ExtraOrdinary Districts

In Episode 4, we hear from Melinda Young, superintendent of Steubenville City Public Schools, Kayla Whitlatch, Steubenville’s treasurer, and Lynnett Gorman, the district’s federal grants administrator, about how ESSER funds are allowing Steubenville to construct a STEM building connected to the high school, which they view as a long-term investment in students’ dreams and post-pandemic economic growth. “This is the money to use for our dreams that we probably would never have had enough money to do any other way,” Young says. In Geary County, Kansas, Dr. Deb Gustafson, associate superintendent, and Jennie Black, director of curriculum and instruction, say their ESSER funds are being used for essentials — like improving the knowledge and skills of teachers, raising pay for substitute teachers, paying for math and ELA curricula, and — they hope — hiring cooks to improve school lunches. Kimberly Hoffman, executive director, data monitoring and compliance, and Jennie Wu, director of school improvement, both in Baltimore City Public Schools, note that they, too, are having trouble finding staff — particularly social workers and school nurses — and talk about how they are dealing with those issues. Dr. Lorna Lewis, superintendent of Malverne School District in Nassau County, New York, adds speech therapists to the list of candidates who are in short supply. Throughout the episodes, we hear directly from expert education leaders about the significant challenges that they are facing. While they all note that many students and school staff have experienced loss and hardship amid the pandemic, these leaders also seem steadfast about keeping calm in the face of obstacles and ready to turn this challenging moment into an opportunity to greatly improve instruction. To hear more from Melinda Young and Lynnett Gorman, listen to Season 1, Episode 3 of ExtraOrdinary Districts and Season 3, Episode 7 and Season 4, Episode 6 of ExtraOrdinary Districts (in Extraordinary Times). To hear more from Jennie Black, listen to Season 3, Episode 9 and Season 4, Episode 4 of ExtraOrdinary Districts (in Extraordinary Times). To hear from the principal of Malverne High School, Dr. Vincent Romano, listen to Season 3, Episode 2, Season 3, Episode 16, and Season 4, Episode 7 of ExtraOrdinary Districts (in Extraordinary Times).

In Episode 3, leaders in two states explain how they are using ESSER funds to pursue statewide improvement efforts. In Delaware, recently retired state superintendent, Dr. Susan Bunting, along with Dr. Michael Saylor, education associate for school leadership initiatives, and Dr. Jackie Wilson, director of the Delaware Academy for School Leadership, note that their state has developed a leadership pipeline that includes teacher leaders, assistant principals, principals, and superintendents, in response to the fact that 40% of current principals and assistant principals will be eligible to retire in the next five years. In Maryland, we hear from State Superintendent of Schools Mohammed Choudhury, who is using $150 million in grants to encourage Maryland’s 24 school districts to “choose their own adventure” and adopt two or more improvement strategies — ranging from the science of reading to Grow Your Own teaching force — that are proven effective. He notes that even small districts are eligible for large grants.

In Episode 2, we sit down with Tricia McManus, superintendent of Winston-Salem Forsyth County Schools, who says that her district is making the most of its relief money by using it to address pressing needs and invest for the future. She’s spending on everything from COVID mitigation and new curricula to contracting with community “violence interrupters” to help mentor and engage students. She is also hiring an evaluator to ensure that the district will be able to see what works and needs to be extended and what doesn’t and needs to be stopped. “I don’t believe we’ll ever have this opportunity again,” she says, adding that “This is a lot of money and we’ve got to be able to show some results.” We also talk with Dr. Tracy Epp, chief academic officer for Richmond Public Schools, and Tyra Harrison, executive director of teaching and learning for the district, who say that the infusion of federal funds has helped the district pump up its literacy program, which is now “on steroids,” thanks to a new literacy institute, investments in teacher training, a new reading program, and the purchase of classroom libraries and books for students to take home. To hear more from Dr. Tricia McManus, listen to Season 3, Episode 15 of ExtraOrdinary Districts (in Extraordinary Times) and Season 1, Episode 6 of EdTrusted

