Sara Neufeld

Blank Slate: The birth of a high school

At Quitman Street Renew School in Newark, Principal Erskine Glover faces the ongoing challenge of keeping the right teachers in place. Photo: Amanda Brown/NJ Spotlight Forty states say they don’t have the expertise required to support low-performing schools turning around, according to a new federal report. Really? There are 10 states that do? As everyone […]

Zarria Porter, 14, stands in front of “Song of the Towers,” her favorite of the 69 paintings replicated to hang in her school. Photo: Kevin Hagen Fourteen-year-old Zarria Porter spends her days surrounded by fine works of art. On her way to dance and computer classes, she passes through a sun-drenched lobby showcasing Georgia O’Keeffe’s […]

CHICAGO — A few years ago, 4-year-old Danny was on the verge of being expelled from a Chicago preschool for violent behavior when a woman named Lauren Wiley was called in to help. She met with the boy’s teacher, who thought he needed to be medicated for attention deficit disorder. But as Wiley listened, the teacher […]

By now, we all know the importance of quality early childhood education in setting students up for success. But what about all the kids who don’t get needed interventions, start school behind and stay stuck there? Many arrive in high school several years below grade level. Their teachers and administrators have one last chance to […]

Lessons from our Time to Learn series

How to break the vicious cycle of poverty and academic failure is one of the most troublesome questions of our time, but this much we know: High-quality preschool helps children from poor families prepare for kindergarten and beyond. Yet as the child poverty rate is climbing, those are the kids least likely to attend such […]

The Annie E. Casey Foundation is out with its 25th KIDS COUNT Data Book, which has been providing the public with an annual glimpse into the well being of American children for the past quarter-century. As big anniversaries do, this one provides a natural opening to look at how we have fared. Trends were both […]

NEWARK, N.J. — Nydresha is a small girl with big dreams about Hawaii. In her dreams, the 12-year-old and her mother live in a beach house. There is peace, and there is quiet. There is no drama, no abandoned houses and no cursing — not even by Nydresha herself. She curses sometimes in real life […]

Not all babies will attend day care or preschool, but sooner or later, just about every kid visits the doctor. So if you have a message you want the parents of all young children to hear, turn to your local pediatrician to deliver it. That’s the logic behind the recruitment of pediatricians in Hillary Clinton’s […]