The son of a Racine School Board member is making a career out of trying to peel away the layers of educational dogma that blur the focus on improving classroom teaching and learning.
Tony Frontier, son of Mike Frontier, currently serves as an assistant professor of education at Cardinal Stritch University in Milwaukee. He’s co-authored four books, and is currently working on a fifth.
Speaking on this past weekend’s Education Matters program, Frontier noted that a lot of high-profile strategies don’t move the needle much.
"We can get hung up on trying to find silver bullets," he said. "Things like block schedules, redrawing district boundaries, choice and charter or year-round schools. Those are all big levers that we attempt to pull. They generate a lot of conversation. They are feathers in the caps of the people who can make those changes."
But when put under a microscope, the results are less than impressive," he says. "They don't really matter in terms of student learning."
What matters, he says, is creating an atmosphere where students take full ownership of their education.
Frontier's books include “Five Levers to Improve Learning” and “Making Teachers Better, Not Bitter.”
The full Education Matters program from last Saturday is available here.
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