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 …
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 …
Suddenly, everyone’s weighing in on what young children need. From CEOs of tech startups to the titans of philanthropcapitalism, from economists to journalists and political pundits, early development and education have become a free-for-all, the province of those whose expertise lies elsewhere. Enter, Erika Christakis, author of The Importance of …
The subject line was irresistible: “Early Childhood Pushes Up.” The Teachers College Record, a hotbed of radical critique, had delivered another gem to my inbox. Here was a scathing commentary on Obama’s “Cradle-to-Career” education policy. “Wish you hadn’t moved to Australia,” I emailed Jeanne Marie Iorio, a senior lecturer at …
September 9th marks the first birthday of Bill de Blasio’s universal preschool initiative, a cornerstone of his agenda to combat inequality. On this day the largest and most segregated school district in the nation will greet its children. Segregation is hardly a new phenomenon in New York City. It’s been …
How can you resist a book that links Vygotsky’s theory of social constructivism with the Framers’ vision for American democracy? I couldn’t. When I first looked at Learning Together: The Law, Politics, Economics, Pedagogy, and Neuroscience of Early Childhood Education, I nearly ran in the other direction. I’m married to …
“Just in case you hadn’t seen this,” a friend wrote, passing along the latest piece by Greg Sargent at the Washington Post. “The next big liberal cause,” he called universal child care. “Does it really have a chance?” my friend asked. The multi-billion-dollar question. Sargent’s “next big liberal cause” was …
June 17th was the darkest of nights. A white man slaughtered nine black people during worship. Our nation’s soul is sick, threatened by an ancient malignancy. We continue to search for the words to make sense of it all. Young black men are taking to their posts with anguish and …
