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Monday, July 18, 2016

Rapid Charter Expansion Is Primary Cause of Detroit Schools’ Fiscal Catastrophe | janresseger

Rapid Charter Expansion Is Primary Cause of Detroit Schools’ Fiscal Catastrophe | janresseger:

Rapid Charter Expansion Is Primary Cause of Detroit Schools’ Fiscal Catastrophe


Here is how David Arnsen of Michigan State University and his colleagues frame one of the issues they investigate in a new study on the impact of rapid growth of charters on the fiscal conditions in school districts in the state of Michigan.  The study will be published this autumn in the Journal of Education Finance:  “Thus far, the state has appointed emergency managers in three school districts (Detroit, Muskegon Heights, Highland Park), has dissolved two school districts (Inkster and Saginaw Buena Vista) and established consent decrees in one (Pontiac)… All except Inkster experienced large declines in enrollment between 2002 and 2012.  Compared to districts statewide, all six of these districts experienced much higher loss of resident students to charter schools and higher shares of special education students.”
The researchers conclude: “(T)he deficit districts in which the state intervened were significantly different from deficit districts in which it did not intervene on each of the demographic characteristics examined.  They had significantly higher shares of African American students (86% versus 40%), and significantly higher shares of low-income students (85% versus 67%).  Districts in which the state intervened also had significantly higher charter penetration (29% versus 11%) of resident students.”
The authors caution that their findings about Michigan may not perfectly apply in other states due to Michigan’s method of funding schools.  Michigan reformed its school funding in 1994 to shift funding responsibility primarily to the state; most states instead  balance state and local responsibility for raising revenue.  And Michigan’s system allows students transferring to a charter or to another school district through inter-district public school choice to carry all of their financing with them. However, due to fixed costs and laws that protect services for particular students, school districts are unable quickly to achieve economies of scale to compensate for declining enrollment.
Even when emergency managers have imposed austerity by raising class sizes and eliminating elective courses, Michigan’s most vulnerable school districts have, due to school choice, faced financial ruin.  The near bankruptcy of the Detroit Public Schools, for example, has occurred during years’ of state imposed austerity by a succession of emergency fiscal managers: “(T)he grounds for this emergency intervention under state law are strictly Rapid Charter Expansion Is Primary Cause of Detroit Schools’ Fiscal Catastrophe | janresseger:

Author's Advice to White Teachers in Urban Schools: Drop the 'Savior Complex' and Learn from Students

Author's Advice to White Teachers in Urban Schools: Drop the 'Savior Complex' and Learn from Students:

Author’s Advice to White Teachers in Urban Schools: Drop the ‘Savior Complex’ and Learn from Students

Chris Emdin


  Dr. Christopher Emdin is a passionate and unapologetic advocate for the advancement of urban education nationwide. In his book, For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood…and the Rest of Y’all Too, Emdin, an associate professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College, conveys his methods of “reality pedagogy” and challenges the biased perception of inner city youth being “unreachable.” White educators are not in the classroom to “save” students, he writes, but should focus instead on integrating the cultures and views of the students into the learning experience. As the teacher’s perception of the students changes, Emdin believes, so will the students’ attitudes towards the value of education. Emdin recently spoke with NEAToday.

What are trends in education over the last few years or so that prompted you to write the book?
Chris Emdin: I think the biggest trend in contemporary education that I found problematic, is that it’s layered. There is a high number of educators teaching in schools highly populated with students of color that don’t reflect the community. If you go in schools right now, almost all black schools have a 90% white staff. And of course you hear or see that and go “well, that’s interesting,” but most of these staff don’t live in the community, they don’t understand the community, they don’t know the socio-economic background of the community, and have a perception about those students based upon were they come from.
There are teachers who are not being trained appropriately. Not to speak negatively about education schools, but there are people coming out of school with a Masters or Bachelor’s in education, taking one class in multiculturalism, or one class on ethnicity, race and politics. Then these teachers go into spaces where race, politics, ethnicity and class are the biggest factors they have to face. There’s also the idea of the hyper-scripted curriculum that the teachers don’t have the space to ask the students about who they are.
What has been the reaction of white educators to the title of the book?
CE: I’ve gotten everything from “Oh wow, thanks for telling the truth!” to “This man is racist.” I’ve gotten to the point in time, my life and my mission where I’m not going to allow political correctness to inhibit me from saying what needs to be said. If you’re not ready to talk about that fact that you are white in a black and brown school, then you shouldn’t be ready to teach in that school.
I’m not demonizing white folks or speaking to just white folks, I’m speaking to the rest of y’all too! There are black folks who also enforce those same white supremacist ideologies. The tools are for everyone, the tools are for the fact that we have 80% of white people in urban schools, but it’s also for you black and brown educators who are conditioned to accept the pedagogies that white folks are Author's Advice to White Teachers in Urban Schools: Drop the 'Savior Complex' and Learn from Students:

