Maureen Costello

American society is one of the most religiously, ethnically and racially diverse in the world. And in the next 40 years, we will become a minority-majority nation. The change will come even faster for schools, where white children will be a minority before the end of this decade.

When Teaching Tolerance -- along with EdWeek, The Huffington Post and others -- urged teachers to recognize that the Trayvon Martin case was a "teachable moment," we all left something out. "

None of us added a warning label: "Follow this advice at your own risk; possible adverse...

This week is National School Choice Week -- a well-orchestrated PR event to celebrate "school choice."

The week of nationwide events even kicked off with a party in New Orleans complete with performances by The Temptations and Ellis Marsalis. It's a lot of fanfare in the name of...

Our nation continues to grow more diverse.

It's especially apparent in our nation's classrooms where one out of four students are the children of immigrants.

Today, when the school bell rings, more teachers are finding themselves looking at a sea of young faces representing an array of racial,...

Alabama's new law -- with provisions against hiring, harboring or transporting undocumented immigrants -- is bad enough for adults. But it is potentially disastrous for kids.

By requiring schools to determine the immigration status of every student at enrollment, the law makes it hard to tell the...

New evidence of the bullying crisis in our schools appears daily in news reports and blogs. For some students, verbal harassment, cyber-ostracism and physical abuse are as routine as turning in homework. That's particularly true for students who are -- or simply perceived to be -- gay, lesbian, bisexual or...

It's not often that history teachers get to have a good laugh. But this week we enjoyed a rare moment of rolling-on-the-floor laughter.

You see, we're usually grim folks who favor "boring textbooks" and "monotonous lectures" in our quest to indoctrinate children with "filtered," "biased and politically correct" history....

Here's a reality check for all those who think today's students simply need better teachers, more seat time and higher test scores:

• A Utah high school student wears a pillowcase resembling a Ku Klux Klan hood to a spirit day rally; shortly after, a mixed-race student blogs about...

Last week, I had a chance to preview documentary films that showed how a strong arts program -- and that could range from mariachi to Shakespeare to poetry slams -- could turn struggling schools into powerhouses of energy and promise. Sunday night, millions of viewers got a chance to see...

The suicides of boys tormented by anti-gay harassment grabbed the public's attention this fall. Those suicides are the tip of the iceberg.

For every tragic and unnecessary case that makes it to the news, there are others we don't hear about. These are the ones that families are too ashamed...

The Teaching Tolerance team had a confab earlier this week to plan ahead. Looking at a 2011 calendar, Sean Price, Teaching Tolerance's managing editor, reminded me that the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War was fast approaching. Did we want to do something?

My first response? Frankly,...

Kudos to the United States Department of Education for making such a strong case in this week's Dear Colleague Letter that bullying is a matter of civil rights.

The DOE rightly reframed the issue of bullying in schools as one of institutional responsibility -- one that can get...

September was a grim month. Three boys -- 15-year-old Billy Lucas in Indiana, and 13-year-olds Asher Brown in Texas and Seth Walsh in California -- took their own lives after being subjected to relentless anti-gay bullying in school.

And then, just...