House Democrats and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos sparred over civil rights, the Every Student Succeeds Act, and teachers’ salaries at a hearing Tuesday, but lawmakers from both parties largely avoided controversial questions about school safety in the aftermath of a Texas high school shooting last week that left 10 students and staff dead.
Appearing before the House education committee, DeVos emphasized that the federal school safety commission she leads is working quickly, and that its ultimate goal is to ensure that schools “have the tools to be able to make the right decisions to protect their own buildings and their own communities.”
She said the commission was developing a timeline for its work, but also said that she planned to have the commission report its findings by year’s end.
“We are looking forward to [hearing from] every interest group, every constituency, particularly teachers, parents, and law enforcement and school leadership,” DeVos told lawmakers, later adding that, “We seek to look at models across the country.”
The commission has only met once since it was created in March after the deadly school shooting in Parkland, Fla., although the secretary met last week with school safety researchers, as well as parents of children killed in school shootings. Its other members are Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. DeVos previously has said that schools should be able to decide if they want to provide staff with firearms to improve safety, but did not share detailed personal opinions on school safety in general with the committee…
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Source: Education Week Politics K-12. May require Education Week subscription.
The students and staff of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School for Science and Technology had a busy Monday morning (May 21). In addition to a graduation ceremony staged for the Lower 9th Ward school’s kindergarteners, students were given an opportunity to test out their newest fitness gear alongside members of the New Orleans Saints team.
The New Orleans Saints and UnitedHealthcare, the country’s largest health insurer, devoted new fitness equipment to the students that was positioned in a “Get Fit” youth fitness zone designated on the second floor of the school. The football players showed 100 students how to properly use the fitness gear in order to encourage students to stay active.
New Orleans Saints Cornerback PJ Williams, Safety Kurt Coleman, Cornerback Arthur Maulet, and Wide Receiver Robert Meachem each spent their morning demonstrating to students how their new fitness equipment is supposed to be used. The initiative at the C-rated school comes a year after the Data Resource Center for Child and Adolescent Health deemed Louisiana No. 8 in child obesity…
How does an individual’s decision to drop out of high school affect the rest of us? And, conversely, how does a student graduating from high school benefit all of us?
Those were the questions the Alliance for Excellent Education (All4Ed) sought to answer when it began working on an economic model that would demonstrate the economic impact of a 90 percent high school graduation rate.
Individuals who drop out of high school are far more likely to spend their lives periodically unemployed, on government assistance, or cycling in and out of the prison system than individuals who earn a high school diploma. But individuals are not the only ones affected when they do not graduate.
To quantify how a student’s decision to drop out affects the rest of us, and, conversely, how a student graduating from high school benefits all of us, the Alliance for Excellent Education (All4Ed) released new data demonstrating the economic impact of reaching a 90 percent high school graduation rate. The data is available for the United States as a whole, all fifty states, and roughly 140 metro areas, from Anchorage, Alaska to Winston-Salem, North Carolina and many places in-between.
During a time when future success is so closely linked to educational outcomes, one in six students do not earn their high school diploma. Individuals who drop out of high school are far more likely to spend their lives periodically unemployed, on government assistance, or cycling in and out of the prison system.
But what if the United States were able to achieve a 90 percent high school graduation rate? How would that benefit the nation?
For the Class of 2015, which had a graduation rate of 83.2 percent, a 90 percent graduation rate would have meant an additional 250,000 students would have walked across the Commencement Day stage.
These graduates would collectively have earned $3.1 billion ANNUALLY in additional income.
That additional income isn’t going under the mattress. It’s being spent in local grocery stores, restaurants, and other businesses, powering national, state, and local economies.
And these new graduates are also contributing more in the form of tax dollars—roughly $664 million collectively by the midpoint of their careers. That tax revenue will go toward public schools, roads, and a variety of other public goods.
In total, the collective spending power of these new graduates will lead to greater opportunities for the nation, including $5.7 billion in economic growth and more than 14,000 new jobs created…
Earlier this year, shortly after 17 students and teachers were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., President Donald Trump created a school commission, led by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, to explore solutions.
And now that there has been another deadly school shooting, at Santa Fe High School in Texas, educators, parents, and others, including advocates in Washington and folks on social media, are wondering just what the commission has been up to since its inception in early March.
The New School has launched the Digital Equity Laboratory, a project-based center that identifies and supports strategies to transform how technology is understood and used to drive racial, gender and economic equity and disrupt the use of technology to produce and reproduce inequity in our social, economic and civic life. It will focus on cross-sector strategies to expand broadband access to communities, particularly low-income communities of color, that have been systematically excluded, marginalized and targeted by many technology systems; ensure that smart-city innovations benefit those communities; and understand the equity implications of big data, algorithms and new edge technologies. The DEL will be housed at The New School’s Milano School.
