Even during Black History Month, U.S. schools are not adequately teaching the history of American slavery, educators are not sufficiently prepared to teach it, and textbooks do not have enough material about it. As a result, students lack a basic knowledge of the important role that slavery played in shaping the United States and the impact it continues to have on race relations in America, according to a recent study by the SPLC’s Teaching Tolerance project.
The report, Teaching Hard History: American Slavery, traces racial tensions and even debates about what, exactly, racism is in America to the failure of schools to teach the full impact that slavery has had on all Americans. The report examines the lack of coverage that U.S. classrooms provide about American slavery through a survey of high school seniors and U.S. social studies teachers. It also offers an in-depth analysis of 15 state standards and 10 popular U.S. history textbooks, including two that specifically teach Alabama and Texas history.
The investigation – conducted over the course of one year by the Teaching Tolerance project – revealed the need for far better and much more comprehensive classroom instruction across the board.
“If we are to move past our racial differences, schools must do a better job of teaching American slavery and all the ways it continues to impact American society, including poverty rates, mass incarceration and education,” said Maureen Costello, a former history teacher who is now the Teaching Tolerance director at the Southern Poverty Law Center. “This report places an urgent call on educators, curriculum writers and policy makers to confront the harsh realities of slavery and racial injustice. Learning about slavery is essential for us to bridge the racial differences that continue to divide our nation.”
Only 8 percent of high school seniors surveyed could identify slavery as the central cause of the Civil War. Most didn’t know an amendment to the U.S. Constitution formally ended slavery. Fewer than half (44 percent) correctly answered that slavery was legal in all colonies during the American Revolution.
While nearly all teachers (97 percent) surveyed agreed that teaching and learning about slavery are essential to understanding American history, there was a lack of deep coverage of the subject in the classroom, according to the report. More than half (58 percent) reported that they were dissatisfied with their textbooks, and 39 percent reported that their state offered little or no support for teaching about slavery.
Teaching Hard History: American Slavery relies on noted historian Ira Berlin’s 10 essential elements for teaching American slavery, articulated in the foreword to Understanding and Teaching American Slavery, as a framework for analysis.
Teaching Tolerance worked with the book’s editors, Bethany Jay, Ph.D., an associate professor of history at Salem State University; and Cynthia Lynn Lyerly, Ph.D., an associate professor of history at Boston College; to convert these elements into 10 key concepts of what students should know.
Teaching Tolerance also assembled an advisory board of distinguished scholars, and partnered with teachers and institutions of higher education, to develop a framework and offer a set of recommendations for teaching about American slavery.
The recommendations include fully integrating American slavery into lessons about U.S. history, expanding the use of original historical documents, improving textbooks, and strengthening the curriculum on topics involving slavery.
“It is of crucial importance for every American to understand the role that slavery played in the formation of this country,” said Henry Louis Gates Jr., a Harvard University professor and adviser for the report. “And that lesson must begin with the teaching of the history of slavery in our schools. It is impossible to understand the state of race relations in American society today without understanding the roots of racial inequality – and its long-term effects – which trace back to the ‘peculiar institution.’ I hope that publishers, curriculum writers, legislators and our fellow American citizens on school boards who make choices about what kids learn embrace the thoughtful framework developed by the Southern Poverty Law Center.”
The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture (NMAAHC) in Washington, D.C., also praised the report and the resources being made available to teachers through the Teaching Tolerance program.
“As the first national museum dedicated to telling the African-American story, we strongly support and encourage Teaching Tolerance’s efforts to unpack the reality of what our education system teaches about slavery and what students are learning about slavery,” the museum wrote in a statement. “The information and the resources that Teaching Tolerance has developed will have a significant impact on the realm of history education.
“The NMAAHC looks forward to being a collaborator in championing the key components laid out in the Teaching Tolerance report, especially the need for schools, educators, students and families to become more savvy about talking about race and white supremacy as it relates to the founding of the U.S. and the legacy of slavery.”
The study follows Teaching Tolerance’s widely cited Teaching the Movement reports that evaluated state standards for teaching the civil rights movement. At the time, researchers suspected that states did a poor job of teaching the civil rights movement, in part because they failed to adequately teach about its historical roots in slavery.
Teachers can access resources on teaching American slavery at www.tolerance.org/hardhistory. The resources are offered to educators at no cost.
