By Ron Rice, Senior Director, Government Relations at the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools
I have been a Black student, education policymaker, and now an advocate for providing the best educational opportunities for all our children. One reality that I’ve had to face and embrace through each of these stages in my life and career is that the prevalence of leaders of color like me is a major contributor to educational success and whose lack thereof stifles that potential. As a student of color, those examples helped me thrive; and today they inform my advocacy.
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. This needed report affirmed what I and many fellow school leaders of color have witnessed first-hand in schools from New Jersey (where I advised the state Department of Education) to Massachusetts, California, Louisiana, Missouri, Wisconsin, and North Carolina, where school leaders of color were studied. The report’s finding is clear: our children of color thrive with diverse and experienced teachers who understand their challenges and have a personal, unwavering dedication to their success.
Most importantly, our report is instructive as well because it sheds light — through the profiles of three public charter school leaders of color from Louisiana, North Carolina, and California — on the principles that can help match our best current and future teachers with our nation’s students. Three of those principles that resonated with my two decades in education policy are:
First, fill our school leadership pipeline with talented educators of color who come from nontraditional backgrounds and fields of study. But how do we dispel the myth that there are not enough qualified and passionate people of color who can and want to fill this educational pipeline? One way to do this comes from Eric Sanchez, co-founder of Henderson Collegiate — a network of three schools serving elementary, middle and high school in Henderson, North Carolina. Instead of only recruiting future educators from traditional education programs, Eric also recruits graduates from university programs focusing on social justice and ethnic studies. And this encouragement doesn’t end once the teachers reach the classroom — we must provide clear pathways for these teachers to pursue school leadership.
Second, school leaders and education policymakers of all colors must be committed to seeing and promoting diversity as an asset, not a deficit; an opportunity, not an obstacle. Imagine how better prepared our children will be for the world of tomorrow if they have been taught the history behind their identity, the language behind their culture, and the geography behind their journey. While nearly all schools struggle with activating this principle for the benefit of our students, our report demonstrates that public charter schools are making substantial progress where traditional public schools haven’t.
Third, achievement and demonstrated success — not myths, preconceptions, and inherited political biases — must be the basis upon which we support the best educational opportunities for all our children. For example, by their design, public charter schools have the flexibility to create and finetune curricula, teaching methods, and optimal outcomes that traditional public schools do not. So, why would we ever consider putting obstacles in any educational paths that are showing real achievement?
Race and identity of both our educators and students is only one factor in the holistic successes we are all working towards. However, it’s also true that all schools across our country in every community have historically not valued students’ diversity and identity as assets to enrich the education they receive. Public charter schools are making real progress to expose this blind spot and make the needed course corrections to ensure the success we’ve seen for some students are the norm for all.
Ron Rice Jr. is a former two term Newark, NJ city councilman, chief advisor to the New Jersey Department of Education, and is currently Senior Director, Government Relations at the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools.
[/media-credit] Participants in the DanceLogic program. (Facebook)
Shanel Edwards, co-instructor of danceLogic, stated that “danceLogic is helping these girls have access to the arts realm and science world as possible career paths, it is allowing them to stretch their own boundaries of what success looks like for them. ”DanceLogic, a unique S.T.E.A.M. program that combines dance and computer coding leading to the development of original choreography and performance, is continuing onto its second year. Girls ranging from the ages of 13 through 18 years participate in the program held at West Park Cultural Center in Philadelphia and learn the value of focus, dedication, and teamwork, as well as industry standard coding language.
During the dance class, led by instructors Edwards of D2D The Company and Annie Fortenberry, a performer with Ballet 180, the girls learn dance skills and movement techniques. This is followed by an hour of learning industry standard coding language under the direction of coding instructor Franklyn Athias, senior vice president of Network and Communications Engineering at Comcast. “I’m helping the kids see that someone, just like them, was able to use Science and Technology to find a very successful career,” Athias expressed in a press release.
