Educators must be especially conscious of using compassionate discipline with students living in poverty. Imagine the stresses felt while growing up poor--insecurity about the basics, living in unsafe conditions, perhaps having untreated health conditions or a parent in jail. Research shows that living in poverty can produce changes in the human…

High-poverty schools need more resources and teaching specialists--not more blame and stigma. Bruce Hansen taught in schools labeled "bad" and schools labeled "good." Those experiences have caused him to reflect on the stark inequities between schools with different socioeconomic statuses and the harmful effects of such labels…

Authors William H. Parrett and Kathleen M. Budge, who work with high-poverty schools and have researched their success, share key elements of such schools' "transformational journeys." Even during the pandemic and its aftermath, some high-poverty schools have kept building their staff's capacity and confidence and gradually lifted…

Students in poverty need both academic and social supports. Former New York City Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew and scholar Pedro Noguera argue that students in poverty need both intensive academic and social supports. They maintain that U.S. education policy, with its focus on academic accountability, has generally failed to grasp this dual…

Ellis describes the Building Resilient Communities process, which in facing trauma, considers not only "adverse childhood experiences," but also adverse community environments--inequitable conditions within a community that feed trauma. In BRC networks, partners from various community sectors--schools, healthcare, criminal justice,…

In order to reach black students academically, we must first know where they "live" socially, culturally, and emotionally, says Horace Hall, a mentor in Chicago Public Schools. In his work with Chicago teens, Hall has learned the importance of understanding the significant challenges these youth face, both within and outside of school,…

Understanding how and why rising racial and economic segregation impacts achievement gaps is critical to closing them. Analyzing data from every school district in the U.S., researchers sean reardon, Erin Fahle, Heewon Jang, and Ericka Weathers evaluate how growing racial segregation interacts with unequal economic opportunities and contributes to…

A high-poverty, previously low-performing elementary school in Maine shifted its from looking mainly at achievement and test scores to focusing on ways to create motivated, confident, engaged students. They created Rise and Shine, through which all 3rd-5th graders start each day with a fun, challenging activity chosen from a big menu--from…

When Michael Bonner's 2nd grade students were failing their reading tests, he didn't give up on them. He made a music video. In January 2017, Ellen DeGeneres broadcast nationally what Michael Bonner's South Greenville Elementary students already knew--that Bonner was a life-transforming teacher. DeGeneres had been moved by Bonner's efforts to…

Families of struggling students, this teacher in a high-poverty school knows, feel defensive and hurt when communications with their child's school focus mainly on that child's deficits. This is especially true for families from poverty or immigrant backgrounds--and affirming the latter families is important in the current climate of hostility…

Teachers in high-poverty schools often feel stressed and fatigued. We might expect that if we ask these teachers to take on even more work by meeting regularly in collaborative improvement teams, they will respond with skepticism, even resentment. But in a study of 83 teachers in six outstanding high-poverty schools, these researchers found the…

In recent years, educators have used the SAMR (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition) model to describe the ideal trajectory of teachers as learners with new technology. The very same general pattern can be found in Judith Sandholtz's research from the Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow project in the 1980s and the five-phase model…

The numbers speak for themselves in terms of the crisis of hunger among kids in the United States: More than 16 million children--one in five--live in households that struggle to put food on the table. Nearly half of all food stamp recipients are children. But, argues Felling, the battle against childhood hunger can be won; the United States has…

Low-income students are now a majority in U.S. public schools. Steve Suitts, formerly of the Southern Education Foundation, reviews statistics showing that the percentage of students in K-12 schools coming from low-income families has increased to 52 percent. Meanwhile, state funding for K-12 schools has increased much more modestly, so that…

Suspension and expulsion rates have doubled in the past four decades. As a result, more students than ever--particularly black, Latino, American Indian, and those with disabilities--are being excluded from classroom instruction. These discipline practices rarely allow students to repair the harm they've done as a result of their transgressions or…