
NATIONAL ESSA NEWS
OPINION: Importance of Educators of Color for Black & Brown Students
NNPA ESSA AWARENESS CAMPAIGN — This month, my organization, the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools released its highly-anticipated report, “Identity and Charter School Leadership: Profiles of Leaders of Color Building an Effective Staff” which examined the ways that school leaders of color’s experiences and perspectives influence how they build school culture, parent and community relationships, and effective staff.
read moreOP-ED: Student Loan Debt is a Crisis
THE WESTSIDE GAZETTE — Finances should never be a barrier to graduation, nor should the financial impact of earning a college degree be a barrier for buying a home, saving money, starting a family, and having a good credit score. TMCF prides itself on building pipelines into good paying jobs but we also have to work to ensure that those students are able to truly reap the financial benefits of their achievements without having to pay off years of student loan debt.
read moreProfile in Education Equity: Sharif El-Mekki
El-Mekki is answering his own “nation building” call. In May, he announced that after 11 years as Shoemaker’s principal and 26 years of being inside schools as a teacher or administrator, he was devoting his full attention and time to launching a new Center for Black Educator Development to help address the urgent need to bring more Black educators into Philadelphia’s classrooms and across the nation. “If I’m going to be serious about trying to change the lives of Black educators and hence the lives of Black children, then it just can’t be my night and weekend job,” he said.
read moreCOMMENTARY: Is There More to Teaching and Learning Than Testing?
In order for education to capitalize on the strengths and talents of learners and the skills and professionalism of their teachers, what kinds of additional progress measures might be employed?
read moreESSA: Every Student Succeeds Act
Video explaining the evolution, benefits and implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act.
read moreOP-ED: Black Studies becomes major factor in social advancement
OUR WEEKLY NEWS — The Black Power movement of the late 1960s helped to redefine African American identity and establish a new racial consciousness. As influential as this period was in the study and enhancement of the African Diaspora, this movement spawned the academic discipline known as Black Studies on our college and university campuses.
read moreBetsy DeVos Approves Testing Flexibility Under ESSA for Two More States
EDUCATION WEEK — U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced that she had approved Georgia and North Carolina to try out new assessment methods for the 2019-20 school year, joining Louisiana and New Hampshire as states to successfully apply to participate in this pilot.
read moreCOMMENTARY: Financial Literacy Transforms Students’ Lives. Here’s Where to Start
EDUCATION WEEK: In 2013, the Council for Economic Education (CEE) released a set of rigorous national standards for financial literacy that offer a starting point for elementary, middle, and high school educators to create a meaningful curriculum with the flexibility to determine what works best in their own school day. Schools should also tailor their curriculum to account for cultural differences in the classroom, as well as the specific learning styles of girls versus boys.
read moreDeVos Seeks to Align Education Grants With Trump-Backed Economic Initiative
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos wants to put a priority on competitive grants that square with the Trump administration's initiative to improve economic opportunities in distressed areas. In the Federal Register, which is where the U.S. government publishes...
read moreNo More Scissors. No More Mail. Box Tops for Schools Goes Digital
General Mills, which founded the program 23 years ago, announced that the program will soon be digital-only. Customers now earn money for their schools by scanning receipts rather than clipping box tops and mailing them in. Participants can download the new mobile app, scan their store receipt, which will automatically analyze which products were box-tops items and tabulate the amount that will be donated to their school of choice. Every box top will still be worth 10 cents.
read moreEducator Spotlight: Donald Hense
Three-quarters of the students enrolled in Friendship schools in D.C. are from Wards 7 and 8, the city’s two poorest areas, and nearly all are African-American. Their achievement is reflected in their continuous improvement on standardized tests. Most recently, Donald Hense and his team celebrated, when five of Friendship’s 12 D.C. schools were rated Tier 1 by the Public Charter School Board – the highest of three ratings a charter school can earn.
read moreStates Hunt for Evidence to Underpin School Turnaround Efforts
EDUCATION WEEK — Allendale County’s school district sits in South Carolina’s Lowcountry, in an impoverished, rural region near the coast known as the “corridor of shame” for the chronic poor quality of its education system. Until recently, three of the district’s four schools were considered among the lowest performing in the state.
