Every person in a school sees something real. But no one sees the whole school alone.

Corey Alderdice, a national voice in talent and transformation, opens the Seeing the Whole School series by exploring how every role in a school comes with a distinct line of sight. Teachers, counselors, coaches, students, families, board members, advancement officers, civic partners, and school leaders each experience the institution from a particular vantage point. The challenge is that these views, while true, are also incomplete.

In this episode, Alderdice introduces the Proximity and Purpose Continuum as a way to understand how schools must connect the work closest to students with the work that sustains the institution. At its heart, this episode invites educators and stakeholders to approach the new school year with humility, curiosity, and a renewed commitment to seeing beyond the part of the school closest to them.

For additional thoughts from Corey, visit coreyalderdice.com.

You can also follow him on Twitter/X, LinkedIn, BlueSky, YouTube, Instagram, and Threads.

Every summer, America seems to have the same argument about New York City's elite specialized high schools. But what if the real debate isn't about admissions at all—it's about asking one kind of school to serve two fundamentally different educational missions?

Corey Alderdice, a national voice on talent and transformation, explores the decades-long controversy surrounding schools like Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, and Brooklyn Tech through a different lens. Drawing on research in gifted education and his own experience leading a selective residential STEM school, Corey argues that identifying talent and developing talent are distinct organizational competencies that often require different institutional designs. Rather than forcing every specialized school to pursue the same mission, he proposes a broader ecosystem of excellence—one that preserves legacy institutions built to accelerate highly prepared students while imagining a new generation of opportunity-focused schools designed to cultivate extraordinary potential. In the collision between excellence and opportunity, perhaps the future of specialized education isn't choosing one over the other, but building enough pathways for both.

For additional thoughts from Corey, visit coreyalderdice.com.

You can also follow him on Twitter/X, LinkedIn, BlueSky, YouTube, Instagram, and Threads.

Arkansas may be emerging as one of the nation’s most ambitious laboratories for early college. Through the ACCESS Act, expanded concurrent-credit funding, a statewide goal for more students to earn associate degrees in high school, stronger transfer pathways, and performance-based funding tied to completion, the state is assembling many of the policy elements national researchers now recommend.

In this bonus double-sized episode, Corey Alderdice, a national voice on talent and transformation, examines how Arkansas aligns with the Community College Research Center’s five recommendations for dual enrollment policy, where the state’s approach appears especially distinctive, and which challenges remain around advising, equitable access, institutional funding, faculty capacity, and long-term outcomes. This bonus episode asks whether Arkansas can move beyond expanding college credit to become a national model for postsecondary completion.

For additional thoughts from Corey, visit coreyalderdice.com.

You can also follow him on Twitter/X, LinkedIn, BlueSky, YouTube, Instagram, and Threads.