Presented by the Ph.D. Program in Urban Education
Provocative Inquiries in Urban Education (PIUE)
Lecture Series, Spring 2018: Listening to Alumni

Challenging the School Readiness Agenda in Early Childhood Education /
Talk and Book Launch

Presenter: Dr. Miriam Tager, UEd alum
Wednesday, April 11th, 6:30–8:30pm
The Graduate Center, CUNY
365 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Room 4202, Urban Education Lounge

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Talk Description: 

The pressure to sort children within the first weeks of school is so great that teachers are unknowingly perpetuating this exclusionary process without noticing that these children are usually low-income Black children. Furthermore, they are not differentiating between Black populations and therefore are perpetuating a color-blind discourse. This reveals one of the key problems of the American school system, including early childhood programs, which is the continuing practice of structural racism. This book controversially challenges the American neoliberal agenda of school reform based on standardized testing and combats these ongoing deficit practices in the early childhood classroom.