Career and technical education (CTE) is undergoing a change across American schools. No longer does it resemble the vocational training programs of 10 or 15 years ago that, oftentimes, wordlessly tracked students viewed as low academic performers into meager-paying jobs. This change is important for a number of reasons, but perhaps none as essential as delivering on education’s promise to… Read more →
When ESSA, The Every Student Succeeds Act, passed and the president signed it, we knew it would happen: States would take the flexibility now afforded to them under federal statute to backslide on accountability. But—maybe naively—I didn’t expect it to happen so quickly, before the rule-making around ESSA’s accountability provisions have even been finalized. We’re seeing it across the country,… Read more →
Be Like Mike. Those three words were part of a very catchy, even iconic, Gatorade commercial back in the early 1990s featuring Michael Jordan shining on the basketball court, and smiling big while surrounded by crowds of kids and fans who wanted to be just like him. Well, with a slight tweak of one word, Rhode Island may have found… Read more →
As a mother of three, Rhode Island Teacher of the Year in 2013, and an aspiring school leader I struggle to understand the push to opt out of annual testing that seems to be taking hold among suburban and mostly white parents. It is uniquely disappointing and perplexing to read a letter from my former boss and learn that the… Read more →
Parents prefer relationships to data. Most of us enjoy people more than numbers and like parent-teacher conferences better than bar graphs. We take comfort in knowing that our kids are being educated in a safe space and worry very little about the high school profile or SAT participation rate in our town. It’s human nature to listen to our hearts… Read more →