Keeping the Dream Alive
As we celebrate MLK Day this year we are also on the verge of the 50th Anniversary of his assassination, and while the dreamer died, this drum major for justice mission lives on as today we see progress in so many areas of Black life in America.
Things we would have never dreamed possible have come to pass where African-Americans occupy positions thought unobtainable 50 years ago. A culmination of this moment happened in 2008, when a nation with a history of racial exclusion elected the nation’s first African-American President Barack Obama. At this time there was talk in the U.S. as the world celebrated that King’s Dream of a Colorblind America had become a reality. There was even talk that the nation was moving in a direction of being post-racial.
King’s Dream in Trump’s America
Fast forward eight years and while there continues to be significant progress on the racial front; there’s been a backlash among a segment of the White population who feels that inclusion, equality and justice for those who were once considered vulnerable is a problem. So as some felt anxiety about social change in response as 2016 Donald Trump won the Electoral College and became the President of the United States.
Donald Trump, whose political ascendance began with him fanning the flames of racial resentment by attaching himself to the racist myth that Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. as part of the birther movement, that attempted to delegitimize the country’s first African-American President. And in his first year as president he and his coterie of Whites in his top cabinet positions are seeking to dismantle Barack Obama’s legacy and his “Make America Great Again” slogan may as well be “Take us back to a White America again.”
This is evidenced in how in this administration they are reshaping the courts by appointing conservative justices to lifetime appointments in the federal judiciary; something that can overturn decisions and have an adverse impact on Civil Rights gains. These include issues around environmental and criminal justice, housing, employment, affirmative action, voter rights and other things centering on the pursuit of justice and equality.
Re-Investing in the Dream
Today it is important that citizens become reinvested in fighting to keep the spirit of the dream alive. Today is a time to re-engage as not only Trump on a national level but on a state level some are trying to turn back the hands of time on the gains that’s given citizens access to equal rights. It is time for those today to fight in the spirit of those who came before them who have persevered the slights, the dogs attacking innocent children, the unfulfilled dreams and in spite of that they found a way to keep their eyes on the prize. Today this spirit must be renewed in this fight to continue to move America in the right direction.
King’s words of a colorblind society still ring true today as it did in 1963 at the March on Washington, even if today it is a far cry from a reality. But the struggle must continue as this nation’s problems with race continues, in addition to turning itself inward threatens America’s position not only nationally but its place as a beacon of hope and freedom across the globe.
And while many know King’s words as idyllic as they are, within his words he speaks of an imperfect nation trying to correct itself. This is what the dream is about people working together correcting our society so that all citizens can share in the dream. That all people regardless of their background can have a seat at the table of power and this is a day many Americans felt had arrived when it elected Barack Obama President in 2008.
But today on MLK Day in 2018, we are seeing a president who is trying to erase Obama’s legacy and a history of progress of all the great freedom fighters. This backlash of Trump and the Republicans who were obstructionist for 8 years must be met with force. Today this does not mean simply marching and protesting, it means being informed, it means voting in high numbers, it means getting an education, it means being better parents to our children, it means holding elected official accountable for how they vote on legislation. It is this that will continue to move the dream forward and make it a reality in the age of Trump.
With the 2018-19 school year in full swing, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has finished approving nearly every state’s plan to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act. But in some ways, the federal government’s work on ESSA is just beginning.
The federal K-12 law’s hallmark may be state and local control, yet the Education Department still has the responsibility to oversee the more than $21 billion in federal funding pumped out to states and districts under ESSA. That will often take the form of monitoring—in which federal officials take a deep look at state and local implementation of the law.
And the department has other oversight powers, including issuing guidance on the law’s implementation, writing reports on ESSA, and deciding when and how states can revise their plans.
Even though ESSA includes a host of prohibitions on the education secretary’s role, DeVos and her team have broad leeway to decide what those processes should look like, said Reg Leichty, a co-founder of Foresight Law + Policy, a law firm in Washington.
Given the Trump team’s emphasis on local control, “I think they’ll try for a lighter touch” than past administrations, Leichty said. But there are still requirements in the law the department must fill, he added.
“States and districts shouldn’t expect the system to be fundamentally different [from under previous versions of the law.] They are still going to have to file a lot of data,” Leitchy said.
But advocates for traditionally overlooked groups of students aren’t holding their breath for a robust monitoring process, in part because they think the department has already approved state plans that skirt ESSA’s requirements…
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The public reporting requirements of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) offer greater transparency about school quality, according to experts and education advocates who also predict that the new law will empower parents and make them more informed partners in the education process of their children.
President Barack Obama signed ESSA into law on December 10, 2015.
“Public reporting is going to be very important, because state systems, like what goes into [calculating] letter grades for schools, are incredibly complex,” said Phillip Lovell, the vice president of policy development and government relations for the Alliance for Excellent Education, a Washington, D.C.-based national advocacy organization that’s dedicated to ensuring all students graduate from high school, ready for success in college and in the workplace. “States are aware of and working on how to communicate information on school performance clearly.”
