Community
So last night, the Science Leadership Academy Home and School Association threw the first huge fundraising night in our history. In a true collaboration between home and school, the school had a silent auction last night which raised a sizable chunk of money, but just as importantly, brought over 150 parents, teachers and friends together for an evening to celebrate and support SLA. It is on nights like last night when you can see the power of a school community. Our Home and School parents were incredible -- the auction was a monster. It took hours and hours and hours to pull together, and I know there were moments of trepidation and frustration as no one kne

Gary Stager: First We Kill the Teacher's Unions
[No... he doesn't really mean it.] A little over a year ago, Gary Stager wrote an article for the Huffington Post about the new-found Democractic fascination with bashing teacher's unions -- and why that is about as counter to Democratic ideals as one could imagine. Today, his words are all the more true. Blaming educational problems on teacher unions is even more absurd when you consider that states like Texas have no teacher unions. Is Texas immune from student achievement challenges? Hardly. The larger question is a matte

We Interrupt this Education Blog...
... with the following important message: GOOOOOOOOOOO PHILLIES!!! Game One was a thing of beauty. How about that Cliff Lee? How about that Chase Utley? (And how about that Ruben Amaro? He took the World Champions and made them better without giving away the farm system.) GOOOOOO PHILLIES!!!

Visions of School -- The Student Perspective
So after reading E. D. Hirsch, Deborah Meier, Diane Ravich, Nel Noddings, President Obama's speech and Robert Pirsig, the students of Modern Educational Theory have written their first draft of their vision of what school should be. These are first passes at these ideas, and these are purpose statements that will evolve over the course of the year. Here was the structure of the assignment: We, at this point, looked at several different views of education, from Deborah Meier's vision of democratic education, to Robert Pirsig's "Church of Reason," to Diane Ravitch and E. D. Hirsch's views of core knowledge, to N

The Other Thirteen
There is an inspiring article in today's New York Times about the Ted Ginn Academy -- a school started by a security guard / football coach. It is a story about an unlikely, non-traditional educator who built a school that is succeeding for students where others have failed. It is not unlike the stories being told about KIPP and Mastery Charter... a group of dedicated educators going above and beyond and saving every child. And that's where I have a problem. They aren't... and papers like the New York Times and the Washington Post are so excited for this narrative, that they are perpetuating the