There was this saying that got thrown around when I taught at one of the elite selective enrollment schools in Chicago: “You can throw a book in a room with these students and walk out and close the door behind you and they will still learn.” Who doesn’t want to work in a school like this? Compliant students who perform… Read more →
Suburban schools have slipped under the radar when it comes to the biggest philanthropic investments and most controversial reforms to roil the education space—school closures, charter growth, teacher evaluations and state interventions. But suburban schools need to wake up from their long complacent slumber. As a new report points out, these schools are ill equipped to deal with the mounting challenges they… 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 →
Cierra Ford came to dread the inevitable question asked of all high school seniors this time of year: “Where are you going to college?” It got to the point in which she would just rattle off the names of a few colleges she never even considered, just to appease the well-meaning adults in her life who assume every bright senior… Read more →