Brenna McMahon Parton, the director of policy and advocacy for Data Quality Campaign, one of the nation’s leading voices on education data policy and use, said that everyone deserves information, which is why ESSA requires that report cards are easy to understand.
“To date, states haven’t focused on parent needs and, as a result, report cards are difficult to find and use,” said Parton. “As states develop new report cards, they should be sure that parents will have a one-stop-shop that provides information they need about how students and schools in their community are performing.”
ESSA reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the historic civil rights law passed in 1965 and effectively replaced the Bush-era No Child Left Behind Act.
Transparency and parental engagement are integral parts of the new law.
Under ESSA, all schools receiving Title I funds must inform parents of their right to request information about the professional qualifications of their children’s teachers; parents are also encouraged to support their children’s educational experiences by communicating regularly with teachers.
In a post on “The 74,” a nonprofit news site dedicated to education, Rashidah Morgan of the Sweden-based Education First, said that, “Greater transparency about school quality, will ultimately empower parents to make more knowledgeable choices about schools.”
Also, transparency on spending and academic results help the public understand how schools are performing in their communities, said Chad Aldeman, a principal at Bellwether Education Partners, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit focused on changing the outcomes and education life for the underserved.
“Accountability systems only work, if people understand what they’re being held accountable for and have enough information to know how to respond,” Aldeman said, adding that parents need good information to make informed choices about where to send their children. “To make that a reality, parents need information about both their own child’s performance, as well as how similar students are performing in other schools.”
Finally, clear, transparent school and district report cards help families make critical decisions and equip community members and the public to push for needed improvement in schools, said Dr. Lillian Lowery, the vice president of PreK-12 Policy, Research and Practice at The Education Trust, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. that promotes high academic achievement for students at all levels, particularly students of color and those of low-income.
“ESSA requires states to report a lot of important information on how schools are doing at preparing all groups of students, including students from low-income families, students of color, English learners and students with disabilities, for post-high school success,” said Lowery. “To maximize the usefulness of this information, state leaders should work with families and education advocates to ensure that report cards are easy to access and understand.”
The public reporting requirements of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) offer greater transparency about school quality, according to experts and education advocates who also predict that the new law will empower parents and make them more informed partners in the education process of their children.
President Barack Obama signed ESSA into law on Dec. 10, 2015.
“Public reporting is going to be very important, because state systems, like what goes into [calculating] letter grades for schools, are incredibly complex,” said Phillip Lovell, the vice president of policy development and government relations for the Alliance for Excellent Education, a Washington, D.C.-based national advocacy organization that’s dedicated to ensuring all students graduate from high school, ready for success in college and in the workplace. “States are aware of and working on how to communicate information on school performance clearly.”
Brenna McMahon Parton, the director of policy and advocacy for Data Quality Campaign, one of the nation’s leading voices on education data policy and use, said that everyone deserves information, which is why ESSA requires that report cards are easy to understand.
“To date, states haven’t focused on parent needs and, as a result, report cards are difficult to find and use,” said Parton. “As states develop new report cards, they should be sure that parents will have a one-stop-shop that provides information they need about how students and schools in their community are performing.”
ESSA reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the historic civil rights law passed in 1965 and effectively replaced the Bush-era No Child Left Behind Act.
Transparency and parental engagement are integral parts of the new law.
Under ESSA, all schools receiving Title I funds must inform parents of their right to request information about the professional qualifications of their children’s teachers; parents are also encouraged to support their children’s educational experiences by communicating regularly with teachers.
In a post on “The 74,” a nonprofit news site dedicated to education, Rashidah Morgan of Education First, said that, “Greater transparency about school quality, will ultimately empower parents to make more knowledgeable choices about schools.”
Also, transparency on spending and academic results help the public understand how schools are performing in their communities, said Chad Aldeman, a principal at Bellwether Education Partners, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit focused on changing the outcomes and education life for the underserved.
“Accountability systems only work, if people understand what they’re being held accountable for and have enough information to know how to respond,” Aldeman said, adding that parents need good information to make informed choices about where to send their children. “To make that a reality, parents need information about both their own child’s performance, as well as how similar students are performing in other schools.”
Finally, clear, transparent school and district report cards help families make critical decisions and equip community members and the public to push for needed improvement in schools, said Dr. Lillian Lowery, the vice president of PreK-12 Policy, Research and Practice at The Education Trust, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. that promotes high academic achievement for students at all levels, particularly students of color and those of low-income.
“ESSA requires states to report a lot of important information on how schools are doing at preparing all groups of students, including students from low-income families, students of color, English learners and students with disabilities, for post-high school success,” said Lowery. “To maximize the usefulness of this information, state leaders should work with families and education advocates to ensure that report cards are easy to access and understand.”
Do state plans for implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act do enough to shine a spotlight on historically disadvantaged groups of students—and do they give schools the tools they need to improve outcomes for those children?
