Special education is failing children in New York City, reports Elizabeth A. Harris in the New York Times. When “T.J.” was two, his mother realized he wasn’t developing like his twin brother. She called the pediatrician, starting a “troubled journey through the labyrinthine bureaucracy of New York City’s special education system,” writes Harris. A decade later, T.J. is a friendly 12-year-old boy with a generous smile. He giggles while watching cartoons, always says “please” a

White liberals perpetuate segregation, charged journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones in a lecture at Yale, reports Christopher Peak in the New Haven Independent. White parents don’t send their children to predominantly black or brown schools, she said. Desegregation peaked in 1988, Hannah-Jones said. That year, the national achievement gap on reading scores was half of what it was in 1971 — the smallest it ever was and has been since. Studies showed the effects of desegregation last

Anastasia Bertram, 7, one of the only white students at her Georgia elementary school, was cast as a segregationist in the school play, her parents complain. Anastasia Bertram, 7, played a racist in the school play. The girl had one line: “Go away, you don’t belong here.” Then she marched with sign saying, “Please go home” on one side and “Cursed is the man who integrates” on the other side. (A black boy marched with her, also carrying a pro-segregation sign.) The girl’s pare

School choice shouldn’t be controversial, writes Chris Stewart on Citizen Ed. School Choice Week reminds us that “hundreds of thousands of children are on waiting lists for charter schools,” he writes. “There are many more students with special needs for whom private programs would be better, but they lack the financial support to access those schools. And, there are the students for whom homeschooling would make a world of difference.” Stewart sees choice opponents as “paren

At 25 percent of urban charter schools, 99 percent of students are non-white, reports AP. That compares to 10 percent of traditional public schools. Does it matter? Kindergartners at a New Orleans charter school. Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images Some inner-city families prefer “cultural homogeneity,” AP concedes. Others simply want a safe, effective school. Test scores tend to be higher at integrated schools, reports AP.  Only 20 percent of students reach proficiency at traditi

Michael Krell teaches statistics at the International Academy, a program for  immigrant students at Cardozo Educational Campus in Washington, D.C. Photo: Natalie Gross Special schools designed for recent immigrants are helping students learn English quickly and catch up academically, reports Natalie Gross in The Atlantic. But some critics worry the model segregates immigrants, while others complain about “focusing too many resources on immigrant children when the test scores

“Segregating” refugees may help them integrate, suggests the Hechinger Report’s Meredith Kolodner. Bowling Green, Kentucky has opened a special “international” high school for newly arrived refugees and immigrants next to a comprehensive high school. Faris Nakhal, 18, who survived a kidnapping in Syria, chose to attend GEO International High with “Somali, Iraqi, Burmese, Bhutanese, Ethiopian and Latin American teenagers,” writes Kolodner. Many of his classmates also had fled

Parents who have a choice tend to choose high-scoring schools! And those schools usually have lots of affluent and middle-class white and Asian-American students and few low-income blacks and Latinos. Liberal parents say they value diversity but choose majority white schools for their children, reports Katie Taylor in the New York Times. A look at the history of District 3, which stretches along the West Side of Manhattan from 59th to 122nd Street, shows how administrators’ d

In Lucinda Rosenfeld’s Class, which satirizes privileged, perfectionist Brooklynites, “parent is both a verb and a competitive sport,” writes Sarah Lyall in a New York Times review. Karen who works for a non-profit, and her husband, a housing advocate, send their child, Ruby, to a public school where whites are a minority. But uber-liberal Karen is dismayed by Ruby’s black classmates with “beaded braids, buzz cuts and neon backpacks” and oddly spelled names. Their daughter is