Research & Publications
New findings from TC Faculty and Students
Pursuing Educational Equity in a Post-Brown World
Published: Wednesday, November 21, 2007
TC's Equity Symposium asks: Can the state finance suits fill the gap as the Supreme Court retreats on integration?
“The decision last June by the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate racial balancing plans in two school districts was the clearest signal yet that the nation has entered a new, post-desegregation era, in which the vision espoused in Brown v. Board of Education – that of a federal judiciary with an abiding commitment to integrated schools – is no longer the operative condition. This shift will alter the national education landscape – and indeed has altered it already – for decades to come.”
That assessment, offered by TC President Susan Fuhrman at the start of the third annual symposium of TC’s Campaign for Educational Equity, was widely shared by the many presenters, discussants and panelists at the two day event, titled “Equal Educational Opportunity: What Now? Reassessing the Role of the Courts, the Law and School Policies after Seattle and CFE.” On the question of precisely how the education landscape has changed, and how those changes will affect the lives of students, communities and the nation as a whole, there was far less consensus.
The Symposium began with a brief overview of the Court’s decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District, in which plaintiffs challenged the constitutionality of voluntary integration plans adopted by school boards in Sea
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TC Faculty Members Contribute to Study That Finds Preschoolers Need More Instruction in Math
Two Teachers College faculty members, Sharon Lynn Kagan and Herbert P. Ginsburg, were part of a team of academics responsible for a National Research Council study that found that preschoolers - particularly those in low-income groups - need more and better instruction in math. Published: 7/2/2009
New Report Explores Learning Progressions in Science
A new report by the Center on Continuous Instructional Improvement - a Teachers College-based arm of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education, whose founding director is the College's President, Susan Fuhrman - explores the concept of learning progressions and their promise for improving science instruction in American schools to the point where all students can meet desired performance standards. Published: 7/2/2009
TC Study Argues for Racially Integrated Classrooms
A new study by TC's Douglas Ready, assistant professor of education, and Megan Silander, a doctoral student in TC's Leadership, Policy & Politics concentration, found that students in predominantly black or Latino elementary schools do not perform academically as well as students in mostly white or integrated classrooms. Education Week posted a story about it. Published: 6/17/2009
Does College Prep for All Really Work?
Doug Ready, Assistant Professor of Education at Teachers College, and University of Michigan colleague Valerie Lee examine the influences of the high school curriculum on student learning and the equitable distribution of that learning by race and socioeconomic status in this article in the journal The Future of Children. They trace the historical development of the U.S. comprehensive high school and then examine the curricular reforms of the past three decades. Published: 9/11/2009
Youth Organizations and Their Role in Lessening the Exposure to Violence Among Urban Youth
In an article in the Journal of Community Psychology, TC Professor Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and Margo Gardner, a researcher at the College's National Center for Children and Young Families, report on their discovery of an inverse association between the variety of youth organizations available at in an urban neighborhood and adolescents' exposure to community violence. Published: 9/11/2009
TC Researchers Explore Racial Microaggressions in the Classroom
Racial microaggressions refer to subtle insults directed toward people of color, often automatically or unconsciously. It has become a growing area of research, and in a study published in the journal Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, Teachers College Professor Derald Sue Wing and four TC students explore racial microaggressions and how they play out in the classroom. Published: 9/11/2009
Applying Adult Education to the Arts-and Vice Versa
Lyle Yorks and Sandra Hayes would be the first to tell you that they are scholars—not artists. Nonetheless, Yorks, TC Associate Professor of Adult and Continuing Education, and Hayes, who earned her doctorate at TC in adult education in 2006, find themselves in the avant garde of a movement that seeks to tap the power of the arts in facilitating adult learning. Published: 12:00:00 AM
How to Educate a Workforce on the Move
For China's massive migrant worker population, community colleges may be the best hope for obtaining an education. Published: 4/28/2009
New Directions in International Development
A new book edited by TC Professor Gita Steiner-Khamsi documents how the flow of aid no longer runs exclusively from north to south. Published: 4/28/2009
Educational Equity at the Village Level
TC's Mun Tsang has led the fight to fund schooling for China's rural poor. Published: 4/28/2009
Helping Teachers Help Kids Explore Bias
A new study guide probes the stereotyping of Muslims, but could apply in any multicultural setting. Published: 4/28/2009
The Emerging Divide Over Educational Reform
In the latest issue of the magazine Education Next, Richard Lee Colvin, Director of TC's Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media, reports on a growing rift in the Democratic Party over the educational reform agenda. Published: 3/11/2009
