Gifted education in America has a race problem. Can it be fixed?

Gifted education in America has a race problem. Can it be fixed?

Why decades of trying to end racial segregation in gifted education haven’t worked

Is it even possible to make a concept that has racist origins more equitable?

Replacing gifted education with SEM schools and other models - https://hechingerreport.org/?p=61640 via @hechingerreport

BUFFALO, N.Y. — On a crisp day in early March, two elementary school gifted and talented classes worked on activities in two schools, three miles and a world apart.

In airy PS 64 Frederick Law Olmsted, in affluent, white north Buffalo, 22 would-be Arctic explorers wrestled with how to build a shelter if their team leader had frostbite and snow blindness. Unusually for Buffalo’s public schools — where 20 percent of students are white and 46 percent are Black — about half of the fourth grade class was white.

In PS 61 Arthur O. Eve, on the city’s majority-Black East Side, 13 first graders, all of them Black, Latino or Asian American, folded paper airplanes in their basement classroom as part of an aerodynamics and problem-solving lesson. Unlike at Olmsted, the highest-scoring elementary school in the city, students at Eve scored around the dismal city average in math and English in 2019, when fewer than a quarter of students passed state tests.

The gifted program at Eve opened two years ago as a way to increase access to Buffalo’s disproportionately white, in-demand gifted and talented programs. Buffalo educators hoped Eve’s new program would give more children — particularly children of color — a chance at enrichment and advanced learning.

Yet two years in, Eve’s gifted classes are under-enrolled, while Olmsted always runs out of room — last year, more than 400 children applied for 65 gifted spots. And even though the district made it easier to apply for gifted classes, Olmsted gifted classrooms still don’t look like the rest of the CONTINUE READING: Gifted education in America has a race problem. Can it be fixed?

Should we screen kids’ genes for classroom success?

Should we screen kids’ genes for classroom success?

Should we screen kids’ genes to ‘predict’ how successful they’ll be in school?

Scientists feel we’re still far from that possibility, but new research could make it possible to spot the genetic patterns associated with educational performance

Many factors boost a child’s chance of success in school — like having wealthy parents who can afford tutors. But recent research has raised another possibility — one that is discomforting to many — the idea that scientists might someday be able to spot the genetic markers associated with academic performance.

To do this, researchers are turning to a relatively new genetic approach called the polygenic score, which assesses a person’s likelihood for a specific future based on a combination of genetic variables. It’s a research technique that some scientists are using to assess obesity or cancer risk, for instance. Now, researchers are exploring this approach in non-medical contexts, like academic or athletic success.

The scientists studying genetic markers in education are trying to untangle how nature and nurture together explain school performance. In principle, genetic screening might enable teachers to tailor their approach to groups of students. Educators might then more effectively instruct kids together in one classroom, rather than separating students into accelerated and low-level courses, which can deprive Black and brown children and children from low-income families of academic opportunities.

But some researchers fear this gene screening work could be misapplied and used to further racist or eugenic thinking, even though race is a social, not a genetic, classification.  There’s an ugly history of proponents of eugenics, who believe in reshaping humanity by breeding “superior traits” and removing “inferior traits,” justifying their thinking with genetics. And there are debunked racist theories that have endeavored to falsely connect race and intelligence. CONTINUE READING: Should we screen kids’ genes for classroom success?

This School Year Has Been Unlike Any Other - The New York Times

This School Year Has Been Unlike Any Other - The New York Times

This School Year Has Been Unlike Any Other

Some examples of how the world of education has responded to the pandemic.

This article is part of our latest Learning special report, which focuses on ways that remote learning will shape the future.

A fall semester unlike any ever known is underway in America.

The coronavirus is lurking around every corner like a ghoul in a Halloween cornfield, waiting to leap out and frighten — if not sicken or kill — anyone who dares pass by.

It has created chaos in the world of education, as some schools refuse to open while others do, only to close again as cases rise. Some are online, while some are in person — or both. The pressure on students, teachers, administrators and parents is immense and has aggravated educational inequalities. Schools, after all, do more than deliver an education: they are a source of food, socialization and internet connections to the rest of the world — along with child care providers for working parents.

