We are no longer at the threshold of the 21st century. It is running us over with its exciting opportunities and accelerated speed. If we do not capture the moment and create the learning environments students truly need, we will have failed. The same structures and methods of the past can inspire us but not constrain us. Read…

Common Core curriculum resources – In this article in Principal Leadership, Illinois school librarian Mary Jo Matousek recommends these resources to support the implementation of Common Core standards:

• S.U.P.E.R Binders – www.tinyurl.com/ileadusuper 
• Graphite -…

Leading, like teaching and learning, is a multidimensional, highly relational endeavor. In a culture that emphasizes technical efficiencies over relational values, the principles that ground educational leadership can become compromised. This corruption of ideals can be traced to conflicts inherent in our roles, as public educators and leaders are asked to enact contradictory purposes. We are agents of the state whose salaries are paid by public funds; and we are agents of change,…

I have a new article on American Thinker about how academic decline is spreading upward into colleges. I've just read through the 150 comments. Really,  that was a depressing experience.

 The article is based on the wishful premise that the elite universities are still elite and that they will want to protect that…

Race and poverty remain connected and neither can be resolved by schools alone but neither they can they be resolved without education. Schools may be segregated by a socio-economic gravity pull toward sameness. The historical phenomenon of moves to the suburbs was motivated by families pulled toward schools and communities where resources were more plentiful. It is also part of our history that schools can help students out of poverty, one by one, and attain higher achievement and…

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 Yesterday I was reading about a teacher's effort to find the perfect way to handle every classroom situation. This teacher made it very clear that at ed school, she had never been trained in "classroom management" or anything similar. So here this unhappy woman was having to reinvent the wheel every day,  to figure out things ed school should teach.

 I think this is very sad. It's shameful…