Tag: students

I’m trying to remember when “diversity” became a dirty word in this country. Sure, there have always been folks who didn’t like sharing the world with others who looked different from them, but I always thought they were going to lose out in the end. Because the future depends on a world that works together…

Traditional schools have it all wrong. They believe that time should be the constant and the amount of learning should be variable. Instead, they should turn that around. Learning should be the constant and time should be variable. Witness the school day that begins at 7:55 A.M. and ends at 3:10 P.M. – everyday. Witness…

Rod Paige, U.S. Secretary of Education under President George W. Bush and the Houston general superintendent who hired me to be a middle school principal, once told me that there was only one public education governance body that hadn’t felt any type of reform pressure over the past 50 years – and that was the…

Teacher evaluation has always been a slippery slope. Back in the early part of this century, school districts became interested in using student growth measures, mainly from standardized test performance, to decide the best classroom instructors. But, student growth measures came under attack primarily from teacher unions questioning the validity and reliability of how standardized…

How long will we continue defending the indefensible? How long will we try to convince ourselves that our traditional K-12 system can be improved, especially when it comes to black, brown, and poor young learners? When will we stop trying to turn those wanting  to try “different” into demons set to destroy public education as…

Too much of traditional school is spent memorizing information. Instead, what if most learning time was spent focusing on how to create. How would our world be different if our learning system “created creators?” A chapter inside Built for More: The Role of Out-of-School Time in Preparing Youth for the Future of Work titled “Creating…

This past Saturday I attended our son’s white coat ceremony at West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia. At WVU, medical students are presented their “white coats” at the end of their first two years of classwork and at the beginning of their two-year rotation schedule. It’s kind of a big deal. During the ceremony,…

Yesterday I asked a couple of questions: What if our learning day was filled with building reading, writing, and problem-solving work? More importantly, what if our learning day focused on leadership skills and how all young learners could benefit from leadership training and character development? Today, continuing to focus on a book titled “Legacy” –…