As a teacher and a parent, what our nation's education leaders think really matters to me. And with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan about to begin a second term, it matters even more.

Today, I'm excited to announce the launch of a new #AskArne video interview series, where the Secretary...

Teachers matter.

Everyone understands this on some personal level; we call all point to at least one important teacher who made an outsized impact on our lives. Earlier this month I traveled to Paris for the World Teachers' Day event hosted at UNESCO (United Nations Educational,...

Over eighty meetings with teachers and school leaders in a two-week cross-country blitz -- not bad work for a team of twelve Teaching Ambassador Fellows (TAFs) working for a year with the U.S. Department of Education.

The Department of Education's third annual back-to-school bus tour

Are great teachers born or made?

Until I actually joined the profession, I thought about the teachers I had as a student and figured they were born talented or clueless. Now I know otherwise.

I learned my lesson the hard way in 2003 when, straight out of NYU Film School,...

It is much easier to destroy than to build. Teachers work with young people, and they are fragile works-in-progress. A rash or unfeeling word can undo so much of the trust and growth that we strive for.

As the year winds down and spring fever kicks in, some of...

Warning: This post contains spoilers about the movie Detachment.

I was looking forward to seeing Detachment, the new teacher film starring Adrien Brody and directed by Tony Kaye. With a very strong supporting cast (Marcia Gay Harden, Tim Blake Nelson, Christina Hendricks, Bryan Cranston, James Caan) and a compelling...

On Saturday, July 30, thousands of educators and parents rallied at the grassroots Save Our Schools March on Washington, D.C. Education heavyweights like Diane Ravitch, Linda Darling-Hammond, Jonathan Kozol, Deborah Meier, and Pedro Noguera all took the microphone, but it was Matt Damon whose closing speech brought down...

Alan and Susan Raymond make documentaries that matter, and their latest, Journey Into Dyslexia, lives up to their reputation. It premieres on HBO2 Wednesday, May 11 at 8 p.m. -- set your DVRs.

This 75-minute film, shot and edited in the Raymonds' trademark no-frills style, bluntly takes on...

High-stakes testing is on the rise.

Since it works so well, why not export it to other parts of American life... like marriage?

WATCH:

Dan Brown's blog Get in the Fracas is hosted by the Teacher Leaders...

Mayor Michael Bloomberg set off shockwaves when he picked media executive Cathie Black to be the next chancellor of New York City's public schools. Aside from a brief conversation with Cindy Adams, Ms. Black has declined all interviews--- except one imaginary conversation with my fictitious "Concerned Educators Blog."...

I attended two early screenings this summer of Davis Guggenheim's big-ticket education documentary, Waiting for Superman, and it touches the education reform zeitgeist. When the film unspools across America over the next weeks, I predict a massive chorus of voices echoing his entreaties for more great teachers, less union influence,...

After two years of teaching in a southeast DC charter school, I finally visited Anacostia Senior High School, my public school neighbor and a place often referred to as an exemplar of a dysfunctional public school. Anacostia got some positive attention though, when two weeks ago Michelle Obama...

60 Minutes recently profiled my school, The SEED Public Charter School of Washington, D.C. The crew had been visiting the school for just over a year, and the final product is the 13-minute clip below. (Catch me around the 4:40 mark.)

William Ayers's new book To Teach: The Journey, In Comics is part autobiography, part education reform tract, and entirely enjoyable to read. I don't know another edu-book that blends these three elements so well. To Teach updates Ayers's 1993 book of the same title-- except this time around...

Mitt Romney, one of the top contenders for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, gleefully dropped some teacher-hating red meat to the CPAC crowd in Washington last week. The audience pounced like bears on honey. As someone who cares about the long-term sustainability of our democracy, I am perplexed.

The Weirdest Political Ad of All Time: Thank You, Carly Fiorina

Beware! California GOP Senate candidate (and former 2008 McCain campaign surrogate and Hewlett-Packard CEO) Carly Fiorina has just unleashed a 3-minute attack ad that will melt the brains of all voters in the Golden State and beyond.

Who...

Expect to see real American classrooms on the silver screen this fall. This could be a beautiful thing.

In the first major deal at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, Paramount Vantage has picked up Waiting for Superman, an education documentary directed by Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth)....

High-stakes testing is a bullet train barreling through education reform; you're either on the train, on the sidelines, or waving your hands in frantic protest, only to be run over.

Last week's education speech by emboldened New York City Mayor-for-Life Bloomberg (who just dropped nine-figures of his own cash...

The editorial page in today's New York Times takes a bizarre pot shot at teachers. In discussing a teacher evaluation system under development in New Haven, Connecticut, the Times overtly dismisses on-the-ground educators:

School reformers were excited to hear that New Haven planned to take student performance into account...

High-stakes testing has become so prevalent in American public schools that the terms "student achievement" and "test scores" are used interchangeably by pretty much everybody.

Much muck has been raked about how the high-pressure exams don't assess students' abilities and learning fairly or accurately. The extreme emphasis on test...