A new report by LFA and Grunwald Associates, with support from AT&T, examines how parents perceive the value of mobile devices, how they see their children using mobiles, and what they think of the possibilities for mobile learning.
Equity
Blog Entries
Wealthy districts in California are beginning to levy so-called "parcel taxes," or flat fees on property, to offset big budget shortfalls. Meanwhile, poorer districts have few or no options for raising extra money, and so the gap between rich and poor grows at the worst possible time.
I don't mean to begrudge the wealthier districts their will to shore up school budgets in lean times. As one school board member in a wealthy district told the Wall Street Journal, "We're very, very fortunate that our community is supportive of our schools."
Still, the growing disparity reminds us that the poorest schools are often most vulnerable to economic shocks. They receive a double blow. Rising homelessness, hunger and student mobility intensify students' needs. Poverty limits schools' ability to address those needs. ...
The education thinktankocracy has become bewitched by all those sexy innovations that dominate education policy discussions--charter schools, new compensation systems, etc. The national preoccupation with those innovations is crowding out critical discussions of more hum-drum, but perhaps more effective, improvements to public education. That's the conclusion Russ Whitehurst draws in an important March 2009 essay.
For those of you who don't know, Whitehurst was the beleaguered director of the Institute of Education Sciences in the Bush administration. It seems he has spread his wings since becoming head of the Brookings Institution's Brown Center on Education Policy.
In his Brookings essay, Whitehurst draws an important distinction between flashy new innovations ("product innovations") and incremental ...
There seems to be no escape from the phony debate over whether schools alone or out-of-school social programs alone can close achievement gaps. Recently, David Brooks fanned the flames with his over-hasty conclusion that the success of the Harlem Children’s Zone’s Promise Academies bolsters the schools alone case.
Brooks distorted the conclusions of a recent Harvard study examining the academies' academic results. Responding to a chorus of complaints about Brooks's tactics, blogger Andy Rotherham fine tuned the argument a bit: “It’s the schools that actually matter most even in the HCZ [Harlem Children's Zone] model," he declared. To be fair, Rotherham isn't pulling his conclusions entirely out of thin air. The study's authors suggest that the Promise Academies are an indispensable ingredient of their students' success--and that the HCZ's wraparound services alone don't guarantee strong academic results.
But Rotherham and other Brooks supporters don't ask the essential follow-up question: Can the schools do it alone, without the HCZ model? The study’s authors ...
Yesterday morning, I emerged long enough from our newborn's diapers and wipes to catch up on some reading. My jaw dropped when I came across this paragraph from David Brooks's Friday op-ed:
[The impressive results of charter schools in the Harlem Children's Zone] are powerful evidence in a long-running debate. Some experts, mostly surrounding the education establishment, argue that schools alone can’t produce big changes. The problems are in society, and you have to work on broader issues like economic inequality. Reformers, on the other hand, have argued that school-based approaches can produce big results. The Harlem Children’s Zone results suggest the reformers are right.
What?!?
Did Brooks really just argue that the Harlem Children's Zone's success supports the schools alone approach championed by "reformers"? That's like arguing that the Surgeon General's reports discredit the link between smoking and cancer. ...
Today, esteemed education historian Diane Ravitch condemned the political misappropriation of the recent McKinsey Report on the economic costs of low educational achievement. Apparently, some have made the extraordinary claim that the report questions the link between achievement gaps and poverty:
At the press conference, according to the story in The New York Times, Chancellor Klein “said the study vindicated the idea that the root cause of test-score disparities was not poverty or family circumstances, but subpar teachers and principals.” This study offered Chancellor Klein the opportunity to argue yet again, as the Education Equality Project does, that schools alone can close the achievement gap, and that such things as poverty and social disadvantage are merely excuses for those unwilling to accept the challenge.
Actually, the report doesn’t say this.... The document says little about causes and cures, just lays out what it costs our society to have so many people who are poorly educated. It does say that low-income students are likely to get less experienced, less qualified teachers, and that ...
A new McKinsey report on the economic costs of low educational achievement has drawn plenty of praise and criticism. Critics charge that the report gives international assessments too much credence while paying scant attention to the dramatic socio-economic disparities that distinguish the United States from the highest-performing nations. The critics have a point, but we should not overlook the report's most critical lessons about the high cost of inequity.
