White language supremacy (WLS) is an implement to white supremacy, particularly within educational institutions. Contextualized within present exigencies, antiracist educators must work alongside students, communities, and institutions to push for the dismantling of WLS because of its deleterious effects on Black, Indigenous, and people of color…

In this commentary, the authors suggest that a paramount job for adolescent literacy assessment is to create more equitable outcomes for all students. The authors propose that the use of learning scales and micro-progressions fills a void and demonstrate how their use can provide better information to teachers and yield information that can…

The Library of Congress has acquired the Omar ibn Said Collection, including an exceptional artifact, the autobiography of Omar ibn Said, written in ancient Arabic by an African enslaved man. In this article, I analytically examine the role of literacy in Omar ibn Said's life as informed by African cultures, ethnicities, histories, languages, and…

Language-in-education research can contribute to transformative progress toward educational equity and excellence. Although this assertion is likely uncontroversial within the field of language in education, agreeing on which types of research lead to which transformative progress is much less straightforward. The thought-provoking commentaries on…

Grade retention as a major element in education and reading policy has been adopted by at least 14 states, with 32+ states linking reading intervention to high-stakes testing. These policies ignore four decades of research on the negative consequences of grade retention and the significant body of research on effective and supportive literacy…

Given the global escalation of gaps between rich and poor, contemporary work in critical literacy needs to overtly question the politics of poverty. How and where is poverty produced, by what means, by whom and for whom and how are educational systems stratified to provide different kinds of education to the rich and the poor? Yet rather than…

The content of the present issue of "Review of Research in Education" (RRE) is timely and important, allowing considered, multiperspectival active reflection, what the author calls cerebration, on language diversity as well as a call for concerted action for linking better the findings of research to the imperatives of teaching. In…

Why don't we eliminate the bachelor's degree? The author believes it's only common sense. In this essay, the author questions the outlay in time and dollars of the bachelor's degree. He believes that the need is not for millions of people with expensive four-year degrees. The real need is for millions of citizens with the critical thinking and…

The "achievement gap" is one of the most disturbing phenomena in American education. Teachers want to close the gap in their own schools--but because the gap is rooted in longstanding and widespread problems, the task sometimes feels like a monumental undertaking. This fall, Teaching Tolerance launched the Teaching Diverse Students Initiative…

The hope of many African Americans in education as the great equalizer is illustrated by a review of African American education in the United States. The challenge of the continuing struggle for equality and the failure of public schools to serve as a liberating force in African American lives are described. (SK)

Contends that literacy acquisition and use occurs in and through social contexts and is a political and cultural activity, and that the distribution of literacy competence by schools is a key link in the reproduction of inequality. Examines social, cultural, political, and economic implications of classroom practices. (RAE)

Points to the accomplishments of the International Reading Association over the past 25 years and discusses progress that has been made in the achievement of two vital, but sometimes contradictory, goals: providing equal educational opportunity and providing quality education. (ET)

Presents, in the form of a fable, a challenge to readers to expose the Emperor's new education as being more about getting rid of public education than about literacy. (SR)

The author focuses on braille literacy as the primary tool for equal education for visually handicapped individuals. The need for braille proficiency is stressed and the importance of braille ability for individual achievement is described. (PHR)

Both Kerala and Finland have made notable achievements in the realm of literacy: Kerala has one of the highest rates in the developing world and Finland ranks first in literacy among developed countries. Both also share a cultural history of granting women a high status in their respective societies. Using Kerala and Finland as examples, this…