Jay Z, Beyoncé Awarding $1M In Scholarships

Jay Z, Beyoncé Awarding $1M In Scholarships

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Correspondent

Hip-hop superstar Jay-Z and his wife, Beyoncé, have announced a new scholarship program that will award 10 scholarships worth $100,000 each to “exceptional” high school seniors who demonstrate financial needs.

“This back to school season, students in the On The Run II Tour markets, who are preparing for college, will be chosen by Boys and Girls Club of America,” according to a joint press release from Beyoncé’s “BeyGOOD Initiative” and Jay Z’s “The Shawn Carter Foundation.”

“Qualified students must demonstrate academic excellence and show financial needs that would make it hard for them to enter college or university for the academic year 2018-2019,” the release noted.

The markets will include Atlanta, Orlando, Miami, Arlington, Texas; New Orleans, Houston, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Clara, and Seattle.

The power couple has had a long history of helping students with The Shawn Carter Foundation spearheading college tours to historically Black colleges and universities and providing scholarships to college bound students throughout the country.

Through her BeyGOOD initiative, Beyoncé created the Formation Scholars Award, a merit program to help female students start or further their college education, and this year they announced the Homecoming Scholars Award, a second merit program, opened to qualified students, regardless of gender, to enter or continue their studies at one of eight HBCUs.

Hampton Educators Learn  Details of 1619 African Arrival

Hampton Educators Learn Details of 1619 African Arrival

Thirty Hampton City Schools educators spent mornings July 23-26 learning the details regarding the first African Arrival in English North America from subject matter experts. Thirty Hampton City Schools educators spent mornings July 23-26 learning the details regarding the first African Arrival in English North America from subject matter experts. The initiative is part of an effort to clarify the details of the 1619 arrival so that youth of Hampton, Virginia, and the nation learn the facts of this pivotal occurrence in American history.

As witnessed and recorded by John Rolfe, the first tobacco planter in the Virginia colony, on August 20, 1619, the White Lion entered the Chesapeake Bay, docked at Point Comfort (present day Hampton) with Africans from the country Angola, of the Bantu culture. They spoke the languages of the Kimbundu and Kikongo. Many were literate and hailed from highly organized societies.

Two of those Africans, named Antoney and Isabell, became servants of Captain William Tucker, Commander of the fort at Point Comfort. Around 1623 or 1624, the union of Isabell and Antoney birthed the first African child in English North America, named William Tucker. The other arriving Africans were interspersed within the Virginia colony, from Elizabeth City County to Jamestown.

Hampton 2019 Commemorative Commission Co-Chairs Dr. Colita Fairfax and Lt. Col. (Ret.) Claude Vann, were among the discussion leaders.

Students from Once-Segregated Norfolk School Change the Conversation on Race

Students from Once-Segregated Norfolk School Change the Conversation on Race

By Leonard E. Colvin,Chief Reporter

In February 1959, Patricia Turner and her brother James Turner, Jr., walked through the front door of the Norview Middle School and into the history books.

They were  two of the Norfolk 17,  the first Black students to desegregate six Norfolk public schools.

The Turners and the other 15 students made history after months of resistance by the city of Norfolk and the state of Virginia, each refusing to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s  decision five years earlier that segregated public schools were illegal.

During her time at Norview Middle and then Norview High School, Turner, like the 16 other Black students, endured isolation, verbal abuse and taunts inflicted by White students who were venting  hatred and anger inspired by a resentful dominant culture resistant to their history-making experience.

In 1963,  despite these challenges,  Pat Turner would graduate from Norview High School and set herself emotionally to never look back.

She attended business college, became an accountant, married briefly and  worked for Norfolk Public Schools for two decades.

Due to an Honorary Doctorate degree awarded by Old Dominion University, “Dr. Turner”  is now seeking to secure an “earned” ODU doctorate.

Over the past five years, although she may have succeeded in “erasing”  most  of the bad memories of long ago, she has managed to secure some emotional and moral closure in a way she could have little predicted.

Today, she regularly joins a group of her White former classmates for lunch at  Bubba’s Seafood Restaurant on Shore Drive In Virginia Beach.

As she did when she was in school with them, Turner is the lone Black sitting amidst the remaining White female members of the Norview Senior Class of 1963.

“I  sit and I am mostly quiet,” said Turner, who admits she is introverted. “During the lunches, we  do not talk about the past all the time.  But it has come up.

“I have been  able to educate them from the perspective of a member of the Norfolk 17, as they have educated me about what was going on with them back then.”

Turner and the  other 16 Black children desegregated those all-White schools during the fall of 1958 by federal law. But rather than admit them, the city closed all of the White schools which were targeted to be desegregated. It was the state law.

While the schools were closed,  many of the White  high school seniors  went to work or the military.  The traditional senior year transition to adulthood and college was erased.

