The classroom and school day are very important. Parents, role models and consistency are critical. After the school day ends, there are many opportunities - utilized or wasted - to ensure academic success, particularly with those whose socioeconomic experiences limit the ability to utilize the time. This program, Blue Engine, seeks to make that time count, in a comprehensive way, in the tradition of TFA.

College competition is fierce. It serves to widen the achievement gap at elite colleges. There is an interesting comment at the end of the article on moving resources to community colleges. I am a big fan of community colleges, particularly our local ones, Dutchess and Ulster.  The Community College Research Center at Teacher’s College is a great source for research and analysis about the unique approach of these colleges.

Many community colleges provide more of a vocational than academic approach, a good thing in diversifying educational opportunities. However, if the achievement gap issue is a result of economically disadvantaged students not having access to elite academic environments, how will reallocation of resources to community college programs bridge that gap? Or will it only make it larger?

We need vocational programs balanced with academic programs. But if we channel students and resources to either higher education choice based purely on economic advantage (or lack thereof) and not on merit, the inequity persists, grows and festers.

Research shows that the KIPP model program is working to significantly and meaningfully close the achievement gap for its students.

AND, that the program’s biggest standard criticism, that the school takes the the most capable students from the underperforming schools, is not the reality that anti-charter critics like to make of it.

“the study didn’t find any evidence that KIPP is systematically enrolling more high-performers from their school districts. On average, the report says, KIPP middle schools have students who are more likely to be living in poverty and are more likely to be black or Hispanic than are students from the schools around them. Back when they were in 4th grade, the study also found, a majority of the KIPP middle school students had lower test scores on average than did students in their local school districts.”

I am a fan!

Life as a 1L is over! I am researching conservation easements this summer as a Tibor T. Polgar Fellow with the Hudson River Institute.

This article, published by the Atlantic Monthly, demonstrates just how complicated - and achievable - great teaching is.

This blog is on hiatus. There are 150 blog posts with great resources, articles to challenge your thinking and information that may interest you (it interests me). I embarked on the next branch in my career at Albany Law School in August and so have devoted most of my *spare* time to that endeavor. Keep the lines of communication open if anything interesting comes your way.

Stories like these clearly demonstrate the inherent tension and difficult issues between employment and jobs and student learning. We need to commit to a new and better process that has creative mechanisms to serve all our students and our teachers fairly.

“The actions of the teachers unions in both Baltimore and New York make sense from their perspective. Unions exist to advance the interests of their members. The problem is that unions present themselves as student advocates while pushing education policies that work for their members even if they leave kids worse off.“