We're Still Waiting For The Promise Of Brown v. Board Of Education To Be Fulfilled | HuffPost

We're Still Waiting For The Promise Of Brown v. Board Of Education To Be Fulfilled | HuffPost

We’re Still Waiting For The Promise Of Brown v. Board Of Education To Be Fulfilled

“When the Supreme Court’s decision finally etched itself upon the country, the social stuff of that imprinting behaved in ways other than intended.”

Our house had a cottonwood tree in the backyard. In the excruciating Texas summer, it bloomed and cotton flew around the house like a summer snow. It caked over the window screens and blocked the wind from coming into the house.

Some of our neighbors had water cooler fans that blew out a cool mist. It made the whole house feel like a swamp and made everyone in the house feel like they were trying to breathe underwater. I hated those fans and was grateful we couldn’t afford one.

We were poor, but not in the ways that mattered. No one went hungry. No one was homeless. There were no drugs. No gangs and no neighborhood blight. The front door to our house was never locked. And everybody owned the home they lived in. My parents purchased our home in the 1950s, and it was a significant accomplishment for them.

When I enrolled in elementary school, all of my teachers were Black and they preached excellence like a well-rehearsed Sunday sermon. By the time I began middle school, in sixth grade, I was a track star, held first chair in the band and was among the top five grade earners.

But all of that changed in 1974, when I was in seventh grade. As part of the mandate issued by the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, my classmates and I were among the first group of Dallas students to CONTINUE READING: We're Still Waiting For The Promise Of Brown v. Board Of Education To Be Fulfilled | HuffPost

Biden’s Plan: Raise Taxes On The Rich, Spend It On Education | HuffPost

Biden’s Plan: Raise Taxes On The Rich, Spend It On Education | HuffPost

Biden’s Plan: Raise Taxes On The Rich, Spend It On Education

The president’s speech to Congress will include proposed tax hikes on wealthy Americans along with free community college and pre-K education.

President Joe Biden will propose spending $1.8 trillion over the next decade to make massive investments in the nation’s education system, and to expand and protect tax credits aimed at the middle class, administration officials said Tuesday night, adding that he would pay for the ambitious agenda with a number of tax hikes aimed at the wealthiest Americans.

Biden is expected to lay out his proposal, dubbed the American Families Plan, in a prime-time speech to Congress on Wednesday.

It faces an uncertain political path forward. While an earlier legislative package from the administration, which focused heavily on infrastructure projects, could attract some support from Republicans, it’s likely this plan ― which is targeted at traditional Democratic priorities such as education and the social safety net ― will rely on the party’s narrow majorities in Congress to stay united. 

The centerpiece of the plan is a massive investment in the nation’s education system, including universal, free pre-kindergarten education for all 3- and 4-year-olds and free  CONTINUE READING: Biden’s Plan: Raise Taxes On The Rich, Spend It On Education | HuffPost

Betsy DeVos Raked In Vast Outside Income As Education Secretary | HuffPost

Betsy DeVos Raked In Vast Outside Income As Education Secretary | HuffPost

Betsy DeVos Raked In Vast Outside Income As Education Secretary

The billionaire Trump Cabinet member reaped nine figures during her four years in office, a watchdog group revealed.

Billionaire Betsy DeVos fattened her fortune considerably from various business interests during her four-year run as education secretary under former President Donald Trump.

DeVos, who is reportedly worth more than $2 billion, reported outside earnings from dividends, interest and rents of at least $225 million and “potentially well over $414 million” during her time in the Cabinet role, according to an analysis of her financial disclosures by watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

“It is impossible to know the exact amount because DeVos’s income is reported in broad ranges, but we do know for a fact that she made nine figures during her four years in office,” the group, known as CREW, said in a statement Monday.

At the most modest end of her reported income, DeVos would have raked in more than $158,000 each day of her 1,422 days in the position. That works out to more than $6,500 per hour.

At the most modest end of her reported income, DeVos would have raked in more than $158,000 each day of her 1,422 days in the position. That works out to more than $6,500 per hour.

DeVos, who pledged to donate her government salary to charity, resigned from her job after the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6. She cited Trump’s divisive rhetoric as an “inflection point.”

Critics, however, said DeVos’ condemnation of the then-president was too little, too late.

Last month, CREW reported that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner earned between $172 million and $640 million in outside income during their time in the Trump administration.

Betsy DeVos Raked In Vast Outside Income As Education Secretary | HuffPost

Rep. Jamaal Bowman Sees Climate As The Next Big Education Push After COVID-19 Reopenings | HuffPost

Rep. Jamaal Bowman Sees Climate As The Next Big Education Push After COVID-19 Reopenings | HuffPost

Rep. Jamaal Bowman Sees Climate As The Next Big Education Push After COVID-19 Reopenings

The New York Democrat is endorsing a $1.16 trillion plan to retrofit school buildings to be cleaner and greener and to hire more teachers.

