“Our Children Can’t Wait should serve as a wake-up call to policymakers, philanthropists, and others who support education and have worked to bring about its improvement. For too long, we have relied on policies that narrowly focus on raising student achievement. Meanwhile, the factors that affect the health and well-being of children have often been ignored. This book provides evidence from a variety of fields to show us why a broader, bolder, and more comprehensive approach to child development and school improvement is needed. With chapters written by a collection of scholars from a variety of disciplines, this book provides the blueprint for creating new policies at the local, state, and federal levels that can really make a difference for our children.”
—Pedro A. Noguera, Emery Stoops and Joyce King Stoops Dean, Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California
“Joseph Bishop's edited volume is a who's who of education policy scholars. It is both timely and will prove to be timeless for our country's next generation of education policymakers.”
—Travis J. Bristol, associate professor, University of California, Berkeley
“Our Children Can’t Wait is the right book at the right time. It provides an unapologetically clear-eyed view at the way in which racism has shaped both our nation and its public school system, and supplies detailed roadmaps for navigating the way forward, toward a future in which every student—Black, White, Brown, Indigenous, and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, LGBTQ+ and differently abled—can step boldly into their brilliance.”
—From the Foreword by Becky Pringle, president, National Education Association
“Justice in policy for the future depends on a nimble and intersectional understanding of everyday constraints and challenges faced by people of color in our country that are themselves artifacts of our nation’s vexed and fraught relationship to these communities. Kudos to Joseph Bishop for this bold and visionary anthology that calls out white supremacy while charting an imaginative, comprehensive, and solutions-based path forward.”
—Angela Valenzuela, professor, University of Texas at Austin
“Our Children Can’t Wait is an extraordinary compilation of thought-provoking analysis, evaluation, and diagnosis of the nation’s public education system and policies, and the inequities in it that persist. The authors go an important step forward and present practical and evidence-based solutions and remedies so that our children can experience the promise of a high-quality, equitable education.”
—Arturo Vargas, executive director, National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund
“This book demonstrates why our children can’t wait for transformative policies during these troubling times of partisan politics designed to maintain an inequitable status quo. Grounded in the best of what we know from empirical evidence, the authors in this contextually situated and action-oriented book chart an agenda forward with fresh, insightful, and bold policy recommendations that could make a powerful difference in the lives of those on the margins. A collection of essays from some of the leading thinkers in education and beyond focused on what is necessary to improve educational processes and outcomes, this book is a resource for any of us serious about the work of co-constructing and co-enacting opportunity policy and practice in the fight for social justice.”
—H. Richard Milner, Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair of Education, Vanderbilt University
“Innovating schooling at scale is an exceptionally difficult problem because it involves changing not simply practices and structures but educators’ understanding of how people learn and develop under different conditions, and community stakeholders’ beliefs and feelings about school and achievement. This wide-ranging volume explains from multiple perspectives the relationships among priorities, beliefs, and resources in education, and how policy can be leveraged to shift the landscape in which schooling takes place.”
—Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, Fahmy and Donna Attallah Chair in Humanistic Psychology, University of Southern California
“The long road to reinventing education policy has been littered with singular fixes and flavors of the moment. This book is the destination, where the full needs of students are met. The wide-ranging expertise of the contributors serves to create a collection of years’ worth of thought, experience, research, and commitment to ending that wait.”
—Joyce Elliott, Arkansas State Senator, former public school teacher
