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Posts tagged as “Linda Darling-Hammond”

California’s State Board of Education Unanimously Approves Ethnic Studies Curriculum for K-12 Schools After Years of Debate

California’s State Board of Education yesterday unanimously approved a model curriculum of coursework in K-12 schools to guide how the histories, struggles and contributions of Black, Asian, Latino and Native Americans — and the racism and marginalization they have experienced in the United States — will be taught to millions of students, according to latimes.com.

Across the nation, so far Oregon and Vermont are the only two states to require ethnic studies classes be taken by its students. A bill in California to make a high school ethnic studies course a graduation requirement is currently making its way through the Legislature.

To quote the latimes.com article:

Although criticism still emerged Thursday, the curriculum approval culminates two years of difficult discussions, protests and rewrites over which groups should be included and how their stories should be presented. Drafts were alternately pilloried for being left-wing propaganda or capitulating to right-wing agendas, and defended as providing an essential means for students of color to see themselves reflected in public school curriculum. It comes at a time when educators are seeking concrete lessons and strategies to address racism.

“The passion that we hear about this topic illustrates why ethnic studies is so important,” board president Linda Darling-Hammond said after nearly eight hours of presentations and discussion. “Much of it is a quest by each person or each group for a sense of belonging and acknowledgement.”

“Ethnic studies demands that we understand the forces that stand in the way of our shared humanity so that we can address them,” she said. “We need the more complete study of our history that ethnic studies provides and the attention to inequality that it stimulates.”

For now, the model curriculum serves as a guide for school districts that want the option to offer ethnic studies. But its lessons stand to become a flashpoint for debate again in the months ahead, as a bill to make a high school ethnic studies course a graduation requirement — believed to be the most far-reaching law of its kind nationally — makes its way through the Legislature.

The final vote came four years, four drafts and 100,000 public comments after state law mandated that educators create a model studies ethnic studies curriculum.

To read more: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-03-18/ethnic-studies-finally-approved-california-schools

[Photo credit: Melissa Minton via Flickr/creative commons]

Three African Americans Among the Top 10 Most Influential Scholars in Education

Education Week recently published the Rick Hess Straight Up Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings. The rankings list the 200 university-based education scholars who had the biggest influence on the nation’s education discourse last year. The scholars are ranked in eight categories including Google Scholar ratings, mentions in major newspapers, books published and their rankings on Amazon.com, Twitter scores, and mentions in the Congressional Record. The rankings are calculated by scholars at the American Enterprise Institute.
Three of the top 10 influential educators are African Americans, including the highest ranked education scholar in the nation.
darling_lindaLeading the list of the most influential education scholars is Linda Darling-Hammond is the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education Emerita at Stanford University where she is faculty director of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education. She is a former president of the American Educational Research Association. Her most recent books are Getting Teacher Evaluation Right: What Really Matters for Effectiveness and Improvement (Teachers College Press, 2013) and Beyond the Bubble Test: How Performance Assessments Support 21st Century Learning (Jossey-Bass, 2014). Dr. Darling Hammond is a magna cum laude graduate of Yale University and hold a doctorate in urban education from Temple University in Philadelphia.
gjladsonGloria Ladson-Billings ranked fifth among most influential scholars in education. She holds the Kellner Family Chair in Urban Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Professor Ladson-Billings is a past president of the American Educational Research Association. She is a graduate of Morgan State University in Baltimore and holds a master’s degree from the University of Washington and a doctorate from Stanford University. Dr. Ladson-Billings is the author of Beyond the Big House: African American Educators on Teacher Education (Teachers College Press, 2005) and The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children (Jossey-Bass, 2005).
claude-steele-thumbClaude Steele is executive vice chancellor and provost at the University of California at Berkeley. From 2011 to 2014, he was dean of the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. Professor Steele served for two years as provost at Columbia University in New York City after being a member of the Stanford faculty from 1991 to 2009. Professor Steele is perhaps best know for his work on the underperformance of minority students due to stereotype threat. Professor Steele is the author of Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do (W.W. Norton, 2010). Professor Steele is a graduate of Hiram College in Ohio and earned a Ph.D. at Ohio State University.
article via jbhe.com