Last week, CNN reported on recent events in Garfield Heights, Ohio, where austerity measures have led local school officials to shorten the schoolday to five hours, get rid of subjects like art, music, and PE -- and send kids home before lunch.

What didn't come out during the piece was...

In the halls of Congress and on the presidential campaign trail, a debate is raging over which set of economic proposals to pursue in order to rebuild the national economy. At the same time, K-12 education reformers are engaged in their own frantic search for the right recipe(s) that can...

OK, people, let's get specific: Out of all the schools in the world, which ones are the most transformational when it comes to imagining a new way to think about teaching and learning in the 21st century?

There are a lot of inspiring schools out there, so I want to...

If you're looking for the latest signs of America's cultural descent into inanity, look no further than this past weekend's Sunday Styles section in the New York Times, and its review of Maria Abramovic's performance piece at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art's recent fundraising gala.

What...

Late Thursday night, alone in my TV room and still struggling to get back onto east-coast time, I watched Tim Tebow's improbable 95-yard game-winning drive, and marveled at the uniqueness of his unfolding storyline.

As the dumbstruck commentators on NFL Network made clear, we are witnessing something unprecedented...

On a recent crisp fall morning in the nation's capital, 3rd grade teacher Rebecca Lebowitz gathered her 29 public school students on their familiar giant multicolored carpet, and reminded them how to make sense of the characters whose worlds they would soon enter during independent reading time.

"What are the...

It wasn't until the end of her tragically short life that Thea Leopoulos first discovered the depth of her talent as an artist.

A buoyant, beautiful girl with dark eyebrows and sharp brown eyes, Thea spent her childhood believing the experts who first told her, back in third grade, she...

I just returned from my first visit to China in 15 years, and I still can't get over how aligned the Middle Kingdom remains around its core "mission statement" -- and how misaligned we remain in the United States.

In China, the mission that directs the priorities of its private,...

OK, I realize I'm late to the game -- I was in China last week when President Obama first outlined his jobs proposal to a joint session of Congress. But as I look at it I'm wondering if anyone else has made a simple observation about his idea...

With all due respect to Flannery O'Connor, my vote for greatest American short-story writer goes to Ray Carver. And with all due respect to America's current crop of leaders, my hope is that they convene a summer book club to read Carver's stories -- and heed his central message.

I'm...

How do we transform the quality of teaching and learning in America?

Like a lot of people, I've been wrestling with that riddle for the bulk of my career. And this July, three separate events are making me wonder in a new way about how to bring about such a...

Last week, I was asked by CNN to comment on the news that most states will soon phase out cursive writing in order to give students more time to hone their digital skills. Initially, I wondered why the issue was receiving national coverage - there are bigger fish...

It's graduation season again -- yet nobody seems to be celebrating.

On college campuses, graduates are entering an economy in which the stable career paths of yesteryear are disappearing -- and the specialized job opportunities of tomorrow have yet to appear. And in communities across the country, parents and young...

When it comes to reforming America's schools, is bigger always better?

I've been wondering about that question since watching a recent episode of Treme, the HBO series set in post-Katrina New Orleans that chronicles the struggles of a diverse group of residents on the slow path toward rebuilding their beloved...

Should your zip code determine your access to the American dream? Or is the U.S. Constitution's guarantee to provide "equal protection" a principle we have silently agreed to uphold in theory -- but not in practice?

This makes me wonder about Tanya McDowell, the Connecticut mother facing felony...

It's not what you think.

I'm a proud graduate of the University of Wisconsin (and two graduate schools). I loved college. And it's undeniable that the United States boasts some of the best universities in the world.

I'm also someone who flunked out my freshman year with a 0.6 GPA....

After reading Michelle Rhee's surprisingly casual dismissal of cheating allegations in D.C.'s public school system, I've decided we need to do something drastic if we want to shake ourselves out of this surreal set of conversations about school reform.

We need Bill Maher to make a documentary about...

Those pesky EduCon folks are at it again.

Earlier this year, I wrote about a small, networked, eclectic tribe of educators who attended a conference at Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, and who, with great energy and determination, pledged their shared commitment to bring about a...

As accusations fly back and forth over the reported D.C. cheating scandal -- the latest in a series of battles between America's two dominant Edu-Tribes -- I can't help but wonder what would happen if we stopped spending so much time focusing on what is broken...

On March 4, during an appearance in Miami with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, President Obama announced he will spend the month of March conducting a listening tour across the country, and "talking to parents and students and educators about what we need to do to achieve reform, promote responsibility,...