Yes, 2017 was a rough year for public school supporters, with the ascension of President Donald Trump and his Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, the continued underfunding and undermining of local public schools, and the increased attacks on teacher professionalism and students’ civil rights. But there’s hope for 2018. The public has grown far more skeptical toward the movement to
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What is community-based accountability? In 2012, I first conceptualized community-based accountability in the post Accountability: Are you ready for a new idea? Over the past several years, California has undertaken this new approach for its more than 4 million students (See all posts on community-based accountability). Local control has been a bedrock principle of public schooling in America since inception. In 2013,
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So do you want the good news or the bad news first? It’s a question my parents often asked me a child growing up. Which do you want to hear first? I’ll start with the bad news. High states testing has been around for a long time (See the post After Thousand of Years, #China Changing Mind on #Testing ? #edreform). Historically,
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I am currently writing for the EdWeek column K-12 Schools Beyond the Rhetoric with Jack Schneider. We are covering a bevy of important topics in education policy such as Teach For America, Charters, Vouchers, High-stakes testing, and Standards. I first excerpted some of our conversation about charters schools in the post Is the Impact of Charters Schools on Achievement a Big Lie? Today, I want to introduce excerpts
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Because I am California bound, I had to cancel an engagement to speak with the Sun City Democrats about education reform. To make up for it, I taped a message to them and answered their questions. I pasted the YouTube response below. Here are the questions: We read, in the Austin Statesman, that one of the major problems for the Texas
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Cloaking Inequity 
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