Broader, Bolder Approach to Education

In a recent blog, Eduwonkette writes about the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education described by Sunny Ladd, Pedro Noguera, and Tom Payzant, and introduces Dr. Suet-Ling Pong's reasearch regarding the effect of family situations and social programs on student learning:

"...In the U.S., children growing up in single-parent families are comparatively worse off in their math and science achievement, relative to similar children in two-parent families, than is true in other countries, and some European countries have much smaller achievement gaps between single-parent and two-parent families than do others.

"A country’s family policy environment is what makes the difference. Family policy takes many forms, including maternity and parental leave, child-care programming and subsidies, public after-school programs, and housing subsidies, to name a few. Countries which Pong and her colleagues describe as having strong family and welfare policies have smaller achievement gaps in math and science between children in single-parent and two-parent families than are found in other countries..."