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Category Archives: Schools and Culture
Let Us Not Be Blamed: A Meditation on the State of Teacher Unionism, Corporate America, and Poverty
Summary: Unions are targeted by corporate based reformers as the bad guy, and do need to take better charge of the debate, but the real culprit at base is the political failure to impact poverty. Maureen (we shall call her) … Continue reading
School Reform, Politics, and Culture: Can We Performance Base Ourselves to the Promised Land?
Summary: Enshrining performance and research based thinking deeply into school reform, and investing accordingly, will invite best practices, promote better life success for students, and in the long run restrict the body of poor outcomes – incarceration, chronic poverty, etc. … Continue reading
Posted in School Reform, Schools and Culture, Schools and Politics
Tagged at risk students, child care funding, low-income students, Performance Based, relationships in schools, school reform, school research, teacher overwork, teacher professionalism, youth violence, youth violence prevention
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School Culture: The “Disagreeable Giver” and the Culture of Continuous Improvement
Summary: Can evidence of successful leadership style in the corporate world be transplanted to schools and kick start a culture of continuous improvement? Do nice guys and gals finish last and ultimately assholes prevail in the race to the mantle … Continue reading
Schools and Culture: Our People in Cuba
Summary: Being part travel guide, part educator, your correspondent places Cuban educational reforms and practice at the center of a recent visit to Cuba. Our full sized Chinese tour bus, improbably ill-suited to the narrow and tangled streets of Santiago, … Continue reading
School Reform: College Counseling is “Elementary”
Summary: College counseling for low income students plays to a largely absent audience if interventions have not been going on since elementary school. I looked across the room of fifty or sixty seniors with a pride that had little to … Continue reading
Posted in At Risk Students, School Reform, Schools and Culture
Tagged at risk students, College Board, College Bound Scholars, college counseling, dropouts, KIPP charter schools, low-income students, relationships in schools, school reform, student motivation, teaching self control, Walter Mischel
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School Reform and the Suspension Trap; Charters Learn the Lesson
Summary: High profile charters in New Orleans learn the lesson good public high schools have known for a while. Suspension often has to take a back seat to more nuanced and humanly intensive interventions in the lives of the kids … Continue reading
Posted in School Reform, Schools and Culture
Tagged at risk students, charter schools, discipline for behavior in high school, dropouts, I-1351 Washington State, Kent School District, KIPP charters schools, low-income students, New Orleans charter schools, public high school counselor, relationships in schools, school reform, student discipline, Suspension
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Schools and Culture: The Death of Michael Brown
Summary: Prior to his encounter with Officer Wilson on the streets of Ferguson, Michael Brown in many respects was a relatively normal teenager on the cusp of adulthood. His death poses a challenge to the manner in which we empower … Continue reading
Progress In School Reform: What Is The Picture We See?
Summary: While by some measures the school reform movement has come up with little but goose eggs in the national aggregate, a more nuanced approach to school change makes clear that improvements do occur in substantial ways, in a cultural … Continue reading
Posted in School Reform, Schools and Culture, Schools and Politics
Tagged Catherine Rampell, dropout prevention, dropouts, educational progress, Head Start, mentor, nation's report card, National Assessment of Educational Progress NAEP, progress in schools, race and education, school reform
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African American Kids and School Based Reparations
Summary: Ta-Nehisi Coates calls in the recent Atlantic for reparative dialogue, and even financial recompense for the long American history of slavery and Jim Crow. An educational superfund that supports the educational turnaround of poor and at risk kids of … Continue reading
Schools and Culture: Boys in Disarray
Summary: The struggles of boys in today’s American schools reflect historical assaults on their self-image and the erosion of legitimate authority in the culture. It was an impressive group of kids, these seniors at my high school outside of Seattle. … Continue reading
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