Ethnic-studies programs, arising from a student and community grass-roots movement, challenge the prevailing academic power structure and the Eurocentric curricula of American colleges and universities. There is little uniformity or stability among 700 ethnic-specific programs and departments. The challenge is reconciling academic goals (knowledge…

The poor performance of students in America's urban high schools, both in absolute terms and in comparison with their more economically secure counterparts in suburban schools, is a critical issue for the country, and the opportunity for all students to learn mathematics has been heralded as the new "civil right." In a recent study of…

Staffing patterns can significantly affect educators' efforts to provide high-quality instruction and create positive teacher/student relations in the middle grades. State data and Johns Hopkins University survey results are used to show how staffing patterns serving one goal may interfere with accomplishing another goal. Corrective staffing…

Debunks notion that someone can teach for nine months and then start learning in a two-week summer institute. Describes a Seattle project that is demolishing teaching/learning barriers by allowing English and history teachers to meet monthly for an entire day to read and discuss literary and historical works and plan an interdisciplinary…