Jane Roland Martin wrote a wonderful book in 1992 called “Schoolhome: Rethinking Schools for Changing Families.” The care, concern and connections traditionally offered to children in a healthy home have been disrupted by changes in the home, particularly by the working mother phenomena. Home is the hidden partner in the education of our young, and [...]

Jules lived in our neighborhood, went to the same high school attended by my two eldest and where I taught. She would drop over, oh, maybe three or four times a month, have a beer or two and just talk. Sometimes she brought her little brother Timmie; they both said, “To get away from our [...]

Richard Elmore, in his book School Reform from the Inside Out, enunciates a Principle of Reciprocity for performance based accountability systems. “For each unit of performance I demand of you, I have an equal and reciprocal responsibility to provide you with a unit of capacity to produce that performance, if you do not already have [...]

We humans are usually pleased to enumerate things; the ten commandments, the eightfold way, the three Rs, the seven intelligences, and so on. If you press anyone, are these really complete and exhaustive lists, the wiser ones will say no, there are plenty of other ways to partition the bird, but these are simple and [...]

I’ve gotten into the annoying habit of asking friends and acquaintances, “When was the last time that you actually used algebra because it was important to your life?” The answer is pretty universally 10th grade or whatever grade was their last algebra course in high school. I take it that algebra is not a life [...]

I was in Governor Romer’s office to talk about education. It was his last appointment of the day, no rush, his mind did not have to be split, planning for the next meeting.  His wife is a teacher and his administration was making education a platform. He says, “What do you think about raising the [...]

“Local Control” – I call it Horace Mann’s compromise - in exchange for the state by state adoption of compulsory schooling, the states were promised the freedom to do it anyway they saw fit. State by state this freedom was passed down to its Local Education Agencies a.k.a school districts, some 15,000 total in the [...]

It doesn’t happen often, but it really pricks up my ears when I hear, “I remember when you told me ….” A couple of days ago it was my old-time, ever the hippy, teacher colleague Randi who filled it in with” …First, do no harm.” This remark came within days of my starting to read [...]

Liz, with over twenty years in classrooms, and I were managing a residential program to train teachers, guys and gals that had a degree in something other than teaching, mature folks. Observing our adult acolytes’ in a residential program ensured that we knew their characters, warm, outgoing, empathetic and the opposites. Adult or not, teaching [...]

George Lakoff in “The Political Mind” describes conservative and liberal beliefs in terms of two different moral structures. Conservative thought begins with the notion that morality is obedience to an authority?assumed to be a legitimate authority who is inherently good, knows right from wrong, functions to protect us from evil in the world, and has [...]

Organizing is essentially about creating a coherent communicative community. “The need for community is universal. A sense of belonging, of continuity, of being connected to others and to ideas and values that make our lives meaningful and significant?these needs are shared by all of us.”  Sergiovanni
“I am we; I am because we are - we are [...]

Consider a continuous parameter that delineates the state of order of systems, “on a scale of zero to one hundred…”For me it begins at the left with perfect order and ends at the right, perfectly disordered, i.e. chaos. The “new science of complexity” tackles systems just to the left of chaos; “complexity, and life itself, [...]

It’s been an interesting year and a half watching Arne Duncan and his Department of Education. They’re up to something, and what’s interesting is to figure out what’s the long-term strategy behind the actions we see reported. Three caveats; 1) if it’s not happening in your local school its not happening, 2) follow the money; [...]

“We learn what we do” is not just a mantra of the progressive movement, it is a summary of current learning theory.
“Why,” said the Dodo, “The best way to explain it is to do it.” Lewis Carroll wrote in Alice in Wonderland. Pestalozzi said, “Life itself educates,” and Aristotle noted, “For the things we have [...]

Intelligence derives from the Latin verb intellegere, to understand, to realize, to discern. Not very sharply defined by the Romans, it was a loose bundle of characteristics of mental capacity. The age of scientific rationality is unable to leave a word like that loosely defined and not measurable. It took fifty-two researchers to report in [...]

He was spoken to or about as E. J. Kapella, and the high school kids talked about him quite a lot. E.J. Kapella taught Drivers Ed and shop, the Drivers Ed brought him into contact with essentially all of the students and they all trash-talked him. You know high schools, you would be a queer [...]

A wise man will not go out of his way for information.” H.D. Thoreau said around 1850. Was he that much ahead of his times, some 150 years before what is now called the information age? No, I can’t believe that he  was foreseeing radio, TV and the internet; he was speaking to his own [...]

Washington, D.C., in late June is as good a place as any to brood about the predicament of our humanity. It is hot and the streets are available to all; this is a democracy. There are blacks, there are whites and browns; those that speak English and those that speak many other languages. There are [...]

“I began taking standardized tests for fun. I would take them I the morning with a cup of coffee, the way other people do crosswords. I found a hidden structure to standardized tests that makes them quite easy. And hilarious. I was obsessive, taking every GMAT, LSAT, SAT, and GRE that had ever been published. [...]

State by state the US has adopted the very European idea of compulsory education, along with the public option used by some 90% of students. Compulsory is a very substantial restriction on freedoms, both of parents and children. The argument is that a universally educated public creates a more healthy and prosperous nation capable of [...]

I met Mike Johnston yesterday who carried the Colorado bill that will tie teacher evaluation to be 50% determined by student achievement, without any  definition of what student achievement might be or how determined. There is just the promise that “We will answer these questions before 2014; trust us.” Now, bills don’t usually pass with [...]

Conservatives and liberals have opposite moral worldviews structured by metaphor around two profoundly different models of the ideal family, a strict father family for conservatives and a nurturant parent family for liberals. In the ideal strict father family, the world is seen as a dangerous place and the father functions as protector from “others” and [...]

Teaching is the most difficult profession of them all,” educator Lee Shulman recently told a group of teachers and psychologists. The only time a physician comes close to doing what a teacher does is when the doctor faces an emergency room of multiple patients with multiple conditions, all of whom need immediate attention. That’s what [...]

When I was young Christmas was exciting and filled with mysteries. Wrapped boxes would be placed on “my pile;” “Merry Christmas George from Granma.” The packages accumulated for a few days before the openings on Christmas day. A curious child will wonder what Granma has purchased, put into this box, and wrapped so carefully and [...]

There is what we describe as the “core” conceptualization of the classroom: Teachers teach from the front of the room, deciding what is to be learned, in what manner, and under what conditions. The primary means of grouping for instruction is the entire class. The major daily classroom activities are the teacher telling, explaining and [...]

J.B. Schramm and E. Kinney Zalesne are CEO and former CEO of the nonprofit College Summit. In an article titled “High School’s Last Test,”in either NYT or WSJ they wrote, “Today, the difference in earning power between a high school graduate and someone who’s finished eighth grade has shrunk to nil.” For a lot of [...]

My friend Bruce Thomas answered my Debbie Meiers blog with the information that Superintendent in Manchester New Hampshire, Louis P. Benezet, banned all formal math instruction in his schools until seventh grade. He felt that a) time spent on math before that age detracted from time needed to develop language and reason and that b) [...]

Debbie Meier is an educator; it’s what she does and has done with her adult life.  She began teaching elementary school in Chicago, moved to Philly and when she moved to NYC became involved with education at City College. In 1974 Superintendent Tony Alvarado picked her to become the founding teacher of an open classroom [...]