Since the early 1980s, young women have outpaced men in educational outcomes. The gender gap is even more pronounced among Black and Latinx students. Moreover, these academic gaps have widened since the pandemic. Based on a five-year study of a district-wide initiative designed to improve academic outcomes for Black and Latino males, Adriana…

School readiness is a quality that adults believe exists within the child, but it actually is an artifact of age-graded schools. Even in a single grade, there will be a one-year spread in ages and, therefore, in development. Instead of sorting children into those who are ready to learn and those who are not, schools should provide opportunities…

In 2001, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation launched the SPARK initiative to improve early learning and transitions into elementary school for vulnerable children. Eight programs were funded, each of which anchored their work in their local communities by forming partnerships with parents, schools and a variety of local organizations. Seven of the eight…

Three highly regarded organizations, the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP), Phi Delta Kappa (PDK) International, and the Lumina Foundation for Education, undertook an important project to collect the opinions of middle school students using a scientific polling process. The idea to poll middle school students took shape…

P-16 initiatives across the nation, with the endorsement of the National Governors Association, are striving to create a seamless education system from preschool through college graduation. P-12 and postsecondary educators are being asked to collaborate on a much deeper level. These efforts are rooted in the belief that "today's education system…

Challenges the reports of California's "success" with early childhood education. (IRT)

Any given child should attend school full time when three parties agree that the time is right: the child, his or her parents, and the school officials. Arbitrary starting dates based on calendar age are outmoded and educationally unsound. (PGD)

Advocates extra time between kindergarten and the first grade for academically and socially immature children to acquire learning skills and develop positive self-esteem. Includes three case studies of former transitional class students. (PKP)

Overviews progress in the interconnected realms of early childhood policy, management of local agencies, front-line practice in classrooms and communities, and experiences of young children and their families. The nation lacks a coherent system to fund, manage, govern, and support quality in local early childhood education agencies. (MLH)

Examines Bloom's theories of mastery learning as developed in his book--"Human Characteristics and School Learning." (IRT)

What is striking about the Goals 2000 initiative is its virtual omission of the student, except as passive receptacle. To claim that students will learn more with heightened expectations is misleading. For content to take root, it must connect with students' internal "prepared structures" and become a "comfortable friend." In…

This paper declares war against the miseducation of young children, who learn best through direct encounters rather than through formalized inculcation of symbolic rules. A variety of socioeconomic forces (including the civil rights and women's movements) are forcing preschoolers into learning environments originally designed for school-age…

Claims that students' self-discipline is the key factor in learning and that the structure of the school is the key factor in developing self-discipline in students. Suggests ways schools can develop awareness of the effects of their structures on student behavior and learning and make appropriate improvements. (PGD)

The shift to alterable variables (those that can be changed before or during the teaching and learning processes) enables researchers to move from an emphasis on prediction and classification to a concern for causality and the relations between means and ends in teaching and learning. (Author/IRT)