Readers, Writers, Teachers, and Students: “the pointlessness of so much of it” | the becoming radical

Readers, Writers, Teachers, and Students: “the pointlessness of so much of it” | the becoming radical:

Readers, Writers, Teachers, and Students: “the pointlessness of so much of it” 

the becoming radical
I wonder who I would have been, without those shelves, without those people and those places, without books.
I would have been lonely, I think, and empty, needing something for which I did not have words.
“Four Bookshops,” The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction, Neil Gaiman
After 18 years as a public high school English teacher and then 14 years and counting as a university professor (many years of which teaching first-year writing along with teacher education), I was sitting a couple weeks ago in our second workshop designed to help university professors teach writing, and I had an epiphany about teaching writing that I believe has helped me understand better why the teaching of writing remains so contentious.
Both the formal teaching of reading and writing—notably at the secondary and undergraduate levels—is conducted by one of two essential groundings: teaching literacy as a reader and/or writer versus teaching literacy as a hyper-student/teacher [1].
While my teaching and advocacy for teaching rests solidly in the former, I am not here suggesting one is better than the other, but that these two perspectives are at the core why discussing and confronting so-called “best practices” often comes off as a heated debate instead of a productive conversation.
I have noted often that many English majors, including those certifying to teach secondary English and those who attain doctorates to teach at the university level, are prepared to teach a very narrow version of literary criticism—mostly addressing fiction and poetry, and mostly through analysis of literary technique and writer’s craft. (See this interesting argument for close reading of multicultural texts that, I believe, recommending close reading by rejecting close reading.)
During the accountability era when what we teach and what students learn have been reduced to how students are tested, reading and writing have been reduced to artificial (as in how we address them in school and how we test them) forms: reading snippets of text to answer multiple choice questions (no real-world readers do this), writing from a prompt in order to be assessed by a rubric and/or against an anchor paper (at best a bastardization of real-world writing, but honestly, again, no real-world writers do this).
I will not explore this fully here, but we cannot ignore as well how the commodification of education has eroded the authenticity of reading and writing. Textbooks and teaching materials feed the accountability dynamic narrowly but also speak to viewing reading and writing as students and teachers, not as readers and writers.
A Case for Readers and Writers in Formal Schooling
I am currently reading Neil Gaiman’s The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction, and this adventure in a writer’s-writer offering essay after essay about his love affair with books, writers, libraries, and genre is both a pure joy for me as reader and writer as well as yet another journey into trying to understand better the Readers, Writers, Teachers, and Students: “the pointlessness of so much of it” | the becoming radical:

Connecticut Charter School Industry spends another half a million dollars on lobbying elected officials - Wait What?

Connecticut Charter School Industry spends another half a million dollars on lobbying elected officials - Wait What?:

Connecticut Charter School Industry spends another half a million dollars on lobbying elected officials


According to the latest lobbying reports filed with the Connecticut Ethics Commission, the charter school industry and their corporate education reform allies spent another $555,000 during this year’s legislative session in their ongoing effort to support Governor Malloy and persuade Connecticut legislators to divert even more public money to the privately owned and operated charter schools in the state.
While Governor Malloy and the Democratic controlled General Assembly instituted the deepest cuts in state history to Connecticut’s public schools, Malloy and the Democrat’s new budget actually increased the amount of scarce public funds going to the charter schools.
At the same time, the charter school front groups were working with Malloy to fight off efforts to fix Connecticut’s flawed teacher evaluation program.
Malloy and the charter schools are intent on keeping the scores that student receive on the unfair, inappropriate and discriminatory Common Core SBAC standardized tests as a prominent factor in determining teacher quality, despite the fact that every major academic study has revealed that individual teachers have an extremely small impact on how individual students do on standardized tests.
Rather than develop a teacher evaluation system based on how well that educator is actually doing, Malloy and the education reformers want to stick with a faulty system that will unfairly judge teachers on factors beyond their control.
Meanwhile, as Wait, What reported earlier this year, the charter school industry and their corporate funded front groups have spent in excess of $9 million on lobbying since Governor Malloy took office in 2011.  See: Charter School Industry “invests” more than $9 million in Connecticut lobbying
The latest ethics reports indicate that, once again, the New York based Families for Connecticut Charter School Industry spends another half a million dollars on lobbying elected officials - Wait What?:

CURMUDGUCATION: Meat Widgets and the End of College

CURMUDGUCATION: Meat Widgets and the End of College:

Meat Widgets and the End of College

Learning Machine's website has the phrase "Build Intelligence" right there on their page, which gives you an idea of were they're coming from. But it's this post from Natalie Smolenski, "Cultural Anthropologist & Dedicated Account Manager at Learning Machine," that really captures just how deeply and fundamentally wrong this particular band of education reform is.




In "A DSM for Achievement," Smolenski lays out how educated human beings can be produced just like toasters or wood screws. And do note-- the whole article is not just Smolenski whipping something up on her own, but spinning off of a speech by Arthur Levine, President of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, delivered as the keynote at the 2016 Parchment Conference on Innovating Academic Credentials. This is not just some insane notion from the fringes, but an insane notion that a lot of Really Important People are attached to.

Smolenski is holding up the DSM-- the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-- as an example of how it can be done, so first she has to deal with how lousy the DSM is at its job.

The DSM and Its Issues

So that she can establish it as a model, Smolenski raises and dismisses the following DSM issues.

1) It's highly subjective, subject to ongoing change and therefor imprecise and unstable.

The DSM has included at various times the "disorders" involved that lead to runaway slaves, uppity women, and homosexuality. In other words, it has been at least as reflective of subjective societal bias as it has been of any scientific truth. More specifically, it has been reflective of the biases of 
CURMUDGUCATION: Meat Widgets and the End of College:



Here's An Idea: Change The Federal Definition Of Student Achievement : NPR Ed : NPR

Here's An Idea: Change The Federal Definition Of Student Achievement : NPR Ed : NPR:

Here's An Idea: Change The Federal Definition Of Student Achievement 



Morgan Polikoff has a modest proposal.
The associate professor at the USC's Rossier School of Education has been looking over the new federal education law. He thinks the Department of Education should abandon what has been the central principle of school accountability for the last decade and a half.
He's submitted a public letter during the feds' open comment period for rulemaking, and asked other researchers and education figures to sign on. So far, dozens have joined him.
What Polikoff wants the government to ditch is a reliance on the "proficiency rate."
The tests have changed over the years and from state to state. So have the cutoff scores, which usually fall somewhere in the middle of the bell curve. But the magic word — proficiency — has not.
Under the old law, proficiency rates were supposed to rise over time until they reached 100 percent, which never came close to happening.
Right now, the Department of Education is making rules to flesh out the Every Student Succeeds Act, which replaced NCLB. The new law abandons the 100-percent rule, but still refers to "proficiency" more than 60 times.
Judging schools on the percent of students deemed proficient, Polikoff argues, has a lot of problems.
"The most obvious is that systems that rely on percent-proficient only care about students right on the margin," he tells NPR Ed.
In other words, there's no incentive to worry about students who are years behind and unlikely to catch up. Nor are there reasons to fuss over the students who score well ahead of average.
Instead, schools are encouraged to focus heavily on those students who are just below the proficiency line.
Some researchers have termed this problem "educational triage," and shown that it actually affects how teachers in classrooms are allocating their time.
A second major problem arises from comparing achievement gaps among groups, such as high- and low-income students, using percent-proficient.
For complicated statistical reasons, analyses that look only at the percent-proficient, Here's An Idea: Change The Federal Definition Of Student Achievement : NPR Ed : NPR:

Why Brooklyn's Middle Schools Are So Segregated - The Atlantic

Why Brooklyn's Middle Schools Are So Segregated - The Atlantic:

New York City's Great Middle-School Divide

How a series of choices has deepened the segregation of Brooklyn’s schools

M.S. 51 in Brooklyn's Park Slope neighborhood is one of its district's "Big Three" middle schools: coveted and highly competitive, they are also whiter, more affluent, and higher performing than other schools in the district.
In leafy, liberal Park Slope and the Brooklyn neighborhoods nearby, many parents divide the local middle schools into two tiers: the “Big Three” and the rest.
First among the Big Three is M.S. 51 on Park Slope’s bustling Fifth Avenue. One of a dozen middle schools that families can choose from if they live within a four-mile-long stretch of west Brooklyn known as District 15, M.S. 51 is where Mayor Bill de Blasio sent his children and where students find a well-traveled path to the city’s most elite public high schools.


 Next on the Big Three list are M.S. 447, a Boerum Hill school that specializes in math and science, and New Voices School of Academic and Creative Arts, a performing-arts school in Sunset Park.

In theory, any student who lives in District 15’s borders—which include not only the well-heeled Park Slope and Carroll Gardens neighborhoods, but also working-class Red Hook and Sunset Park—can attend the Big Three. In practice, the schools are dominated by a subset of families: At the Big Three, over 50 percent of students are white, and less than 30 percent come from low-income families. At the other nine middle schools, just 10 percent of students are white, and more than 80 percent are poor.
That divide highlights a harsh truth about the sources of school segregation in New York City.
Many people, including Mayor de Blasio, point to segregated neighborhoods as the cause of separate schools. In fact, many of the city’s school zones and districts encompass a mix of families. And by opening up every school to any family in a district, “school choice” systems like the one in District 15 offer a golden opportunity to override divided neighborhoods and make schools integrated.
Instead, district parents, schools, and officials have made choices that reinforce segregation.
* * *
In the whiter, wealthier northern half of District 15, competition is fierce for a seat at a Big Three school.
“You have to battle for your so-called ‘choice,’” said Antonia Martinelli, a Gowanus parent and blogger who put M.S. 51 and 447 at the top of her son’s application. Otherwise, “there’s a fear that your child won’t get into a good enough high school.”
Some parents pay a private consultant $400 for a two-hour consultation about the district’s admission process. Others rely on their social circles. Because parents believe that attending one of the school tours will increase their odds of admission, many wait at their computers for the exact moment when online registration begins. The spots are usually snatched up within hours.
“It’s almost a full-time job,” said Rhonda Keyser, whose child attends M.S. 51.
But ultimately, the competition is within a narrow group of parents.
Eight of the district’s 25 elementary schools send half or more of their students to one of the Big Three, according to city data. Those elementary schools are on average 64 percent white and just 17 percent low-income. Districtwide, 31 percent of students are white and 65 percent are considered poor.
Monica Kipiniak’s son attends the School for International Studies, one of several district and charter schools where families who did not make it into the Big Three are starting to venture. She said the fight for Big Three seats favors wealthier parents with the time and ability to navigate the process and to ensure their Why Brooklyn's Middle Schools Are So Segregated - The Atlantic:

Turkey widens post-coup purge, demands Washington hand over cleric | Reuters

Turkey widens post-coup purge, demands Washington hand over cleric | Reuters:

Turkey widens post-coup purge, demands Washington hand over cleric


Turkey purged its police on Monday after rounding up thousands of soldiers in the wake of a failed military coup, and said it could reconsider its friendship with the United States unless Washington hands over a cleric Ankara blames for the putsch.

