DeVos Defends Civil Rights Record

DeVos Defends Civil Rights Record

Education Week logoHouse Democrats and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos sparred over civil rights, the Every Student Succeeds Act, and teachers’ salaries at a hearing Tuesday, but lawmakers from both parties largely avoided controversial questions about school safety in the aftermath of a Texas high school shooting last week that left 10 students and staff dead.

Appearing before the House education committee, DeVos emphasized that the federal school safety commission she leads is working quickly, and that its ultimate goal is to ensure that schools “have the tools to be able to make the right decisions to protect their own buildings and their own communities.”

She said the commission was developing a timeline for its work, but also said that she planned to have the commission report its findings by year’s end. 

“We are looking forward to [hearing from] every interest group, every constituency, particularly teachers, parents, and law enforcement and school leadership,” DeVos told lawmakers, later adding that, “We seek to look at models across the country.”

The commission has only met once since it was created in March after the deadly school shooting in Parkland, Fla., although the secretary met last week with school safety researchers, as well as parents of children killed in school shootings. Its other members are Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. DeVos previously has said that schools should be able to decide if they want to provide staff with firearms to improve safety, but did not share detailed personal opinions on school safety in general with the committee…

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OPINION: This Black History Month, Let’s Take Back the Fight for Education Equality

OPINION: This Black History Month, Let’s Take Back the Fight for Education Equality

By Kay Coles James (President, The Heritage Foundation)

Frederick Douglass. Condoleezza Rice. Martin Luther King, Jr. Clarence Thomas. Ida B. Wells. Shirley Chisholm.

All of these leaders will receive renewed national attention during this Black History Month. And all have something else in common: their emphasis on education.

None of these leaders would have been able to achieve the remarkable victories or overcome the incredible obstacles they faced without an education.

I share their passion for education equality. I’ve fought for it all my life.

My own battle started in 1961, when I joined 25 other black students to integrate a segregated junior high school in Richmond, Virginia. And it hasn’t stopped since. I fervently believe all children—no matter their race, religion, income, age, or address—have an equal right to receive an excellent education.

That’s more than opinion. It’s the law of the land. In the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling that ended school segregation, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote, “It is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is ‘a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.’”

Nearly 65 years later, however, it’s painfully obvious that education in America remains very unequal. Too many schools are failing their students. Schools that squash children’s dreams, beat down their hopes, and diminish their expectations have created a crisis in the black community. Today, in many large U.S. cities, more than half of all African American students never graduate high school.

All children deserve to get the tools they need to make their dreams come true. But high school dropouts typically don’t have them. As a result, it’s much harder for them to get a job, much less earn what those who do graduate make. They’re also more likely to commit crimes and be victimized by crime. Far too often, the dreams they once had turn into nightmares.

I was fortunate. Even though I was kicked, punched, and stuck with pins during the integration battle, I was able to attend a better school. Too many kids today don’t have that chance. Instead, anti-reform forces block them from going to better-performing schools.

Who are the anti-reformers? A determined cartel of teacher unions, education bureaucrats and career politicians. They make a lot of money from the current system in the form of union dues, salaries and political contributions. And they view any attempt to change that system as a threat and anyone seeking to advance education equality as their enemy.

Just ask U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. Testifying before Congress, DeVos explained her goal is “ensuring that every student has an equal opportunity to receive a great education.” But rather than be hailed for seeking the equality promised decades ago, she’s being attacked by those who want things to stay just as they are.

If you are wealthy, connected, or elected, chances are your child goes to or graduated from a great school. But if you live in a poor urban neighborhood, your child is much more likely to go to a failing school, a school where more than half of all students can’t read or write well, have low math scores, face the daily threat of bullying and violence and won’t graduate.

Do these sound like “equal terms” to you?

I say—no more! The crisis of failing schools has afflicted too many Americans for too long, and it will never end so long as we continue to deny every child their equal right to an excellent education.

And so I call on all caring Americans to join me in this fight. It’s a part of our heritage as a people—and of our inalienable rights as citizens of this nation.

Kay Coles James is president of The Heritage Foundation. You can follow Kay on Twitter @KayColesJames.

Decades after “Little Rock Nine,” school segregation lingers – Education Week

Decades after “Little Rock Nine,” school segregation lingers – Education Week

It had been three years since the Supreme Court had declared “separate but equal” in America’s public schools unconstitutional, but the decision was met with bitter resistance across the South. It would take more than a decade before the last vestiges of Jim Crow fell away from classrooms. Even the brave sacrifice of the “Little Rock Nine” felt short-lived—rather than allow more black students and further integration, the district’s high schools closed the following school year.

The watershed moment was “a physical manifestation for all to see of what that massive resistance looked like,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

“The imagery of these perfectly dressed, lovely, serious young people seeking to enter a high school … to see them met with ugliness and rage and hate and violence was incredibly powerful,” Ifill said.

Six decades later, the sacrifice of those black students stands as a symbol of the turbulence of the era, but also as a testament to an intractable problem: Though legal segregation has long ended, few white and minority students share a classroom today.

The lack of progress is clear and remains frustrating in the school district that includes Central High. The Little Rock School District, which is about two-thirds black, has been under state control since 2015 over the academic performance of some of its schools. The district has seen a proliferation of charter schools in recent years that opponents say contributes to self-segregation.

Ernest Green still remembers the promise of the era that put him and the eight other students on the front line. After reading about the May 17, 1954, Brown v. Board of Education decision in the local newspaper, he recalled: “I thought to myself, ‘Good, because I think the face of the South ought to change.’… ”

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REPORT: “Brown” at 62: School Segregation by Race, Poverty and State

REPORT: “Brown” at 62: School Segregation by Race, Poverty and State

Gary Orfield, Jongyeon Ee, Erica Frankenberg and Genevieve Siegel-Hawley
Civil Rights Project – Proyecto Derechos Civiles

As the anniversary of “Brown v. Board of Education” decision arrives again without any major initiatives to mitigate spreading and deepening segregation in the nation’s schools, the Civil Rights Project adds to a growing national discussion with a research brief drawn from a much broader study of school segregation to be published in September 2016. Since 1970, the public school enrollment has increased in size and transformed in racial composition.

Intensely segregated nonwhite schools with zero to 10% white enrollment have more than tripled in this most recent 25-year period for which we have data, a period deeply influenced by major Supreme Court decisions (spanning from 1991 to 2007) that limited desegregation policy. At the same time, the extreme isolation of white students in schools with 0 to 10% nonwhite students has declined by half as the share of white students has dropped sharply.

This brief shows states where racial segregation has become most extreme for Latinos and blacks and discusses some of the reasons for wide variations among states. It calls attention to the striking rise in double segregation by race and poverty for African American and Latino students who are concentrated in schools that rarely attain the successful outcomes typical of middle class schools with largely white and Asian student populations.

Further, it shows the importance of confronting these issues given the strong relationship between racial and economic segregation and inferior educational opportunities clearly demonstrated in research over many decades.

Civil Rights Project / Proyecto Derechos Civiles. 8370 Math Sciences, P.O. Box 951521, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1521. Tel: 310-267-5562; Fax: 310-206-6293; e-mail: crp@ucla.edu; Web site: http://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu

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On the anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education

On the anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education

Today marks the 63rd anniversary of the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education decision which established the segregation of public school students based on race as unconstitutional.

Public education is America’s most vital institution and the foundation of our democracy. NSBA believes that public education is a civil right and that each and every child deserves equal access to a high quality public education that maximizes his or her individual potential.

The Court’s historic decision validated the struggle and remarkable actions of countless Americans who challenged the destructive effects of segregation in our society. The Court recognized we’re a multicultural society and that we’re stronger when we’re united. The decision had and continues to have a profound and significant impact on the lives of our children, our country’s educational system, and our nation as a whole.

NSBA recognizes the significance of the Court’s unanimous decision more than fifty years ago and what equal protection under the law continues to mean for Americans today. Every child in America deserves and has the right to attend a great public school where they live.

Give Communities of Color a Voice in Reshaping Education

Give Communities of Color a Voice in Reshaping Education

By Wade Henderson (President and CEO, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights)

For the first time in our nation’s history, the majority of students in public schools are students of color. But in most places, communities of color still have little meaningful say in how their states manage and resource education. As a result, too many students in this new majority are in overcrowded classes and inadequate facilities where teachers are overworked, underpaid and stuck with a curriculum that lacks rigor and relevance.

All students deserve the opportunity to learn and work hard in a healthy environment with excellent teachers, but even 62 years after Brown v. Board of Education, our nation is reeling from the unfulfilled promise of an equal education for all. Educational equity is vital to our nation; two-thirds of all future jobs will require some level of higher education, and research suggests that within the next 10 years, our economy will face a deficit of 11 million skilled workers. Continuing policies that fail to prepare all students for college and careers is an immoral and self-defeating choice that stunts our nation’s economic potential — and mocks our democratic ideals.

But now there’s an opportunity for states, districts and schools to make a better choice. The Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA, the federal education law Congress passed late last year, requires that parents and communities be meaningfully engaged in determining how states equitably educate their children.

Under ESSA, every single state and school district is confronted with a question of enormous consequence: Will they work with new majority communities to develop plans and policies that ensure excellent schools for all children? Or will they continue to make their decisions in a bubble, avoid accountability and do a disservice to students in the process?

Progress is not guaranteed. For this new law to improve education for every student, states need to put communities in the driver’s seat and focus on the interests of marginalized students. We have always had strong, clear and diverse voices demanding that our education system serve the interests of their children — but decision-makers rarely listen.

Recent research shows that Black and Latino parents understand what the problems exist in their children’s schools — and they have clear ideas about what should change. They know that the schools their children attend don’t get as much funding as schools White children attend; they know their children aren’t getting as good an education as White children; and they know that race is at least one of the reasons why. But they also believe good teaching and high expectations are critical and they want both for their children.

This is all information that states should be taking into account when determining their policies and programs under the new law. And to do that, states, districts, and schools have to engage new majority parents and communities. They have to build strong accountability systems that identify and target meaningful support and improvement in any school where all students — or any group of students — are not learning. They have to provide robust data and reporting about how well schools are educating students and they have to provide them in formats and languages that parents can understand. And, as communities of color demand, they have to distribute resources — high-quality teachers, challenging coursework, up-to-date facilities and classroom materials — more equitably.

Last year during the debate over the new law, states argued that they were in the best position to make decisions that would benefit all students. Now is the time to prove it.

Every single child in this great country deserves a world-class education. But that can’t happen if states and districts ignore the priorities of the families they serve. Experience shows that this can be done. All we need is the will to sit down, open our minds and listen to what all families are saying.

Wade Henderson is president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of more than 200 diverse civil rights organizations. Follow The Leadership Conference on Twitter @civilrightsorg and learn more about their work at http://www.civilrights.org.

PHOTO CAPTIONS: Wade Henderson, the president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights says that Continuing policies that fail to prepare all students for college and careers is an immoral and self-defeating choice that stunts our nation’s economic potential — and mocks our democratic ideals. (Freddie Allen/AMG/NNPA)