A research review by the Education Commission of the States finds that teachers' expectations—often based on factors including race, ethnicity, and family income levels—can significantly affect students' academic performance. Read Full Post >
Jonathan Kozol, at age 76, has new book out entitled Fire in the Ashes: Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children in America. In it, he looks yet again—reportedly in career-summation mode—at the devastating consequences of America's failure to provide equitable educational opportunities in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Read Full Post >
Washington Post education columnist Jay Mathews reports that a relatively under-the-radar Teacher Home Visit Program in Missouri is having a noticeable impact on student performance: A study by the St. Louis public school system last year of 616 home visits found that the third- to sixth-grade stu... Read Full Post >
Richard Whitmire, author of Why Boys Fail and one of our former opinion bloggers, writes in a USA Today column that "we need to stop lumping blacks and Hispanics together" when talking about ways to improve educational outcomes for minority students. By many measures, urban school districts are ma... Read Full Post >
According to the Los Angeles Times, Corona-Norco Unified School District, the 10th largest school system in California, has managed to avoid "the pitfalls common to similar districts with diverse student populations and budget constraints." Read Full Post >
Monday night, I had the chance to see Lisa Delpit, author of our upcoming Teacher Book Club selection, "Multiplication Is for White People:" Raising Expectations for Other People's Children, speak at a restaurant/performance space in Washington. The event, hosted by the nonprofit Teaching for Change... Read Full Post >
Live from the ASCD Annual Conference in Philadelphia It was pretty darn sunny in Philadelphia yesterday—record-breaking temperatures even for this time of year. It's cloudier now but I'll be inside for much of the next two days, along with 8,000 or so educators attending the annual ASCD confer... Read Full Post >
On his blog Borderland, teacher Doug Noon laments the reading assignment he was given over the winter break—Ruby Payne's Framework for Understanding Poverty. He writes: This is to prepare us for the indoctrination session [part of his school's improvement plan] to follow upon our return from o... Read Full Post >
Renee Moore, an award-winning educator in Mississippi, tells the story of a talented young African-American history teacher of her aquaintance who is being driven out of the profession because of his frustration with a state-appointed teaching consultant at his school. Read Full Post >
Riffing on the Occupy Wall Street movement, New York Times human rights columnist Nicholas Kristof argues that the most effective way to reduce inequality in the United States would actually be to expand early child education. Kristof reports—as any elementary teacher already knows—that si... Read Full Post >
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