In the wake of George Floyd’s horrific death, white Americans increasingly understand what it means to be Black in this county. Even before this gruesome event was captured on video for us all to see, Trey Gowdy, a former U.S. House of Representatives member and Republican litigator, was quoted as saying: “I have finally begun…
Read MoreRecently, I watched a basketball game between Rutgers Newark and The College of New Jersey. I was with a coach from one of the local inner city high schools and 12 of his promising athletes. Three of the coach’s former students were on the Newark team. He also knew several of the other players, having…
Read MoreAs a nation, we need to improve our academic standards to be more competitive internationally. Moreover, testing to assure students are achieving those standards from state to state is not unreasonable, and our tests are frankly easy compared to some administered in foreign countries. Unfortunately, the way we are implementing the improved Common Core standards,…
Read MoreAt the recent Correctional Education Association conference in Arlington, VA, Dr. Lois Davis presented the findings of a meta study being published by the Rand Corporation, “How Effective Is Correctional Education, and Where Do We Go from Here?” Dr. Davis and a team of fellow researchers comprehensively reviewed studies on educating incarcerated adults and juveniles. …
Read MoreDuring a recent trip to London Correctional in Ohio, an inmate named Roger asked me to look at the computer monitor in front of him. With great pride he wanted to share his success on his most recent math lesson. Roger is 61 years of age, and other than a few grades in elementary school, education…
Read MoreRecently, the U.S. Department of Education reported that student loan defaults are surging to record levels, with one in seven loans in default. What is not discussed much in the articles is the huge percentage of defaulting students who do not even complete their degree. Only 56% of students complete 4-year colleges within 6 years…
Read MoreM. Night Shyamalan, the film writer and director, recently published his own research on why American students under-perform their peers on international tests. Those of us who read educational research are not surprised when he concludes that low performance in education is rooted in poverty. If you eliminate the poorest students, and focused on…
Read MoreIn the past few decades American education focused very heavily on reading comprehension as the path to learning, while writing received relatively less attention. The negative results of this trend have been chronicled for a long time. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) writing exam, last given in 2002, showed that 69% of 8th graders…
Read MoreThe link between low educational achievement and incarceration is clear. About 75% of inmates in state prisons did not obtain a high school diploma (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2003). Students who drop out of high school are by some studies up to eight times more likely than high school graduates to end up in jail…
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