Eric R Jackson

Public education plays a crucial role in crafting a nation's future. In the United States, education reform policy, particularly the reliance on large-scale, standardized testing, is a growing topic of national conversation and concern. An Illusion of Equity: The Legacy of Eugenics in Today's Education demonstrates how centuries of propaganda have led us to accept the idea that test scores indicate something so valuable about human beings that they should be used to organize society. Drawing on decades of experience as an educator, author Wendy Zagray Warren unpacks the origins of this practice, inviting us to probe the ideologies underlying testing procedures and score interpretation and to evaluate the rationale for using test scores as the sole markers for academic achievement. From the beginning, large-scale tests have produced scores divided by race and class. Initially, these results aligned with the eugenic ideology of its creators. Warren shows that while the rhetoric used to justify test-based policy has changed, the model used to produce test scores remains much the same. Therefore, so do the outcomes of test-based policies, which continue to reproduce and reinforce the existing social hierarchy of the United States. The hope of equity lies in educators charting new paths and scholars around the world who are dreaming new educational paradigms into being. Ultimately, Warren invites policymakers, educators, and parents to explore the richness of possibility when education is designed around the belief that every child is worthy of the opportunity to thrive.

For hundreds of years, the American public education system has neglected to fully examine, discuss, and acknowledge the vast and rich history of people of African descent who have played a pivotal role in the transformation of the United States. The establishment of Black studies departments and programs represented a major victory for higher education and a vindication of Black scholars such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Nathan Huggins. This emerging field of study sought to address omissions from numerous disciplines and correct the myriad distortions, stereotypes, and myths about persons of African descent. In An Introduction to Black Studies, Eric R. Jackson demonstrates the continuing need for Black studies, also known as African American studies, in university curricula. Jackson connects the growth and impact of Black studies to the broader context of social justice movements, emphasizing the historical and contemporary demand for the discipline. This book features seventeen chapters that focus on the primary eight disciplines of Black studies: history, sociology, psychology, religion, feminism, education, political science, and the arts. Each chapter includes a biographical vignette of an important figure in African American history, such as Frederick Douglass, Louis Armstrong, and Madam C. J. Walker, as well as student learning objectives that provide a starting point for educators. This valuable work speaks to the strength and rigor of scholarship on Blacks and African Americans, its importance to the formal educational process, and its relevance to the United States and the world.

This study explores the various ways in which parental involvement can help to increase student academic success. More specifically, this analysis is based on the notions that: 1) parent involvement in inner city schools present unique challenges that are different from the traditional middle class perspective; 2) there is value in a cooperative approach between parents, teachers, and administrators that places the student at the center of each major discussion and decision; and 3) illustrates that parental involvement is a real perspective and not just rhetorical jargon. Although the focus of this book is in increasing parent involvement in inner city schools, readers must be mindful that the ultimate objective for this work and others like it is the successful educating of all children, so that they graduate from high school, and move into higher education, or into the workforce. Parent involvement by itself will not ensure academic success of children, but, combined with many strategies, including a clear understanding of the differences between an inner city school environment and a middle class school setting, effective teaching, sound and relevant curricula, safe and secure learning environment, and visionary leadership, children attending inner city schools can be just as effective as those in middle class school settings.

This study explores the various ways in which parental involvement can help to increase student academic success. More specifically, this analysis is based on the notions that: 1) parent involvement in inner city schools present unique challenges that are different from the traditional middle class perspective; 2) there is value in a cooperative approach between parents, teachers, and administrators that places the student at the center of each major discussion and decision; and 3) illustrates that parental involvement is a real perspective and not just rhetorical jargon. Although the focus of this book is in increasing parent involvement in inner city schools, readers must be mindful that the ultimate objective for this work and others like it is the successful educating of all children, so that they graduate from high school, and move into higher education, or into the workforce. Parent involvement by itself will not ensure academic success of children, but, combined with many strategies, including a clear understanding of the differences between an inner city school environment and a middle class school setting, effective teaching, sound and relevant curricula, safe and secure learning environment, and visionary leadership, children attending inner city schools can be just as effective as those in middle class school settings.