About the EP Blog

Education Pioneers shares stories of impact, insights, ideas, and opinions to advance the conversation about what great leadership in education looks like.

COVID Response Roundtable: Front-Line Insights on K-12 Pandemic Response

By Jennifer Chin, August 2, 2021

When the history books look back on the 2020-2021 school year, they’ll paint a picture of an education sector in crisis: triaging remote learning with efforts to re-open schools and classrooms safely, battling widening opportunity gaps for students of color, and navigating the emergence of a vaccine that is still not approved for youth. Throughout this unprecedented year, EP’s exclusive cohort of 24 COVID Response Fellows have been on the front lines of 23 school systems’ responses. Primarily funded through philanthropy to benefit school systems at no additional cost, these senior-level...

Sharing Our Humanity: Reflections During Asian and Pacific American Heritage Month

By Melissa Wu, May 28, 2021

May is Asian and Pacific American Heritage Month. Passed by Congress in 1990, this month is traditionally a celebration of Asians and Pacific Islanders in the U.S. And despite traditions and practices over the past 20 years, this May feels different. The change is challenging, but positive. We are deepening and expanding the dialogue about navigating race in America while identifying as AAPI, both within the AAPI community and beyond. For generations, exclusion and erasure have marked the AAPI experience of race in America, including during recent reckonings with racism and white supremacy...

Better Than It Was Before

By Terrence Kneisel, May 21, 2021

The end of the school year is quickly approaching, and focus is quickly turning towards summer learning and the work ahead to accelerating student learning next school year. It's clear that schools, systems, networks, and education organizations want to maximize the opportunity and unprecedented funding available to reimagine student learning. A year of disrupted learning -- where data show students of color trailing white peers in terms of access to and attendance at in-person instruction -- leaves concern about widening opportunity and achievement gaps. Meanwhile, the Elementary and...

Pioneer Profile: Ijeoma Anyanwu

May 11, 2021

In this Pioneer Profile with Ijeoma Anyanwu (2014 Alum) , she talks about what drives her to address systemic racism in her work to transform education. Ijeoma currently serves as Director, Office of District and School Transformation at Boston Public Schools. She was featured at the 2021 Agents of Change event as an Alum driving meaningful change during crisis. Tell us about yourself and how you came to education. I took a less traditional route to where I am today than most people in the field. As far back as I can remember, I have always been interested in the art of teaching. As a child,...

Pioneer Profile: Hassan Hassan

May 11, 2021

In this Pioneer Profile with Hassan Hassan (2012 Alum) , he shares the hardest (and most surprising) challenge he's faced as a leader this year, and what he hopes the future holds. Hassan currently is the CEO of 4.0 Schools, an early stage education incubator. He was featured at the 2021 Agents of Change event as an Alum driving meaningful change during crisis. Tell us about yourself and how you came to education. As a child, I immigrated from Sudan with my mother when she won the Diversity Immigrant Visa Lottery – a chance to dramatically expand our opportunities. My mom was a teacher who...

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