All of the Above Podcast

This Week: The LA Times let everyone know that “ nearly half of LAUSD students are chronically absent ” this year. And, if you didn’t read the article (which in fairness, is pretty nuanced), and just saw the headline, you might be left with the idea that the teachers of Los Angeles were practically locking the doors of school in kids faces and telling the kids they can’t come to school. Sadly, the...

Advanced. Honors. GATE. Remedial. Foundational. Students have been “tracked,” or sorted and grouped by perceived ability level, into categories such as these for years. While some argue that tracking helps schools and teachers design instruction to meet the needs of students of varying ability levels, the data suggests that tracking has long resulted in racial inequities and de facto segregation w...

This Week: Mauel and Jeff take a step back from the headlines and major policy issues of the world to reflect on two important questions.  What is one area where we wish we’d gotten better preparation as a young teacher?  And what is one nugget of advice we’d give to folks coming into the profession today? From seeking out trusted veterans, to intentionally honing your craft, the guys sh...

All that talk about “reimagining school” seems like a distant memory to a lot of us, but many folks are hard at work implementing innovative school designs that better serve our most marginalized communities. As we ditch masks and charge ahead into a new normal, what might districts across the country do to actually cultivate, enable, and support innovative approaches to school design and operatio...

This Week : Normally we love to get into deep, critical conversations about the wrongs of the world of education and how to right them. This week, we’re just gonna enjoy the forces of white supremacy, bigotry, and racist lies in school being on the defensive!  Whether it was an anti CRT bill being defeated after scandalous neutrality on Naziism in the Indiana state legislature, the resignatio...

The partisan push to ban books, curriculum, and pedagogy that helps students interrogate oppression continues rage. How can educators teach children to combat bias and racism when such topics are increasingly taboo and policed? What work needs to be done to put our ideals of liberty and justice into practice in our schools? Liz Kleinrock, who is an educator extraordinaire, a recipient of the Teach...

This Week: It’s America in 2022, and while right wing folk are literally threatening to kill kids of school board members across the country, we find ourselves in a media frenzy over the recall of three San Francisco Unified School District Board members. And what’s to blame?  Well, the LA Times , SF Chronicle , NY Times , the Atlantic , and the AP sort of agree. Kinda. Was it the effort to r...

This Week: A fascinating article in The Progressive got Manuel and Jeff talking about some of our predictions of what’s to come once we have fresh, new state test scores this spring. The learning loss hawks are circling, and once the data is public and we’re able to quantify just how deficient and underperforming all of the kids are, and how exacerbated the equity gaps are, which we’ve always know...

Although most policy organizations and education leaders who advocate for educational justice maintain a secular voice and vision, there are those for whom building an equitable, humanizing public school system is a matter of religious faith. Zakiya Jackson, who serves as president of the Expectations Project, joins us this week to discuss the intersections of faith, educational equity, and policy...

This Week: The Learning Policy Institute released a new report this week outlining the impacts of the teacher shortage on districts across California during the pandemic, how they’re responding, and what their researchers recommend as policy solutions.  The ideas range from the important but conventional - like better pay - to the wonky, like expanding teacher residencies and pipelines from c...

This Week: The Florida State Senate passes a bill that requires teaching that ensures white, and white adjacent folk, cannot be made to feel “discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race,” joining the ranks of states and municipalities outlawing the teaching of truthful history.  The battle for the very soul of public education in the s...

To educators like UCLA’s Dr. Annamarie Francois, schools aren’t just sites for reading and math, but instead are the moral, political, and social centers of our democracy. As the Executive Director of UCLA’s Center X, Dr. Francois has led decades of leadership and innovation efforts to support marginalized school communities. She joins us this week to explore how educators and schools of education...

This Week : With the COVID infection graph approaching an upward, vertical line, schools across the country open after the holidays, and the great experiment with the lives and health of the nation’s youth (and school staff) begins. Chicago teachers make headlines for forcing a temporary move to distance learning, while numerous smaller districts are forced to do the same by the sheer magnitude of...

This Week : If you understood the assignment, you’re on break right now, spending time with loved ones, not checking work email, silencing your alerts, and just relaxing. And, we got you covered with an AOTA special passing period this week, a holiday news roundup. A lot has been happening, even while most schools around the nation are closed. The anti CRT madness is working to ban books in TX lib...

This Week : Winter break is here, at least for some of us, and not a moment too soon.  As the omicron variant rages across the globe, and in many parts of America too, schools are closing or on high alert not just because of the pandemic, but because of worries about TikTok inspired violence on school campuses. Man, it’s time for a break. Manuel and Jeff dig into it and share some love for th...

This Week: As the holiday season is here, the US Surgeon General releases an Advisory on Protecting Youth Mental Health , and the LA Times drops an article detailing a rise in “ threats, fights, and misbehavior ” in this still-in-a-pandemic, but post pandemic school year. But all student behavior tells a story, so what story are our children telling us right now? And, by the way, didn’t we know th...

This Week: Michael Bloomberg, billionaire former NYC mayor and presidential candidate who nobody wanted to hear from, announced this week that he will be spending $750 million to promote charter school expansion across the nation over the next 5 years.  In a scathing opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal he states that “American education is broken” and that charter schools are a “proven a...

The pandemic hastened what was already a rapidly-evolving relationship between schooling and technology. Although millions of students have now been assigned their own devices and logins for a litany of online platforms, the digital divide still persists and students in both rural and urban neighborhoods continue to struggle with limited connectivity. This week we’re joined by Ken Shelton--one of...

This Week: The state of New Hampshire passed a so-called anti “CRT” law back in June, but just this month rolled out its mechanism by which people can report educators for teaching truthful history. In response, a right wing group called Moms for Liberty (of course it is) organized a $500 bounty for the first person who successfully turns in an educator to the state. This is the latest, if perhaps...

Despite knowing that the pre-pandemic approach to schooling wasn’t working for whole swaths of students, many school leaders are struggling to make good on all that “reimagine” talk that was swirling around prior to this school year.  Given the ongoing structural barriers that principals and their schools have to contend with, how does one build and sustain a model that meets students’ needs?...

This Week: A stunning set of survey results from intelligent.com shows that thirty four percent - more than one of every three - white college applicants has falsely claimed to be a person of color on a college application, including nearly half of all white male respondents. What the heck is happening yall? Is it a bad dream? Is it some twisted form of reverse, reverse racism? Sadly, it also seem...

As ethnic studies becomes a high school graduation requirement in California and national battles over teaching about race and racism continue to rage, what does the road ahead look like for expanding this critical discipline? And as more regions adopt courses in ethnic studies, what considerations need to be made for it ending up in the hands of educators who are untrained, who haven’t studied th...

This Week: The LA Times drops a bombshell article highlighting the negative effects of the pandemic on test scores and grades, and a clickbait headline that LA’s students “need help now.” Surprise, surprise, the pandemic wasn’t good for the city’s most marginalized kids and communities, right? We went into this year talking a big game about “reinventing” and “reimagining” education, but didn’t mov...

This Week: Jeff being on vacation means that we needed to order a sub for this week’s Passing Period ! Manuel and the substitute (ahem…“guest teacher”) explore the recent wave of headlines regarding the national substitute teacher shortage and ponder what this means for students, teachers, and the school system going forward. Is boosting sub pay enough, and will this get worse before it gets bette...

This Week: CA Governor Gavin Newsom is flexing, fresh off the unsuccessful recall attempt.  This week the gov signed a suite of bills into law that will bring nearly $124 billion in education spending to the state, and bring about the highest per pupil funding in the state’s history. There’s something for everyone in these bills - protocols for schools to screen students for mental health, ex...