Weekend Reading: Hechinger, NPR, EdWeek, NYT

Here are some of the stories from magazines and sites I don't check during the week:  

Only about half of StudentsFirst's Missouri candidate won in the primary, notes @hechingerreport ow.ly/f0JQ1

Public employees insulated from earlier job losses now face layoffs NPR ow.ly/eZD95 

Show Me Your Badge - NYT ow.ly/f0liC@kevincarey1 

How Do You Raise a Prodigy? - NYT Magazineow.ly/eZCBv #thisweekined

[Also: Where Are the Gifted Minorities? Scientific Americanow.ly/eYXmz Co-written by my former colleague Rena Subotnik]

Uh, oh, @ncate: Minnesota Colleges Must Turn Over Education Syllabi ow.ly/eYVd5 @edweek

Jonathan Kozol interview in In These Timesow.ly/eZCdE [Does he ever talk about Ravitch, I wonder?]

Image via: Great Moments of Obama Talking on the Phone #thisweekined

 

Comments

[Bruce]

The Scientific American article on gifted minorities is surprisingly devoid of new suggestions. Pretty much every one of its ideas for getting more underrepresented minorities to raise their achievement and their representation in gifted education was tried at Locke High School; indeed, that's why the school was named Locke High School, since Alain Leroy Locke was the first African American recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship. We used to have mass produced posters of relatively famous African American scientists, civil rights leaders, and other intellectuals all over that campus (even after its student body had become two-thirds Latino).

An alternative would be to stop reinforcing racial identities, so as to establish genuinely equal campus cultures that promote effective education for everyone regardless of ethnic background, as a sort of naturally accepted way of doing things.