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Diversifying gifted and talented programs represents only the first step in expanding access, educators say. Districts also must retain those students—and that means ensuring their experiences are positive.
Five years ago, the lack of diversification in the gifted and talented program in Minnesota’s Mankato Area Public Schools illustrated a nationwide problem. African-American, Native American, Latino and low-income students […]
Look at a graph of the racial and ethnic makeup of the nation’s typical gifted and talented program over the past 25 years, and the lines are mostly flat. Whites and Asians remain overrepresented relative to their numbers in the population.
Diversifying enrollment in gifted programming is just a first step, educators say. Equally important is retaining those students—and that means ensuring that their experiences are positive. “I look at recruitment […]
Teacher quality is crucial to the success of schooling, yet the teacher-hiring process is sometimes rushed and ad hoc. A late-summer flurry of activity in which subjective factorsÑfrom where a […]
Once a month, Tim Mills, superintendent of Washington’s Bellevue Public Schools, sits down for a one-on-one conversation with each member of his school board. Obeying parameters honed in a 16-year […]
The classroom video camera saw it all. Watching the playback, one teacher realized that she gave her students too little time to answer the questions she posed. Another teacher finally […]
On the walls of Tim Cline’s office hang samples of outstanding work completed by students in Interior Distance Education of Alaska (IDEA), the public school program he runs. Visiting parents […]
Three years ago, Tom Brabson, business manager of Plain Local Schools in northeastern Ohio, heard the superintendent of a district 60 miles away describe how his life had changed in […]
Teaching research skills once meant asking students to turn stacks of library books into essays on the poetry of Emily Dickinson or the causes of the Civil War. But today, […]
The bad news seems to be everywhere. The School District of Philadelphia had 190 teaching vacancies in October. From New York to California, enrollment in teacher-preparation programs has fallen by […]
Despite anecdotal evidence that schools across the country face hiring challenges, statistical proof of a shortage is hard to come by. Federal data for 2011-12, the most recent available, shows […]
The 3,000 students in rural Maine’s Regional School Unit 19 begin compiling electronic portfolios of their schoolwork in pre-K, when the district issues every child a Google account. In the […]
When Heidi Sipe, superintendent of Oregon’s poor, rural Umatilla School District, asks her elementary-age students what they want to be when they grow up, she no longer gets the answers […]
In southern California’s Brawley Union High School District, students newly arrived from Mexico study math and science using a university-developed curriculum written in Spanish. In the Omaha Public Schools, bilingual […]
Across the country, thousands of school districts are building and publicizing summer meal programs, components of a 48-year-old, federally funded effort to keep low-income children from suffering the health and […]
Last fall, a national problem arrived in Superintendent Richard Scaletta’s corner of rural northwestern Pennsylvania. Principals in the General McLane School District began reporting unprecedented levels of misbehavior: students in […]
Years ago, it was easy for districts to ignore what high average daily-attendance numbers can conceal: kids, sometimes lots of them, who miss weeks of school every year. The 2015 […]
Greene County Career Center (Ohio) Initiative: A truancy interventionist helps students cope with life challenges such as daycare for their children, homelessness and driving parents to chemotherapy appointments. Result: Truancy […]
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