Addressing Discrimination in School Matters

"Every student has the right to an education free from discrimination that provides high-quality, equitable opportunities to learn. Unfortunately, sometimes individuals or systems may act in ways that violate this right. Discrimination occurs when people are treated unequally or less favorably than others because of some real or perceived characteristic. In every community and every school, discrimination exists in both intended and unintended ways. It may take the form of direct, overt...

How Multiple Intelligences Theory Can Guide Teachers' Practices: Ensuring Success for Students with Disabilities

This On Point was produced by the National Institute for Urban School Improvement (NIUSI). It is about the Gardner's multiple intelligences (MI) theory and it is implications for Special Education. This On Point applies to all students having Special Education services and families and teachers of people with disabilities. In MI theory, Gardner indicated that the intelligence of children (i.e., thinking, problem solving, and creating) is valued differently depending on the family and...

A developmental perspective on college & workplace readiness

This report provides a developmental perspective on what competencies young people need to be ready for college, the workplace, and the transition to adulthood. National hand-wringing about the lack of preparedness of high school graduates for college and the workplace has catalyzed researchers, educators, and policymakers to define the skills and competencies students need in order to be successful. These prescriptions tend to focus either on college readiness or on workplace readiness. At...

Abandoned to their fate: Social policy and practice toward severely retarded people in America

Cambodian Invisibility: Students Lost between the "Achievement Gap" and the "Model Minority"

This article discusses one aspect of a research study that explored the school experiences of Cambodian American students. Due to their invisibility in the school setting and also in the literature on school reform, these children from refugee families are often overlooked as schools attempt to "close the achievement gap." Through their own words, the young people provide insight as to why the schools are so ineffective in educating them, resulting in disproportionate dropout rates and...

Closing the Achievement Gap Through Teacher Collaboration: Facilitating Multiple Trajectories of Teacher Learning

How should district and school leaders improve education for students traditionally underserved by public education: by increasing control over teaching and curriculum, or by empowering groups of teachers to have more collective autonomy, responsibility, and opportunities for professional learning? The second approach-promoting multiple trajectories of learning among groups of teachers-has advantages, as well as some challenges, as a means of closing various achievement gaps. Sociocultural...

Coincidence or conspiracy? Whiteness, policy and the persistence of the Black/White achievement gap

Adopting an approach shaped by critical race theory (CRT) the paper proposes a radical analysis of the nature of race inequality in the English educational system. Focusing on the relative achievements of White school leavers and their Black (African Caribbean) peers, it is argued that long standing Black/White inequalities have been obscured by a disproportionate focus on students in receipt of free school meals (FSMs). Simultaneously the media increasingly present Whites as race victims...

Developmental Delay

Think of all the skills that children have to learn when they come into the world: smiling, turning over, responding to people, communicating, eating solid food, crawling, standing, and on and on. We expect these skills to emerge naturally over time and know more or less when they should. At 3 months, Susana will probably be doing this, at 4 months, she’ll be doing that. By a year, well, she’ll be tottering around, getting into everything. This time-table for skills to emerge is commonly...