Alan M. Blankstein

Alan M. Blankstein is the author of Failure Is Not an Option^® (Corwin Press, 2004) and 9 volumes of the Soul of Education Leadership series.

Alan Blankstein, a former “high risk” youth, began his career in education as a music teacher and has worked in youth-serving organizations since 1983, including the March of Dimes, Phi Delta Kappa, and Solution Tree, which he founded in 1987 and directed for 12 years.

Alan is Founder and President of the HOPE Foundation (Harnessing Optimism and Potential through Education), a not-for-profit organization, the Honorary Chair of which is Nobel Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The HOPE Foundation has a more than decade-long track record of helping leaders create school cultures where “failure is not an option” for any student.

Alan launched the professional learning communities’ movement through HOPE first by bringing W. Edwards Deming and later, Peter Senge into the educational arena, and then by publishing seminal works on the topic. A prolific author, Alan’s works include Failure Is Not an Option®: Six Principles that Guide Student Achievement in High Performing Schools, which won the NSDC (now Learning Forward) Book of the Year award. With more than 300,000 copies in circulation, it is now the gold standard in creating and sustaining learning communities.

Additionally, Alan is publisher of four Failure Is Not an Option® (FNO) video series and, with Paul Houston, is senior editor of the 13-volume The Soul of Educational Leadership series. His latest book, The Answer is in the Room: How Effective Schools Scale Up Student Success (2011), is in press.

Alan has also provided keynote addresses throughout the UK, South Africa, the Middle East, Canada, and for virtually every major educational organization in the US.

Alan served on the Harvard International Principals’ Center’s advisory board, as board member for the Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health, as Co-Chair of Indiana University’s Neal Marshall Black Culture Center’s Community Network, and as advisor to the Faculty and Staff for Student Excellence (FASE) mentoring program. He also served as advisory board member for the Forum on Race, Equity, and Human Understanding with the Monroe County Schools in Indiana and on the Board of Trustees for the Jewish Child Care Agency (JCCA), where he was once a youth in residence.

For more information about Alan Blankstein see below articles:

Alan Blankstein: "Betting on me"  
Alan Blankstein: How to Jumpstart Reform