Las Animas - Bent County Library District

Building Equity Taxonomy is introduced to clarify the structural and interpersonal components of an equitable and excellent schooling experience, and the Building Equity Review and Audit, survey-based tools to help school and teacher leaders uncover equity-related issues and organize their efforts to achieve physical integration, social-emotional engagement, opportunity to learn, instructional excellence, and engaged and inspired learners.

The liberal arts are under attack. The governors of Florida, Texas, and North Carolina have all pledged that they will not spend taxpayer money subsidizing the liberal arts, and they seem to have an unlikely ally in President Obama. While at a General Electric plant in early 2014, Obama remarked, "I promise you, folks can make a lot more, potentially, with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree." These messages...

"Deliver on the promise of equal education. Every day, 250 children are suspended from school. Many are children of color who are deprived of opportunities to experience high-quality early learning at the same rate as white children. Many families don't feel heard and respected in their children's schools. The question is, How can we dismantle inequities and provide nurturing, responsive care and education to all children? [This book] leads early...

"Is school the best way to get an education? Ethan and Emily Tuttle have spent several years in school being graded on the quality of their work. But after hearing an award-winning teacher discuss some problems with schooling and share a vision for how children are best educated, the Tuttle family decides to embarck on a new learning adventure. Long-time educator John Taylor Gatto shares ideas with the Tuttle family from his Book "The Underground...

In the new global economy, the jobs that exist now might not exist by the time today's students enter the workplace. To succeed in this ever-changing world, students need to be able to think like entrepreneurs: resourceful, flexible, creative, and global. Researcher and Professor Yong Zhao unlocks the secrets to cultivating independent thinkers who are willing and able to use their learning differently to create jobs and contribute positively to the...

"This book is offered as a guide to public policy for patriot-activists in the Tea Party movement as well as for candidates for public office, incumbent office holders, civic and business leaders, and journalists assigned to cover the movement. It consists of eight chapters, seven of them previously published by The Heartland Institute as booklets in a series called Legislative Principles and one written specifically for this book. Together, they...

"From two leading experts in education and entrepreneurship, an urgent call for the radical re-imagining of American education so that we better equip students for the realities of the twenty-first century economy. Today more than ever, we prize academic achievement, pressuring our children to get into the "right" colleges, have the highest GPAs, and pursue advanced degrees. But while students may graduate with credentials, by and large they lack...

From the Secretary of Education under President Obama, an exposé of the status quo that helps maintain a broken system at the expense of our kids education. "Education runs on lies. Thats probably not what youd expect from a former Secretary of Education, but its the truth." So opens Arne Duncans How Schools Work, although the title could just as easily be How American Schools Work for Some, Not for Others, and Only Now and Then for Kids. Drawing...

"Adams's book was the first comprehensive history of the Native American boarding school era and has remained a classic work in the field. Moving beyond a study of federal Indian policy, the book vividly details the day-to-day experiences of Indian youth living in a "total institution" designed to reconstruct them both psychologically and culturally. Within the overarching narrative of the government's retreat from its initial plan of assimilation,...

"In many public schools, students are spending up to 28 percent of instructional time on testing and test prep. Starting this year, the introduction of the Common Core State Standards Initiative in 45 states will bring an unprecedented level of new, more difficult, and longer mandatory tests to nearly every classroom in the nation up to five times a year--forcing our national testing obsession to a crisis point. Taxpayers are spending extravagant...