• When Policy Meets Practice: Why School Mandates Often Miss the Mark

    The View from the Ground Floor
    It’s safe to assume that policymakers have the best intentions when proposing new provisions for schools. Initiatives for literacy, new pedagogical strategies, and requirements for professional development all sound beneficial to the school community. But what do these regulations look like from the ground floor as a teacher?

    In my experience, many teachers were not fond of change at all. And I didn’t blame them. Teachers who had been at the school for 15+ years had observed nearly every type of change: from the creation of the Common core to the beginning of PLCs and even more recently bans on curriculum regarding DEI, they have seen it all. When these regulations trickle down from the state, administrators typically come up with a plan to disseminate the requirements to their staff. Teachers see the decisions being made and are told to comply with them.

    I experienced this discomfort while teaching at a public middle school that needed to comply with a recent bill prioritizing literacy and critical thinking in all classrooms. In response, the administration decided that all staff must post the same vocabulary words on a word wall in their classroom, along with delivering weekly reading comprehension lessons to their homeroom students. This measure was intended to provoke students’ curiosity and level the playing field for students who didn’t know much academic language. But even the best educational ideas, when shared with teachers hastily, impede the positive impact.

    On the day before school started, printers were whirring with lists of 20 words like “concur” and “refute,” teachers were concerned about where the word wall would fit in their room, and questions were unanswered on who would be responsible for creating these reading comprehension lesson plans. You might imagine that non-ELA teachers were not happy with this new responsibility—and you would be right. In fact, many teachers skipped through their reading lessons and instead gave students silent reading time. The teachers didn’t understand why this responsibility had been given to them or what effect it would have on students’ well-being, so they didn’t give it their full effort. It was never explained to them. 

    So, while state legislators have good intentions in their policies, that doesn’t ensure that the legislation will be attuned to teachers' needs or interests, or that it will include the details needed for meaningful implementation. This may lead to a desensitization of new policies for teachers, as they watch mandates come and go without any input in what’s prioritized and why.

  • Maryanne Wolf Knows Her Proust and Her P.O.S.S.U.M.

    Our guest author is Harriett Janetos an elementary school reading specialist with over 35 years of experience. In this essay Ms. Janetos reflects on Maryanne Wolf’s paper Elbow Room: How the Reading Brain Informs the Teaching of Reading recently published by the Albert Shanker Institute. This essay originally appeared in the author's Substack Making Words Make Sense. 

    Multicomponent instruction means making room for ALL the components of literacy--taught at the right time in the best way. It provides the bridge between Balanced Literacy and Structured Literacy.

  • What Bayard Rustin Would Do? Part 2

    Our guest author is Eric Chenoweth, director of the Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe and principal author of Democracy Web, an online comparative study guide for teachers, students and civic activists. He worked with Bayard Rustin in various capacities in the late 1970s and 1980s. Eric visited the new exhibition at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, “The Life of Bayard Rustin: Speaking Truth to Power,” which shines a light on Rustin’s central work in the Civil Rights Movement and his contributions to the international peace and human rights movements. It runs through February, 2026 and will form the basis of a permanent exhibition in the museum’s expansion planned for 2026. Part 1 of “What Bayard Rustin Would Do” describes the exhibition and the context to Rustin’s work up to 1965. Part 2 describes Rustin’s work and writings in the last 25 years of his life as he faced the increasing backlash to the gains of the Civil Rights Movement. The full article is posted on the Albert Shanker Institute’s March on Washington Resources page.

     

    Introduction
    Bayard Rustin was a man of politics and action who devoted his life to organizing and advocacy for greater freedom and democracy in the United States and abroad. Much of that organizing and advocacy was in the form of direct action (he was arrested more than twenty times in acts of civil disobedience), lobbying, and mass protest. Bayard Rustin was also a public intellectual who used the spoken and written word to advance his ideas for democratic change and social and economic justice. While he wrote frequently in his early years of activism for radical publications like Liberation, Rustin wrote more frequently and in more known publications after his organizing of the March on Washington gave him greater prominence. His words were always a guide for action.

  • What Would Bayard Rustin Do? Part 1

    Our guest author is Eric Chenoweth, director of the Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe and principal author of Democracy Web, an online comparative study guide for teachers, students and civic activists. He worked with Bayard Rustin in various capacities in the late 1970s and 1980s. Eric visited the new exhibition at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, “The Life of Bayard Rustin: Speaking Truth to Power,” which shines a light on Rustin’s central work in the Civil Rights Movement and his contributions to the international peace and human rights movements. It runs through February 2026, and will form the basis of a permanent exhibition in the museum’s expansion planned for 2026. Part 1 of “What Bayard Rustin Would Do” describes the exhibition and the context to Rustin’s work up to 1965. Part 2 describes Rustin’s work and writings in the last 25 years of his life as he faced the increasing backlash to the gains of the Civil Rights Movement. The full article is posted on the Albert Shanker Institute’s March on Washington Resources page.

     

    We live in a reactionary age. Worldwide, the advance of freedom in the previous century did not just stall. It went into reverse. What is shocking many is that this reactionary age has taken root in the modern world’s oldest, richest and most militarily powerful democracy. Donald Trump’s return to the presidency in January 2025 has put him in a position to assert largely unchecked power to reverse America’s progress towards a multiracial democracy. 

    This period in America would not have surprised the civil rights leader Bayard Rustin. He spent decades working to end a previous period of white reactionary rule in the United States. Yet, soon after the masterwork of his career — the organizing of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom — he began warning of a political backlash against the gains made to end Jim Crow rule and to make the country a full democracy ensuring the right to vote to all citizens. As he that backlash began to manifest, he argued for political strategies and policies to move the country in a radical direction towards greater equality. Whatever situation he found himself, Rustin worked to achieve a more equal, tolerant and pluralist society and a freer world through nonviolent and democratic means. His life and teachings offer guidance on how to respond to today’s global reactionary challenge. A new museum exhibition offers a launching point.