In Episode 1, we talk about the big picture with Phyllis Jordan of FutureEd, a Washington think tank that has been tracking how districts are spending the money. She says that what is very clear is that what she calls “under-resourced districts” are using much of their money for immediate needs, such as repairs or to prevent illness. We also talk with Dr. Luvelle Brown, a superintendent in Ithaca, New York, and Dr. Corey Miklus, a superintendent in Seaford, Delaware, about how much of their Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds had to be spent to keep students and staff safe from illness. And Seaford’s director of building services, Doug Henry, explains what it takes to retrofit old buildings so that they repel water and circulate air properly. To hear more from Dr. Luvelle Brown, listen to Season 1, Episode 6 of EdTrusted. To hear more from Dr. Corey Miklus, listen to Season 2, Episode 4 of ExtraOrdinary Districts and Season 3, Episode 6 of ExtraOrdinary Districts (in Extraordinary Times).

Are you wondering how school districts are spending the money the federal government sent them to get through the COVID crisis? Karin Chenoweth, a writer-in-residence at The Education Trust, has been talking with educators around the country for Season 5 of ExtraOrdinary Districts. Karin explores how this once-in-a-generation investment in education is being used to meet the immediate needs of students during the pandemic and to set up long-term strategies to address inequities.

In the final episode of this season of ExtraOrdinary Districts, Tanji Reed Marshall interviews her co-host Karin Chenoweth about Chenoweth’s new book, Districts that Succeed: Breaking the Correlation Between Race, Poverty, and Achievement, which will be published May 25 by Harvard Education Press. Be sure to subscribe to ExtraOrdinary Districts to be notified of new episodes when they come out.

In this episode, ExtraOrdinary Districts co-hosts Karin Chenoweth and Tanji Reed Marshall chew over what they heard and what they learned from five previous episodes that explored different aspects of reading instruction. They connect the question of reading instruction to our historical moment in which we as a nation are deciding whether to be a democracy in which all citizens are equal or an autocracy in which some citizens are marked to be members of a lower caste. If we are to be a democracy, all our citizens must be educated. At the very least that means able to read. The podcast’s extended look at reading instruction was prompted by the Council of Chief State School Officers’ call to states to improve reading instruction.

When Tennessee showed no progress on the last results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress and Massachusetts actually declined, both states were spurred to make some major changes to improve the reading instruction in their states. In this episode, Dr. Lisa Coons, chief academic officer of the Tennessee State Department of Education, Dr. Heather Peske, senior associate commissioner, Massachusetts Department of Education, and Katherine Tarca, director of literacy and humanities in the Massachusetts Dept. of Education, discuss what those two states are doing. Coons describes a statewide effort that is being driven by the governor, legislature, and state department of education to provide training for aspiring and existing teachers and school leaders, curricular resources, and tutoring services for students who are not proficient in reading. “This is pretty comprehensive. It is pretty intense,” Coons said. Social media, she said, has helped spur efforts within Tennessee to ensure that all children learn to read well. Part of that is a series of podcasts by American Public Media’s Emily Hanford, which has brought an intense scrutiny on reading instruction and the training teachers receive in their teacher preparation programs. The podcasts were cited by the Council of Chief State School Officers in its call to states to improve reading instruction, a call which prompted ExtraOrdinary Districts to produce a series of episodes on reading instruction. In Massachusetts, a new campaign called Mass Literacy is focused on providing grants, creating resources, and providing information about evidence-based reading instruction to educators in the state’s 400 school districts. “We’re trying to promote the idea that all our students have the right to learn in a culturally responsive and affirming environment,” said Tarca. “All students deserve to read wonderful literature. And all students deserve to be taught to read fluently and pull the print off the page. And none of those things are mutually exclusive.” Although the Massachusetts effort is much smaller in terms of budget and scope than Tennessee, “One of the messages you’re hearing from us,” said Peske, “is the importance of coherence within the state agency and using the available levers to us whether it’s licensure, educator preparation, in-service professional learning, access to high-quality instructional materials.”

