Timothy Ready - Böcker

This volume summarizes a range of scientific perspectives on the important goal of achieving high educational standards for all students. Based on a conference held at the request of the U.S. Department of Education, it addresses three questions: What progress has been made in advancing the education of minority and disadvantaged students since the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision nearly 50 years ago? What does research say about the reasons of successes and failures? What are some of the strategies and practices that hold the promise of producing continued improvements? The volume draws on the conclusions of a number of important recent NRC reports, including How People Learn, Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children, Eager to Learn, and From Neurons to Neighborhoods, among others. It includes an overview of the conference presentations and discussions, the perspectives of the two co-moderators, and a set of background papers on more detailed issues.

Since 1968 the Elementary and Secondary School Civil Rights Compliance Report (known as the E&S survey) has been used to gather information about possible disparities in access to learning opportunities and violations of studentsa (TM) civil rights. Thirty-five years after the initiation of the E&S survey, large disparities remain both in educational outcomes and in access to learning opportunities and resources. These disparities may reflect violations of studentsa (TM) civil rights, the failure of education policies and practices to provide students from all backgrounds with a similar educational experience, or both. They may also reflect the failure of schools to fully compensate for disparities and current differences in parentsa (TM) education, income, and family structure. The Committee on Improving Measures of Access to Equal Educational Opportunities concludes that the E&S survey continues to play an essential role in documenting these disparities and in providing information that is useful both in guiding efforts to protect studentsa (TM) civil rights and for informing educational policy and practice.The committee also concludes that the surveya (TM)s usefulness and access to the survey data could be improved.