Nick Covington

Progressive education is a world-building project rooted in the radical hope that schools can become something fit for human beings.

A look back at our most popular articles, podcasts, videos, and resources from 2025 and a look ahead at what's to come in 2026!

We are excited to share a new service from Human Restoration Project that allows us to listen and learn from young people in ways not possible before.

How can John Dewey’s ideal of a thriving democratic education revitalize an American commitment to freedom and democracy?

We're reimagining what's possible using student voice in our professional development.

“There comes a point when some of the field’s most basic models of learning no longer serve society well; we have reached that point.”

Human Restoration Project is looking for teachers interested in traveling, teaching, and learning in Poland this Summer!

Human Restoration Project announces Education and Innovation Research grant from US Dept of Education

The varied and dynamic nature of learning environments necessitates a more flexible and holistic approach. 

Literacy doesn’t come in a box, we’ll never find our kids at the bottom of a curriculum package, and there can be no broad support for systemic change that excludes input from and support for teachers implementing these programs in classrooms with students. 

Nick Covington & Michael Weingarth call for a moratorium on using "The Science of Learning" to describe one aspect of how the brain works in relation to the multiple goals of school.

A partnership on feedback-driven learning.

The takeover of Houston ISD sits at the intersection of so many issues impacting American education today: democratic backsliding and the rise of authoritarianism; the so-called “parents’ rights movement”; testing and accountability measures; poverty, racism, and charter schools. We would be wise to understand what’s happening in Houston as a canary in the coal mine.

We must stand with each other and with young people if we are to sustain the intergenerational project of America; if we are to keep the lights on, and the sea at bay. 

The latest from Human Restoration Project! Let's restore humanity, together. An overview of our upcoming conferences, recently released videos, and summary of content releases.

The simple act of having hope for a better future breaks the doom-loop and builds a platform for action.

We break down our favorite books on progressive education.

Deconstructing what test scores actually mean.

This update showcases our progress on our Human-Centered Interdisciplinary Subject, a project in creating an actionable cross-disciplinary, holistic course.

It's past time to demand a conference model that is accessible, sustainable, and representative of the communities we serve.

Our goal is to answer the question: how can we prepare learners for a world that needs them to enact change?

As laws targeting so-called “divisive topics” intimidate and threaten teachers for having formal conversations and curriculum on these topics, we have to ask ourselves, if we aren’t talking to kids about the impact of these deadly ideas, who is?

Engaging in a collective movement toward debt cancellation.

Csikszentmihalyi’s blind spot is a critical one: that poverty is a cause of inattention and a lack of cognitive resources, not an effect.

What are the tenets guiding the unmaking of public education, what are the aims of the unmakers, and what is there for the rest of us to be worried about?

What is it about the world that is worth preparing students for, and are we dedicated to the work of building that better world alongside them?

What is this “toxic propaganda” the White House and Senate are taking action over, and what are the consequences of having CRT banned from our schools and public institutions?

This is a recap of our asynchronous professional development session, where we worked as a cohort to develop actions and solutions for equitable practices in our classrooms.

This is an overview of our August 1st Summit with Inspire Citizens (Donna Guerin, Steve Sostak, Kavita Tanna), Out of the Blocks (Aaron Henkin, Wendel Patrick), and Evan Whitehead!

This past week, Human Restoration Project has had the honor of presenting this workshop on ungrading and liberatory pedagogy at Digital Pedagogy Lab 2020. Here's an overview of the activities we covered, what we learned, and resources to share!

No analogy is perfect, but I think we can use fishing as an example of an experience where the philosophy of universal design, combined with the support of experienced and conscientious adults, can help us develop a classroom learning experience that achieves the goal of UDL.

What we absolutely can and should do, however, is define our work as educators biased toward life-affirming, student-centered, inclusive praxis and create a space where we can do the work of reversing the decomposition... a Radical Hope.

Do specialists actually get better with experience or not, and is narrow, deliberate practice the only way to achieve greatness in a given field?

In this article I’ll look at the movement of undergrad and graduate programs away from standardized assessments, unpack new research into our assumptions about standardized test scores as predictors of college completion, and challenge listeners to re-rethink “What’s in a grade?”

In this article I’ll unpack the criticisms and limits of “what works” in what we call evidence-based educational research and practice.

For those who believe the measure of a quality education can be distilled into an assessment score, the last 20 years of data must be intensely disappointing.

...constructivism has been a consistent but controversial and often caricatured counterweight to the recurring top-down reform movements — rooted in accountability and standardized test scores — that have defined the last 30 years of the educational debate.

In contrast with the methods books I had read for coursework and professional development, Kohn’s voice spoke to me with an urgency, a moral weight and clarity which framed dry topics.

...white rage through the most explosive periods in America’s racial history, which the reader comes to understand through the brutal clarity and consistent facts of the historical narrative.

This year I challenged my sophomore AP Euro students as we headed into the final weeks of class: Put your best foot forward.

This is the kind of learning that is possible if we unencumber our classrooms from complicated instructional strategies...

We were trapped in the circular logic and language of letter grades and points: I got an A so I must have learned it, and I know I learned it because I got an A.

But writing “My Pragmatic Journey…” wasn’t just an exercise, it served as a clarification of my values and my role as a teacher.

Yet my journey to student voice and choice in the classroom was born out of an intense frustration that what I and my co-teacher were spending hours planning, and daily troubleshooting, just wasn’t having the impact we were intending.