The problems commonly associated with inner-city schools were not nearly as pervasive a century ago, when black children in most northern cities attended school alongside white children. In "Schools Betrayed", her innovative history of race and urban education, Kathryn M. Neckerman tells the story of how and why these schools came to…

Scratch the surface of a successful school and you will find a web of interactions that is the root of its success. Who is it that envisions, inspires, cajoles, and rallies all the various players in and around a school toward any improvement goal? Often it's a superintendent, a principal, a professor, a special teacher, or a parent. In a word,…

"Managing School Districts for High Performance" brings together more than twenty case studies and other readings that offer a powerful and transformative approach to advancing and sustaining the work of school improvement. At the center of this work is the concept of organizational coherence: aligning organizational design, human…

"The Opportunity Gap" aims to shift attention from the current overwhelming emphasis on schools in discussions of the achievement gap to more fundamental questions about social and educational opportunity. The achievement gap looms large in the current era of high-stakes testing and accountability. Yet questions persist: Has the…

This module is designed to introduce educational leaders to an organizational assessment tool called a "culture audit." Literature on organizational cultural competence suggests that culture audits are a valuable tool for determining how well school policies, programs, and practices respond to the needs of diverse groups and prepare…

The Academy for Educational Development (AED) offers this report, "Education for All: Opportunities for Public-Private Partnerships," to help focus and inform the discussion of the September 2006 Conference on Business and Education. The Academy is pleased to be cosponsoring this program with the Conference Board and acknowledges the…

Persistent gaps between the academic achievements of different groups of children are thoroughly documented by the U.S. National Assessment of Educational Progress and other statistical analyses of state assessments, grades, course selection, and dropout rates. Despite improvements in some years, the gap endures as a consistent and disturbing…

"Brown v. Board of Education" only presumed to eliminate the "de jure" apartheid that existed in 1954. It was never intended to resolve the "de facto" gap in minority achievement that still faces education policymakers today. Sociologist David J. Armor goes beyond "Brown" to identify a set of definite risk…

The age distribution and growth of the Latino population have critical implications for the present and future of social and economic policy, with particular emphasis on early care and education. Following a discussion of the demographic trends involving Latino children and families, this paper discusses the child care and early education needs of…

In an effort to gauge receptiveness to Achieving the Dream, a major initiative to close achievement gaps at the nation's community colleges, the authors chose three participating colleges for an exploratory study. In each of the three communities, they conducted focus groups with relatively understudied stakeholders: full-time and adjunct faculty…

Helping teachers decide the critical point when a young child is ready to learn and the appropriate strategy to use with that child is the crux of this successful program. Scaffolding Early Literacy is helping close the learning gap between higher-performing students and minority, special needs, and low socioeconomic students. (Contains 3…

A major school district in Philadelphia has been taken over, handed out and chopped up. The for-profit Edison schools opened in Philadelphia, just as Dallas had asked them to leave for a lack of measurable improvement in schools. Linda Darling-Hammond frames this article around what happened in Philadelphia because she feels that in some ways it…

This report reveals the problems with claims made by Arizona state public education officials that English Language Learners (ELLs) are thriving under English-only instruction. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) and the state's accountability system, Arizona LEARNS, require all students, including ELLs, to participate in statewide…

This guide describes the measures California state officials use to evaluate schools and school districts, explaining what they are and what they indicate. Results of standard tests and the Academic Performance Index (API) indicate substantial gaps between the achievement of various groups of students in California. African American, Latino, and…

On May 7, 2002, the Governor's Business Council of Texas was honored to host a number of state and national education leaders who came together to discuss higher education's role in creating an effective and aligned P-16 education system. The State of Texas faces a daunting challenge in improving our P-16 system and increasing rates of college…