Groups file complaint alleging civil rights violations in physical education | EdSource

Groups file complaint alleging civil rights violations in physical education | EdSource:

Groups file complaint alleging civil rights violations in physical education

In the latest salvo in a longstanding effort to enforce a California education law that requires physical education classes for all students, six health advocacy organizations filed a federal complaint Thursday charging that California public schools discriminate against Latino and African-American students by disproportionately denying them access to the classes, in violation of federal civil rights law.

The organizations asked for federal intervention to ensure that the California Department of Education and school districts comply with “the legal obligation to provide students with equal access to resources for physical education and fitness without regard to race, color, or national origin,” according to the complaint.

“Black and Hispanic students are systematically denied quality physical education,” according to the complaint sent to Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Education. The complaint was filed by the The City Project, the California Center for Public Health Advocacy, the California Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, the Prevention Institute, the Latino Coalition for a Healthy California and the Anahuak Youth Sports Association.

“Black and Hispanic students are systematically denied quality physical education,” according to a federal complaint charging civil rights violations in California physical education.

Robert Garcia, founding director of The City Project, a Los Angeles civil rights advocacy group, said the complaint was filed as a federal civil rights violation on the basis of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and an October 2014 so-called “Dear Colleague” guidance letter from Llahmon to educators across the country. That letter reminded educators of their obligation to end “unlawful discrimination” caused by inequities in educational resources.

“Lack of funds does not preclude the duty to act” to fulfill civil rights obligations, Llahmon wrote in the letter, which was cited in the complaint. The complaint expanded on the point by stating, “While sound educational and budgetary judgments by state and local education officials may lead school districts to prioritize certain resources, such decisions cannot reflect unlawful race discrimination in purpose or effect.”

A California Department of Education spokeswoman said Friday that the department had not seen the complaint and was unable to provide comment.

Harold Goldstein, executive director of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy, said in a statement that educators have turned “a blind eye” to the health consequences for children who are not provided consistent, quality physical education instruction.

“Too often these ethnic and racial disparities have a devastating impact on the long-term health and welfare of our children,” Goldstein said. “Without adequate physical education, children are more likely to be obese, develop type 2 diabetes or have a lifetime of costly chronic disease.”

GOING DEEPER

• Complaint Re: Physical Education and Physical Fitness Title VI Compliance in California Public Schools, filed by six organizations, Aug. 13, 2015
• Physical Education Model Action Planand checklist, Los Angeles County Public Health Department et al, March 2015
• Improving Physical Education in Elementary Schools, UC Berkeley Center for Weight and Health

California Education Code requires public schools to provide a minimum of 200 minutes of physical education every 10 days in elementary schools and 400 minutes in middle and high schools. But several studies have found significant non-compliance, including an audit by the California Department of Education of 155 districts from 2004 to 2009 that reported half were not meeting physical education requirements and a 2012 study of 55 districts from 2004 to 2006 by San Francisco State University researchers that found half of the districts were out of compliance.

In March, 37 school districts, including Los Angeles Unified, settled a lawsuit alleging they failed to provide the minimum number of physical education minutes in elementary schools. As a result, the districts are required to publicly document the amount of physical education instruction that elementary students receive, starting this fall and continuing for two to three years, depending on the district.

According to the complaint filed Thursday, the 2012 study by San Francisco State University researchers found that elementary school students in districts that did not comply with physical education minutes requirements “were more likely to be Hispanic or Black and less likely to be white or Asian.”

The California Department of Education includes an evaluation of physical education in its cycle of compliance monitoring of districts, but according to a 2007 report “Physical Education Matters” by researchers at San Diego State University, “There are no real consequences for failure to comply.”

The complaint asked Llahmon of the U.S. Department of Education to send a “Dear Colleague” guidance letter to California educators reminding them of their obligation to ensure equal access to physical education, and take other steps to ensure that physical education minutes are being monitored and fulfilled. To that end, the organizations recommended the use of a Model Action Plan for physical education and a compliance checklist developed by the Los Angeles County Health Department and several of the health organizations that filed the complaint.