Oprah Winfrey, George and Amal Clooney, Steven Spielberg and Former DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg are among the growing list of Hollywood insiders who are supporting next month’s March For Our Lives, the Washington D.C. rally organized by survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Winfrey, Clooney, Spielberg and Katzenberg have committed $500k each to the effort.
Today, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School survivors got the support of Former President Barack Obama, who tweeted: Young people have helped lead all our great movements. How inspiring to see it again in so many smart, fearless students standing up for their right to be safe; marching and organizing to remake the world as it should be. We’ve been waiting for you. And we’ve got your backs.”
Former First Lady Michelle Obama also extended her support in the strongest of terms.
“I’m in total awe of the extraordinary students in Florida. Like every movement for progress in our history, gun reform will take unyielding courage and endurance. But @barackobama and I believe in you, we’re proud of you, and we’re behind you every step of the way.”
During his eight years in the White House, Obama served as “Consoler-In Chief” to relatives of victims as well as survivors of the Pulse Nightclub, San Bernardino terrorists, Washington Navy Yard shooting, Emmanuel AME Church, the Aurora theater shooting and the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, and was dubbed by some as the “most anti-gun president in American history”, but failed to get any meaningful legislation on gun control passed.
Encouragement also came from Hillary Clinton, who tweeted: “Parkland students, you have shown so much courage in standing up for truth, for your right to attend school safely, & now against these disgusting smears. The good news is, it will only make you louder & stronger.”
Public schools in the nation’s capital recently reported that the graduation rate for 2017 was the highest in the school system’s history.
According to school officials, about 73 percent of Washington public schools’ students graduated on time, another record high for a school system that had struggled years ago to graduate even half of its students. The graduation rate marked a four-point rise from the previous year and a 20-point gain from 2011, when just over half of D.C. Public School students graduated within four years.
In response, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser proudly described the school system as the “fastest improving urban school district in the country.
“These graduation rates are a reminder that when we have high expectations for our young people and we back up those expectations with robust programs and resources, our students can and will achieve at high levels,” Bowser said in a statement.
But it was all false. A report by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education shows more than one of every three diplomas awarded to students were not earned. The report found that 937 out of 2,758 graduates of D.C. public schools did not meet the minimum attendance requirements needed for graduation. Teachers even admit to falsely marking students present.
Washington is the latest of a series of public school systems found guilty of widespread cheating. Similar cheating was found in public schools in Philadelphia, New York City, Chicago, Memphis, Los Angeles, Columbus, Ohio, and Atlanta.
The perpetrators in these scandals weren’t the students but the administrators and teachers. Both have admitted to falsifying records on standardized tests, graduation requirements and student grades.
In response, some teachers have been fired and stripped of their licenses to teach again. In other places like Atlanta, teachers and administrators have gone to jail. In Washington, D.C., Antwan Wilson, District of Columbia schools chancellor, resigned Feb. 20 after it was revealed he used his position to get his daughter into a preferred school.
The real culprit in these cheating scandals, according to education experts and teachers, is the increased — and some say unfair — pressure on education officials from the government to meet a certain level of student performance. If they don’t meet the mandated standards, school systems could lose funding, and with less money to pay for staff and supplies some people could lose their jobs.
President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, replaced by the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015 and former President Barack Obama’s Race to the Top created an “accountability system,” education experts said, linking student performance to Title I funding, which are federal grants given to schools with a high percentage of low-income students.
No Child Left Behindwas the first law requiring federally-mandated tests to measure student performance. Prior to the law, states and cities used achievement tests to measure what students were learning to decide how effective their instruction was and what changes they might make.
Harvard professor Dan Koretz, author of the book The Teaching Charade: Pretending to Make Schools Better, said cheating by teachers — in many cases sanctioned or encouraged by administrators — is fueled by the misuse of standardized tests to measure school performance which has pressured teachers to raise scores beyond what is reasonable.
“Some cheat and, ironically, all of these shortcuts undermine the usefulness of tests for their intended purpose—monitoring what kids know,” Koretz said.
Koretz and other education experts believe standardized tests can be a useful measure of students’ knowledge, when used correctly.
A survey by the Washington Teacher’s Union and EmpowerED echoes Koretz’s assertion that teachers feel pressure to cheat. The survey found that almost 60 percent of teachers said that they’ve felt pressure or coercion from superiors to pass undeserving students.
“There has been strenuous pressure to hit specific targets regardless of student performance or attendance,” an anonymous D.C. public school teacher said on the survey.
Another teacher said, “Administrators, parents, and teachers just want good grades so the school system and the student look accomplished on paper.”
