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Steven has been profiled in the New York Times and the New Yorker. His work has been covered in these publications and the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, the Hechinger Report, Frontline, Boston Magazine, Fast Company, Inc., and many other outlets.
The Branch Media
LOST DEBATE WITH RAVI GUPTA
education reform’s identity crisis
Ravi sits down with Steven for a candid conversation about his new book, The Lost Decade, and the current state of education reform. They reflect on what’s changed in schools over the past decade, exploring the tension between pushing for academic excellence and navigating a fast-changing cultural and political landscape. They also unpack what it means to build school cultures that are both rigorous and inclusive, the role funders play in defining priorities, and why it’s more important than ever to have honest, and sometimes uncomfortable, conversations about the future of education.
The 74 MiLlion
Federal Courts Block Education Department From Pulling Funds Over DEI
Linda Jacobson, April 24, 2025
Steven speaks out against the Trump Administration’s threat to cut federal fundings to schools and districts that engage in “illegal” DEI practices. Illiberalism on the Left must not be met with illiberalism on the Right.
The New York Times
He’s a Foe of D.E.I. in Schools but Not a Fan of Trump’s Crusade
Ginia Bellafante, April 25, 2025
Ginia Bellafante talks with Steven about the dismaying results of social justice education, the urgent need to extend a vibrant liberal arts education to all students, and the misguided attempt by the Trump adminisrtation to ban “DEI.”
The New York Times
Why Some of the Country’s Best Urban Schools Are Facing a Reckoning
Eliza Shapiro, July 5, 2019
Steven Wilson, the chief executive of a Brooklyn-based charter school network, Ascend, scrapped his charters’ rigid approach to discipline. “We wanted to blow all that up,” he said. “We wanted to hear students talking, exchanging ideas, taking intellectual risks.”
J. David Ake/Getty Images
Gabby Jones for the New York Times
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
The ATLANTIC
Prioritizing the Arts Over Test Prep
Sara Neufeld, April 27, 2015
In an age when public education has become synonymous with high-stakes exams, an inner-city charter-school network is using culture and creative expression to teach the Common Core standards. Do the arts go hand in hand with the Common Core? An inner-city charter network pushes culture over test prep.
A gallery lesson at Brooklyn Ascend Middle School. Photo courtesy Ascend Learning
The New York Times
A Brooklyn charter school looks past “No Excuses”
Ginia Bellafante, March 9, 2017
Ascend’s founder and chairman, Steven Wilson, inspired by the Black Lives Matter phenomenon and the national conversation around mass incarceration, was questioning the network’s approach and had begun to make changes. Some other charter networks were starting to move in this direction as well, but Ascend, according to James Merriman, head of the New York City Charter School Center, remains the only one in New York City to have formalized an entirely new and progressive system of managing behavior.
Courtesy Ascend Learning