Since no White students applied to attend any of the all-Black schools,  they remained opened.

“They (the White students at Norview) were told by their parents that we (the Norfolk 17)  were trying to take their schools and deny them an education,” Turner said. “So they were punishing us.   It was not our fault. Nor was it their fault, it was the city … the politicians  which closed the schools.

“I explained to them that we were just 17 little Black kids, trying to get an education” Turner said. “Segregation was illegal. But they did not understand that. Their parents  did not explain to them, why and what we were doing, until I explained it all. I also told them about me as a person.  Now they know.”

Turner said her  interaction with her White classmates started five years ago  when plans for the class of 1963’s 50th  reunion were being devised. She was approached to join them during the planning session in Nags Head.

“I was so surprised,” Turner  recently told the Guide. “Initially I  was very leery … afraid. I had never had any contact  with them since leaving high school. This is why I had one of my friends accompany me to that first meeting. Then I attended by myself.”

Turner said after 50 years, her classmates had aged, as she did. She had no idea of how they looked  back in  the day; she never had the chance.

But they knew she was the “Black Girl” who was walking through a sea of White hatred and anger.

“So if they were any of the ones who said or did nasty things to me back then, I could not identify them,” Turner said. “None of them have admitted they did.”

“But there was  one.  A woman who died recently,” Turner said, “and she would come up…hug me… start crying so hard…she would wet up my clothes.  I do not know  what was on her heart…to make her feel so bad. But I had to tell some of the other classmates, to tell her that all of the crying and hugging was not necessary.  She did stop.”

Turner said because she sought to educate her White classmates and explain to them, her role as  a  member of the Norfolk, 17, her classmates have  made attempts to redeem themselves with small gestures.

Turner explained she was an “outsider” as a Black child  attending Norview Middle and High schools. She had no social life.

She also did not interact with the Black  students at Ruffner Middle or Booker T. Washington High schools.

So she was a “outsider,” too, from the Black community, as well.

At one of the Norview class reunions, she was made the honorary Homecoming Queen.

Also,  at one of the luncheons, her classmates organized a birthday party for her.

“I did not have a normal childhood after I entered Norview Middle School,”  Turner said. “I could not join a club, be a cheerleader, have a boyfriend or enjoy lunch time talking  to friends.  My childhood was stolen. I have reclaimed something from even people who thought I was trying to take something  from them. But like them, all I wanted was a good education and to enjoy life.”

Today, only 11 of the Norfolk 17 are still alive.   Like the others, Turner despite her efforts to “move on” from her experiences at

Norview Middle and High schools, she is reminded of those experiences.

Over the years she has been reminded often of the chapter she wrote in Norfolk’s and the nation’s history.

Although she believed it, the idea of Pat Turner being an  “outsider” in the view  of the Black and most of the White community of Norfolk, has been erased long ago, as she  is  frequently reminded, in word, deed and image.

The spotlight will be even brighter early next year, when Norfolk will observe the 60th anniversary of the Norfolk 17 who etched their legacy in the city’s, Virginia’s and the nation’s history books.

Delegate seeks to add more mental health counselors to public high schools

Delegate seeks to add more mental health counselors to public high schools

the Legacy Newspaper logoby Liza David

THE LEGACY NEWS – A Prince William County legislator is promoting a bill to add more mental health counselors in public high schools. 

The bill, HB 252, proposed by Del. Elizabeth Guzman, D-Prince William, would that each student board employ one mental health counselor for every 250 high school students in the local school division.

Del. Elizabeth Guzman

In her district of Prince William County, Guzman said the average case load for a school counselor is between 450 and 500 students, but the counseling process involves more than just those students.

“When counselors help children, it’s not like they are serving one person,” Guzman said. “Many times we need to involve family members and friends as part of helping a person to become successful in life.”

Guzman said that if counselors have a smaller caseload, “they could help the parents to become a support system for the children.”

Guzman said being a mother of four children in the public school system gives her an inside perspective to the challenges public schools have faced throughout the years.

“Any time there was a school budget cut, the fields that were affected in the public education system were special education, school counselors, psychologists, [and] social workers,” Guzman said.

Guzman hopes to pass this bill with the help of her professional knowledge as a social worker. According to her campaign website, Guzman worked in the public sector for 10 years, most recently as the division chief for administrative services for the Center for Adult Services for the City of Alexandria. She also holds master’s in both public administration and social work.

On Jan. 10 Guzman’s bill was endorsed by both the Virginia Education Association and the Virginia Counselor Association. She said she also met with teachers and counselors before her campaign.

Becky Bowers-Lanier is the advocacy consultant for the VCA, and said, “our counselors are most supportive of her bill, [and] we will actively support it.”

Guzman’s bill requires high schools to meet the ratio of one counselor to every 250 students, but Bowers-Lanier said the VCA, “would love to have the ratio of one to 250 throughout K-12.”

