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The WSJ with a spot-on editorial on the CA Supreme Court's narrow (4-3), unfortunate decision: Students Lose, Liberals Elated California denies a constitutional challenge to failing schools. Aug. 22, 2016 6:56 p.m. ET http://www.wsj.com/article_email/students-lose-liberals-elated-1471906567-lMyQjAxMTE2MjIyMzEyNTM0Wj Remember when progressives worked to break down the barriers to minority education? You know,  Brown v. Board  and all that. Well, nowadays good liberals rejoice when their judicial friends deny upward mobility to poor black and Hispanic children. That's how the left reacted to  http://airmail.calendar/2016-08-29%2012:00:00%20EDT  decision by the California Supreme Court not to hear an appeal of the  Vergara v. California  case charging that the Golden State has systematically denied minority kids trapped in failing schools their constitutional right to an education. The plaintiffs, backed by some public-spirited donors, had won in lower court but lost on appeal and...

Good to see the CA setback hasn't deterred Students Matter: Students Matter just filed  Martinez v. Malloy,  a new federal lawsuit on behalf of a group of Connecticut students and their parents challenging state laws and policies that actively prevent students from accessing quality public schools. This is Students Matter's third education equality case, and our first in federal court. The lawsuit targets a set of state laws and policies that limit access to quality public school options — including magnet, traditional and charter public schools — that are delivering a world-class education to students of all backgrounds. These unnecessary restrictions have created a system in which zip code and luck of the draw determine whether students have a shot at a quality education and, we believe, violate the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of equal protection and due process. We know what works. It's time to cut through unnecessary and harmful red tape and make sure all students...

The decision is even more of a disgrace since the court didn't even hear (much less rule on) the case. Nevertheless, two courageous justices wrote scathing dissents: Unfortunately, Liu and Cuellar were not given the chance. In a shameful abdication of duty, 4 of the 7 California Justices refused to even listen to the arguments of Beatriz Vergara and her fellow plaintiffs. Those four justices, Carol Corrigan, Kathryn Werdegar, Tani Cantil-Sakauye, and Leondra Kruger, thus join the ranks of names such as those of Roger Taney and Henry Brown that will be forever tainted by their defense of a brutal and discriminatory system. Fortunately, California's rules allow dissents even in cases of accepting or denying a petition for review. Thus, Justices Liu and Cuéllar, had the opportunity to keep hope alive for future petitioners. Justice Liu's dissent included the following language: "One of our criteria for review is whether we are being asked "to settle an important ques...

Shael Polakow-Suransky and two others with an insightful NYT op ed entitled, "Train Teachers Like Doctors": Our nation has faced — and solved — a similar problem before. In medicine, we long ago recognized that significant study and practice under the guidance of a skilled practitioner are necessary to ensure that doctors are qualified to serve the public. After World War II, we increasingly invested public money in a range of efforts to strengthen doctors' preparation, including stipends for training. We now spend $11.5 billion a year on medical education, roughly $500,000 for every new doctor. For a fraction of that cost we can build a strong system of teacher preparation — good residency programs cost about $65,000 per candidate, including tuition and stipends, according to our calculations. Much of the money could come from reallocating current resources. States and school districts need to do the tough, detailed work to redirect and focus funds that are not being use...

Two easy interventions help at-risk students from dropping out of college: Regardless of their credentials, many freshmen doubt that they have the necessary brainpower or social adeptness to succeed in college. This fear of failing hits poor, minority and first-generation college students especially hard. If they flunk an exam, or a professor doesn't call on them, their fears about whether they belong may well be confirmed. The cycle of doubt becomes self-reinforcing, and students are more likely to drop out. The good news is that this dismal script can be rewritten. Several recent research projects show that, with the right nudge, students can acquire ways of thinking that helps them thrive. In a large-scale experiment at an unnamed school I'll call Flagship State, incoming freshmen read upperclassmen's accounts of how they navigated the shoals of university life. The accounts explained that, while the upperclassmen initially felt snubbed by their classmates and intimidate...

Interesting and troubling research on rising income inequality in recent decades, which has led to rising educational inequality: Duncan and Murnane make the case that the ability of the affluent to invest in their children has contributed to the "growth in the income-based gaps in children's reading and mathematics achievement" which, in turn, has "contributed to a growing gap in the rate of college completion." The two authors also document the growing disparity of parental financial investment in "child-enrichment goods and services." In 1972-73 high-income families spent about $2,850 more per year per child on child enrichment than low-income families did. By the 2005–2006 school year, this gap had nearly tripled, to $8,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars. While several of the Russell Sage authors cite the success of a few specialized education programs in raising the academic achievement levels of low-income students, the report suggests that given ...

Another troubling study about "persistently disadvantaged" children (in Michigan) – defined as 8 th  graders to qualified for free or reduced-price lunch  every year  since kindergarten – which concludes that "American Schools Are Even More Unequal Than We Thought": The  National Assessment of Educational Progress , often called the  http://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ , publishes student scores by eligibility for subsidized meals. Under the federal  No Child Left Behind Act  and its successor, the Every Student Succeeds Act, districts have reported scores separately for disadvantaged children, with eligibility for subsidized meals serving as the standard measure of disadvantage. With Katherine Michelmore, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Michigan, I have analyzed data held by the Michigan Consortium for Educational Research and  found that  this measure substantially understates the achievement gap. In Michigan, as in the rest of the country, about half...

Paul Tough with an in-depth article in the The Atlantic about "How Kids Learn Resilience": But here's the problem: For all our talk about noncognitive skills, nobody has yet found a reliable way to teach kids to be grittier or more resilient. And it has become clear, at the same time, that the educators who are best able to engender noncognitive abilities in their students often do so without really "teaching" these capacities the way one might teach math or reading—indeed, they often do so without ever saying a word about them in the classroom. This paradox has raised a pressing question for a new generation of researchers: Is the teaching paradigm the right one to use when it comes to helping young people develop noncognitive capacities? Paul Tough June 2016 Issue Education http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/how-kids-really-succeed/480744/

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