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On Saturday, the New York Times ran a fascinating story about a Florida science teacher's struggles to teach evolution to students raised on the biblical story of creation.  (For the first time this year, the Florida Department of Education began requiring all public schools to teach evolution.) That teacher's struggles no doubt mirror struggles faced by thousands of teachers across the country.

Laws on evolution in public school classrooms will continue to swing back and forth as intelligent design advocates and their creationist kissing cousins keep pressing their case with policymakers. In the meantime, teachers simply have to make do without strong--and scientifically sound--guidance on how best to survive in this environment.

In 2002, Charles Haynes of the First Amendment Center offered some thoughts on a way forward.   ...

Charles Murray is apparently at it again in his forthcoming book, Real Education.

Murray's 1994 book, The Bell Curve, infamously argued that demography is destiny. It held that members of certain racial and socioeconomic groups are poor because they're not smart enough to be otherwise.  Real Education apparently applies this objectionable principle to education, with the expected results.  

If the book excerpts in the Wall Street Journal are any indication, the book will argue that low-performing students lack the intelligence to perform well.  It will counsel schools to put these students out of their academic misery by tracking them into less intellectually-ambitious, more strictly vocational courses. ...

Phi Delta Kappa, International has just released the results of the 40^th Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools.  It makes for fascinating reading.

The Big Headlines

The press will no doubt focus on the following findings: ...

Harvard professor and cultural critic Henry Louis Gates, Jr. captured some 25 million viewers with his riveting PBS documentary series, African American Lives (WNET). Using genealogical research and DNA science, Gates traces the family history of 19 famous African Americans. What results is a rich and moving account of the African American experience.

Gates recently spoke with Public School Insights about the documentary and a remarkable idea it inspired in him: To use genealogy and DNA research to revolutionize the way we teach history and science to African American Students. Now, Gates is working with other educators to create an "ancestry-based curriculum" in K-12 schools. Many African American students know little about their ancestors. Given the chance to examine their own DNA and family histories, Gates argues, they are likely to become more engaged in their history and science classes. As they rescue their forebears from the anonymity imposed by slavery, students begin to understand their own place in the American story.

If the stories in African American Lives are any guide, they're in for an experience.

The Significance of African American Lives

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: Tell me about "African-American Lives" and its significance, in your view.

GATES: Wow, that's a big question. [Laughing] I got the idea in the middle of the night to do a series for public television that would combine genealogy and ancestry tracing through genetics. I've been fascinated with my own family tree since I was 10 years old - that's the year that my grandfather died. ...

A number of blogs have recently picked up the trailer for Whatever it Takes, a documentary about a high-performing urban school in the Bronx.  If the 10-minute trailer is any indication, the film will be powerful and inspiring.  Still, like many fictional or documentary films that celebrate a set of heroic students and educators working against all odds, the film raises some important questions.

For one, we should be careful not to absolve entire systems--school systems, communities, voters and policymakers--of their shared responsibility towards the nation's most vulnerable children.  After all, it takes systemic solutions--advanced through collaboration among leaders, front-line educators, communities and, yes, policymakers--to spread the wealth beyond disconnected islands of excellence.  (Indeed, the Learning First Alliance report Beyond Islands of Excellence focuses on lessons on systemic improvement drawn from five successful districts.) ...

Child advocates have worried in recent years that recess has been disappearing from public school calendars as schools focus more heavily on academics--primarily math and reading.  Is this concern warranted?  According to the National School Boards Association's Center for Public Education, the answer is yes and no.

In its recent analysis of research on the fate of recess, the Center reaches the following conclusion:  "To borrow from Mark Twain, reports of recess's death seem to have been grossly exaggerated....  Even so, the pressure on schools to find more instructional time is real, and it seems to be leading many districts to shave minutes from the recess time they provide. In addition, children who attend high-poverty, high-minority, or urban schools are far more likely than their peers in other locations to get no recess at all-a definite 'recess gap' that commands our attention." ...

In the Washington Post today, Jay Matthews offers a thought-provoking challenge to uncritical purveyors of critical thinking programs. "As your most-hated high school teacher often told you," Matthews writes, "you have to buckle down and learn the content of a subject--facts, concepts and trends--before the maxims of critical thinking taught in these feverishly-marketed courses will do you much good."

To some extent, Matthews is states the obvious.  If you don't have anything to think about, critical thinking will likely elude you. Critical faculties atrophy when starved of content knowledge. (Unfortunately, too many low-income students must in fact survive on an academic starvation diet when basic reading and mathematics crowd out important content areas.) ...

Education Week reported yesterday that the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards is mounting a new effort to increase the number of Board-certified teachers in hard-to-staff schools.  (See the National Board's website for more information on this initiative.)

The National Board recognizes teachers who successfully complete its process of "intensive study, expert evaluation, self-assessment and peer review."  It has long acknowledged that only a minority of the teachers they certify work in the schools that need them most.  According to recent research, Board certification raises student performance. In light of this evidence, the National Board's renewed focus on hard-to-staff schools is heartening.

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Every few weeks, we like to give our readers an update on new stories we've published about public schools and school districts that have succeeded--often against stiff odds.  Don't miss our most recent selection of stories:  ...

In a Washington Post editorial today, Robert Samuelson reacts to author Bill Bishop's caution in his new book, The Big Sort: namely, that Americans are increasingly segregating themselves by social and political values into so-called "lifestyle ghettos."  Samuelson soft-pedals Bishop's claim that this trend is exacerbating political polarization and endangering our long-held commitment e pluribus unum, but other commentators lend Bishop's concern greater weight.  ...