The Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder (MSR) and its nonprofit namesake the Spokesman-Recorder 501(c)(3) hosted the 23rd annual Graduation Celebration Thursday, May 24 at the Metropolitan Ballroom in Golden Valley. More than 200 community members, graduating students and their parents attended the free scholarship dinner and ceremony awards. Ten students were presented with Cecil E. Newman Scholarships at the event themed “Education and Graduation: It’s a family affair.”
Each year, the MSR invites graduating African and African American high school students in Minnesota to participate in a 500-word essay contest for the scholarship named after the late MSR founder and publisher. A volunteer essay committee selects the winners.
This year’s 2018 Cecil E. Newman $1000 Scholarship winners are Zarina Sementelli, Majeste Phillip, Jay Viar Johnson, Jasmine Jackson, Charlotte DeVaughn, Verbena Dempster, Jerrell Daniel and Maryam Abullahi. Two additional graduating students, Miracle Campton and Amed Faud, each received a $500 Cecil E. & Launa Newman scholarship.
After the event, scholarship recipient Zarina Sementelli said, “It feels empowering and liberating to receive this honor because of who I am and everything I had to overcome.”
Comedian and radio personality Shed G, who has become a mainstay for the graduation celebration, emceed the event and kept the audience entertained and laughing throughout the evening like a “Ringmaster of Fun.”
Travis Lee/MSR News
When asked what it meant for him to get the call to emcee the MSR event again, he said, “What I love about all of this is [that] you see students from different nationalities and the Minnesota Spokesman-Recordergiving them an opportunity to receive scholarship money. The other thing I love is when the guest speakers say something that I can take home as an adult. It makes being here each time extra special.”
The Graduation Celebration featured a variety of offerings, including a career, resource and education expo in the afternoon followed by the gala dinner, live entertainment, and giveaways in the evening.
Keynote speaker Dr. Tonya Jackman Hampton, Ph.D. spoke on the importance of individual branding and knowing where you come from. Dr. Jackman Hampton advised that one should find one’s executive style and then own it. She encouraged the students not to buy into the lie that using proper communication skills is a form of “sounding or talking White.”
Jackman Hampton also referenced her brand as an example, revealing that she, too, benefited from the influence of the late Cecil E. Newman as one of his granddaughters and embraced the Graduation Celebration’s “It’s a Family Affair” theme with pride.
Performers included “Step with Soul” step team, which opened the entertainment with a fiery, synchronized, crowd-pleasing and foot-stomping routine; and a creatively choreographed performance by dance troupe Shape Shift. Singer Kennedy Hurst also graced the stage with her rendition of Mariah Carey’s Hero.
[/media-credit] Step With Soul dance troupe were one of the evenings many highlights
Tracey Williams-Dillard, MSR CEO & publisher, closed the evening with heartfelt words. “Being in a room with all of the graduates and their families to recognize their achievements and accomplishments truly demonstrates that “Education and Graduation” is a family affair,” said Williams-Dillard.
Over the years, the MSR has recruited marquee-name entertainers as keynote speakers such as LL Cool J, Tavis Smiley, Kimberly Elise, Hill Harper and Nick Cannon, just to name a few, who have helped put the annual Celebration on the local and national map. In recent years, however, MSR has recruited from local talent to address the scholarship winners and their families. The main event sponsor for the Graduation Celebration was the Medtronic Foundation.
African or African American high school students graduating in 2019 are encouraged to apply for next year’s MSR Graduation Celebration in the spring at www.graduation-celebration.com or call the MSR at 612-827-4021.
Below, find our Graduation Celebration insert, including Cecil E. Newman scholarship essays and remarks from Mayor Jacob Frey, Senator Amy Klobuchar, and others. Go hereto see this year’s entries for the 2018 Community Yearbook. Scroll down to the more photos from Travis Lee.
Kids arrive at school with large achievement gaps between rich and poor, and the achievement gaps grow over the summer. Now two new studies show that the summer learning gap between the lower and middle classes may be narrowing while the rich surge ahead of everyone.
A May 22, 2018, report from the National Center for Education Statistics tracked more than 18,000 kids who attended kindergarten in 2010-11 and followed up with their parents in the fall of 2011 to see how they spent their summer. It’s a nationally representative group, expressly selected to mimic the actual racial, ethnic, income and geographic diversity in the country.
By many measures, poor kids participated in fewer educationally enriching activities over the summer than middle class and wealthy kids. Only 7 percent of poor kids and 13 percent of “near” poor kids (families of four living on an income of $22,000 to $44,000 a year) went to summer camp. Roughly 40 percent of non-poor kids — middle-class and wealthy — attended summer camp. The poor were less likely to go on cultural outings. For example, only 32 percent of poor kids and 44 percent of “near” poor kids went to an art gallery, a museum or a historical site over the summer. Almost two-thirds, or 63 percent, of non-poor kids, did. Only 15 percent of poor kids attended a concert or a play. One third of non-poor kids did.
