Eric Celeste Celeste

When I first met Alan Cohen, he was trying to explain to me what he meant when he used the term “high-quality early education.” This was about four years ago, when Cohen was first put in charge of early education in Dallas ISD, a large urban district composed of 220-plus […]

This quote from a report aimed at early education teachers seems ripped from today’s headlines. “Early childhood education … is as dynamic and rapidly changing as any other field in human studies. It is increasingly difficult to stay abreast of new information because technological and ideological change is happening so […]

Allison Garland knows why Learning Leaders for Learning Schools, an intensive professional learning cohort for certain Phoenix-area principals and district office personnel, works so well. Actually, that's a little misleading. There are, in fact, many reasons the three-year program, supported by the Arizona Department of Education and Learning Forward (with a grant […]

Allison Garland knows why Learning Leaders for Learning Schools, an intensive professional learning cohort for certain Phoenix-area principals and district office personnel, works so well. Actually, that’s a little misleading. There are, in fact, many reasons the three-year program, supported by the Arizona Department of Education and Learning Forward (with […]

Denver Public Schools’ Professional Learning Center was still relatively new when it decided to tackle a problem of practice that has vexed systems and departments across the country: How to measure the impact of professional learning. To do so, the Professional Learning Center created a new comprehensive measurement approach — […]

I was anxious. It was early March, and the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) was naming its first-ever winners of a new initiative called Great Districts for Great Teachers, designed to recognize districts for their exceptional programs and policies on recruiting, encouraging, supporting, and retaining great teachers. I wanted […]

We know change is hard. Author Mary Shelley called it the most difficult of things: “Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change,” she wrote. We’re fully aware then that the change we have introduced with this issue — not only redesigning Learning Forward’s […]

Who knew that groups of Yucatan midwives, Liberian tailors, meat cutters, and insurance claims processors would contribute so mightily to improving public education? Etienne Wenger knew. Wenger, an educational theorist and practitioner, with his writing partner studied the way these groups indoctrinated new members and apprentices. Their observations on what […]

Equity is discussed with such regularity in education that it’s shocking to discover many of us probably aren’t sure how to define the term. To be more specific: When two people talk about equity, it’s very possible they’re assuming agreement but really talking about different things. That’s my takeaway from […]

This issue is personal for me because the advice it contains about breaking out of silos and building networks is so relevant. As someone who has spent his career writing and editing, my most consistent coworker for more than a quarter-century has been my keyboard. It is always there for […]