LPI Blog

A quarter-century ago, Newark and nearby Union City epitomized the failure of American urban school systems. Students, mostly poor minority and immigrant children, performed abysmally. Graduation rates were low. Plagued by corruption and cronyism, both districts had a revolving door of superintendents. Today, Union City, which opted for homegrown gradualism, is regarded as a poster child for good urban education. Newark, despite huge infusions of money and outside talent, has struggled by comparison.

Renewing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was once considered a long shot, but in December 2015, the bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was signed into law. Will federal regulators encourage states to take advantage of the new flexibility provided by ESSA to move teaching and learning purposefully into the 21st century? And will states assure these opportunities are made available to all students, rather than an elite few?

While more than two-thirds of high school graduates enroll in college, nearly two-thirds of these students arrive on campus unprepared for college-level rigor. Instead of trying to solve this problem together, high schools and colleges typically operate in silos. The situation is entirely different in Long Beach, CA, where collaboration, from pre-k through college, is the watchword. 

By Linda Darling-Hammond and Patricia Gandara | How we can create 21st century learning opportunities for all students? In this op-ed, authors argue that a wide range of structural inequalities contribute to ongoing learning and achievement gaps. They identify three high-leverage policy areas to promote equity and deeper learning: adequate and flexible K-12 funding based on pupil needs, educator standards that focus preparation programs on deeper learning, and more supports and fewer constraints to enable innovative instruction and assessment.

Does preschool work? Although early education has been widely praised as the magic bullet that can transport poor kids into the education mainstream, a major new study raises serious doubts. A closer analysis, however, underscores the importance of quality if preschool is to have a positive long-term impact on children’s lives.

A recent California Task Force on K-12 Civic Learning noted that nationally, fewer than half of eligible young people ages 18-24 voted in the 2012 elections, and that the U.S. recently ranked 139th of 172 democracies around the world in voter participation. Is the standard approach to teaching civics failing to prepare students for their future roles as voters, jurors, and civic leaders?

The pace of knowledge growth accelerates every year, with technology information now doubling every 11 months. Our world is being transformed by these new technologies, as well as shifting demographics and the demands of a global economy. Our children need to be prepared for this new world and all its complex realities. And that requires new approaches to learning. 

For decades, policy makers have treated those living in poverty as helpless and inept. The worse off the neighborhood, the less influence its residents have over their future. Rather than ask what would strengthen their communities, social services conduct “needs assessments” and agencies deliver solutions that seldom work. As the successes of Houston's Neighborhood Centers show, people who live in these communities must determine their own fate.

The conventional wisdom among social scientists is that there is little payoff in investing in troubled teenagers. As the University of Chicago economist James J. Heckman argued in 2011, “we over-invest in attempting to remediate the problems of disadvantaged adolescents and under-invest in the early years of disadvantaged children,” when the potential gains are supposedly the largest. But this consensus is wrong, as we now know from recent scholarship.

For more than a decade, Congress has not been able to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). In the current debate on standardized test scores, one important question is being missed: What kinds of assessments should be used when, how, and for what purposes if we want high-quality learning to occur that prepares students to be critical thinkers, problem solvers, collaborators, and lifelong learners?