The girls use coding to create their own choreography. “The combinations of dance and logic have good synergies. Learning something like dance requires practice, just like coding,” said Athias. “The dance is more physical, but it requires the students to try, fail, and try again. Before long, the muscle memory kicks in and the student forgets how hard it was before. Coding is really the same thing. Learning the syntax of coding is not a natural thing. Repetition is what makes you become good at it. After learning the first programming language, the students can learn other programming languages because it becomes much easier.”
“My favorite thing about the program is that the students can explore leadership roles. By building their own choreography and supporting each other in coding class, they navigate creating and sharing those creations, as well as resolving conflict to make one cohesive dance. There’s a lot of beauty and bravery in that process,” stated Fortenberry.
]The very first session of danceLogic culminated with the girls performing choreography and sharing what they learned through coding and how it has impacted their lives.
Kids arrive at school with large achievement gaps between rich and poor, and the achievement gaps grow over the summer. Now two new studies show that the summer learning gap between the lower and middle classes may be narrowing while the rich surge ahead of everyone.
A May 22, 2018, report from the National Center for Education Statistics tracked more than 18,000 kids who attended kindergarten in 2010-11 and followed up with their parents in the fall of 2011 to see how they spent their summer. It’s a nationally representative group, expressly selected to mimic the actual racial, ethnic, income and geographic diversity in the country.
By many measures, poor kids participated in fewer educationally enriching activities over the summer than middle class and wealthy kids. Only 7 percent of poor kids and 13 percent of “near” poor kids (families of four living on an income of $22,000 to $44,000 a year) went to summer camp. Roughly 40 percent of non-poor kids — middle-class and wealthy — attended summer camp. The poor were less likely to go on cultural outings. For example, only 32 percent of poor kids and 44 percent of “near” poor kids went to an art gallery, a museum or a historical site over the summer. Almost two-thirds, or 63 percent, of non-poor kids, did. Only 15 percent of poor kids attended a concert or a play. One third of non-poor kids did.
More than half of rich and middle-class parents said they read to their children every day during the summer. Fewer than 40 percent of poor kids’ parents did so.
But there were surprises too. A larger subset of poor families than non-poor families said they had their children work on math and writing activities every day. For example, one fourth of poor families said they engaged in writing activities with their kids each day. Only 12 percent of non-poor families did this.
A couple pieces of egalitarian news: three-quarters of kids played outside every day, regardless of household income. And one-third of kindergarten graduates of all income levels looked at or read books every day.
Disparities in how low, middle and high income parents invest in their children during the summer are nothing new. But it’s interesting to see how they have changed over time. The last time NCES studied how kindergarteners spent their summer, in the summer of 1999, the questions were slightly different. But it seems that low-income families were even less likely to participate in activities with their children back then. For example, only 20 percent of children from low-income families with less educated parents went to art, science or discovery museums over the summer — roughly 12 percentage points lower than in 2011. Forty-five percent of low-income children went to a zoo, aquarium or petting farm back in 1999 — roughly 9 percentage points lower than in 2011.
At first glance, it seems that low-income families are now more involved with their children and investing in them more. Perhaps the summer experience gap between low- and high-income children is narrowing. But the 2011 NCES report focused on children living in poverty and not in wealth. All the non-poor children are lumped together, be they middle, upper-middle or upper class, and their summer experiences are all averaged into one number. It doesn’t detect or highlight growing disparities among these income groups.
Sociologists, however, are finding that parental investment in their children has diverged sharply over the last 40 years with growing gaps between the middle and the upper classes. In a May 2018 paper published in the American Sociological Review, researchers from the University of California at Berkeley and Colorado State University found that the most affluent Americans are driving this difference, spending ever higher amounts of money on their children’s education and enrichment, from after-school lessons to summer camps.
They also found that this increase in parental investment in children was directly related to growing income inequality. That is, in states where income inequality grew a lot, so did disparities in parental investments. The higher the income inequality, the larger share of their income rich people spent on their children.
“Affluent parents might see rising income inequality as really making a winner-take-all economy and feel a strong push to give their kids every advantage they can,” said Daniel Schneider, professor of sociology at Berkeley, in a press release.
In other words, rising income inequality not only leaves the rich with more money to spend but also reshapes parents’ desires to invest larger portions of their money in their own children. High-income parents are not simply spending more in general but are targeting their spending toward their children.