The instability for so many who depend on all that is grim.

But wait. In every dark time across history some people rise up and cope — more than cope really. They demonstrate resilience, creativity and an ability to innovate.

Some experts look at these efforts and hope that many will change — for the better — how students are taught and learn in the future.

Chris Cerf, who started his career as a high school teacher, served as the New Jersey education commissioner, deputy chancellor for New York City’s Department of Education, and is a founder of a nonprofit called Cadence Learning, is one of the optimists.

“I absolutely believe that we are going to come out of this pandemic having learned a great deal about how to deliver quality instruction to students,” he said.

You’ll find a handful of examples — snapshots, if you will — here and throughout our Learning section of creativity in a time of crisis.

#Coronavirussyllabus

It developed, as many things do these days, on Twitter.

In March, Anne Fausto-Sterling, an emerita professor of biology at Brown University, tweeted that professors should “teach the virus” whatever their discipline. CONTINUE READING: This School Year Has Been Unlike Any Other - The New York Times

Public Schools: Our Democracy’s Essential Institution | janresseger

Public Schools: Our Democracy’s Essential Institution | janresseger

Public Schools: Our Democracy’s Essential Institution

This blog recently discussed (here and here) Derek Black’s new book, Schoolhouse Burning: Public Education and the Assault on America Democracy, about the long battles to protect the right to public education under the principles embodied in the nation’s founding documents and the 50 state constitutions. Black believes that public schools are our nation’s essential public institution; he also argues that protecting public education and protecting democracy both require constant attention: “The question today is whether constitutions are enough, whether courts can, in effect, protect and save that right for the rest of us. Might it be, as it has always been, that constitutions are just ideas, the force of which ultimately depends on how deeply they penetrate our cultural psyches and how faithfully we pass those ideas along?”  (Schoolhouse Burning, p. 224)

Reading Black’s new book sent me back to some books on my shelf in which a political philosopher and a philosopher of education explore the role of our nation’s public schools for informing and preserving our democracy.

What about the threats today to the social contract—the idea that along with expecting government to protect our individual rights, we must all take responsibility for ensuring that our institutions and laws protect our collective wellbeing? What about a period like the one we are living through, when the President of the United States and the U.S. Secretary of Education insist that we turn away from “government” schools and instead divert our tax dollars to privatized (but publicly funded) charter schools and publicly funded tuition vouchers to pay tuition at private and religious schools?

In a 2007 book, Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole, the late political theorist Benjamin Barber describes precisely how today’s CONTINUE READING: Public Schools: Our Democracy’s Essential Institution | janresseger

Quarantined and Disrupted | JD2718

Quarantined and Disrupted | JD2718

Quarantined and Disrupted

Glanced down at my phone to see who was texting. Today. Middle of the day. It was a former student. Now a teacher herself. Middle school. Why was she texting from work? She’s teaching in person. The text cleared things up.

Quarantined

She was unceremoniously sent home, to quarantine. One of her students is positive.

Disrupted

So she’s already been tested, and with some luck will be negative. But the teacher is home. Class moves to fully remote. They are disrupted. But is this a surprise? They were already doing some weird “in one day, out the next” kind of thing. Maybe every third day? I should ask. And there was weird recorded lessons, or live stream… I don’t know the details. But the class was already disrupted.

Every class in the city has already been disrupted. At best – at best – classes are 50% in person. Every third day is more common than every other day, and there are schools on less frequent rotations than that. Each school is different.

Little side note: this does not mean that each school chose what it thought was best. The DoE’s insistence on a full rotation with daily instruction outside of as well as inside of school, and the UFT’s insistence on “blended learning” straight-jacketed most schools. Some were able to go through the necessary hoops to get “exceptions” accepted – but remember how the first schools that decided they wanted to go remote were shot down? The schools chose, unless the Chancellor wanted them to choose something else.

As September passed, a new disruption developed: many schools offer in building instruction – via the internet. Students, mostly in some high schools, come to school, open a lap top, and zoom into their CONTINUE READING: Quarantined and Disrupted | JD2718

CURMUDGUCATION: Orphaned Education, Forgotten Children

CURMUDGUCATION: Orphaned Education, Forgotten Children

Orphaned Education, Forgotten Children

These are depressing times. Let me tell you why I'm bummed, but first, let me tell you a story.

