On Monday, January 15, 2018, the holiday marking the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the NAACP and the Africa-America Institute announced a groundbreaking partnership during the 49th NAACP Image Awards.
[/media-credit] NAACP President Derrick Johnson. The NAACP and the Africa-America Institute announced a partnership to develop and distribute a curriculum designed to highlight the accomplishments, achievements and history of Africa and its Diaspora. (NAACP)
The NAACP will work with the AAI on the development and distribution of a curriculum designed to highlight the accomplishments, achievements and history of Africa and its Diaspora.
“It’s appropriate that on a day that we honor Dr. King as well as promote positive images of people of color, we announce to the world a partnership that includes a curriculum, learning exchange and a network for advocacy and activism on behalf of those of African descent in the United States and abroad, “said Derrick Johnson, President and CEO of the NAACP.
“AAI has a long history of academic exchange and educational meetings between Africa and America. Now is an extraordinary time and opportunity to partner with the NAACP and together connect the more than 42 million Afro-descendants with the brilliance of the African history and its contribution to modern civilization,” added Kofi Appenteng, President of the Africa-America Institute.
The curriculum from the NAACP/AAI Alliance will include content such as Africa’s Great Civilizations, the critically acclaimed series by Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Partners and NAACP chapters will benefit from organized screenings and lessons with an early education focus on positive identity formation and a more advanced curriculum that includes studies in social sciences.
A campaign kick-off will take place in February of 2018 as a part of Black History Month.
More than 1,000 people and organizations had some thoughts for DeVos and her team when it comes to these priorities, which the department will use to help decide who gets hundreds of millions of dollars in competitive grants.
DeVos had pitched giving applicants a leg-up in applying for the funds if they focus on school choice, innovation, citizenship, meeting the needs of children with disabilities, STEM, literacy, effective instruction, improving school climate, expanding economic opportunity, or helping military-connected students. She gave the education community thirty days to offer formal feedback.
She got nearly 1,500 comments from the education field. We read them, well, okay, fine, some of them, so you don’t have to.
“The Department should not reward states for adopting voucher programs that do not serve all students, fail to improve academic achievement, undermine public education funding, harm religious freedom and lack critical accountability for taxpayers,” the groups wrote.
In the next few weeks, I will be closing my time as a summer intern at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and beginning my final undergraduate year at Howard University in Washington, D.C. I’ve learned more about public education at the National Alliance in two months than I have in the past year.
However, even though I work for a charter school advocacy organization, I do not consider myself pro-charter. I am also not pro-district.
I’ve heard many arguments that support charter public schools and many that support district schools – all with valid points and facts to back them up.
So, when I began to find myself truly confused, I did what I always do. I looked up what Black people are saying about this. Black opinion + my own thoughts = a solid case to base my life decisions on. While it may not be the most mathematical equation for success, it works for me. I googled “Black leaders charter schools” and felt a small sense of relief come over me because I was going to get an answer.
[/media-credit] Nicole Sahbaee is a rising senior at Howard University and a participant in the Walton-UNCF K-12 Education Fellow program.
I wasn’t going to have to wonder anymore because the Black leaders in education would tell me what their point of view is, why they have it, where the research came from and what they are going to do about it.
Looking back on this now, I’m aware that it sounds like I don’t use my brain to critically think, but we all do this in some form. In politics, people look up what the standard Democratic or Republican viewpoint is; in media people go to their favorite artist’s page to read their view; and in school, students go to their favorite teacher for their opinion.
As I began to read through the articles, I found topics about the NAACP and Black Lives Matter being pitted against Black leaders in education. I was pissed. So, two huge organizations that have Black prosperity at their core are at odds with Black education leaders and parents? I was so irritated that I closed the screen and went to deal with this confusion another day.
Weeks passed and I continued to gain information. I read the letter that had been written and signed by 160 Black leaders in support of charters, I watched clips of the NAACP’s special hearings on charter schools, and I researched teachers unions and their disdain for the charter movement. I turned over every rock I could find for some sort of answer.
Despite all the research and opinions, I still could not figure out who was on the right side of history. I could not look to Black leaders in this situation because they are consumed with the politics of the district vs. charter debate, just like many others in education.
