In this collection of articles, teachers bring students' home languages into their classrooms-from powerful bilingual social justice curriculum to strategies for honoring students' languages in schools that do not have bilingual programs. Bilingual educators and advocates share how they work to keep equity at the center and build solidarity between diverse communities. Teachers and students speak to the tragedy of languages loss, but also about inspiring work to defend and expand bilingual programs. Book jacket.

Since the first edition was published in 1994, Rethinking Our Classrooms has sold over 180,000 copies.

An essential guide to transforming the quotidian communications that feed inequality in our schools—from the award-winning editor of Everyday Antiracism Words matter. Every day in schools, language is used—whether in the classroom, in a student-teacher meeting, or by principals, guidance counselors, or other school professionals—implying, intentionally or not, that some subset of students have little potential. As a result, countless students “underachieve,” others become disengaged, and, ultimately, we all lose. Mica Pollock, editor of Everyday Antiracism—the progressive teacher’s must-have resource—now turns to what it takes for those working in schools to match their speech to their values, giving all students an equal opportunity to thrive. By juxtaposing common scenarios with useful exercises, concrete actions, and resources, Schooltalk describes how the devil is in the oft-dismissed details: the tossed-off remark to a student or parent about the community in which she lives; the way groups—based on race, ability, and income—are discussed in faculty meetings about test scores and data; the assumptions and communication breakdowns between counselors, teachers, and other staff that cause kids to fall needlessly through the cracks; or the deflating comment to a young person about her college or career prospects. Schooltalk will empower educators of every ilk, revealing to them an incredibly effective tool at their disposal to support the success of all students every day: their words.

Although coeducation has been the norm within private and public schools since the 1970s, single-sex education has staged a comeback in recent years as a means of addressing the academic and social problems faced by some students. Single-sex education raises controversy on ideological grounds, and in 1996 the Supreme Court struck down the all-male admissions policy at the Virginia Military Institute in a decision that has cast a legal cloud over public initiatives. In this timely book, Rosemary Salomone offers a reasoned educational and legal argument supporting single-sex education as an alternative to coeducation, particularly in the case of disadvantaged minority students. Salomone examines the history of women’s education and exclusion, philosophical and psychological theories of sameness and difference, findings on educational achievement and performance, the research evidence on single-sex schooling, and the legal questions that have arisen. Correcting many of the current misconceptions about single-sex education, she argues that it is a viable option and that the road to gender equality should be paved with diverse educational opportunities for all students—regardless of race, class, or gender.

Quality and Equity in Education draws attention to the importance of developing and testing theories of educational effectiveness and using these theories for improvement purposes. It makes a major contribution to knowledge and theory building in research on promoting quality and equity in education. The book presents an improved version of the dynamic model of educational effectiveness based on the empirical data emerged from studies testing its validity, claiming that the proposed theory can be used for establishing links between educational effectiveness research and school improvement. Towards that end, the book presents the Dynamic Approach to teacher and school improvement, demonstrating its impact on quality and equity in education. The book not only proposes an agenda for further research on developing and testing the dynamic theory of educational effectiveness but also refers to research methods that can be used to test the assumptions of this theory and search for relevant cause and effect relations. The agenda also refers to the need of identifying the conditions under which the dynamic approach to teacher and school improvement can have an effect on student learning outcomes. This book will be of great interest for academics, researchers and postgraduate students working in education research and the area of quality and equity in education. It will also be of interest to policymakers, school advisors and other stakeholders in education.

How we organize children by ability in schools is often rooted in ableism. Ability is so central to schooling—where we explicitly and continuously shape, assess, measure, and report on students’ abilities—that ability-based decisions often appear logical and natural. However, how schools respond to ability results in very real, lifelong social and economic consequences. Special education and academic streaming (or tracking) are two of the most prominent ability-based strategies public schools use to organize student learning. Both have had a long and complicated relationship with gender, race, and class. In this down-to-earth guide, Dr. Gillian Parekh unpacks the realities of how ability and disability play out within schooling, including insights from students, teachers, and administrators about the barriers faced by students on the basis of ability. From the challenges with ability testing to gifted programs to the disability rights movement, Parekh shows how ableism is inextricably linked to other forms of bias. Her book is a powerful tool for educators committed to justice-seeking practices in schools.