What’s “Your Big Idea” about the First Amendment? One high-schooler will win a $2,000 scholarship by sharing their ideas about free speech in an Instagram video.
The SC Bar Young Lawyers Division (YLD) is sponsoring its third annual “Your Big Idea” Scholarship Competition this spring. To enter, students must complete an application and answer one of five prompts about the First Amendment in an Instagram video. The submission deadline has been extended to April 13, 2018 at 5 p.m.
“This is a great opportunity to encourage students to use technology to think critically about their role in society and their rights,” said Julie Moore, YLD iCivics Committee Chair.
The contest is open to all 11th and 12th grade public, private and homeschool students in South Carolina. Students must also plan to enroll in a post-secondary institution for the 2018-2019 or 2019-2020 school year.
This year, teachers who want to give their students a head start on the competition can request a lawyer to visit their classrooms to give a lesson. Additionally, the iCivics Committee has prepared digital resources about free speech for students and teachers who want to get involved.
For the first time ever, more than half of Louisiana’s high school graduates in 2017 were eligible for TOPS scholarships to attend college, according to the state’s Department of Education.
About 52 percent of 2017’s graduates statewide qualified for TOPS, according to a news release from the department. The increase in eligible students marks a gain of 18 percent since 2012, when 16,289 of graduates, or 45 percent, qualified for the scholarship program.
Eligibility is up in each of the four TOPS award categories, both compared with last year and with 2012, the department said.
In a released statement, Louisiana Superintendent John White called rising TOPS eligibility among graduates “another testament to the great work happening in K-12 classrooms across the state to prepare our students for success after high school.”
Number of students eligible for TOPS awards from 2012-2017
Watching students from Howard employ a strategy proven to be successful during the civil rights movement illustrated several positive things including, not definitely not limited to, the importance of Blacks knowing our history.
The students were angry, they said, after learning that money for student aid had been funneled into the accounts and hands of unscrupulous school administrators. They were frustrated because these dollars were and are essential to their being able to continue and complete their matriculation at the historically Black university. And they wanted to know why the truth had been withheld from them for so long.
And so, they took a page out of the annals of the modern-day civil rights movement, taking over the university’s administration building, holding a sit-in for over a week, carefully articulating their demands and even conferring with local attorneys in order to make sure they weren’t straying too far afield from rights that Blacks finally received through blood, sweat and tears.
What’s most impressive is they were successful in their efforts.
We couldn’t help but smile — even being tempted to utter a more contemporary form of urban vernacular by shouting, “you go, young folks!”
Certainly, Howard University’s president, trustees and other top officials have significant work to do — particularly, but not limited to, regaining the trust of their students and their families.
But for the moment, a semblance of normality has been restored on the Howard University campus. And that’s something that happened, not because of the rhetorical musings of old folks but through the courageous actions of determined Black youth who showed that they care about their futures.
Were Dr. King still alive, he would undoubtedly find a lot has happened since thousands joined him for the historic March on Washington that may evoke feelings of frustration, disappointment — even rage in some cases. But he would be pleased, too.
Why? Because Black youth, at least those who have chosen to continue their educational pursuits at schools like Howard, historically founded in order to provide greater and more equitable opportunities for youth of color, have learned their history well. And they’re making the best of that history while recasting and reshaping it for use in tackling the challenges they now face in this brave new world.
ANNAPOLIS — After more than three months of working on recommendations to improve the Prince George’s County public school structure, nothing will change for now.
A proposal to allow elected members of the school board to select a vice chair and create an inspector general office died in a Senate committee on Monday, the last day of the Maryland General Assembly.
The committee didn’t receive a letter of recommendation from senators who represent Prince George’s to state their position on the idea, so the current system of the county executive choosing the board’s chair and vice chair will continue.
In addition, two-thirds of the board, or exactly half its 14 members, can vote on any item contrary to the chief executive officer. The proposed change in the legislation was three-fifths, or eight of the 14 members.
The House unanimously approved both bills labeled HB 184 (inspector general) and HB 186 (school board structure).
Some blame longtime state lawmaker and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr., who supports a hybrid structure over an all-elected school board. Miller resides in Calvert County but represents portions of Prince George’s and backs County Executive Rushern L. Baker III.
“I think it’s sad when one or two persons can set the agenda for all the elected officials who are here, and we would be deaf to what our constituents have asked us for,” said Sen. C. Anthony Muse (D-District 26) of Accokeek, who presented legislation for an all-elected school board. “We’ve heard from hundreds from our constituents that they wanted change.”
The proposed changes stemmed from controversies such as alleged pay raises for high-ranking school staff and grade inflation among high school seniors that some officials, educators and residents have called lack of accountability.
According to a brief, historical analysis of the legislation, Prince George’s swayed through changes to the school board structure and a hybrid format with nine members in 2002.
In December 2006, the legislature changed to all nine members elected with five from a particular district and four at-large colleagues.
