Clik here to view.
Voices of the Dropout Nation: Steve Peha Takes on Randi Weingarten
When it comes to the role of teachers in stemming the nation’s dropout crisis and crisis of educational failure, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association and their allies...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Education Absolutes Worth Thinking Over
The single-biggest problem in discussions about reforming American public education is that nearly all players think their belief is gospel. Both defenders of traditional public education’s status...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Considerable Legacy: Joel Klein
Joel Klein wasn’t exactly the natural choice for chancellor of New York City’s gargantuan and stupendously dysfunctional traditional public school system when he got the job in 2002. After all, the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Wanted: The Walkman and iPod for Educational Governance
While the rest of the world has moved on, education is stuck in a phonograph form of governance. When Sony announced last month that it would stop producing the cassette version of the famed Walkman,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Two Thoughts on Education This Week: On Teacher Quality Reform
The End of Ed Schools — and Professional Development?: When it comes to training teachers and improving their skills, this is clear: The nation spends a lot on it ($7 billion alone on training...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Voices of the Dropout Nation: The Need for a New Normal in Education
Our K-12 system largely still adheres to the century-old, industrial-age factory model of education. A century ago, maybe it made sense to adopt seat-time requirements for graduation and pay teachers...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Three Questions: Indiana Schools Superintendent Tony Bennett
Since taking office as Indiana’s Superintendent of Public Instruction two years ago, Tony Bennett has managed to make the kind of meaningful changes in reforming how the Hoosier State recruits and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Rewind: The Dropout Nation Podcast: Get Rid of Poor-Performing Teachers (and...
Photo courtesy of GothamGazette.org As you wind down from the Thanksgiving weekend, listen to this Dropout Nation Podcast, on the need to get poor-performing teachers out of classrooms. The damage...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Dropout Nation Podcast: What Education As a Civil Right Really Means
On this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast, I explain what it should mean for education to be the leading civil rights issue of this era. School reformers and others make this statement every day, but it...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Michelle Rhee’s School Reform Opportunity
If you are, as my colleague, Steve Peha, still disappointed in former D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee for not sticking it out after her patron was ousted as Chocolate City’s mayor, you will...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Beyond Charlottesville
In the wake of yesterday’s Dropout Nation commentary, there has been plenty of reformers stepping up to call out President Donald Trump’s defense of White Supremacists committing terrorism last weekend...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Teach For America Shows Reformers the Way
Should Teach For America stop being more-explicit in its efforts to build brighter futures for poor and minority children inside and outside of schoolhouse doors? This is a question that shouldn’t even...
View ArticleClik here to view.
AFT’s and NEA’s Soft Bigotry Against Minority Children
America’s public school teaching workforce is mostly-White and nearly all female. Many of them live in suburbia — even when they teach in urban districts. Even when they do live in urban districts,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Conversation: Teach For America’s Elisa Villanueva Beard
On this edition of The Conversation, RiShawn Biddle chats with Teach For America CEO Elisa Villanueva Beard about the teacher quality reform outfit’s more-pronounced efforts on addressing equity,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Integration Mirage
If the Century Foundation and other advocates for socioeconomic integration are believed, Cambridge Public School in Massachusetts is supposedly the model for harmonious, high-quality educating of all...
View ArticleA Holy Call for School Reform
Truly He taught us to love one another, His law is love and His gospel is peace. Chains he shall break, for the slave is our brother. And in his name all oppression shall cease. Sweet hymns of joy in...
View Article
