The Arizona State University and Phoenix Seminary graduate has been on that mission since she gave birth to a son, years ago.
Her prayer, she said, is that she’ll be a “radiant light in dark spaces” who leaves a legacy of hope, peace and love.
Wood and other parents in the Phoenix area’s Black Mothers Forum are seen as game-changers in the fight for education equality for Black children.
Led by Wood, who has served as a pastor in a women’s prison and as Chief of Staff for the Phoenix City Council, the group has taken the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the education law passed during the Obama Administration, very seriously. The Black parents’ group is using ESSA to leverage their awareness and involvement in their children’s education and to ensure that African American students excel in the public school system.
“We, as Black mothers, have come together to collectively address the concerns that we have with our Black sons and daughters being pushed out of their schools at an alarmingly higher rate than their White peers all over the nation,” Wood said.
The mission of the Black Mothers Forum, Wood explained, is to educate parents on their rights with respect to student discipline and a culturally-inclusive curriculum, while also getting organized through focus groups that allow members of the forum to execute a course of action to effectively make structural changes.
“We do this by meeting multiple times a month and having various experts come in from various organizations to educate and train our mothers on knowing their rights, sharing a culturally-integrated curriculum and learning [the signs and symptoms] of any mental health challenges our children may be experiencing,” Wood said.
For instance, the group has entered partnerships with the ACLU’s Demand 2 Learn program, Arizona State University’s Center for the Study of Race and Democracy, and other initiatives.
Members of the Black Mothers Forum, also completed a 13-week course on Black history to help develop a deeper understanding of their ancestors so that they could properly inform their children.
“We attend high school and grade school district board meetings regularly and address the disproportionate suspensions and dismissals of our students of color for minor infractions,” said Gwendolyn Payton, a Black Mothers Forum member, who also serves in the Equality division of the organization. “As a result of speaking out, schools are contacting us to come on campus and be visible and interact with our students of color. We challenge the schools to include more culturally diverse curriculum and activities and to hire more teachers and principals of color.”
In February, when a Black Phoenix charter school student was pulled out of school after officials claimed the boy’s hair braids violated school policy, the Black Mothers Forum sprang into action to defend the youth causing the district to issue a mea culpa and welcome the child back to school.
“The dress code at the school was specifically created as another means of targeting and harassing our Black children,” Wood said.
But, it’s just one reason why the group must encourage Black mothers to attend school board meetings and request study sessions be conducted publicly to address the disproportionate disciplinary practices with respect to Black children, Wood said.
“When we show up in large numbers to address an issue we have seen positive results,” Wood said. “We have found that in order to dismantle the school to prison pipeline it starts with us focusing in on ensuring our children are in safe and supportive learning environments and that means we need to address the punitive disciplinary actions administered by implicitly biased school administers and teachers.”
Wood continued: “We strongly believe that, as parents, we have the power to change the current school system when we collectively communicate the same message.”
According to Wood, that message is simple:
“We, as Black mothers, will no longer remain silent while our children are blatantly disrespected, threatened, harassed, intimidated, provoked, neglected and set up to fail through policies, disciplinary practices, curriculum, regulations and/or laws deeply rooted in racial stereotypes.”
In an effort to encourage young people to pursue and succeed in STEAM careers (Science, Technology Engineering, the Arts and Mathematics), Ford announced a new quarterly column dedicated to showcasing opportunities in STEAM. The column will appear on BlackPressUSA.com and will be available to NNPA members through the NNPA Newswire.
The NNPA is a trade group that represents more than 200 Black-owned media companies, operating in the United States; the member publications reach more than 20 million readers, combined, in print and online every week.
The new column will begin in March.
“Rest assured, this will not be a self-serving platform,” said Renah Carlisle, a sales zone manager for Ford’s Phoenix Region. “Both Ford and the NNPA support STEAM initiatives and it is a reminder to our children, that the impossible is possible.”
This year, there will be more than 8 million jobs available in STEAM and the federal government alone will need an additional 10,000 workers for information technology and cybersecurity, Carlisle said.
“In tandem with other programs and initiatives, with the launch of this new STEAM column, we’re excited to not only put a focus on an important issue impacting our youth, but to also offer [another avenue] to increase awareness, consideration and participation in exciting, dynamic career opportunities available to all young people everywhere,” said Carlisle, in a press statement about the new STEAM column.
