Summary: 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
Recent Comments
People Power and the Rebound of Low Income Kids
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
Leave a comment
History Lessons and Poor White Kids
Summary: Colonial British class attitudes linger yet in the challenges facing rural and small town white poor. Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir of Appalachian poverty, reminds that the lot of poor white kids in school follows remarkably similar patterns to that of their similarly challenged poor black and brown brothers and sisters. Continue reading
Charters Revisited: It’s a Broad Spectrum Out There or, The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
Summary: Charter horror stories in Newark and Detroit mask a Stanford CREDO report that finds charters outperforming traditional public schools in many areas of the country. That same CREDO report however is critiqued as statistically flawed; in truth charters may benefit kids of better organized low income families, but their selection processes leave the more intractable of the poor languishing in low performing urban schools. Continue reading
Posted in Charter Schools, School Reform
Tagged charter debate, charter success, charters pull funding, CREDO report, Detroit charter schools, kids of poverty, low-income students, market solutions for school failure, Massachusetts charter schools, organized low income families, public schools flounder fiscally, substandard public schools
Leave a comment
Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA): Will the States Address the Role of Poverty in School Reform?
Summary: ESSA, the new federal education act, puts more authority in the hands of the states. Will (finally) the role and conditions of poverty be addressed in kids’ learning? Will old mistakes continue? Are well vetted approaches such as Richard DuFour’s Professional Learning Communities going to be enough? Continue reading
Posted in At Risk Students, School Reform
Tagged development frontal cortex kids, Every Student Succeeds Act poverty, kids poverty unprepared school, legacy No Child Left Behind, low performing schools, quality early childhood education, Richard DuFour, role of poverty school reform, stresses of poverty, support new mothers, testing results evaluate teachers
Leave a comment
Do We Miss the Forest for the Trees? What Vital School Reform and Change for Kids is Percolating Under the Radar?
Summary: Does the economic and social vitality in abundant evidence in locales across the country, but beneath the national radar, parallel equally vital school and kid centered programming that so far has failed to register in national educational statistics? Maybe so.
Continue reading
Posted in At Risk Students, School Reform
Tagged black graduate matriculate, early childhood education, economic social vitality, innovative curricula, lead levels affect development, low income readiness school, mentors low income students, poverty predations, school relationships, shift social contract, skill emotional development
2 Comments
More Reflections on Change by a Veteran Teacher Still Going After Many Years of School Reform
Summary: This continues my sister-in-law Ticia’s reflections on changes she’s seen in forty years of elementary teaching, which include the school reform movement. Last post focused on changes in kids over that time; this one ponders shifts in support services and resources, as well as building climate and teacher autonomy. Continue reading
Posted in School Reform
Tagged changes school climate, effects poverty school progress, Florida class size, instructional aides classroom assist, low income school, online resources workshops curricula, reflections change veteran teacher years school reform, South Florida No Child Left Behind, support services for special education, teacher micromanaged, technology kids' learning, testing disturbing questions learning
1 Comment
Many Years of School Reform: A Veteran Teacher Reflects on Changes in Kids and the Classroom
Summary: My sister-in-law Ticia, a quality second grade teacher in a largely low income public elementary school in Florida, visited my wife and me recently. Our conversation turned into her veteran reflection about the changes she’s experienced in over forty years of teaching. Here be the gist. Much will not be news to other deep veterans, or even somewhat experienced observers, but hopefully will serve as a reflection on where we have arrived after some tumultuous decades of reform. Continue reading
See the Kids of Color
Summary: Paintings of young people by Kehinde Wiley are an opportunity to move beyond racial stereotypes and into contemplation of real lives. Continue reading
schooldog 