Money doesn’t seem to be a replacement for time. Despite time-pressured lives, the sociologists found that high-income parents did not reduce the amount of time they spent together with their children.
Today’s income inequality is not only leading to unequal investment in children, but also laying a foundation for even more unequal adult lives in the future.
This story about kindergarten summerwas written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
More than 100 students at the 43rd Annual Neighborhoods USA (NUSA) Conference in Birmingham on Friday created their own city where technology is paramount and littering and cyberbullying are not tolerated.
The City of Diversity – with the slogan, “Where Everybody Counts and YOU Matter” – was a “tech city” and it even came with an election season to give students a taste of politics.
Birmingham is hosting the 43rd Annual Neighborhoods USA (NUSA) Conference. The four-day event, which ends May 26, features a series of panels, workshops, and collaborative events that encourage networking, camaraderie, and idea-sharing. The theme for 2018 is “Building Tomorrow’s Community Today.”
Creating a city during the youth conference was a lot harder than imagined, said Annissa Owens, a rising junior at Shades Valley High School.
“You have to find neighborhood presidents, city councils, a mayor; you have to find transportation, how to get around,” she said.
However, Owens, 15, said she is grateful for the experience which included her role of getting people out to vote.
“[Citizens] have to get the law they want to be passed, and to do that, they have to vote for whoever they want to be mayor,” she said. “I think my part is important because if you want your voice to be heard you should go vote. So, you can’t get mad when the change you wanted didn’t happen if you don’t vote.”
DeRenn Hollman, 13, who will attend Ramsay High School in the fall, was a mayoral candidate and said his goal was to “make the city more comfortable and like easier for people.”
“I want more technology, and you won’t have to work as hard for things,” he said. “It’s a tech-heavy city, so it’s easy, but the easiest thing to do is to participate in the things the city has going on.”
Running for elected office wasn’t as easy he thought.
“Campaigning is hard because you have another candidate who is just as qualified as you,” he said. “But you also have a team behind you and people who support you and believe in you. It’s still hard to go up there and speak in front of people though.”
The candidates had two major campaign issues: cyberbullying and littering.
“You’re either for littering to be a crime or against littering to be a crime,” Owens said. “You’re either for social media to end because of cyberbullying or you’re against social media to end because of cyberbullying.”
Hollman said, “as a mayor I want some cyberbullying to stop, but I don’t think social media should have to end because of it. Social media is fun but use it responsibly.”
Campaigning taught the students some valuable lessons.
“You still have to go through a lot of different people (such as the legislative branch) and if they don’t like it, they cannot go through with it,” Hollman said. “You can’t just say ‘littering is a crime’; you have to send it to your council to approve it. If they don’t like the law they can vote against it.”
Owens said he now sees some things differently.
“Some things are not as easy as it sounds,” she said. “Like getting extra transportation is not as easy as I thought it was. Like getting a new bus. You have to go through voting and funding to get those new things.”
Danny Brister, operations manager for the City of Birmingham Mayor’s Office Division of Youth Services and co-chair for the NUSA Youth Conference, said the message for students was simple.
“We told them that we need their impact, their intelligence, we need them to engage,” Brister said. “At the age of 18 a young person can serve as neighborhood president. That’s important for them to know. As early as 16 they can vote in their neighborhood elections. We hope they gain an understanding that it takes a lot of work. We hope they leave inspired to make a change.”
Birmingham is hosting the 43rd Annual Neighborhoods USA (NUSA) Conference. The four-day event, which ends May 26, features a series of panels, workshops, and collaborative events that encourage networking, camaraderie, and idea-sharing. The theme for 2018 is “Building Tomorrow’s Community Today.”
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…
Earlier this year, Mayor Randall L. Woodfin invited Birmingham City Schools’ students, children of city employees and students attending other schools in Birmingham to reflect on what inspires them about the Magic City. Students could draw anything from their favorite park or school to their community and even the mayor for the “My Birmingham. My Mayor. And Me’’ art contest.