A study conducted by the Urban Institute, a nonprofit research organization, showed that over 45 percent of Black students nationwide attend these low-income or high poverty public schools. Meanwhile, only 8 percent of White students attend these same schools.
Education expert Morgan Polikoff, a professor of education at the University of Southern California, said the result is that cheating is found primarily among majority-Black schools, which lack the educational tools and support they need in order to adequately serve their students.
“There are teachers who’ve felt pressure because they don’t feel that they have the capacity or support to achieve expectations through realistic measures,” Polikoff said.
Koretz said the cheating underscores the fallacy of rewarding and punishing schools based on standardized tests.
The answer “is to reduce the pressure to meet arbitrary targets,” he said. “Another is to routinely monitor how schools are reaching their targets. Yet another is to broaden the focus of accountability in schools to create a more reasonable mix of incentives.”
Four Chicago-Area Teens Selected to Participate in Mentoring Trip to Disney Dreamers Academy
Four Chicago-area teens are among the 100 extraordinary youths from across the nation announced by Disney to participate in its immersive, transformational four-day program, March 8-11, at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida.
The program, which is entering its 11th year with a new “Be100’’ campaign, and is hosted by entertainer Steve Harvey and ESSENCE Magazine, highlights Walt Disney World Resort’s continued commitment to the next generation of teens by inspiring them at a critical time in their development to make a difference in their lives and to relentlessly pursue and realize their dreams.
“Each of these 100 girls and boys has proven themselves to be exceptional as students and as human beings, so it’s an honor to have them join us at Walt Disney World Resort,’’ said Tracey D. Powell, Walt Disney World Resort vice president of commercial management – resorts and Disney Dreamers Academy executive champion. “It is our hope that this potentially life-changing program will help create the next generation of great dreamers and achievers.’’
Participating students, known as “Disney Dreamers,” embark on a journey throughout the Disney theme parks and behind the scenes, turning the vacation destination into a vibrant classroom for students to discover new careers, pursue their dreams and interact with Harvey and other motivational speakers and celebrities. Among the celebrities who have participated in the past are singers Patti LaBelle and Mary J. Blige, NBA legend and business mogul Magic Johnson, gospel music star Yolanda Adams, NFL superstar Cam Newton, plus TV personalities such as “The Chew’’ co-host Carla Hall, “Good Morning America’’ co-anchor Michael Strahan and ABC correspondent T.J. Holmes.
Additionally, students participate in hands-on, immersive career-oriented workshops, ranging from animation to zoology. Each student is given important tools such as effective communication techniques, leadership skills and networking strategies.
“Inspiring our youth to dream big and chase those dreams is a personal mission,” said Harvey. “Having a dream is one of the most important things in life. That is why engaging with these students is an annual highlight for me, and the 2018 Disney Dreamers Academy will be no exception.”
The four Chicago-area students are: Mariah Barnett from Aurora; Tabitha Willis from Country Club Hills; Tamela Trimuel from Harvey and Jayvion Rice from Riverdale.
Since 2008, Walt Disney World Resort has provided all-expenses-paid trips to more than 1,000 students, plus a parent or guardian, to participate in the annual Dreamers Academy. The students are selected from thousands of applicants who answered a series of essay questions about their personal stories and dreams for the future.
“At ESSENCE, we are committed to impacting the leaders of tomorrow,” said Michelle Ebanks, president of ESSENCE Communications. “Every year, we continue to be impressed by the exceptional students selected for Disney Dreamers Academy, and it is our privilege to play a role in encouraging them to achieve their goals.’’
Contact: Vicki Levengood 517-241-7978 Agency: Civil Rights
February 23, 2018
Lansing, MI – The Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE) has awarded the Michigan Department of Civil Rights (MDCR) a $20,000 grant to advance racial equity in the city of Kalamazoo. MDCR will partner with the city to strengthen community partnerships and develop a racial equity lens to better analyze and address the issue of fair housing in the city.
“There has been growing concern from Kalamazoo residents about issues related to housing, including quality and affordability, as well as high rates of homelessness,” said Agustin Arbulu, Executive Director, Michigan Department of Civil Rights. “Looking at this concern through a racial equity lens, we see low rates of home ownership for people of color, high rates of concentrated poverty in neighborhoods where African Americans and Latinos live, and the legacy of redlining and segregation. This grant award enables us to bring together multiple efforts in a comprehensive and sustained way to help foster actionable change.”
