News
“Tracking vs. High Quality Education for All Students” IDRA Classnotes Podcast Episode 124
Policies that encourage schools to funnel students into different high school tracks are making resurgence. This, after decades of research and experience showing the detrimental effects of tracking on students and communities. Students who are low-income or minority endure the worst as they are pushed into watered-down curricula that take away their option to choose college after high school. IDRA director of policy, Dr. Albert Cortez gives an overview of what tracking looks like today across the country and how these policies ignore the fact that “higher expectations produce higher results.” Albert is interviewed by Bradley Scott, Ph.D., director of the IDRA South Central Collaborative for Equity.

Call for Applications - IDRA Launches José A. Cárdenas School Finance Fellows Program
IDRA is launching a new fellows program to support research that will inform efforts to secure equitable funding of public schools across the country. The Call for Applications packet is online now. Dr. María “Cuca” Robledo Montecel, IDRA President & CEO, stated: “We are so pleased to honor Dr. Cárdenas in a way that will move forward school funding equity efforts in states across the country as well as informing national efforts that can be undertaken to encourage states to improve equity in state-level school funding systems.”

No Back-Tracking – Supporting More Opportunities Not Limitations Preparing Our Children for College and 21st Century Options
Tracking is bad educational policy and practice. It is damaging to many students. Its failure is well documented. We must avoid policy that tracks students into low level curriculum and instead put in place practice that prepares all students to enroll in and complete college. As Texas policymakers consider bringing back policies that many decades of practice have proven unproductive, biased and student-limiting, Aurelio M. Montemayor, M.Ed., outlines the background of tracking policies and their detriment to students.

New IDRA Semillitas de aprendizaje Storybooks Published
IDRA has just published a new set of storybooks as part of IDRA’s Semillitas de aprendizaje series, a unique bilingual (Spanish/English) set of early childhood materials based on the art of storytelling. With rich vocabulary, each book tells its beautiful story in English and in Spanish separately. The stories feature children and other characters who discover new things like life in the country, learning about spiders, first aid kits, the seasons, geometric shapes at home, traditional beading, a dancing ostrich, counting critters, a circus dream and gold mining. The storybooks are complemented by the 10 Semillitas de aprendizaje™ Big Books and are designed for early childhood and primary grades.