The federal government is set to spend nearly $200 billion to safely reopen schools, boost state spending on low-income school programs and increase financial aid at universities as part of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act.

To Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), that spending looks more like triage than investment. On Saturday, the first-term congressman is set to unveil a $1.16 trillion proposal to fund climate-friendly retrofits at every K-12 public school in the nation, hire and train more teachers, and beef up funding for low-income and disability-focused programs.

Before COVID-19 killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and made in-person classes unsafe, nearly 8,000 public schools sat within 500 feet of highways, truck routes and other traffic-clogged roads where roughly 4.4 million students breathed air filled with toxic levels of exhaust pollution. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that nearly 1 in 5 schools has at least one classroom with unsafe levels of radon, a radioactive gas that causes lung cancer. Countless more schools struggle with mold, toxic building materials and excessive heat, particularly as climate change worsens heat waves.  

The proposal aims to spend $250 billion over 10 years to retrofit schools, remediating lead and asbestos, equipping facilities with solar panels and batteries, and increasing energy efficiency and air circulation. Once those upgrades are complete, it would slash emissions of planet-heating carbon dioxide by at least 29 million tons per year, the CONTINUE READING: Rep. Jamaal Bowman Sees Climate As The Next Big Education Push After COVID-19 Reopenings | HuffPost

Entire School Board Resigns After Trash-Talking Parents In Hot Mic Moment | HuffPost

Entire School Board Resigns After Trash-Talking Parents In Hot Mic Moment | HuffPost

Entire School Board Resigns After Trash-Talking Parents In Hot Mic Moment

The four members of the Oakley Union Elementary School District Board in California didn’t realize their meeting was being broadcast to the public.

OAKLEY, Calif. (AP) — All members of a San Francisco Bay Area school board resigned days after they were heard making disparaging comments about parents at a virtual board meeting they didn’t realize was being broadcast to the public.

The four members of Oakley Union Elementary School District Board had stepped down by Friday amid growing outrage that began with the board’s Wednesday meeting. Before the meeting officially began and unaware the public could see and hear them, they used profanity and made jokes about parents just wanting a babysitter or to smoke pot in their home.

The incident garnered national attention and widespread condemnation.

The district’s superintendent, Greg Hetrick, announced the resignation in a letter Friday and said that Contra Costa County education board members will replace them in an interim capacity, the Mercury News reported.

“We deeply regret the earlier comments that were made in the meeting of the Board of Education earlier this week,” a joint statement by now ex-board members Kim Beede, Erica Ippolito and Richie Masadas says. “As trustees, we realize it is our responsibility to model the conduct that we expect of our students and staff, and it is our obligation to build confidence in district leadership; our comments failed you in both regards, and for this we offer our sincerest apology.”

Beede, Ippolito and Masadas join board President Lisa Brizendine, who announced her resignation Thursday.

Trustees were awaiting the start of the meeting when they began discussing parents’ letters and social media posts about reopening schools.

Beede defended herself against a parent who chided her on social media for going to a party during the coronavirus pandemic after declaring it wasn’t safe to return to school.

“I wasn’t doing anything bad — I honestly don’t care about that part — but are we alone?” she asked the other trustees. “B—-, ..If you call me out, I’m going to f—you up.”

“Sorry, that’s just me,” Beede added.

After some laughter, Brizendine chimed in to commiserate with CONTINUE READING: Entire School Board Resigns After Trash-Talking Parents In Hot Mic Moment | HuffPost

How the pandemic has altered school discipline — perhaps forever

How the pandemic has altered school discipline — perhaps forever

How the pandemic has altered school discipline — perhaps forever

Remote learning violations, mask-wearing offenses and an opportunity to rethink harsh discipline

One Thursday this fall, a middle schooler in Florida’s Brevard Public Schools received an in-school suspension. He had ripped off another student’s face mask and blown into a peer’s face. That same day, six other students across the district were written up for not wearing their masks correctly (including one who also faked using hand sanitizer), while an elementary school student was assigned three days of “private dining” for sharing food in violation of safety guidelines. Meanwhile, an e-learning student got in trouble for filming another student during class without permission.

In many ways, that Thursday was emblematic of a new age of discipline, with multiple students across the district getting written up for infractions that didn’t exist the school year before. Students removed their masks, chatted inappropriately in Zoom and failed to socially distance. In all, about 11 percent of discipline incidents outlined in detail from the start of the school year in late August to mid-September were in some way related to the coronavirus pandemic and the district’s new requirements for in-person and virtual instruction, according to records that Brevard Public Schools provided to The Hechinger Report/HuffPost.

