ExtraOrdinary Districts: Steubenville Part 2 – A Program in Service of a Vision
November 06, 2017 by Karin Chenoweth Back in the late 1990s, Ohio adopted a law that said that fourth graders who couldn’t pass a reading test would have to be retained. Steubenville educators realized that some…
ExtraOrdinary Districts: Steubenville Part 1 – Changing the Path of Poverty
November 06, 2017 by Karin Chenoweth Superintendent Melinda Young has seen preschoolers who enter the Steubenville school district graduate from high school ready for college. This shows the power of schools to, in her words, change…
ExtraOrdinary Districts: Lexington Part 3 – Building a Learning Community
November 01, 2017 by Karin Chenoweth Superintendent Ash refocused Lexington school district on helping not the bussed-in Boston students but any student who needed extra help. He brought in nationally known trainers who helped teachers learn…
ExtraOrdinary Districts: Lexington Part 2 – Where Do You Start? Everywhere!
November 01, 2017 by Karin Chenoweth Once the educators in Lexington got a handle on how badly some of their students were doing, they threw themselves into fixing the problem. But some parents were surprised that…
ExtraOrdinary Districts: Lexington Part 1 – Secrets of a High-Performing School District
November 01, 2017 by Karin Chenoweth Most wealthy, high-performing school districts have huge achievement gaps. And 10 years ago, Lexington, Massachusetts, did too. The students doing the worst? Mostly African American and Hispanic students who were…
ExtraOrdinary Districts: Episode 1 – How Do We Know Which School Districts are ExtraOrdinary?
November 01, 2017 by Karin Chenoweth Anyone who wants to identify “extraordinary districts” has a daunting challenge: The United States has more than 14,000 school districts and they vary widely. Some have hundreds of students; some…
ExtraOrdinary Districts: Ordinary School Districts That Get Extraordinary Results
October 30, 2017 by Karin Chenoweth Across the nation, many school districts are asking themselves, “What can we do to better serve our students of color and those from low-income communities?” In Ed Trust’s new podcast,…
Reclaiming the Ground for Our Children
October 13, 2017 by Brooke Haycock The Baltimore Times recently featured Baltimore City Schools CEO Sonja Santelises and the district’s blueprint for success. The following poem was inspired by her powerful opening address at the start…
Diversity Offers a Clear Path to Brighter Futures for All Children
June 07, 2017 by John B. King Jr., J.D., Ed.D. This essay was originally published in a compilation from the Albert Shanker Institute as part of an event it hosted today titled “School Integration By Race & Class: A Movement…