Most elementary schools teach reading with either a basal reading program, a teacher-developed curriculum, or a balanced literacy program like Fountas & Pinnell or Teachers College Units of Study. But the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), in calling for a national improvement in reading instruction, has called upon all state superintendents and commissioners to encourage schools and districts to adopt the high-quality materials that have been developed in the last few years to line up with both Common Core state standards and with the science of reading. In this episode, experts Carol Jago and David Liben talk with Ed Trust’s director of practice Tanji Reed Marshall and writer-in-residence Karin Chenoweth about the difference using high-quality materials at both the elementary and secondary levels could make in helping students learn to read. Jago is a longtime English teacher and a former president of the National Council of Teachers of English, as well as a prolific writer, including a widely used high school English textbook. She has been awarded several career awards, such as the International Literacy Association’s Adolescent Literacy Thought Leader Award. Liben, also a longtime teacher, was deeply involved in the development of state standards for reading and has served as a consultant in the development of several of the English Language Arts curricula which are considered “high quality.” “When I go around to schools using one of these high-quality materials,” Liben said, “the teachers almost always say they never thought their struggling readers would be this involved in what they’re doing.” The reason, Liben said, is the bulk of the day is spent on rich grade-level texts so that even the weakest readers are “Playing in the ball-game. They’re part of it.” Liben said that too often when people talk about the “science of reading” they are simply talking about teaching phonics. That is important to teach, he said. But he talked about the need to understand additional sciences—of vocabulary development, building background knowledge, mastering features of complex text, and standard of coherence—to have a more integrated understanding of reading science. In addition, when students write about what they read, Jago said, not only do they clarify their own thoughts but they also provide a “window” for their teachers to understand what young learners are understanding. That helps teachers to “craft instruction in response to that.” “The National Reading Project,” she said, has been helpful in showing teachers how to better teach and assess writing. (Chenoweth mentioned a project in the UK that is working to help teachers assess writing with something called “comparative judgment.”) The elementary programs that Liben, Jago, and Marshall consider to be “high quality” are Great Minds’ Wit and Wisdom*; EL Education; Core Knowledge; American Reading Company; and Bookworms. At the secondary level, Jago said, most teachers continue to teach novels and said English teachers need to help their students “interrogate” the novels they teach rather than stop teaching them because of problematic content. She also mentioned that Student Achievement Partners had brought in the organization Disrupt Texts to help think about how teachers can expand their understanding and skill of how to do that. She said that the American Indians in Children’s Literature website has been helpful in her expanding her understanding of the way American Indians have been portrayed in children’s literature. In addition, Marshall mentioned a new study about the positive effect social studies instruction has on reading ability. And Chenoweth noted that Bookworms is featured in Season 2, Episode 4 of ExtraOrdinary Districts, which is a profile of Seaford, Delaware. * In Season 3, episode 18, Baltimore City Superintendent Sonja Santelises said that her city had adopted Wit and Wisdom but had also developed a supplementary curriculum because the African American experience is not well represented in the program.

