The 74 and award-winning journalist Roland S. Martin will host their second education town hall event in their national tour, “Is School Choice the Black Choice?” on February 22nd, 2019 from 6-8pm at the Ray Charles Performing Arts Center on Morehouse College’s campus.
The event will feature a dynamic panel discussion moderated by Martin and comprised of a variety of educators, advocates and opponents of educational reform who will discuss the controversial issue of the school choice movement within the Black community. Among those on the panel:
Local Partners include Better Outcomes for Our Kids (BOOK), EdConnect, Genesis Innovation Academy, GeorgiaCAN, Georgia Charter School Association, Ivy Preparatory Academy, State Charter Schools Commission of Georgia, Teach for America- Metro Atlanta, and the Urban League of Greater Atlanta. National partners include: American Federation for Children, EdChoice, ExcelinEd, National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, United Negro College Fund, and the Walton Family Foundation
This event series will bring Roland Martin and The 74 to African-American communities in 10 cities across the country over the next two years. In each city, working in close partnership with local education reform, faith and civic groups, Roland Martin and The 74 will host a live event to discuss high-quality school options for black families with an expected ~400 parents and community leaders in attendance.
The goal of each event is to stimulate more genuine, fact-based conversation about the tough education issues impacting communities of color. They will also debunk myths about school choice and empower participants with resources to take the necessary steps to create change within their respective communities. Additionally, each event will be livestreamed to ensure the widest possible reach. Their first joint effort launched in Indianapolis, Indiana in December 2018.
A dispute over pay and class size in Chicago boiled over into the nation’s first charter school strike this month, raising questions about how teachers’ unions, going forward, will reconcile their longheld opposition to charters with their need to pick up more dues-paying members.
The historic walkout—and the concessions won by the Chicago Teachers Union on behalf of the striking charter school teachers—was welcome news for unions, which are predicted to potentially shed substantial members and revenue after the fateful U.S. Supreme Court Janus decision earlier this year.
Soon after the strike started, people began asking whether cracks were starting to show in the charter movement, the first viable public alternative—and challenge—to traditional public schools. For so long the charter movement has steadily expanded in many American cities, propelled by some of the world’s wealthiest philanthropists.
The Chicago teachers’ strike has been largely cast in the media as a major symbolic win for teachers’ unions and a warning sign for charter schools and their supporters.
But there are equally fraught—if less examined—questions facing unions as they simultaneously decry charters as the tools of billionaires trying to privatize public education and encourage charter teachers to join their ranks. A growing unionized workforce in the charter sector may very well require changes from teachers’ unions as well as charter schools.
Anti-Charter Policy Pushes
Unions have longed positioned themselves as the defenders of traditional public schools, and have used their considerable political and financial clout to stymie charters. In Chicago, the Chicago Teachers Union has called for a moratorium on all new charter schools. Elsewhere, unions have lobbied to block additional state funding for charter schools, backed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of charter schools, campaigned to keep caps on the number of charter schools allowed to open, and called for bans on charter management groups and companies…
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On December 18, the Trump Administration’s Federal Commission on School Safety released its recommendation to remove 2014 guidance issued by the Education Department and the Department of Justice to eliminate disparities in school discipline. This guidance came about after a comprehensive review and study and talking extensively to all stakeholders seeking to interrupt the disgraceful and disproportionate suspension of students of color and disabled students from school.
For more information on Breaking the School To Prison Pipeline, read the report DREDF authored for the National Council on Disability.
The guidance the Administration seeks to withdraw created minimum standards and basic protections for children with disabilities and other at-risk students from discriminatory practices that feed the school-to-prison pipeline. Withdrawl not only harms students, but also families, communities, and our nation. Data shows, and DREDF sees firsthand, that often students of color, foster kids and children with disabilities—many students fit into all of these categories—are subjected to the most punitive and exclusionary discipline. The administration’s regressive recommendations would reverse hard fought improvements to correct these established, irrefutable disparities.
The Post Salon co-sponsored a community dialogue on schools Sunday, Dec. 9. along with Oakland Public Education Network (OPEN), Educators for Democratic Schools, the New McClymonds Committee and the Ad Hoc Committee of Parents and Education.
