We’re days away from Iowa’s caucuses and all the craziness that will follow in the nation’s capital. I’m going to take a little time to digest where Trumpmania goes from here and to knuckle down on my new book (working title Letters to a Young Reformer). Consequently, I’m going to take a blog break for February and once again hand the reins to an array of guest stars.
Next week we’ll have Marc Porter Magee, CEO and founder of 50CAN. Marc is part of the famed “Porter Magee” education clan—his wife Kathleen is superintendent of New York City’s Catholic Partnership Schools (which hosted Pope Francis last fall in his first-ever visit to an American Catholic school) and his brother Mike is CEO of Chiefs for Change. Marc will be blogging about trends in education advocacy in 2016, including personalized learning and accountability systems in the ESSA era.
The following week will be Josh Cowen. Josh is an associate professor in Michigan State’s College of Education, where he studies teacher labor markets and school choice and serves as co-editor of the influential journal Educational Evaluation and Policy Analys. Interesting factoid: before heading to grad school, Josh was a research producer for CNN’s Crossfire. He’ll be looking at choice-related issues including student exit and the importance of information for parental decisions.
The week of February 15 we’ll be joined by Alexander Hoffman, president of AleDev Research. A former high school English in the Boston suburbs and New York City, his focus is on connecting education policy with how schools and people actually operate. Alexander ardently challenges my take on various issues from time to time, on questions including the Common Core (you won’t want to miss his coming blog on what he terms “The Big Common Core Lie”). He’ll also be addressing the many kinds of “accountability” in schools.
Finally, I’m delighted to have the Smarter Schools Project step in during the week of February 22nd. A variety of tech-savvy educators will share their stories and talk about how they’re trying to use technology to cultivate great teaching and learning. In their posts, they’ll be discussing how to spark conversation between parents and educators about the benefits tech can bring to the ed world.
With that, I’ll be back with you all at the end of the month—when we’ll know what happened to Trump, Clinton, Sanders, and Cruz (which sounds like it could be a big-time law firm) in the initial contests.