Summary: Institutional leadership in the charter era, the fate of a deep student underclass, and the teaching of civics are three topics which mistakenly get short shrift in the current conversation around schools. Continue reading
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Dubious Tales: Don’t Build It and They Won’t Come
Summary: While the Seattle School Board votes to fight a zoning waiver for a new Green Dot charter high school, the Board members seem to ignore complex forces gathering at their door. Continue reading
How Diminished Funding to Higher Education Worsens Income Inequality
Summary: Huge cuts in state funding for higher education have left our premier public universities to thirst after the money well to do families from out of state are able to pay for a selective education. As a consequence, membership of moneyed families in upper socioeconomic echelons is solidified and the portal for entry by lower income youth is contracted. Continue reading
Teachers’ Resistance (and Other Stories of Sanity)
Summary: In a climate of federal retreat to the nineteenth century, and sometimes unintentional de facto assaults from our friends, teachers nonetheless shape the future by their own good practice in the present day, every day. Continue reading
Why Do They Leave?
Summary: We ask too few teachers to do too much to reach trauma impacted kids, and with too little support and preparation.
In the rain shadow of the Washington State’s Olympic Mountains, nestled below rugged peaks and ridges, and adjacent to the Straits of Juan de Fuca, sits the small city of Sequim. As with burgs large and little, Sequim’s schools struggle with an expanding population of kids that hang on the margins, whose early and unsuccessful exit from school can be seen coming a mile away in a flurry of absences, poor grades, and behavior infractions. Continue reading
People, Time, Faith, Cognitive Maps and the Reclamation of Lost Kids
Summary: An approach to retrieval of the legion of unmoored kids on the periphery of our schools can be extracted from an innovative treatment model for incarcerated “callous and unemotional” kids. Continue reading
The Two Headed Being in American Education
Summary: Successful charters have extended research based in public schools to construct more pure versions of practice effective with at risk kids. Continue reading
Publics Versus Charters and the Student Underclass
Summary: The ideological brawl between charter and public school advocates obscures the truth that there is a substantial group of big city low income kids of color whose needs are not met by either camp. Continue reading