NNPA President and CEO Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., said that the NNPA was excited to join Ford in this important conversation about the future of our youth.
“Across the country, our members serve as the voice and advocate for the communities they serve,” said Chavis, in a press statement about the new STEAM column. “The unsettling fact that every 26 seconds a student drops out of high school should be impetus enough for leaders, mentors and all who care about the future of our youth to develop a pipeline for future leaders in STEAM careers.”
The statement continued: “Both NNPA and Ford share a mutual commitment and support for STEAM initiatives and are excited to support innovation, differentiation and opportunities that help our youth ‘Go Further’ in tech,” and explore the limitless potential of the future.
Students in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) system are learning faster than just about any other school district in the nation, according to new research.
Reardon based his analysis on 300 million elementary school test scores covering more than 11,000 school districts.
“I don’t think CPS is doing anything extraordinary or special for parent engagement, but it may be worth pointing out that we’re suddenly leading the nation in student growth and our kids of color are outperforming comparable kids of color across the state,” said Marilyn Rhames, the founder of the nonprofit Teachers Who Pray and a veteran teacher in Chicago.
[/media-credit] Mayor Rahm Emanuel called the report a testament to the hard work, progress and success of Chicago’s remarkable students, teachers, principals and families. In this photo, Emanuel speaks during the White House Summit on Working Families Chicago Regional Forum at the Ralph Metcalfe Building in Chicago, Ill., April 2014.
Still, Rhames, author of the upcoming book, “The Master Teacher: 12 Spiritual Lessons that can Transform Schools and Revolutionize Public Education,” cautioned that there’s another side to the success story that shouldn’t be overlooked.
“There’s a huge race-based disparity of performance on the SAT, which all 11th graders in the state of Illinois has to take,” Rhames said. “Some CPS high schools did the worst in the state. So, how effective is our growth, if it’s not translating into better preparation for college?”
But, it’s not just about test scores, student attendance is up, Chicago high schools are offering more rigorous courses and high school graduation and college enrollment rates continue to rise, said Elaine Allensworth of the Chicago Consortium on School Research.
The consortium has provided a descriptive examination of two- and four-year college enrollment patterns among CPS graduates over the last 10 years.
They found that CPS graduates’ immediate college enrollment rates increased over the last decade, with 63 percent of 2015 graduates enrolling in either a two- or four-year college immediately after high school, compared to 50 percent of graduates in 2006.
In 2015, CPS graduates’ rate of enrollment in four-year colleges was equal to the national rate at 44 percent, and higher than some urban districts, including New York and Los Angeles, which were 38 percent and 24 percent, respectively.
In June 2017, WBEZ in Chicago reported that even as CPS—the state’s largest school district—reeled from an ongoing budget crisis, an academic turnaround has occurred.
For decades, the district reportedly shouldered a reputation of being perennially challenged by poverty and chronically low-performing schools.
“That’s not Chicago anymore,” said Paul Zavitkovsky, a researcher with the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Center for Urban Education Leadership.
Research has also revealed that Chicago students, on average, repeatedly outperform their peers outside the city.
Reardon, a leading expert on education equality in the United States, presented an analysis in November that revealed Chicago’s students learn and grow at a faster rate than 96 percent of school districts in the country—including wealthy districts.
Reardon’s findings also noted that, among the 100 largest school districts in the country, Chicago has the highest growth rate between third and eighth grade; and each successive CPS class is outperforming the class that came before and improving at a rate far above the national average, according to Reardon’s report.
“This report is a testament to the hard work, progress and success of Chicago’s remarkable students, teachers, principals and families,” Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a statement. “CPS students make Chicago proud every day. They not only lead in the classroom, they lead the country in academic growth, and their achievements are earning national recognition and respect.”
Kate Phillippo, an associate professor of cultural and educational policy studies at the School of Education at Loyola University Chicago, said she’s excited to see increased learning growth in CPS.
“It’s important to note what Chicago accomplished specifically. For example, its third grade test scores are still below the national average, but its growth is unusually high,” Phillippo said.
While there’s no one secret to success, initiatives at the school level have clearly promoted growth, she said.
“I think the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) has the potential to support student achievement, giving districts greater flexibility about how they approach curriculum, and what learning supports they provide to their students,” Phillippo said. “ESSA’s provision for less standardized testing will also free educators up from a sense of pressure to prepare students for high-stakes tests. Finally, it is critical that ESSA has kept in place protections for economically disadvantaged students; that’s one of the hallmarks of ESSA.”