The last results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed no progress and some indicators even declined, meaning few children are reading at an advanced or proficient level. Partly because of those disappointing results and partly because of a series of podcasts by American Public Media’s Emily Hanford, a growing number of educators, parents, advocates, and policymakers have become interested in incorporating the “science of reading” into reading instruction in hopes of improving the reading ability of American children. And the science of reading forms a large part of the call of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) to state superintendents and commissioners to focus on reading instruction. The CCSSO especially asked state superintendents and commissioners to ensure that teachers understand how to incorporate the findings of the National Reading Panel Report, published in 2000. That report said that research supported teaching five elements of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension strategies. But this is a complicated topic. The science of how people read, which is the province of cognitive science and neuroscience, doesn’t always translate seamlessly with the science of reading instruction. In this conversation, Karin Chenoweth and Tanji Reed Marshall talk with nationally known reading researcher Timothy Shanahan, who helped lead the National Reading Panel, and neuroscientist Donald Joseph Bolger about the tension. “Translating the research findings into practice,” Bolger said, is “difficult for people who want to know what to do and how to do it—who want a silver bullet.” That, he said, “is not the world that scientists live in.” Instead his goal at the University of Maryland School of Education, he said, is to “make teachers aware of all the components of reading” because they will need to be able to diagnose whatever struggles students have with learning to read. Shanahan said the fact that almost all methods of teaching reading will result in some students learning to read has confused the question of what the best method of teaching reading is. Everything “works” to some degree, he said. “What we mean when we say ‘it works,’” he said, is that “when kids get explicit teaching on that particular thing, on average they do better.” In other words, reading research works for improvements on the margin. “About 35 percent of our children are proficient in reading,” Shanahan said. “It doesn’t have to be that way, but it does mean we have to make an effort to get those marginal gains, because that’s what we mean by ‘it works.’” But, he cautioned that there is more to reading instruction than just the science. For example, schools are often organized so that the students who need the most thoughtful instruction are provided the newest, least prepared teachers who, once they gain experience and expertise, often leave those classrooms. “The kids are fine,” he said. “The problem…is that they are not in supportive environments.” Shanahan says he hopes the CCSSO report will help educators figure out ways to accelerate learning following what is sure to be some drops in reading proficiency during the school building closures during the coronavirus pandemic. This is the second time Shanahan has been part of the ExtraOrdinary Districts podcast. The first time was when he was on a panel discussing the reading instruction in Cottonwood and Lane Oklahoma, which was part two of Season 2, a season in which we focused closely on the kind of reading instruction three successful and improving districts provided.

The right to be taught how to read is a birthright of all Americans, argues attorney Mark Rosenbaum. And schools have a responsibility to teach them, says reading expert Nell Duke. They are allies in a series of legal cases to try to establish the “right to read,” and they join podcast co-hosts Karin Chenoweth and Tanji Reed Marshall in this second installment of a series of podcasts about reading instruction. (The first was a conversation with reading researcher Alfred Tatum.) Among other things, they discussed the three legal cases Rosenbaum has brought: Michigan: In 2019, a panel of the federal Sixth Circuit Court agreed with Rosenbaum’s argument that the 14th Amendment requires that all children be taught to read. Although the case does not provide a legal precedent for other federal courts, it did lead to an unprecedented settlement with the state of Michigan to be spent on schools in Detroit. California: In 2020, the state of California agreed to a settlement in a case in which Rosenbaum argued that children have a right to read under the California constitution. The case cited an analysis of reading instruction in some of the lowest performing districts done by Duke and other scholars. In response, the state agreed to spend $53 million on California’s lowest performing schools to improve reading instruction. New York City: This month, Rosenbaum filed suit against New York City arguing that it operates “racialized pipelines” where African American and Latino children are funneled into dilapidated school buildings with few books and harsh disciplinary practices, while some children—primarily White and Asian—are funneled into “gifted and talented” programs and specialized high schools. “If you had to design a caste system, you could do worse than coming forward with the New York City school system,” Rosenbaum said. “Public education was the great innovation,” Rosenbaum said. “It was supposed to be the great equalizer. The reality is that it is the great un-equalizer. It is the strategy and the methodology for separating and for saying that certain groups will be treated as if they are superior to others.” In order to ensure that every child has access to a quality education, Duke said, the field of education, should develop minimum standards of care. Such standards might include, for example, that every school ensure that elementary children are read aloud to every day, based on a huge body of research that demonstrates the importance of reading aloud to children. Although the Department of Education’s Institute for Education Sciences does provide practice guides, Duke said, few teachers know about them and they are not comprehensive. Such minimum standards of care would ensure that no schools would have few books, few teachers, and no reading specialists, as was the case in some of the schools she studied in California. “The vast majority of children can learn to read with the right instructional supports,” she said. “And it’s absolutely an appropriate mission for schools. In fact, one might argue the primary mission for schools is to develop citizens—and, to be a citizen in this country who can actively participate in the democratic process, reading and writing is so fundamental.”

