Achievement and Opportunity Gaps

Confronting the Graduation Rate Crisis
Gary Orfield
Only half of our nation's minority students graduate from high school along with their peers. For many groups—Latino, black, or Native American males—graduation rates are even lower. As states hasten to institute higher standards and high-stakes tests in the effort to raise student achievement, this situation is likely to worsen, particularly among minority students. Yet this educational and civil rights crisis remains largely hidden from public view.
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Harvard Educational Review Special Issue, Fall 2011
Edited by the Editors of the Harvard Educational Review
Immigration, Youth, and Education offers strikingly rich perspectives on immigrant young people and their education—and thereby points to possible future directions for educational policy, practice, and research.
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Perspectives and Strategies for Challenging Times
Edited by Thomas B. Timar and Julie Maxwell-Jolly
This timely and thoughtful book provides multiple perspectives on closing achievement gaps.
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How Educators Can Put All Students on the Path to College
Roberta Espinoza, foreword by Kathleen Cushman
For many students, making their way to higher education requires more than hard work and determination. Low-income minority students who overcome obstacles to achieve academic success have usually encountered at least one college-educated adult in their schooling who took the initiative to reach out to them and provide concrete academic guidance.
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Understanding Diversity, Opportunity Gaps, and Teaching in Today’s Classrooms
H. Richard Milner IV, foreword by Gloria Ladson-Billings
2012 Outstanding Book Award, American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE)
2010 Critics' Choice Book Award, American Educational Studies Association (AESA)
A new edition of Start Where You Are, But Don't Stay There is available. Learn more.
Start Where You Are, But Don’t Stay There addresses a crucial issue in teacher training and professional education: the need to prepare pre-service and in-service teachers for the racially diverse student populations in their classrooms. A down-to-earth book, it aims to help practitioners develop insights and skills for successfully educating diverse student bodies.
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Achievement and Inequality in Education
Edited by Carol DeShano da Silva, James Philip Huguley, Zenub Kakli, and Radhika Rao
The Opportunity Gap aims to shift attention from the current overwhelming emphasis on schools in discussions of the achievement gap to more fundamental questions about social and educational opportunity.
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An Emerging Vision for Closing the Achievement Gap
Ronald F. Ferguson
For the past 15 years, economist Ronald Ferguson has investigated the myriad factors that combine to create racial disparities in academic performance. This volume brings together Ferguson’s most important papers and most recent thinking on these issues. In language accessible and useful to education practitioners, Ferguson sets forth a wide-ranging and compelling vision for closing the achievement gap.
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