Using evaluation data to benefit individuals in real time, and real ways

Note: After this week, Audacious Ideas will be on summer hiatus. We’ll return with an exciting new lineup of bloggers after Labor Day. For the past 10 years, as the Executive Director of Wide Angle Youth Media, I, like most nonprofit administrators, have collected thousands of surveys and assessments, from audience feedback at events, to […]

Enterprising Green3

Green can be a polarizing term. Especially when it brings about images of swimming polar bears, talk of carbon and climate change, or messaging to turn the thermostat down and put on your jumper, like ol’ Jimmy Carter. Environmentalism has typically cast a message about scarcity that only appeals to a relatively small number of […]

What are we waiting for?

A few weeks ago, OSI announced the Public Safety Compact, a new initiative that will help 250 prisoners overcome their addictions. This is certainly a welcome step forward, but what has taken everyone so long? Everyone knows that it’s stupid and unreasonable to do the same thing over and over and expect different results, yet […]

Encouraging STEM education

My audacious idea is that we want to produce students who will help our country to be as competitive globally as possible. The 21st Century Economy is going to require more emphasis on STEM fields – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics — and we need in Baltimore to think about being competitive within the 50 […]

What if…? Consider the possibilities

A September 2005 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT) “National Summit on Recovery,” held in Washington DC, focused on accomplishing three specific goals: • Developing new ideas to transform policy, services and systems toward a recovery-oriented paradigm. • Articulating guiding principles and measures of recovery that can be used […]

The city and the neighborhood as school

In light of the recent court decision about charter school funding, the old dichotomy about charter schools versus “traditional” public schools comes alive. The dichotomy is false. Charter schools can be neighborhood schools, if the outreach is to a neighborhood and a community. And traditional neighborhood schools can be like charters, if we trust them […]