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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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When asked to predict the future, it's hard to forget that the totally automated future that expo organizers and Sci-Fi prognosticators prepared us for has not come to pass. We are all still waiting for our flying cars - not to mention the end of email spam. In fact, we've recently come to realize that without the human factor - one great case in point being the modern entrepreneur - this breathtaking speed and usability is of little use. So I now reach out to quote another brilliant but non-technical light, John Lennon, who famously advocated "Power to the People."
Exercise
The corporate reformers have sucked the life out of teaching and learning. The real purpose of education is lost in a blizzard of data - numbers entered onto a rubric to become bits of data - trillions of 0's and 1's about each child are flying at high speed, tracked and collecting in data banks like so many feet of snow to be mined for corporate profits - icy cold they create systems of punishment as dangerous crevices - an abyss of corporate created failure - a place devoid of all humanity for children and teachers to try to traverse. 
One of our favorite studies we came across this year touched on many of these threads. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University followed for years a generation of children who began first grade in the Baltimore public school system in 1982. The stories (and data) about their lives tell us much about what it's like to grow up poor in urban American - and what it takes to escape those odds.
In the era of No Child Left Behind and Common Core, we've forgotten about the learning and development that matter. The modern era of high-stakes standardized testing kicked into gear at the turn of the twenty-first century, with federal No Child Left Behind legislation mandating annual math and reading tests for public school children beginning in third grade. It has not been a golden age. Standardized testing has risen from troubling beginnings to become a $2 billion industry controlled by a handful of companies and backed by some of the world's wealthiest men and women. The near-universally despised bubble tests are now being used to decide the fates of not only individual students but also their teachers, schools, districts, and entire state education systems-even though these tests have little validity when applied this way.
Despite very little evidence to support its efficacy for student learning, standardized testing has claimed our classrooms. "Objective" data drives decision-making rather than the "subjective" issues that affect the children we seek to educate. Teachers are constantly labeled as ineffective, uncaring, unprepared. Patently unqualified corporations, millionaires and for-profit businesses are invited to "solve" educational issues while patently qualified teachers, teacher educators and educational researchers are excluded from the discussion.
The accountability procedures imposed on K-12 schools have diverted astounding amounts of money and time from teaching and learning. The accountability procedures have not led to any measurable improvement in student achievement. Extending these ill-conceived procedures to teacher education programs is counter-productive. Attaching high stakes to evaluation leads to the distortion of the processes that are being evaluated, as documented by Dr. Donald Campbell, the pre-eminent social scientist.
Have you ever felt like you're talking, but nobody is listening? Here's Julian Treasure to help. In this useful talk, the sound expert demonstrates the how-to's of powerful speaking - from some handy vocal exercises to tips on how to speak with empathy. A talk that might help the world sound more beautiful.
In 1840 Mann wrote 