Use this space to comment on any quote from this reading.

Wednesday's Judiciary Committee hearing was a milestone for a movement that has fought to raise awareness about these kinds of policies in schools around the country. The issue sits squarely at the intersection of race, educational equity and criminal justice. The committee heard testimony from Obama administration officials, a former Chicago Public Schools student, reform advocates and criminal justice leaders who sought to answer some basic questions: What good has the rise of zero-tolerance school discipline policies, now responsible for three million suspensions a year, done for the students they were supposed to protect? And just as pressing: What justifiable explanations are there for the deep disparities that zero-tolerance school discipline so reliably produces?

I'm so glad Kara posted her link already because this is a great follow-up to it. If you are interested in learning more about the kids in "Shame of the Nation", here is an interview with Kozol talking about the impact of poverty on schools and his new book "Fire in the Ashes".

We like to believe all students have an equal opportunity to learn regardless of the color of their skin or the amount of money their families have. However, a new report by the Schott Foundation for Public Education details just how far from that ideal the education available to students from differing backgrounds in New York City actually is.

"Only about half the US population have ancestry arrived to the country before the Civil War, and less then 20% of the 2000 population can be attributed to colonists arrived before the US independence" (p. 1632).

This is one of Jessica Ross' sources, and I think it's really an interesting connection to the idea of school as a game and the possibility of creating reward junkies vs. the benefits of instant feedback. Here's the quote she liked from it: "Clearly,verbally identifying misbehaving students by name, publicly stating specific transgressions, and the provision of team debits on a blackboard may have acted as a discriminative stimulus for appropriate conduct (Salend, Reynolds, & Coyle, 1989) and provided a source of immediate feedback."

Can we use video games as an example for improving education?

"While the general trend in middle school mathematics performance was upward over the period of the project, students of teachers randomly assigned to the treatment group (eligible for bonuses) did not outperform students whose teachers were assigned to the control group (not eligible for bonuses)." So much for the argument that paying teachers more is enough to raise their kids' test scores!

This is an interesting connection: today's education budget cuts directly impact the viability of our future economy. So much for racing to the top...

Maybe moral education should be about developing students' individual passions? And supporting them in developing "grit"?

An academic version of the impact of poverty on schools - good source for your PROBE papers!

Here's the original article on which the previous blog post was based.

So, here's the plan: ditch the standardized tests, use NAEP instead, and spend those billions of dollars on food, health care, gardens, and books. Okay, education problem solved. Well done, Peg!

How can we get more money for schools? Stop letting corporations evade property taxes?

What do you think? Can schools really overcome our class divisions?