Based on a recommendation in 2012 from Baker, state lawmakers approved to add four appointed members and expand the board to 13. The county executive can currently appoint three members, select both chair and vice chair and the County Council approve a third member.
A high school student makes up the 14th person on the board, but she’s chosen by a regional Student Government Association and doesn’t vote on the budget, school closings and personnel matters.
The Prince George’s County Educators Association released a statement Tuesday, April 10 to express its displeasure with state officials who ignored the union’s no-confidence vote in February on the school system’s top leadership.
“Over the past few years, our educators have watched PGCPS lose $6 million in Head Start money, over 600 educators placed on administrative leave and a grading scandal that emanated from the [school system’s] central office,” said union President Theresa Mitchell Dudley. “There is no accountability to the PGCPS Board of Education.”
Belinda Queen, a member of the county’s Democratic Central Committee running for a school board seat, supports an all-elected board.
“The people wanted an all-elected school board,” Queen said in Annapolis minutes after the General Assembly’s last session ended after midnight Tuesday. “We should not be compromising on the backs of the voters. We have to learn as elected and appointed officials we have to fight for the voters. If we cannot be their voice, then we don’t need to be in office.
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is approving plans that fly in the face of the Every Student Succeeds Act’s protections for vulnerable children, according to more than a dozen civil rights groups, including the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
The groups sent a letter Tuesday to Democratic and Republican leaders on the House and Senate education committees asking them to tell DeVos to stop approving “unlawful” plans.
“We call on you to fulfill your role in ESSA’s implementation and to correct the Department of Education’s flawed approval of state plans that do not comply core equity provisions of the law,” the groups wrote to Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., as well as Reps. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., and Bobby Scott, D-Va.
This is far from the first time that the civil rights community—and Democratic lawmakers—have questioned DeVos’ approach to plan approval. The Alliance for Excellent Education, one of the 17 groups that signed off on the letter, put together a legal brief questioning whether some of the plans that DeVos has approved meet ESSA’s requirements. And both Murray and Scott have written letters to DeVos saying she is flouting the law.
Educators are doing something right inside our public school buildings. While it’s not often reported, indicators of disciplinary problems have been showing steady declines in recent decades, including for such serious infractions as gang activity, physical threats of violence, and weapons carried on school property. But it’s too early to start high-fiving. A new study further reveals that the overall picture is hiding disturbing and persistent inequities in how discipline is administered.
First, let’s look at what’s moving in the right direction:
Between 2000 and 2016, the percentage of public schools reporting at least weekly incidents of bullying fell from 29.3 to 11.9%. Over the same time period, schools also saw declines in student verbal abuse of teachers (12.5 to 4.8%); student to student sexual harassment (4.0 to 1.0%); and gang activity (18.7 to 10.4%).
Since 1993, the percentage of high school students who reported being in a physical fight at school decreased by half (16 to 8%); students who said they had carried a weapon (defined as a gun, knife or club) in school fell from 12 to 4%.
Schools are reporting fewer “serious disciplinary actions“ against students for fighting, insubordination, and possession or distribution of illegal drugs or weapons. In 2005-06, nearly half — 48.1% — of public schools had on at least one occasion removed a student for five days or more. That percentage dropped to 37.2% in 2015-16.
The number of students who have been subject to such disciplinary actions has fallen even more dramatically, from 3.9 million in 2005-06 to about 600,000 in 2015-16.
Unfortunately, not all students were equal beneficiaries of these improvements. The non-partisan U.S. Government Accountability Office examined how school discipline practices affect black students, boys, and students with disabilities compared to their classmates. Its report was developed at the request of Representatives Bobby Scott (D-VA) and Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and was released in March of this year.
The authors analyzed the most recent data (2013-14) from the Office of Civil Rights in order to compare the proportion of disciplinary actions received by different student groups compared to their representation in the overall student population. Here’s what they found:
A long-awaited report on access to digital learning hit the newsstands this week with a familiar headline: a digital divide, known as the homework gap in education circles, persists, especially for students of color, students from low-income families, and students in rural areas.
Released by Institute of Education Sciences (IES), an arm of the National Center for Education Statistics, on April 4, 2018, Student Access to Digital Learning Resources Outside of the Classroom found large gaps in both connectivity and access depending on the racial and ethnic background, economic status, and location of a students’ family.
The report was required under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and was supposed to be released in June 2017. When the deadline was missed, the Alliance for Excellent Education joined the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) and 18 other organizations in a coalition letter calling for it to be released as soon as possible, given the critical information it reveals about home access to high-speed broadband internet, especially for historically underserved students.
Lack of Access in Rural Areas
According to the report, students in suburban areas had more access to fixed broadband at home, 84 percent, than did students in rural areas, 71 percent. Unsurprisingly, students in remote rural areas had less access to fixed broadband, at 65 percent, than their peers in other geographic areas.
