“We have to harden our schools, not soften them up,” President Donald Trump said at a White House event days after the Feb. 14 school shooting in Parkland, Fla.
There is no evidence to support such an assertion. I know, because I’ve looked for it. I have spent close to a decade studying various aspects of American high school life, culminating last year in a book that questions whether high-security schools do students more harm than good. In Rhetoric, Embodiment, and the Ethos of Surveillance: Student Bodies in the American High School, I make a controversial suggestion: We need to lessen school security.
We may think that more metal detectors, more sniffing dogs, and more armed police officers will keep students safer. The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved the STOP School Violence Act last week by a 407-10 vote to provide training and funding for violence prevention. The bill doesn’t allow funds to be used to provide firearms, but could fund threat assessments and crisis-intervention teams. A similar Senate bill is awaiting a vote.
The darker side of all these safety measures is that they conflate schools with prisons, engendering the school climate with fear, distrust, paranoia—and, yes, violence…
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When a deadly or life-threatening crime takes place at an educational institution, the public justifiably asks: Did the school do enough to maintain safety? At such times, “we can’t say anything because of student privacy” is a profoundly incorrect answer—legally, morally, and practically.
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) was enacted in 1974 to protect students against law enforcement snooping into secret files their schools might be keeping without their knowledge. Over the years, aggressive lawyering by school and college attorneys has distorted the statute to encompass much more—but not nearly as much as school administrators insist.
Journalists and concerned parents have been unable to obtain many documents from the Broward County school system that might help the public understand whether school authorities responded to the Parkland, Fla., mass shooter’s capacity for violence with adequate urgency. Instead, they have met the “FERPA wall of secrecy” in asking about the background of Nikolas Cruz.
Government records, including those maintained by public schools, are normally presumed to be open for public inspection, even when the records contain sensitive or embarrassing information. But schools have widely come to misunderstand FERPA as preventing them from providing the public even with an anonymized factual description of serious disciplinary incidents or safety problems that involve students.
As a result, parents and community members regularly hear that “something bad happened” at a school but that they can’t be told what it is or whether anyone was punished. This makes it impossible for the public to hold schools and colleges accountable for how they use their governmental authority…
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This moment is one of tumult for our nation. In the past year, multiple mass shootings have left hundreds dead. Wide exposure of workplace sexual assault has prompted challenging reflections, conversations, and reckonings. Kneeling athletes and protests in the streets have launched a national dialogue about the experiences of communities of color and the meaning of patriotism.
Unprecedented political divisiveness has contributed to a national discourse simmering with anger and suspicion. For students and educators, it can be terrifying, it can be overwhelming, it can be uneasy. It can also be incredibly powerful.
As educators, school leaders, and school partners, it’s easy to exist within the illusion that we are able to script our students’ educational journeys. We agonize over curricular development and homework completion. We mandate graduation requirements and work tirelessly to perfect course schedules. And yet, students’ lives exist within and beyond those bubbles. And their eyes are wide open to the travails of broader society. Rather than luring students back onto our prescribed paths in the wake of the Parkland, Fla., tragedy and other moments of upheaval, we must make our schools a space where they can make sense of the world…
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School administrators across the country have a choice to make this week. Judging from pre-emptive censorship efforts in two districts, some of them are going to get it wrong.
To mark the one-month anniversary of the Feb. 14 deadly school shooting in Parkland, Fla., students nationwide plan to walk out of school for 17 minutes to demand their state and local representatives address gun violence. Students, who are among the organizers of the ENOUGH National School Walkout on March 14 and a separate day-long National School Walkout on April 20, are using social media to rally classmates. In a statement posted to Instagram and Facebook, student organizers—who hail from more than a dozen states—call their joint efforts “part of an escalating force in a longer fight.”
Yet, in at least two school districts, administrators are seeking to silence student voices with threats of discipline. In a now-deleted public Facebook post, Superintendent Curtis Rhodes of the Needville Independent School District, near Houston, warned against student participation in any type of protest during school hours. He threatened a three-day suspension for any participating student because, he wrote in the post, students “are here for an education and not a political protest…”
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In a typical high school civics class, students learn about local and federal government and media literacy, as well as citizenship and participation. They might learn how to contact their local representative, use social media for advancing a cause, or debate an issue they feel strongly about. But few students—and only a small fraction of adult citizens for that matter—participate in a highly contentious national debate.
Mere weeks after the Parkland, Fla., high school shooting that killed 17 students and educators, the news cycle would normally be winding down. But this tragedy doesn’t seem to be fading from memory quite as fast as previous school shootings. The reason is obvious: Parkland’s teenage students aren’t staying quiet.