There were more than 200 entries from grades kindergarten to 12th. Judges were impressed by the submissions, which included colorful charcoal pieces, collages, paintings, colored pencil works and even a sculpture of the mayor. On Tuesday, April 17, Woodfin recognized the first-place winners during the Birmingham City Council meeting. Woodfin congratulated each student and thanked them for showcasing what they loved about the city.
“All of these submissions show the tremendous talent of students in Birmingham. I thank each student for dedicating their time for the contest, each teacher for guiding them through the process, and every parent for supporting their child in this endeavor,’’ the mayor said.
This month’s visit to City Hall was a first for Zaiderick Hayes, a fifth grader at Avondale Elementary School. He said he got the idea to create a collage for his winning piece after doing research on the internet. Zaiderick included some of his favorite places in Birmingham and a hand-drawn image of the mayor.
“It wasn’t hard. It took two days to draw the mayor,’’ said Zaiderick, whose art work has won other awards. At Avondale Elementary, an award-winning piece he did for a different contest will be featured on the school T-shirt next year.
Said Principal Courtney Nelson: “I’m proud of Zaiderick and all of his accomplishments. He is an art legend at Avondale.’’
Art work by students receiving first, second and third place will be on display on the third floor of City Hall through April. Art work by all other students will be on display at various libraries that part of the Birmingham Public Library system. To see a list of libraries hosting the art work, please visit www.birminghamal.gov.
This contest was made possible by The Mayor’s Office; Division of Youth Services; Birmingham Museum of Art; Arlington House; Birmingham Public Library; Birmingham City Schools; Birmingham City Schools Dr. Lisa Herring and McDonald’s.
C-SPAN announced Wednesday that Ashleigh Richardson and Ta’Kaiya Cooper, students at Ramsay High School in Birmingham are second-prize winners in C-SPAN’s national 2018 StudentCam competition. They will receive $1,500 for their documentary, “You Matter,” about the 15th Amendment. Their video will air on C-SPAN at 5:50 a.m. CST and throughout the day on April 11.
“Congratulations to Ashleigh and Ta’Kaiya as second-prize winners in C-SPAN’s national StudentCam documentary competition – it’s a terrific recognition,” said Adam Falk, Senior Vice President, State Government Affairs, Charter Communications. “This year, C-SPAN’s StudentCam contest gave students the opportunity to learn more about and deeply appreciate the U.S. Constitution and its impact on our local community. We are proud to partner with them on this important initiative.”
Each year since 2006, C-SPAN partners with its local cable television providers in communities nationwide to invite middle school students (grades 6-8) and high school students (grades 9-12) to produce short documentaries about a subject of national importance. This year students addressed the theme, “The Constitution & You: Choose a provision of the U.S. Constitution and create a video illustrating why it’s important to you.”
In response, C-SPAN received a record 2,985 video submissions from over 5,700 students in 46 states and Washington, D.C. Students worked in teams or as individuals to address a wide range of public policy issues, from the freedoms of the First Amendment and the right to bear arms, to equality and the powers of Congress.
“With so much national debate about government power and personal freedoms, we were eager to hear students’ perspectives on what the Constitution means to them,” said C-SPAN’s Manager of Education Relations Craig McAndrew. “Students across the country engaged in conversation on the local level with elected officials, experts, community leaders and educators to explore how national issues impact their daily lives.”
The most popular provisions of the Constitution explored by students were the First Amendment (26 percent), followed by the Second Amendment (16 percent) and the 14th Amendment (11 percent).
C-SPAN is funded by America’s cable television companies, which support StudentCam. In Birmingham, C-SPAN is available locally through Spectrum.
Ashleigh and Ta’Kaiya are among more than 300 students across the country winning a total of $100,000, including one grand-prize winner, four first-prize winners, 16 second-prize winners, 32 third-prize winners and 97 honorable mentions.
The 150 winning videos may be viewed at http://www.studentcam.org/and may be used in a broadcast with attribution to C-SPAN. To schedule an interview with one or more of the winning students, please contact Pam McGorry at pmcgorry@c-span.org.
