Urban Teacher Residency Programs
It's no secret that schools serving the most disadvantaged students face the toughest challenges in attracting and retaining effective teachers. As a result, the poorest, most vulnerable students--those who need our help most--are least likely to attend schools with fully qualified staff members.
One promising solution is attracting attention: Urban Teacher Residency programs. These programs combine master's-level education coursework with clinical teaching experience in actual urban classrooms. According to a recent article in Voices in Urban Education, these programs are showing early success in poor urban schools. Ninety percent of graduates from a Boston program--and 95 percent of graduates from a similar program in Chicago--are still teaching three years after graduation. Compare that to national urban school retention rates, which typically run between 30 and 50 percent.
The programs succeed by combining some essential ingredients of successful teacher retention programs: mentoring, professional collaboration, school/university partnerships, on-going support for teachers, and concrete links between research and classroom practice.
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A Village Route to Early Childhood Education
In the 1990s, we at Davenport Community Schools noticed a trend: Children were coming to kindergarten unprepared to learn. A troublingly low number of our district’s children (more than half of whom receive free or reduced price lunch) had preschool experience. Recognizing the importance of early childhood education in ensuring students are ready to succeed in school and life, we developed the Children’s Village, which includes formal preschool classes and all-day, year-round programming serving children from six weeks to five years old. Today, when a Children’s Village student arrives for the first day of kindergarten, the teacher can say, “This child is ready to learn.”
With early childhood education, students learn more, teachers accomplish more and taxpayers get more for their education tax dollar. But it takes all our students, teachers, staff, administrators, parents and partners to make the Children’s Villages a success. Indeed, it really does take a village to ensure quality early childhood education. Read more
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Black/Latino Students NOT "Disadvantaged"
Disadvantaged. Minority. Multicultural. Diversity. All words to obfuscate the harsh reality of racism/white supremacy that governs policies, curricula and hiring practices within the US public education system.
Every child comes to school with a long and complex history and culture of their people... and the potential for intellectual development with the ability to realize their civic responsibiities.
Disadvantaged relative to the norms of racism and the Eurocentric worldview, yes. But NOT disadvantaged relative to how these children navigate- on a daily basis -their oppressed environments. These children are brilliant masters of survival and growth within the harshest environments-- in spite of the mainly negative views of their educators as to their abilities.
Let the Black/Latino parents and children help define what is needed for educational success instead of corporate moguls pressing privatizing schemes onto public education. When this happens, you will see that our Black/Latino children (and their parents) are far from being disadvantaged and very much"advantaged."
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