“When these children are in high school they have to be ready to face real life,” Guzman said, “and if they don’t get the right support while they’re in school, there’s not a hopeful future for them.”

Bowers-Lanier said in 2016 the Virginia Board of Education proposed a revision of the standards of equality, “to tighten the ratio of counselors in K-12 to one to 250.” However, adding more counselors to high schools, “has a pretty high fiscal impact, and so it was not taken forward to the General Assembly last year.”

The VCA hopes to draw funds, “from the at-risk grant program to support the payment of the counselors,” Bowers-Lanier said.

Bowers-Lanier said at-risk funding is part of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), so additional counselors would be paid for with federal funds. Bowers-Lanier said that ESSA applies to students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, meaning they are considered high-risk and therefore in need of counselors.

Inside the ESSA Plans: What Are States Doing About Goals and Timelines?

Inside the ESSA Plans: What Are States Doing About Goals and Timelines?

By Stephen Sawchuk, Alyson Klein, and Andrew UjifusaEducation Week logo

EDUCATION WEEK — This week, Education Week is bringing its trademark analysis to the remaining state plans for fulfilling requirements of the Every Student Succeeds law. On Monday, we had a look at the states’ proposed “school quality” indicators, €”the required but nonacademic portion of each state’s plan to judge schools. Today, we’re going to take a look at states’ goals for raising student achievement and their timelines for doing so in the plans awaiting federal approval.

One thing we’ll keep stressing again and again this week: how far federal policy has moved since the days of the No Child Left Behind Act (ESSA’s predecessor). Read on.

So, what kinds of goals are states setting?

Some states chose fixed goals that aim for all students, and all subgroups of vulnerable students, such as those qualifying for subsidized school lunches or English-language learners, to reach the same target (such as 80 percent proficiency). What’s nice about this kind of goal is that it sets the same endpoint, making it easier to see over time how achievement gaps are expected to close. States in this category include: Arkansas, Hawaii, Kansas, Mississippi, (grades 3-8 only), Ohio, Minnesota, New York, Rhode island, South Dakota, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

Read the full article here: May require an Education Week subscription.

Source: Education Week Politics K-12

Betsy DeVos’ Team Tells New York, Three Other States They Have ESSA Work to Do

Betsy DeVos’ Team Tells New York, Three Other States They Have ESSA Work to Do

EDUCATION WEEK — Minnesota, New York, Virginia, and West Virginia have some work to do on their plans to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

All four states, who were among the 34 that turned in their plans this fall, were flagged for issues with accountability, helping low-performing schools improve, and other areas. So far, ten other states that turned in their plans this fall — Alabama, Alaska, Georgia, Kansas, Maryland, Montana, North Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming—have received feedback from the feds. Puerto Rico has also gotten a response on its plan. (Check out our summaries of their feedback here and here.)

Plus, sixteen states and the District of Columbia, all of which submitted plans in the spring, have gotten the all-clear from U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. Colorado, which asked for extra time on its application, is the only spring state still waiting for approval.

So what problems did the department find in this latest round of states? Here’s a quick look. Click on the state’s name for a link to the feds’ letter…

Read the full article here: May require an Education Week subscription.

Want more analysis of ESSA plans? Edweek has you covered here.

US high school graduation rates rise to new high

US high school graduation rates rise to new high

The nation’s graduation rate rose again to a record high, with more than 84 percent of students graduating on time in 2016, according to data released Monday by the U.S. Department of Education.

That is the highest graduation rate recorded since 2011, when the Education Department began requiring schools to report rates in a standardized way. The graduation rate rose by nearly a percentage point from 2015 to 2016, from 83.2 percent to 84.1 percent. It has risen about 4 percentage points since 2011, when 79 percent of students obtained a high school diploma within four years.

All minority groups saw a rise in on-time graduation rates in 2016, but gaps persist. Only 76 percent of black students and 79 percent of Hispanic students graduated on time, compared to 88 percent of white students and 91 percent of Asian/Pacific Islander students.

The Obama administration considered the rise in graduation rates among its most important achievements in education, but experts have cautioned those rates can be a poor measure of how prepared young people are for work and higher education. Even as they are graduating at higher rates, students’ performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a test of reading and math achievement, is unchanged or slipping…

Read the full article here:

(c) 2017, The Washington Post. Written by Moriah Balingit.

VA Dept. of Ed Proposes New Accountability System

VA Dept. of Ed Proposes New Accountability System

The Virginia Dept. of Education is proposing a new accountability system. Under the new plan, “schools will be identified as requiring either ‘comprehensive support and improvement’ — when school-wide test scores fall short of benchmarks — or ‘targeted support and improvement’ — when a subgroup falls short.” Spokesman Charles Pyle commented that “the state’s accountability program offers parents user-friendly data to evaluate schools, including an online dashboard.”