Almost a decade ago, I was the local union president during a contentious contract negotiation that became a strike. That was probably the lowest part of my teaching career. If you've taught for more than a year or two, you know, somewhere back in the back of your mind, that a lot of people are not really pulling for you, don't really respect the work you do, don't think you should get all uppity about wanting good wages, good working conditions, some sort of say in how the work is done. 

You know all that, but you put your head down, focus on the work, the students, the people out there who respect and value the work you're doing. There are plenty of them, sure enough. But those others. You know they're out there, in many cases in positions of power, but like I said--you keep your head down. But during the strike, I couldn't ignore them. They stopped me on the street, called me at home. I had to look right into that dark maw, and it was deeply disheartening. 

I feel like we're back there again. Seven months of this pandemess, and I think we've become numb, used to just how much education and children is NOT part of the ongoing concerns before us at the moment. On the one hand, it's not news--public education has been a political orphan for at least thirty or forty years. Go ahead--name a prominent political figure who's known for being a champion of public education. Name a Secretary of Education who did their utmost to stand up for public CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Orphaned Education, Forgotten Children

A VERY BUSY DAY Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... The latest news and resources in education since 2007

Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... | The latest news and resources in education since 2007

A VERY BUSY DAY

Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

The latest news and resources in education since 2007

 

 

Big Education Ape: THIS WEEK IN EDUCATION Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... The latest news and resources in education since 2007 - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2020/10/this-week-in-education-larry-ferlazzos_10.html

Three New Resources To Help Teach About The Presidential Election

by Larry Ferlazzo / 11h

mohamed_hassan / Pixabay Here are new additions to THE BEST RESOURCES FOR TEACHING ABOUT THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION : Election 101 is from CNN. Lesson of the Day: How Does the Electoral College Work and Why Does It Matter? is from The NY Times Learning Network.

‘Keeping Politics Out of the Classroom Is Like Keeping the Water Out of Rain’

by Larry Ferlazzo / 11h

is the headline of my latest Education Week Teacher column. Four educators consider how to explore politics in the classroom, including by incorporating multiple perspectives and ensuring all student voices are heard. Here are some excerpts:

The Best Videos For Educators In 2020 – Part Two

by Larry Ferlazzo / 11h

It continues to be time for end-of-year “Best” lists. Now it’s time for the Best Videos For Educators. You can see all my previous “Best” lists related to videos and movies (and there are a lot since I’ve doing this since 2007) here. Note that they’re also continually revised and updated. Here are my picks from the second half of 2020: A few months ago, I posted Implicit Bias Training Doesn’t See

This Should Be Great: “What The Constitution Means To Me” Is On Amazon Prime Video This Friday

by Larry Ferlazzo / 11h

lynn0101 / Pixabay Last year, I published “What the Constitution Means to Me” Sounds Like A Great Play With Lots Of Teaching Potential. I just learned that they taped one of the performances and it will be available on Amazon Prime this Friday! You can read more about it at: Heidi Schreck says she now feels “100 years older” than she was when she filmed the Broadway version. is from Slate. Here’s

Everything You Wanted To Learn About Infographics But Were Afraid To Ask

by Larry Ferlazzo / 11h

FirmBee / Pixabay I have over 2,100 frequently revised and updated “Best” lists on just about every subject imaginable, and you can find them listed three different ways in three different places (see Three Accessible Ways To Search For & Find My “Best” Lists ). I’m starting to publish a series where each day I will highlight the “Best” lists in a separate category. Today, it’s on Infographics: T

My Latest BAM! Radio Show Is About Creating Conditions That Encourage Students To Develop Intrinsic Motivation For Reading

by Larry Ferlazzo / 13h

Three Ways to Help Students in Distance Learning Develop an Intrinsic Desire to Read is the topic of my latest ten-minute BAM! Radio Show. I’m joined in the conversation by Sawson Jaber, Melissa Butler, Jennifer Orr and 

Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... | The latest news and resources in education since 2007