Racial equity is the systemic fair treatment of all races that produces equitable opportunities and outcomes for all people. Using a racial equity lens in analyzing societal problems allows communities to focus on the ways in which race and ethnicity shape experiences with power, access to resources and opportunity, and helps them find solutions that advance racial equity.
The GARE grant is designed to provide flexible resources for local government to seed projects that are focused on eliminating structural racism. The grant will support the work of MDCR to:
Build and deepen partnerships between the City of Kalamazoo, MDCR and community-based organizations focused on advancing racial equity;
Connect government entities to the community-based process and emerging infrastructure of the Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation (TRHT) process in Kalamazoo and nationally;Assist the City of Kalamazoo to adopt a racial equity framework in both its internal and external operations, including the implementation of the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) framework.
Efforts will focus on, but will not be limited to, the Edison, Northside and Eastside neighborhoods. The results of this work will be incorporated into the City of Kalamazoo’s required Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Consolidated Plan for 2019-2024.
“GARE’s Implementation and Innovation Fund offers the prospect of building cross-sector collaboration with partners who have extensive reach and influence in the community,” said Arbulu. “It’s also an opportunity to bring together state and city government, as well as philanthropic and community-based organizations to work collaboratively in advancing racial equity. We’re excited about the promise this project represents.”
Last spring’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District reaffirmed the importance of providing, in the words of Chief Justice John Roberts, an “appropriately ambitious” education for the nation’s 6.7 million children with disabilities. The court ruled that in order for school districts to meet their obligations under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, they must offer students with disabilities an individualized education plan that enables them to make progress and be adequately challenged to meet their full potential.
The court described this standard in its ruling as a “fact intensive exercise.” From our vantage, that fact-intensive exercise must include processes to ensure that schools actually provide the mandates that appear in each student’s IEP.
In recent years, there have been substantial structural improvements to existing special education practices. Schools now typically place greater emphasis on educating students with disabilities in general education classes and have adopted stringent guidelines to ensure that students with disabilities have access to the general education curriculum.
Despite these improvements, the U.S. Department of Education determined in July that fewer than half of the states are meeting their obligations under IDEA. Most of those states failing to follow educational guidelines have done so for at least two years…
Read the full article here: May require an Education Week subscription.
The chairman of the Council of the District of Columbia’s Committee on Education is pushing Mayor Muriel Bowser to broaden the scope of an investigation that uncovered a high school graduation scandal to include public and charter elementary and middle schools as well as charter high schools.
In a Feb. 21 letter, Councilmember David Grosso (I-At Large) asked Bowser to direct the Office of the State Superintendent to retain Alvarez & Marsal or to hire another independent firm that would build on a December investigation that audited DCPS’ high school attendance and graduation policies.
“After holding two public hearings on graduation accountability and receiving compelling evidence that teachers throughout the city, across grade levels, and in both sectors of public education feel pressure to pass students, it appears that these issues may extend beyond high schools,” Grosso wrote in his letter to Bowser.
Alvarez & Marsal released a report in January that showed 34 percent of the DCPS class of 2017 received diplomas in violation of district attendance or grading policies. The ensuing fallout cost four DCPS officials their jobs and prompted system-wide policies and stopgaps to make sure students have truly earned their diplomas.
“Those results were extremely troubling, but they do not tell the whole story,” Grosso said in the letter. “A cross-sector, system-wide examination will provide a more accurate picture of whether or not our children are prepared for the next milestone in their academic career before advancing.”
Grosso has requested a response from Bowser by March 1.
When Tara Chklovski, an aerospace engineer from India, came to the United States to pursue her Ph.D, she noticed a lack of interest in technology.
“It was interesting to see that the same drive in technology [in India] wasn’t here,” Chklovski said. “Girls are not encouraged to go into engineering and tech.”
It soon became apparent to her that something needed to be done about that. So she decided to give young people from underserved communities, particularly girls, the opportunity to become innovative leaders in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
And in 2006 in Los Angeles, she founded Iridescent to do just that.
Since then, about 100,000 children, parents, mentors and educators have participated in the organization’s two international programs: Technovation and Curiosity Machine.
Technovation, which is for middle and high school students, gives girls the chance to learn necessary skills to become leaders and entrepreneurs in the tech world.
Girls in the program are encouraged to find a problem in their communities and are challenged to solve them by creating a mobile application, Chklovski said. In teams and with the support of mentors and a curriculum, the girls go through several stages of introducing their own mobile app startup.
