TrueBlue

One reason I found it so hard to post on this site last spring, summer, and fall was that I was working top-speed on a book. My co-author–Boston-based entrepreneur and education reformer Chris Gabrieli–and I signed a contract with Jossey-Bass in early June, and delivered the manuscript November 19, for a May 2 publication date. That took just about everything I had. Now all that writing is about to bear fruit. Next month bookstores will be showing Time to Learn: How a New School Schedule is Making Smarter Kids, Happier Parents, and Safer Neighborhoods. Working with Gabrieli was both terrifically educational and a lot of fun–he’s incredibly energetic, really smart on the issues, and dauntingly astute as an editor and writer. We think the book could make a real splash in the world where folks are trying to figure out how to close the “achievement gap” and how to stop the long stagnation in our public schools.

The core idea in the book is that kids aren’t spending enough time in school to learn what they need to know to thrive in today’s world. So let’s expand the school day by a couple of hours, redesign it to put the kinds of things back into the curriculum that have been squeezed out in recent years: recess, enrichment, phys ed, science. This is already happening in lots of places–in a growing pilot program in Massachusetts, in charter schools around the country, in some really low-performing schools in Miami–and proving that it works.

There you have it–all the rest, as the rabbis like to say, is commentary. But it’s fun commentary, written in an engaging and conversational style, with some great stories from schools and classrooms around the country. It’ll make a great gift for the public school teachers, school board members, school policy wonks, or parents of school-aged children in your life. Here’s what the cover looks like:

I’ve begun to agree with my sociologist friend and colleague Doug Eichar at the University of Hartford who told me the other day that he thought Hillary Clinton had “crossed the line” by first, implying that John McCain had better credentials to be President than did Barack Obama; and second, by her “as far as I know” throwaway line about whether he’s a Muslim.
The interview with her that ran this morning, on NPR’s Morning Edition, which you can listen to here, gave me the willies, I must confess. I felt as though some combination of my high school vice principal and Ken Kesey’s “Big Nurse” had invaded my radio. She dodged question after question after question (while defending the Michigan primary, in which she ran against “uncommitted,” as “fair”–when the amazing thing is that she only got 55% of the vote against that opponent) and then talked about her heavy involvement in a raft of foreign policy decisions, for which she can produce no evidence whatsoever. I’ve been warning my Obamaniac friends to beware of the Kool-aid, but Hillary’s campaign might be starting to drive folks to drink.

I have a feeling that Eliot Spitzer has just become the new Alberto Gonzales: the blogger’s gift that just keeps on giving. You can see my first entry on the subject of my soon-to-be-ex Governor here, on the Huffington Post.