Tag: teachers

I receive a lot of emails that start with “10 ways to improve your math scores,” or “6 strategies to improve your classroom reading performance.” At this point in my career (which is basically over), I tend to ignore any title sent to me that begins with “___ ways.” But there was one article (advertisement)…

I love my wife. But for the life of me I cannot understand how she critiques my call for a new learning system while ignoring how bad the current public system is for most kids. I’ve written about this predicament before. She, along with others, seem more interested in explaining why a new learning system…

For 10 years, I worked as an executive director of an educational non-profit committed to improving public schools through leadership practices and classroom outcomes. Part of my work was raising money from private foundations to supplement the fee for service payments from our partner school districts. Even though some private philanthropists have made a difference…

The traditional school system has convinced itself that all they need to do to fix their problems is to identify, recruit, hire, and retain qualified school leaders and classroom teachers. Districts spend a lot of money trying to get the right people on the bus if you will. But what if all that effort and…

TGIF! Here’s your Friday News Roundup. Black Parent Open to New Forms of Schooling, Polling Suggests (The 74) One positive that came from the COVID pandemic seems to be empowering black parents of school-aged kids. According to a recent article in The 74 online, “Black parents say they play a much more active role in…

I have a lot of friends suspicious of vouchers, or education savings accounts. One of my friends wrote the following for a publication printed by the public school district he lives in. This is what my friend had to say: “School Vouchers or Education Savings Accounts—Not a Simple Yes or No With our State running…

When Matt Barnes and I launched The Education Game a few years ago, we quickly noticed most parents we worked with were fearful of the unknown when they considered withdrawing their children from the traditional public school system. These parents knew their public school was not the right place for their children, but still they…

I was disappointed last week after reading Bruno Manno’s opinion piece in The 74 online titled “Education is One Area Where ‘Domestic Realists’ Agree. Let’s Build on That”. Manno served in several senior positions in the U.S. Department of Education from 1986 to 1993. He is now senior advisor for the Walton Family Foundation’s K-12…

Have you ever been to the Astrodome? When it opened in 1965, it was applauded as “The Eighth Wonder of the World”. Now it sits idle and decaying. According to a Texas Monthly story this past February, “Five years ago, a nonprofit called the Astrodome Conservancy announced that Houston’s most iconic building, shuttered for more…