Speaking at the meeting were Oakland teachers, parents and community leaders concerned about low teacher salaries, upcoming budget cuts and the threat of closing schools and selling or leasing the campuses to charter schools.
Mike Hutchinson from OPEN said, “There’s only one way to stop this. That’s to organize.” And he presented information to indicate that the district is not really in a deficit. Taylor Wallace explained why the state does not have Black and Latino teachers and called for changing this serious situation. Oakland teacher Megan Bumpus represented the Oakland Education Association and explained the teachers’ struggle with the school district.
Among ideas presented at the Salon was a brief draft program that includes demands on the State of California, which bears much of the responsibility for Oakland’s problems.
While the district may be guilty of misspending, it is the State of California that is responsible for funding and is depriving the public schools of the money they need to serve the needs of Oakland children.
And it is the State that decides who is allowed to teach and creates obstacles that keep some of the best young teachers out of the classroom.
More than 100 teachers, parents and community members attended a community assembly Sunday, Dec. 9 to discuss the fight for a living wage for teachers and other school employees and “for schools our students deserve.” Photo by Ken Epstein.
At the end of the dialogue, participants adopted a motion to hold a press conference at the State Building in January.
Draft of a People’s Program:
1. No public school closings. Closing schools does not save money. It hurts kids and neighborhoods.
2. No sale of public property. A major element of privatization is selling off the legacy of publicly owned property and institutions left to us by earlier generations of Oaklanders.
3. No budget cuts to the schools. California is one of the richest economies in the world. It has a budget surplus, a Democratic majority in the legislature, and the capacity to fully fund schools.
4. End the teacher shortage and the lack of Black, Latino, indigenous and Asian teachers by eliminating such barriers as multiple standardized tests and multiple fees and by reforming the non-elected, unrepresentative State Commission on Teacher Credentialing.
5. Rescind the remainder of the debt imposed on Oakland by the State legislature 15 years ago and spent by state-appointed administrators without input from Oakland residents
6. A living wage for all school employees. A first-year teacher, a custodian, a school secretary should all be able to live in the city where they work, if they wish to do so. That’s a “community school.”
7. End the discrimination against schools below the 580 freeway.
8. FCMAT (Fiscal Crisis Management and Assistance Team) out of Oakland. Democratic control of our school budget and school governance.
9. Open the books of the Ed Fund, which was created by non-elected State Administrators and does not provide transparency.
10. Reduce class sizes, standardized testing, test prep, age-inappropriate expectations, unnecessary bureaucracy, and mid-year consolidations.
Engage parents and teachers in a collaborative recreation of special education and the education of immigrant and emergent bilingual students.
If you have thoughts or comments on this draft program, send an email to Salonpost02@gmail.com
A federal panel led by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos that’s charged with making policy recommendations on school shootings in the wake of the massacre at Majory Stoneman Douglas High School last Valentine’s Day promised to have its report out by the end of the year. That means we will see the commission’s report any day now.
So what do we already know about what may be in it? And what should we be watching for? Here’s your quick preview.
The report will almost certainly call for scrapping the Obama administration’s 2014 guidance dealing with discipline disparities. So what happens next?
Almost every advocate watching the commission believes it will recommend ditching Obama guidance, jointly issued by the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice. (The Washington Post reported that this is a for-sure thing last week.) The directive put schools on notice that they may be found in violation of federal civil rights laws if they enforce intentionally discriminatory rules or if their policies lead to disproportionately higher rates of discipline for students in one racial group, even if those policies were written without discriminatory intent. You can read about the arguments for and against the guidance here.
The big question will be, how do school districts react to the change? How many will decide to keep using the practices they set up to respond to the guidance, which supporters say has helped school districts revise their discipline policies to benefit of all kids? And how many will decide to make changes, in part because some educators say the guidance has hamstrung local decision-making on discipline? And will Democrats in Congress, who will control the House as of January, move to somehow formalize the guidance in law? It’s unlikely that would pass a Republican-controlled Senate, but it would send a message and keep the debate going in Washington.
What does the report say about arming teachers and about guns in general?
President Donald Trump said that the massacre at Stoneman Douglas might not have been as bad if educators had been armed. “A teacher would have shot the hell out of him before he knew what happened,” Trump said, referring to Nikolas Cruz, the former student who is accused of the slayings.