In videotaped interviews conducted this past fall and summer, four TC department chairs talk about the work of their faculty, trends in their academic fields of discipline and their own research. Published: 12/23/2008
The Connections Among Kids, Reading and an Orderly Home
A recent study by Anna Johnson, Anne Martin and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, all of TC's National Center for Children and Families, as well as Stephen A. Petrill of Ohio State University, tied household order to early reading skills. Published: 3/23/2009
Protecting the Passion of Scholars in Times of Change
In an article in Change magazine, TC Professor Anna Neumann draws on her research to explore the passion that drives recently tenured professors in their work and calls for protecting that scholarly commitment "at any cost as we move into a future of inevitable and seismic change in higher education." Published: 3/11/2009
A TC doctoral student's new study reveals a more critical view of the 'Zionist narrative' of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Published: 4/6/2009
Redefining ‘Normal' in Personality Testing
Assistant Professor Jill Hill argues that the ubiquitous MMPI-2 test misses the mark when it comes to American Indians. Published: 3/24/2009
Real-World Lessons on Recruiting and Developing Quality Teachers
The experiences of five urban school districts, one state and three education entrepreneur organizations offer new insights into the effective recruitment, development and retention of top-quality teachers. Published: 11/18/2008
How Toys and Technology Help Kids Learn
How can futuristic gadgets help us learn? Sandra Okita explores the learning partnership between people and technology. Published: 10/17/2008
A Consortium to Maximize Learning through Electronic Games
On the premise that the way into the head of an Internet-age kid is through his electronic games, Teachers College is part of a new consortium of universities, funded by Microsoft, that will study the potential of computer and video games to teach math and science to middle-school children. Published: 11/7/2008
An Encyclopedia of Peace Education
Monisha Bajaj has developed the Encyclopedia of Peace Education on the College's Web site that charts the history and new directions of a still-evolving field. Published: 12/20/2008
SPECIAL TC REPORT What Works in Schools
Teachers College’s Equity Matters research initiative is inventorying the successes and failures of strategies across a range of fields that affect the nation’s education achievement gap. Published: 9/23/2008
Analyzing Test Score Gains in NYC
The New York Sun reports that a group led by TC faculty member Aaron Pallas has found that the test scores of black and Hispanic students in New York City have risen during the Bloomberg era—but that the gap that separates them from white students remains as wide as ever. Published: 8/5/2008
Talking Equity, From Azerbaijan to Zambia
The 52nd annual meeting of the Comparative and International Education Society, which will take place at Teachers College beginning this Monday, March 17th, will tackle issues of gender, ethnicity, economics, disability, urbanization, privatization and peace education, to name a few. The underlying theme: educational equity worldwide. Published: 3/12/2008
A New Way to Troubleshoot Student Learning
Two new studies show that teachers who successfully use a method called proximal assessment for learner diagnosis, or pald, can boost the performance of fifth and sixth grade students in math. Published: 4/2/2008
Completing Your Qualitative Dissertation: A Roadmap from Beginning to End
The doctoral dissertation is academia's Mount Everest—a massive undertaking, requiring discipline, stamina and emotional reserves. A new book from TC maps the steps for completing a qualitative dissertation. Published: 8/25/2008
Understanding Education Research: Tips, Tools and Advice for Journalists from Teachers College
When a study or an e-mail that sounds like major news about education comes across a journalist's desk, how can a reporter tell if it's newsworthy or valid? The Hechinger Institute has been training journalists throughout the year to answer that question and others, through seminars and a new guide filled with tips on how to access and understand research. Published: 8/11/2008
In the latest issue of The Journal of Education Controversy, Margaret Crocco and Maureen Grolnick, who led development of TC's 'Teaching The Levees' curriculum -- a 100-page teaching tool that explored civic issues raised by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath -- reflect back on their work, the extraordinary tragedy that produced it, and the ongoing need for Americans to re-examine what it means to live in a democracy. Published: 7/29/2008
Study to Examine Performance-Based Financial Rewards for State Colleges
Many states tie a portion of funding of higher education institutions directly to those institutions' performance in retaining students, student learning, graduation, job placement and other indicators. One of the great puzzles about such performance funding, however, is that it has proved both popular and unstable. Published: 7/24/2008
TC Researchers Test New Therapy for Kids with Cerebral Palsy
Since June 28, the tenth floor of Thorndike Hall has looked like the scene of a child's birthday party. Kids from ages 5 to 10 are tossing balls, molding and cutting modeling clay, stringing beads, playing board games and lining up for the hands-down favorite—a chance to play baseball, bowling or tennis on a Nintendo Wii video game. Published: 7/24/2008
Symposium Asks: Can School Equity Be Created Without First Overcoming the Effects of Poverty?
