Author: Matt Underwood

This week marks the start of the 2016 Georgia legislative session, and with it, a big year for the intersection of politics and public education in our state.  Elected officials at the state level have a growing influence on what happens in our K-12 schools (a trend that I don’t think is all together good,…

Happy holidays!  Instead of reading a blog post from me this week, why don’t you come ask me about something you’ve read in one of my previous posts?  I’ll be hosting three “chats” this week: two of them in person at ANCS, the other online on my Facebook page.  See the image below for details.…

We are about to buy a new couch for our house, and in preparation, my wife has been thinking about the best way to configure our living room.  She’s visualized what various arrangements of furniture will look like with a different sized couch.  I know not to even try to help with this kind of…

In the past decade or so, there’s been a sharp rise in the amount of data readily available for teachers and schools to use in taking stock of student learning.  Much of this rise can be attributed to the higher stakes placed on students, teachers, and schools through accountability requirements tied to standardized tests and…

I recently finished reading Dale Russakoff’s book The Prize: Who’s in Charge of America’s Schools?, and the hackneyed “this book should be required reading…” really, truly, without irony applies to this book.  Anyone who is involved with public education in America—educators, parents, elected officials, funders, etc.—should read this book because it has some critical lessons…

I can imagine that I was not the only charter school educator who cringed when I saw the headline recently “At Success Academy Charter School, Singling Out Pupils Who Have ‘Got to Go’”.  According to the article, at one of the schools in the Success Academy network of charter schools in New York City, the…

6 years ago this week, Ted Sizer, a mentor to me and many, many others in the field of education, passed away. For the past few years, my blog posts during this week have featured Ted’s words instead of mine as one small way of honoring him and continuing to let his ideas push our…

For the past several years, we’ve taken time at our gatherings of our full K-8 faculty and staff to hear from a few teachers and staff members about why they teach and choose to work at ANCS.  It’s a tradition borrowed from some other schools, one that serves to remind us of the passion we all…

Last night, the Atlanta Board of Education approved the renewal of our school’s charter for another five year term.  Our charter renewal petition now goes to the Georgia Department of Education, and, pending approval there, ANCS will begin a new charter term next summer that will extend until June 2021, taking us right up to…

“Research tells us…” “What the literature says is…” You’ll often hear people in education use some version of those statements when they are explaining why they are advocating for a certain approach to teaching or a certain structure for a school.  Over the past 15 years or so, there’s been increasing emphasis on using “research-based”…