Time for Equity: Implementing & Measuring Access to…

Time for Equity by brown Thursday,October 9,2014

This guest post is by Jaime Del Razo, a principal associate at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform (AISR) at Brown University Schools and student learning are complex. Using a single number like students’ standardized test scores – or even a handful of narrowly defined statistics – as the sole measure of student and school success, and of the impact of policies and practices, is not enough to capture that complexity. AISR’s new report Leveraging Time for School Equity: Indicators to Measure More and Better Learning Time presents a new set of comprehensive, rich and meaningful measures of what matters for student learning and for taking reforms to scale. Each indicator includes a description of what is measured, why it matters, and some possible ways of measuring it.

These indicators cover a broad range of factors for success at the student, school and system levels. Student

Stories of Impact: Grant Beacon Middle School – A Success Story in K-12 School Innovation

Stories of Impact by brown

Students at Grant Beacon Middle School take guitar lessons as part of the school’s enrichment program. (Photo courtesy of Grant Beacon Middle School)

It’s a Tuesday afternoon and all 450 Grant Beacon Middle School students are staying an hour later at school. They’re not in detention. The buses aren’t late.

Instead, students are participating in a range of activities, from a rocket-building class to one-on-one tutoring in math, and they’re excited to be there.

Grant Beacon is a public school in Southwest Denver whose students come from mostly low-income families.

The Opportunity Equation

The Opportunity by brown

How Citizen Teachers Are Combating the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools

Parental wealth now predicts adult success more than at any point in the last hundred years. And yet as debates about education rage on, and wealth based achievement gaps grow, too many people fix the blame on one of two convenient scapegoats: poverty or our public schools. But in fact, low-income kids are learning more now than ever. The real culprit for rising inequality, Eric Schwarz argues in The Opportunity Equation, is that wealthier kids are learning much, much more–mostly outside of school. In summer camps, robotics competitions, sessions with private tutors, and conversations around the dinner table, children from more affluent families build the skills and social networks that propel them to success.

Instead, students are participating in a range of activities, from a rocket-building class to one-on-one tutoring in math, and they’re excited to be there.

Grant Beacon is a public school in Southwest Denver whose students come from mostly low-income families.