Learn more about the Every Student Succeeds Act at nnpa.org/essa.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s influence on the Civil Rights Movement is indisputable, but his fight for equity in education remains a mystery to some.
That fight began with his own education.
“He clearly had an advanced, refined educational foundation from Booker T. Washington High School, Morehouse College, Crozer Theological Seminary, and Boston University,” said Reverend Jesse Jackson, Sr., the founder of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. “His education in his speeches and sermons and writings were apparent and he wanted us all to have that type of education.”
King completed high school at 15, college at 19, seminary school at 22 and earned a doctorate at 26.
“Dr. King laid down the case for affordable education for all Americans, including Polish children—from the ghetto and the barrios, to the Appalachian mountains and the reservations—he was a proponent for education for all and he believed that strong minds break strong chains and once you learn your lesson well, the oppressor could not unlearn you.”
Rev. Al Sharpton, the founder and president of the National Action Network (NAN), said that NAN works with Education for a Better America to partner with school districts, universities, community colleges, churches, and community organizations around the country to conduct educational programming for students and parents.
“The mission of the organization has been to build bridges between policymakers and the classrooms by supporting innovations in education and creating a dialogue between policymakers, community leaders, educators, parents, and students,” Sharpton said. “We’re promoting student health, financial literacy, and college readiness in our communities, just like Dr. King did.”
King was a figure to look up to in both civil rights and academia, Sharpton told the NNPA Newswire.
“Then, when you look at his values, he always saw education, especially in the Black community, as a tool to uplift and inspire to action,” Sharpton said. “It’s definitely no coincidence that a number of prominent civil rights groups that emerged during Dr. King’s time, were based on college campuses.”
Sharpton added that King routinely pushed for equality to access to education.
“Just as importantly, he always made a point to refer education back to character—that we shouldn’t sacrifice efficiency and speed for morals,” Sharpton said. “A great student not only has the reason and education, but a moral compass to do what’s right with his or her gifts. It’s not just important to be smart, you have to know what’s right and what’s wrong.”
Dr. Wornie Reed, the director of Race and Social Policy Research Center at Virginia Tech who marched with King, said when he thinks of King and education, he immediately considers the late civil rights leader’s advocating that “we should be the best that we could be.”
“King certainly prepared himself educationally…early on he saw that education played a crucial role in society, but perceived it as often being misused,” Reed said. “In a famous essay that he wrote for the student newspaper at Morehouse in 1947, he argued against a strictly utilitarian approach to education, one that advanced the individual and not society.”
Maryland Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings, who remembers running home from church on Sundays to listen to King’s speeches on radio, said King had a tremendous impact on education in the Black community.
“Dr. King worked tirelessly to ensure that African Americans would gain the rights they had long been denied, including the right to a quality education,” said Cummings. “His fight for equality in educational opportunities helped to tear down walls of segregation in our nation’s schools.”
Cummings continued: “He instilled hope in us that we can achieve our dreams no matter the color of our skin. He instilled in us the notion that everyone can be great, because everyone can serve and there are so many great advocates, who embody this lesson.”
In support of education equality, civil rights leaders across the country are still working to ensure all students, regardless of color, receive access to experienced teachers, equitable classroom resources and quality education, Cummings noted further.
For example, the NAACP has done a tremendous amount, across the country, to increase retention rates, ensure students have the resources they need, and prepare students for success after graduation—whether it be for college or a specific career path, Cummings said.
During his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in Oslo, Norway, King said: “I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits.”
The need for high quality education in the Black community is universal and the route to get there may be different, but education does matter, Jackson said.
“Dr. King told me he read a fiction and a non-fiction book once a week. He was an avid reader and, in the spirit of Dr. King, today we fight for equal, high-quality education,” said Jackson. “We fight for skilled trade training, affordable college education and beyond.”
Without hesitation, Jill Lauren said that the most critical program that should be included under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is proper reading instruction beginning in kindergarten.
“We know that children learn to read by using either a whole language or phonics approach. Some kids seem to pick up reading, as if by magic, while others need every sound and syllable rule explicitly taught,” said Lauren, who holds a bachelor’s of science and master’s degree in learning disabilities from Northwestern University.
Known as an expert in reading and writing, Lauren has trained teachers around the country to utilize a variety of structured, multi-sensory approaches to the instruction of reading and written language.
“Teachers of pre-K to [third grade] need to know how to teach both methodologies of reading instruction,” said Lauren. “Every child entering third grade should be reading on grade level, meaning we have four years to properly teach kids how to read.”
Lauren continued: “Without the essential skill of reading on grade level, the rest of a child’s school years will be troubled, and statistics show that most youth offenders, as well as adult inmates, struggle with literacy. This educational failing is a national tragedy.”
Lauren’s concerns come as Education Week reported a push by Republicans in Congress to overturn accountability regulations for ESSA could have far-reaching consequences for how the law works in states, and the potential end of the much-contested rules is dividing the education community.
Groups supporting the move argue that it would free schools from unnecessary burdens, while opponents contend that overturning the rules could hurt vulnerable students and create turmoil in states and districts trying to finalize their transition to ESSA, the 2015 law that replaced the No Child Left Behind Act.
The National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), comprised of 211 African American-owned media companies and newspapers, recently received a $1.5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support a three-year, multi-media public awareness campaign focusing on the unique opportunities and challenges of ESSA.
Bridging the academic achievement gap in education K-12 for African-American students and others from disadvantaged communities is of critical importance over the next several years, said Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr., the president and CEO of the NNPA.
“The ESSA law was established to help increase the effectiveness of public education in every state,” said Chavis. “Our task is to inform, inspire, and encourage parents, students, teachers, and administrators to fulfill the intent and objectives of ESSA with special focus on those students and communities that have been marginalized and underserved by the education system across the nation.”
Under ESSA, states will adhere to more flexible federal regulations that provide for improved elementary and secondary education in the nation’s public schools.
ESSA, which also reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), received bipartisan support and was signed into law by President Barack Obama on December 10, 2015. The regulations are administered by the U.S. Department of Education and ESSA goes into full effect at the beginning of the 2017-2018 school year.
Last week, the House of Representatives approved a joint resolution that would overturn ESSA accountability rules issued by the Obama administration.
Those rules, which became final in November, are intended to detail for states the timeline for addressing underperforming schools, how schools must be rated, the ways English-language learners must be considered in state accountability plans, and other policy issues.
As some education advocates push for more intensive reading instruction in pre-K and kindergarten, others argue that attendance is the key to success.
“One of the things that should be included in any modification of ESSA is the fifth criteria for schools which is about school climate,” said Helen Levy-Myers, founder and CEO of Athena’s Workshop, Inc., a texting application for educators. “The most important metric in school climate is individual student attendance rates. Measuring when individual students attend or are absent is a key indicator of school environment and more valuable than a survey, an acceptable option, which can influence results in the way questions are phrased.”
School attendance is often dependent on other factors, like the friendliness of the staff, school leadership, safety of the school and neighborhood, health of the community, and the level of engagement between students and teachers, she said.
A white paper presented by Levy-Myers noted that the “cold, hard truth is that chronically absent children end up leading harder lives.”
Students that miss just two or three days each month in kindergarten and first grade never catch up. They become chronically absent, defined as missing 10 percent or more of the school year.
About 83 percent of the chronically absent students in kindergarten and 1st grade are not reading at grade level at the end of third grade. Not being able to read well means that everything gets harder and that a student is four times more likely to drop out before graduation, Levy-Myers said.
Without a high school diploma, getting any job or advancing beyond the lowest, entry-level job is almost impossible, and that person is now eight times more likely to end up in jail, she said.
“Teachers and administrators know these facts, but parents often do not understand how small absences add up. Parents that do not visit the school or district website do not get the message about the importance of daily attendance,” Levy-Myers said. “They have not calculated that being absent two days a month, every month for nine months of school equals 18 days or 10 percent of the typical 180-day school year and that chronic absenteeism translates into a long list of negative outcomes.”
While many Republican lawmakers have moved to strike down the implementation of ESSA, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos told state school officers around the country that despite a delay, several regulations will be reviewed and changed by March 21.
DeVos told the officers that state ESSA plans will still be accepted either in April or in September.
In a memo to state school heads DeVos wrote: “Due to the regulatory delay and review, and the potential repeal of recent regulations by Congress, the Department is currently reviewing the regulatory requirements of consolidated State plans, as reflected in the current template, to ensure that they require only descriptions, information, assurances, and other materials that are absolutely necessary for consideration of a consolidated State plan.”
