Creating Equitable Classrooms with Mike Cronley

In this episode, host Jethro Jones interviews Mike Cronley, founder and CEO of Class Composer, about how his software helps create equitable classrooms. They discuss the challenges faced by educators in balancing class compositions and how Class Composer addresses these issues.

• Getting the right kids in the right places in elementary school
• Focus on behavior and then start overloading based on other characteristics. 
• Rarely changed once the school year starts. 
• Classroom imbalance can impact the school for much longer than just the school year. 
• Teachers are happy with the output. 
• People weren’t starters but they make an impact. 

About Mike Cronley

While some big ideas are born in the boardroom, others are born in the lunchroom. In his 12 years teaching third grade near Denver, Colorado, Mike shared the frustrations of many colleagues enduring inequitable classes – for example, classes having an imbalance of low readers or students with challenging behavior. 

These imbalances weren’t surprising, given the student placement process was done with pink and blue paper cards. Over lunch one day in 2007, the school’s music teacher was venting to Mike about some unruly students who mistakenly ended up in her class together, even though they were supposed to have been separated based on their disruptive behavior the year before. 

Wouldn’t it be great, they mused, if there were some software to create class lists and avoid these basic errors? As a self-professed technology geek, Mike started dreaming about the possibility of creating his own solution. That dream grew into an obsession, and he found himself spending evenings and weekends consumed by research – driving his wife crazy. 

The result was Class Composer, software built on Mike’s tech savvy, his teacher’s perspective, and his commitment to creating positive learning environments. 

Mike, who received his B.S. in Psychology from the Ohio State University and an elementary teaching certificate from the University of Colorado Denver, is no longer in the classroom, but is an educator at heart who loves making a positive impact on the lives of teachers and students. 

He lives in Boulder, Colorado with his wife and two poodles, and he loves to ski, bike, and camp with his family, including his college-age son and daughter.

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