Tag Archives: at risk students

School Bureaucracy: Behind the Walkout at Garfield High

Summary: The common practice in school districts that adjusts student-teacher ratios a month into school retards the learning process, distracts teachers and counselors from more important work, and in the end simply harms students, some more than others. The practice … Continue reading

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African American Kids and School Based Reparations

Summary: Ta-Nehisi Coates calls in the recent Atlantic for reparative dialogue, and even financial recompense for the long American history of slavery and Jim Crow. An educational superfund that supports the educational turnaround of poor and at risk kids of … Continue reading

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School Reform: Build In Support and They Will Come

Summary: Presidential directives and court cases are useful, but good teachers know schools of poverty will burn out their energies without well designed support for their efforts. The drumbeat of reform has a new cause. Since quality teachers are the … Continue reading

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School Bureaucracy: Lessons from the VA and GM

Summary: The current debacles at the Veterans’ Administration and General Motors, and the parallel inability of upper management to solicit data from grass roots workers, may well mirror the deaf ear of too many senior school administrators to teacher point … Continue reading

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At-Risk Students: Follow the Money

Summary: Incentive systems for school districts to retrieve and hold dropouts are themselves dysfunctional. Yet, in committed communities dropout retrieval efforts are succeeding. “Follow the money.” Normally a line uttered on a TV crime show, a recent Education Week article … Continue reading

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Schools and Culture: Boys in Disarray

Summary: The struggles of boys in today’s American schools reflect historical assaults on their self-image and the erosion of legitimate authority in the culture. It was an impressive group of kids, these seniors at my high school outside of Seattle. … Continue reading

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School Reform: Once Again A Tale of Teacher Power

Summary: Amid the relative merits of “direct instruction” and “inquiry” approaches to curriculum, a narrative emerges that suggests teacher empowerment may be the more important variable. In the ongoing assault on school dysfunction, debate rages between those who advocate “direct … Continue reading

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At Risk Kids and the College Game

Summary: Low income kids often are first in their family to contemplate college, and so lack the fund of family college information taken for granted by middle and upper class students. Their back up option, the guidance of their high … Continue reading

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At Risk Students: Changes in the SAT Amount to Nothing Useful

Summary: New changes in the SAT serve only to respond to increased market share on the part of the ACT, and distract from the business of improving schools and stimulating at risk students to make use of opportunities before them. … Continue reading

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At Risk Low Income Students: Sometime Victims of a Blame Game

Summary: Stereotypical assumptions about low income kids should not cloud the will to social investment, via schools, in their economic future. Yesterday I visited with an old friend and neighbor in a community in which I had lived for 35 … Continue reading

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