Concern Over Gender Gaps Shifting to Boys
By Debra Viadero, edweek.org
Kenneth E. Wallace, a suburban Chicago educator, first noticed that boys were lagging behind girls academically when he coached high school wrestling in Indiana in the 1980s. His district put a “no pass, no play” rule in place. Girls’ participation in sports was barely affected, but Mr. Wallace found himself working in overdrive to tutor the boys on his team so they could still compete. Years later, when Mr. Wallace became an assistant principal, the contrasts were even more vivid. Who accounted for most of the disciplinary referrals on his desk? The boys. Suspensions? Boys again. Mr. Wallace also saw that boys predominated in special education and among the ranks of dropouts.

Saved by the Bell
by Brett Hoover, Ivy League Associate Director
By the time he was 2 years old, the odds of Earl Martin Phalen becoming a successful adult were already stacked against him. But now Phalen is proof that long shots make the best stories.

Group Offers $300,000 For Preschool Education
by Maria Glod, Washington Post Staff Writer, February 3, 2006
A group of Fairfax County business leaders discouraged by the poor skills of many job applicants has decided to pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into preschool education, in hopes of improving the caliber of the county's workforce.

African-American Boys: The Cries of a Crisis
by E. Bernard Franklin (Midwest Voices)
If there is not major intervention in the next 25 years, 75 percent of urban young men will either be hopelessly hooked on drugs or alcohol, in prison or dead. The data are clear. Reports by the American Council on Education, the Education Trust and the Schott Foundation show that African-American boys spend more time in special education, spend less time in advanced placement or college prep courses and receive more disciplinary suspensions and expulsions than any other group in U.S. schools today. The Schott Foundation started the Black Boys Initiative in 2003, says President Rosa Smith, because “black boys represented the worst-case scenario for a group coming out of public education.”

America's WETLAND: Campaign to Save Coastal Louisiana
Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita have left coastal Louisiana devastated and New Orleans in shambles. Some locations in Cameron, Plaquemines and St. Bernard Parish are gone, lost forever to the Gulf. The nation is bearing witness to what many in Louisiana have been warning about for years - losing of America's WETLAND will have a profound effect on the nation - as many lives were lost, hundreds of thousands displaced and gasoline prices reach an all time high.
[Read the article online]

Steven Spielberg and Facing History Bring Schindler's List to the Nation's Schools ( from the Facing History & Ourselves Newsletter)
Schindler's List, the award winning film directed by Steven Spielberg, is becoming a significant teaching tool in high schools across the nation. Spielberg himself explained why in the Foreword to the study guide Facing History prepared through a grant from his production company, Amblin Entertainment, and Universal Films.

Spotlight on Success: Every Student at High-Poverty, High-Minority Massachusetts School Accepted to College
Alliance for Excellent Education; Volume 5, Number 17; September 19, 2005
Nationwide, two out of three high school freshmen read below grade level, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). This alarming statistic can be changed; educators know a great deal about how to educate low-performing adolescents to high standards, and many schools are successfully meeting the challenge. On September 14, the Alliance for Excellent Education profiled one such school, the University Park Campus School (UPCS) in Worcester, Massachusetts, as part of its series of forums looking at successful adolescent literacy programs and ways they are improving our nation's high schools.

Ramos rallies for 'great things' in Bridgeport
August 31, 2005; Susan Silvers; Connecticut Post
As a youngster beginning seventh grade at Lincoln School in the East End some years back, John J. Ramos encountered a teacher named Mr. Arnold. "He taught math — my least favorite subject — and he caused me to like it," Ramos, the city's new superintendent of schools, recounted Tuesday. "He was firm, but engaging. He cared about us. We knew how much he cared. Finally, I could do math." Seeking to set an upbeat tone for a new academic year — and the administration of the state's largest public school district he took over in June — Ramos recalled the difference that Mr. Arnold made in his life, addressing an unprecedented convocation of the city's 3,000 school employees. With a theme of "Bridgeport — Expect Great Things," Ramos and other speakers addressed not just the professional staff usually on hand for such assemblies, but also clerical workers, custodians and security personnel. The crowd was so large it had to be convened in the Arena at Harbor Yard. {click here for pdf}

City hires new school chief
July 16, 2005; Maureen Nolan and Frederic Pierce; Syracuse Post-Standard (pdf)
Alida Begina, Syracuse's new school superintendent, says her father would have been proud to see her become the first woman to head the Syracuse school district. Begina's dad passed away last year.Õ7BeginaÕ When she was growing up in Minneapolis, he made it clear that she, her sister and her brother would go to college, even when she told him her career plan to be a hairdresser. Begina, now 55, listened to her dad. She went to college and grew up to be an educator. For the last 10 years she's been the superintendent of the Hamden, CT, school district.

Is Small Beautiful? The Promise & Problems of Small School Reform
Rethinking Schools Online, Volume 19 No. 4 - Summer 2005
B The summer edition of Rethinking Schools explores the hottest trend in school reform: small schools. The issue includes contributions from national reform leaders and includes a survey of small school reform efforts sponsored by the Gates Foundation and reports from major urban sites of small school reform, including New York, Chicago, Oakland, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Cleveland. In her anchor essay, "Not in Our Name," small schools advocate Michelle Fine says many of the small schools being created today are abandoning the democratic, anti-racist principles of the early small schools. "It breaks my heart to see the small schools movement commodified, ripped from its participatory and radical roots, and used to facilitate union busting, privatization, faith-based public education, and gentrification. To be sure, public education has always been a contested space; educational reforms have always blended elements that were potentially oppressive and subversively liberatory. But educational reforms, of late, have been systematically transformed into political efforts to undermine our most inclusive and democratic institutions in the service of privatization and perpetual inequality. And the small schools movement is no exception," writes Fine. "U.S. high schools, especially in urban areas, need radical change," write the editors of Rethinking Schools. "The issue is what role small schools can play in solving their problems. The small schools movement has become a testing ground for competing visions of public education and the kind of society we should prepare our youth to enter and inherit." This issue also highlights successful small schools and examines the problems of implementing small school reform in the midst of school budget crises. {click here for more information}.

The Importance of Professional Development to Unlock the Potential of Students in Urban Settings: A Response to Virginia Richardson and Patricia Anders
by Eric J. Cooper and Yvette Jackson
Benjamin Banneker’s quote was captured in a letter to one of America’s founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson. These attitudes continue to this day to reflect American and worldwide beliefs about race, and the ability of black Americans in particular, to succeed in academic pursuits (Zinn, 2003). This belief, driven by stereotypical threats to African American students by often unknowing educators, results in African American underachievement. A result of low expectations is students who may become traumatized and internalize through a self-fulfilling prophecy that indeed they are not capable of a high level of academic achievement (Cooper, 2004). {read entire pdf here}

Professional Preparation and Development of Teachers in Literacy Instruction for Urban Settings
by Virginia Richardson and Patricia L. Anders
The various calls for quality teachers who will ensure that “no child is left behind” are often justified by a deep concern for what is happening (or not happening) in urban schools. There are few who would argue with descriptions of the often dismal conditions in urban schooling and the relative poor literacy performance of children and youth, but there is considerable disagreement around the solutions to these problems. {read entire pdf here}

Countering Structural Racism (pdf)
July, 2004
This publication, from the Forum for Youth Investment, explores how youth activism can be used as a powerful tool for increasing both personal development and collective engagement around the issues of race and racism. We review the field research recently completed by the Youth and Racial Equity (YRE) Project, led by the Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity in collaboration with mosaic consulting; talk with Shawn Ginwright, professor of Sociology and Ethnic Studies at Santa Clara University; and profile the efforts of Urban Underground and Asian/Pacific Islander Youth Promoting Advocacy Leadership (AYPAL).

Are young Black men expendable? (pdf or online)
by Phillip Jackson, May 19, 2004, The New Pittsburgh Courier
A recent study by Northeastern University’s Center for Labor Market Studies shows that in Chicago, 45 percent of the Black men 20-24 years old are out of school and out of work. The authors of the study think this number reflects national trends on this issue. One of the authors, Neeta P. Fogg, says the dropout rates for young Black men are increasing and that dropping out of high school is economic suicide.

Top Colleges Take More Blacks, But Which Ones?(pdf or online)
by Sara Rimer and Karen W. Arenson, June 24, 2004, The New York Times)
While about 8 percent of Harvard's undergraduates were black, only about a third of the were from families in which all four grandparents were born in this country, descendants of slaves. The trend concerned some professors.

Latinos Lag In Finishing College, Report Says (pdf)
By Stuart Silverstein, June 24, 2004, The Los Angeles Times)
Latino college students drop out of school far more frequently than their white counterparts and earn bachelor's degrees less than half as often, according to a new national report the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of USC's Annenberg School for Communication.

Let Us Show We Believe No Child Should Be Left Behind (pdf)
May 16, 2004
In serious conversations about public schooling these days, people eventually mention two landmark federal interventions: The Brown vs. Board of Education decision 50 years ago and the No Child Left Behind legislation of the current Bush Administration.

Understanding Adultism: A Key to Developing Positive Youth-Adult Relationships (pdf or online)
by John Bell
"Most of us are youth workers because we care about young people.  Personally we want to both be effective and have good relationships with young people.  We are satisfied when things go well. We feel bad when our relationships sour. Sometimes we scratch our heads in dismay when, despite our best efforts and concern, we find ourselves in conflict with young people we work with. We sense that some larger dynamics are at work that we can’t quiet see.

"Eleanor & Brown: 
A National Initiative Commemorating Brown v. Board of Education and the Human Rights Legacy of Eleanor Roosevelt
Both constitutionally and statutorily the nation and the states call, in various words, for equal educational opportunity for all students...The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision by the Supreme Court is an occasion for the nation and for each community within the nation to reflect on how far we have come from the days of that unanimous declaration and yet how far there is to go...
Go to the complete article online

Help Wanted: Urban school districts need quality teachers, but hiring policies make it too difficult to land top talent
By Andrew J. Rotherham and Jessica Levin
(DLC | Blueprint Magazine | March 23, 2004)
Contrary to conventional wisdom, high-quality teacher candidates are not out of reach for large urban school systems. But tapping into this talent pool requires a more ambitious approach to hiring. Urban school districts suffer from a shortage of qualified teachers in such critical areas as math, science, and special education. But they could go a long way toward solving the problem by retooling hiring practices and making job offers just a few months earlier -- before the best candidates are locked into new jobs elsewhere
Go to the complete article online
Acrobat pdf file of article

Harvard project on districts announced (pdf or online)
by Anand Vaishnav, October 26, 2003, Boston Globe
The Harvard Business School and the Harvard Graduate School of Education announced a joint research project last week to study the academics and management of nine school districts across the country, hoping to break new ground in finding the best ways to turn around large public school systems.

American Indian Chamber of Commerce of Wisconsin Scholarship Opportunities
click here for information and application

Tests find USA, not students, lacking (pdf or online)
By Arthur Levine
President of Teachers College at New York's Columbia University.
USA Today, January 7, 2003
A national study of the impact of high-stakes standardized testing, conducted by Arizona State University and released last week, found that such exams have failed to improve students' performance. That should be no surprise.

Survey Discounts Attitude In Races' Education Gaps (pdf)
By Michael A. Fletcher, Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 20, 2002; Page A12
This study punctures the arguments that many have used to explain the reasons for the achievement gap. Typically the victims are often blamed, (i.e., students, parents, peer groups), for the continuation of the poor achievement of children and youth of color. The survey conducted with a large sample pool reinforces the importance of: teacher quality, the need for professional development, high standards and expectations, and the elimination of bias in school data analysis.

Bridging the Achievement Gap (pdf)
July 2002 - Richard Elmore - Albert Shanker Institute
National educational leader Richard Elmore has written "Bridging the Gap Between Standards and Achievement: The Imperative for Professional Development in Education." Published by the Albert Shanker Institute, this paper examines the knowledge gap in professional development and how professional development can work to improve schools, and how the quality of instructional practice affects student learning. What is your school district's plan for professional development? How effective is the professional development program in your district? What resources are allocated?

Literacy Top Priority for Seattle Schools
April 8, 2002 - Seattle Times by Keith Ervin - Seattle Times staff reporter
Aimed at teachers, instructional assistants and principals from kindergarten to 12th grade, the Literacy Initiative is the most ambitious professional-development effort undertaken by the 47,000-student district in recent years — and perhaps the biggest ever.
Acrobat PDF file of article

FINAL REPORT OF THE INTERIM STUDY COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION ISSUES
November, 2002 - Indiana Legislative Services Agency
The Legislative Council directed the Committee to study various education issues, including the effects of academic standards and accountability laws on public schools, differences in average achievement levels, resources that would enable students to meet proficiency standards, issues relating to the Graduation Qualifying Exam and Indiana's special education population, and national board certified teachers. NUA staff is cited in the report.
Acrobat PDF file of article

Can Teacher Education Close the Achievement Gap?
April 2, 2002 - Martin Haberman, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee - AERA - New Orleans
Martin Haberman writes an important piece on the challenges of teacher education programs and the need to build on and extend what we know about selection and the beliefs of "star" master teachers whose children do learn. The author writes that schools, rather than functioning as the great equalizer, tend to both reflect and replicate social-class structures and societal biases. The end result: families in the top 25% of income send 86% of their children to college; while families in bottom 20% send 4% of their children to college.
Acrobat PDF file of article

The Mystery of Good Teaching
Education Next - Dan Goldhaber
Article online
Acrobat PDF file of article

Unwarranted Intrusion
Education Next - Richard F. Elmore
Article online
Acrobat PDF file of article

Students' Vocabularies Shown Tied to Incomes
February 11, 2002 - Danbury News Times
Acrobat PDF file of article

Barbara Sizemore Stresses Test Preparation to Help Poor Black Children
By Ann Bradley; March 13, 1996 - Education Week on the Web
Acrobat PDF file of article

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