I watched my granddaughters skip up the walkway to their elementary school and wondered. What will they learn today? How well will they learn today what is important for them to know? How will they handle their learning frustrations? How … Continue reading
Tell Me What You Learned Today. I’m Listening.
Self-Interest Drives School Choice
School choice is self-interest and self-interest is what it is, self before all else. One can parse out all the other motives and characteristics that underlie school choice and the one common denominator is “I want to choose who my … Continue reading
Stop Coddling the Hare; Tend to the Tortoise
Aesop spun a fable about a race between the tortoise and the hare. The tortoise won! However, that was just a fable and not likely in real life where tortoises are what they are – slow and late to the … Continue reading
Professional Pay for Teachers in Five Years Not Twenty-one
“How long will it take me to reach the top annual salary in my profession?”, the newly hired teacher asked. Her first-year salary was just above the national average for starting teachers. “Twenty-one years,” the district’s Human Relations officer told … Continue reading
In the Business of School, No News Is Bad News
When perception is reality, bad news about your school is terrible news, no news is bad news, and good news is the only news with a future. If your local school is not generating and publishing good news about its … Continue reading
The Ugly American Transcendent
When I read The Ugly American more than 50 years ago, an archetypal 3-D image affixed in my thinking, one that has emerged as a lens through which to observe phenomenal persons over the past half century. Yesterday, a populist … Continue reading
Human Talent Is The Key to Tech Advancement
You may read this article as a presentation of an employment concept or as an endorsement of a person; either way, you are right. Which is more valuable when you are short on each – human talent or tangible, highly … Continue reading
The Attack on Teacher Prep – A Last Bastian At Risk
The idea that teachers in public schools need not be professionally prepared by licensed teacher preparation programs is circulating in my state. So that I am clear on the issue, I believe that this idea is an unadulterated wrong. The … Continue reading
Ernie in the Back Row – The Reality of Educational Reform
“Hey, Ernie! Yes, you in the back row of the faculty meeting where you have been sitting it seems like forever. Do you remember telling us ‘I’ve seen educational changes come and go. All I have to do is sit … Continue reading
Building New Faculties
If a faculty of teachers is the heart of any school, then high quality instruction by caring teachers is the end game of faculty-building. Faculty building is the recruitment, hiring, sustenance and bonding of an array of expert teachers into … Continue reading