In Immeasurable Outcomes: Teaching Shakespeare in the Age of the Algorithm, Gayle Greene, professor emerita at Scripps College, raises serious questions about the loss of the humanities. The problems she tells us begin in K12, with a cold focus on accountability, reducing students to test scores and algorithms with students facing screens instead of teachers. […]
Student Differentiation v. Alignment: Know the Difference and Set Children Free
In a democracy that stresses freedom and individuality, education reformers remade public schools focusing on aligning children to narrow high-stakes standards, even before Common Core State Standards appeared in 2010. It isn’t easy to differentiate when the end goal is the same narrow standard. Standards don’t involve differentiating how children learn. Teachers might try individual […]
“Back to Basics” Again! What Does it Mean for Students and Teachers?
Many of our elected officials have virtually handed the keys to our schools over to corporate interests. Presidential commissions on education are commonly chaired by the executives of large companies. ~Alfie Kohn, The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and “Tougher Standards” (p. 15, 1999) Back to Basics is back! Those famous words […]
18 Issues for Ed. Secretary Cardona to Better Drive the School Bus
Education Secretary Cardona focuses on reducing absenteeism, tutoring, and after-school programs. And he refers to raising the bar, which sounds like A Nation at Risk talk. Yet there are so many K12 issues that Cardona and the Biden administration could address, lead, and support the states and local school districts. Here are some educational issues […]
Science of Reading and EL Education: What is It?
School privatization was born of manufactured crisis, and one of the so-called crises today is reading instruction. Not that reading shouldn’t be debated and improved when it’s called for, especially for children experiencing learning disabilities. Still, the frenzy surrounding reading in this country has become fever-pitched. It has divided teachers who want to do what’s […]
Saving Public Schools: 23 Issues (At Least) to Ponder for 2024
Happy New Year! Caring for others shines through during the holidays. So, everyone has had time to think about the importance of public education and how we care about all of America’s children. Ten years ago, I wrote a book called Losing America’s Schools: The Fight to Reclaim Public Education. So, how’s it going? Here are […]
Will The Real Recess Stand Up? It’s NOT Playworks, Phys. Ed., Meditating, or Brain Breaks!
The lack of breaks for children and the misrepresentation of what constitutes recess continues to flourish. School reformers try unsuccessfully to replace recess. But recess is not Playworks, Phys.Ed., meditation, or Brain Breaks controlled by adults who tell children what to do, denying them the ability to learn academic and social skills that recess provides […]
Saving Kindergarten! Real Teachers Write the Kinderchat Guides with Real Solutions!
In 2022, co-authors Heidi Echternacht and Amy Murray wrote The Kinderchat Guide to the Classroom. They’re the founders of the famous #Kinderchat that started on Twitter years ago. Since NCLB, kindergarten has changed with demands far beyond what used to be considered developmentally appropriate. Many kindergarten teachers will recognize themselves facing a juggling act, satisfying […]
41 Ways a Big Lie Continues to Haunt America’s Public Schools
Forty years ago, Americans learned of A Nation at Risk, the troubling and mostly bogus report by the Reagan administration claiming public schools and teachers failed to produce students who were capable American workers. Berliner’s and Biddle’s The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America’s Public Schools disproved the report, but it still […]
Grade Retention is Unnecessary!
Studies have linked dropout rates in Georgia, Florida, Massachusetts, New York, and North Carolina to the effects of grade retention, student discouragement, and school exclusion policies stimulated by high-stakes tests. ~Linda Darling-Hammond, the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education Emeritus at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and former President and CEO of the Learning […]