Related: They didn’t turn in their work for remote school. Their parents were threatened with courts and fines

For teachers around the country, school discipline during the pandemic has been confounding. Few have received much guidance from administrators on how to handle discipline issues that arise in remote learning and in school buildings where education has been reshaped by new health and safety guidelines. In many districts, like Brevard, which CONTINUE READING: How the pandemic has altered school discipline — perhaps forever

If Schools Don’t Overhaul Discipline, ‘Teachers Will Still Be Calling The Police On Our Black Students’ | HuffPost #BLM #BLACKLIVESMATTER #BLACKHISTORYMONTH

If Schools Don’t Overhaul Discipline, ‘Teachers Will Still Be Calling The Police On Our Black Students’ | HuffPost

If Schools Don’t Overhaul Discipline, ‘Teachers Will Still Be Calling The Police On Our Black Students’

As districts across the country cut their school resource officers, advocates warn it won’t be enough to end overly harsh discipline of Black students.

Shyra Adams vividly remembers the days after the death of Tony Robinson, an unarmed Black teenager killed in 2015 by police in her hometown of Madison, Wisconsin. 

Angry and distraught over the injustice, Adams, then a high school sophomore, staged a walkout with hundreds of other students, who filled the state Capitol to protest Robinson’s death. She joined weekly protests and helped organize sit-ins at her school. Then, she cried quietly in class as she watched the Dane County district attorney announce on TV that no charges would be filed against the officer who shot and killed Robinson.

“It felt kind of hopeless at that point,” Adams, now 21, said. 

But this summer, after five years of testifying at nearly every Madison school board meeting about the importance of removing police from schools, Adams found herself crying for a different reason. This time, she said, the tears came from her renewed hope that fighting for young people of color could lead to change. In June, she and other members of the Freedom Youth Squad, a group of Black and Southeast Asian activists, gathered to watch the Madison school board’s unanimous vote to cancel its contract with municipal police and remove all officers stationed at its high schools.

“A lot of people in different states were winning, but I thought, ‘In Madison? No way. They’ve been ignoring us for years,’” Adams said. “But that’s changing now. We finally got CONTINUE READING: If Schools Don’t Overhaul Discipline, ‘Teachers Will Still Be Calling The Police On Our Black Students’ | HuffPost

Rebecca Klein: These Textbooks In Thousands Of K-12 Schools Echo Trump’s Talking Points | HuffPost

These Textbooks In Thousands Of K-12 Schools Echo Trump’s Talking Points | HuffPost

These Textbooks In Thousands Of K-12 Schools Echo Trump’s Talking Points

Their religion-centered, anti-Democrat, anti-science, anti-multicultural message mirrors the Christian nationalism seen at the U.S. Capitol riot.

Christian textbooks used in thousands of schools around the country teach that President Barack Obama helped spur destructive Black Lives Matter protests, that the Democrats’ choice of 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton reflected their focus on identity politics, and that President Donald Trump is the “fighter” Republicans want, a HuffPost analysis has found.

The analysis, which focused on three popular textbooks from two major publishers of Christian educational materials ― Abeka and BJU Press ― looked at how the books teach the Trump era of politics. We found that all three are characterized by a skewed version of history and a sense that the country is experiencing an urgent moral decline that can only be fixed by conservative Christian policies. Language used in the books overlaps with the rhetoric of Christian nationalism, often with overtones of nativism, militarism and racism as well. 

Scholars say textbooks like these, with their alternate versions of history and emphasis on Christian national identity, represent one small part of the conditions that lead to events like last week’s riot at the U.S. Capitol, an episode that was permeated with the symbols of Christian nationalism. Before storming the Capitol, some groups prayed in the name of Jesus and asked for divine protection. They flew Christian and “Jesus 2020” flags and pointed to Trump’s presidency as the will of God. The linkage between Christian beliefs and the violent attack on Congress has since pushed evangelical leaders to CONTINUE READING: These Textbooks In Thousands Of K-12 Schools Echo Trump’s Talking Points | HuffPost

What It's Like Teaching On Zoom To Students I've Never Met, And Often Not Seen Or Heard | HuffPost

What It's Like Teaching On Zoom To Students I've Never Met, And Often Not Seen Or Heard | HuffPost

What It’s Like Teaching On Zoom To Students I’ve Never Met, And Often Not Seen Or Heard

“I do not know what my students sound or look like, as they rarely come off mute or turn their cameras on.”

I looked on the chat board and saw that one of my 7th-grade students had, once again, posted a picture of a McDonald’s meal. This meant that they needed a break and wanted to tell me about the Travis Scott meal at McDonalds.

