Because of the new leadership at the U.S. Department of Education, educators worry that political ideologies and unproven agendas will be pushed and imposed, 
rather than reforms based on best practice and research. In this article published in The Atlantic, the failures of the for-profit education reform sector are examined.
Iceland Knows How To Stop Teen Substance Abuse. The World Isn’t Listening
An article with clear, research-based examples of how to diminish substance abuse in young people: long- versus short-term investments, prevention over treatment. And importantly, involving schools and parents and community organizations, driven at the federal level to ensure local success.
A few factors emerged as strongly protective: participation in organized activities – especially sport – three or four times a week, total time spent with parents during the week, feeling cared about at school, and not being outdoors in the late evenings.
The Complexity of School Choice as Improvement Model
The Harvard Graduate School of Education‘s online journal Usable Knowledge published an interview with educational economist Joshua Goodman regarding the implications of President Elect Donald Trump’s selection of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education. Specifically,
The selection (of DeVos) has raised larger questions about who should finance education, how schools should be held accountable, and even how we define the value of a public school system.
A major factor negatively influencing school choice and market pressures as the sole direction of education improvement efforts are the lack of immediacy, where school quality is more difficult to measure than in other areas of the economy, like Goodman’s examples of restaurants and grocery stores.
Star Spangled Geeks
A long and significant read on how the United States Government bureaucracy reflexively inhibits change — in this case technology efficiencies — and how small reform victories cascade to larger initiatives. The article, by Steven Levy, is instructive on how organizations can always aspire to provide better service, better outcomes. How this ‘Rebel Alliance’ counts immediate, small victories as essential in proving worth are also essentials steps for consensus building. It’s good storytelling too, with villains and heroes, tensions, and graceful arcs.
Star Spangled Geeks
To the dismay of government contractors, the United States Digital Service is gloriously hacking away in the VA and the Pentagon.
A Real Path to Shared Prosperity in America
A discussion of income inequality, and the means for overcoming the issue, by the Harvard Business School‘s Joseph B. Fuller, Karen G. Mills, and Jan W. Rivkin.