On Monday and Tuesday, November 17-18, 2008, The Campaign for Educational Equity of Teachers College, Columbia University, will host its fourth annual Equity Symposium, 'Comprehensive Educational Equity: Overcoming the Socioeconomic Barriers to School Success.' Published: 10/14/2008
What Dropouts Are Costing California
Each year, 120,000 Californians reach the age of 20 without a high school diploma. Over a lifetime, those dropouts will cost the state $46.4 billon, or 2.9 percent of the gross state product, according to a new analysis by TC Professor Henry Levin and Clive Belfield of Queens College, City University of New York. Published: 9/6/2007
Older Artists Model Successful Aging
A recent study of older artists by TC's Joan Jeffri awards this group high marks for a range of indicators associated with successful aging and suggests they have a great deal to offer as a model for society. Published: 12/1/2007
Smile - But Maybe Not When Your Heart Is Breaking
'Smile and the whole world smiles with you,' the saying goes -- to which George Bonanno might add a less catchy corollary: 'Depending on your sincerity and what you're smiling about.' Published: 11/15/2007
Are Dual Enrollment Helping Community Colleges Boost Student Performance?
A report by Melinda Mechur Karp, Juan Carlos Calcagno, Katherine L. Hughes, Dong Wook Jeong and Thomas R. Bailey explores enrollment by high school students in college-level courses. The authors, all of whom are with the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, found that dual enrollment is a useful strategy for encouraging postsecondary success -- not only for academically-focused high school students, but also for those who participate in career and technical education programs. Published: 10/23/2007
New Books from Teachers College Faculty
New works from TC faculty members Henry M. Levin, Susan Fuhrman, Joan Jeffri, Jeffrey Henig, Lynn Kagan, and R. Douglas Greer on topics ranging from education policy research and how the media represents it to the public to language development in children and arts administration issues in the U.S. and China. Published: 1/8/2008
Getting Ready for Pre-K – and Later Life
Readiness for pre-K can be a strong predictor of achievement later on, finds a new study co-authored by TC's Jeanne Brooks Gunn – but don't give up on that rowdy toddler Published: 12/12/2007
Debunking the Myth of the Overscheduled Child
A group of leading child development experts is challenging the popular notion that kids engage in too many organized activities, and that the pressures of overscheduling are leading to substance abuse and other developmental problems. Published: 8/20/2006
The Success of Chinese Math Teachers
For the past 20 years, studies of math achievement have shown that Chinese (and other East Asian) children consistently outperform their American counterparts in almost every area. Now a study published in Contemporary Educational Psychology by Teachers College’s Stephen Peverly, Associate Professor of Psychology and Education, and former TC students Zheng Zhou of St. John’s University and Tao Xin of Beijing Normal University, suggests that Asian teachers simply know more about math. Published: 1/22/2007
New Strategies for Professionals in Nutrition Education
A new book by Isobel Contento, TC's Mary Swartz Rose Professor of Nutrition and Education, provides strategies to future professionals who will work with the public. The first nutrition education text ever written and 15 years in the making, the book is decidedly not a compendium of the latest scientific theories about what constitutes good nutrition. Published: 5/8/2007
Study Shows More HS Grads = Big Taxpayer Savings
The U.S. taxpayer could reap $45 billion annually if the number of high school dropouts were cut in half, according to a new study led by Henry M. Levin, the College's William Heard Kilpatrick Professor Economics and Education. Published: 2/22/2007
Telephone outreach can dramatically increase the incidence of screening for colorectal cancer (CRC) in an urban minority population, according to a new study led by Charles Basch, TC's Richard March Hoe Professor of Psychology and Education. Published: 1/22/2007
Supreme Court Reviews Brief by Amy Stuart Wells in Public School Racial Balance Cases
The U.S. Supreme Court reviewed an amicus brief submitted by TC Professor Amy Stuart Wells in December as part of its consideration of challenges to school integration plans in Washington State and Kentucky. Published: 4/24/2007
The Go-To Web Site for Research on U.S. Latinos
The New York Latino Research Clearinghouse at Teachers College, Columbia University, is an online source of the most up-to-date research reports, academic papers and policy news that relate to the Latino populations of the United States by the leading scholars and policy organizations in the country. Published: 3/14/2006
A New Way to Judge Quality Teaching-By Watching It Online
For the past year, TC's Thomas Hatch, Associate Professor of Education, has been taking a video camera into local public schools and taping teachers in action. He then puts the footage into multimedia presentations on the Web to reach a broad community of educators. Published: 5/8/2007
Rock N Roll Speaks Truths With Power
For decades, parents have worried that the lyrics to rock music are corrupting their children and poisoning their minds. But what of the many pearls those lyrics may express? In his new book, Rock 'n' Roll Wisdom: What Psychologically Astute Lyrics Teach About Life and Love, Barry Farber, TC's Professor of Psychology and Education, analyzes rock lyrics for their psychological truths. Published: 8/28/2007
Defending the Community College Agenda
The Community College Research Center at Teachers College celebrates the publication of Defending the Community College Agenda, a new book by Thomas Bailey, Professor of Economics and Education, and other researchers at the Center. Published: 12/1/2006
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