Tag Archive for ‘low-income students’ at The Core Knowledge Blog

Elizabeth Green of Gotham Schools has laid her hands on a 34-page transition memo written by Democrats for Education Reform, and puts it online for all to see. She leads with DFER’s touting Teach for America founder Wendy Kopp or Chicago schools boss Arne Duncan for Secretary of Education over NYC’s Joel Klein (the memo is pretty clear, however, that in DFER’s ideal world, Klein or Washington’s Michelle Rhee would get the job).

Here’s what you won’t read in the DFER memo: anything about curriculum. The word appears only once in 34 pages, and that’s in someone’s job title. The memo to the President-elect lays out dozens of staffing recommendations and a legislative strategy that addresses accountability, teacher quality, and a 20% increase in Title I funding. DFER even suggests the Obama Administration ”steer clear of getting involved in any aspect of the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind until it has firmly gotten its footing.” On what kids should actually be learning? Cue the crickets. Chirp.

This is not to single out DFER. Ed reform groups across the board have much to say about funding, structures, choice, charters, incentives and myriad other topics yet virtually nothing about what children are actually taught inside the classroom. There are clear connections to be made between curriculum and reading achievement, but with 15% to 18% of school age children moving in a given year, student mobility alone is reason enough to support a uniform national curriculum. Without it, we institutionalize the gaps and repetitions that occur as student’s move from class to class, school to school or town to town. In particular, low-income children, who move far more often, are profoundly impacted by this.

To her credit, Kati Haycock touched briefly on the issue in her address at the start of the Education Trust National Conference in Washington yesterday, asking educators to consider not just common standards but ”common curriculum, some common lessons and assignments, and a carefully sequenced development of skills, knowledge and vocabulary.”

At least someone’s talking about it. Anybody listening?

Mercy College in New York is creating an “Immediate Decision Week,” an instant, on-the-spot evaluation that allows students to learn whether they have been admitted 24 hours after showing their high school transcripts, the New York Sun reports. The paper says admissions officers will also be canvassing local beaches and malls in “roving vans” in the New Yorks five boroughs and Westchester in search of instant applicants.

The beach?? “Dude, you are, like, so totally accepted!”

The Sun’s ed reporter Elizabeth Green says appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, it’s not an act of desperation (Mercy’s enrollment numbers are up strongly) but attempt to improve customer service — and to make sure that everyone who is qualified for the college knows that it is available.

“For the sophisticated middle class, the dignified and genteel ways of higher education do not constitute a barrier,” notes Barmak Nassirian, American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. “Now imagine the unsophisticated, low-income student who doesn’t have a cooperative adult in their life, for whom the very knowledge that you have to get admitted to go to college is news. What’s wrong with their running into a desk at a mall, where somebody grabs their best instincts and makes them act on it? That’s a fabulously good thing.”