read moreESSA’s Growing Pains Evident Amid Progress
EDUCATION WEEK — If the Every Student Succeeds Act were a schoolchild, it would be a preschooler—not much more than 3 years old, making steady progress, but still stumbling a bit along the way.The first major rewrite of the nation’s main K-12 law in more than a decade, ESSA was signed into law at the end of 2015, replacing and updating the groundbreaking—but problematic—No Child Left Behind Act.
read moreCOMMENTARY: Assembly Workers and Widgets
Well, how can we feel more professional and less like factory workers producing widgets? First, we must clarify our mission. Students are not widgets. There can be no reject bins for human beings with different needs and varied learning intelligence!
read moreCOMMENTARY: Color “Blindness”
Our perceptions of the value of ourselves and others often determine our treatment of and reactions toward those we view as less than or not as valued. Wars are fought over cultural and religious differences. Regardless of the injury, all people’s blood is red and all of us can hurt or grieve, regardless of color.
read moreCOMMENTARY: Classroom Culture Clashes
…in answer to the question when cultures clash in the classroom, who suffers, we all do! Poorly educated students make for a society that alienates its young, one that is unable to retain skilled and experienced teachers, and a country frustrated with unemployment, under-employment, and an ever-growing culture of violence, fear, and intolerance. Court systems and privatized prisons, along with mortuaries, result when the classrooms act as prep schools for these expensive alternatives.
read moreFederal Flash: The Education Question Betsy DeVos Can’t Answer
The House Education and Labor Committee hearing this week examined the policies and priorities of the U.S. Department of Education. It was the first oversight hearing for Secretary DeVos to testify before the Committee since Democrats regained control of the House. While members asked questions on a variety of topics ranging from student loan debt to affirmative action to the rights of transgender students, many focused on implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA.
read moreHBCUs Testify Before Congress
LOS ANGELES SENTINEL — Tuesday, April 9, Herman Felton, Ph.D., president and CEO of Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, provided testimony before the House panel that decides the funding levels for all federal education programs. The House Appropriations Committee’s Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Subcommittee received public witness testimony from only 24 individuals to inform their crafting of the upcoming bill to fund the government for fiscal year 2020.
read moreDemystifying Student Performance Via Parental Engagement
Although parental engagement has a strong correlation to student academic performance and achievement, why is it that African American parents appear disproportionately less engaged than parents of other races?
read moreCan You Hear Us, Now?
The Brown Bookshelf’s 28 Days Later initiative takes their original goal to highlight Black authors a step further. The initiative is designed to highlight Black authors with recently released books or books that have “gone unnoticed.” During Black History Month, every day, a different book and author will be featured.
read moreCOMMENTARY: What More Can Be Done Under ESSA to Support Highly Qualified Teachers
NNPA NEWSWIRE — Teacher concerns transformed into organized protests when, in early 2018, the West Virginia teacher’s strike made headlines, lasting over 2 weeks. Local education activists and teacher advocates forced the state legislature to address many of their concerns through the statewide strike. Afterwards, teachers returned to their classrooms with a 5 percent pay raise.
read moreCOMMENTARY: For Black Children, Attending School Is an Act of Racial Justice
In the 2015-16 school year, Black boys made up 8 percent of public school enrollment, but they were 25 percent of the boys suspended out of school. Black girls were 8 percent of enrollment, but 14 percent of the girls suspended out of school. While Black children are overrepresented in practices that exclude or remove students from school, White children are underrepresented. Such data are clear evidence that racism and bias often drive exclusionary practices. To ignore this is to preserve the status quo.
read moreCOMMENTARY: A Dream Deferred — Is the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) Just Another Elusive Dream?
Parents must get engaged to hold legislators and educators accountable for their ESSA State Plans. Parents must also hold themselves accountable in prioritizing the education of our children. Research shows that just one year with a bad teacher can put a child three years behind. Now, think about what happens after years of neglect and lack of advocacy.
read moreEquity v. Equality
ESSA gives power back to the states to control education policy. Now, members of the community must hold their school leaders and elected officials accountable to implement system-wide and school-specific measures that ensure equity in our schools.
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