Change is hard, especially for the Chicago Public Schools. We have had five CEOs of the school system in the past four years. Arne Duncan. Ron Huberman. Terry Mazany. Jean-Claude Brizard. And now, Barbara Byrd-Bennett, or B3 as her nickname goes. At least we finally got a woman in the top spot!... Read Full Post >
For the past three days my morning drive to work has become a bit awkward at two stop signs. As I inch closer to the intersections near two different schools, I am beckoned by a throng of teachers in red shirts holding picket signs, chanting, and banging on the metal guard rails that line the sidewa... Read Full Post >
A friend I used to work with nine years ago recently contacted me in response to my post Amber Alert: Teenage Boy Mentally Kidnapped by Gangs. He wondered if the 20-year-old man in the post who was killed in an apparent gang shooting was the same student he had taught in 2004 when the deceased was ... Read Full Post >
I am staying in the port city of Douala, Cameroon, grand central station of the 18th Century, where kidnapped Africans took the dreadful voyage to the Americas to live out their lives as slaves—if they survived the Middle Passage at all. For the first time in my life, I journeyed to the M... Read Full Post >
**This post was updated a few hours after publishing to reflect new information received via email from a missionary in Cameroon. They made all the bricks. The villagers squatted low and scooped up red earth in their hands, packed it into block molds, and left the muddy mix to harden in the hot Afr... Read Full Post >
Like many of you, I spent some time on the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday reflecting on his life and legacy. I attended a commemoration service with my two little girls, and I listened to a choir sing the old Negro spirituals. I sang along and shed some tears. Like many of you, Dr. King is my h... Read Full Post >
"When elephants fight, it's the grass that suffers." - an African proverb. I am relatively new to the world of education policy. I entered the arena two years ago through Teach Plus, a non-profit organization that aims to offer leadership opportunities to high quality teachers with at least three y... Read Full Post >
During my interview with Jean-Claude Brizard, I asked him to explain the source of his aggressive ambition to fix Chicago Public Schools. Reforming a massive, decades-old, broken urban educational system is not a job one man can do alone. And it's not a job without difficult decisions, political pr... Read Full Post >
Urban school districts across America are grappling with how to improve their education quality while also cutting programs to fix their massive budget deficits. In Illinois, the failure to win a $400 million Race to the Top grant exacerbated the problem because well-intentioned but expensive refor... Read Full Post >
I first met CPS chief Jean-Claude Brizard in August and then wrote the blog post "Ready or Not, Here We Reform." One of my teacher-friends was so upset that I called Brizard "a very smart leader" that he wouldn't read my blog for a month. Controversy is nothing new to Brizard: From his $250,000 sa... Read Full Post >
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