Munzir Forbiz

Reassigning teachers based on enrollment, the superintendent wrote, was necessary “in order to serve our students equitably.” Telling her students she was leaving Martin Luther King High School was one of the most difficult conversations she’s ever had, said Karlynne Staten. The move wasn’t by choice. Staten, a special education case manager, had been informed […]

Millions of students are returning for another school year marked by challenging teacher shortages, causing schools to double up classrooms, move courses online and employ what critics have labeled as underqualified teachers. As states lower the certification standards to become a teacher, education experts worry these tactics could delay students’ recovery from pandemic learning loss. Packed

Districts serving large numbers of students of color and families in poverty are losing the highest number of educators. For many educators, the 2022-2023 school year was harder than the pandemic years. Sharif El-Mekki, founder and CEO of the Center for Black Educator Development, recalled a recent conversation with a principal describing the challenges. “Every time

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Gregg Klinginsmith, the superintendent of Warren County R-III School District in Warrenton, Missouri, about his experience overseeing the district’s switch from a five-day school week to a four-day school week in 2019. The following has been edited for length and clarity. We’ve elected to develop our

As a teacher, you know the thrill of a new day and the satisfaction of preparing for it with care. You have lessons that will captivate your students, visual aids that will make their eyes light up, and a plan to keep them engaged from start to finish. But, let’s be real, sometimes things don’t

One of the latest teaching trends includes getting rid of grades and homework as part of a push towards achieving equity in the classroom. We’ve sort of created this rate race and competition all about just getting the grade rather than focusing on the learning itself and that favors, in some cases, the kids who

I once taught a shooter. He wrote me a scathing letter about my class a year before he murdered his mother and reportedly planned to attack the school. During a safety training at my school, we were taught that if a student is trapped in the hall during a lockdown and they knock on the door

While schools across the country struggle to fill vacant teaching positions, one Texas district is capitalizing on groundwork it laid in 2019 that has led to a near-zero vacancy rate. When Ector County Superintendent Scott Muri took over the 33,500-student district in the summer of 2019, there were 356 teaching vacancies—the equivalent of 18 percent

When friends suggested I include charter schools among the places to visit during my recent trip to see innovative learning models in New York City, I was skeptical. I was focused mostly on spotlighting microschools, learning pods, hybrid homeschools and similar experimental programs created by entrepreneurial parents and teachers who are reimagining K-12 education in

Faced with the undeniable fact city kids attending charters schools do far better on state exams than those stuck in the regular public-school system, critics routinely complain that charters “teach to the test” — as if that’s somehow a bad thing. Tests, after all, measure what kids are supposed to learn. Schools that don’t “teach to the test” effectively