Poverty
An Open Letter to the NAACP & Black Lives Matter: We Are On the Same Team
Cassandra Pinkney, co-founder and executive director of Eagle Academy Public Charter School, authored this letter to the NAACP a few days before she passed away last Friday. The NAACP and Black Lives...
Poverty
How Chicago’s Noble Network Pioneered High School Innovation at Scale
If you set foot on campus at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, the Land of Lincoln’s flagship four-year school, 1 of every 5 Black and Latino students you meet will have graduated from...
Poverty
Striking Is the Most Morally Broke and Opposite-of-Woke Thing Chicago Teachers Could Do
Here we are again. The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) has voted to go nuclear and strike in an attempt to settle labor-management disputes over compensation and budget distress. The district has...
Achievement Gap
I Just Couldn’t Trust a Diverse Suburb With My Black Daughter’s Education
People loosely use the term “good schools and diversity” without looking into it or researching what that means. When you get below the surface, it means achievement for the White kids, but not for...
Achievement Gap
Richard Whitmire's 'The Founders' Is Turning Myths on Their Heads
Richard Whitmire’s new book, “The Founders,” offers a virtual tour through the moves, machinations and mindsets that led to the growth of a particular flavor of public charter schooling. Rather than...
Poverty
5 Reasons I’m Optimistic About the Class of 2020
I don’t have teenage kids any more, but I do have a special interest in the nearly 4 million kids who are just starting high school right now. Back in 2010, the GradNation campaign set a goal of 90...