Author: Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig
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“Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.” — Dr. Emmett Brown, Back to the Future The year is now. But the stakes? They’re from the future. Imagine stepping into a souped-up DeLorean, gunning it to 88 miles per hour, and landing not in 1955, but in the school district of tomorrow. What do you…
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I’m thinking about someone I’ll call Pat Drek. That’s not his real name—but the feelings and contradictions he represents are very real. Pat failed out of college after his first year. Higher education didn’t work for him—or maybe it failed to work with him. And yet, he went on to build a highly successful career. Financially, professionally,…
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Five years ago today, the world witnessed a modern-day lynching. On May 25, 2020, George Floyd—a 46-year-old father, brother, and Black man—was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer who knelt on his neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds. Floyd pleaded for his life. He called out for his mother. He said the words that…
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In an era where public education has become a battleground for ideological warfare, Maya Angelou’s wisdom feels more urgent than ever: “I am convinced that courage is the most important of all the virtues. Because without courage, you cannot practice any other virtue consistently. You can be kind for a while; you can be generous…
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A quiet decision from the Supreme Court today—one that received far less media coverage than it should have—may well be remembered as a key moment in the battle over the soul of public education in the United States. The justices, deadlocked in a 4-4 split, left in place an Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling that invalidated…
Cloaking Inequity 