Tag: students

I’ve written about the Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (Iowa CCI) before. They are a well-intentioned group trying to improve Iowan lives. They earned recognition in the state back in the 1980’s when they partnered with Willie Nelson and others to protect Iowa family farmers from having their land repossessed by banks. Now they not…

It’s a rainy, cold day in Iowa…duck weather! Here’s “A Little About A Lot”: Many Parents Value Grades Over Test Scores, Missing Signals to Intervene (The 74, 3/30/26) By now, ABPTL readers should know how unreliable teachers’ grades are when it comes to assessing desired learning outcomes. For peat’s sake, we still have teachers rewarding…

What if work world and school world collided? Meaning kids could become better readers, writers, and problem-solvers while working at a job they love? There aren’t a lot of examples of learning spaces that combine work and school, but there are some – and they seem to be growing. Take for example the partnership between…

Outdoor learning has always been a “nice to do” in this country instead of a “have to do.” The opposite is true in the Scandinavian countries. Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark pride themselves for offering outdoor schools to children of all ages. Even when the temperature is well below freezing, Scandinavia’s young learners are taking…

When I was a high school principal, we had a list of all our students and the school activities they were involved in. Whenever we had kids whose activity space was blank, we knew we had a potential problem. We knew “busy minds were happy minds” when it came to kids being involved in school…

I’ve told this story before. When I was a new high school principal, I sat on a panel discussing the importance of establishing a seamless pipeline when it came to providing a strong learning plan for every public school student. Of course, with me representing the upper secondary piece of the pipeline, I was eager…

Our traditional K-12 school system’s inability to be more flexible when it comes to when and where learning happens is becoming a major concern. As EducationWeek reported last week (3/17/26), more and more school districts are shortening their school calendars, primarily due to financial reasons, while many of our K-12 districts are still suffering from…

Texas pays $10,474 to parents who choose an accredited private school through the state’s education savings account (ESA) program. If you are a parent of a child with a disability, then that amount can increase to a maximum of $30,000. But if you are a parent of a homeschooler, the Lone Star State pays only…

I’ve told this story before. When I was a region superintendent in Houston, we had to decide where boundary lines would be drawn for a new elementary school. My staff spent months studying the data, making sure the new elementary school and the established elementary school close by would share an equal amount of middle…