As schools struggle to address learning loss, chronic absenteeism, and short staffing, there’s intense interest in the potential of tutoring. Well, one intriguing model seeks to provide quality tutoring and teachers with a lucrative part-time gig by building a network of teacher-tutors. Tutored by Teachers, founded in 2019, offers virtual…

When I’m working with school leaders, we usually wind up spending a lot of time on the fact that “talk is cheap.” A principal can tell teachers how much she values their time, but if she starts staff meetings late or swamps them with trivial tasks, they won’t believe a…

Jeremy Noonan taught in Paulding County, Ga., until he created a video that explained how easy it is for students to cheat their way through online credit recovery (OCR). The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published an article that linked to his video and covers the events that followed. As you would expect…

Wildflower is a network of tiny, teacher-led Montessori schools that was launched in Cambridge, Mass., in 2014, by a team that included MIT media professor Sep Kamvar and 30-year Montessori veteran Mary Rockett. Today, the network includes 60 schools across the nation, with 10 more on their way. Since 2016…

In “Straight Talk with Rick and Jal,” Harvard University’s Jal Mehta and I examine some of the reforms and enthusiasms that permeate education. In a field full of buzzwords and jargon, our goal is simple: Tell the truth, in plain English, about what’s being proposed and what it might mean…

Over the past couple years, Pedro Noguera and I have done scores of events, webinars, and media appearances in which we’ve discussed our book A Search for Common Ground. One theme that inevitably comes up, just because it’s unavoidable in today’s educational landscape, is the issue of “equity.” Someone will…

In an era of concerns about college affordability and connecting low-income high schoolers to postsecondary opportunities, Washington-based PeerForward helps thousands of mostly minority, mostly low-income students each year seek options beyond high school and tap the resources to take advantage of them. In 2021–22, PeerForward served 13,000 high school seniors…

Teaching hasn’t always been organized the way it currently is in American schools. Back when Socrates was doing his thing in ancient Greece, teaching was a simple proposition. Students sat and listened. Teachers talked and asked questions. That was it. It was pretty darn limited. …

Amid the heated debates over testing, “grading for equity,” and test-optional college admissions, it’s easy to throw up one’s hands in exasperation. That’s what makes a new book by Ethan Hutt and Jack Schneider so timely. In Off the Mark: How Grades, Ratings, and Rankings Undermine Learning (But Don’t Have…