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Why the Marshall Memo?

The problem: school leaders don't have time to read

In an ideal world, school principals and other educational leaders would make time to read the professional literature and would be up to date on the best thinking on raising student achievement, closing the achievement gap, and presiding over caring learning communities.

But very few school leaders are able to do this. Their work life is simply too busy, and after hours they're exhausted and need to spend time with their families. An additional barrier to reading the literature is that the best ideas are widely scattered among at least 30 different publications. No single magazine or newspaper allows for one-stop shopping in the marketplace of educational ideas.

Many educators compromise by reading Education Week; it's a very solid publication, but its main focus is national policy news. Two electronic newsletters, PEN Weekly NewsBlast and ASCD Daily Newsbrief, are also popular, and both are free; but these are also quite policy-oriented and their synopses are very brief. Education Gadfly, another free electronic newsletter, is lively and readable, but it too deals almost entirely with national policy issues.

So what is a principal who is hungry for actionable, school-based research to do?

The solution: a brief weekly summary of the best articles

The Marshall Memo was conceived to meet this need. Kim Marshall, who was a Boston teacher, central office curriculum director, and principal for 32 years and now works with new principals in New York City, acts as "designated reader" for busy school leaders. Kim's 35 years working in and around schools gives him excellent news judgment on which articles are of greatest interest to school leaders.

Kim subscribes to 39 magazines, journals and newspapers that do the best job covering education (see the "Publications covered" link in this website), reads the issues that arrive each week, picks the most relevant articles, writes a detailed précis of each one (giving an electronic link to the original article whenever one is available), pulls out several provocative quotes for the first page, and sends out the Marshall Memo as a e-mail attachment every Monday. Kim published 50 issues during the 2003-04 school year, and plans keep up this pace during 2004-05.