The GOP’s Biggest Charter School Experiment Just Imploded – Mother Jones

The GOP’s Biggest Charter School Experiment Just Imploded – Mother Jones:

The GOP’s Biggest Charter School Experiment Just Imploded 

The west side of Columbus, Ohio, is a flat expanse of one-story houses, grimy convenience stores, and dark barrooms, and William Lager, in his business wear, cut an unusual figure at the Waffle House on Wilson Road. Every day, almost without fail, he took a seat in a booth, ordered his bottomless coffee, and set to work. Some days he sat for hours, so long that he’d outlast waitress Chandra Filichia’s seven-hour shift and stay on long into the night, making plans and scribbling them down on napkins.

The dreams on the napkins seemed impossibly grandiose: He wanted to create a school unlike anything that existed, a K-12 charter school where the learning and teaching would be done online, and which would give tens of thousands of students an alternative to traditional public schools across the state. It would offer them unheard of flexibility—a teen mom could stay with her child and study, while a kid worried about being bullied could complete lessons at home. And it would be radically cheaper than a traditional classroom, since there would be no buildings to maintain, no teachers’ unions to bargain with. At the time—the late 1990s—it was a revolutionary idea. Lager called it, in the heady days when the internet seemed to promise a solution to every problem, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow.

But back then—before Lager had his mansion and lake house, before he rose to become a hero of the school choice movement, before Jeb Bush flew in to give ECOT’s commencement speech and Betsy DeVos helped him and his cohort transform Ohio’s educational landscape—Filichia, the Waffle House waitress, could tell Lager seemed broke. Balding, round-faced, and concentrating intently as he scribbled, she even once caught him trying to pass off photocopies of discount The GOP’s Biggest Charter School Experiment Just Imploded – Mother Jones:

Sexual Harassment: Not In Our School #MeTooK12 #MeToo #TimesUp

Video | Stop Sexual Assault in Schools:

Stop Sexual Assault in Schools

Educating students, families, and schools about the right to an equal education free from sexual harassment

Click Here To Go To The #MeTooK12 Campaign On FaceBook

Click Here To Go To The #MeTooK12 Campaign On FaceBook

WATCH IT NOW PART 1    PART 2	SHARE IT NOW	READ ABOUT IT	TAKE ACTION

 is an innovative video for K-12 parents, middle and high school students, schools, and community organizations. It’s about gender equality in education, students’ protections under Title IX, and much more. Video Contents  Media Reports

As high school students plan for their new gender equality group, we watch them interview nationally recognized education, legal, and LGBTQ experts and learn from counselors, advocates, parents, and students. The video offers simple steps and engaging activities to make schools safer with equal learning spaces for all students.

In Part 2, a teenage victim learns about her right to privacy and mandated reporting when she speaks with a victim’s advocate.

 was created by parents who know—first hand—how important this information is for K-12 families. Share the video and Action Guide widely. Use the Presentation Guide to invite others to start the conversation!

 is free of charge. Your tax-deductible donation helps to defray production costs of Part 1 and allows us to produce Part 2.  To make your donation, please use PayPal. Thank you!

Send us your feedback and take the online evaluation.

 Video | Stop Sexual Assault in Schools:

Take Action

• •  Action Guide
  • Campus activism: How to Become a NOW Activist in High School

Read 6 more items ↓

Resources referenced in the video

In order mentioned

The assault that led to the founding of SSAIS

The Sexy Lie TEDx Youth Talk with Professor Caroline Heldman

Read 26 more items ↓

Fact Sheets

Read 11 items ↓

Know Your Rights

Read 6 items ↓

Is Your School Title IX Compliant?

• Title IX Compliance Checklist

Problem with your school

• Problem with your school (SSAIS.org)
• Filing complaints (SSAIS.org)

Abuse by school staff

• Stop Educator Sexual Abuse, Misconduct, & Exploitation (S.E.S.A.M.E.)
• Talk About Abuse to Liberate Kids (TAALK)

Films, online talks, and PSAs

Read 19 items ↓

Books and Studies

Read 8 items ↓

Talking to Students

Read 1 item ↓

SSAIS thanks Terri L Rossi for supporting this page.

Video | Stop Sexual Assault in Schools:

Promoting healthy masculinity in K-12 schools - Marc Grimmett #MeTooK12 #MeToo #TimesUp

Promoting healthy masculinity in K-12 schools - Marc Grimmett - YouTube:

Promoting healthy masculinity in K-12 schools - Marc Grimmett

#MeTooK12 Campaign | Stop Sexual Assault in Schools: 

In this excerpt from Sexual Harassment: Not in Our School! psychologist and professor Marc Grimmett talks about ways to make our schools free from sexual harassment and violence. Watch the full video at http://bit.ly/2q6dVqt and Part 2 at http://bit.ly/2pvZZs8 "Sexual Harassment: Not in Our School!" is an empowering video for middle and high school students, K-12 parents, schools, and community organizations. It’s about gender equality in education, students’ protections under Title IX, and much more.
Visit SSAIS.org/video to learn how to bring Sexual Harassment: Not in Our School! to your audience free of charge. Share it widely using the Presentation Guide to start the conversation!
#MeTooK12 Campaign | Stop Sexual Assault in Schools
This video was created by parents who know—first hand—how important this information is for K-12 families. Visit SSAIS.org/video to support this work and get involved!
 Copyright 2016 SSAIS.org All Rights Reserved. For noncommercial distribution only.

