A Better Path to Learning

Author: svb802

  • Proof of Practice

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    I’m not a big fan of startups that, well, remain startups. We have too many examples of small learning organizations within the public space that do well in terms of getting kids to become smarter and stronger but never scale beyond what might be called a “boutique” enterprise. Recently, Education Reimagined published a report titled…

  • Friday News Roundup

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    It’s Friday. Time for the News Roundup. Harrison vs. High Ed: How One Lawmaker is Weaponizing Social Media to Eradicate LGBTQ+ Curriculum (The Texas Tribune) Representative Brian Harrison from Midlothian, Texas. Although he did not pass one of his own bills in the last Texas legislative session, Harrison has taken it upon himself to shut…

  • Urgent Optimism

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    I’ve posted nearly 650 articles on the ABPTL website (along with Facebook and LinkedIn postings). Most of those articles have been critical of our present K-12 teaching and learning system. And, admittedly, I haven’t gained the readership I expected when I started writing the column over three years ago. But, believe it or not, I’m…

  • Dumbing Down or A Different System

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    A long-time friend (he was best man in our wedding) is a conservative. One night I was opining that Donald Trump would go down in history as our worst president. My friend came back that America was going down the drain because of Nancy Pelosi and her fellow liberal Democrats. We stopped talking about politics…

  • Good Schools vs. Bad Schools

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    I started teaching in the Houston Independent School District (HISD) in 1984. I left the district to lead a Houston-based educational non-profit in 2008 and retired from that organization in 2018. I was either part of HISD or a partner to the district for 35 years. And during those 35 years, there were 15-20 schools…

  • Skills Over Knowledge

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    Skills or knowledge? Which one should learning leaders focus on? As The 74 reported in a post (9/30/25) recently, “…it is ever more common for school districts and states to publish ‘portrait of the graduate’ – a vision of the well-educated student. As a review of this collection of portraits reveals, there is little emphasis…

  • Friday News Roundup

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    Time for the Friday News Roundup. UT-Austin Considering Offer to Adopt Trump Priorities for Funding Advantages (The Texas Tribune) The Texas Tribune reported late last week that The University of Texas at Austin was considering an offer by the Trump administration that would grant the university access to substantial and meaningful federal dollars in exchange…

  • AI and Learner Trust

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    It seems artificial intelligence might be decaying the trust built between a teacher and their students. In a recent posting by The 74 (9/22/25): “Researcher Jiahui Luo of the Education University of Hong Kong in 2024 found that college students in many cases resent the lack of ‘two-way transparency’ around AI. While they’re required to…

  • The Illusive Microschool

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    America’s K-12 schools have lost 1 million students since the 2020 pandemic. Some enrolled in private schools, utilizing voucher money approved by mainly red state legislatures to pay for it. But others created smaller learning organizations like enhanced homeschooling, learning pods, and microschools. After five years, the Rand Corporation decided it was time to evaluate…

  • News From The Heartland

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    Iowa has made public education news recently, for all the wrong reasons. Governor Kim Reynolds and other state leaders are attempting to make the case for Iowa to receive block grants from the federal government, which gives the state flexibility in how to spend funds historically dispensed by the U.S. Department of Education. According to…