Just weeks ago, Brandy Caldwell was finishing up her senior year at Boston’s Brandeis University when she got the notice: The coronavirus was forcing a campus shutdown in two days. For most students, that meant a hasty packing up and a quick car trip home to their parents. But for Caldwell, 22, it wasn’t that...

As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads throughout the United States, the urgent need for health and stability is paramount. In these early weeks of spring, we must work together to minimize transmission and flatten the curve. Yet even as we secure the basic safety of our homes and communities, we must not forget the important, once-a-decade...

Our polarized and tribal politics have suddenly come crashing into a moment where we are now only as strong as our weakest link. The coronavirus knows no party, ideology, ethnicity, or wall. And the virus certainly doesn’t distinguish between those who support differing progressive policy positions on education. A few weeks before our entire city...

As the coronavirus continues its spread across the country, it threatens lives, upends work schedules and shuts down public events. Schools are shutting their doors, sending students home to learn. How are you going to manage it all, even while navigating changing work demands, shopping for life in a pandemic and getting tonight’s dinner on...

What’s a school for in the 21st century? Start with the bedrock: they’re for helping children develop academic skills and access core content, right? Those famous R’s: reading, writing, ‘rithmetic, you know the deal. We also count on them to grow democratic citizens — informed, aware, civic-minded community members. But that’s just the beginning. Public...

The snowballing spread of COVID-19 across the United States has left education leaders — from superintendents and principals to teachers and nonprofit executives — with lingering uncertainty about overall organizational preparedness, gaps in proximate public health infrastructure, and continuity planning. In a moment that demands action, many are wondering what to do next and how to...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive. The National Education Association finally threw its weight into the Democratic presidential primaries, announcing Saturday night that it recommended Joe Biden for the nomination. A Biden endorsement is hardly a surprise; he is an establishment candidate, and NEA is a major player in the...

Deans for Impact, the organization I helped found, believes all teachers should understand basic principles of learning science. But what does that mean? We see learning science as the study of how humans think and learn — what others call cognitive science. The last several decades have deepened our scientific understanding of how our minds...

The 2010s were the decade for technology to fundamentally change education. Two years before the decade’s dawn, Clayton Christensen, Michael B. Horn and Curtis Johnson predicted in their book Disrupting Class that online learning would revolutionize teacher-led instruction and catalyze a student-centered transformation in U.S. K-12 schools. As the decade began, enthusiasm for ed tech...

Policymakers are focusing on the craft of teaching reading. They must also focus on the politics. Last year’s NAEP scores continued a lackluster streak and set off a predictable bout of handwringing. This time, it was reading instruction — or, more precisely, our national pandemic of ineffective reading instruction — catching the flak. In response,...