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About Us
The Horace Mann League of the USA is an honorary society that promotes the ideals of Horace Mann by advocating for public education as the cornerstone of our democracy.
Officers:
President: Gary Marx, President, Center for Public Outreach, Vienna, VA
President-elect: Charles Fowler, Exec. Director, Suburban School Admin. Exter, HN
Vice President: Christine Johns-Haines, Superintendent, Utica Community Schools, MI
1st Past President: Joe Hairston, President, Vision Unlimited, Reisterstown, MD
2nd Past President: Mark Edwards, Superintendent, Mooresville Graded Schools, NC
Directors:
Laurie Barron, Supt. of Schools, Evergreen School District, Kalispell , MT
Martha Bruckner, Supt., Council Bluffs Community Schools, IA
Evelyn Blose-Holman, (ret.) Superintendent, Bay Shore Schools, NY
Carol Choye, Instructor, Bank Street College, NY
Brent Clark, Exec. Dir., Illinois Assoc. of School Admin. IL
Linda Darling Hammond, Professor of Education, Stanford U. CA
James Harvey, Exec. Dir., Superintendents Roundtable, WA
Eric King, Superintendent, (Ret.) Muncie Public Schools, IN
Steven Ladd, Superintendent, Elk Grove Unified School District, Elk Grove, CA
Barry Lynn, Exec. Dir., Americans United, Washington, DC
Kevin Maxwell, CEO, Prince George's County Schools, Upper Marlboro, MD
Stan Olson, Director, Silverback Learning, Boise, ID
Steven Webb, Supt. of Schools, Vancouver School District, WA
Executive Director:
Jack McKay, Professor Emeritus, University of Nebraska at Omaha,
560 Rainier Lane, Port Ludlow, WA 98365 (360) 821 9877
To become a member of the HML, click here to download an application.
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After the hearing, I (Paul Thomas) concluded that John Hill of the Alabama Policy Institute had it right when he wrote: "Although both sides of the Common Core debate make arguments worth consideration, both the potential benefits and pitfalls related to Common Core have been the subject of exaggeration and error."
Assistant Secretary Deb Delisle 
Award-winning Prinicipal Carol Burris of South Side High School in New York has been exposing the problems with New York's botched school reform effort for a long time on this blog. (You can read some of her work 
This study analyzes the association between the presence of old for grade and retained peers and the propensity for seventh graders to engage in deviant behaviors and receive an out-of-school suspension. Then, we examine whether some students are more vulnerable to peer influences associated with having retained and older peers.
A familiar explanation for our deepening partisan divide is 
They do not have a "secret sauce," the phrase once used by Mayor Rahm Emanuel to describe the Noble Network of Charter Schools, each of which is named to honor a very rich patron. They do have a secret recipe, however, for manufacturing the illusion of success. Be wise. Think critically. Read carefully.
After more than a decade of test-driven, high-stakes accountability in the No Child Left Behind era, many educators and policymakers in the United States are looking to move toward a more thoughtful approach. Rather than maintaining a system that uses narrow measures of student achievement to sanction poorly performing schools, the push is now to implement next-generation learning goals that encourage higher-order thinking skills. The driving force behind this shift is the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English language arts and mathematics. Forty-five states and the District of Columbia have adopted the standards. State-led initiatives-such as the Next Generation Science Standards and Common Career Technical Core-are next in line.
Until about 1980, America's public schoolteachers were iconic everyday heroes painted with a kind of Norman Rockwell patina-generally respected because they helped most kids learn to read, write and successfully join society. Such teachers made possible at least the idea of a vibrant democracy. Since then, what a turnaround: We're now told, relentlessly, that bad-apple schoolteachers have wrecked K-12 education; that their unions keep legions of incompetent educators in classrooms; that part of the solution is more private charter schools; and that teachers as well as entire schools lack accountability, which can best be remedied by more and more standardized "bubble" tests. 
Interest in the "Inverted U" was started after reading Malcom Gladwell's recent book, 
A 6th grader in Texas with the user name "Gummy Bear" pops onto my laptop screen. She's doing a National History Day project about "rights and responsibilities" that highlights the Supreme Court case 
If you want kids to fail, stop making failure so horrible. Children can't be expected to take risks when the societal consequences are so crushing. Much as we like to pretend otherwise, failure is likely. It is important that people take risks. Innovation depends on it. That's the generic sentiment that sloshes around the cult of entrepreneurship and small business, a cult that has managed to seep into so much of our mainstream economic discourse. According to this sentiment, we need people out there doing novel things that will mostly fail but occasionally lead to significant breakthroughs that generate new goods, services, and processes that improve our lives. 