This isn’t the first time I found disappointment with Black role models – Raven-Symoné was a huge heart breaker – but this is too important to ignore. Every second that is spent focusing on which school is better or what should be the dominant structure is doing a disservice to our children. Our children are the ones suffering without a quality education and are then chastised by society for not meeting “the bar.”
I get that money, politics, and power are important, but we can’t afford to fight this fight with each other. We have no choice but to be unified. According to the Civil Rights Data Collection, Black students are suspended and expelled at a rate three times greater than White students. This is something we should be focusing on. If our children don’t make it, that not only affects us but it is on us. The White school leaders that are trying to make change will be heartbroken if the years of work they put into improving public schools don’t pay off, but we will be crippled.
This is not an attack on Black leaders today, this is a cry for help. I’m a 21-year-old intern, trying to graduate from college. I’m doing everything in my power to change the narrative for our children, but I don’t have the power, yet. Black leaders, I’m begging you to use your power to create. Create the schools for our children that also provide jobs for our people. Position it so that Black school leaders have the resources to train up our kids. If you are an organization with the words Black, African American, Negro, or Colored People in your title then this is your duty, this is your fight.
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, just take a page from “Pimp My Ride” and make it better. At the very least, create a space for conversations to flow freely regarding the schools our children go to. We may never reach a consensus and that is okay. There are multiple different ways to learn, to teach, and to lead. If you can’t do it, use your resources to find someone who can. This isn’t a conversation I wish to pick up in twenty years when I am in your shoes and we don’t have twenty more years to wait. I don’t care what structure is used to educate our kids, we just need something that works.
Yesterday, a twelve-member task force, convened by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), released a report on “Quality Education.” The task force was formed in December 2016 after the NAACP’s October 2016 call for a national moratorium on expanding charter schools until a set of conditions were met.
The charge of the task force was to bring forward “practical recommendations that respond to the urgency of this resolution and the inequities undermining public education.” In order to fulfill their charge, from December 2016 to April 2017, the task force held public hearings in seven cities—New Haven, Memphis, Orlando, Los Angeles, Detroit, New Orleans, and New York.
The report acknowledged that, from testimonials at the public hearings, they found some positive aspects of charter schools. However, the report ultimately concluded that “even the best charters are not a substitute for more stable, adequate and equitable investments in public education in communities that serve all children.”
Criticism of Public Hearings
According to NAACP task report report, the “hearing format [for the public meetings] ensured testimony” from all of the following stakeholders: educators, administrators, school policy experts, charter school leaders, parents, advocates, students, and community leaders. However, some have questioned the authenticity and fairness of these meetings, claiming that they did not include groups and individuals who were charter supporters.
For example, in Tennessee, members of Memphis Lift, a parent-activist organization, voiced disapproval when they were only allowed 12 minutes at the end of a four-hour meeting. Additionally, in Orlando, Minnesota education activist Rashad Anthony Turner was ushered out of the meeting by police after he interrupted a speech by Randi Weingarten, American Federation of Teachers President, because opponents of the moratorium were kept waiting.
Task Force Provides Five Recommendations Based on Public Hearings
According to the report, the testimonials illuminated the “perceived” benefits and problems with charter schools. Using those testimonials, the task force created five recommendations, summarized below, that would improve the quality of charter schools.
Recommendation #1: Provide more equitable and adequate funding for schools serving students of color. The task force argued that education funding has been “inadequate and unequal for students of color for hundreds of years.” In order to remedy the problem, the task force recommended that states should implement weighted student formula systems and model them after the systems that Massachusetts and California have pursued. They also recommended that the federal government should “fully enforce” the funding equity provisions within the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).
Recommendation #2: Invest productively in low-performing schools and schools with significant opportunity and achievement gaps. In order to ensure that all students receive a high-quality education, the task force recommends that federal, state, and local policies need to “sufficiently” invest in three things: creating incentives to attract and retain teachers, evolving instruction to be more challenging and inclusive, and providing more wraparound services for students such as health and mental services.
Recommendation #3: Develop and enforce robust charter school accountability measures. There were five parts within this recommendation. They are as follows:
Create and enforce a rigorous chartering authorizing and renewal process. The task force recommends that states should only allow districts to serve as authorizers. This is significant since, of the 44 states that allow charter schools, only four—Wyoming, Virginia, Iowa, and Kansas—have district-only charter authorization.
