Q&A With Paige Kowalski: Getting Transparent About Student Data

Student data. Standardized testing. Accountability. These words set off a lot of big feelings among parents, educators and policymakers — especially fear and anger. Controversies…

Education Needs a Bigger Tent, Not a Bigot Tent

In the past several years, right-leaning education reformers have been contemptuous of—and frustrated by—progressives who brought a justice orientation into the movement.  Back in 2015,…

Want to Build Anti-Racist Schools? Start With the Adults.

The past year has put an intense spotlight on the racism and inequities that plague American schools. It has also inspired leaders and educators to…

We Need to Keep Talking About HIV With Our Students

As a kid born in the 70s and raised primarily in Arkansas, I was a skeptic for the first seventeen years of my life. Growing…

Here’s Why ‘No Politics in the Classroom’ Isn’t Working for Marginalized Students

Which of the following is too political to be displayed in a public school teacher’s classroom? We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all…

If We Don’t Do Something Radical Now We Will Fail Our Kids

This has not been the “back to school” we look forward to each year. In these early days of the new school year, it has…

It’s OK, You Can Teach For America

In 2013, Sandra Korn, then a senior at Harvard and a contributor to the student newspaper The Crimson, wrote an article telling her peers “Don’t…

No, But Seriously, How Are the Children?

Last week I made what I thought was a simple request: for all of us to prioritize the question “how are the children?” as if…

Without Teach For America, I Wouldn’t Be Teaching in the Same Latinx Community Where I Grew Up

I have vivid memories of teachers joining my school communities and then saying goodbye to them only a few years later. As a young girl,…

We Can Make the First Year of Teaching Better. Here’s How.

When Barack Obama was elected president in November 2008, I was living in Chicago and working as a computer security engineer. After hearing Obama’s passionate…