When it comes to sizing up America’s public schools, test scores are the go-to metric of state policy makers and anxious parents looking to place their children in the “best” schools. Yet ample research indicates that standardized tests are a poor way to measure a school’s performance. It is time—indeed past time—to rethink this system, Jack Schneider says. Beyond Test Scores reframes current debates over school quality by offering new approaches to educational data that can push us past our unproductive fixation on test scores. Using the highly diverse urban school district of Somerville, Massachusetts, as a case study, Schneider and his research team developed a new framework to more fairly and comprehensively assess educational effectiveness. And by adopting a wide range of measures aligned with that framework, they were able to more accurately capture a broader array of school strengths and weaknesses. Their new data not only provided parents, educators, and administrators with a clearer picture of school performance, but also challenged misconceptions about what makes a good school. With better data, Schneider shows, stakeholders at the federal, state, and local levels can undo the damage of present accountability systems and build greater capacity in our schools. Policy makers, administrators, and school leaders can better identify where assistance is needed. Educators can engage in more evidence-based decision making. And parents can make better-informed choices for their children. Perhaps most importantly, better data can facilitate communication among all these groups, allowing them to take collective action toward shared, concrete goals.

Special education and gifted and talented programs were designed for children whose educational needs are not well met in regular classrooms. From their inceptions, these programs have had disproportionate representation of racial and ethnic minority students. What causes this disproportion? Is it a problem? Minority Students in Special and Gifted Education considers possible contributors to that disparity, including early biological and environmental influences and inequities in opportunities for preschool and K-12 education, as well as the possibilities of bias in the referral and assessment system that leads to placement in special programs. It examines the data on early childhood experience, on differences in educational opportunity, and on referral and placement. The book also considers whether disproportionate representation should be considered a problem. Do special education programs provide valuable educational services, or do they set students off on a path of lower educational expectations? Would students not now placed in gifted and talented programs benefit from raised expectations, more rigorous classes, and the gifted label, or would they suffer failure in classes for which they are unprepared? By examining this important problem in U.S. education and making recommendations for early intervention and general education, as well as for changes in referral and assessment processes, Minority Students in Special and Gifted Education will be an indispensable resource to educators throughout the nation, as well as to policy makers at all levels, from schools and school districts to the state and federal governments.

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

As World War II comes to an end in 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies in office. Throughout the country, the greatest generation mourns its leader. A spring snowstorm in Western New York inaugurates the cold war. Chuck Hobbie is just a boy, born on unlucky Friday, April 13th, but fortunate to be a child in Buffalo. As all Buffalonians know, it is not a dazzling city, unless the sparkle of winter snow and the shimmer of reflected summer lights from Erie and Niagara count. Likewise, the city's citizens, families, and teachers are unremarkable, unless resilience, friendships, and quiet, day-to-day hard work matter. Buffalo's children are not special at all, except that they were raised in Buffalo, amid the history of the Niagara Frontier, by people who cared for them and institutions that prepared them to fly. Buffalo's west side is where Chuck comes of age, but his childhood experiences range from there to New Hampshire's White Mountains, a farm in Lewiston, N.Y., Holloway Bay in Ontario, and Alaska's Brooks Range. Join Chuck as he recalls in Buffalo Wings the childhood family, friends, teachers, and experiences that shaped his life in the decades before the assassination of John F. Kennedy.