“Technology is neutral, but people are not,” Maya Wiley, founder and co-director of the DEL, and Greta Byrum, co-director of the DEL, said in a statement. “With the fast pace of technological change to our job markets, how we communicate with one another and the data produced and collected about us, and how it is used, technology has great potential to drive social benefits democratically or deliver social, economic and civic devastation for some. We no longer have a digital divide. We have a technological chasm. The laboratory will provide a space for people of diverse disciplines to collaboratively develop approaches and strategies to protect democracy; increase the economic, social and civic health of our communities, particularly low-income communities of color; and support innovation that disrupts inequality, rather than reproducing it.”
Bruce Fuller, a sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley, works on how schools and civic activists push to advance pluralistic communities. He is a regular opinion contributor to edweek.org where he trades views with Lance Izumi, on the other side of the political aisle.
This blossoming spring of teacher uprisings—marching on state capitols, winning hefty pay raises—cheers any citizen who knows that robust societies depend on vibrant schools.
But arid summers may await the nation’s educators, as the Trump-tweaked U.S. Supreme Court seems ready to eviscerate these same teacher associations who battle each day for better schools.
While hearing oral arguments in the Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Council 31 case in February, justices voiced skepticism over compulsory union dues, the life blood of local associations that mobilize the nation’s 3.2 million teachers.
Still, it’s the wildcat strikes moving across the nation—ignited mostly by young and passionate teachers—that may reshape the future of labor unions…
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The secretary will speak to lawmakers on the House education committee about the “policies and priorities” of the U.S. Department of Education. Compared to her predecessors, DeVos hasn’t been on Capitol Hill a lot during her roughly 16 months as education secretary, at least in terms of public appearances: She’s testified before spending committies three times, and once to the Senate education committee for her rocky confirmation hearing in January 2017. Tuesday’s hearing would be the first time she’s testified before the House committee that deals with K-12 issues.
DeVos has met privately a few times recently with lawmakers on Capitol Hill. But education committee lawmakers haven’t had the chance to ask DeVos detailed questions in public about her track record. In fact, on Friday, House committee Democrats sent out a fact sheet pointing out that her predecessors spent significantly more time testifying to Congress over comparable periods of time. In former Secretary Arne Duncan’s first 15 months, for example, he testified to Congress nine times.
With a big House election in November coming up, Dems on Tuesday might be particularly eager to trip DeVos up during her testimony and spin what they see as embarassing sound bites into campaign ads.
So what might lawmakers ask DeVos? Democrats in particular will have pointed questions for her in the name of opposition party oversight; here are a few prominent items that might come up…
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By Lynette Monroe (Program Assistant, NNPA ESSA Public Awareness Campaign)
Salome Thomas-EL, a charter school principal and award-winning national education expert, captivated an audience of over 500 educators with his keynote address on overcoming barriers to success at the 2018 National Title I Conference in Philadelphia, Penn.
Title I schools are characterized by the additional funds they receive to meet the needs of their most vulnerable students. Title I funding provisions are designed to improve the academic achievement of the disadvantaged and to ensure that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education. The National Title I Conference engaged educators at all levels around the relationship between cultural competence and best academic practices.
Principal EL leads Thomas Edison Charter School, a tuition-free, public charter school in Wilmington, Del. According to the school’s website, more than 95 percent of students that attend Thomas Edison live at, or below the poverty level.
Principal EL shared the story of the Thomas Edison Charter School chess team that competed and won the United States Chess Federation (USCF) National Elementary Chess Championship in Dallas, Texas on Sunday, May 11, 2014.
Edison was the only school from Delaware competing in the National Tournament, but persevered to bring home Delaware’s first National Scholastic Chess Championship, the school’s website said.
“Thomas Edison is the home of one of the most-fierce, all-female chess teams in the nation,” the school’s website said. “They have won the Mid-Atlantic All-Girls Chess Championship three of the past four years.”
Principal EL left the crowd with four C’s (Crazy, Curious, Consistent and Culture of Love) that he has used to overcome barriers to success in the classroom:
Crazy—Every child deserves to have at least one person be crazy about them.
Curious—It is not enough for educators to care about their students; they must be curious about their lives outside of school, as well.
Consistent—Often times vulnerable youth grow accustomed to inconsistencies from adults in their lives. Principle EL challenges educators to stay consistent, despite the challenges that may occur.
Culture of Love—Sometimes the children who need love the most, ask in the most unloving ways. Principal EL also challenges educators to create a culture of love for all students.
Similar stories of triumph were shared from educators from all over the country, highlighting why diversity and representation in teaching is so important.
Dr. Tommy A. Watson, the principal of Palmer Lake Elementary School in Brookland Park Minn., grew up in Denver, Colo. As a child, both of his parents were addicted to heroin and were professional shoplifters. He also spent a lot of time in foster care and was homeless as a senior in high school. Today, Dr. Watson travels the country sharing his story with at-risk youth, leaving behind a message of hope.
