Group items tagged

While it might seem encouraging for education and civil rights leaders to assert that poverty isn't an obstacle to higher student achievement, the evidence does not support such claims. Over 50 years, numerous studies have documented how poverty and related social conditions - such as lack of access to health care, early childhood education and stable housing - affect child development and student achievement.

Much controversy has been aroused and much ink has been expended about the way in which Eva Moskowitz is now defying the original stated purpose of charter schools, and marketing her chain of Success Academies to white middle class families in Brooklyn and on the Upper West Side.  Her glossy flyers, sent to households by the truckload, with many families having already received five or six, increasingly feature the faces of little white children. There has also been much debate about the problems of NYC's demanding school "choice" process -- but not much said about how school choice may further segregate  our public schools, especially in many areas of Brownstone Brooklyn, where the last ten years or more of gradual gentrification have led to more diversity in neighborhood schools.  While the UCLA Civil Rights project has shown how charter schools contributes to more segregation nationwide, here are the observations of one Brooklyn parent who is also a high school teacher, Cindy Black, about what happened when a new elementary school of "choice" -- though not a charter -- opened up  in her community

A new letter from the Office for Civil Rights at the federal education department details how school districts should act on some changes to federal law regarding people with disabilities. The way I'm reading it, the letter expands the range of students to whom school districts' may have to provide special education services and accommodations, including some who in the past may have been found not to need those services.

The undersigned education, civil rights, religious, children's, disability, and civic organizations are committed to the No Child Left Behind Act's objectives of strong academic achievement for all children and closing the achievement gap. We believe that the federal government has a critical role to play in attaining these goals. We endorse the use of an accountability system that helps ensure all children, including children of color, from low-income families, with disabilities, and of limited English proficiency, are prepared to be successful, participating members of our democracy. While we all have different positions on various aspects of the law, based on concerns raised during the implementation of NCLB, we believe the following significant, constructive corrections are among those necessary to make the Act fair and effective.

A broad coalition of 38 civil rights, education reform and business groups sent House education chairman John Kline a scathing letter Wednesday, describing his No Child Left Behind legislation as potentially racist. "It undermines the core American value of equal opportunity in education embodied in Brown v. Board of Education," the groups wrote.

It is hard to put in words how honored I am to have been invited to speak to this group. I can think of no gathering whose work is more important to the future of this nation, or have handled this responsibility more honorably, than public schools principals in the state of New York. You are the last line of defense between public school teachers and a political juggernaut of unprecedented proportions seeking to change the way public education in the United States is organized. This movement, led almost exclusively by people who come from business and the law rather than education, is responsible for the public demonization of members of a human services profession unprecedented in American history, yet it commands virtually unanimous support of the press and broadcast media, leaders of both political parties, the nation's wealthiest foundations and some misguided civil rights leaders.

Why have our efforts fallen short? Over the past fifty years, U.S. school reform has been dominated by three major movements, aimed at promoting equity, increasing school choice, and using academic standards to leverage improvement. While all three have changed schooling in notable ways, none has brought about the needed level of general improvements because they mostly sought to improve education from the outside rather than the inside. To make real progress, we will have to think and act much more audaciously. The next round of reform must focus on the essentials of education-the quality of teaching and curriculum, and the means of funding them. Moreover, if we truly want to improve our schools sooner than later, then we must declare a good education to be a civil right for every child. This article explains the shortcomings of the three major reforms and proposes a bolder approach for future school reform. The current campaign for the presidency presents an opportunity to discuss this improvement agenda.

"Rooted in the gospel tradition, the song "We Shall Overcome" became an anthem of the African‑American civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s and then an assertion of struggle and solidarity worldwide. Solidarity is at the heart of both the song and the phrase "we shall overcome." Given that history, it's both perverse and predictable that Philanthropy magazine titled its spring 2013 cover story "They Shall Overcome." The long article-written by then editor-in-chief Christopher Levenick-profiles five of the wealthiest backers of free-market K-12 public education reform (publicly funded but privately run charter schools, publicly funded vouchers for private schools, evaluating teachers and schools based on students' standardized test scores, closing large numbers of schools based on test scores or to save money, and the like)."

"Last month saw the publication of a new report, New York State's Extreme School Segregation, produced by UCLA's highly regarded Civil Rights Project. It confirmed what New York educators have suspected for some time: our schools are now the most racially segregated schools in the United States. New York's African-American and Latino students experience "the highest concentration in intensely-segregated public schools (less than 10% white enrollment), the lowest exposure to white students, and the most uneven distribution with white students across schools.""

"Today several important civil rights organizations released a statement that is critical of the decision by many parents and students to opt out of high stakes standardized tests. Though we understand the concerns expressed in this statement, we believe high stakes tests are doing more harm than good to the interests of students of color, and for that reason, we respectfully disagree."

"Milwaukee's voucher system, which allows low-income students to attend private schools using tax dollars, discriminates based on disability, according to a complaint filed Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Wisconsin Foundation and Disability Rights Wisconsin."

It seems like I've been doing this most of my adult life. Coming to D.C. to march around the White House has almost become a yearly ritual, starting with the Civil Rights Movement, the struggle to end the war in Vietnam and the many wars since, and now -- in some ways a continuation of those great movements -- the struggle to save and transform our public school system.

New federal grants and civil rights requirements have led states and districts to generate an unprecedented flood of data on students, from preschool through college, and states are now working to help districts make sense of it.

Just 2 days before the Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action took place at the Ellipse on the US Capitol Grounds, Bill Gates was speaking in front of the National Urban League's annual conference on July 28, 2011.  His topic was "Education As a Civil Right".  In his speech he promoted the brave new world's philosophy of  CHOICE through the privatization of public schools.  

These Charter Schools, and Bill Gate's own words,  like the words of propaganda used in Orwell's Animal Farm - are often preaching to us from on high, using the language of 'choice', 'freedom', and 'civil rights' as outlined in my own blog "The White Shadow:  Bill Gates, Charter Schools, and the Evil Twins". This re-segregation is repeated more and more across our country, harming the lives of so many of our children, our families, our teachers, and our public schools.

In the world according to ALEC, competing firms in free markets are the only real source of social efficiency and wealth. Government contributes nothing but security. Outside of this function, it should be demonized, starved or privatized. Any force in civil society, especially labor, that contests the right of business to grab all social surplus for itself, and to treat people like roadkill and the earth like a sewer, should be crushed.

States and districts would get unprecedented leeway to move around federal money under the latest in a series of bills to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. But the measure is already being decried by a top Democrat as a "backdoor" way to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education and as an attack on students' civil rights.

ProPublica analyzed new data from the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights along with other federal education data to examine whether states provide students equal access to programs - such as Advanced Placement or higher-level math and sciences classes - that researchers say will help them later in life. We found that in some states, high-poverty schools are less likely than wealthier schools to have students enrolled those programs.

"The powers that be in the Democratic Party, including President Obama, have made charter schools their main vehicle for educational renewal in low-income communities, and there are more than a few civil rights leaders and elected officials in black and Latino communities who view them as a chance to give families in their neighborhoods better educational opportunities. We have now had six years of strong support for charters from the Obama administration, backed up by Race to the Top money. It is time to ask some hard questions."

"New York state has the most racially and economically segregated schools in the country, according to a report released by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles last year."