Wednesday, March 23, 2011

The potential power of full integration

See Bob Herbert's piece in The New York Times

And the study he references.

From the study:

"The education reform debate is dominated by efforts to make high-poverty schools work better, but a new report released by The Century Foundation suggests that a more promising strategy involves providing low-income families a chance to live in more-advantaged neighborhoods, where their children can attend low-poverty public schools.

. . .

"Among the studies key findings are the following:
  • "By the end of elementary school, students in public housing who attend more-affluent green zone schools through the inclusionary housing program cut the achievement gap with non-poor students in the district by one-half in math, and by by one-third in reading.
  • "Despite the district’s extra investments in its most disadvantaged (red zone) schools, by the end of elementary school, children living in public housing who attended lower poverty (green zone) schools far outperformed their public housing peers in red zone schools. The size of the effect from attending a low-poverty (green zone) school for children living in public housing in math was 0.4 compared with attending a higher-poverty (red zone) school. This low-poverty effect is quite large relative to other educational interventions, where research has often identified an effect of approximately 0.1 on student test scores.
  • "The educational benefits of socioeconomic integration are significant, but they take time. Only after four years in the district did public housing children in low-poverty schools notably outperform public housing children in the district’s moderate-poverty schools."

Monday, March 14, 2011

Itinerant lives, children, and education

Itinerant Life Weighs on Farmworkers’ Children

Eating habits and class (UK)

Food and class: does what we eat reflect Britain's social divide?