I am still not over the sadness and anger I feel over what happened to my colleague, Joyce Irvine.

Even though I have never met her, I call Ms. Irvine my colleague because of the way her work as principal of Wheeler Elementary School in Burlington, Vermont, has been described. As reported in the New York Times parents are grateful for her leadership, she knows all her students, she has begun innovative programs, her teachers and her superintendent give her high marks, even her U.S. Senator praises her work.

And she has been fired.

For the past eighteen years I have worked as a high school/middle school  principal along side a dedicated staff and a committed community to improving a school.  In that time we have increased graduation and college going rates, engaged our students in more internships and college courses, created an advisory system that keeps tabs on all of our students, and developed the highest graduation standards in the state (including a Senior Project and Graduation Portfolio). 

But reading the popular press, and listening to the chatter from Washington, I have just found out that we are not part of the movement to ‘reform’ schools.

(This blog also appeared in the June 6th edition of the Washington Post's Answer Sheet.) 

The Sunday before Memorial Day was Wayne’s day.

It was the day he graduated from our school.  A day he did not think would come.  But a day he made happen—and we helped.

Wayne came to me last summer and asked could he please come to our school.  Eighteen, having been pushed out of his school in northern Ohio, he had moved in with a girl friend in the area. 

Earlier this month Governor Charlie Crist of Florida surprised lots of folks by vetoing a school ‘reform’ bill passed by the state legislature.  Who knows how this figures into his political calculations; I’ll just say that the veto made educational sense.

As a school principal, I read everything about education with an eye towards how it would affect my school and my kids.  So it is with the recently released ‘blueprint’ from the Administration on changes in NCLB.

I have approached the upcoming reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) with cautious optimism.  During the last campaign season I heard lots of talk about ending the over-reliance upon standardized tests, supporting teachers, and equalizing educational opportunities.  I hoped this would mean my school, our teachers and kids, would have something to look forward to.

This past week I was in Washington to talk with colleagues and friends about the upcoming debates over NCLB.  While I enjoy the city and my friends, it was great to get back to my school just in time for Friday—one of my favorite days.  And it has nothing to do with it being the day before the weekend.

Every other Friday my staff and I meet for what we call ‘planning period meetings’.  Since we are on a semester schedule with long periods this means we have about an hour to talk about our shared work.  During the first semester of the year we read a book together and discuss it.  In the second semester we take on a protocol called ‘looking at student work.’

(Previously published on Valerie Strauss' blog, "The Answer Sheet," in the Washington Post.) 

Years ago, I learned that if you want to communicate with people, it’s best to avoid jargon.

It was my fourth year as principal, and I’d decided to add a portfolio requirement for graduation. After two years of study, meetings, and hearings, we were ready to move forward and decided to share the plan with the entire community. Feeling creative, we decided to put the entire proposal in a booklet and mail it to every district resident.

Then, mistakenly, we decided I would write the booklet.

For the past week my school has been closed due to the snows that have made our roads unsafe for bus traffic.  This happens sometimes, and it starts the annual computing of when the last day of school will be.  It also started a rather telling conversation about global warming.

At the monthly pancake breakfast this past weekend a number of folks dug out of the snow and made it in for coffee, conversations, and too much to eat.  More than once some neighbor made a comment about the weather and global warming.  “So much for global warming,” or “Where’s Al Gore when we need him?” or “If the world’s heating up, why are my walks still frozen over?”

In the Dec. 14 issue of The New Yorker, physician Atul Gawande takes on one of the persistent critiques of the current health care debate:

“We crave sweeping transformation, however all the current bill offers is … pilot programs, a battery of small-scale experiments.  The strategy seems hopelessly inadequate to solve a problem of this magnitude.  And yet—here’s the interesting thing—history suggests otherwise.”

(Previously published in the Columbus Dispatch) 

The recent release of the Department of Education's Race to the Top application has me anxious and hopeful. On the one hand, we've been through a trying eight years of the failed No Child Left Behind Act. Schools have dumbed-down and narrowed curricula, cutting the arts, physical education and more in the name of prepping for tests. Some kindergartners have forsaken rest time and recess for test prep; field trips have been replaced by worksheets; and some students likely to fail the tests have been pushed out of schools.