Create and enforce a common accountability system.
Monitor and require charter schools to admit and retain all students. This recommendation calls for open enrollment procedures, and asserts that charter schools should not be allowed to counsel out, push out, or expel students that they “perceive as academically or behaviorally struggling, or whose parents cannot maintain participation requirements or monetary fees.”
Create and monitor transparent disciplinary guidelines that meet students’ ongoing learning needs and prevent push out. The report recommends that charter schools should be required to follow the “same state regulations regarding discipline as public schools,” and use restorative justice practices.
Require charter schools to hire certified teachers. Many states allow charter schools to hire uncertified teachers at higher rates than traditional public schools, however Minnesota is not one of them.
Recommendation #4: Require fiscal transparency and equity. The task force recommends that all charter schools be held to the “same level of fiscal transparency and scrutiny as other public schools.”
Recommendation #5: Eliminate for-profit charter schools. This recommendation not only states that all for-profit charter schools should be eliminated, but that all for-profit management companies that run nonprofit charter schools should be eliminated as well. Approximately 13 percent of U.S. charter schools are run by for-profit companies. Additionally, at least 15 states allow virtual schools, with many of them operated by for-profit organizations.
Report Elicits Scrutiny from Education Advocates
In response to the NAACP report, Nina Rees, CEO and President of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS), issued a statement where she indicated that NAPCS was glad to see the NAACP recognize the value of charter schools and agreed with them that “whoever oversees a public school should take that responsibility seriously, have the highest expectations, and hold educators in the school accountable” for educating students.
However, Rees also asserted that the NAACP’s policy resolution and report failed to “acknowledge that Black parents are demanding more and better public-school options,” citing a nationally representative survey which found that found 82 percent of Black parents favored allowing parents to choose their child’s public school.
She also cited a 2015 CREDO Urban Charter Schools Report, which found that Black public charter school students gained 36 days of learning in math and 26 in reading over their non-charter school peers.
Chris Stewart, based in Minnesota and former director of outreach and external affairs for Education Post, asserted that “the NAACP has lost its way,” claiming that they have become an “unwitting tool of teacher unions” due to the union’s significant contributions to the NAACP over the years. He also claimed that the unions are “threatened by the growth and success of non-unionized charter schools.”
District-Charter Collaboration: Hope in a Time of Political Tension
The growing and contentious disagreements between education organizations and advocates regarding the merits of charter versus traditional district schools are not new and will likely continue to dominate the news cycle.
However, in recent years, a growing number of districts and charter schools have put aside their political differences and worked together in order to do what’s best for students. Our next two blog posts will examine the cities where some of those collaborative relationships are taking place, as well as provide history on district-charter collaboration in Minnesota.
Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) authorities convened with black publishers from around the country to discuss how to hold states accountable in assuring equity to its most vulnerable students.
During the 190th anniversary of the Black Press, the National Newspapers Publishers Association (NNPA) with the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation held a breakfast on Friday, March 24, at the Dupont Circle Hotel in Northwest to strategize against those who threaten to pigeonhole the federal education law.
“We have to continue to press our federal rights,” said Hilary O. Shelton, director of NAACP’s Washington bureau. “The new ESSA law does not have the same robust implementation that we’ve had before. What this means is that we still have to work hard to make sure the plan is right.
“But it’s not right if we’re not pushing the government to make sure they come up with the resources that we need,” he said. “They have more flexibility than ever before to undercut a lot of the gains that we have made even with the last three authorizations.”
Hilary O. Shelton, director of the NAACP’s Washington Bureau, speaks during a March 24 breakfast held by the National Newspapers Publishers Association (NNPA) at the Dupont Circle Hotel in northwest D.C. during the celebration of the 190th anniversary of the Black Press to discuss implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act. (Roy Lewis/The Washington Informer)
Shelton said the NAACP is deeply worried about new Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and how “our children” will be affected. He challenged the black and Hispanic publishers in the room to do diligent reporting, bringing the facts to its communities.
“You have to find out what your schools are in putting in their implementation plans before they are submitted to the Department of Education,” Shelton said. “Being able to report what that looks like before the implementation deadline day on April 3 is key.
