Tag: parents

A long time ago I was taught by a mentor that earning high test scores for your school wasn’t enough to keep your job as a campus principal. In addition to solid test scores, you had to take care of your learner community – students, parents, and teachers. This was advice that served me well,…

Best practice in reading has flipped between phonics and balanced literacy over the past 50 years. Most recently, Lucy Calkins and her Unit of Study strategy, created at Columbia University’s Teachers College, was criticized for not emphasizing the science of reading (phonics) enough. Now, it seems science of reading strategies are facing criticism. As The…

Why aren’t more high schools embracing the microschool idea? Microschools are small learning groups that train young learners to define, plan, execute, and evaluate their own learning. The goals of most microschools are to make young learners better readers, writers, problem-solvers, and to build character. Ten years ago or more, my educational non-profit supported a…

Some of the best advice I ever received when it came to running a school or a group of schools came from kids – not adults. I had student advisory groups when I led a middle school and when I led a high school. I even had a student advisory group when I was a…

Last week Educated Reimagined released an interview with Marc Porter Magee, CEO of 50Can and Dr. Felicia Cumings Smith, President and CEO of the National Center for Families Learning (NCFL), focused on a recent 50-state survey of 20,000 parents. Parent attitudes regarding their children’s learning, including those choices their young learners and their families make…

Microschool enrollment is increasing across America. A microschool is a small, flexible learning environment that blends personalization with a community of learners that offers a tailored, student-centered learning atmosphere. The 74 highlighted the increased attention toward microschools in an online article last week: “Kara Fox did not want to wait. A mom of two, she…

As young learners and their coaches become more familiar with artificial intelligence and how AI can assist and impact their learning, it’s still troubling that too many K-12 districts are committed to banning not only AI, but also cellphones and social media. The BIG Questions Institute published an online article last week discussing five trends…

Today we discuss homeschooling on a couple of fronts. First, to continue our focus on anywhere learning, Vermont’s North Branch Nature Center has designed a learning program targeted for those homeschooled young learners. For more than a decade, this nature center has helped thousands of public school students throughout Central Vermont immerse themselves in nature…

Is a learning organization successful if it increases its academic performance while losing enrollment? Maybe that learning organization is improving performance because of lost enrollment? This is the case with the Houston Independent School District. HISD reports a decline in enrollment of 168,400 students in the 2025-26 school year, a loss of 4.7%. Back in…