Fresno gets described in a lot of unkind ways by people who have never been to Fresno: a rest stop with its own airport, the town you drive through on the way to Yosemite, Bakersfield with slightly better parking.
Jeffie Esparza Hickman has heard them all, even the one where Californians call her hometown "this hot armpit of California."
She runs a school there where every single student plays an instrument or sings, and where 100% of graduates go to college. Turns out the armpit is outperforming your district.
You can challenge that claim by following Jeffie’s playbook.
Jeffie is the superintendent and principal of University High School, a 500-student charter on the Fresno State campus. She taught for years before roughly two decades in administration, so she has watched the paperwork pile grow from both sides of the desk.
"Right now there's a lot of compliance, and that's a lot," she says.
Her fix costs nothing and starts in week one.
Here’s what’s on the dashboard this week:
Today’s Deep Dive: Steal this from a music school
Reading Rainbow: 6-year-olds and 200-year-old grades
From Our Desk: A good excuse to go on TikTok
Watch of the Week: Ted Lasso and seven lesson tie-ins
How a clarinet beat the 40-page handbook
Somewhere in your building is a document that explains classroom culture across 40 pages, with a table of contents. It was written to be defensible rather than read, which is why nobody has made it past page four.
University High School's version is one sentence long. Two years of music experience to enter the lottery, and once you're in, you perform. All 500 kids, no bench, no note from home. A freshman and a senior land in the same section and learn each other's names in about nine minutes, because you cannot stay anonymous in a room where a stranger has to count you in.
That single condition shrinks down to fit one room and one bell schedule. Four moves make it work:
Pick the one thing every student does, with zero opt-outs
Build it so kids who'd sooner eat a stapler than voluntarily speak to each other have to cooperate
Treat the skills it builds as the actual job, rather than the prize for finishing the job
Clear a real hour off your own plate first, because none of this survives 90 unread assignments and a Sunday
Jeffie's staff spent this year on that last one. One teacher built his own grading bot, which was somehow the least interesting thing about it.
"We need to spend more time analyzing the data rather than just gathering the data," she says.
An hour you save only counts if it lands somewhere. Otherwise the busywork moved to a nicer neighborhood.
Read Jeffie's full breakdown, including the three questions to ask before you plan the year.
The science of reading just got a sequel: Almost every state now requires or encourages evidence-based reading instruction, the legislative fight is basically over and national data show elementary readers are still struggling, with only a few states standing out. Meanwhile 18 states passed structured, intervention-oriented math laws between 2022 and 2025, so the sequel got greenlit before anybody finished reviewing the original. Your PD calendar already knows.
Two heavyweights on what the job actually is: Lisa Delpit and Christopher Emdin have a new book out, and their test for good teaching is borrowed from medicine. Nobody picks a doctor who shares their politics but cannot cure anything. Culture is the tool for delivering academics rather than a substitute for them, and they are blunt that doing right by kids the world has written off has always carried professional risk.
200 years and it's still one letter: For nearly two centuries, the report card has been the official answer to “how is my kid doing?” Two hundred years of iteration, and the deliverable is still a single letter with no baseline and no context, which families then read as proof of grade level. This one lays out what to send home instead.
The metric nobody puts on the dashboard: Franklin Square district in New York audited its literacy program and found passages teachers described as redundant, robotic and out of context, leaving young readers unmotivated, plus assessments given only a few times a year that measured kids against state benchmarks rather than their actual progress. Reading nothing, written by nobody, graded on enthusiasm. The rebuild kept teacher autonomy.
6-year-olds are already filing paperwork on themselves: First graders are forming beliefs about whether they are "math people," whether their ideas are worth saying out loud and what a mistake says about them as a learner. That entire identity gets assigned before anyone administers a placement test. The fix costs nothing and mostly involves letting them explain how they got there.
Recess has lobbyists now: Yup, you read that right. A Tennessee mom discovered her kindergartner got 20 minutes of recess a day, organized other parents and helped pass a state law requiring at least 40. Her nonprofit now has chapters in 20 states, and Michigan parents are petitioning for 60 minutes. Adults are testifying before legislatures to secure a child's right to go outside.
Did you know we’re on TikTok? And that we’re funny on TikTok? Both are true.
Looking to grade smarter not harder this year? Say no more.
Our CEO 🤝 an NHL legend. Watch here.
We’re hitting the road! Email [email protected] if you’ll be at any of the following conferences:
Sept 11: Napa Appreciation Event (CA)
Sept 18: Temecula Appreciation Event (CA)
Sept 24-25: Texas Leaders Round Up Event
Our pick of the week: Ted Lasso (Season 4)
Why We’re Obsessed: A man with no relevant credentials walks into a hostile building, learns everybody's name, refuses to be cruel about anything and somehow wins. That's either a coaching philosophy or a transcript of your first ever teaching job. Season 4 hands Ted Lasso a season with no easy wins left and makes him show up anyway, which stops being television around week six and turns into surveillance footage of October.
Recommended lesson integration:
Kindness as a trackable skill: Students name one specific nice thing a classmate did, with details, out loud. Harder than it sounds. Adults across every industry are terrible at this, which is the entire reason performance reviews exist.
Growth mindset with the poster taken down: Ted keeps players who are currently bad at things. Have students name something they were genuinely bad at last year and are now merely okay at. Okay is a promotion and should be celebrated accordingly (with snacks).
British vs. American English: Build a translation wall for biscuit, football, pants and boot. Then step back and let them argue about which country is wrong. Both delegations leave insulted, which is authentic diplomacy. Ragebait FTW!
Subtext and character motivation: Chart what Roy Kent says against what Roy Kent means. Excellent training for reading between lines, and for decoding an email that opens with "Just a quick question!!" and runs 900 words.
Leadership styles and team culture: Compare Ted's locker room with that of a coach who runs on fear and whistle volume. Ask students which one they'd play for, then which one they've actually had. The pause before they answer is the whole lesson and it grades itself.
Mental health vs. the myth of the guy who's fine: Ted has panic attacks and then goes to therapy about them, on purpose, repeatedly. Track what changes for him afterward. Absolutely no trust falls required.
Pick your poison for the first week back.
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