It’s October, almost seven months into a pandemic that has turned the world upside down. Since the shutdowns in March, folks have adapted; businesses have gotten creative with curbside pickup and contactless delivery. Families...
Tag - ZACHARY WRIGHT
Last month, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia released a brief exposing the gaping digital inequities between those with and those without broadband access and the related impact on the city’s worsening unemployment...
If there were villains in Philadelphia’s COVID-19 nightmare, Comcast would be right up there with Joel Freedman, owner of the shuttered and unused Hahnemann Hospital. 20,000 Philadelphia students without internet connections...
“Progressive” is a slippery word. The very term denotes improvement, progress, and thus is by nature a desirable term with which to self-apply. But “progress” is in the eye of the beholder. What might be...
Students around the country are taught about America’s glorious victory in Brown v. Board of Education, the seminal moment that undid Plessy v. Ferguson’s separate but equal racial segregation. Desegregation is touted as a...
J. Martin Rochester, a professor of political science at the University of St. Louis-Missouri, once wrote an article raising concerns about teaching social justice in schools. Rochester’s problem with teaching social justice...

No Matter What Anyone Says, the Money Ought to Follow the Kid Regardless of What Kind of Public School They Choose
I am punching above my weight. I am no education policy wonk, nor am I a mover or shaker in America’s larger educational conversation. But a recent blog post by the well-known edu-legends Carol Burris and Diane Ravitch on The...
The room is dimly lit when you enter, a short ramp leading you further into the darkness. Five prison cells await. Old. Wooden with iron bars and solid padlocks. Within, ghostly apparitions come into focus. Old women. Young...
I’ve written about teacher accountability before, but I recently read a few things that got me thinking. The first was a report out of Los Angeles that showed that nearly half the teachers in Los Angeles’...
At Mastery Charter School Shoemaker Campus, I’m not just a teacher; I am a warrior for social justice. Education in America, wherein we have legislated who can learn and with whom one can learn, is inseparable from...