Thursday, July 16, 2009

Two good reads

Garrett Delavan's book, The Teacher's Attention (Temple U.) makes the case for smaller schools and smaller classes, or as he calls it "relationship load reduction." Delavan is a high school teacher in Salt Lake City.

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Blue-Chip Black (University of California) by Karyn Lacy, is a study of middle-class African-Americans in Prince George's County, Maryland, one of the largest such communities in the nation. It's a community set apart from both poor blacks and whites -- avoiding traditional classrooms in favor of selective enrollment magnet schools or elite private schools. It is also a community being devastated by the current economic disaster, making Lacy's work that much more significant. She writes:
Cross-racial alliances are most prevalent in Prince Goerge's County, where the county's dismal fiscal conditions united black and white residents on key issues, namely development and schools.

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