The B. F. Day Elementary School in Seattle (Washington) exemplifies positive changes that can be made with principal leadership and teacher involvement. The school is one of six Seattle urban schools receiving federal and state support for educating homeless children under the McKinney Homeless Assistance Act. (SLD)

Describes positive results coming from Trinity University's active support of educational reform efforts at Hawthorne Elementary School (Houston, Texas). Trinity's teacher education agenda focused on preparing teachers for the real world of the elementary school and pursuing a teacher-selected school reform project. (GR)

Provides an evaluator's view of the quantitative effects of the Core Knowledge Sequence, a content-based K-6 curriculum model, and other reforms at Hawthorne Elementary School (Houston, Texas). Pretest and posttest results show increased academic performance in reading, writing, and mathematics, based on Texas Assessment of Academic Skills…

Focuses on a low-performing school district to review the problems of school reform and accountability, and to reveal the set of prevailing conditions and themes that make change more complicated. It is argued that the politics of race, poverty, the vacuums in communication and leadership, and the uncritical mass of human resources dramatically…

Study using Association of American Medical Colleges data investigated relationship between medical school admission practices at public and private institutions and proportions of matriculants at each school interested in general practice, rural practice, practice in socioeconomically deprived areas. Results show public schools and those with…

Discusses realities that challenge middle level education, including changes in social, economic, and political life which are threatening children and affecting their lives. Asserts that local communities should reflect on the implications of these realities for their middle level programs and plan ways to address these problems. (SD)

Fifty years ago, the Supreme Court ruled in "Brown v. Board of Education" that: "Segregation of white and Negro children in the public schools of a State solely on the basis of race, pursuant to state laws permitting or requiring such segregation, denies to Negro children the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth…

Increasingly, researchers, policymakers, school leaders, and concerned citizens are recognizing that high schools in the United States are in need of major reform. Current research shows that high schools are not preparing students for college, work, or life, and that they are leading to increased alienation among students. In a much-noted speech…

This Legislative Report Card assesses how California's governor and Legislature have handled bills it says affected racial inequities--or might have if they had been signed into law. The report examines an eclectic collection of bills that addressed the minimum wage, the creation of a single-payer health care system and other issues in education,…

Jonathan Kozol has made a good living talking with students. His books chronicle travels among poor, minority children, most of them African Americans in struggling public schools. In the four decades that Kozol, now 70, has been writing books--11 so far--his message has hardly wavered: minority children are unsuccessful because rich, white…

The arts survive at the margins of education primarily as curriculum enrichments. However, evidence is emerging that shows that arts education can have powerful effects on student achievement, with the greatest gains for students in the lowest socioeconomic status quartile, those most at risk of academic failure. Arts integration is an…

The first decade of democracy in South Africa ushered in dramatic social policy reforms. One innovation in initial teacher education emerged through the skills development policy, which introduced learnerships to address South Africa's human resource development needs. South Africa's learnerships have been adapted from countries such as the United…

The purpose of compensatory education is grounded in the history and practice of addressing the effects of poverty on teaching and learning. The intended purpose of compensatory education was to provide additional investment in human capital for low-income students to compensate for the higher investments in human capital afforded to more…

In this paper, we examine some modern myths of poverty and special education. Mythology has been a staple of curriculum for many years, particularly in the early grades. Students study mythology to understand historical societies, unearthing cultural values and mores communicated through fables. Not so benign are myths related to poverty and…

This manual for Idaho school districts covers the identification, assessment, and educational needs of students who show intellectual promise, specific academic performance, leadership, creativity, or talent in the visual or performing arts. It is organized into seven chapters and seven appendices which take up approximately half the publication.…