Posted by Kohlmoos on Sep 7, 2020 in The EDGEucator | Comments Off on 19 years and counting
On September 11, 2001 I was at a retreat with ten educational leaders in a conference room one block from the White House. We were discussing the future of teacher preparation in urban research universities and their partnering school districts. We were thinking revolutionary thoughts about a new vision for public K12 education and their relationships with their own communities and nearby public universities. In the middle of some very innovative thinking, we were told to evacuate the conference center immediately and find a safe place to...
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Posted by Kohlmoos on Aug 1, 2020 in The EDGEucator | Comments Off on Rest In Power, John Lewis
https://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/morgan-freeman-reads-rep-john-lewis-last-words-89332293780
All week I have been searching for the right words to express my grief at the passing of John Lewis. I found those words in his own words that he wrote the day before he died. Watch with reverence this reading by Morgan Freeman....
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Posted by Kohlmoos on Jul 25, 2020 in The EDGEucator | Comments Off on Alicia Wilson-Ahlstrom is an EDGE Strategic Partner!
Alicia Wilson-Ahlstrom brings twenty years of experience to working with community partnerships, philanthropic partners, and policy bodies that provide essential supports to children, youth, families and communities on strategic policy and programmatic development in both the US and abroad. Alicia has served as the principal investigator for the Use of Research Evidence Learning Cohort Design project and primary consultant to the Democratizing Evidence curation project in partnership with the William T. Grant Foundation to advance...
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Posted by Kohlmoos on Jun 1, 2020 in The EDGEucator | Comments Off on The New Normal (Part VIII): Quarantine and Curfew
April and May were horrific months for America as the COVID death total climbed over 100,000, unemployment soared to unprecedented levels, and the devastating impact on marginalized communities and populations became even greater. But at the beginning of that final week of May there seemed to be some glimmers of hope that we just might be on the other side of the curve. Was recovery on its way?
Then the horrific video from Minneapolis went viral and brought us back down to earth — reminding us that the disease that has infected...
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Posted by Kohlmoos on May 22, 2020 in The EDGEucator | Comments Off on The New Normal (Part VII): Re-Entry or Re-Opening?
Like with the economy, education leaders are pondering how, when and under what circumstances schools should be re-opened in the coming months. Very tough and challenging decisions are to be made soon. And it starts with the very idea of “re-opening”. It might be an inaccurate concept since it implies a simple flipping of the switch. Presto! … we are back to where we were when we closed.
Well, to my way of thinking it will be less like a re-opening and more like a re-entry … into a vast education ecosystem that,...
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Posted by Kohlmoos on May 4, 2020 in The EDGEucator | Comments Off on The New Normal (Pt VI): A rubric to help educators make critical decisions about when and how to reopen schools by Rich Long.
By Richard M. Long, the executive director of the Learning First Alliance.
It’s an understatement to say that we’re living at a time of uncertainty. Public education is a large endeavor: While we have 50.8 million students in traditional public schools, we also have 14,000 school districts, many communities, and families who all have different needs. Yet all want to know, what are we planning and when will the school buildings open?
The anathema to planning is uncertainty. And, in times of uncertainty decisions are still needed,...
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Posted by Kohlmoos on May 3, 2020 in The EDGEucator | Comments Off on The New Normal (Part V): Return, Re-entry, Recovery?
A school closed due to the COVID-19 epidemic sits empty in New OrleansLAN WEI/XINHUA NEWS AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES
As Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez once wrote, ““It is easier to start a war than to end it.” The same can be said about education’s battle with covid-19 — starting with the abrupt closing of over 90% of the schools around the country in March and leading to the return to school (or some variation thereof) in the coming weeks or months. As monumentally challenging as the closing of school was just a few...
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Posted by Kohlmoos on Apr 18, 2020 in The EDGEucator | Comments Off on The New Normal (Pt IV): School budgets and the light at the end of the tunnel.
With stunning speed the COVID crisis has disrupted most every sector of our society in immeasurable ways. For schooling, the changes have been particularly acute and abrupt. As Education Week points out in their report on closings, in just a few weeks “… School closures due to coronavirus have impacted at least 124,000 U.S. public and private schools and affected at least 55.1 million students.” That’s over 90% of the total (I am surprised it’s not 100%). The magnitude of the challenge of re-entry (as some...
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Posted by Kohlmoos on Apr 16, 2020 in The EDGEucator | Comments Off on The New Normal (Pt III): Navigating a new political battleground of which education is a part
This disheartening commentary from The Hill observes that the responses to the pandemic and a faltering economy are increasingly becoming defined simplistically by partisan affiliations rather than by science, evidence or circumstance. From where I sit, this is a dangerous development that could lead us down a self-destructive path that will make recovery all the more distant and difficult. And suddenly schooling has been thrust into middle of this political debate over how to protect public health while reinvigorating the economy....
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Posted by Kohlmoos on Apr 13, 2020 in The EDGEucator | Comments Off on The New Normal (Part II): Recovering from learning loss & revenue loss
In this recent WaPo article, Eric Gordon, chief executive for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District said it best, “We have to have a recovery plan for education … I’m really worried that people think schools and colleges just flipped to digital and everything’s fine and we can just return to normal. That’s simply not the case.” Indeed, the recovery process for learning loss will result in a “generation of students forced to play catch-up, perhaps for years to come”. And for the most vulnerable students...
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