Class Struggle is a column written by Jay Matthews of the Washington Post. Reading Jay reinforces my original plan to sell our free service to teachers and let teachers sell to other teachers, rather than sell PlansForUs to administrations and have it filter down by mandate.

A recent Jay Matthews post produced the following distillation of his favorite passage from the book “Tested: One American School Struggles to Make the Grade“. A book which I am picking up on my way home today.

“Passing through the gym, where kindergartners wafted a colorful parachute in the air and scampered under it in turns, Leone said of the teacher, ‘I can’t see his goal.’ In prekindergarten, where Leone saw not only ’sight words’ like is and and but also the MSA scores displayed on the wall, she said, ‘I love the way these are all posted.’ In fifth grade she was dismayed to find Mrs. Williams’s students sitting at their desks reading books while others finished a test. She encouraged McKnight to come up with a school-wide protocol for spending time after completing a test, one that didn’t include free reading.”

PlansForUs posits that teaching is contextual to a classroom and that while there can be certain universals, the means by which teachers deliver these universals should be at the teachers discretion. With that said, Leone’s ideas could have merit if properly expressed.

Best of luck to all of you teachers in the coming years and please join the growing community of teachers collaborating at PlansForUs.

by Tyler, CEO