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Category Archives: School Reform
Discipline and Students of Color: the Ecology of Student Experience
You are a student of color in a large American high school, perhaps also a recent immigrant. A friend of yours has run afoul a school code; let us say by talking disrespectfully, out of control, to a teacher. Continue reading
Posted in At Risk Students, School Reform, Schools and Culture, Schools and Politics
Tagged alternative schools, charter schools, disproportionate discipline, econlogy of schools, ecosystem of schools, iGrad, school funding, staff mix school funding, students of color, Suspension, unconscious bias, Washington State Legislature
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Mindfulness and the Low Income Brain Drain
Mindfulness and meditation emerge as one tool in schools’ slow grapple with the psychological and neurobiological consequences of poverty in student lives. Continue reading
Yes, Betsy DeVos, Public Schools Do Make Gains
In this new climate where educators anticipate a Betsy DeVos assault on public schools, it is well to publicize success stories in the public school arena Continue reading
I Am A Teachers’ Union Man (With An Asterisk)
Against a decline of unions in general, scant evidence exists for charges from free market types that teachers unions are a chief hindrance to school reform. But there is room for teachers’ unions to be more effective school change agents. Continue reading
After All These Years, Separate Still Looks Unequal
Resegration of American neighborhoods leaves kids of color disproportionately exposed to the challenges of growing up in homogeneously poor neighborhoods and going to inferior schools. Comparisons to their poor white counterparts show the latter more likely to live in economically mixed neighborhoods with correspondingly better schools. Will one day we hear renewed calls to desegregation of schools and communities? Continue reading
Posted in School Reform, Schools and Culture, Schools and Politics
Tagged African American graduation rate, Black Lives Matter, cognitive emotional development, desegregation, detrack, heterogeneous grouping, high poverty neighborhoods, low income kids of color, poor white students, resegregation, separate but unequal
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Betsy DeVos, the Force Behind Detroit School Chaos
With apparently good intentions to help kids trapped in “low wattage” schools, Betsy DeVos, a champion of charters and school choice, by leverage of her family’s financial and political clout, has engineered changes in Michigan schools that have lowered their standing, and undercut the viability of Detroit schools. She has been tapped as Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education. Continue reading
People Power and the Rebound of Low Income Kids
Hands on school experience has joined with neuroscience and social science to prescribe quality relationships in the school lives of struggling low income students. Continue reading
Posted in At Risk Students, School Reform
Tagged behavior problems suspension attendance, executive brain development, human relationships wayward kids, low income child frontal cortex, low income child frontal lobe, plasticity brain, quality relationships low income students, students belonging agency competence, support stressed parents
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