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In reform, real focus on needs on students

Oklahoma’s education debate spends a lot of time on a few familiar subjects: education funding vs. tax cuts, vouchers and charters vs. traditional public schools and high-stakes testing vs. letting teachers teach. What’s too often missing from these debates is any consideration of the needs of real students. We’ve lost sight of the reasons kids […]

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Failing forethought

Researchers contend that crushing poverty is more significant than failing public schools or bad teachers. Two years ago, a Stanford University study documented the new “income achievement gap.” The report showed family income is the “biggest determining factor in a student’s academic achievement.” The same year, writer Joanna Barkan published a report in Dissent Magazine […]

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Class act

Mary Kate Henson Credit: Mark Hancock “Childhood obesity in Oklahoma is on the rise in all areas, but in zip codes with lower incomes, lower accessibility to grocery stores and low walkability, poor health trends are even higher,” said Mary Kate Henson, health promotion specialist at the Oklahoma City-County Health Department, which established the “Wellness […]

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LETTERS

Oklahoma Gazette provides an open forum for the discussion of all points of view in its Letters to the Editor section. The Gazette reserves the right to edit letters for length and clarity. Letters can be mailed, faxed, emailed to pbacharach@okgazette.com or sent online at okgazette.com, but include a city of residence and contact number […]

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Back to class

In less than five minutes on May 20, that world was turned upside down when a tornado demolished her school as well as neighboring Plaza Towers Elementary. Between the two schools, Singleton and some 80 teachers lost most of the classroom supplies they had bought, made or borrowed during their careers. Such items either were […]

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In the city

Barbara Gonzales Credit: Shannon Cornman Since 2010, the academy has given upper-level education majors who are passionate about teaching in urban classrooms the opportunity to do so through a partnership with Oklahoma City Public Schools. Gonzales and fellow future teachers entered the program in January. After completing volunteer hours and training, they will be placed […]

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Incomplete ‘grade’

If presented within context, my message is that “for some students within the lowest quartile of test takers who have serious handicapping conditions, ‘it is just about too much to ask” that they be held to the standard — the numerical gradient of growth — expected of the general population of students. Given the severe […]

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