After one failed attempt to buttress the prospects of black males at a racially diverse high school, teachers fashioned a life skills class that was heavy on racial pride and personal insight. In so doing they borrowed liberally from the Motivational Framework for Culturally Responsive Teaching by Margery Ginsberg and Raymond Wlodkowski that leans…

Blended learning holds the potential of improving the way we educate students and of making them more motivated. Blended education--the melding of information technology based distance learning with school attendance--is perhaps the best way to educate students for 21st century skills, says Michael Horn in a "Kappan" interview. Horn points out…

The best way to eliminate the persistent achievement gap is to eliminate poverty. But that is a monumental challenge that will not be achieved soon. In the meanwhile, neither we as a society, nor the low-income families among us, can afford to wait for poverty to be eliminated to raise the affected children's educational achievement. Research…

School librarians are natural partners in the effort to improve the education, social and employment outcomes of black males. School librarians in Durham, N.C., have been working to close the literacy gap for black males. One of the literacy initiatives centered on the work of Alfred W. Tatum who believes that efforts to engage black males in…

There has been a steady increase in the number of so-called dual-credit classes which allow high school students to earn high school and college credits simultaneously. There also has been an increase in the number of such classes students are taking. The author asks whether the classes are ameliorating the problems they were intended to fix:…

Teacher educators have not been sitting quietly by the side as others have demanded changes in teacher preparation programs. Across the nation, scores of efforts are underway to recruit, train, induct, and retain a highly skilled class of professionals for American schools. The stories presented in this article cover just a fraction of the…

Raising academic standards while eliminating achievement gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students are among America's primary national educational goals. According to a growing body of research, America will attain its goals of equity and preparing students to function effectively as citizens and productive workers only through a…

School districts on the leading edge of the Birth through Third Grade movement have demonstrated unprecedented success raising the achievement of low-income students by developing coherent strategies focused on the early years of learning and development. These communities are not merely improving preschool. Rather, they are building aligned,…

Have efforts to improve schools neglected high achievers? A growing chorus of critics is voicing concern for the achievement gap, but not the gap between well-to-do and poor students, or white and non-white students. The gap that most worries them is the one between U.S. students and students in other industrialized nations. Among the 34 nations…

States are in fiscal funk. This means that "ambitious education initiatives" are being scuttled. The current downturn could force teachers to see how much can be accomplished by attending to some long overlooked, incontrovertibly effective actions and initiatives. In this article, the author recommends several simple fundamental changes in…

Strapped for cash, a Massachusetts high school creates its own venture capital fund to incentivize teachers to create programs that improve student learning. The result has been higher test scores and higher job satisfaction. One important program is credited with helping close the achievement gap at the school, while others have helped ambitious…

Folk beliefs in our culture support less rigorous curriculum for disadvantaged students, and initiatives to encourage educators to rethink these beliefs are in order. But that's not so easily accomplished. There's ample evidence that all kinds of beliefs are resistant to change. Nonetheless, research shows that disadvantaged students could handle…

Students at Claremont Academy in Chicago and their scores have become a proof point in a broadening argument between adults and institutions over whether single-sex education does more good than harm, or whether it does any good at all. The battle pits the American Civil Liberties Union and women's groups against some who have been frequent allies…

What do young black males say about what stands in the way of their academic success? Rather than rely on scholarly researchers to answer this question, the authors talked with a number of black males between ages 13 and 22 in Washington D.C., and Milwaukee, Wis., to learn what they had to say. These young men rarely talked about schools or…

At first glance, closing the achievement gap seems fairly straightforward. It is a difficult task to accomplish, but it does not seem an especially complex one to conceptualize. How educators look at achievement gaps will determine their success in reducing them. When designing interventions, the author suggests that educators need to remember the…