“See exactly what officials in your local area have in store for our students,” he said. “I’d like to encourage you to monitor all that goes on along those lines. We’ve seen the tricks that get played throughout the country. We would like your stories to show what’s going on, on the ground so we can know what fight we have here in Washington, D.C.”
Susie Saavedra, senior director for policy and legislative affairs for the National Urban League’s Washington bureau, stressed how important ESSA is to communities of color.
“Education for the Urban League is the key to economic power and self sufficiency,” she said. “During the past few years we’ve been very engaged in education advocacy work through the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
“You might wonder what role do civil rights organizations play in this space, but for the Urban League it’s the heart of our mission,” Saavedra said. “We serve communities that are underserved in today’s public school system. The demographics have shifted as we know — the majority is kids of color and kids that live in poverty.”
Kristen Amundson, president and CEO of the National State Board of Education, said that when President Lyndon B. Johnson first signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the goal had been to promote equity and equality.
“Now we have the passage of ESSA and a great deal of that power and authority is coming back to states,” Amundson said. “When I tell you that it is states that is going to have to be protectors of equity and equality I understand that is a big ask.
“The part about the legislation that is going to be so essential is the stakeholder engagement,” she said. “It spells out groups that needs to be involved in the implementation of states plans including State Boards of Education members and civil rights organizations.”
Amundson said that states are, more or less, doing that, though some of them have done better than others.
“Now next month states are going to file their plans,” she said. “The real question is going to become is the stakeholder engagement one and done, or is this going to become a set way states do business. My argument is [that] it has to become engrained in everything you do. If parents, teachers and civil rights organizations are at the table, they will hold schools accountable.”
Amundson said a simple way for anyone with a vested interest to engage lawmakers is to demand a seat at the table.
“This is not the prom — don’t wait to be asked,” she said.
The 47th PDK/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools was released on August 24, 2015. The poll is an invaluable barometer of changing sentiments about K-12 education, and this year the results included an extensive review of attitudes toward testing in America.
Among the key findings:
The majority of parents said they would not excuse their own children from tests, yet this same majority feel there is too much emphasis on standardized testing, and believe they should have the right to opt their children out of those tests.
Nearly one-third of African-American parents say results from standardized tests are very important to improve schools and compare school quality, while only 15% of white parents said the same – a perspective supported by the ongoing advocacy by the NAACP and Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights for the inclusion of accountability measures in the reauthorization of ESEA.
One read of these results is that they reflect a growing negative public perception of testing due to the time and money spent on mandated accountability tests, and the painful rollout of new versions. A logical reaction is to reduce this burden, but there is a risk of an overreaction.
America’s students deserve a system where accountability does not trump learning – a comprehensive approach to ensure that kids get their needs met, and that we as a society are fulfilling our obligations to our most vulnerable learners. Significant improvements must be made – and the PDK/Gallup poll underscores the urgency of the issue.
In fact, these data highlight a critical gap in public understanding about assessments and the different ways they serve the learning process – a topic we have been researching for several years. Public opinion research conducted for NWEA showed parents clearly value assessments when they support student learning, provide timely results and take minimal time to conduct. When students were asked, they showed a sophisticated understanding of the difference between assessments that help them grow, and those that do not.
For this reason, NWEA is announcing a major initiative focused on improving assessment literacy for all. The initiative includes a Task Force comprised of both in-service and pre-service experts that will guide efforts to improve assessment literacy nationwide, a newly expanded AssessmentLiteracy.org website offering extensive resources to foster understanding of assessment and its role in learning, and professional learning opportunities for educators.
As a mission-driven not-for-profit, NWEA is committed to helping teachers, education leaders and parents build assessment systems that efficiently and effectively measure student mastery and growth. We are equally committed to helping ensure families, communities and our nation as a whole have the data we need to support each student’s success.
As President and CEO, Matt Chapman leads the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) in achieving its vision for student-centric education grounded in research-based evidence of what helps students learn. Since joining in December 2006, Matt has led NWEA in nearly quadrupling the number of students served, to over 7 million, and introduced new products and services while continuing NWEA’s focus on its mission.
Remember 
By Nicole Sahbaee Special to the AFRO
The 47th PDK/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools was released on August 24, 2015. The poll is an invaluable barometer of changing sentiments about K-12 education, and this year the results included an extensive review of attitudes toward testing in America.