Chicago's 'School Deserts'
Brandon Johnson is deputy political director of the Chicago Teachers Union, and heads its Black Caucus. He posts this solid piece on Labor Notes, "‘School Deserts’ Hit Chicago’s Black Neighborhoods".
AND THE ASSHOLE OF THE YEAR AWARD GOES TO...Jon Stewart's take on the Rahm/Trump dust up.
Black students and Black educators have shouldered the weight of nearly 20 years of school closings, as many of our neighborhoods turn into “school deserts,” with no traditional neighborhood schools left.
There are schools in Chicago whose student body is overwhelmingly Black but which have few to no Black teachers. This is because Black teachers are more likely to work in high-poverty schools with high percentages of Black students: exactly the schools most likely to be closed or “turned around” and to fire their staffs. Black teachers made up almost half of Chicago’s teaching force in 1995. But by 2011, Black teachers were down to 26 percent. That year they made up 65 percent of teachers in the schools that were closed and 40 percent of the tenured teachers who were laid off.
“I gotta say, Chicago, this is on you. Did you not realize he was gonna put his name on a building you Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Chicago's 'School Deserts':