Articles

Gender-segregated classrooms are on the rise in the U.S. — especially the Southeast — but research regarding their effectiveness remains inconclusive.

Some people argue “gay-friendly” schools offer needless segregation. Others say they’re the only chance some kids have to make it.

In third grade, Julia Horsman’s entire science project consisted of being herded outside with the other kids with disabilities and rolling soda cans down a ramp.

As a kid, I remember listening wide-eyed to my grandmother tell me about the “Dummy Room.” The Dummy Room was one of her first assignments as a young teacher in small-town Iowa in the 1930s. Like other Dummy Rooms across the country, it was the dumping ground for the school district’s hard cases.

A couple of years ago, my wife casually mentioned that our son’s school in Chattanooga, Tennessee, would be introducing some single-sex classes. I was surprised because I thought any type of segregation was illegal. But after a little research, I found that a sexual revolution has been brewing in our public schools.

Today is the 11th anniversary of the death of Matthew Shepard. I don’t think anyone can contemplate this date without a mix of strong emotions. But for me, the date always brings a special blend of anger, shame and guilt.

During the fourth week of school, the form came home, stuffed into my daughter’s backpack: Your student scored a XX on his/her DIBELS literacy test, administered this Fall/Summer. Based on this score, your child will be placed in Open Court Level XYZ [with] TEACHER A...

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” These few words, spoken casually by Sonia Sotomayor at the annual Mario G. Olmos Law and Cultural Diversity Lecture at UC-Berkeley in 2001, came back to haunt President Barack Obama’s nominee for the United States Supreme Court during the spring and summer of 2009. Hard to believe that this brief statement could cause such anguish, particularly among the conservative white senators who form part of the Senate Judiciary Committee, yet they led to days of arrogant grilling by the Senators and weeks of newspaper articles and commentary by television pundits speculating on what Sotomayor meant, whether it would hurt her confirmation, and what it would signal for the new court.

In fiction, children with disabilities are often still segregated, labeled, lonely and lost. These titles will help bring your school’s library into the age of inclusion.

Jackie Brown prided herself on teaching her students about disabilities. But could she confront her own feelings about her mother and polio?