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.
Latest by this author
A state where schools experienced deep adversities before COVID-19 shows the nation a pathway forward.
DeVos’s divisive tenure as U.S. secretary of education under the Trump administration will have repercussions for decades to come.
An approach to transformative school improvement challenges existing education models.
The school district was at the forefront of a public education model that is gaining national popularity—but its decision undercuts what the community appreciates about each school’s custom offerings that put students first.
The transformative approach to school improvement is a catalyst for community revival.
A district in the Washington, D.C., suburbs shows how a transformative approach to school improvement can address longstanding opportunity gaps in education.
A 2022 study warns that career and technical education and advanced digital systems increasingly lock children into narrow school curricula and prescribed workplace futures.
By Jeff Bryant and Velislava Hillman in Education | Our Schools Project | English | February 18, 2022
While politicians pit parents against schools, educators are finding a way to make parent involvement integral to what the school does.
It’s no coincidence that many states that have passed new laws forbidding the teaching of “divisive” topics are the same ones undermining and privatizing public schools.
Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona finally said the quiet part out loud.
Experts call for cultivating better student relationships and providing families with more supports—exactly what the community schools approach is all about.
Reports have revealed an alarming level of financial waste (an estimated $1.17 billion in federal tax dollars), fraud, and abuse in the charter school industry that resulted from the Charter Schools Program’s poor oversight of spending and a slipshod review process for grant approval. Meanwhile, charter advocates continue to lobby for their funding.
The pandemic showed how school choice could play out in suburban communities like Wake County, North Carolina, and it isn’t pretty.
Former teachers and board members say charters run by Accel Schools are designed to fail.
Charter school funders like Eli Broad turned school leadership into a cartel system focused on advancing careers and enriching businesses.
A destructive voucher program drained the state of millions of education dollars.
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.
External
Are Community Schools the Positive Disruptor Public Education Needs?
The Progressive | April | 2025
Trust in public schools has eroded, but community schools in La Crosse, Wisconsin, may show how it can be restored.
The Progressive | February | 2025
In her Senate confirmation hearing, McMahon never had to explain the Trump Administration’s real education agenda.
The Progressive | November | 2024
People around the country split their tickets to support public schools and vote for Trump.
The Progressive | October | 2024
The school’s success is a counterpoint to Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant campaign and a testament to the resiliency of public schools when they embrace their local communities.
The Progressive | August | 2024
While the charter industry has become “too woke” for Republicans, it has done nothing to win back Democrats.
The Progressive | February | 2024
Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona finally said the quiet part out loud.
EdPolitics | August | 2023
Tricia Cotham’s defection to the Republican Party wasn’t about her relationships with fellow lawmakers; it was about the influence of big money and the charter school industry.
Lapham’s Quarterly | March | 2022
Jeff Bryant reports on bringing the community into education.
The Progressive | September | 2022
At the annual Netroots Nation gathering, progressives are told to lift up the values and villains of public education.
The Progressive | June | 2022
Even in Republican-led states, voucher programs are getting pushback.
The Progressive | April | 2022
For years, charter schools have gotten away with wasting billions in federal funding, but a wave of new proposals would end the grift.
The Progressive | March | 2022
By emphasizing communication and trust-building, they offer a solution for repairing the frayed relationship between parents and schools.
The Progressive | November | 2019
Much of the blame lies with an education reform movement that has exhorted schools to operate more like businesses and mimic corporate hiring processes.
Publications by this author
Co-authors: Velislava Hillman | Taylor & Francis | April | 2022
This paper addresses families’ perceptions of corporate influence in career and technical education (CTE) through market-driven policies that enable data extraction for student profiling and seek to align K-12 education with business-driven needs. Aligning education with business needs can offer early employment, however, accelerating technological developments risk subjecting hyper-specialised individuals to highly unpredictable labour markets and ultimately job insecurity. Using grounded theory, we conducted in-depth interviews with families across the United States, to obtain their views on the hyper-specialisation in CTE.
The emerging discourse is that powerful corporations offer makeshift hyper-specialisation curricula that fit their business needs and do not necessarily reflect, or indeed, consider children’s best interests. This research contributes to scholarship by elucidating the views of families affected by the corporate influence in CTE. The collected stakeholder accounts suggest the need for more in-depth research on individuals who rely on CTE for future employment.
Media by this author
Interview | July | 2023
Jeff Brant joined radio veteran Ed “Flash” Ferenc on America’s Work Force Union Podcast to talk about a recent report by the Network for Public Education, “A Sharp Turn Right: A New Breed of Charter Schools Delivers the Conservative Agenda,” that finds that charter schools that market to families a “classical” or “traditional” approach to schooling are essentially catering to parents and politicians that follow “right-wing ideology.” Listen at the 31:10 mark.
Interview | July | 2023
At the the recent Netroots Nation Annual Conference in Chicago, Jeff joined Rick Smith to talk about how attacks on public schools are feeding the school privatization industry that is a danger to our democracy. Listen at the 1:15:27 mark.
Interview | December | 2022
Jeff Bryant interviewed in Private Equity Stakeholder Project webinar.
Feature | December | 2022
Jeff Bryant’s reporting on charter schools featured in new Private Equity Stakeholder Project report.
Interview | June | 2019
Our Schools’ Jeff Bryant in radio interview on charter schools fight in West Virginia.
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