My daughter is losing her computer teacher to a budget cut. Well, maybe. The principal tells us that the teacher is okay with it. The district tells us that in fact there is no cut. But explanations ring hollow when you’re upset and looking for someone to blame, and so the question became: in a funding fight, in a system as complex as education, who is to blame?

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The issue of school segregation – particularly, the trend toward re-segregation – is once again in the news in Boston, with a Boston Globe analysis finding that 60 percent of schools were “intensely segregated” (defined as at least 90 percent students of color). This was up from 42 percent of schools two decades ago....

For 35 years, Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences (MI Theory) has reassured us that people are more than the sum of any intelligence test. MI Theory has found special resonance among educators, who every day see tremendous variation in what students do well and where they struggle.

In addition to helping us understand individuals, MI Theory may also be instructive for how we understand schools. After all, schools...