First off, apologies for our prolonged absence from posting. We have been working on some really exciting projects here at the Workshop, but for various reasons we need to keep it under wraps for a while longer. We very much looking forward to writing about what we are doing instead of what we might be doing in the future.…

I found this interview yesterday and loved this response to a Dave Eggers question about speaking at a local high school:
(warning: some explicit language)

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On Monday, there was an editorial in the Times detailing the failure of most performance evaluation systems. This management professor, Samuel Culbert, offered his take on how most individuals are evaluated at work:

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Reading for class tomorrow — one of the best parts of teaching is meeting old friends again and again — and found this gem:

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Lots of good coverage in the Notebook and elsewhere about Audenried, Hope Moffet, and resistance to the Renaissance Schools plan in general. But I was thinking this weekend about how becoming a Renaissance school could really end up benefiting Audenried…

…if Universal Companies plays its cards right.

Universal is slated to take over the school as an outside manager.…

Most mornings at 5:30 a fitness “boot camp” takes place in the schoolyard across the street from my house.  I am usually up and sometimes take my dog for a walk before the kids wake up.  On our daily wander my dog and I often pause to watch people in various states of fitness and exhaustion moving from station to station doing mountain climbers, push-ups, odd looking lunges, stepping up and down on things and wiggling this huge rope.  The fit as a fiddle fitness instructor flitters here and there, keeping them moving, motivated and from hurting themselves.…

I’m going to wade into the topic of what is happening at Audenried very, very carefully.

I have concerns with how the Renaissance Schools initiative is being deployed, but I am not reflexively opposed to closing chronically terrible schools. I have no idea whether Audenried falls into this category. I haven’t spent any time there, and I don’t know anyone who has in the last seven or eight years.…

Class would begin with Twitter. This would be new for me. I’ve never tweeted, I don’t have an account, and I generally think it’s a bad thing that all communication happens in Chicken McNugget-sized thoughts. But in several countries this morning, protests are being organized in real time using the social networking site.…

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One of the most common ways of classifying school reform approaches is to think of them as either top-down (driven by school or district leadership) or bottom-up (driven by teachers). But increasingly I don’t think those are the right categories. The more critical distinction is outside-in versus inside-out. I don’t mean whether the reformers are inside or outside the school.…