The annual competition is sponsored by the C-SPAN Education Foundation. Videos were evaluated by a panel of educators and C-SPAN representatives based on the thoughtful examination of the competition’s theme, quality of expression, inclusion of varying sides of the documentary’s topic, and effective incorporation of C-SPAN programming.
Ten students sat with white lab coats, stethoscopes around their necks, waiting to receive pins and certifications for their work in nursing academy.
These weren’t college students, though. They were students from Robinson Elementary School in Fairfield in grades third through sixth. This is the first year the school started its Exploratory Nursing Program, and on Tuesday, students received recognition for their work.
Jennifer Coleman, a professor at Samford University School of Nursing and member of the Birmingham Black Nurses Association (BBNA), said she was impressed with the students’ level of knowledge of healthcare.
“These children were giving out information that we give our college students . . . the future of healthcare is in good hands; I see some healthcare leaders, some CEOs of healthcare organizations.”
Coleman, who was joined by Deborah Zimmerman and Martha Dawson – also members of the BBNA – visited the school when the program began in December, and said students were very hands-on.
“We talked about nursing, healthcare, the importance of activity, exercise, nutrition, we taught them CPR [cardiopulmonary resuscitation],” Coleman said. “One of our nurses let them all stick her finger to check her blood glucose. They asked questions, and we realized how amazing they were. They were asking such high-level questions . . . they surpassed our expectations. They’re so smart, inquisitive.”
Students were also taught how to take blood pressure, listen to heart rates, and check blood sugar levels for diabetes. They presented information about hypertension, health and wellness, how to test for the flu, how to properly wash hands and how to perform CPR on adults and infants.
“If your family member is not responding to you and on the floor, you have to know how to do CPR,” said Ophelia Acquah, a teacher at Robinson Elementary School, who developed the program. “There might not always be another adult around.”
Parents were also impressed with the results. Lakecia Coleman (no relation to the professor) said her 11-year-old daughter Ja’Nia, who received her pin on Tuesday, has always talked about being a doctor or nurse.
The program helped her daughter become passionate about pursuing the healthcare field, Lakecia said.
“She’s been questioning all the family on their health,” Lakecia said. “She’s been looking into it more now. One of her uncles is a diabetic, and she’s been asking a lot of questions since she got started in the program. My husband recently had surgery so she’s been on all of us about our health.”
Healthcare is a good field of work, but it’s more than a career, she said.
“[Ja’Nia] wants to be healthy and she wants our family to be healthy,” Lakecia said. “So, she’s going to be on our backs about it until we get it together. We’re going to be in good hands with these young people leading the way.”
Ophelia Acquah, a teacher at Robinson Elementary School, developed the program to introduce students to a diverse field, she said.
“Most of the career academies are in the high schools, but the pace the world is going, the kids need to be exposed at an early age – the earlier the better,” said Acquah, who has no background in healthcare but a passion for finding solutions to needs. “A lot of times students in low-income areas are forgotten, but it’s my responsibility as an educator to find a need and fix it.”
The program went beyond health and included math, Acquah said.
“[Students] had to apply what they learned from the professionals to what they learned in the lab and decide what is the problem affecting the students. They came up with weight,” she said. “They learned math calculations and how to find averages and how to find research. They worked together. They worked as a team to put the slides together.”
Students read articles, researched, and checked for accuracy with their sources, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. They also had labs for four weeks and “worked with their classmates as if they were nurses,” Acquah said. “One of the kids said ‘my patient’ so they had patients that came into the lab and had their weight and blood pressure checked.”
Students were asked take notes on findings, she said.
“They noticed that their peers weight fluctuated, not because they gained weight, but because they had heavier clothes on,” Acquah said. “So, these were things they considered and looked at in their research.”
Professionals also spoke to the students. “They had a dental hygienist come to class,” Acquah said. “We had a doctor of psychology from Lawson State Community College teach how to conduct their research. That’s how they designed their surveys.”
The program has been a success.
“I had some students that came to me saying ‘next year I don’t want to be a patient, I want to be a nurse,’ Acquah said. “And I hope that we do have more who are passionate about this next year.”
