What the Research Says

For 25 years, educational researcher Belinda Williams has studied the best ways to improve low-performing schools through her work at Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania. In an NEA Today interview, Ms. Williams contends that the strengths of students in high-poverty, low-performing schools should be defined "in terms of what they bring from their environment-what they know, what they do, and what they care about. Build learning around things they care about or that matter. That's the way to engage children who come from a different experience in the teaching and learning process."

She notes, "Research would suggest that to improve our neediest schools, there needs to be more than a superficial directive that says 'focus on teaching and learning.' How human beings learn has to be central to that focus on teaching and learning."