Then there is Curiosity Machine, a family science program where children and their parents participate in a weekly design challenge. In it, they explore everything from computer science to biomechanics using simple household items like popsicle sticks or cardboard.
A few weeks ago, the nonprofit launched its Artificial Intelligence Family Challenge, in which students ages 8 to 15 and their families learn the basics of artificial intelligence technology by building projects together.
Tara Chklovski
“The big challenge is that AI is changing the world in big ways,” Chklovski said, and “the education system is going to take many years to react and respond.” This challenge intends to prepare young girls for it.
Although the AI challenge is still in the developing stages at some schools, STEAM coordinator for local district east of the Los Angeles Unified School District Craig Sipes said he is seeing a lot of excitement from teachers, principals and parents.
“[The project] is really fun and engaging and thought provoking for kids,” Sipes said. “Kids love to do hands-on projects, and by introducing the engineering design process, we help students structure how to solve problems.”
The program is teaching kids that when things don’t work out, it doesn’t mean they failed; instead, it’s showing them that failure is an opportunity to grow, Sipes said.
But what makes these programs unique, Chklovski said, is their family design.
“A key part [of the success of these programs] is engaging parents; it’s a two-generational approach. It’s really important for the child and parent to learn [about STEAM],” Chklovski said.
But these programs, Chklovski has found, do more than provide children an opportunity to bond with their families and be mentored by STEM professionals; they’ve also bettered the individuals who participate in them.
“Often, kids who do well in the family challenge struggle academically. Once they find a creative and imaginative environment, they really try,” she said.
For many students, creating designs is the first time the child feels like he or she could be successful in something, Chklovski said.
But Iridescent hopes to reach beyond helping young children blossom; it hopes to help their parents and guardians, too.
“If some of these stay-at-home moms are not working because they are taking care of children, it’s a big loss of potential,” Chklovski said. But if the millions of stay-at-home mothers in the U.S., many who don’t take the academic path, take on an entrepreneurial route after the program, big things can happen.
“If you can open new horizons for 60 million [stay-at-home mothers], we can change the world.”
Donna Edwards already has her sights set on cleaning up the Prince George’s County school board in her bid for county executive.
If elected later this year, the former U.S. congresswoman said she would ban the school system CEO and top-ranking school officials from donating campaign contributions to board members.
“Our education leaders are bold enough to put up political contributions that can influence their hiring and contracting decisions,” Edwards said Thursday at a press conference outside the school administration building in Upper Marlboro. “It may not be illegal, but it is unethical.”
Edwards’ comments were triggered by revelations that two school board members, Carolyn Boston and Sonya Williams, received such donations for their election campaigns.
According to finance reports, schools system CEO Kevin Maxwell donated $500 to Boston, the school board vice president who served on a committee to evaluate Maxwell’s performance.
Boston, who couldn’t be reached for comment, eventually returned the money.
Williams received $3,000 from Delegate Dereck Davis (D-District 25) of Mitchellville, according to campaign documents. The money from Davis, who is married to schools Deputy Superintendent Monique Whittington Davis, came from his terminated campaign from Congress two years ago, campaign records show.
“I’ve known [Davis] forever,” said Williams, a civil engineer who has served on the board since 2014. “It is not unethical or illegal for any politician to support another politician’s campaign. My goal on the school board is for us to be great by choice.”
Although the Maryland Ethics Commission monitors and approves regulations based on the legislature, state law allows school boards to manage its own ethic rules and committees.
Michael Lord, executive director of the state’s Ethics Commission, said Prince George’s received approval for its ethics regulations at least three years ago. He said any school complaints, however, are handled by the county, not the commission.
“It is all done on the local level,” Lord said.
The donations to Boston and Williams surfaced after two parents, Keisha Chase and Yolanda Rogers, wrote a letter last week to alert the state’s ethics commission.
“The culture of pay-to-play, kickbacks, you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours must end if we are ever going to provide a quality education for our children,” the letter said.
Chase and Rogers have children who attend DuVal High School in Lanham. Parents received letters from Maxwell last month informing them several staff members had been removed for violation of grading and graduation procedures.
The parents now plan to bring their concerns about the campaign contributions to the state Board of Education and Republican Gov. Larry Hogan.
By Elaine Hegwood Bowen, M.S.J., Chicago Crusader
By Mark Alter, Marc Gottlieb, and Jay Gottlieb
by: Lenore T. Adkins Special to the AFRO