Business champions of school reform have admittedly lost some of their luster in the current economic environment. The judgment of consulting groups like McKinsey seems a bit more fallible these days. The past year has shown us that a handful of Harvard MBA’s can do at least as much economic damage as a horde of high school dropouts. It would behoove many in the business community to show a bit more humility as they discuss education and the economy.
Still, let's not ignore some of the report's most critical conclusions:
"Race and poverty are not destiny." This is not just a truism. Charles Murray and his acolytes have been hard at work attributing poverty and low achievement to genetic causes. These views have even been gaining traction in some mainstream education blogs. Murray and his followers seek to inoculate Americans against concern about the tremendous social, economic, political and educational disadvantages that ...
Apparently, a woman from Rochester, New York has been jailed for enrolling her children in a suburban public school miles away from her urban home . Students at the largely affluent suburban school perform well on state-mandated tests. Students at her local urban school, which serves mostly low-income students of color, do not.
Susan Eaton finds this punishment outrageous. She writes in The Nation that the suburban district "reportedly hired a private investigator and sent him after... urban parents who'd done the same thing. The taxpayer-supported sleuth will continue to trail mothers and fathers suspected of trying to cross the line and 'steal' from the town...."
Eaton links the difference between the two schools' performance to racial and economic segretation, laying some of the blame on "discriminatory practices in the nation's housing and lending markets." Setting the dogs on those who ...
Last week, I took a couple of swipes at Charles Murray's fatalistic, offensive, and oddly persistent claim that many children (by which he generally means poor children and children of color) are largely ineducable.
Richard Nisbett does a much better job of tackling Murray's arguments in his recent book, Intelligence and How to Get It. (The New York Times reviewed Nisbett's book on Sunday.) IQ is malleable, he argues, so it makes all the sense in the world to help struggling students excel academically.
Any educator worth his or her salt subscribes to this view. Still, Murray's work lives on. It earns respectful reviews even from people who generally know better.
Murray's persistence should focus the mind of anyone interested in improving ...
As a Freedom Rider in 1961, Congressman John Lewis was brutally beaten by a white mob in Montgomery, Alabama. In August 1963, he spoke alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. on the day Dr. King delivered his immortal "I Have a Dream" speech. On March 7, 1965--"Bloody Sunday"--Alabama state troopers' savage suppression of the peaceful march Lewis led across the Edmund Pettus Bridge helped inspire passage of the Voting Rights Act.
Now, almost 45 years later, Congressman Lewis will witness the inauguration of Barack Obama just one day after the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service.
Congressman Lewis recently shared with us some reflections on the significance of this historic occasion.
[Listen to the full interview (4 min., 15 seconds)]
Interview Transcript
PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: Thank you so much for joining us, Representative Lewis.
REPRESENTATIVE LEWIS: I am delighted and pleased to be with you.
PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: We're fast approaching Martin Luther King Day, and one day later the historic inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama. What are the major lessons of these days for young people in our schools? ...
About this time each year, public schools face a "December dilemma": What to do about the religious content of the holidays? In a new interview, First Amendment scholar Charles Haynes offers some guidance on how public schools and school districts can avoid common pitfalls.
Of course, public schools should not turn their holiday assemblies into the kinds of devotional events one would expect to find in a church. Such assemblies violate the First Amendment. Nor should public schools banish all mention of religion. Attempts to create anodyne, content-free holiday events often anger religious parents and create more problems than they solve.
Instead, Haynes argues, public schools should use their holiday assemblies as opportunities to teach students about a variety of religious holidays. Such assemblies can help schools fulfill their mission to educate students about the diverse religions and cultures represented in their communities and the nation as a whole. Haynes is careful to point out that school districts can avoid all manner of heartache if they fully engage their communities in finding solutions to the December dilemma.
According to Haynes, the stakes of controversies over holiday assemblies are higher than many realize: "These kinds of controversies are really about...what kind of country we are going to be.... It's extremely important that public schools take the lead in helping us understand one another so we can live together as citizens in one country.
Download the entire interview here or listen to five minutes of interview highlights:
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