OTHER PUBLICATIONS

Spirit of Giving Guide (2004-2005) DC VOICE is featured in this year's edition, compiled by the Community Foundation for the National Capital Region, along other local community organizations with missions focusing on civic engagement.  Click here to view the Guide's feature on DC VOICE.  

Council of the Great City Schools Report (2003) Restoring Excellence to DC Public Schools, indicted DC school leaders for abdicating academic leadership. The report’s recommendations aligned well with the DC VOICE Supports for Quality Teaching framework. Click here for a summary of the report's recommendations provided by DC VOICE.

Missed Opportunities: How We Keep High Quality Teachers Out of Urban Classrooms (2003)

The teacher quality challenges facing large city school systems are often attributed to their inability to attract high-caliber teachers. A study by The New Teacher Project reveals that staffing challenges have more to do with late and inefficient hiring practices and not the lack of interested, qualified applicants.

DCPS FY2004 Operating Budget (2003)
Mary Levy's (of Parents United for the DC Public Schools) summary and analysis of the DCPS FY2004 Operating Budget.

Myth vs. Reality on DCPS Spending (2003)
A report issued by the Parents United Civic Leader Advisory Committee shows that DCPS spends less in local funds per pupil than most of the surrounding school districts. "D.C. Public School Funding: Myth & Reality," addresses issues such as how much money per pupil DCPS spends, its budget history over the past decade, and how much it spends on the central bureaucracy.

A Place for Art (2003) completed by the Kennedy Center along with DCPS, showed that there are no standards or accountability for arts programming and there was a lack of district-wide leadership for comprehensive arts integration, both discipline specific and integrated arts. Contact DC VOICE if you would like to promote city-wide awareness of the value of arts integration in our schools.

NATIONAL REPORTS AND PAPERS

Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching (2004)
The Civil Rights Movement has the capacity to help students develop a critical analysis of United States history, but the empowering potential is often lost in a pursuit of names and dates.  This book by Teaching for Change and the Poverty & Race Research Action Council (PRRAC) provides lessons and articles for classrooms and communities on how to go beyond a heroes approach to the Civil Rights Movement and offers interactive and interdisciplinary lessons, readings, artifacts, and interviews. You can place an order by contacting Teaching for Change at (800) 763-9131 or http://www.teachingforchange.org/.

From Governance to Accountability: Building Relationships that Make Schools Work (2003)
The NYU Institute for Education and Social Policy, in collaboration with the Drum Major Institute, has published this report, written by Kavitha Mediratta and Norm Fruchter.  A primary conclusion of the report is that reform efforts are unlikely to lead to large-scale school improvement unless they combine top-down structure with bottom-up relationships with the people most important to student achievement: parents and communities.

Teacher Quality Lags in Poorer Schools (2003) Read this Christian Science Monitor article!