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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.
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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.
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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.
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Our schools are among the most unequally funded in the industrialized world, with some states or districts spending more than double what others spend per pupil. Money properly spent on the right educational resources for students who need them the most — especially on well-qualified educators and keeping classes at reasonable sizes — can make a huge difference.
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On the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress, the average reading and math scores of 8th-grade black boys were barely higher than those of 4th-grade white girls, and Latino boys did only marginally better. The male adolescents who participated in a program called Match, where teenage students work two-on-one with a math tutor, ended up as much as two years ahead of a control group. Here is why.
To help inform California’s systemic shifts towards whole child education, the Learning Policy Institute provides critical and timely research across several key issue areas.
Schools need diverse, well-prepared educators. A high-quality educator workforce requires investments in teacher preparation and learning, policies to increase recruitment and retention, and strategies to sustain educator capacity to create and innovate.
LPI has conducted research on several individual states, often at the request of state policymakers, to help inform evidence-based policies and support the work of states to reimagine their education systems.
Evidence shows that adequate and equitable financing of public schools improves a range of outcomes for all students, yet disparities in school funding shortchange many children in the United States.
The Racial Equity Leadership Network (RELN) is a fellowship program for district leaders who are committed to addressing persistent disparities in their systems and ensuring that race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status are not predictors of student success.