As mass shootings become a disturbing cultural norm, the country’s reaction seems to follow a familiar pattern. America collectively gasps. We watch footage of children filing out of a school, arms raised. We rage on Twitter. We share political memes, shaming or congratulating the nation’s lawmakers for their “thoughts and prayers” refrain. We make donations to whichever side we’re on. And then we move on. Until more bullets fly…
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Last spring’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District reaffirmed the importance of providing, in the words of Chief Justice John Roberts, an “appropriately ambitious” education for the nation’s 6.7 million children with disabilities. The court ruled that in order for school districts to meet their obligations under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, they must offer students with disabilities an individualized education plan that enables them to make progress and be adequately challenged to meet their full potential.
The court described this standard in its ruling as a “fact intensive exercise.” From our vantage, that fact-intensive exercise must include processes to ensure that schools actually provide the mandates that appear in each student’s IEP.
In recent years, there have been substantial structural improvements to existing special education practices. Schools now typically place greater emphasis on educating students with disabilities in general education classes and have adopted stringent guidelines to ensure that students with disabilities have access to the general education curriculum.
Despite these improvements, the U.S. Department of Education determined in July that fewer than half of the states are meeting their obligations under IDEA. Most of those states failing to follow educational guidelines have done so for at least two years…
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The District of Columbia public school lottery deadline for pre-K through 8th grade students is fast approaching; just as new figures confirm that District public charter schools now educate 47 percent of all D.C. students enrolled in public schools. This vote of confidence in these unique public schools is a tribute to the diversity and strength of the educational programs they offer.
Tuition-free and open to all District-resident students, public charter schools are free to design and develop their school curriculum and culture, while being held accountable for improved student performance by the city’s Public Charter School Board.
D.C.’s school lottery, accessible online at myschooldc.org, allows families to choose from the District’s public schools, charter and traditional, that are out-of-boundary—schools that are not the local option provided by D.C. Public Schools and for any pre-K program. Parents and guardians rank up to 12 choices, allowing them to express a preference for over-subscribed programs. Names are drawn at random until available spots are filled.
The lottery is backed up by practical support, including an education festival with different schools exhibiting and an email and telephone hotline with multiple language options. Free public transportation allows students to attend schools across the city without extra cost.
[/media-credit] Dr. Ramona Edelin is executive director of the D.C. Association of Chartered Public Schools.
While some schools are in such demand that there are waitlists, the lottery randomly fills places, but shortlists students who don’t make it into a chosen school—some 85 percent of students are awarded a place at one of their top three school choices.
Charters were introduced to the District to raise public school standards by increasing choice. While these unique public schools have led the way in raising standardized test scores and on-time high school graduation rates, they also have introduced themes and approaches that boost college and career readiness. This has been particularly important in the District’s most underserved communities: charter students in D.C.’s Wards Seven and Eight are twice as likely to achieve state benchmarks for college and career preparedness than their peers enrolled in traditional public schools.
Thanks to an expansion in preschool pushed by public charter schools and the city-run school system, nearly all four year olds and most three year olds attend preschool. Charters have the flexibility to tailor their programs to provide effective early education.
By allowing public charter schools to offer different paths to educate young scholars so that they may access the higher education and advanced career options that position them to succeed in life, best practices evolve from which all educators can learn. Families also are brought to the table because, as schools of choice, parents and guardians have a say in what works for their children. Public education dollars follow the student in the District, so charters have incentive to inspire confidence.
The District of Columbia model of school choice for all regardless of income has multiplied quality public school options—especially for the least advantaged. Today, three in four students exercise families’ rights to attend an out-of-boundary school rather than simply accepting their neighborhood school place. And as the next generation of children is increasingly provided with the skills necessary to succeed, all of our communities can look forward to better opportunities and a more secure future.
Dr. Ramona Edelin is the executive director of the DC Association of Chartered Public Schools.
AFRO — “Our society has treated the abuse, maltreatment, violence, and chaotic experiences of our children as an oddity that is adequately dealt with by emergency response systems… These services are needed and are worthy of support—but they are a dressing on a greater wound… Later, in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood [affected persons will develop] behavioral, learning, social, criminal, and chronic health problems.”
This is the assessment of Dr. Robert Anda, M.D., one of the principal investigators of the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACEs), conducted by the Maryland State Council on Child Abuse & Neglect in its annual report presented to Governor Hogan and the state legislature in June 2017.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, “Childhood experiences, both positive and negative, have a tremendous impact on future violence victimization and perpetration, and lifelong health and opportunity. Research in this area has been referred to as Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), [which has] been linked to risky health behaviors, chronic health conditions, low life potential, and early death. As the number of ACEs increases, so does the risk for these outcomes.”
