Assessing Change
Our ability to adapt to new situations is key to success. However, change often happens too slowly for us to recognize it, so it takes a sudden, dramatic shift in circumstances to spur a...
Take Poverty out of the Literacy Equation for Good
The federal economic stimulus package passed last month achieves something progressives have dreamed of for decades: monthly assistance for...
Does Access Always End in Excess?
The fact that access and excess resemble each other is because of a family resemblance they brought to English from Latin, their shared language of origin. They also came into English at the same...
End the System of School Segregation
One of the most disturbing realities of the U.S. education system is that schools remain largely segregated by race, ethnicity, and language more than 60 years after the Supreme Court declared “separate but equal”...
Stop Overlooking English Learners
Deborah J. Short outlines a plan to invest and engage in English Learner education
In the past six months, we have heard the cry “DEFUND” in varied contexts, often as a call for social justice,...
Standardized Testing Detriment to Minority Children
Over the last year or so, the movement against high-stakes standardized testing has subsided, maybe due to educational activists focusing their attention on more pressing issues, such as funding, in the Trump era, or...
Pluralism of Nouns
People who grow up speaking English never have to worry about one of the odder parts of our grammar: noncount nouns (also called mass nouns).These are words like sand or butter that don’t have usual plural forms, don’t use indefinite articles...
Diverse Reasons for Optimism
As we start a new year, it’s usually a good time to reflect upon the progress and shortfalls of the previous year while planning what we can hope to achieve in the coming year....
Rebuilding a Diverse Edustructure
For some Americans, the federal government investing a single dime in education is considered an overreach of power and an insult to the Constitution, which lays out that the responsibility for all functions not...
Arguing for Good Reason
The outrageous attack on the U.S. Capitol shocked the world, but the environment in which such violent sentiment was allowed to brew has been years in the making. The campaigns against mainstream media, against...