More than half of rich and middle-class parents said they read to their children every day during the summer. Fewer than 40 percent of poor kids’ parents did so.
But there were surprises too. A larger subset of poor families than non-poor families said they had their children work on math and writing activities every day. For example, one fourth of poor families said they engaged in writing activities with their kids each day. Only 12 percent of non-poor families did this.
A couple pieces of egalitarian news: three-quarters of kids played outside every day, regardless of household income. And one-third of kindergarten graduates of all income levels looked at or read books every day.
Disparities in how low, middle and high income parents invest in their children during the summer are nothing new. But it’s interesting to see how they have changed over time. The last time NCES studied how kindergarteners spent their summer, in the summer of 1999, the questions were slightly different. But it seems that low-income families were even less likely to participate in activities with their children back then. For example, only 20 percent of children from low-income families with less educated parents went to art, science or discovery museums over the summer — roughly 12 percentage points lower than in 2011. Forty-five percent of low-income children went to a zoo, aquarium or petting farm back in 1999 — roughly 9 percentage points lower than in 2011.
At first glance, it seems that low-income families are now more involved with their children and investing in them more. Perhaps the summer experience gap between low- and high-income children is narrowing. But the 2011 NCES report focused on children living in poverty and not in wealth. All the non-poor children are lumped together, be they middle, upper-middle or upper class, and their summer experiences are all averaged into one number. It doesn’t detect or highlight growing disparities among these income groups.
Sociologists, however, are finding that parental investment in their children has diverged sharply over the last 40 years with growing gaps between the middle and the upper classes. In a May 2018 paper published in the American Sociological Review, researchers from the University of California at Berkeley and Colorado State University found that the most affluent Americans are driving this difference, spending ever higher amounts of money on their children’s education and enrichment, from after-school lessons to summer camps.
They also found that this increase in parental investment in children was directly related to growing income inequality. That is, in states where income inequality grew a lot, so did disparities in parental investments. The higher the income inequality, the larger share of their income rich people spent on their children.
“Affluent parents might see rising income inequality as really making a winner-take-all economy and feel a strong push to give their kids every advantage they can,” said Daniel Schneider, professor of sociology at Berkeley, in a press release.
In other words, rising income inequality not only leaves the rich with more money to spend but also reshapes parents’ desires to invest larger portions of their money in their own children. High-income parents are not simply spending more in general but are targeting their spending toward their children.
Money doesn’t seem to be a replacement for time. Despite time-pressured lives, the sociologists found that high-income parents did not reduce the amount of time they spent together with their children.
Today’s income inequality is not only leading to unequal investment in children, but also laying a foundation for even more unequal adult lives in the future.
This story about kindergarten summerwas written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
The students in Stacy Mazak’s kindergarten class couldn’t stand still as they waited their turn at the dunk tank.
They had already spent 15 minutes hula-hooping and decorating the street in front of their school with chalk and 15 minutes in the inflatable bounce houses the Wilkinsburg School District gets for the annual field day events. Now, they were anxious to knock one of Turner Elementary School’s other teachers into the water.
One student, 6-year-old Breonna Pollard, said she didn’t feel the same excitement about moving on to first grade next year.
“I want to stay with Ms. Mazak,” she said, scooting out of the way of the splash when one of her classmates hit the dunk target with a softball.
But under the district’s reorganization plan for next school year, Ms. Mazak and Breonna will be moving to a new school together.
With the district’s middle- and high-school students now attending Pittsburgh Westinghouse Academy in Homewood, Wilkinsburg administrators are re-focusing their efforts on the district’s younger students. After years of program cuts and an exodus of families who opted to enroll their children in private or charter schools, district leaders are embarking on an ambitious plan to boost enrollment and re-vamp Wilkinsburg’s two elementary schools.
JACKSON — Kids and teens who are 18 years old or younger can participate in Jackson Public Schools’ summer feeding program, which begins on Monday, June 4. The district uses federal funding through the U.S. Department of Agriculture to pay for lunches served in Jackson at 12 different sites around the city.
On Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., students can go to one of the 12 locations to receive a free lunch from June 4 through July 13. The program is only closed for July 4.
Mary Hill, executive director of food service at JPS, said this is the 27th year in a row that the program has operated in the city. She said the goal is to not stop the stream of meals that students receive at school. The district is 100 percent on free-and-reduced lunch, meaning students eat free at school throughout the school year.
“I’ve been told that there are students that really rely on the program that we have,” Hill told the Jackson Free Press.
No transportation is provided to the 12 sites (listed below), but the only requirement for a student to eat is to be between the ages of 0 and 18 years old. Hill said the district projects it will serve about 4,500 meals a day this summer. She said groups from vacation Bible school or summer enrichment programs often participate. JPS will be reimbursed for every meal they serve.
Some Illinois lawmakers are on board with a plan to require school boards to pay starting teachers $40,000 a year without providing additional funding for districts.
The Illinois House on Thursday narrowly approved the plan, House Bill 5175, to require local schools to pay new teachers in the state at least $40,000 annually. The vote was 61-38, mostly along party lines, in the House. State Rep. Jay Hoffman, D-Swansea, is driving the plan. He said it’s about fairness.
“Let’s set a mark that we in this General Assembly are going to try and address the shortage of teachers in Illinois,” Hoffman said. “And that we’re going to pay them a decent wage.”
Friday, June 1, 2018 – The Delaware Department of Education is seeking public comment on a revised proposed 225 Prohibition of Discrimination Regulation, which will be published in the June Register of Regulations today.
The department received more than 11,000 comments on a previous version of the proposed regulation. After careful review of that feedback, Secretary of Education Susan Bunting made responsive changes. The version to be published today:
Removes the provision that allowed students to make changes on how they were identified without parental involvement and adds a requirement of parental notification and permission; and
Substitutes the state’s suggested model policy for a guidance document to assist districts and charters in creating local policies.
Because the revised proposed regulation reflects substantive changes from the previous version published, the regulation has been published in the Register again with another month-long public comment period before any decision on a final regulation is made. Secretary Bunting thanks those who shared their feedback during the first formal comment period and encourages the public to again share comments by July 6. All comments received will be posted online after the public comment period ends.
To be considered as part of the public record, comments must either be submitted via email to DOEregulations.comment@doe.k12.de.us or via mail to the attention of Tina Shockley, Department of Education, 401 Federal St., Suite 2, Dover, Delaware 19901. Comment submitted to other email addresses will not be accepted. Comments must be received by July 6.
The Commonwealth Education Blueprint is a multiyear effort founded and managed by the Pennsylvania School Boards Association (PSBA) to develop and implement a statewide vision for the future of public education. Through this comprehensive project, education stakeholders from across the state and from many areas of expertise collaborate to proactively determine what education should look like in years to come.
VISION:
Pennsylvania will provide an equitable, exceptional public education that empowers all learners to achieve a meaningful, productive life in our democratic society.
The Process & Your Involvement
The project steering committee conducts meetings and collects data (ongoing since Oct. 2017) toward drafting the Blueprint. They have also been convening Blueprint study groups, focus groups and, now a statewide survey.
Your involvement is critical to the Blueprint’s success! We hope you will participate in this short surveyto build the foundation for public education in the future. Please complete it by May 31, 2018: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/edblueprintpa
What’s Next?
After all of the data has been compiled and analyzed, a comprehensive report will be and will serve as the driving document to set and benchmark milestones toward achieving the vision and shaping all future education-related legislation and advocacy. We hope you will join us in distributing the Blueprint and this vision later in 2018.
For more information about the Commonwealth Education Blueprint, contact Ashley Lenker White, senior director of strategic initiatives, at (800) 932-0588 or ashley.white@psba.org.
The United States has a math problem, and, like most middle school students sitting down with their homework, we are not finding any easy solutions. Young people in this country are struggling to attain the proficiency necessary to pursue the careers our economy desperately needs. Universities bemoan students’ inability to complete college-level math. Each year thousands of newly admitted college students are placed in non-credit-bearing remedial courses in math, a path that immediately puts them at higher risk of not completing a degree.
Maybe it’s the classics professor in me talking, but I approach this math problem from an unorthodox angle: Latin. In a 2011 article, “An Apology for Latin and Math,” high school Latin teacher Cheryl Lowe made a compelling comparison between the study of Latin and the study of math. Much like Latin, she observed, “math is hard because it builds so relentlessly year after year. Any skill not mastered one year will make work difficult the next.”
High school teachers have discovered that the unrelentingly cumulative nature of the study of Latin and the study of mathematics explains why students struggle to excel in either discipline.
A favorite lament of college and university faculty in quantitative fields is that students cannot perform college-level math. But what is college-level math?
In the world of classics, there is no such thing as college-level Latin. My daughter’s high school Latin teacher uses the same textbook for her class that I have used to teach Latin at Duke University, Whitman College in Washington state, and the University of Southern Maine. It turns out that there are only two differences between high school Latin and college Latin. The first is pace. I tell students that one year of college Latin is the approximate equivalent of three years of high school Latin…
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LANSING – Updates to the State of Michigan phone system have required the change of phone numbers for some offices and staff members at the Michigan Department of Education (MDE).
The new toll-free number for the main line at MDE is 833-633-5788.
If you know the name of the MDE staff person who wants to contact, you can search for their contact information at this convenient website: http://www.state.mi.us/dit/default.aspx.
All media inquiries should begin by contacting the Office of Public and Governmental Affairs, with the contact information noted at the top of this press release.
Representatives of President Donald Trump’s school safety commission, which is charged with making recommendations to combat school violence in the wake of February’s massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and other tragedies, spent the morning at Hebron Harman Elementary School here learning about positive behavioral supports and interventions, a widely-used system to help improve school climate and student behavior.
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who chairs the commission, and others heard plenty of discussion of restorative behavior practices in which students resolve conflicts through conversation, common expectations for behavior, and community building circles.
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