The education field has long understood that improving class instruction was the key to improving student learning. But for the past two decades, the focus of national and state policy, as well as the efforts of education practitioners, has been almost exclusively on teachers and their practices. In 2004, however, an important study established that principals were important to student […]

Schools have come under increasing pressure to reopen their buildings so that students can attend in person again. But those who insist that schools are safe don’t often acknowledge the work that must be done in order to make them safe. Jennifer Robbins, principal of Ladd Acres Elementary School in Hillsboro, Oregon, talks about the many things that have had […]

Recently the organization representing state education superintendents issued a statement urging their members to make reading instruction a core focus. During the rest of this season, we will have an ongoing discussion of why the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) took such an unusual step and the implications of its statement. To kick off this series of discussions, […]

Junction City, Kansas (USD 475 Geary County) re-opened school buildings in September after a summer of planning and a myriad of mitigation measures, from closing down water fountains to ensuring that students face in the same direction whenever possible—as well as making sure every school has a nurse or nurse clerk and putting in equipment to change the air in […]

After a fall of flipping between opening and closing school buildings, Godwin Heights Public Schools in western Michigan responded to a huge spike in community spread of coronavirus by deciding to close before Thanksgiving until at least January 19. Part of the decision rested on the fact that it had become difficult to fully staff schools as bus drivers, janitorial […]

“Something that was already a yeoman’s job has become even greater.”

“We keep using that word hard.”

“We have a third of our kids in every day. But one hundred percent of our students are learning every single day” In this episode of Season Four of The Education Trust’s podcast, ExtraOrdinary Districts, Nicholas Stirling, superintendent of Valley Stream 30 in Nassau County New York, is joined by assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction Jennifer Lewner and three […]

In this inaugural episode of Season Four of The Education Trust’s podcast, ExtraOrdinary Districts, Sergio Garcia, principal of Artesia High School in ABC Unified District in Los Angeles County, is joined by two teachers: William Napier, chair of the special education department and Stephanie Palutzke, acting dean. Napier and Palutzke are also the school’s teacher union representatives, and they and […]

The Education Trust is about to launch Season 4 of ExtraOrdinary Districts. In our first two seasons we provided in-depth profiles of school districts that are breaking the correlation between race, poverty, and academic achievement. Before we could even choose the next districts to go to, the pandemic hit. So for season 3, Ed Trust’s Director of Practice Tanji Reed […]

In a lively conversation, Tanji Reed Marshall and Karin Chenoweth wrap up Season 1 of ExtraOrdinary Districts in Extraordinary Times by talking through what they have heard from school and district leaders from Alabama, California, Delaware, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon and Washington D.C. Over the course of 19 episodes, front-line educators […]

“If we’re face-to-face, we’ll be pretty good with that. If we’re remote, we’re 80% there,” says superintendent Corey Miklus in Seaford, Delaware, about the upcoming fall semester. “The real question is if we go to a hybrid format, because in that hybrid format there’s probably about 50 to 100 different scenarios you could work out.” Should they have A days […]

Dr. Sonja Santelises joins ExtraOrdinary Districts in Extraordinary Times to discusses the Black Lives Matter protests and the decisions she faces as superintendent of Baltimore in planning for the return of students in the fall — from what equipment she is having to buy to what changes in the curriculum she will have to make. Surveys to gather information and […]

By using gyms and deploying every possible teacher, even if they don’t have all the proper certifications, Steubenville’s superintendent Melinda Young is hoping to “open up all day every day.” The only exception is that 4-year-olds will attend three days a week and 3-year-olds will go two times a week. “We just feel so strongly that we need those students […]

Increased costs in the face of massive budget cuts means that the already difficult task of re-opening school buildings becomes even more complicated. “It’s overwhelming,” says Vincent Romano, principal of Malverne High School in Nassau County, New York. In this episode of ExtraOrdinary Districts in Extraordinary Times, Romano and Sergio Garcia, principal of Artesia High School in Los Angeles County, […]

“The money exists to ensure that all students are served,” says Tricia McManus, the brand-new deputy superintendent of Winston-Salem Public Schools in North Carolina. The question, she adds, is whether we as a nation are willing to spend it. When the pandemic closed schools, McManus said, it shone a light on the needs of all children. “We definitely saw that […]

Providing distance learning is much harder than providing an education in person, says Mary Haynes-Smith, principal of Mary McLeod Bethune Elementary School in New Orleans. Bethune is a school that runs on personal relationships and hugging, and building a culture of resiliency is much more difficult when done through computers, she said. “This is so much of a harder task […]

“The biggest bonus” of the remote learning that Godwyn Heights School District in Michigan has been doing is the strengthened ties between school and families, says Mary Lang, principal of West Elementary School. Another bonus, says Michelle Krynicki, director of curriculum and instruction for the district, is that bonds among teachers have also been strengthened. She has heard teachers say, […]

Jennifer Robbins, principal of Ladd Acres Elementary School in Hillsboro, Oregon, has been collecting and studying data about which of her school’s students are showing up to distance learning classes and what they are learning. She wants to know, “What types of lessons are really working?” One sixth grade teacher, for example, says he is getting better results in math […]

After delivering 10,000 devices, thousands of Wi-Fi hot spots, and 300,000 meals per week, Mobile County Public Schools created a hybrid system of instructional packets, online instruction, and television instruction to provide children and families choices in how continue their education. Many systems around Mobile “just gave worksheets or busy work,” Superintendent Chresal Threadgill says, and he has faced backlash […]

That sounds like an obvious statement, says Daniel St. Louis, principal of University Park Campus School (UPCS) in Worcester, Massachusetts. But “a big part of how we see our identity has been taken away” by the school closures following the pandemic. “One of our great, great strengths is the relationships — the social learning, group work, learning together, being with […]

“It hurts my heart tremendously” to know that gaps in achievement will grow during the shutdown of school buildings, says Jennie Black, principal of Washington Elementary in Junction City, Kansas. She is most worried about the students who were already struggling in school before buildings closed and aren’t logging into school lessons during this time. She and her teachers have […]

Before their school building closed, teachers and leaders at Garfield Prep Academy in Washington, D.C., learned as much as they could about COVID-19 and shared that with students and parents. The next step was to gather materials and lessons that students could take home. Once school closed, says principal Kennard Branch, “the first order of business was to make sure […]

Educators in Steubenville, Ohio, have been scrambling ever since hearing that their schools might close. With no clear standards for how to operate schools remotely, they have been trying things, evaluating them, and revising. “It’s a learning process,” says Superintendent Melinda Young. Initially thinking schools would only be closed for two weeks, teachers put together packets with review materials that […]

Corey Miklus became superintendent of Seaford (Delaware) Public Schools in January. On March 13 he closed the buildings to students. “These are some challenging times, but we’re figuring it out just like everyone else is.” Since closing its doors, the district has distributed 600 computers to families and worked with local internet providers to provide Wi-Fi for low or no […]

“This is different. This is hard for some of our parents. We have to show compassion and patience,” says Faith Belle-Lucy, principal of Dr. Robert W. Gilliard Elementary in Mobile, Alabama. Parents and students are facing a brand-new world of distance learning, she said, and not all are ready. Over the past few weeks a team of 10 volunteer teachers […]

We are “creating the new normal,” Superintendent Dr. Nicholas Stirling says. As his schools closed this spring, Valley Stream 30 in Nassau County, New York, phased in its response. The first two weeks, “phase one,” recognized that “everyone would be dealing with the fear and the anxiety, the emotional impact of what we’re being put through.” During that time the […]

“Let’s teach….But remember the context.”

On March 11, Malverne High School in Nassau County, New York, collected cell phones from their students in an attempt to help them become more mindful and focused in school. Within three days, as they prepared to shut down in the wake of Covid-19, “We were telling them, ‘connect, connect, connect,’” principal Dr. Vincent Romano says. All Malverne students were given iPads, and teachers have plunged into teaching their classes and are staying in touch with their students. But the school closure, Romano said, “is devastating,” particularly for seniors who were looking forward to the spring musical and athletic contests. “The prom is still on the table,” Romano says hopefully. But at this point it is impossible to know when it will be safe to stop social isolation, and whether Malverne will be able to have a graduation ceremony is in doubt.

John Daniel, superintendent of Cottonwood Public Schools in rural Oklahoma, talks about the challenges of making sure students don’t fall behind when many of his students and teachers don’t have access to computers, Wi Fi, or even reliable cell phone service. The one good thing that might come out of this experience, Daniel said, is a public commitment to ensuring digital access to all of Oklahoma and the rest of the country.

To talk about the lessons we can learn from Valley Stream 30 (episode #6), Ed Trust brought together Jeffrey Howard, founder of The Efficacy Institute, Natalie Wexler, author of The Knowledge Gap, and Josh Anisansel, a Long Island school administrator who wrote his doctoral dissertation on Valley Stream 30. In a wide-ranging conversation moderated by podcast creator Karin Chenoweth, Josh […]

Valley Stream 30 is just over the Nassau County line from Queens, New York, and has attracted a diverse population of African Americans, Hispanics, and relatively new immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. It is in many ways a classic “white flight” district. Twenty years ago, 40 percent of the elementary school district was white. Today, only […]

To talk about the progress Seaford has made in the last few years (episode #4) Ed Trust brought together Sonja Santelises, CEO of Baltimore City Public Schools, author Richard Kahlenberg, and Sharon Brittingham, a Seaford native who is a former principal and today coaches principals throughout Delaware. Moderated by podcast creator Karin Chenoweth, they had a wide-ranging discussion about reading […]

Seaford, Delaware, was the “Nylon Capital of the World” until DuPont closed its plant. Today it has twice the rate of poverty as the rest of the state. For years, three of its four elementary schools were among the lowest performing in the state. But Sean Reardon identified it as a district where African American students were learning at a […]

Panel Discussion of “Exposing and Learning From Expertise” with reading researcher Timothy Shanahan, University of Illinois-Chicago’s Steve Tozer, and Todd Hughes of the Choctaw Nation.

A small, kindergarten-through-8th-grade district in rural Oklahoma, Lane was identified by Sean Reardon, Professor of Poverty and Inequality at Stanford University, as one of the few districts in the country that “grow” its students almost six academic years in five calendar years (Chicago, profiled in Season 1, is another). Since he identified it, Lane has improved its absolute achievement considerably. […]

To kick off Season 2 of ExtraOrdinary Districts, we brought together an all-star panel to discuss school district improvement. Janice Jackson, CEO of Chicago Public Schools, Harvard University’s Ronald F. Ferguson, and University of Michigan’s Nell Duke. The panel, moderated by ExtraOrdinary District creator Karin Chenoweth, had a wide-ranging discussion that went from the need for carefully designed early reading […]

We’re excited to announce season 2 of ExtraOrdinary Districts is coming in November 2019! Take a listen to this quick preview and then subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Haven’t listened to Season 1 yet? That’s ok. Download the full season and get to bingeing!

Delaware’s first African American attorney went before the state’s first Catholic judge in 1952 to ask that Delaware’s schools be desegregated. The judge agreed that segregation should be dismantled but that only the U.S. Supreme Court had the power to do so. It did so on May 17, 1954, in Brown v. Board of Education. That September, 11 African American […]