Civil Rights Activists Ask the Candidates: Where Do You Stand on K-12 Education?
Before the second debate tonight, the Journey for Justice asks the candidates to respond to these questions:
Education activists release statement ahead of second presidential debate: “Will the next president be tone deaf…”
CHICAGO – Today, Jitu Brown, national director of the Journey for Justice Alliance (J4JA) released the following statement ahead of the second presidential debate in St. Louis on Sunday, September 9th. Thousands of African American and Latino parents, students and activists have challenged both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump (and third-party candidates) to release their K-through-12 public education platforms, as well as identify how, if elected, they will work to end federal education policies that have destabilized communities and hurt students of color:
“As parents, students and residents of communities impacted by corporate education interventions in 24 cities across this nation, we are dismayed by the omission of public education as an issue during this presidential election season. Public education repeatedly polls as a top tier issue, but has been largely ignored by both major and third party candidates,” said Brown.
“Will the next president be tone deaf to the tremors from the ground? As a national network of grassroots community organizations across America, we have seen first-hand a determined resistance to failed, top-down corporate education interventions that cannot be ignored; Title VI civil rights complaints filed in 12 cities, thousands of people in determined protest against school closings, sit-ins and traffic blockades, students occupying the superintendent’s office in Newark, a 34-day hunger strike to save a neighborhood’s last open-enrollment high school in Chicago, the rejection of punitive standardized test across the nation and from those who wish to be the leader of the free world; silence.
“The next president must base their advocacy in relationship with people’s lived reality, not corporate relationships. When a mother cries in Detroit because her child’s school is being closed, or students walk-out by the thousands in Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Camden and Newark, Baltimore and Philadelphia; it matters. The next president must understand that the United States ranks 19th in the world in public education among OECD countries but when you remove poverty we are number 2. The next president must have the courage to stare down inequity in public education with a commitment to hear the voices of the people directly impacted. The next president must understand that we do not have failing schools in America, as a public we have been failed,” he continued.
“We are asking the next president to meet with the Journey for Justice Alliance and adopt our education platform. Include J4J on your education transition team so that public policy can be rooted in our lived experiences, not someone’s opinion of our communities. We were disappointed that the vice-presidential candidates said nothing about public education in their October 4th debate. We want to hear from both candidates on October 9th about their education agenda. Will they be honest about the harm inflicted on our communities by school closings and the unwarranted expansion of charter schools? Will they acknowledge that the “illusion of choice” must be erased by the reality of strong, high quality neighborhood schools within safe walking distance of our homes? We will be watching.”
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The Journey for Justice Alliance (J4J) (www.j4jalliance.org) is a national network of inter-generational, grassroots community organizations led primarily by Black and Brown people in 24 U.S. cities. With more than 40,000 active members, we assert that the lack of equity is one of the major failures of the American education system. Current U.S. education policies have led to states’ policies that lead to school privatization through school closings and charter school expansion which has energized school segregation, the school-to-prison pipeline; and has subjected children to mediocre education interventions that over the past 15 years have not resulted in sustained, improved education outcomes in urban communities.Civil Rights Activists Ask the Candidates: Where Do You Stand on K-12 Education? | Diane Ravitch's blog:
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