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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.
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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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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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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.
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By Linda Darling-Hammond and Steve Barr | This was a year of good news and bad news in California’s schools. Faster-than-expected infusions of new funding under the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) allowed many districts to replace teachers and programs lost during the Great Recession. However, as the school year opened last August, districts around California scrambled to hire qualified teachers, and many came up short.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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In 2013, Bill de Blasio campaigned for mayor on a promise of universal pre-K. Two years later, New York City enrolls more children in full-day pre-K than the total number of students in San Francisco or Boston. New York City’s experience instituting a high-quality program so quickly provides valuable lessons for pre-K efforts across the country.
