A

Jeff Bryant

From Observatory

Jeff Bryant Headshot.jpeg
Jeff Bryant
Journalist

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


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 Twitter @jeffbcdm.

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-author: 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.

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.

Research areas

whitelistUser:WikiVisor



Have you signed up yet?

We’re building a guide for everyday life, where experts will educate you about our world.

Share
Copy Link