Other health and civil rights advocacy groups praised the complaint. Philip Tegeler, executive director of the Poverty & Race Research Action Council, which co-authored an April report titled “Finishing Last: Girls of Color and School Sports Opportunities,” said in a statement,”Disparities in access to sports opportunities and physical fitness programs are another unfortunate aspect of our separate and unequal system of public education – with potential long term health impacts for children of color.”

Jane Meredith Adams covers student health and well-being. Email her or Follow her on Twitter. Sign up here for a no-cost online subscription to EdSource Today for reports from the largest education reporting team in California.

Sign up here for a no-cost online subscription to EdSource Today for reports from the largest education reporting team in California.Groups file complaint alleging civil rights violations in physical education | EdSource:

Failure factories | One fateful decision. Years of neglect. Five once-average schools remade into the worst in Florida | Tampa Bay Times

How the Pinellas County School Board neglected five schools until they became the worst in Florida | Failure factories | Tampa Bay Times | Tampa Bay Times:

One fateful decision. Years of neglect. 

Five once-average schools remade into the worst in Florida.

FAILURE FACTORIES

In just eight years, Pinellas County School Board members turned five schools in the county’s black neighborhoods into some of the worst in Florida.

First they abandoned integration, leaving the schools overwhelmingly poor and black.

Then they broke promises of more money and resources.

Then — as black children started failing at outrageous rates, as overstressed teachers walked off the job, as middle class families fled en masse — the board stood by and did nothing.

Today thousands of children are paying the price, a Tampa Bay Times investigation has found.

They are trapped at Campbell Park, Fairmount Park, Lakewood, Maximo and Melrose — five neighborhood elementary schools that the board has transformed into failure factories.

Every year, they turn out a staggering number of children who don’t know the basics.

Eight in 10 fail reading, according to state standardized test scores. Nine in 10 fail math.

Ranked by the state Department of Education, Melrose is the worst elementary school in Florida. Fairmount Park is No. 2. Maximo is No. 10. Lakewood is No. 12. Campbell Park is No. 15.

All of the schools operate within six square miles in one of Florida’s most affluent counties.

All of them were much better off a decade ago.

Times reporters spent a year reviewing tens of thousands of pages of district documents, analyzing millions of computer records and interviewing parents of more than 100 current and former students. Then they crisscrossed the state to see how other school districts compared.

Among the findings:

■ Ninety-five percent of black students tested at the schools are failing reading or math, making the black neighborhoods in southern Pinellas County the most concentrated site of academic failure in all of Florida.

■ Teacher turnover is a chronic problem, leaving some children to cycle through a dozen instructors in a single year. In 2014, more than half of the teachers in these schools asked for a transfer out.

 At least three walked off the job without notice.

■ All of this is a recent phenomenon. By December 2007, when the board ended integration, black students at the schools had posted gains on standardized tests in three of the four previous years. None of the schools was ranked lower than a C. Today, all the schools have F ratings.

■ After reshaping the schools, the district funded four of them erratically. Some years they got less money per student than other schools, including those in more affluent parts of the county. In 2009, the year after resegregation, at least 50 elementary schools got more money per student than Campbell Park.

■ Other districts with higher passing rates are doing far more to aid black students, including creating special offices to target minority achievement, tracking black students’ progress in real time and offering big bonuses to attract quality teachers to high-minority schools. Pinellas did none of those things.

The problems don’t end in the five south St. Petersburg schools. Overall, black children in Pinellas County are failing at higher rates than black children in virtually any other school district in Florida.

In 2014, they were a third more likely to fail math than black children in Miami-Dade, Broward, Orange and Palm Beach counties. They were 23 percent more likely to fail math than black children in Hillsborough.

