A public charter school in Utah received requests from parents for their children to opt out of the Black History Month programing that the school traditionally uses in the month of February. After that story made national news, the school reported that the parents had reversed course and the program would continue with all students […]
In late December, then President-Elect Joe Biden announced his nominee for U.S. Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, currently the Education Commissioner for Connecticut. This prompted me to do a little investigating about this particular cabinet position and what I found was interesting. Here are 5 things I didn’t know: The Department of Education and its […]
Recently I saw this tweet from an educator. It’s arresting for two reasons: her distress is evident and searing, and her assertion is a little shocking. Forget entirely about learning? So, then I started really thinking about this and why I found it shocking. And I realized it’s because in my community, while I know […]
One area in which districts must be vigilant is in the vetting of resources. Resources must be vetted for a variety of reasons, including alignment to the district’s curriculum and to external assessments in use, but resources must also be vetted for bias – language or imagery which employs racist terms, perpetuates stereotypes, marginalizes certain groups, […]
The events of 2020 have given us a window into some of the inequities present in American classrooms. The school shutdowns in early Spring, followed by re-openings with online or hybrid learning models revealed a number of inequitable situations: Lack of access to devices for online instruction, Lack of access to Wi-Fi for online instruction, […]
Let’s break with some of the heaviness of 2020 and get historical for a moment. Nina Otero-Warren was the Santa Fe Superintendent of Instruction from 1917-1929, and also, briefly, the Inspector of Indian Schools in Santa Fe County. She was one of New Mexico’s first female government officials and she instituted a number of policies […]
The efficacy of intervening early and aggressively to close learning gaps for children of color and students in poverty is clear. What may not be so clear is how to intervene. What is going to offer the best chance of actually realizing the goal of improved achievement for these marginalized students? Research that’s been around […]
Parents of marginalized students often feel marginalized themselves by schools and teachers. Sometimes this marginalization is inadvertent: statistically, the higher the parents’ income, the more likely they are to attend school events and to volunteer. Those who volunteer frequently have more opportunity, which allows them to build relationships with teachers and administrators, to get information […]
I’ve written about trauma and its effects in this space before, but in light of recent events, I think it deserves a deeper look. The simplest definition of trauma is an emotionally painful or distressing event that results in lasting emotional or physical effects. An example of this is the PTSD suffered by soldiers returning from combat […]
“When we treat a person as only as we think they are, we make them worse. But if we treat a person as if they were already what they could be, we take them as far as they can go.” — Goethe Possibly my favorite piece of research ever is from 1985. It’s an oldie, […]