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It’s March 11, 2014. Welcome to the inaugural morning update from RealClearEducation. Below you will find just a handful of the news stories, commentaries, and reports leading our site this morning. But the best content lives on our site – there’s plenty more at RealClearEducation.com, and we’ll update with more throughout the day. Also on our front page this morning: the first column by RealClearEducation columnist Dan Willingham and a Morning Commute interview with Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO), where he talks Bill de Blasio and New York.  All week we’ll post video from that interview on a range of issues.

RealClearEducation officially launches tomorrow morning at an event in Washington, D.C. featuring a great lineup of panelists to discuss key issues. It’s not too late to RSVP if you’d like to join us, but space is limited. 

If you’re not sure what we’re up to, here’s a short editor’s note describing more about what you can expect from RealClearEducation. 

It’s a fitting day to launch this newsletter, which will preview the day each weekday. On this date 191 years ago, Samuel Read Hall opened the first teacher training school in the United States. Hall had agreed to come to Concord, Vt. to serve as a pastor but only with an agreement that he could launch such a school. 

Almost two centuries later, how to train teachers is a hotbed of controversy. It’s just one of many debates in education that frequently give off more heat than light. That probably wouldn’t make sense to Hall.  He was homeschooled, but later taught at a private school, and obviously believed in teacher training.  In other words, he cut across various parts of this sector.

We’ll try to do that, too.