Good News on NAEP in Chicago, But Why Remains a Mystery
For many years, Oprah Winfrey has written a column for her magazine titled, “What I Know for Sure.” In the column, she shares nuggets of hard-won wisdom. It’s great for inspiration, but it doesn’t rely...
View ArticleMired in Averageness: What Will It Take, Suburban Schools?
Parents pay dearly for the privilege of living within the boundaries of Chicago suburban schools such as Barrington High and Naperville Central. Both are ranked among the top 40 high schools in the...
View ArticleOur Kids Can’t Have a Successful Future Without This
As parents, we’re always met with catch-22’s when it comes to what’s best for our children. Do we shield them from the tough realities of the world or do we encourage them to meet these challenges head...
View ArticleA Strike Hurts Everyone: A Call From a Parent to Chicago Teachers Union
This week, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is planning to hold a three-day vote to decide whether to strike if stalled contract negotiations ultimately fail. If 75 percent of CTU members vote yes, a...
View ArticleIf They Can Make Progress in Washington, Can’t We Do the Same Here in Illinois
From my vantage point in Chicago, these past few weeks were surreal on the education landscape. In Washington we saw an all-too-rare but wonderful example of compromise on a landmark education law. In...
View ArticleFrom Our Friends: Here Are Our Hopes for 2016
Last week I put out a call to all the members of our growing network of bloggers and friends to share their hopes for 2016 and a story of success from the past year. Better Conversation A dominant...
View ArticleThe Hardest Part of My Job Is Telling Students They Aren’t Prepared
I teach English at my local community college, which puts me in constant contact with students of every age and circumstance who are hoping that a college degree will help them improve their lives....
View ArticleWhy I Threw Away My High School Diploma
This weekend a paper in New York state reported that 70 percent of students at State University of New York colleges need to take remedial courses—this is something I know too well. I’ve been one of...
View ArticleClosing the Belief Gap With STEM
“I believe you can be…an astronaut, a scientist, an inventor, a coder….” Belief is a powerful word. It inspires, motivates and can give a student the confidence he or she needs to succeed....
View ArticleStop Using Parents as an Excuse Not to Teach Our Children
My skin starts to crawl whenever I hear the issue of parental involvement raised in discussions about education equity. Not because I don’t believe it’s relevant or has any bearing on educational...
View ArticleWe’ve Seen Quite a Bit of Opt-Out Theatre, Now It’s Time for the Facts
At the Los Angeles Education Writers Association panel, opt-out advocate Bob Schaeffer waved a stack of papers and exclaimed the average student had to take 112 standardized tests during the course of...
View ArticleParents Can’t Just Use Test Scores to Choose a School. They Need the Whole...
Whenever parents would get into a discussion about “good schools” and “bad schools,” I would urge them to look beyond the simple rankings of test scores and try to actually get inside a school. Meet...
View ArticleYou Don’t Know a School Until You Know Its Community: Lessons From a Charter...
As administrators, teachers, or any other sort of “expert” in education, we can often come into school communities thinking we know the answers, that we can “fix” things. When I started my career as a...
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How States Are Approaching School Accountability
For the most part, what states measure for school quality has already been decided by federal law under the Every Student Succeeds Act. Every state, for example, has to track student test scores to see...
View ArticleIllinois’ Current School Funding Formula Is the Definition of Insanity....
Kimako Patterson is the superintendent of Prairie-Hills Elementary District 144. Prairie-Hills is a 2,600-student district in the south suburbs of Illinois where 95 percent of students are from...
View ArticleFix the Formula, Illinois. It’s Time.
Yesterday afternoon, my second-grader got her copy of the school yearbook. She flipped back to the kindergarten class photos. “Miss Maya’s class used to have three teachers,” she observed. Now it has...
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Illinois Has a Rare Opportunity and Here’s One Last Chance for You to Weigh In
This is an amazing moment for educational equity in Illinois. After decades of suffering under the most inequitable method of funding schools in the country, our state legislature has come together to...
View ArticleCPS Succeeds, CTU Misleads
For the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), a glass that is three quarters full is still half empty. Consider the dueling announcements from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and local reform...
View ArticleSuperintendent’s View: Right Now Students Face ‘Bare Minimum’ Education in...
Too often Illinois has been viewed as a laughingstock by the rest of the country for its broken finances and its notorious governors. The chaos of the last few years, though, is enough to make even the...
View ArticleIt’s Gonna Take A Miracle To Keep My Kid in Chicago Public Schools All Year
It’s August, yet it’s chilly enough in Chicago to roast marshmallows. That’s what some friends from our daughter’s preschool invited us to do over the weekend. Most everyone who came has kids or...
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