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Tag Archives: education and politics
School Reform: Tough to Measure and Hostage to Heightened Poverty
Summary: What is the report card on school reform? Test scores, mediocre at best, are too narrow a measure, though useful. Project based deep learning and interventions that motivate students are important, but difficult to measure. Increasing poverty and income … Continue reading
At Risk Kids: A Road Map to Intervention
Summary: Children of poverty often need more intensive services to succeed in school; a blueprint for doing so out of the University of Oregon School of Education merits a review.
Design Thinking and What At Risk Kids Need
Summary: Design thinking arrives in a big way at IBM to empower employees to work closely with customers to design the next wave of IBM products. Might the same process illuminate the real needs of at risk, under performing kids, … Continue reading
Schools and Politics: In Epitaph Of A Tale Told By An Idiot
Summary: The demise of No Child Left Behind together with the rise of Every Student Succeeds acknowledges the limits of federal power and corporately inspired test measurement, targets funding to lower performing groups, and shifts the balance of policy power … Continue reading
Schools and Poverty: The Good News from King County, Washington
Summary: In a flash of progressiveness, the voters of King County (Seattle) have levied themselves a substantial sum to lift children born to poverty, and may yet more fully put their money to their famously progressive mouth. Perhaps it has … Continue reading
Posted in At Risk Students, Schools and Politics
Tagged at risk students, Best Starts for Kids, Dow Constatine, education and politics, education research, foster kids, Harlem Childrens' Zone, Jessyn Farrell, low-income students, parent support, poverty, preschool, school funding, teen clinics
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Schools and Culture: Beyond Separate and Unequal
Summary: Acceleration in the mortality rate among low income white males due to suicide and drug abuse holds a mirror up to a war on drugs which targeted disproportionately the black community. The comparison puts in relief the distance between … Continue reading
Posted in At Risk Students, Schools and Culture
Tagged at risk students, black white relationship, desegregation, education and politics, heroin epidemic, interracial relationships, low-income students, police community relations, resegregation, social communication, teaching, war on drugs
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Let Us Not Be Blamed: A Meditation on the State of Teacher Unionism, Corporate America, and Poverty
Summary: Unions are targeted by corporate based reformers as the bad guy, and do need to take better charge of the debate, but the real culprit at base is the political failure to impact poverty. Maureen (we shall call her) … Continue reading
Charter Schools: Russakov’s The Prize, and Lessons from Newark
Summary: Dale Russakov’s tale of the assault by reformers on Newark Schools is a saga of conflict, righteous myopia, entrenched interests, unintended consequences, upheaval in neighborhoods, grudging progress, and a rending of social fabric; yet in the end no easy … Continue reading
Schools and Politics: Seattle Teachers Strike and Aim to Be Players
Summary: The Seattle Teachers’ strike has ended with advances in salary and working conditions, but also in agreements that address quality of schooling for kids, such as disproportionate discipline for kids of color and, in general, suspension as a tool … Continue reading
Posted in Schools and Politics
Tagged at risk students, Dale Russakoff, disproportionate discipline, education and politics, empowering teachers, low-income students, parent support, school funding, school reform, Seattle Teachers strike, teacher morale, teacher pay, teachers' unions, Testing
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School Reform and Politics: The Lessons of LBJ and the Pedernales
Summary: Truly radical government intervention seems to occur at moments of raggedness in the social fabric, such as in the aftermath of the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. At what point do the struggles of our … Continue reading
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