Children, Guns, and the Bear of Toxic Stress

Within days of Donald Trump’s victory, I issued the following call to action: As we go forward, holding our children close, we must be vigilant, and relentless. We must be creative and steadfast in our resistance.  We must harness the energy in our communities for social progress and educational equity—and …

Bill de Blasio’s Schools Chancellor is Leaving: Who will Restore the Joy to Early Ed?

Not long before New York City’s public schools closed for winter break, Katie Lapham posted to Twitter a drab black-and-white photograph of a testing manual she had found in her mailbox, the imprimatur of Carmen Fariña in the upper left-hand corner. An elementary school teacher and long-time critic of education …

New York’s Young Children are Thrown under the Bus

On September 11th, the education committee of the New York Board of Regents approved  the “Next Generation” standards for English Language Arts and mathematics. Our youngest children have been thrown under the bus. We are violating everything that is known, which is considerable, about how children develop and learn best.  …

Harriett Krein-Hart: A Bright Light on the Hudson

When my firstborn was a toddler, his father and I began the search for child care. The project was daunting, the price tag exorbitant. To whom could we entrust our child? What were we looking for? Would we know the right program when we saw it? Would he be loved …

Will Bill de Blasio Exile Three-Year-Olds from Play?

My family held a Passover Seder in London this year.  A feast of liberation in a city governed by Sadiq Khan, the first Muslim to preside over a major Western capital.  Our haggadah, the guiding text, affirmed our solidarity with refugees across the globe.   The meal was leavened by savory …

A Kindergartner Reserves a Space for #OptOut2020

Welcome to the season of testing, our vernal blood sport. Uploading the schedule took forever. It must have been the server of the New York State Education Department, sclerotic as the bureaucracy itself. But there it was, a memo signed by Deputy Commissioner Angelica Infante-Green. An exam for every public …

The Power of Their Voices: Early Childhood Teachers Talk School Reform

A former preschool teacher carried the torch for democracy at the confirmation hearing for Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education. “The Senate should not be a rubber stamp,” Patty Murray said.  “We owe it to the American people to put families and children first, not billionaires.” Those …

High-Quality Early Learning According to Yvonne Smith

No fewer than 8,9600,000 results for “high-quality early learning” appeared in .57 seconds, the time required by Google’s query processor to find the relevant web pages from the company’s database. How comforting to think one might get a handle on this phenomenon. “What does high-quality early childhood education look like?” …

Renee Dinnerstein’s Revolution Grows in Brooklyn

Last September, before school began, I made my way to the Brooklyn Historical Society for the launch of  Renée Dinnerstein’s new book, Choice Time.  At a time of standardized tests for five-year-olds, canned curriculum, didactic instruction, and the Common Core—in a city of deep inequality and segregation—this event was long …