National News: Having just one black teacher can keep black kids in school

National News: Having just one black teacher can keep black kids in school

How important is it to have a role model?

A new working paper puts some numbers to that question.

Having just one black teacher in third, fourth or fifth grade reduced low-income black boys’ probability of dropping out of high school by 39 percent, the study found.

And by high school, African-American students, both boys and girls, who had one African-American teacher had much stronger expectations of going to college. Keep in mind, this effect was observed seven to ten years after the experience of having just one black teacher.

The study is big. The authors, Seth Gershenson and Constance A. Lindsay of American University, Cassandra M.D. Hart of U.C. Davis and Nicholas Papageorge at Johns Hopkins, looked at long-term records for more than 100,000 black elementary school students in North Carolina.

Then the researchers checked their conclusions by looking at students in a second state, Tennessee, who were randomly assigned to certain classes.

There they found that not only did the black students assigned to black teachers graduate high school at higher rates, they also were more likely to take a college entrance exam. “The results line up strikingly well,” says Papageorge.

This paper is another piece of social science evidence reinforcing the case for having more teachers of color and for training teachers to be more culturally responsive. We’ve reported on instances of implicit bias by white teachers, even toward preschool students, that black students are more often recommended for gifted programs by teachers of color and that students of all races prefer teachers of color.

And this isn’t news to many African-American families who already feel strongly that their children need role models in their education. Khalilah Harris has experienced the issue both as a policymaker and as a mother of three daughters. She was the Deputy Director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans under the Obama administration. She recently transferred her two older daughters, 12 and 14, to a progressive private school to expose them to more diverse teachers and curriculum.

“My youngest, who is 7, goes to supposedly the best public school in Baltimore City, but there is not any teacher of color there, and that is deplorable,” she says. “If you grow up in a world that does not reflect your essence as valuable from birth, the fact that you don’t have a teacher … who looks like you, will cause cognitive dissonance.”

Papageorge says the “role model effect” that Harris describes is quantifiable. “Sometimes when I talk about expectations, people think I’m talking about magic fairy dust,” he says, “but in economics, it’s one of the biggest things that determine the kinds of investments people make.” In other words, whether it’s money you put toward a mutual fund, or time and energy you spend on your education, how much you expect to get out can determine how much you put in.

If a low-income black boy never sees anyone in the classroom who looks like him, Papageorge says he might conclude, “‘Hey, college is just not for me’. And then why would you work hard in school?”

Yolanda Coles Jones of Charlottesville, Va., says she and her husband avoided the school system altogether. They homeschool their four children, two girls who are 9 and 7, and 4-year-old twin boys. She says they didn’t see their local public or private schools “understanding the needed emphasis on black children seeing black faces.” The family is part of a homeschooling co-op called Community Roots, that, Coles Jones says, was founded “to have an atmosphere that is safe for children of color to be in.”

In future research, Papageorge hopes to replicate the study and unpack the powerful and long-lasting effects observed. But based on the evidence he already has, he has an immediate policy recommendation. Having just one black teacher in his study made all the difference to students; having two or three didn’t increase the effect significantly. Therefore, schools could work to change student groupings so that every black student gets at least one black teacher by the end of elementary school.

“Should we hire more black teachers?” he asks. “Yeah, probably, but it requires more black college graduates … We could push around rosters tomorrow, change the way we assign kids, and have some effects next school year, not 10 years from now.”

> Source:

Understanding the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) 3 of 3

Understanding the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) 3 of 3

Published on Mar 3, 2017

Dr. Tony Marchese of ICF interviews Dr. Caitlin Howley and Dr. Jobi Lawrence of the Appalachia Regional Comprehensive Center to establish a basic understanding of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). This is the first of a three-part series based upon the following objectives:

1. Inform citizens in region about federal education law
2. Explore how the new law might affect states, local districts and schools
3. Provide information about how to provide input to the law as a public education stakeholder

Overview of Programs in Series
Program One: Introduce public to how each state in the Appalachian Region is transitioning to the new law

Program Two: Highlight thoughtful approaches to ESSA planning

Program Three: Examine challenges related to planning for ESSA implementation

Caitlin Howley directs the Appalachia Regional Comprehensive Center, which provides technical assistance to state education agencies in four states. She also conducts research and evaluation of school, college, and professional development programs across the Appalachian region. Previously, Howley was Associate Director of the ARCC, provided evaluation for several Comprehensive Centers, and served as a Research and Evaluation Specialist with the Appalachia Regional Education Laboratory.

Jobi Lawrence serves as a consultant of the ARCC as well as the Title III Director in a State Education Agency. Over the course of her career in education, Lawrence has served as an ESL and Bilingual Co-Teacher, a faculty member in higher education and an administrator in higher education and a state government agency.