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Immigrant Students: Our Kids, Our Future

Patricia Gándara

Apr 19 2018
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This blog post, from Dr. Patricia Gándara, LPI Senior Fellow and Director of the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles, is part of the Learning Policy Institute series, Education and the Path to Equity. Dr. Gándara discusses the changing demographics of immigrant students and how they’ve been impacted by increased immigration enforcement practices. She also argues for reframing how we think about immigrant students to focus on their assets, which “prime them to be the very best learners in our schools.”

Topics Equitable Resources and Access, Deeper Learning
Blog

Kerner At 50: Educational Equity Still a Dream Deferred

Linda Darling-Hammond

Apr 11 2018
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Fifty years ago, the Kerner Commission issued a seminal report on racial division and disparities in the United States. With this blog by Learning Policy Institute (LPI) President Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond, LPI launched a new blog series, Education and the Path to Equity. With it, we commemorate the release of the Kerner report and examine the persistent struggle to provide an equitable education for each and every student.

Topic Equitable Resources and Access
Blog

Quality and Access Depend on Developing California’s Early Learning Workforce

Madelyn Gardner

Mar 07 2018
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As California policymakers look to strengthen the state’s early care and education workforce, the state could take a page from New Jersey’s playbook. In 1999 the Garden State launched an initiative to strengthen and increase compensation for its pre-K teacher workforce. Within 10 years, nearly every preschooler in the state program was taught by a fully credentialed teacher being paid a public school teacher’s salary.

Topic Early Childhood Learning
Blog

Deeper Learning: An Essential Component of Equity

Pedro A. Noguera

Mar 01 2018
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Access to deeper learning—classes in which students are engaged to think deeply and develop the skills and abilities they’ll need for college and work—is a central equity issue for our time, says Dr. Pedro Noguera in this LPI Blog. In this interview, Noguera discusses the role of deeper learning in providing all students with an equitable and empowering education and what it will take to “scale up” deeper learning practices.

Topics Deeper Learning, Equitable Resources and Access, Deeper Learning: Curriculum, Instruction & Assessment, Deeper Learning: School Organization & Design
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California Districts Report Another Year of Teacher Shortages

Desiree Carver-Thomas

Feb 22 2018
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In districts throughout California, many newly hired teachers lack any experience teaching the subject or students they were hired to teach and are not enrolled in a teacher preparation program. That’s according to a survey conducted last fall by the Learning Policy Institute, which found that persistent teacher shortages are once again leading districts to rely on underprepared teachers to fill classrooms throughout the state.

Topics Educator Quality, Educator Quality: Recruitment & Retention, Equitable Resources and Access
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The President’s 2018 Education Budget Proposal Is Déjà Vu All Over Again

Linda Darling-Hammond

Feb 15 2018
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Like the movie “Groundhog Day,” the President’s 2018 education budget proposal feels like déjà vu all over again. Last year, we published a blog post that addressed the President’s proposed cuts to the Every Student Succeeds Act. Fortunately, the Congress that developed the Act and passed it in a strongly bipartisan vote in 2015 protected its key features. This year, in the President’s new budget proposal, however, those cuts are back.

Topics Equitable Resources and Access, Educator Quality
Blog

Community Schools: Building Home–School Partnerships to Support Student Success

Anna Maier

Jan 31 2018
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Family and community engagement is one of the four pillars of high-quality community schools, yet school staff often struggle to build a culture that includes ongoing engagement and creates partnerships that cultivate trust and respect. In this blog, LPI Research and Policy Associate Anna Maier highlights two community school initiatives successfully bridging the gap between home and school and shares the compelling evidence of the impact of effective engagement on student and school success.

Topics Equitable Resources and Access, Deeper Learning, Deeper Learning: School Organization & Design, Early Childhood Learning
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Op-Ed: What Pre-K Means for Your Pre-Teenager

David L. Kirp

Dec 14 2017
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A recent long-term study concluded that the effects of high-quality preschool programs last long into adulthood, and that because of higher projected income and diminished likelihood of incarceration, every dollar invested in quality preschool could generate a two-dollar return. Unfortunately, without a commitment by policymakers to invest in children’s education, this “powerful vaccine” won’t survive.

Topic Early Childhood Learning
Blog

Why Addressing Teacher Turnover Matters

Linda Darling-Hammond

Leib Sutcher

Desiree Carver-Thomas

Nov 13 2017
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Over the last three years, thousands of news stories and dozens of studies from LPI and other organizations have documented teacher shortages across the country. Yet some critics argue that turnover is not generally a problem and shortages may not even be real. In this blog, Linda Darling-Hammond, Leib Sutcher, and Desiree Carver Thomas break down the research and explain that solving turnover and shortages is not a pipedream; it’s a policy question.

Topics Educator Quality, Educator Quality: Recruitment & Retention
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Oakland’s Graduate Capstone Project: It’s About Equity

Oct 26 2017
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By Young Whan Choi | What should a high school student be able to do upon graduation? In this guest blog, Young Whan Choi, manager of performance assessments for the Oakland Unified School District, discusses how the use of a districtwide Graduate Capstone Project is an integral part of the district’s commitment to graduating all students prepared for college, career, and community.

Topics Deeper Learning: Curriculum, Instruction & Assessment, Deeper Learning, Deeper Learning: College, Career & Civic Participation

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Why Our Education Funding Systems Are Derailing the American Dream

Feb 18 2019

We live in an era of extreme income inequality and one of the places it’s hitting hardest is in our schools. That’s because inequity is hard-wired into our school-funding systems. Linda Darling-Hammond and Jeff Raikes explain the hard wiring and discuss what we can do to shift direction and ensure that every child receives a quality education.

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Just as schools were becoming safer, Trump ‘safety’ commission likely to halt progress

Jan 08 2019

In late December, 2018, the Trump administration rescinded Obama-era guidance on school discipline that has helped improve school safety and student achievement across the country. In advance of that decision, Linda Darling-Hammond and Chris Edley cautioned against this move in a commentary in The Hill. They explained that after states adopted the guidance, suspensions and expulsions—which are given at much higher rates to students of color—were reduced significantly as were school-based firearms incidents.

Blog

What Detroit and Chicago Can Teach Us About Student Growth and School Rating Systems

Dec 13 2018

Historically, U.S. schools have been rated based largely on student performance on an annual summative test. With the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), state accountability systems now feature additional measures of student and school success, including academic growth. These factors are critical if we are to create accountability systems that recognize the contributions that schools make to student progress, while reducing bias against educators and schools serving students in diverse, high-poverty communities.

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