EducationNews.org

Collins is a teacher in the Louisiana Teacher Fellows program, which seeks to close the achievement gap by recruiting people from other industries to teaching.

June 23, 2009 - "It's been our experience that in high-poverty and minority schools that have a program like this, what works for them is more time on task," she said. "For students who are struggling and are behind, what is valuable is meaningful instruction."

Every year, public libraries and schools across the country collectively field hundreds of requests from parents, public officials and activists pressing for the removal of books they deem inappropriate. That includes literary classics, human sexuality manuals and, occasionally, even the dictionary, according to the American Library Association.