When I was a third grader at Clara Barton Elementary School in Fargo, North Dakota, my principal Miss Minnis held an assembly where she showed us home movies of her summer trip to Australia.  I was amazed at the existence of such a large a country so far away from the U.S.  We learned the...Read More

This blog post of mine, entitled ”What If Great Minds Ran Our Schools?” based on my book If Einstein Ran the Schools: Revitalizing U.S. Education, first appeared in the blog TeachThought on May 1, 2020: The long-awaited test results from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) are in, and although there’s something there for...Read More

Many educators and parents have been worrying that the interruption in school being experienced by so many students nationwide (and worldwide) as a result of COVID-19 will result in significant ”learning loss.”  That is, by not having previous learning reinforced, and by not adding new learning to their experience, students will backslide in their academic...Read More

I’ve been reading in the news the past week about educators who are concerned that with school closures going on until at least the fall, kids are in danger of undergoing ”backsliding” even more severe than occurs during summer vacations. I want to challenge that idea.  In my mind, if students ”lose” knowledge after three...Read More

What kind of an arts program does your child’s school have?  Is it one where kids color in turkeys from identical worksheets?  Or, is it instead a rich program of expressive painting and sculpture, dramatics, dance, and music?  Since 2008, more than 80% of schools nationwide have experienced cuts to their budgets, and many of...Read More