Regi Taylor (LinkedIn Photo)
This evaluation is nowhere more applicable than to children of Baltimore City, where there’s a strong case for an epidemic of ACEs. Looked at through this prism the crises in education, delinquency, violence, crime and substance abuse come clearly into focus. Reports last year that zero students at thirteen Baltimore high schools demonstrated math proficiency should be investigated for the likelihood that Adverse Childhood Experiences played a role in those results.
Many behaviors attributed to Baltimore youth mimic the symptoms displayed by military personnel returning from war zones, described as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD. A case can be argued that the environment for too many of Baltimore’s children resembles a combat atmosphere. The unrelenting stressors encroaching these kids could be described as Contemporaneous Traumatic Stress Disorder, because it is felt 24/7 with no end in sight.
Low academic achievement, attendance and graduation rates, high delinquency, violence and incarceration rates, are not due to inherent susceptibility or natural predisposition of Baltimore’s children toward failure. Not only do the city’s youth have their senses constantly bombarded with negative, painful, threatening stimuli from various sources inside and outside their homes, feelings of helplessness and hopelessness are compounded when their savior of last resort, their government, is viewed as just another threat.
Like the children of Iraq and Afghanistan, who’ve lived through a generation of war, imagine the insecurity Baltimore’s children must feel living under a government, in the person of police, who, from their perception, torment and brutalize them, their families and community. What are the emotions of kids who witness military-clad police with tactical weapons, gear and vehicles patrolling their neighborhoods in convoys, confronting their families and neighbors, and sometimes them directly, on top of the toxic social and cultural pressures stressing them daily?
For the children of Baltimore, epidemic rates of murder, assault, rape, gang activity, strong-arm police, child abuse, domestic abuse, substance abuse, overdose, illiteracy, extreme poverty, homelessness, malnutrition, undernourishment, lead poisoning, incarceration, inadequate heat, pest infestation and HIV, are not statistics. It’s a day in the life. Any wonder that test scores flop when more adversity than books are carried to school every day?
Regi Taylor is a native of West Baltimore and a writer.
The selective outrage of partisan ideologues in the education space is a well-known phenomenon and nowhere is that more on display than in the muted reaction to the scandal surrounding the 2017 graduation rate that has been unraveling in Washington in recent weeks. With the release of the final report of the audit ordered by the city’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, we know, unequivocally, that more than one-third of the Washington public schools’ class of 2017—a total of 900 students—were only granted diplomas because their teachers and administrators flouted attendance policies and misused credit-recovery programs.
One would think that the loudest accountability hawks in the education reform movement would be beside themselves, writing op-eds, and taking the battle to Twitter in the name of justice for students. But as the details of the graduation-rate investigation by NPR and Washington’s local public radio station (WAMU) have emerged, these avatars of accountability have been uncharacteristically silent. The very same folks who are quick to jump on the slightest whisper of wrongdoing in virtual charters and voucher programs, for example, have suddenly lost their aversion to dishonesty and fraud. When the reforms they support are carried out by people they like and align with politically, their commitment to accountability appears to soften. And maybe that would be understandable, except that students and families suffer when silence settles over a deliberate and well-orchestrated injustice inside a school system.
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Last month, a pair of Apple shareholders demanded in an open letter that the company address growing concerns about children’s addiction to their products. In light of research on the detrimental effects of electronic-media use, investment firm JANA Partners and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System argued, parents need better resources to make sure children are using devices “in an optimal manner.” While Apple defended its parental controls and protections for children, the letter was proof that more people are starting to realize what many in the scientific community have been saying for years: Overuse of screen-based technology is bad for children’s health.
Modern technology is powerfully addictive, especially for the young, developing mind. With teenagers ages 13-18 averaging almost nine hours of entertainment media use a day—that doesn’t include homework or other media use in school—it’s no wonder many parents are starting to notice. (Even two of technology’s most prominent creators, Bill Gates and the late Steve Jobs, famously admitted in interviews that they limited their own children’s screen use.) Psychologists and neuroscientists have shown correlations (and in many cases, causation) between overusing technology and lower grades, trouble sleeping, inability to focus, poor self image, and depression and anxiety. Some research even shows a decrease in gray matter—the brain tissue responsible for sensory perception, memory, emotion, and self-control—in a technology addict’s cerebral cortex.
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By Jennifer Young
