I’m thrilled to announce that my new book with Keith Fickel is available for pre-order!
Cultivate & Activate: Building Teacher Capacity for Instructional Leadership
Ships May 2026
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A lot of people seem to not realize that some students are more expensive to educate because they have higher levels of need that require additional staffing.
Private schools simply do not accept those students in the first place.
The average cost to educate a public school student is $20,000 per year, the average Catholic school elementary tuition is about $4,500. In other words, Catholic schools get better results with 1/4th the money.
There’s no good way to do merit pay.
We have an extensive research literature documenting what has been tried, and why it has not worked.
Nobody has any ideas for making it work. They’re just not aware of why it has failed so far.
Ohio will be the first state in the country to implement merit-based pay for teachers & principals in our public schools. Pay for performance - period.
The problem with accepting late work without penalty is that due dates exist for CONTENT reasons, not just CONVENIENCE.
If you didn't do the work yesterday, you won't be ready for today's lesson, and you'll learn less.
If you didn't turn in your draft, you can't revise. Etc.
Late work isn’t about students needing more time to demonstrate mastery, or life getting in the way.
Overwhelmingly, the student wasted class time and has not even attempted the assignment.
Allowing them to fall further and further behind is not helpful.
Deadlines matter.
Children have never gone to school because they were intrinsically motivated to do so, or because the teacher matched their “learning style.”
Children go to school because adults make them, period. That’s how it has always been, and that’s how it must be today, too.
Poor school attendance by any child is always a symptom, rather than the cause of the issue. What falls away first is engagement - the style of teaching, learning & support doesn’t fit the child - inevitably followed by their attainment and only then by their regular attendance.
Let's be clear: student mental health is a *healthcare* issue, not an educational issue.
We need to stay in our lane and not take on the work of therapists, counselors, and doctors.
Why is this controversial?
So if I, as a high school chemistry teacher, am given a student who cannot read or do basic arithmetic, and that student is not proficient with stoichiometry at the end of my course, that’s my fault? Come on.
This isn’t gaslighting. If 80-85% of students are not successful in the tier 1 setting, the teacher is to blame and requires additional training, coursework or instructional support.