Deborah Meier is a visionary teacher, author, and founder of successful small schools in New York City and Boston. Harry Boyte, senior scholar at Augsburg College, is founder of the youth civic empowerment initiative Public Achievement and a leader in the movement to democratize higher education. This blog is no longer being updated.
School Choice & Charters
Opinion
What 'System' Works for Both of Us?
Pondiscio: "Innovation," even in small entrepreneurial schools, tends to be an idea more honored in the breach than the observance. Here I think the reform impulse bears a disproportionate amount of blame.
School & District Management
Opinion
On Small School Networks & Democracy
Deborah Meier: But if we could start with the question of what a good school needs and then build a system based on that, it doesn't seem as undoable.
Assessment
Opinion
Bridging Differences: 2013's Top 10 Posts
Poverty. Equity. Testing, and how standardized assessment plays into both. These are themes that dominated Bridging Differences in 2013. Looking back at the blog this year revealed that the most-read posts in 2013 were written by numerous writers (Eric Hanushek, Alfie Kohn, Michael Petrilli, Elliott Witney, and, of course, Deborah Meier) on different aspects of the achievement and experience gap between rich and poor students.
Teaching
Opinion
The Task of Building a Thirst for Knowledge
Meier: None of us should blame our kids, our teachers, their parents, or public schools for their "failure" to outperform the rich on, of all things, tests which we know are, by design, sensitive to class and race.
Standards & Accountability
Opinion
Who's the Real Progressive?
Robert Pondiscio: If being progressive means concern with how children are educated, not the outcome of that education, then what does it mean to be progressive?
Teaching
Opinion
A Standard Curriculum Won't Erase Gaps
Deborah Meier: How a mandated national curriculum or privatization promotes accountability or equality is a mystery to both Diane and myself.
Teaching
Opinion
The Progressive Case for a Common Curriculum
Do you believe we can morally and lawfully make knowledge demands, however trivial, of one class of citizens but not another?
Standards & Accountability
Opinion
In 'The Spirit of Liberty'
It's probably easier to teach about liberty than democracy. The former is perhaps "natural" to the human species.
Standards & Accountability
Opinion
What Can We Agree to Teach?
A child who does not leave his or her public education endowed with the same body of knowledge as his or her peers is consigned to second-class citizenship
Education
Opinion
Happy Thanksgiving!
Bridging Differences is taking a one-week break and will return with posts from Deborah Meier and Robert Pondiscio the week of Dec. 1.
Equity & Diversity
Opinion
The Hard Part: Defining Democracy
We're not natural-born democrats, but we are natural born "intellectuals," "theorists," "jokers," "reflecters," plus possessors of plenty of grit.
Standards & Accountability
Opinion
Educating for Democracy-and Liberty
At their best, our schools have always welcomed children into the body politic, while also serving as engines of upward mobility, individual agency, and self-fulfillment.
Standards & Accountability
Opinion
Before 'What' (We Teach) Comes 'Why'
I want communities, teachers, and students to have lively discourse about what "the future" will look like, rather than "teaching to" a preordained one.
School Choice & Charters
Opinion
Ed Reform Needs a Nixon-to-China Moment
One of the unfortunate effects of our polarized education climate is that it makes enemies of people who might be able to add value to each other's work.