Another country

Since its birth, the U.S. has defined itself as egalitarian, fundamentally distinct from the class-ridden societies of Europe, writes Matt Phillips in Quartz. This has sometimes been true: On the eve of the American Revolution, income distribution for American colonists was much better than in England, slavery aside (if you can put it aside). Yet the U.S. has become increasingly unequal since the Civil War. For an interval in the 20th century, parity…

A triumph in redesign

In a profile of Guilmette Elementary School in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Jennifer Davis writes in The Hechinger Report that Principal Lori Butterfield didn't want to boost literacy and math scores at the cost of everything else. Lawrence Receiver Jeff Riley gave district principals "charter-like" autonomies, including control over budgets, curricula, schedule, professional development, and how much time (200 or 300 hours) to add to a full school…

Mission impossible

What burned teacher Ellie Herman out after five years, she relates on the Answer Sheet blog in The Washington Post, was a photocopier dubbed "La Bestia" in her low-income high school in Los Angeles. Herman, decades-long TV writer/producer for shows like "Desperate Housewives," "Chicago Hope," and "Newhart," switched in 2007 to teaching Drama, Creative Writing, English 11, and 9th-grade Composition at a South Los Angeles charter that was 97 percent…

Crossing the Border to Kindergarten

By Annalisa Nash Fernandez

Ed Week

English-language learners represent nearly one in 10 public school students nationwide. There is no question that ELL programs can strain limited school resources, but these children do learn English. And as early language learners, they also enjoy a wide range of cognitive benefits. Benefits that I wanted my own children to take advantage of because they do not live in a Spanish-speaking…