“What we are seeing so far is not encouraging,” concludes a report from The Education Trust, a Washington-based organization that advocates for low-income and minority students. “For all the talk about equity surrounding ESSA, too many state leaders have taken a pass on clearly naming and acting on schools’ underperformance for low-income students, students of color, students with disabilities, and English learners.”
Education Trust, whose executive director, John B. King Jr., served as President Barack Obama’s last secretary of education, reviewed the 17 ESSA plans submitted to the department so far, as well as the 34 that have been submitted. It found that:
In general, states picked indicators that get at whether students are learning, including chronic absenteeism, college and career readiness, and on-track graduation. But some states picked so many indicators that it will be that there’s a “real risk” schools won’t have the incentive to improve on any of them, the advocacy group said. Example: Connecticut and Arkansas each have more than 10 indicators. Plus, some states, including Louisiana, have proposed indicators that aren’t ready for rollout yet…
Read the full story here: May require an Education Week subscription.
Along with the various cuts to the U.S. Department of Education’s budget proposed by President Donald Trump, the other part of Trump’s fiscal 2018 spending plan getting a lot of attention is the $1 billion the president wants to add to Title I in order to encourage open enrollment in public schools. There are a lot of questions about how that, along with many other parts of Trump’s education budget blueprint, would work. Let’s explore some of them.
First, it’s important to point out this increase isn’t necessarily and strictly a $1 billion bump for Title I. The budget says it’s an increase from the $14.9 billion that Title I grants technically get now. But ESSA gets rid of the Obama-era School Improvement Grants and instead shifts that money over to a portion of Title I money states can set aside for their own school improvement activities. That means that once Congress gets around to doing a regular fiscal year budget, Title I is already slated to rise to $15.4 billion.
So once (or if, for you pessimists out there) that happens, Trump’s proposed Title I funding increase would only be roughly $500 million…
President Donald Trump has finally, finally started to nominate people to fill the top political ranks at the U.S. Department of Education. Recently, for example, the White House announced its pick for deputy secretary (former South Carolina state chief Mick Zais) and for assistant secretary for career, technical, and adult education (Michigan state Rep. Tim Kelly.)
But the Trump team is still really behind the eight-ball when it comes to staffing 400 Maryland Ave.
How far behind? We went back and looked to see when the Obama administration named its picks for some of the agency’s top players. In just about every instance, it was months ahead of the Trump crew…
The education field can always count on shifting priorities. Over the past 20 years, in an attempt to “fix” what many people dub a broken public school system, everyone from politicians to famous athletes to business moguls to education leaders has tried to find and repair the gaps in student achievement. But many educators are skeptical of new initiatives that come down the pike. Is a revamped approach really meant to help prepare children for the future, or is it just people outside of education sticking their noses where they don’t belong?
That certainly rings true in the STEM vs. STEAM argument of the past decade. In recent years, science, technology, engineering, and math have been at the center of our schools’ change fabric. These fields are desperate to fill jobs that didn’t exist before the 21st century. According to the 2016 U.S. News/Raytheon STEM Index, there were more than 230,000 additional STEM jobs and less than 31,000 additional graduates in these fields in 2014-15 alone. To help close that gap, President Barack Obama rolled out investments and initiatives to increase STEM education.
As schools expanded into high-tech gadget hubs, many educators argued for the integration of arts into STEM learning to bring needed creativity to the learning process. Others pushed back for keeping the arts separate, saying that adding the arts to STEM subjects simply created more distraction. While the STEAM movement has gained momentum, educators are still divided on arts integration…
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Barack Obama shocked students at a Washington school Friday by popping in to give them encouragement at the beginning of the new year.
“I do believe that most of the problems we have are going to be solved by you,” Obama told a group of students from McKinley Technology High School, according to an Instagram video posted on his account after his unannounced visit.
In the video, a small group of students can be seen gasping in surprise as Obama walks into a room with a cheery “How’s it going, everybody?”
The former president has made few public appearances since leaving the White House in January.
Obama will be attending a fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee on September 27, only the second time he’s publicly raised money for his party since leaving the White House. Obama attended a fundraiser hosted by former Attorney General Eric Holder for the National Democratic Redistricting Committee back in July.
The commission, which made the move on Friday, plans to take a closer look at civil rights enforcement across the government, including the Departments of Justice, Health and Human Services, Labor, and Housing and Urban Development.
The panel is particularly concerned that the Trump administration is seeking to cut the budgets of the civil rights arms of these agencies. And it is bothered by statements by some cabinet officials, including U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, that the commisssion says may demonstrate that the Trump administration isn’t going to take civil rights enforcement seriously. (DeVos is, in fact, the only cabinet official the statement mentions by name)…
By Edwin Buggage
With the 2018-19 school year in full swing, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has finished approving nearly every state’s plan to implement the 
Do state plans for implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act do enough to shine a spotlight on historically disadvantaged groups of students—and do they give schools the tools they need to improve outcomes for those children?
