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My message to Dr. Hall
Today was Dr. Hall’s last day as the superintendent of the Atlanta Public Schools. Below is the letter I wrote to Dr. Hall for her retirement celebration last week. Dear Dr. Hall, A lot of people are...
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Endings and Beginnings
Today was the end of an era–the last day of Dr. Beverly Hall’s tenure as the superintendent of APS. It has been eons in urban-public-education years which, like dog years, are quite a bit shorter than...
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Knowing is…
…half the battle? I’m not sure in this case. So, today we finally got a glimpse of the results of the nearly year-long state investigation into cheating on the CRCT in APS. I am only going to throw out...
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Burning and rising.
Atlanta claimed the phoenix as its mascot after Sherman burned much of the city to the ground in his bloody march south toward the end of the Civil War. The city has gone through numerous upheavals...
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Enemies.
Last year at a forum for a local young leaders group, our mayor Kasim Reed said (something like) this, “We must not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” This is a reference to an aphorism often...
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Races & Battles
In the last couple of weeks I’ve seen two films that spoke to me a lot in this school reform work. Pretty remarkable, mostly because I’ve only seen about 3 movies outside my house in the last two years...
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Detoxing
A few years back, I did this yoga detox over spring break. I was feeling kind of crummy physically, work was stressful — I think I’d been back at APS for just a few months, so I was barely feeling like...
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False alarms
A really funny thing happened at work today. Well, it wasn’t funny at first. At first, it might have been the most heart-wrenching thing I’ve ever had to think about at work. We got a call from a...
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“Us” vs. “Them”
I started writing very early on here about “us” vs. “them” thinking. These politics in our community have reared their ugly head with a vengeance this week with the release of the strawman options for...
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Who are the people in your neighborhood?
Today, I gave a presentation to the faculty of an APS school that is suggested for closure in three of the four scenarios posed by the demographers. In the fourth, this school merges with a nearby...
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