Fifty-seven of 67 school districts in Florida recorded better reading scores, putting Pinellas in the same league as the poorest, most rural counties in the state.

In an interview with the Times, Superintendent Mike Grego acknowledged the school district’s role in creating problems at the schools.

“You can’t undo the past. You have to take the district from where it’s at,” Grego said. “I’m going on record saying we’re going to fix this. And we’re going to educate our students as if each one of them was our own kid.”



Pinellas County Schools Superintendent Mike Grego

Hired in 2012, Grego has launched reforms to aid students in the five schools. They include adding extended learning programs, extra summer instruction and bringing in counselors and social workers to connect families with outside services — initiatives that were proposed in the past but never started or were discontinued.

Pinellas County’s black students haven’t been struggling in secret.

 School Board members have heard repeatedly from parents and teachers at south St. Petersburg schools who begged for relief. State education officials have stepped in to monitor four of the five schools because of their low test scores.

Yet, when contacted by the Times, board members distorted facts, pleaded ignorance or said they needed more information before they could act.

Linda Lerner, who voted for the plan that resegregated the district in 2007, blamed the schools’ problems on “the cycle of poverty,” not on actions by the School Board.

“This is a nationwide thing, not just us. You hear school districts everywhere talking about this,” said Peggy O’Shea, who also voted for the plan in 2007. “It’s an issue that’s everywhere, unfortunately.”

“We only talk about it in black schools,” she added, “but we resegregated white schools as well.”

“We’ve looked at just about everything we can and put things in place,” said Carol Cook, who also voted for resegregation in 2007. “I think we’re on the right track.”

“Mindblowing,” said Terry Krassner, who joined the board in 2010 and who said virtually the same thing about struggling black students four years ago. “I think we need to figure out what we don’t know.”

Black parents and community leaders hold up such sentiments as proof of a disconnect. They say they are not convinced real changes are coming.



Goliath Davis, a former police chief and deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, speaks to Pinellas County School District officials.

“We keep making the same mistakes over and over and over,” said Goliath Davis, a former police chief and deputy mayor of St. Petersburg. “What happens to all these kids? What do they do? Every time we fail one, the criminal justice system is a winner.



 And you’d rather pay to keep them incarcerated than try to straighten out the system?”How the Pinellas County School Board neglected five schools until they became the worst in Florida | Failure factories | Tampa Bay Times | Tampa Bay Times:

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THE INTERACTIVE

The story in charts

”How the Pinellas County School Board neglected five schools until they became the worst in Florida | Failure factories | Tampa Bay Times | Tampa Bay Times:

WHAT THE SCHOOL BOARD SAYS

The Times asked board members to take a position on key issues.

”How the Pinellas County School Board neglected five schools until they became the worst in Florida | Failure factories | Tampa Bay Times | Tampa Bay Times:

YEARS OF NEGLECT

School Board members promised that things wouldn't turn out this way.

”How the Pinellas County School Board neglected five schools until they became the worst in Florida | Failure factories | Tampa Bay Times | Tampa Bay Times:

How one teacher's union is struggling for relevance in a hostile political landscape | Deseret News National

How one teacher's union is struggling for relevance in a hostile political landscape | Deseret News National:

How one teacher's union is struggling for relevance in a hostile political landscape

Milwaukee has stood at ground zero of education reform battles since at least 1990, when the city became one of the first of two to experiment with vouchers for private schools. Today, roughly 26,000 Milwaukee students now use vouchers to enroll at private schools, while about 78,000 remain in the public school system.

Scott Walker’s election as governor in 2010 put Milwaukee back in the spotlight for radical education reform. Over raucous protests at the state capitol, the new GOP governor, and current presidential candidate, enacted his signature “Act 10” legislation, which took on public employee unions, including those of teachers, stripping away most collective bargaining rights. Bitter battles followed, including efforts to recall Walker. He survived three elections in the past five years.

Now, the Milwaukee school system is again on the hot seat, as the state prepares to take control of failing city schools, following the model of the Recovery School District in New Orleans, which took over and chartered almost all public schools in the Crescent City.

What happens in Wisconsin could have national implications, as teacher unions across the country are now playing defense. State leaders on the left, like Gov. Andrew Cuomo in New York, and the right, like Gov. Chris Christie and Wisconsin Gov. Walker, are pushing hard to strip the power of unions and privatize, or at least charter-ize, schools.

Kim Schroeder, president of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Association, the local NEA affiliate, says the union has struggled to respond to the adverse climate and has had to rethink how it relates to teachers, policy makers and the general public. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Deseret News: How should parents and taxpayers think of the role of teacher unions in the public education?

Schroeder: Teacher unions are fighting to make sure that all students, regardless of their income, race, gender or social economic status, get the opportunities and support to learn and succeed. That’s our role. We represent the people in the classroom who are there every single day.

DN: So this raises the question of the critiques recently made by Gov. Cuomo in New York and Gov. Chris Christie in New Jersey, both of whom have in very similar terms attacked teachers’ unions and argued that they do not represent kids, but rather the they only represent the job security and income of the teachers.

Schroeder: Obviously, we vehemently disagree with those comments, especially from Christie, but also from Cuomo. They have attacked in a very ugly and threatening way the expertise and professionalism of hundreds of thousands of professional educators. Teachers’ unions are made of the people who work with the students. The teachers are the best equipped to stand up for the students. They see what happens in the classroom. They are the best ones to make the school and classroom decisions that ensure success.

DN: The membership of the National Education Association, which you are affiliated with, has dropped over 230,000 members in the past four years. What’s causing this decline?

Schroeder: There are fewer public school jobs with the increase in private charters, takeovers of major city school districts. Places like Wisconsin have also lost collective bargaining, which has presented at challenge to us here.

DN: Is Wisconsin a unique situation, or have others seen similar assaults on unions? Is this an oddity or a canary in the coal mine?

Schroeder: Wisconsin is unfortunately not an oddity. Wisconsin is unusual because it happened all at one time, with cuts to public education funding and the attack on collective bargaining. But we are also seeing it in Indiana and Michigan and Missouri. We saw it in New Orleans with the recovery school district, where almost the entire city shifted over to charter schools. There is a concerted effort to end public school as we know it.

DN: What is “Act 10” and how has it affected teaching in Wisconsin?

Schroeder: The legislation eliminates collective bargaining of anything at all except base wages. That means contracts can be written on a Post-it Note. Anything about working conditions, safety in the classroom, class size, hours spent teaching, health insurance can no longer officially be part of collective bargaining. It also required teachers to pay 5.8

Read more at http://national.deseretnews.com/article/5546/How-one-teachers-union-is-struggling-for-relevance-in-a-hostile-political-landscape.html#UjGye1dBHRFFgk4A.99

Every Latino Child Left Behind | NCLR Action Fund

Every Latino Child Left Behind | NCLR Action Fund:

Every Latino Child Left Behind

In 2002, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was instituted and changed the way public schools operated. For the first time in the history of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), NCLB marked a deliberate and strong federal approach to increase equity in education. As a nation, we committed to holding all students to high academic standards, closing the achievement gap for some of our nation's most vulnerable students, and providing parents the tools to hold our school systems accountable for their success or failure. In doing so, the academic performance of students-disaggregated by race and ethnicity, income and disability-took center stage by requiring data that showed academic progress. The law mandated that action must be taken by schools when children were falling behind. 

But the overly prescriptive nature of NCLB led to actions like state over-testing. Several weeks ago both the House and Senate passed bills to rewrite NCLB. In the House, H.R. 5 narrowly passed with no Democrat support. This bill known as the "Student Success Act" goes too far to the extreme. Not only would House Republicans allow federal dollars - intended to support the most in-need schools and the children they serve - to be moved to more affluent schools, but they would strip all federal oversight for how tax-payer dollars are spent in the name of "local flexibility." Is taking from the poor to give to the rich how we expect to secure equity and win the battle for civil rights in education in 2015? And are we ready to place our unquestionable trust in states to do right by our kids when they have failed so many times before?

The more bi-partisan Senate rewrite S. 1177, known as the "Every Child Achieves Act," attempts to strike a balance between state flexibility and federal oversight. But while the bill retains vital guardrails such as annual assessments and the disaggregation of data by critical subgroups (i.e., race and ethnicity, English learners, students with disabilities); more needs to be done to secure the civil rights of our most vulnerable students. Nowhere in the bill is there language that requires states to intervene once the state has identified that a school and its students are in need of support.

An amendment sponsored by Senator Murphy (D-CT) that would have made the necessary improvements to the ECAA by requiring states to identify schools where Every Latino Child Left Behind | NCLR Action Fund:

The Problem We All Live With | This American Life

The Problem We All Live With | This American Life:

562: The Problem We All Live With

JUL 31, 2015

Right now, all sorts of people are trying to rethink and reinvent education, to get poor minority kids performing as well as white kids. But there's one thing nobody tries anymore, despite lots of evidence that it works: desegregation. Nikole Hannah-Jones looks at a district that, not long ago, accidentally launched a desegregation program. First of a two-part series.

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  Ira speaks with New York Times Magazine Reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones about her years reporting on education and the various kinds of school reforms administrators have tried to close the achievement gap that never seem to work. Nikole says there's one reform that people have pretty much given up on, despite a lot of evidence that it works – school integration. (11 minutes)

  • Nikole Hannah-Jones

• ACT ONE

  The Problem We All Live With PART ONE.

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  Nikole Hannah-Jones reports on a school district that accidentally stumbled on an integration program in recent years. It's the Normandy School District in Normandy, Missouri. Normandy is on the border of Ferguson, Missouri, and the district includes the high school that Michael Brown attended. (30 minutes)

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  • "ODDS AGAINST", NEAL.

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  The Problem We All Live With PART TWO.

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  Nikole Hannah-Jones' story on the Normandy school district from the first part of the show continues. (14 minutes)

  Nikole also wrote about Normandy for ProPublica.

  And Elisa Crouch's article in St Louis Dispatch that documented the day in the life of one Normandy senior is here.

  • Nikole Hannah-Jones

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  • "IS IT BECAUSE I'M BLACK", SYL JOHNSON

Photo

Norman Rockwell's painting "The Problem We All Live With" depicting Ruby Bridges – the first black child to attend an all white elementary school in the South. Image from the website of the Norman Rockwell Museum.

CURMUDGUCATION: Klein Fails Hard (Bye Bye, Amplify)

CURMUDGUCATION: Klein Fails Hard (Bye Bye, Amplify):

Klein Fails Hard (Bye Bye, Amplify)

The news has spread rapidly-- Amplify, the education tech division of News Corp, headed by Joel Klein and funded by Rupert Murdoch, is headed directly down the tubes.

Klein is the poster boy for unqualified people in educational leadership roles, rising to the head of the nation's largest school system based on his extensive background as a lawyer. Since then, he has been one of the bright lights of reformsterdom. He has helped sell the idea that education is a threat to national security and argued about the power of education to overcome humble backgrounds by telling his own story (well, a story loosely based on his own life). Mercedes Schneider devoted a whole chapter to his exploits in Chronicle of Echoes, and even that is probably not enough space to  trace his reformy footprints, from bolstering baloney groups like National Council on Teacher Quality and Jeb Bush's FEE to jump-starting the career or other well-connected clowns with no education background.

Klein has since tried to make his case for his handling of New York City schools in a book Lessons of Hope. The book contains all the signature Klein features, including a casual relationship with the truth. Klein is great example of the modern management principle that you don't have to know the business of the company you're running-- you just have to be smart, audacious and leaderly.

After New York, Klein decided to combine what he didn't know about education with what he didn't know about technology and con Rupert Murdoch into launching an education tech company. Amplify was going to be a player in the world of touch-screen based education. It's popular field for many reasons, not the least of which is the revenue stream involved. Note that Amplify's product was CURMUDGUCATION: Klein Fails Hard (Bye Bye, Amplify):

Federal AP Boondoggle

The USED is once again happy to announce that they have delivered a grant of $28 million to the College Board corporate coffers.

They have done this by once again paying to help cover the costs of taking the AP test for many low-income students.

This certainly sounds like a noble and worthwhile thing, and the nice quotes from Washed Up NY Education Commissioner and  Now Deputy Secretary Without a Title So He Wouldn't Have To Face Congressional Approval John King certainly sound mighty fine: "Advanced Placement classes and the corresponding exams come with very high expectations for our students, as well as important early exposure to the demands and rigor of college-level courses, all while still in high school."

Well, I was not impressed the last time this program rolled around, and I'm still not impressed. Here's why not:

Tests are not education. Getting students the opportunity to take the test is less impressive than giving students the educational support to prepare for the test. $28 million to get teachers AP class teacher training, or money to get poor schools the materials they need to do the class properly (how many AP and Honors students in this country have to buy their own books and materials). This is like saying, "We are going to pay the fee for you to try out for Olympic time trials, but you'll still have to train without a coach out in your barn."

Bulk buying bargains? I am still waiting to hear the part where the federal government cut a deal with the College Board. "The taxpayers are giving $28 million to somebody," Fake Undersecretary John King should be saying. "Cut us a deal. Show me how much of your gigantic profit margin on these tests you will sacrifice in order to get this giant bale of bucks, or we'll support some other 

Federal AP Boondoggle

With A Brooklyn Accent: How Broken Windows Policing Leaves Large Numbers of People Unemployable

With A Brooklyn Accent: How Broken Windows Policing Leaves Large Numbers of People Unemployable:

How Broken Windows Policing Leaves Large Numbers of People Unemployable

  The other day, one of my friends and tennis partners, a criminal lawyer, gave a chilling account of what a good part of his law practice involves. Many of his clients, he said, are working class people who have been arrested for non violent crimes ranging from shoplifting, to possessing small amounts of drugs, to passing  bad checks,  to getting in bar room brawls, to arguing with police when stopped for DWB or WWB ( Driving or Walking While Black). What he tells these clients is that they are paying him to make sure that they won't have an arrest or conviction record that will show up on background checks. And why is that worth it? Because employers simply won't hire people, even for entry level jobs, if they have criminal convictions on their record.

   I left this conversation extremely upset. Not just because it confirmed what i knew about criminal records disqualifying people for employment-I knew this from unsuccessfully trying to help young men who had recently been released from prison find jobs-but because this disqualification covered even people who were arrested for non violent offenses who would never spend a day in jail, a group whose numbers have been growing astronimically in the last few years because of "Broken Windows Policing."

    In many parts of this country, it is the official policy of police departments to arrest people en masse for  minor non violent offenses. In New York City, the stated logic of this policy is to prevent more serious crimes and to engage in searches which take guns off the street; but in many other communities, such as Ferguson Missourri, a side effect of the policy is to  fine local residents in such proportions that it helps balance strapped city budgets. In any case, it is now official public policy to maximize arrests for non-violent offenses and to promote police officers 

With A Brooklyn Accent: How Broken Windows Policing Leaves Large Numbers of People Unemployable:

The Civic Importance of Public Education: Valuing What We Take for Granted | janresseger

The Civic Importance of Public Education: Valuing What We Take for Granted | janresseger:

The Civic Importance of Public Education: Valuing What We Take for Granted

How can we learn to value what we take for granted?

Public schools are institutions we have taken for granted for so long that it’s hard to imagine they could disappear.  In Cleveland’s saddest neighborhoods, I am jarred every time I drive by an empty lot where I used to see a school that has now been torn down.  I still remember the names of each of the elementary schools in my small Montana town.  Schools are the institutional anchors by which I define neighborhoods.  But when people attack public education, as lots of people do these days, I struggle to know how to put into words my defense of this core civic institution.

One way to learn to appreciate the public schools is to read the philosophies and histories of public education.  David Tyack, the education historian, writes: “I believe that public schools represent a special kind of civic space that deserves to be supported by citizens whether they have children or not.  The United States would be much impoverished if the public school system went to ruin… The size and inclusiveness of public education is staggering.  Almost anywhere a school-age child goes in the nation, she will find a public school she is entitled to attend.  Almost one in four Americans work in schools either as students or staff.” (Seeking Common Ground: Public schools in a Diverse Society, p. 182)

Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz, Harvard economists, share another perspective on the importance of public education in our nation’s history. They identify a set of virtues of public education: “By virtues, we mean a set of characteristics that originated in basic democratic and egalitarian principles and that influenced the educational system.  The virtues… include public provision by small, fiscally independent districts; public funding; secular control; gender neutrality; open access; and a forgiving system.  These virtuous features are summarized by the word ‘egalitarianism.’ They have held the promise (if not always the reality) of equality of opportunity and a common education for all U.S. children.” (The Race Between Education and Technology, p. 130)

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 was designed to hold schools accountable for outcomes. For the purpose of forcing everybody to try harder, No Child Left Behind set utopian and unreachable test score targets.  Schools that could not quickly and consistently raise scores every year until all children were deemed proficient by 2014 were labeled “failing.”  More and more schools were marked as “failing”  every year, and the federal government was finally forced to create waivers for schools from the punishments that were supposed to follow.  But the waivers have not diminished the sting of the widespread label of “failure.”  These days when people think about public education, their minds are driven by the media to the need for turnaround and accountability.  This happens so frequently that I have actually felt compelled to formulate a response: Public schools cannot be perfect, but a system of public education provides society’s best chance for meeting the needs and protecting the rights of all of our children.

Of course, such responses are theoretical; they miss the heart of the matter.  There is one book, however, that explores public schools in a very different way.  Last week in theWashington Post, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the publication of Possible Lives, Valerie Strauss printed a guest column from its author, Mike Rose, research professor in the UCLA The Civic Importance of Public Education: Valuing What We Take for Granted | janresseger:

More student diversity, less integration as school restarts | 89.3 KPCC

More student diversity, less integration as school restarts | 89.3 KPCC:

More student diversity, less integration as school restarts

As over 50 million students nationwide head back for the new academic year, it's clear America is a-changing — and you only need to look in public schools to get a sense of how. 

The U.S. Department of Education projects kids this school year will be majority minority, meaning less than 50 percent of all pre-kindergarten through grade 12 will be white. 

The percentage of white students is expected to continue to decline at least through 2024 with increasing enrollments of Hispanics, Asians/Pacific Islanders, and students of two or more races. 

But then consider this: despite 60 years of Supreme Court mandated desegregation in schools as established in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education, a lack of classroom integration remains pervasive.

And California does not do well when it comes to mixing up children in class. 

A 2014 UCLA Civil Rights Project report found that California was the worst in the nation in the percentage of black students in majority white schools for the 2011-2012 school year and it ranked second worse among the states in the percentage of Latino children in majority white schools.

Measuring Latino students' exposure to white students, California also ranked the worse among the states, followed by Texas, New York and Mexico. “These Latino destination states thus are concentrating Latino students in schools that are overwhelmingly composed of other Latino and/or black students and away from white students,” the report states.More student diversity, less integration as school restarts | 89.3 KPCC: