Minnesota: The Money Behind the Effort to Rewrite the State Constitution’s Education Clause + Minneapolis: Segregated But Celebrated Charter School Will Close | Diane Ravitch's blog

Minnesota: The Money Behind the Effort to Rewrite the State Constitution’s Education Clause | Diane Ravitch's blog

Minnesota: The Money Behind the Effort to Rewrite the State Constitution’s Education Clause

Minneapolis: Segregated But Celebrated Charter School Will Close | Diane Ravitch's blog - https://wp.me/p2odLa-u9i via @dianeravitch

In late April, I posted an article by Minnesota blogger and public school advocate Rob Levine about a sneaky effort by elites in the state to rewrite the state constitutional clause on education to protect and encourage segregated charter schools.

This new post digs deeper into the machinations and motivations behind the demand to revise the state constitution.

The campaign is led by the president of the local Federal Reserve Bank but named “the Page Amendment” for a popular local judge.

Blogger Steve Timmer explains that the money and muscle for “the Page Amendment” comes from the president of the local Federal Reserve Bank and the Minneapolis Foundation.

“Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari and former Minnesota Supreme Court Associate Justice CONTINUE READING: Minnesota: The Money Behind the Effort to Rewrite the State Constitution’s Education Clause | Diane Ravitch's blog

What Does Educational Equity Mean? | janresseger #BLM #BLACKLIVESMATTER

What Does Educational Equity Mean? | janresseger

What Does Educational Equity Mean?

Monday, May 17, 2021, marked the 67th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which banned racially segregated schools and unequal access to education. Over more than two decades, NAACP attorneys Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall built up a series of court precedents leading to the 1954 decision in Brown, which declared that educational opportunity, “where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.” However, two-thirds of a century later in most places in the United States racial separation and inequity remain the conditions of our children at school.

Among advocates for educational equality, there has, for decades, been an ongoing conversation about the definition of equity. Iris Rotberg, a professor of education policy at George Washington University, recently published a column in which she quotes Thurgood Marshall’s definition all those years ago:  “We sit… not to resolve disputes over educational theory but to enforce our Constitution… I believe the question of education quality must be deemed to be an objective one that looks at what the state provides its children, not what the children are able to do with what they receive.”

Rotberg interprets Marshall’s words: “The government’s responsibility, therefore, is to ensure equal opportunity, not to debate its link to student achievement.”  She is interpreting Marshall’s definition of justice to mean equality of educational inputs and not a comparison of test score outcomes.  She is advocating that states be held accountable for equalizing CONTINUE READING: What Does Educational Equity Mean? | janresseger

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