Download or read book Challenging the Achievement Gap in a Suburban High School written by John B. Diamond and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A substantial body of research has sought to explain racial achievement gaps in education (Ogbu, 2003; Lee, 2002; Jencks & Phillips, 1998; Ferguson, 1998a; Ferguson, 1998b). Although these gaps narrowed between 1970 and 1988 (Lee, 2002), they began to increase after that time. Most often, research exploring the gap has examined the relative influence of various factors exogenous to schools (e.g., students? race, social class, peer culture, and home environments) or school and classroom organizational factors (e.g., tracking and teachers? expectations of students). Much less research has examined the impact of school-based interventions designed to address directly the racial gaps in achievement. In this paper, the authors examine the impact of an adolescent literacy intervention intended to accelerate the learning of ninth-and 10th-grade students, particularly African-American students, who struggle with reading comprehension. This strategy combines an instructional intervention and a focus on building positive teacher-student relationships designed to enhance student achievement.
Download or read book Closing the Opportunity Gap written by Prudence L. Carter and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-26 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the achievement gap has dominated policy discussions over the past two decades, relatively little attention has been paid to a gap even more at odds with American ideals: the opportunity gap. Opportunity and achievement, while inextricably connected, are very different goals. Every American will not go to college, but every American should be given a fair chance to be prepared for college. In communities across the U.S., children lack the crucial resources and opportunities, inside and outside of schools that they need if they are to reach their potential. Closing the Opportunity Gap offers accessible, research-based essays written by top experts who highlight the discrepancies that exist in our public schools, focusing on how policy decisions and life circumstances conspire to create the "opportunity gap" that leads inexorably to stark achievement gaps. They also describe sensible policies grounded in evidence that can restore and enhance opportunities. Moving beyond conventional academic discourse, Closing the Opportunity Gap will spark vital new conversations about what schools, parents, educators, and policymakers can and should do to give all children a fair chance to thrive.
Download or read book Despite the Best Intentions written by Amanda E. Lewis and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-08-04 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the surface, Riverview High School looks like the post-racial ideal. Serving an enviably affluent, diverse, and liberal district, the school is well-funded, its teachers are well-trained, and many of its students are high achieving. Yet Riverview has not escaped the same unrelenting question that plagues schools throughout America: why is it that even when all of the circumstances seem right, black and Latino students continue to lag behind their peers? Through five years' worth of interviews and data-gathering at Riverview, John Diamond and Amanda Lewis have created a rich and disturbing portrait of the achievement gap that persists more than fifty years after the formal dismantling of segregation. As students progress from elementary school to middle school to high school, their level of academic achievement increasingly tracks along racial lines, with white and Asian students maintaining higher GPAs and standardized testing scores, taking more advanced classes, and attaining better college admission results than their black and Latino counterparts. Most research to date has focused on the role of poverty, family stability, and other external influences in explaining poor performance at school, especially in urban contexts. Diamond and Lewis instead situate their research in a suburban school, and look at what factors within the school itself could be causing the disparity. Most crucially, they challenge many common explanations of the 'racial achievement gap,' exploring what race actually means in this situation, and why it matters. An in-depth study with far-reaching consequences, Despite the Best Intentions revolutionizes our understanding of both the knotty problem of academic disparities and the larger question of the color line in American society.
Download or read book Changing Suburbs Changing Students written by Shelley B. Wepner and published by Corwin Press. This book was released on 2012-09-21 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Embrace the changing suburbs by changing your school! As your students evolve, has your school evolved with them? This unique book offers an explanation of the increasing diversity in student makeup and ideas for acting as an agent of positive change for your school. The authors offer tools and recommend ways you can improve student achievement by: Developing an action plan for more focused, culturally responsive student instruction Creating a culture that celebrates diversity Building partnerships with parents, universities, and the community Providing programs for English learners such as tutoring, the arts, and summer support
Download or read book Bridging the Achievement Gap written by John E. Chubb and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2004-05-13 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The achievement gap between white students and African American and Hispanic students has been debated by scholars and lamented by policymakers since it was first documented in 1966. The average black or Hispanic secondary school student currently achieves at about the same level as the average white student in the lowest quartile of white achievement. Black and Hispanic students are much less likely than white students to graduate from high school, acquire a college or advanced degree, or earn a middle-class living. They are also much more likely than whites to suffer social problems that often accompany low income. While educators have gained an understanding of the causes and effects of the education achievement gap, they have been less successful in finding ways to eliminate it—until now. This book provides, for the first time in one place, evidence that the achievement gap can be bridged. A variety of schools and school reforms are boosting the achievement of black and Hispanic students to levels nearing those of whites. Bridging the Achievement Gap brings together the findings of renowned education scholars who show how various states, school districts, and individual schools have lifted the achievement levels of poor and minority students. The most promising strategies include focusing on core academic skills, reducing class size, enrolling students in more challenging courses, administering annual achievement assessment tests, creating schools with a culture of competition and success, and offering vouchers in big-city school districts. While implementing new educational programs on a large scale is fraught with difficulties, these successful reform efforts offer what could be the start of widespread effective solutions for bridging the achievement gap.
