Still Failing at Fairness

Despite decades of effort to create fair classrooms and schools, gender bias is alive and well, and in some ways growing. School practices continue to send boys and girls down different life paths, too often treating them not as different genders but as different species. Teachers and parents often miss the subtle signs of sexism in classrooms. Through firsthand observations and up-to-the-minute research, Still Failing at Fairness brings the gender issue into focus. The authors provide an in-depth account of how girls' and boys' educations are compromised from elementary school through college, and offer practical advice for teachers and parents who want to make a positive difference. The authors examine today's pressing issues -- the lack of enforcement for Title IX, the impact of the backlash against gender equity, the much-hyped "boys' crisis," hardwired brain differences, and the recent growth of singlesex public schools. This book documents how teaching, current testing practices, and subtle cultural attitudes continue to short-circuit both girls and boys of every race, social class, and ethnicity. Hard-hitting and remarkably informative, Still Failing at Fairness is "a fascinating look into America's classrooms" (National Association of School Psychologists).

David Sadker is professor emeritus at American University (Washington, DC) and, along with his late wife Myra Sadker, gained a national reputation for work in confronting gender bias and sexual harassment. David Sadker has directed more than a dozen federal education grants, and authored or co-authored seven books, including the bestselling introductory teacher education textbook, Teachers, Schools and Society, (McGraw Hill, 2008). The American Educational Research Association's (AERA) honored the Sadkers for "the best review of research" published in 1991, for their professional service in 1995, and for "scholarship, activism, and community building on behalf of women and education" in 2004. The American Association of University Women awarded the Sadkers' their Eleanor Roosevelt Award in 1995, and the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education recognized their work with the Gender Architect Award in 2001. David Sadker has received two honorary doctorates. He currently teaches at the University of Arizona. Karen R. Zittleman is co-author of Teachers, Schools, and Society (McGraw-Hill), and a contributing author to Gender in the Classroom: Foundations, Skills, Methods and Strategies Across the Curriculum and wrote Making Public Schools Great for Every Girl and Boy. She has taught at American University.