Jeff Bryant
Jeff Bryant is a writing fellow and chief correspondent for Our Schools. He is a communications consultant, freelance writer, advocacy journalist, and director of the Education Opportunity Network, a strategy and messaging center for progressive education policy. His award-winning commentary and reporting routinely appear in prominent online news outlets, and he speaks frequently at national events about public education policy. Follow him on Bluesky @jeffbinnc.
Released for Syndication:
02/14/2025
During Donald Trump’s first presidential term and the Joe Biden presidential administration, proponents of education reform declared their movement dead. Their well-funded campaign to blame teachers for low scores on standardized tests, threaten public schools with closures, and ramp up market competition from charter schools...
Released for Syndication:
12/06/2024
A podcast about the state takeover of the Houston Independent School District (HISD), which Houston Public Media (HPM) produced, promoted, and then quietly killed before it debuted, has been shared with Our Schools. “The Takeover,” hosted by Dominic Walsh, an award-winning public education journalist,...
Released for Syndication:
09/18/2024
There was an ironic moment in former President Barack Obama’s speech at the 2024 Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago when he brought up the passing of his wife Michelle’s mother Marian Robinson who, he noted, was raised in the South Side of Chicago...
Released for Syndication:
08/12/2024
In choosing Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to be her running mate, Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has not only picked a progressive governor and a Midwestern populist to lead the party’s national ticket but she also may have signaled that the...
Released for Syndication:
07/09/2024
Dawn Sydnor Cole, principal at Morrill Math and Science Elementary School in Chicago, has been trying to fill an open position for an art teacher in her school ever since she was first hired to lead the school—six years ago. Why is finding an...
Released for Syndication:
06/13/2024
“Until now, we haven’t even tried to make big-city school districts work, especially for children of color,” Jhoanna Maldonado said when Our Schools asked her to describe what Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and his supporters have in mind for the public school system of the...
Released for Syndication:
03/27/2024
Judging by a rash of news reports beginning in late 2023, communities across the country may be gearing up for a massive wave of school closures in 2024. “A school closure cliff is coming,” warned an article in the Hechinger Report in August 2023....
Released for Syndication:
12/18/2023
“I do what I think is best for kids,” said Lauren Leto, a career public school educator at Brandon High School in Hillsborough County, Florida. “That’s my hill I’m ready to die on,” she told Our Schools.
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Released for Syndication:
11/10/2023
In 2023, Republican state governors went to unprecedented lengths to enact universal school voucher programs in legislative sessions across the country and made support for these programs into rigid party ideology. Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott, for instance, went so far as to recall the...
Released for Syndication:
09/22/2023
It seems that no community may be immune to what many are calling a national mental health crisis among children and teens.
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