Adding the lens race and ethnicity amplifies even larger gaps in access for students in these rural areas. Higher numbers of students of color in rural areas had either no internet access or only dial-up access (41 percent of African American students and 26 percent of Latino students), compared to their white (13 percent) and Asian (11 percent) peers.
Breakdown by Race and Ethnicity
Regardless of locale, students of color and students from low-income families had less internet access than their peers. As demonstrated by the figure below, there’s an 18-percentage-point gap in fixed broadband access between white students and their African American peers. A similar difference of 16 percentage points exists for Latino students and an even larger gap of 28 percentage points for American Indian/Alaska Native students when compared with their white peers.
President Donald Trump has pledged in the past to either eliminate or dramatically scale back the U.S. Department of Education—but he’s ended up signing a spending bill that increases the department’s budget to the largest number in its history.
The new spending level approved by Congress, after months of delay, amounts to a broad rejection of the more-austere budget proposal released last year by Trump and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. The president and the secretary sought to eliminate some department programs and cut back others, and create two new major school choice initiatives.
The fiscal 2018 spending bill Trump signed into law last month includes a $2.6 billion increase for the Education Department over fiscal 2017 levels. Included in the new budget for the department is a $300 million increase for Title I, the federal program earmarked for students from low-income backgrounds, up to $15.8 billion, as well as increases for programs dealing with students with disabilities and for career and technical education.
In addition, the budget preserves a $2.1 billion program for educator development, which the Trump administration’s fiscal 2018 budget request had proposed eliminating. Funding for after-school and a Title IV block grant that the Trump budget also sought to eliminate was increased as well…
Read the full article here: May require an Education Week subscription.
Working as a Financial Aid Counselor, families often ask me how they can pay for college. More often than not this conversation takes place during the student’s senior year in high school. As a first-generation college student, there are things I wish my family and I had known to help us save on our college bill. These are a few things that families can do to help cut the cost of college:
1. Community colleges can be great options
Community college offers the most affordable education out there. At community college you can complete the general education classes that every school requires, and then transfer to a 4-year school where you can take classes specific to your major. Also, community college is a great place to gain technical skills and earn a short-term certificate to get you started in the workforce.
2. Buy used textbooks or rent them
Buy used books or check to see if you can rent textbooks at your school or online. After the class is over, sell your books back online, to the bookstore, or to someone else.
If you do an internet search for textbooks you may find a better deal from an online retailer than from the school bookstore, or you may be able to download a less expensive electronic version.
3. Explore all of your aid options
Apply for financial aid using the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). There are several types of aid such as grants, scholarships, work-study and loans. Apply for financial aid every year you are in school and start looking for scholarships early.
Also check with your school’s Financial Aid Office to see if merit-based aid is available. To qualify for merit-based aid, you may need to meet certain criteria, such as specific academic areas or certain sports.
4. Borrow responsibly
Student loans are not free. You must pay back your student loans with interest.
If you have student loan money left over after you pay your school expenses, you do not have to accept that money. It is not free! The less money you borrow now, the less money you will have to repay after graduation.
If you pay the interest while you are in school, you will pay less money in the long run.
5. Avoid dropping classes and focus on graduating on time
Decide what you want to major in early in your college career and decide which career path is right for you. By thinking about this ahead of time, you will avoid paying for classes that don’t end up contributing toward your degree.
Dropping classes will extend your time to completion. The longer you are in school the more you will pay for college. Postponing joining the workforce also means you will be losing out on potential earnings.
These are only some of the things I wish I had known when preparing to pay for my college education. All of the tips mentioned involve planning ahead.
A great way to handle your finances and practice planning is to develop a spending plan. A spending plan can help you manage your financial aid and finances, while helping you figure out your expenses over the number of years that it will take you complete your degree, but that’s a topic for another blog.
Robert Weinert Jr. is a Financial Aid Adviser and is pursuing his Masters in Higher Education Administration Enrollment Management at Bay Path University. He is a 2017-18 virtual intern with the Office of Federal Student Aid, U.S. Department of Education.
The SC Bar Young Lawyers Division (YLD) is sponsoring its third annual “Your Big Idea” Scholarship Competition this spring. To enter, students must complete an application and answer one of five prompts about the First Amendment in an Instagram video. The submission deadline has been extended to April 13, 2018 at 5 p.m.
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is approving plans that fly in the face of the Every Student Succeeds Act’s protections for vulnerable children, according to more than a dozen civil rights groups, including the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
Educators are doing something right inside our public school buildings. While it’s not often reported, indicators of disciplinary problems have been showing steady declines in recent decades, including for such serious infractions as gang activity, physical threats of violence, and weapons carried on school property. But it’s too early to start high-fiving. A 
Working as a Financial Aid Counselor, families often ask me how they can pay for college. More often than not this conversation takes place during the student’s senior year in high school. As a first-generation college student, there are things I wish my family and I had known to help us save on our college bill. These are a few things that families can do to help cut the cost of college:
Live and recent hosted webcasts of the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence (CCEE) meetings.