Alan Blankstein

Alan Blankstein is an educational leader, bestselling author of Failure Is Not an Option, and founder of the HOPE Foundation, an organization dedicated to supporting educational leaders in building high-performing schools where every student succeeds regardless of background. Formerly a disadvantaged youth himself, he brings personal conviction to his commitment that background should never determine a child’s destiny.

Failure Is Not an Option

Blankstein’s book Failure Is Not an Option has become one of the most influential texts in American education reform, providing research-based strategies and practical frameworks for transforming struggling schools into thriving institutions. His work focuses on building professional learning communities, creating collaborative teacher cultures, and implementing the systemic changes that produce breakthrough improvements in student achievement across all demographics. He has worked with thousands of schools and districts across the country and internationally over the course of his career.

Transforming Schools Through Collaborative Leadership

Blankstein’s presentations inspire and equip education leaders at every level with practical, research-based frameworks for ensuring success for all students regardless of background or circumstance. His keynotes deliver research-based strategies for building professional learning communities that drive student achievement, transforming struggling schools into high-performing institutions through collaborative leadership, educational equity and the practices that ensure success for every student, and the leadership principles that create lasting meaningful school improvement and systemic change.

Failure Is Not an Option®: Building Sustainable Improvement

While the press spotlights charismatic leaders as the solution, research shows that this lasts only as long as that leader’s tenure. Significant early gains and sustainable improvement need not present a dichotomy to school administrators today.

How can school systems make sustainable, scalable improvement in teacher effectiveness to support school and district improvement goals? The best kept secret in education today is that the answer is already in the room. The question is how to build a culture of trust and collaboration to spread the good things already happening within a district to all its schools. In this session, Alan Blankstein will draw on 15 years of research and a decade-long track record in the field to demonstrate how six principles can act as a system and as a framework to build and leverage the work of leadership teams so that Failure Is Not an Option for any student.

The Answer Is in the Room: How Effective Schools Scale Up Student Success

Presentation on how to build leadership communities within and between schools and districts, how to create schools where failure is not an option, and what it takes to turn schools around and continually improve schools that are already good. The  session is for everyone and is an engaging, humorous keynote that provides a foundation for creating a high-performing school culture based on Failure Is Not an Option: Six Principles that Guide Student Success in High-Performing Schools. Examples go from teaching to leadership strategies. Content is based on two decades of research and one decade of field-tested practice in districts throughout the world – much of which is encapsulated in the award-winning Failure Is Not an Option ®, and the newly released The Answer Is in the Room: How Effective Schools Scale Up Student Success.

Reaching Hard-to-Reach Students