Denise Fawcett Facey

The start of educational efficiency seems to have arrived . . . finally. Last June, when I wrote about the imminent arrival of national education standards, 46 states favored standardized goals, agreeing essentially to teach the same topics during the same grades. Since then, all states have gotten on board, except Texas and Alaska. Moreover, last week, Maryland joined Kentucky in endorsing the new educational standards for reading and math, which is a precursor to actual adoption and implementation of the standards. Each state that participates will create its own curriculum, based upon the common standards. Then, once teachers have been trained and textbooks modified, students in every grade in the country will have one standard. (more…)

Do you remember an old public service commercial with the tag line, “Reading is Fundamental?” I was reminded of it recently by a wonderful reading program in Oakland, California, targeting at-risk children, and I was elated. Then I discovered, to my dismay, that our current dismal economy jeopardizes the program’s existence for the upcoming school year. So, the program’s sponsors, a non-profit group called Oakland Parents Literacy Project, may have to end their eight-year quest to raise reading ability in their school district. (more…)

Do you think of the words “gifted” and “minority” as mutually exclusive? Even if you don’t — or won’t admit it — far too many educators act as if gifted African American and Latino students are non-existent or, at the very least, a rarity. That’s why I’m so enthusiastic about the Los Angeles Unified School District’s effort to prove otherwise. (more…)

The equation often works something like this: student + misbehavior=student suspension. But consider what happens when teachers change their behavior. Shifting the paradigm, an increasing number of schools across the country are implementing a behavior management program called Positive Behavior Interventions and Support (PBIS) in which teacher behavior changes before that of the students. And it works. (more…)

Remember when integrating public schools was considered a key component of improving education for all, particularly for minority students? Then, to what do we attribute the resegregation of schools? A recent ruling in Mississippi cast light on this situation when Senior Judge Tom S. Lee of the U.S. District Court of Southern Mississippi ruled that Walthall County schools could no longer resegregate by allowing whites to transfer to a predominately-white school nor could they continue to create segregated classrooms within schools. In 2010, are we still under the colossally ignorant belief that education of white students and black students together will somehow be deleterious to whites? (more…)