Rewind: The Dropout Nation Podcast: Why Civil Rights Activists Should Embrace School Reform

July 28, 2010

With  old-school civil rights groups complaining about President Barack Obama’s embrace of the school reform movement — and its commitment to improving the quality of education for all children — listen to this Dropout Nation Podcast from February on why their approach to educational equity doesn’t work. The only way educational equity will actually be [...]

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Voices of the Dropout Nation: In Quotes

July 26, 2010

“We’re going to stop lying to children and lying to families [about curriculum quality]… We have to challenge the status quo on when schools are failing… We think it is unacceptable” — U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on Common Core State Standards and overhauling failing schools at the Military Child Education Coalition’s annual conference, [...]

Why Russ Whitehurst Gets It Mostly Wrong on Harlem Children’s Zone

July 23, 2010

The Harlem Children’s Zone and it’s chief executive, Geoffrey Canada, have not only exemplified what school reformers can do when they take a community-based approach to improving education, but has even spawned a movie, an American Express commercial, and the Obama administration’s Promise Neighborhoods program for tackling poverty and education. So naturally, the release of [...]

Watch: A New Jersey Pastor on Why Poor Families Need School Choice

July 21, 2010

President Barack Obama may not be a fan of school voucher programs — and has allowed D.C.’s Opportunity Scholarship Program to go out of business. But his Race to the Top school reform competition has fostered new discussion about — and efforts to — launch and expand these forms of school choice for the poorest [...]

This is Dropout Nation: A Southern Decline

July 12, 2010

Five decades ago, the states below the Mason-Dixon line spurred the first modern major efforts to reform American public education. Concerned about low educational attainment, especially among its rural and poor black and white students, governors such as governors such as Lamar Alexander (a future U.S. Senator) and future presidents Bill Clinton and George W. [...]