Education Next – Andy Smarick
“The unrest in Baltimore has been on most of our minds. As a kid, I lived–and, now with my own three kids, live–not far from the city, so I’ve been following events closely. Over the last week, there’ve been some moving pieces written about the schools of Charm City. NPR followed a principal the day after schools reopened and captured the pained (and painful) voices of 8th-grade boys. The Baltimore Sun covered a group of Baltimore Ravens visiting schools, including a high school named for famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass (watch the two embedded videos of Ray Lewis). My favorite, though, has been the piece written by my friend, the inspirational Derrell Bradford, a Baltimore native. He offered a personal reflection of his journey–figurative and literal–from a troubled neighborhood through challenged and elite schools to his current role as a school reform advocate. This CNN piece, about Baltimore’s lost men, is similarly moving and even harder to read. I’m incapable of adding new insight to the issues of race involved here. I did my best to contribute a small bit on that score in the wake of Ferguson last fall.”(more)