This article presents popular misconceptions on teaching culturally relevant books and provides strategies that can inform the search, selection, and teaching of books in culturally responsive ways. Informed by relevant research and insights gained from collaboratively teaching a children's literature course at college level, I discuss how the…

In a 2010 address to the College Board, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan laid out a vision for high school that advances the Obama administration's goal of the U.S. once again leading the world in educational attainment. There is no grade in which the magnitude and complexity of this shift becomes clearer than in senior year. Historically,…

The Nation's Report Card[TM] informs the public about the academic achievement of elementary and secondary students in the United States. Report cards communicate the findings of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the largest continuing and nationally representative assessment of what the nation's students know and can do.…

This article presents annotations of 30 trade books on the 2008 list of Young Adults' Choices that are the result of voting by students in five different regions of the United States. Trade books (books other than textbooks) published in 2006 were submitted by more than 50 publishers. Each book had to have at least two positive reviews from…

The proportion of high school students completing a challenging core curriculum rose significantly between 1990 and 2005--from 31 percent to 51 percent--and students are doing better in their classes than their predecessors did. However, that good news is tempered by other findings in two federal reports. The performance of high school seniors on…

The world outside schools is changing rapidly with the advances of technology and economic requirements for a 21st-century global citizenry. Today, technology has moved into one's everyday life and is becoming a pervasive part of how one works, learns, and plays. Similarly, networked communications and computer technology have transformed the…

This report is one of nine detailed case studies of small urban high schools that served as the foundation for the Education Resource Strategies (ERS) report "Strategic Designs: Lessons from Leading Edge Small Urban High Schools." These nine schools were dubbed "Leading Edge Schools" because they stand apart from other high…