Start Where You Are, But Don’t Stay There: Understanding Diversity, Opportunity Gaps, and Teaching in Today’s Classrooms (Harvard Education Press, 2010) by H. Richard Milner, associate professor of education. The book details strategies for closing the achievement gap by refocusing attention on opportunity gaps to successfully teach students in diverse, urban schools. It provides a counter to pervasive notions that teachers and students in highly diverse and urban schools cannot succeed, demonstrating how teachers and students work through and transcend academic, social, individual and systemic challenges to thrive.
Reversing Underachievement Among Gifted Black Students, 2nd Ed., (Prufrock Press, Inc, 2010) by Donna Y. Ford, professor of special education. Two thorny issues continue to exist in education since the book was first published in 1996: the underrepresentation of black students in advanced placement classes and the persistent underachievement of black students even when identified as gifted. In this edition, these two issues are addressed, with updated information on key social, familial, educational and psychological factors that contribute to underachievement and underrepresentation.
Up from the Blue (2010, HarperCollins) by Susan Henderson, MEd’92. The debut novel from Pushcart Prize-nominee Henderson, Up from the Blue unfolds against the backdrop of 1970s America—a tumultuous era of desegregation, school busing and the early rise of modern-day feminism. The story of an imaginative young girl struggling to make sense of her mother’s mysterious disappearance, the book delves into the complexity of family relationships.