Over the past few decades, primary and secondary education have been rethought, reshaped, and rebranded. Amidst the changes in the K-12 world, there have been stigmas attached to different styles of education just as there are in the post-secondary world. Although the options in post-secondary education outnumber those in primary and secondary education, stigmas persist about…

Last week, I listened to American Institutes for Research’s webinar “Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Students Who Are Academically Successful: Examining Academic Resilience Cross-Nationally”. Maria Stephens and Ebru Erberber, Senior Researchers at American Institutes for Research, observed the discrepancies between marginalized students and their ability to thrive academically. They investigated the prevalence of “academic resilience” internationally as well as…

John Gerdy, an accomplished philanthropist, author, and athlete, details the nature of sports, specifically football, in his book entitled Balls or Bands: Football Vs. Music as an Educational and Community Investment. Gerdy’s depiction of football acts as a call for school reform and the need to rework the traditional models of education to best suit…

Yesterday, the CER interns were given the opportunity to complete a private tour of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), located in Greenbelt, Maryland. Touring the facilities was like getting a chance to go to Space Camp for a day, but for a group of college students! We were shown the James Webb Space Telescope,…

Schooling in America affects every person in this nation and yet everyone involved, whether it be on the policy and reform side of things or those actually in the schools, are not correctly informed about the other side. The policy makers and reformers are not in the classroom and those in the classroom don’t understand…

Reflecting on the ensuing American Revolution, British political thinker Edmund Burke had this to say: “We also reason and feel as you do on the invasion of your charters. Because the charters comprehend the essential forms by which you enjoy your liberties, we regard them as most sacred, and by no means to be taken…

Erin Gruwell, the inspirational teacher behind Freedom Writers, continues to be one of the few educators fueling my desire to teach in a low-income area. Her experience as a transformative educator showed me the power of the teacher in a classroom. However, many teachers remain ineffective in the classroom. The Thomas B. Fordham institute hosted…

I recently attended a discussion at the American Enterprise Institute with Robert Putnam of Harvard University, Charles Murray, who is a W.H. Bradley Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and William Julius Wilson, a sociologist and Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University. Each speaker presented their criticism of Putnam’s newest…

A story of how a charter school started out as an idea to meet a need, the struggles it encountered trying to come into being, and the amazing impact it’s had so far on its community now that it is open and serving students. St. Helen Elementary School, part of the Roscommon Area Public Schools…

When I heard the word entrepreneur, the field of education was quite possibly the last thing that entered into my mind. To me, an entrepreneur was always someone who created a new business against a great deal of resistance from outside forces. Think Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook or Steve Jobs and Apple. I never before…