Download or read book Creating the Opportunity to Learn written by A. Wade Boykin and published by ASCD. This book was released on 2011 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore why some schools are making more progress than others, so you can focus on what works and build the capacity of high-performance, high-poverty schools.
Download or read book Education Empire written by Daniel L. Duke and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the fact that more than one-half of the students in the United States are educated in suburban schools, relatively little is known about the development of suburban school systems. Education Empire chronicles the evolution of Virginia's Fairfax County public schools, the twelfth largest school system in the country and arguably one of the very best. The book focuses on how Fairfax has addressed a variety of challenges, beginning with explosive enrollment growth in the 1950s and continuing with desegregation, enrollment decline, economic uncertainty, demands for special programs, and intense politicization. Today, Fairfax, like many suburbs across the country, looks increasingly like an urban school system, with rising poverty, large numbers of recent immigrants, and constant pressure from an assortment of special interest groups. While many school systems facing similar developments have experienced a drop in performance, Fairfax students continue to raise their achievement. Daniel L. Duke reveals the keys to Fairfax's remarkable track record.
Download or read book High Performing African American Students written by Linda H. LoGalbo and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The achievement gap is commonly associated with high poverty urban schools, however, in suburban, middle class America, the achievement gap still manifests itself (Ogbu, 2003). Commonly referred to as an excellence gap, this gap is the discrepancy between high performing African American students and their peers (Rambo-Hernandez et al., 2019). However, there are high performing African American students that achieve success in schools. This mixed methods study explored the lived experiences of high performing African American students in a suburban school. The two-part study included a survey with quantitative questions, Growth Mindset scale, and Grit scale, as well as qualitative interviews. There were 18 participants for the survey and 10 participants for the semi-structured interviews. The findings identified challenges for high performing African American students including isolation, microaggressions, curriculum, representation, recommendations, and competition. To combat these challenges, high performing African American students identified family, friends, engagement in school, and the ability to code switch as personal factors in their academic success, while school factors for success included the school environment, supportive staff, relationships, and extracurricular activities. This study provides a counternarrative to the underperforming African American students in public schools. By studying high performing African American students in schools, school leaders can focus their efforts to create a school environment where all students succeed.
Download or read book Charter High Schools written by and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Challenges Facing Suburban Schools written by Shelley B. Wepner and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-05-01 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This coedited book describes the impact that an increasingly diverse student population has on 21st century suburban schools. It also presents what can and should be done to help K-12 school district administrators and teachers address this growing phenomenon across the nation. This eight-chapter book: provides a demographic, political, economic, and sociological overview of the changing nature of suburban schools describes the nature of student diversity in the changing suburbs and issues with student achievement identifies administrative responsibilities and program structures for working with a changing student population proposes ways to reduce the achievement gap, most notably in literacy looks at how to use “whole child” assessment protocols to provide support for such students delves into parent inequities within changing suburban districts and offers ideas for closing the parent gap. This book is written for school district administrators, teachers, legislators, policy makers, teacher educators, and educational researchers for developing programs and pathways for a segment of the student and parent population that now is living in suburban areas without traditional roots as advantaged suburbanites.
Download or read book Closing the Achievement Gap written by Belinda Williams and published by ASCD. This book was released on 1996-10-15 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's no secret that students attending urban schools in the United States do not fare as well on measures of achievement as their rural and suburban counterparts. According to Belinda Williams and her coauthors, this gap is largely due to a little acknowledged fact: that poor and minority students bring culturally distinct values and beliefs to the classroom that are often incompatible with the biases inherent in the curriculum, assessment measures, and teachers themselves. This second edition of Closing the Achievement Gap argues that if education reform is to work, educators must become more sensitive to the worldviews of disadvantaged students--and to incorporate this awareness into their day-to-day work. Teachers, principals, and legislators must * Learn about cultural perceptions of human development, * Apply this knowledge to professional development and comprehensive reform, and * Align political policy accordingly. In addition to providing a framework for meeting these challenges, this book offers specific suggestions for bridging the cultural divide through such diverse methods as direct vocabulary instruction, opportunity-to-learn strategies, and school-level organizational reform. Thoroughly researched and eloquently written, it is a vital resource for ensuring that students of all backgrounds succeed equally well in the classroom.
Download or read book Detracking for Excellence and Equity written by Carol Corbett Burris Corbett Burris and published by ASCD. This book was released on 2008-08-15 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ability grouping. Leveling systems. Streaming. This is the modern way of talking about tracking -- the traditional practice of sorting and selecting students based on test scores and other criteria, and then steering these groups into "the most appropriate" course of study. In 1987, New York's suburban Rockville Centre School District faced the fact that its longstanding tracking system was resulting in unequal educational opportunities and allowing racial and socioeconomic stratification of its student population. School leaders embarked on an ambitious program of reform: reexamining beliefs about intelligence, ability, and instruction, and offering all students the opportunity to study a rigorous curriculum in heterogeneous classrooms. In this book, authors Carol Corbett Burris and Delia T. Garrity, veterans of the Rockville Centre School District, offer an experience-based and research-supported argument that detracking--implemented with planning, patience, and persistence--can do in every school district what it did in theirs: raise achievement across the board and dramatically narrow the achievement gap. Their main goal is a practical one: to provide educational leaders with proven strategies for launching, sustaining, and monitoring a successful detracking reform. Here, you'll read * Why detracking is necessary, the benefits it brings, and how to build support among teachers and parents * How to revise curriculum to "level-up" instruction * How to establish a multiyear, personalized professional development program to help teachers address new instructional needs * How to best support effective teaching and learning in a heterogeneous classroom Detracking for Excellence and Equity outlines a comprehensive approach built on self-reflection, direct action, vigilant supervision, and a set of very clear beliefs: that schools and opportunity matter; that acceleration and enrichment will improve all students' achievement; and that all students deserve access to the best curriculum.
Download or read book Meeting the Challenge of Adolescent Literacy written by Mark W. Conley and published by Guilford Publications. This book was released on 2013-11-18 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this concise, thought-provoking book, prominent researchers analyze existing knowledge on adolescent literacy, examine the implications for classroom instruction, and offer specific goals for future research. The volume reviews cutting-edge approaches to understanding the unique features of teaching and learning in secondary schools. Particular attention is given to how teaching literacy across disciplines can improve students' content-area learning, and the book includes chapters dedicated to literacy in math and science classrooms. Also addressed are key findings and unresolved questions regarding fluency instruction, struggling adolescent readers, responding to the literacy needs of African American adolescents, and literacy coaching.
Download or read book Class and Schools written by Richard Rothstein and published by Teachers College Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary public policy assumes that the achievement gap between black and white students could be closed if only schools would do a better job. According to Richard Rothstein, "Closing the gaps between lower-class and middle-class children requires social and economic reform as well as school improvement. Unfortunately, the trend is to shift most of the burden to schools, as if they alone can eradicate poverty and inequality." In this book, Rothstein points the way toward social and economic reforms that would give all children a more equal chance to succeed in school. This book features: a summary of numerous studies linking school achievement to health care quality, nutrition, childrearing styles, housing stability, parental economic security, and more ; aA look at erroneous and misleading data that underlie commonplace claims that some schools "beat the demographic odds and therefore any school can close the achievement gap if only it adopted proper practices." ; and an analysis of how the over-emphasis of standardized tests in federal law obscures the true achievement gap and makes narrowing it more difficult.
Download or read book Just Research in Contentious Times written by Michelle Fine and published by Teachers College Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this intensely powerful and personal new text, Michelle Fine widens the methodological imagination for students, educators, scholars, and researchers interested in crafting research with communities. Fine shares her struggles over the course of 30 years to translate research into policy and practice that can enhance the human condition and create a more just world. Animated by the presence of W.E.B. DuBois, Gloria Anzaldúa, Maxine Greene, and Audre Lorde, the book examines a wide array of critical participatory action research (PAR) projects involving school pushouts, Muslim American youth, queer youth of color, women in prison, and children navigating under-resourced schools. Throughout, Fine assists readers as they consider sensitive decisions about epistemology, ethics, politics, and methods; critical approaches to analysis and interpretation; and participatory strategies for policy development and organizing. Just Research in Contentious Times is an invaluable guide for creating successful participatory action research projects in times of inequity and uncertainty. Book Features: Reviews the theoretical and historical foundations of critical participatory research. Addresses why, how, with whom, and for whom research is designed. Offers case studies of critical PAR projects with youth of color, Muslim American youth, indigenous and refugee activists, and LGBTQ youth of color. Integrates critical race, feminist, postcolonial, and queer studies.
Download or read book When Treating All the Kids the SAME Is the REAL Problem written by Kendra Johnson and published by Corwin Press. This book was released on 2014-10-30 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Empowered solutions to close the achievement gap start here! This original, solution-oriented guide for school leaders helps to serve children of color, children from low-income families, and other marginalized student groups. Practical implementation strategies and tools assist school leaders to methodically tackle the challenges of equity-driven reform and: Understand the root cause of the racial-achievement gap Take concrete actions to transform the educational process Use daily, real-time data to determine effective teaching and learning practices Includes reflective-discussion questions and case studies. Accelerate the achievement of underserved students with this transformative book!
Download or read book School Hazard Zone written by Pamela Althea Joyce and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2008 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: School Hazard Zone: Beyond the Silence/Finding a Voice explores the dynamics that help to perpetuate minority academic underachievement. Through five years of journal entries, epiphanies, and inspirations, Pamela Althea Joyce presents an honest glimpse of undemocratic practices at an urban/suburban high school. She identifies variables associated with minority achievement, examines experiences of the individuals involved, ultimately reframes the «achievement gap» problem, and invites the reader to take a stand on the matter. From the perspective of a teacher preoccupied with the daily challenges of minority students, Joyce identifies positive and negative influences originating from self, school, and society, which play a role in tilting the academic playing field to the disadvantage of underachieving students. She provides alternatives, offering «do now», low-cost suggestions and feasible long-term ideas for closing the «achievement gap». The book will be enlightening for the general public, administrators, teachers, student teachers, parents, and all individuals concerned about the future of the American educational system.
