Blogs on Achievement Gap

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David MarkusNovember 30, 2011

The year is 2006.

Superintendent Peter Gorman of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District in North Carolina is visiting Cochrane Middle School, a struggling school in a high-poverty community in east Charlotte. Known for his no-nonsense determination to turn around the district's failing schools, Gorman minces no words in describing Cochrane: "This may be the worst school I have ever seen."

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Elena AguilarNovember 9, 2011

I am an Oakland resident, an Oakland educator, and the mother of an Oakland public school student. I am committed to transforming our schools and world, and I work hard at maintaining hope and faith that this can be done.

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Audrey WattersOctober 27, 2011

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.

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Vanessa VegaOctober 25, 2011

People often ascribe technological devices with magical properties, as though the inert objects in and of themselves can bestow us with the capacity to be "better, faster, and more productive." In actuality, it is the people making and using technological devices to achieve shared goals that produce the seemingly magical results.

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Betty RaySeptember 30, 2011

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.

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Alina TugendSeptember 6, 2011

As the school doors swing open to welcome the start of another year, both teachers and students will have goals: to inspire a class, to learn new things, to get good grades.

What probably won't be on that list is to make a mistake -- in fact many. But it should be.

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David MarkusAugust 25, 2011

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.

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David MarkusAugust 10, 2011

Is there a moment when a learning innovation, like online learning, officially becomes a best practice? When adjectives like "experimental" and "promising" give way to "tried and true" and "proven success?"

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Anne OBrienJuly 25, 2011

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.

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Brian SimsJuly 22, 2011

Brian Sims is managing director of training academies at AUSL in Chicago. Betsy Haley Doyle co-authored this blog. She is a manager in The Bridgespan Group's education practice.

Last June, as principals and teachers from 14 Chicago public school "turnarounds," run by the nonprofit Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL), gathered at the Academy's leadership summit, there was a moment when the room turned silent. A slide went up comparing the percentage of students achieving annual expected growth at each school to the average score for each school's teachers. The figures were based on a sophisticated teacher evaluation tool, the nationally recognized Danielson framework.

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