Ms. Osman: What did you learn about the Travis Scott meal?

Student: Miss! This meal is craaazy. I heard that people are just going up to the window and telling the workers, “you know what I want.”  (poop emoji and laughing crying emoji)

Ms. Osman: How would the worker know what they want? 

Another student: Idk. But I don’t like Quarter Pounders. 

Student: I don’t like Big Macs In & Out’s better

I let a few more minutes of this go on. I’ve been trying to build in time for the students to chat with each other, especially since they haven’t seen their peers this whole year. This is a crucial part of the school experience, and as middle-schoolers, a time in their lives to learn how to properly socialize. It also allows me to get to know them as well. 

In history, 2020 will probably be remembered as the year of despair. Just in the U.S., hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost, millions are unemployed, and even getting to spend time with friends and family is severely limited (if even possible). 

One of the most affected areas has been education. Every community is handling schooling differently: Classes are in-person in some places, virtual in other areas, and CONTINUE READING: What It's Like Teaching On Zoom To Students I've Never Met, And Often Not Seen Or Heard | HuffPost

As COVID-19 Continues, Classroom Learning Gaps Between Haves And Haves-Nots Are Getting Wider | HuffPost

As COVID-19 Continues, Classroom Learning Gaps Between Haves And Haves-Nots Are Getting Wider | HuffPost

As COVID-19 Continues, Classroom Learning Gaps Between Haves And Haves-Nots Are Getting Wider

They attend the same schools and have the same teachers, but some kids have started to fall behind their wealthier classmates.

As soon as schools reopened in September, it was apparent that the gaps in her son’s classroom between the haves and the have-nots had grown, says parent Amina Scott. Scott suspects that some kids had access to enrichment programs and hands-on help during the many months that schools and summer camps were shut down, and some, like her third-grade son, had not.

Scott’s son, Yasin, attends a public school in the affluent suburb of Newton, just outside Boston. He is bused from their home in the Roxbury neighborhood to the suburbs through a voluntary desegregation program called METCO. Yasin has always been at grade level or even ahead of his classmates, especially excelling in reading, says Scott. But this year, while attending in-person classes two times a week on a hybrid schedule, the dynamic shifted.

After months away from school, some of his classmates seemed to have mysteriously advanced, easily reciting concepts he says they were never taught. In the early weeks of class, Yasin came home upset, questioning where his classmates could have learned such material. He used to indulge his mom’s questions about what he was learning and how his day was, but he soon stopped wanting to talk about school, telling Scott that he had finished his homework even when he had skipped questions.

“He feels behind and it’s affecting his confidence. I could tell he was avoiding talking about it,” said Scott, a 29-year-old single mother who works full time at a nonprofit in addition to holding down two consulting gigs. “To me it’s scary, it worries me but also I CONTINUE READING: As COVID-19 Continues, Classroom Learning Gaps Between Haves And Haves-Nots Are Getting Wider | HuffPost

A Former Principal, Jamaal Bowman Has A List Of Names For Joe Biden’s Education Secretary | HuffPost

A Former Principal, Jamaal Bowman Has A List Of Names For Joe Biden’s Education Secretary | HuffPost

A Former Principal, Jamaal Bowman Has A List Of Names For Joe Biden’s Education Secretary

The incoming New York congressman named Randi Weingarten, Dr. Betty Rosa and Freeman Hrabowski as possibilities to head the Department of Education.

Before he ousted longtime Democrat Rep. Eliot Engel in a stunning primary win earlier this year, Representative-elect Jamaal Bowman was a public middle school principal in New York City. Now, as he prepares to enter the House, Bowman hopes to push President-elect Joe Biden to choose a Secretary of Education that would understand the struggles faced by public school educators.

Bowman’s short list includes Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, the second largest teacher’s union in the country; Dr. Betty Rosa, New York’s state education commissioner; and Freeman Hrabowski, the long time president of University of Maryland, Baltimore County. 

The three represent an important set of criteria for Bowman: Rosa and Weingarten were in-classroom educators. All three have experience focusing on underrepresented kids — whether as first-time English learners like Rosa, or an administrator who has emphasized opportunities for Black students in the science and medical fields, like Hrabowski. In Weingarten’s case, Bowman said she also fits the need for a “resurgence of labor.”

Bowman has been a vocal critic of policies put in place in recent years — including by the Obama administration. He’s a staunch critic of charter schools and has advocated against the Common Core standards and the emphasis on standardized testing, despite his own school’s high performance in them. He said his conversations with the Biden team have been positive — but he’s still operating with caution.

Democrats were united in their opposition to the Trump administration’s Education CONTINUE READING: A Former Principal, Jamaal Bowman Has A List Of Names For Joe Biden’s Education Secretary | HuffPost