Turkish authorities moved swiftly to retaliate for Friday night's coup, in which more than 200 people were killed when a faction of the armed forces tried to seize power.
But the swift justice, including calls to reinstate the death penalty for plotters, drew concern from Western allies who said Ankara must uphold the rule of law in the country, a NATO member that is Washington's most powerful Muslim ally.
Thousands of members of the armed forces, from foot soldiers to commanders, were rounded up on Sunday, some shown in photographs stripped to their underpants and handcuffed on the floors of police buses and a sports hall. Several thousand prosecutors and judges have also been removed.
A senior security official told Reuters that 8,000 police officers, including in the capital Ankara and the biggest city Istanbul, had also been removed from their posts on suspicion of links to Friday's coup bid.
Thirty regional governors and more than 50 high-ranking civil servants have also been dismissed, CNN Turk said.
Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said 7,543 people had so far been detained, including 6,038 soldiers. Work was under way to purge the civil service.
Turkey blames the failed coup on Fethullah Gulen, a cleric based in the United States who has a wide following in Turkey and denies any involvement.
Ankara has demanded Washington hand him over. Washington says it is prepared to extradite him but only if Turkey provides evidence linking him to crime. Yildirim rejected that demand.
"We would be disappointed if our (American) friends told us to present proof even though members of the assassin organization are trying to destroy an elected government under the directions of that person," Yildirim said.
"At this stage there could even be a questioning of our friendship," Yildirim added.
Yildirim said 232 people were killed in Friday night's violence, 208 of them civilians, police and loyalist soldiers, and a further 24 coup plotters. Officials previously said the overall death toll was more than 290.
ERDOGAN'S PLANE IN REBEL SIGHTS
Around 1,400 others were wounded as soldiers commandeered tanks, attack helicopters and fighter jets in their bid to seize power, strafing parliament and the intelligence headquarters and trying to seize the main airport and bridges in Istanbul.
The coup crumbled after President Tayyip Erdogan, on holiday at the coast, phoned in to a television news program and called for his followers to take to the streets. He was able to fly into Istanbul in the early hours of Saturday, after rebel pilots had his plane in their sights but did not shoot it down.
On Sunday he told crowds of supporters, called to the streets by the government and by mosques across the country, that parliament must consider their demands to apply the death penalty for the plotters.
"We cannot ignore this demand," he told a chanting crowd outside his house in Istanbul late on Sunday. "In democracies, whatever the people say has to happen."
He called on Turks to stay on the streets until Friday, and late into Sunday night his supporters thronged squares and streets, honking horns and waving flags.
Turkey gave up the death penalty in 2004 as part of a program of reforms required to become a candidate to join the EU. Germany said on Monday that Turkey would lose its EU status if it reinstates the death penalty.
Yildirim said Turkey should not act hastily over the death penalty but could not ignore the demands of its people.
The bloodshed shocked the nation of almost 80 million, where the army last used force to stage a successful coup more than 30 years ago, and shattered fragile confidence in the stability of a NATO member state already rocked by Islamic State suicide bombings and an insurgency by Kurdish militants.
Western countries said they supported Erdogan's government but Ankara should abide by the rule of law.
"We stand squarely on the side of the elected leadership in Turkey. But we also firmly urge the government of Turkey to maintain calm and stability throughout the country," U.S. Secretary of State Kerry told a news briefing in Brussels where he attended a gathering of European counterparts.
"We also urge the government of Turkey to uphold the highest standards of respect for the nation's democratic institutions and the rule of law. We will certainly support bringing the perpetrators of the coup to justice but we also caution against a reach that goes well beyond that."
Referring to Gulen, Kerry called on Turkey to furnish evidence "that withstands scrutiny", rather than allegations.
EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini also called on Ankara to avoid steps that would damage the constitutional order.
"We were the first ... during that tragic night to say that the legitimate institutions needed to be protected," she told reporters on arrival at the EU foreign ministers meeting.
"We are the ones saying today rule of law has to be protected in the country," she said. "There is no excuse for any steps that take the country away from that."
Turkey's pro-Kurdish HDP opposition, parliament's third largest party, said it would not support any government proposal to reintroduce the death penalty. The main CHP opposition said the response to the coup attempt must be conducted within the rule of law and that the plotters should face trial.
"HEAVY BLOW" TO MILITARY


Turkish security forces are still searching for some of the soldiers involved in the coup bid in various cities and rural areas but there is no risk of a renewed bid to seize power, a Turkey widens post-coup purge, demands Washington hand over cleric | Reuters


 

