Learning is always personal, intimate, specific. Our discussions of the pros and cons of different kinds of learning have to be equally so. To settle for any less — in one direction or the other — is to shortchange one of the most important conversations we can be having right now.

chool administrators have to be diligent and purposeful about staying plugged in to what is happening in classrooms and the challenges faced by their instructional staff.

1. Our schools are failing.

2. Unions defend bad teachers.

3. Billionaires know best.

Let’s be honest, by and large, we’re still preparing new teachers to be curriculum delivery specialists, not participants in and facilitators of deep student inquiry in the classroom.

I’d love to get rid of the factory side of education, not just do it better, but that’s a far off reality given the current climate.

Despite their claims, the corporate reformers have no proof that the harm of their tactics is outweighed by any good. They lied about their 90-90-90-90 schools. Now they’ve been caught lying about their continually improving schools. They have absolutely nothing.

I have to say that, of course, with a caveat. You have to do it carefully and strategically. Most people are risk averse, which means that they play it quite safe and they don't explore as widely around their assumptions, or their mental models, as they perhaps should. Organizations exacerbate this because they reward people for results most of the time, and not so often on good intentions or good process for exploration. If your intention is to change a business model or if you're in a new environment, I think you should have more tolerance for mistakes than is typically the case in companies.