Fighting Income Inequality in Schools
Authors Greg Duncan and Richard Murnane, wrote an article
for the The Atlantic about fighting
against income inequality in public schools. The article mainly addresses the
solutions they present in their new book, Restoring
Opportunity. The book presents three initiatives that will help with
education changes designed to combat deficiencies in low income schools.
Duncan and Murnane say that one of the problems with public
schools, and the ideas to fix them, is that they rely on “silver bullets” to
solve the problem. The authors believe throwing money at a school or creating
charter schools does not address the problem. They believe that consistency and
quality are the only way to prepare low income kids to obtain new technological
jobs.
Duncan and Murname have proposed three ideas to help put quality
and consistency into practice. First, they believe, that not only are Pre-K
programs are essential; they need to be staffed with trained teachers following
the same curriculum. Second, elementary and middle schools should have a system
that has teachers working as one group, all responsible for literacy, not just
English teachers. Third, large failing high schools need to be replaced by smaller
focused schools with teacher and student support.
Every one of their ideas has been put into practice on a
small scale in New York since 2001. The result has been a marked improvement on
graduation and SAT scores. The article offers more information on how the initiatives
work, however, no information on how they are implemented. I am assuming that
in order to get more information they want people to buy their book. What I
like about this article, is that if offers solutions and does not just point
out the problems. The article does offer a quick explanation of how each program
works, but there is not enough information to offer valid praise or criticism of
their initiates. I think it could be interesting reading, especially after discussing
Jonathan Kozal.
How to sell a book… In response to your blog written by Greg Duncan and Richard Murnane entitled “The Atlantic” I have also searched for consistency and quality in low-income schools. The whole curriculum development process needs to be well planned.
ReplyDeleteDuncan and Murnane’s three initiatives are very interesting. The two authors say
“Throwing money at a school or creating charter schools does not address the problem.”
I agree, that if smaller schools are not performing well, they need to be replaced. I agree that middle schools and elementary schools need to work as one as well. Finding trained teachers and keeping them seems to be the problem every where.
Ultimately, what is at stake here is education. The findings, which have been revealed, make a person wonder if there is a balance in education? Let alone, I don’t want to buy a book, which makes me feel like I’m the only one who can fix the problem. I agree with you, Duncan and Murnane may have only given us a taste of the solution, and the rest is going to cost us. What a hoax. Just fix the problem, and win the noble prize.
Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/04/us/politics/obama-budget-would-expand-low-income-tax-break.html?_r=0