Big Education Ape: Fethullah Gulen Should Not Be Operating American Charter Schools. | deutsch29 - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/07/fethullah-gulen-should-not-be-operating.html



Big Education Ape: Reclusive Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania, blamed for failed coup in Turkey - LA Times -http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/07/reclusive-muslim-cleric-fethullah-gulen.html

Big Education Ape: US would consider extradition request for exiled cleric -http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/07/us-would-consider-extradition-request.html


 Big Education Ape: Fethullah Gulen: The Islamic scholar Turkey blames for the failed coup - The Washington Post - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/07/fethullah-gulen-islamic-scholar-turkey.html

Big Education Ape: Jersey Jazzman: What We Don't Know About Gulen-Linked Charter Schools, And Why That's a Problem - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/07/jersey-jazzman-what-we-dont-know-about.html

Big Education Ape: Coup in Turkey: Is Fetullah Gulen Behind It? | Diane Ravitch's blog - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/07/coup-in-turkey-is-fetullah-gulen-behind.html

Big Education Ape: KILLING ED: 120 American Charter Schools and One Secretive Turkish Cleric -http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/01/killing-ed-120-american-charter-schools.html

 Big Education Ape: Update: Gulen Harmony charter school network accused of bias and self-dealing Dallas Morning News - http://go.shr.lc/1qV85Hm

Big Education Ape: Turkey Links Texas Charter Schools to Dissident - WSJ - http://go.shr.lc/1OW1ZfV



Big Education Ape: Magnolia Science Academy - A Gulen Charter School: Gulen Magnolia Science Academy links discussed at LAUSD board meeting -http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/06/magnolia-science-academy-gulen-charter.html

How Racial Bias Affects The Quality Of Black Students' Education | ThinkProgress

How Racial Bias Affects The Quality Of Black Students' Education | ThinkProgress:

How Racial Bias Affects The Quality Of Black Students’ Education

A statue memorializing the Confederacy is spray-painted with the message "Black Lives Matter" several days after a shooting at a historic black church Sunday, June 21, 2015, in Charleston, S.C. (AP Photo/WCSC-TV, Philip Weiss)

The Department of Education recently released some startling numbers about how much our country spends on prisons versus schools that added fuel to the fire of national conversation about criminal justice reform.
One way to think about our national priorities is to look at where we spend our money. For example, according to the department’s report, every single state spends less all on pre-k-12 education than they do on corrections. And over the past 20 years, state and local spending on public colleges and universities has remained stagnant while spending on the prison system rose by almost 90 percent.
Amid the conversation about systemic racism sparked by the Black Lives Matter movement, especially in the wake of the police killings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling and the subsequent protests across the country, it is important to look at how racism manifests itself in our education system.
In addition to inadequate levels of education funding, there are other factors that affect quality of education, such as racial bias that reveals itself through school discipline and our curricula choices. Decades of racial bias against black Americans and the legacy of slavery are evident in our classrooms.

Ongoing school segregation that reduces opportunities for black students

Although it has been more than 60 years since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision establishing that separate schools for white students and black students are not equal, schools in the U.S. remain very economically and racially segregated.
School segregation is often assumed to be a problem specific to the South. But northern cities and midwestern cities — like ChicagoNew York CityDetroit, and Boston, where people arguably fought hardest against court-ordered busing — also have many racially isolated schools. On the west coast, California had 31 open desegregation cases as of 2014.
Students’ quality of education suffers in this segregated school environment. In schools with a disproportionately high concentration of students of color, students are instructed by less experienced teachers, have less access to things like Advanced Placement courses, and receivemore expulsions and suspensions. Studies have shown that students who attend segregated schools make slower progress in reading.
The facilities themselves tend to be very poor as well. In Detroit Public Schools, where there is a budget crisis, teachers have protested poor school conditions such as dead rodents, spoiled food, cracked floors, and moldy ceilings. In Baltimore schools, students have had to wear coats and scarves to class because they didn’t have enough heat in their classrooms.

Student discipline that pushes black kids out of school

Racially biased school discipline contributes to what’s known as the “school-to-prison pipeline,” which refers to school policies that push students, especially students of color, into the criminal How Racial Bias Affects The Quality Of Black Students' Education | ThinkProgress: