Pushing Past the Achievement Gap
March 15, 2007 at 7:00 p.m.
Strong Auditorium
University of Rochester's River Campus
Free and Open to the Public

Gloria Ladson-Billings, the Kellner Family Professor of Urban Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the 2005-06 president of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), will present “Pushing Past the Achievement Gap” as the Spring 2007 Scandling Lecture hosted by the University of Rochester’s Warner School of Education.

During her lecture, Ladson-Billings will challenge participants to look at the inherent fallacies of the achievement gap discourse, existing among African American, Latino, and other students of color and their White counterparts, that keeps us locked into a deficit paradigm. She will encourage the audience to look at students’ achievement struggles in a larger context of social failure that impedes their school success.

Ladson-Billings’ research examines the pedagogical practices of teachers who are successful with African American students. Her work has won numerous scholarly awards, including the H.I. Romnes Faculty Fellowship, the Spencer Post-doctoral Fellowship, and the Palmer O. Johnson Outstanding Research Award. In 2002, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Umea University in Sweden and in 2003-04 she was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. She also was the 2004 recipient of the George and Louise Spindler Award for ongoing contributions in educational anthropology, given by the Council on Anthropology & Education of the American Anthropological Association.

Ladson-Billings is the author of the critically acclaimed books, The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children and Crossing Over to Canaan: The Journey of New Teachers in Diverse Classrooms. She continues to write numerous book chapters and articles for scholarly publications and investigates Critical Race Theory applications to education.

Registration is not necessary. The event is free and open to the public. An interpreter will be provided for individuals who are hearing-impaired. For more information about the Scandling Lecture Series, please contact the Warner School at (585) 276-3502.