Category Archives: Uncategorized

The PR of education reform focuses on the feel-good, beating the odds, stories about heroic teachers and and rock-star superintendents who never give up on their students. There are the 106 original graduates of Chicago’s Urban Prep Charter school that … Continue reading →

I joined Teach For America in 1991 as part of their second ever cohort.  Over the past 28 years I’ve had a relationship with them that has had various ups and downs.  For a short period of time I was … Continue reading →

After the New York Times debunked the success of the T. M. Landry school in Louisiana, some very prominent reform cheerleaders have been writing about how the media needs to be more skeptical of stories in education that seem too … Continue reading →

For the past ten years, there have been two ‘sides’ in the debate over how to best improve schools in this country. On one side, you had people like Michelle Rhee, Jeb Bush, Bill Gates, Arne Duncan, Mike Bloomberg, and … Continue reading →

Seven years ago, as part of Tennessee’s Race To The Top plan, they launched The Achievement School District (ASD).  With a price tag of over $100 million, their mission was to take schools that were in the bottom 5% of … Continue reading →

A few years back, I wrote a series of letters to ‘Reformers I know,’ trying to engage publicly with education reformers I was, at least at one time, on a friendly basis with. I then expanded to ‘Reformers I DON’T … Continue reading →

There was a time that the ‘teacher story’ was a popular archetype along with the buddy movie, the romantic comedy, and the spaghetti western.  Starting with the novel ‘Blackboard Jungle’ in 1953, there have been a string of popular books … Continue reading →