Over many decades, America’s disciplinary policies, from preschool to high school, have disproportionately affected marginalized students. This difference creates a “discipline gap.” Black students account…

Storytelling and Restorative Practices Are Key to Social-Emotional Learning

When COVID-19 closed our schools almost a year ago, teachers—regardless of how many years we’d been in a classroom—suddenly became new teachers again. Distance learning…

Here’s Why Dumping the Discipline Question on the Common App Really Matters

This is a year unlike any other. I am sure you have heard this over and over again as, over the past seven months, our…

What If We Radically Reimagined the New School Year?

Monday night I sat on my back patio staring up into a rare, starry Chicago night. I squinted and made out each point of The…

Now Is the Time to Remake Our Schools With Equity in Mind

This week, the school reopening conversation is largely about when we reopen schools. Some people, including our president, want schools to reopen widely, as soon…

You Can Call It a ‘Lost Decade,’ But I See a Lot of Good Things Happening

WHAT WE GOT RIGHT: The spin never stops when it comes to education and it goes into overdrive with the close of a decade. Amidst all the hype of a lost decade and the need for humility from education reformers, I see a glass way more than half full.…

We Were Making Progress on School Discipline Until Betsy DeVos Came Along

WHAT WE GOT WRONG: At the turn of the century, in 1999, I was graduating from high school, motivated to enter the teaching profession with a passion to reform school discipline practices and eliminate the school-to-prison pipeline. …

What You Think You Know About Restorative Justice Is Probably Wrong

On Monday, we ran a piece written by a mother whose experience with restorative justice was a horror story. Readers responded in large numbers to the piece,…