Several years ago, I was privileged to spend an hour a week mentoring Natavia, a 4th-grader in Detroit. She had been held back a year because of poor reading skills. When I gave her a book at Christmas, I later learned it was the first book she had ever owned. The challenges in this girl’s [...]

I’m intrigued by what I’m reading about The Equity Project (TEP) Charter School in New York City. What’s attracting attention right now are the salaries that the school is paying teachers: $125,000 a year plus up to a $25,000 annual bonus based on schoolwide performance. By anyone’s standards, that’s serious money. TEP will begin the [...]

My service on my local school board taught me many lessons that I never expected — and sometimes didn’t want — to learn. Quite a few of those lessons involved bullying of students at school, near school, or on the Internet when they were away from school. None of them were pretty stories. The one [...]

Most of the education community is just learning that Kappan columnist Jerry Bracey died in his sleep Oct. 20 at his home in Port Townsend, Washington. The tributes are pouring in, something that would probably surprise Jerry who seemed to thrive by irking the field, not delighting it. Jerry Bracey was not a reporter in [...]