More and more individuals and organizations are recognizing that education is no longer just about a child’s K-12 experience. The reality is that student achievement doesn’t just happen because of a good elementary school experience. It happens when early childhood experiences include social, literacy, language, physical, and cognitive development.
As more research comes to the surface about just how critical early childhood learning is on overall outcomes for students, it certainly makes you think about what really needs to happen to create catalytic change. But is there an age that could be too young for school? Should it be mandatory for three and four year olds to attend 180 days of school? Who should be responsible for the cost? This is the conversation that states like Iowa are having right now. People are recognizing that knowing your abc’s, how to share, read, talk and tie your shoes are not just basic skills. They are critical skills.
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Four days, 3,500 LGBTQQIA folks. One hotel. I recently spent a long weekend at the gayest conference in the nation: Creating Change. Hosted in Atlanta, Georgia, I was inundated by nearly 300 workshops, caucuses, plenary sessions, leadership sessions, a special message from Obama and a whole bunch of networking to boot.
You may be asking what such a conference has to do with educational inequity? The answer: everything.
Photo courtesy of Blair Mishleau
On Sunday, I’ll watch two groups of men seek their own chance to make history in Super Bowl XLVII. As a football coach, I’ll watch each team’s strategy, their formations, the players’ techniques. As a Teach For America alum, I’ll be thinking about two lessons I learned when I joined the corps in 2005, and that I will try to instill in my players at Cornell.
Photo courtesy of Dave Archer
As a native of New York City and an alumna of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I’ve seen my fair share of die-hard sports fans. On any given day in New York, it wouldn’t surprise me to see a person walking down the street sporting a Yankees fitted cap, a Mets t-shirt, or a Carmelo Anthony Knicks jersey. I even own a “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” Nets t-shirt. I spent most of my undergraduate career seeing others in Carolina blue, whether at a basketball game, a house party or in class.
But none of my experiences in New York or Chapel Hill braced me for “Purple Fridays” at my school, aka the capital of Ravens Nation. I had never witnessed such loyalty and devotion to a sports team within a community, until I started teaching here in Baltimore City. On any given Purple Friday, I see kids in all grades, from Pre-Kindergarten through eight, sporting a Ravens jersey, hoodie, t-shirt, or a purple accessory (like a bead necklace or bracelet) to display their support for their hometown team. At my school, the most important names on Monday mornings are Lewis, Flacco, Rice and Smith.
Photo courtesy of Olubunmi Fashusi
My two years as a Teach For America corps member presented me with an understanding that is both a gift and a powerful burden, one that I carry with me everyday. This understanding is that our country contains within its first-world borders millions of individuals who cannot meet the daily demands of 21st century life, whether that means paying the utility bill, landing a job that pays a living wage, or finding an excellent education for their children.
Today, millions of hard working, low-income Americans find themselves trapped on the lowest rungs of our socio-economic ladder, unable to traverse an increasingly impassable wealth gap. A 2011 study by the Economic Mobility Project found that the United States has a lower rate of social mobility than most developed countries. Empirically speaking, the American Dream may be more attainable elsewhere.
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This post was originally published on TeacherPop and has been reprinted with permission.
“There are few things in my life that are certain. I don’t know how much I’ll pay for a gallon of gas or milk next week, I don’t even know how much I’ll have to pay to finish school next semester …There is one thing that I am certain I want to do: I want to teach.”
That was the opening statement of my letter of intent in September 2008, when I was applying for Teach For America. I wasn’t being facetious either. I had been planning on teaching high school English since I was 16. When I was placed at a charter school teaching high school English. I figured I was in this for life.
Life has a funny way of working, though, and a year and a half later, I found myself weighing the options of either staying and seeing my students (many of whom would be seniors) graduate, or combing theTFANet JOB board (which is amazing, by the way) for a new position after finishing my second year.
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In the heart of Chicago’s Homan Square stands an historic power house. Built in 1905, it provided electricity and heat for the massive Sears, Roebuck & Company world headquarters on the city’s West Side. In 2009, the building was transformed into a school for the kids of North Lawndale, a neighborhood on the west side of Chicago that has experienced a disproportionate level of poverty and violence. Power House High’s recent history, while far from exemplary, demonstrates community and district leaders’ willingness to look for what works (whether from a traditional or charter model - because we know there are bright spots in both), and to insist on high student achievement above all else.
Photo by Seth Anderson via WikiCommons
Five links that made us think this week:
Ever heard Beyonce’s song that says “Who runs the world? Girls.” Well, Beyonce got it right. According to The Girl Effect campaign, girls are the most powerful force for change on the planet. Studies have shown that investing in the education of young girls leads to a reduction in child marriage and pregnancy, a reduction in poverty and violence, and increases the health and well-being of families (by reducing the risk of HIV). Created by the Nike Foundation and in collaboration with other foundations, The Girl Effect campaign aims to give girls around the world the power they need to contribute to their community and society at large.
Photo courtesy of Carolina Cromeyer
This is the fifth and final post in a Pass the Chalk series on the term "achievement gap."
I have had a long-standing pinch with the term achievement gap, though I struggled to articulate why – until I read a recent post by my fellow TFA alumna Camika Royal (Baltimore ’99), which helped me more fully explore that discomfort.
The term “achievement gap” first showed up in academic papers in the 1960s. It referred specifically to gaps in educational achievement between White and Black – then called Negro – students during desegregation in New Jersey. In coining the term, researchers were highlighting the need to expand educational opportunities for Black children, which was no doubt a good intention.
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This is the fourth post in a Pass the Chalk series on the term "achievement gap."
In education, the language we use matters – our word choices indicate our perceptions and, sometimes, our misperceptions.
In recent years, some educators have argued that the phrase “the achievement gap” contributes to one such misperception. The debate came to a broader audience a couple of months ago in a pair of blog posts—one published by GOOD magazine and a follow-up on Diane Ravitch’s blog—by educator and historian Camika Royal (Baltimore ‘99). Dr. Royal criticizes the use of the phrase “achievement gap” as racist and inaccurate. We’re glad she brought more attention to this conversation. But we also believe that the education community needs to be able to recognize and discuss the gap in outcomes—with an understanding that the gap results largely from underlying, systemic disparities in opportunity.
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