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Author Archives: schooldog
School Culture: The “Disagreeable Giver” and the Culture of Continuous Improvement
Summary: Can evidence of successful leadership style in the corporate world be transplanted to schools and kick start a culture of continuous improvement? Do nice guys and gals finish last and ultimately assholes prevail in the race to the mantle … Continue reading
School Suspension Reform and the Real School
Summary: As any reform, change in suspension practices will need to be founded upon staff cohesion and communication, a clearly thought out plan that includes both the mentoring of students and accountability for their actions, and sufficient adult people power … Continue reading
School Reform: Race and Class and Suspension
Summary: Suspension from school for misbehavior has long contributed to chronic school failure particularly for African American and low income students. Alternatives to suspension are cropping up in various locales, many of which seem to intervene with more intensive and … Continue reading
School Reform: Listen Deeply to What Teachers Know
Summary: Recent research identifies truths about kids and pedagogy that have long been embedded in the practice of American educators. Time is long past to act more consistently on teacher insights. The American teacher is targeted from some sectors as … Continue reading
Posted in At Risk Students, School Reform, Schools and Politics
Tagged Adverse Childhood Experiences, at risk students, education and politics, educational research, empowering teachers, phonetic reading, school reform, teacher knowledge, teacher professionalism, teaching, trauma in students
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At Risk Kids: In-School Suspension Re-Imagined
Summary: With calls to find alternatives to exclusion of disciplined students from school, in-school suspension might serve as a vehicle through which adult staff and mentors can work with suspended students in a constructive fashion. In my mind’s eye I … Continue reading
Posted in At Risk Students, School Reform
Tagged Adverse Childhood Experiences, at risk students, dropouts, failure of suspended students, film Paper Tigers, in-school suspension, James Redford, low-income students, relationships in schools, school funding, school reform, student resilience, suspension from school
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At Risk Kids: Keeping Them in the Game
Summary: Building of relationships with at risk kids and seeing their misbehavior as an expression of difficulties in their history can short circuit suspension and retain them as part of the school community. This people intensive approach requires deepened funding. … Continue reading
School Reform Begins at Conception
Summary: Emerging research on “fetal origins of disease” poses a challenge to school reform and public policy. In this era of rapid changes in social consciousness, a man with African American heritage is president, and gay and lesbian folk are … Continue reading
Posted in At Risk Students, School Reform, Schools and Politics
Tagged African Americans in poverty, at risk students, education, fetal origins of disease, institutional racism, low-income students, poverty and stress, pregnancy leave, school reform, stress and unborn child, stress on pregnant women
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Schools and Culture: Our People in Cuba
Summary: Being part travel guide, part educator, your correspondent places Cuban educational reforms and practice at the center of a recent visit to Cuba. Our full sized Chinese tour bus, improbably ill-suited to the narrow and tangled streets of Santiago, … Continue reading
At Risk Students and School Reform: Will High Expectations Be Enough?
Summary: An impressive turnaround in enrollment, academic atmosphere, and graduation rate at Seattle’s Rainier Beach High School apparently stems from a decision a few years ago to establish an International Baccalaureate program at the school. While high expectations of student … Continue reading
Schools and Politics: The Feds, the Locals, and School Reform
Summary: As with institutional racism, as with health care, in educational quality the federal government often is the court of necessary remedy where local leadership fails to guarantee equal protection to the disenfranchised. In the recent Conservative Political Action Conference … Continue reading
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