DOE Strategic Blunder
November 8, 2010Reactionary “Activists”
November 9, 2010Quotes of the Day
Today’s New York Times on a new report from the Council of the Great City Schools that finds that middle-class black boys do no better on standardized tests than poor white boys:
Poverty alone does not seem to explain the differences…“There’s accumulating evidence that there are racial differences in what kids experience before the first day of kindergarten,” said Ronald Ferguson, director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard. “They have to do with a lot of sociological and historical forces. In order to address those, we have to be able to have conversations that people are unwilling to have.”
Versus Diane Ravitch on the relationship between poverty and academic achievement:
Poverty is the single greatest determinant of low scores.
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From the same story:
“What it does not discuss are policy responses identified with a robust school reform movement that emphasizes closing failing schools, offering charter schools as alternatives and raising the quality of teachers.
“The report did not go down this road because “there’s not a lot of research to indicate that many of those strategies produce better results,” Mr. Casserly said.”
Anybody listening at the White House or in Trenton?