The Intellectual Discipline Required to Improve Schools

When you do your best work and find you still aren’t successful, that’s a hard moment that takes intellectual discipline and even a bit of courage to face. But it is also a moment of opportunity to bring fresh thinking and expertise to bear, as I write about in the Huffington Post this week. Once you get used to the process, it provides great opportunity for creativity.

My column was, in part, responding to an op-ed by Dan Willingham and David Grissmer on the need to continually monitor and research preschool programs to see what’s working. Since then, Willingham expanded on that in his own blog in a way that demonstrates the opportunity for creativity that rigorous thinking allows. Although in this case he’s only talking about preschool, the basic principle applies throughout education.