Blogs on Achievement Gap

Last week, the American Academy of Pediatrics restated its long-standing recommendations that parents limits the access to television of children under age two. But it's fairly clear that few people are actually heeding the advice. According to a recent study by Common Sense Media, children of all ages are spending more and more time in front of screens of all sorts -- not just television screens, but computer screens, iPads, smart-phones, gaming consoles and the like.

Last year, the first-ever Education Nation summit in New York City took a lot of heat for under-representing the teacher perspective. They dropped a divisive bomb from the get-go by screening the movie Waiting for Superman. Then they followed up with a panel discussion that pitted controversial then-DC chancellor Michelle Rhee against the head of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten. There was a clear pro-charter agenda which made for some controversial (and ratings-friendly) sound bites. And it really peeved a lot of teachers.

When the Edutopia coverage team arrived at the campus of KIPP King Collegiate High School in San Lorenzo, California, I was carrying some extra baggage. About five years ago, I had viewed televised reports about the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) schools in Houston and New York City, showing sixth, seventh and eighth graders, mostly African American and Latino, dressed in school uniforms and expressing their devotion to KIPP and its intensive approach to learning.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that one of the areas where the federal government has focused its efforts in education recently is on school turnarounds. They want to identify chronically low-performing schools and concentrate on making them better -- significantly better -- quickly.