Since this is Trump’s commission, after all, it’s hard to imagine the report would come out against arming teachers. But it’s an open question how strong the language will be on this topic. Will the report encourage districts to arm educators, and point out that, under the department’s interpretation of the Every Student Succeeds Act, federal funds can be used to arm educators? (Democrats who helped write the law have a different take.)…
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One year into a four-year $49 million initiative to improve training for aspiring school principals, a new RAND Corporation report found that seven universities are beginning to change their principal preparation programs to better reflect the real-world demands of the job.
The seven universities participating in The Wallace Foundation’s University Principal Preparation Initiative (UPPI) are redesigning their programs by working with local high-need school districts that hire their graduates as well as accreditation agencies in their states—a move not typical of most other programs.
“Past research shows that successful principal preparation programs should include partnerships with districts,” said Rebecca Herman, a senior researcher at RAND and a lead author on the report. “Our report illustrates such engagement is feasible, valuable and critical to creating these programs.”
Principals help set school vision and culture, supporting teacher effectiveness and, ultimately, improving student achievement. Some educators say many university programs that train principals favor theory over practice and provide too little field experience in which candidates learn by taking on duties of school leaders. The initiative seeks to boost such programs by generating lessons for other universities on how best to design a program that prepares effective principals.
The RAND report found that, during the first year of the initiative, programs are working to better align programs with expected skills needed upon graduation, as well as ensuring their programs meet state and national leadership standards. All have taken evidence-based self-assessments to see how programs can be improved and developed models to guide their redesign. Programs are trying to develop a more coherent curriculum that integrates theory and practice, and offer more hands-on training opportunities and greater collaboration with school districts by asking practitioner-leaders to work as part-time instructors.
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and her team are moving forward with parts of a department-wide reorganization proposal unveiled earlier this year, including elevating the office charged with helping to advocate for the private school community within the federal bureaucracy, and changing the way privacy policy is handled.
The office of nonpublic education, which was previously part of the soon-to-be-defunct office of innovation and improvement, will now report directly to the office of the secretary. DeVos is a longtime advocate for vouchers, tax credit scholarships, and other forms of private school choice.
That move and other reorganization changes were first reported by Politico.
The remainder of the office of innovation and improvement will be moved to the broader office of elementary and secondary education, Education Week reported earlier this year.
DeVos is also planning to move the department’s budget office, which she has reportedly sought to eliminate, into a new office of finance and operations. That office’s other jobs will include finance, accounting, budgets, contract management, personnel, business data analysis and more.
And she will make changes to the way privacy policy is handled within the department. The department will continue to have a chief privacy officer, who will be housed in the office of the chief information officer. The chief privacy officer will be in charge of privacy legislation, privacy safeguards, and information collection and clearance. Subject matter experts in the family policy compliance office will provide student privacy technical assistance, and investigate Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act violations, said Elizabeth Hill, a spokeswoman for the agency.
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U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas, who is in a fierce race for the Senate, has hit his opponent, Republican Sen.Ted Cruz, for wanting to take money away from public schools, and for being the “deciding vote” in favor of U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ confirmation.
“At a time when nearly half of the school teachers in Texas are working a second job just to make ends meet, Ted Cruz wants to take our public tax dollars out of their classrooms, turn them into vouchers,” O’Rourke says in a new campaign ad. “He was the deciding vote in putting Betsy DeVos in charge of our children’s public education. I want to pay teachers a living wage. I want to allow them to teach to the child, and not to the test. And when they retire, I want it to be a retirement of dignity. Those public educators have been there for us. Now it’s time to be there for them.”
It’s true that Cruz has been a big proponent of private school vouchers. And he was the author of a provision in the new tax law that allows families to use 529 college-savings plans for K-12 private schools.
Emmett Louis “Bobo” Till (July 25, 1941 – August 28, 1955). He was a fourteen year old African-American from Chicago, Illinois who went to stay for the summer with his uncle, Moses Wright in Money, Mississippi.
By: Lynette Monroe (NNPA Newswire Guest Columnist)
August 28th, marked the day, 63 years ago, when Emmett Till was savagely beaten and lynched in Mississippi. It is the same day, 8 years later, that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his immortal “I Have a Dream” speech. Ten years ago, on that day, then candidate Barack Obama accepted the Democratic presidential nomination. On August 28th of this year, Florida elected its first Black gubernatorial candidate, Democrat Andrew Gillum.
Despite the horror of Emmett Till’s murder in 1955, August 28thhas marked a date of victory and progress for Blacks in America. Many of these victories were obtained by Blacks showing up to the polls.
However, these change-making triumphs were — and often still are — met with retaliation from those that benefit most from the status quo. Therefore, we must remain vigilant in securing unprecedented Black voter participation in the 2018 elections by exercising our constitutional right to vote — a right the current administration has failed to protect.
During the White House’s first press briefing following President Trump’s visit to Helsinki, April Ryan questioned Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders about voter suppression and election meddling. The White House failed to state a clear position.
It is up to each of us as Americans to decide whether or not the United States will protect from foreign and domestic adversaries. Ensuring that our right, as citizens, to vote in free and fair elections is secure. However, history reminds us that the U.S. has a poor record of protecting those rights for all of its citizens — especially when those citizens are African Americans.
Fortunately, forewarned is forearmed. Our opponents have not changed their tactics. The enemies of justice have always known this fact that education is inextricably tied to freedom: Our right to read is as fundamental as our right to vote.
Brown vs. the Board of Education, the famous Supreme Court decision which declared school segregation unconstitutional, was rendered in 1954. In 1956, just two years after Brown, Look magazine published the confessions of J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, the men acquitted for the brutal murder of Emmett Till. In the article, Milam indicated that school integration and voting rights were motives for his violent behavior.
“As long as I live and can do anything about it,” Milam said, “Niggers are gonna stay in their place. Niggers ain’t gonna vote where I live. If they did, they’d control the government. They ain’t gonna go to school with my kids.”
While the tactics and techniques employed are no longer as violent and blatant as Milam and Bryant’s, the intent to suppress Black votes and simultaneously limit access to an equitable education continues into the 21stcentury.
In 2012, measured against the population, the percentage of Black voter participation surpassed that of Whites. In 2013, just one year later, the Supreme Court voted to void section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, allowing nine, mostly southern and historically discriminatory states, to change their election laws without advance federal approval. Immediately, Texas re-enacted a previously blocked voter identification law and began making plans for redistricting.
In 2015, President Barack Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) into law. ESSA is the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965 and is designed to ensure access to high-quality education for all children regardless of the color of their skin, geographic location, or socioeconomic status. A major distinction between this law and earlier reauthorizations is that it grants each state the power to develop the academic standards and evidenced-based interventions that best fit the needs of their population.
In June of this year, the Supreme Court upheld Ohio’s right to purge voting rollsif voters have failed to participate in recent elections and fail to respond to a notice from election officials. Nationwide initiatives to clear inactive voters from the rolls are thinly veiled attempts to reduce “widespread voter fraud,” enacted by several Republican-controlled legislatures, despite overwhelming datathat establishes that voter fraud I essentially non-existent.
Opponents of justice realize that access to education enhances the prospect that citizens will exercise our voting rights. The ethical lapses and physical violence that often arise as a result of progress in these areas is no coincidence. To combat voter suppression, the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), in partnership with other civil rights groups, has launched a campaign to drive 5 million additional Black voters to the polls.
In his remarks to the attendees of the NAACP’s convention in San Antonio, Texas, Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., NNPA President and CEO, remarked that much of what is happening in Washington, D.C. today, “is in reaction to our going to the polls and voting. Voter suppression is taking place because weare voting.”
Lynette Monroe is the program assistant for the NNPA’s Every Student Succeeds Act Public Awareness Campaign and a master’s student at Howard University. Her research areas are public policy and national development. Follow Lynette on Twitter @_monroedoctrine.
Earlier this year, the island’s government approved a plan to create “alianza” schools, which are intended to be like charter schools, as well as a “free school” selection program similar to vouchers. The legislation creating both, signed by Puerto Rico’s governor and backed by Secretary of Education Julia Keleher, would create restraints on both programs: In the first year of the voucher-like program, for example, the number of students would be capped at 3 percent of total student enrollment, and then at 5 percent in the second year. Keleher said the programs would help the island’s educational system better meet students’ needs and help transform a long-struggling system.
Puerto Rico’s Supreme Court has