Close the Gap

The President in interview mode

Greetings! I just got back from a two-week trip to Japan, which means I’m still getting caught up on the Obama administration’s new programs. I’m sure I’ll have lots to say about their Race to the Top initiative in a few days – if nothing else, it looks [...]

Greetings from Cambridge! Today we heard from several more incredible high schools, all of which have closed or dramatically narrowed the achievement gap in recent years. Like yesterday, all of them reported a strong sense of community and an intense focus on skills.

The ideas that stuck out for me most today, though, came [...]

Greetings! I’m currently in Cambridge, MA, attending the annual Harvard Achievement Gap Initiative (AGI) Conference. I’ll have a fuller posting on what went down at the conference, but in the meantime I’ll be updating you with a day-by-day report.

First of all, the conference is pretty swanky. The venue is the Harvard Business [...]

Have you heard of McKinsey & Company? They’re a global management consulting firm, which means that they hire the best and brightest grads from the world’s top universities, then send them around world to solve business problems for governments and large corporations. The folks at McKinsey have a reputation for being particularly good [...]

Wendy Kopp

In the world of public education, Wendy Kopp carries a very big stick. While still an undergrad at Princeton she came up with the idea of a national teacher corps, then moved to New York and founded a little organization called Teach for America (TFA). Twenty years later, her brainchild has [...]