The Next Normal

Building a movement: With a little help from our friends

If there’s one thing we know about catalyzing and sustaining systematic improvements in P–12 education, it’s that the work will take a community of institutions working together to catalyze any changes worth sustaining.

A case for optimism

The world did not stop in 2020–21, and we did not stop moving forward with important work.

What kind of national tutoring corps would work?

One that is a step toward a sustainable and diversified education workforce and not just a very expensive band-aid.

Home and community: From helping "my kids" to helping all kids

The pandemic has underscored many longstanding educational inequities we knew about or should have known about. Among the most acute, I think, is the inequity caused by the vast differences in social networks that kids bring to the act of learning.

Looking beyond COVID to a coherent theory of change

What makes a transformation in education desirable is the long-simmering failure of our education system to do most of what we need it to do for all of our learners: prepare them, as economic beings, to thrive in the next workforce and, as civic beings, to thrive democratically as citizens.

A time for provisional decisions

Superintendents and principals are measuring out six-foot-long spaces between desks and checking inventories of bleach. So we don’t want the question of what to do with our ASU teacher candidates to be an unresolved problem on the lower third of the to-do list of our school partners. We want to be part of the solution to the challenges already high on that list.

Systems planning in a crisis

Crisis planning is unavoidable in the face of a pandemic. Yet, as we and our partner districts make future plans, we’re finding that school-related challenges presented by COVID-19 are not new. 

Cracks in the normal

Times of extreme stress reveal cracks in the normal that have been there all along. As our college has responded to the disruptions caused by the coronavirus, we have lived in and peered through the cracks in the normal. What have we seen?

Substitutes and (in)equity

As we have engaged schools and districts in this work, we are seeing how prevalent school staffing practices mismanage human capital in ways that impede equity.

A note on equity

It’s instructive to me and to others at MLFTC who are designing Next Education Workforce models that, among the most salient questions we are asked, is the question of equity – of which the attainment gap is a crucial component. 

To personalize learning, personalize teaching

Earlier this month, Education Week published a special report comprising a series of articles that address the challenges and promise of personalized learning. Based on a survey of nearly 600 teachers, the report offers considerable insight into how practitioners feel about their experience with whatever is called “personalized learning” in their schools.

What’s a college of education for?

As dean of a college of education committed to producing top-tier scholarship and to operating a large teacher-preparation program, what, when all is said in done, is my job? What makes a good dean of a college of education? What would success look like?

It’s not enough to credential people and generate ideas. We need to bring people and ideas together to increase the capabilities of individual educators and the performance of education systems.