“When I went off to college, my mother was in prison, my father was in prison and my older brother was in prison. My older sister was back in Denver on drugs…I really saw education as my only way out,” Dr. Watson explained, as he detailed his motivation to share the power of education in his life.
Dr. Robert Kirton, the CEO for DNA Educational Solutions and Support also talked about his personal experiences as an adolescent and how he uses those experiences to shape the education policies that he advocates for.
[/media-credit] Dr. Robert Kirton, the CEO for DNA Educational Solutions and Support delivers remarks during the 2018 National Title I Conference in Philadelphia, Penn. (Travis Riddick/NNPA)
“My thing is going from risk to resiliency. I started off pretty sluggish. I got in trouble all the time while in school. I got a young lady pregnant, while in high school,” Dr. Kirton said. “She left me with the baby; she didn’t see him again until we both graduated from college. He graduated with his bachelor’s and I graduated with my doctorate.”
According to Dr. Kirton’s biography, the educator has a documented success that includes a cumulative graduation rate above 95 percent.
Dr. Kirton’s personal story of risk to resiliency supports his educational approach. His straight-forward, disciplined strategy focuses on ensuring students feel safe and understand the connection between their actions and consequences. His method to “suspend students to school” is a refreshing approach in an educational system that disproportionately suspends and expels Black children.
When asked about the importance of parental engagement, Dr. Kirton answered, “I engage parents as partners…[you have to] bring them into the fold and make them apart of the team.”
Dr. Kirton continued: “When parent participation is not an option, I find a parent-like figure to fulfill that crucial part.”
Learn more about the Every Student Succeeds Act and the importance of diversity and inclusion in teaching at nnpa.org/essa.
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. Lynette’s research areas are public policy and national development. Follow Lynette on Twitter @_monroedoctrine.
Childhood and adolescence were anything but easy for Duncan Campbell.
He was neglected by his alcoholic parents from a young age, and his father spent years in and out of jail.
Knowing he couldn’t rely on them, Campbell worked several jobs to get through school. In his 20s, he worked in a juvenile court in Oregon as a child care worker, where he built strong bonds with the children in his unit.
After a stint as a successful businessman, Campbell sold his timber firm to focus on helping at-risk children break out of generational poverty. That’s when he started Friends of the Children, a nonprofit that soon grew nationally.
But the nonprofit’s recent presence in Los Angeles is particularly apt, said Thomas G. Lee, executive director of the organization’s local branch. And that’s because Los Angeles has the largest child welfare system in the country.
“[Friends of the Children L.A.] is about building strong networks with children,” Lee said. “Networks matter. As children form networks with families, it’s important if we’re going to break cycles of poverty and get them out of the welfare system. We have to connect children with families and individuals in a meaningful way and with depth.”
And that’s what the organization does: connect at-risk children with caring adult mentors.
The nonprofit identifies kindergarten children living in poverty and matches them with an adult mentor –– or friend –– until the child graduates from high school.
Mentors spend two hours a week in the children’s classroom and two hours one-on-one, totaling 16 hours a month together.
“Our focus is making sure the child is meeting educational outcomes, social and emotional outcomes, and to expose and get them connected to the array of sources [available to them] in L.A. County,” Lee said.
Thomas Lee
Although L.A. has countless resources for foster children, they are often underused because individuals don’t know about them, Lee said.
“Our mentors become a bridge to those resources,” getting families and children connected to a larger network of support.
But it’s not just foster youth that Friends L.A. advocates for. It’s also youth exiting the foster care system that are parenting.
Lee said the local organization wants to focus on enrolling the 128 children of foster youth into their program. By doing so, it hopes to serve “that population in a real and intentionally meaningful way.”
And their program seems to be working. The organization’s website reports that 83 percent of its children graduate from high school; 93 percent stay out of the the juvenile justice system; and 98 percent avoid parenting, even though 85 percent were born to a teenage parent.
While Friends L.A. is just planting its feet in the county –– particularly in East and South L.A. –– communities and organizations have warmly received it, Lee said, and already it is looking to extend a broader hand to more children in need.
“Foster youth have much skepticism about adults in their life, and for good reason,” Lee said. “But developing a deep level of trust between us and them was really important. … It requires a level of humility, thoughtfulness and care, especially for kids who have been failed by a lot of people.”
But Friends of the Children L.A. is changing that, one friend and one child at a time.
INFORMATION BOX
L.A. Executive Director: Thomas G. Lee
Years in operation: national: 25; L.A.: 7 months
Annual budget: $3 million
Number of employees: 7
Location: 672 S. Lafayette Park Place, Suite 33, L.A. 90057
House Democrats and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos sparred over civil rights, the Every Student Succeeds Act, and teachers’ salaries at a hearing Tuesday, but lawmakers from both parties largely avoided controversial questions about school safety in the aftermath of a Texas high school shooting last week that left 10 students and staff dead.