#MeTooK12 Campaign | Stop Sexual Assault in Schools: 

Click Here To Go To The #MeTooK12 Campaign On FaceBook

Click Here To Go To The #MeTooK12 Campaign On FaceBook

Stop Sexual Assault in Schools

Educating students, families, and schools about the right to an equal education free from sexual harassment

#MeTooK12 Campaign

A campaign to promote awareness and inspire action
to counteract pervasive sexual harassment and sexual violence in K-12 schools.

Combating rampant K-12 sexual harassment and assault

by Esther Warkov, Executive Director, SSAIS

#MeTooK12 is a social media hashtag created by the national nonprofit Stop Sexual Assault in Schools (SSAIS.org). The campaign encourages ...
Read more

What adults can do about K-12 sexual harassment and assaultby Jeffrey Caffee, civil rights attorney

Action Plan

• Spread the hashtag #MeTooK12
• Tweet your experiences of K-12 sexual harassment or assault. 
• Post your experiences on the new #MeTooK12 Facebook page.
• Check out the video and action guide at SSAIS.org/video, and the SSAIS YouTube channel.
• Involve students, parents, school staff, clubs, community, media, and lawmakers.
• Learn about Title IX and implement the Action Guide at SSAIS.org/video.
• Contact SSAIS to become more involved with this campaign.

Coming soon: Blog by Sabrina Stevens, Senior Digital and Mobilization Manager, National Women's Law Center.

Coming soon: Vlog by professor and activist Caroline Heldman.

#MeTooK12 Campaign | Stop Sexual Assault in Schools:

New Year’s Resolution For Public Education

New Year’s Resolution For Public Education:

New Year’s Resolution For Public Education

Wayne Wlodarski, a labor relations consultant for OEA, is asking teachers and all other citizens to make a New Year’s resolution in support of public education.

He, with permission, turned a Network for Public Education (NPE) statement into the attached resolution:

I BELIEVE that public education is the pillar of our democracy. I believe in the common school envisioned by Horace Mann. A common school is a public institution, which nurtures and teaches all who live within its boundaries, regardless of race, ethnicity, creed, sexual orientation or learning ability. All may enroll – regardless of when they seek to enter the school or where they were educated before.

I BELIEVE that taxpayers bear the responsibility for funding those schools and that funding should be ample and equitable to address the needs of the served community. I also believe that taxpayers have the right to examine how schools use tax dollars to educate children.

I BELIEVE that such schools should be accountable to the community they serve, and that community residents have the right and responsibility to elect those who govern the school. Citizens also have the right to insist that schooling be done in a manner that best serves the needs of all children.

In so stating these beliefs, I will do whatever I can to support and promote public education in Ohio.

This resolution can be signed and sent to public official and the media as an expression of support for the public common school system.

Please circulate this resolution via all means available.New Year’s Resolution For Public Education:

Mapping the imaginary lines we use to segregate our schools - Vox

Mapping the imaginary lines we use to segregate our schools - Vox:

Mapping the imaginary lines we use to segregate our schools

Is your district drawing borders to reduce or perpetuate segregation?

Think about your elementary school.

If you attended an American public school, chances are you went to that school because your family lived in that school’s attendance zone. You probably didn’t think twice about it.

We tend to assume these are neutrally drawn, immutable borders. But if you take a step back and look at the demographics of who lives in each attendance zone, you’re faced with maps like this:

Once you look at the school attendance zones this way, it becomes clearer why these lines are drawn the way they are. Groups with political clout — mainly wealthier, whiter communities — have pushed policies that help white families live in heavily white areas and attend heavily white schools.

We see this in city after city, state after state.

And often the attendance zones are gerrymandered to put white students in classrooms that are even whiter than the communities they live in.

The result is that schools today are as segregated now as they were about 50 years ago, not long after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision.

But this exact strategy — gerrymandering school districts to include certain kinds of students Mapping the imaginary lines we use to segregate our schools - Vox:

Wendy Lecker: The segrenomics of U.S. education - StamfordAdvocate

Wendy Lecker: The segrenomics of U.S. education - StamfordAdvocate:

Wendy Lecker: The segrenomics of U.S. education

For children in Baltimore classrooms, 2018 opened with buildings where temperatures never topped 40 degrees. An incensed teacher wondered why persevering in abominable conditions is something “we only ask of black and brown children.”

A new book by Cornell professor Noliwe Rooks, “Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation and the End of Public Education,” traces the history of separate and unequal education in America.

Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education

White America’s reaction to the prospect of educating children of color has ranged from outright and often violent opposition to promoting weak substitutes for adequately funded, integrated schools — substitutes that fail to ensure educational equity. Throughout U.S. history, these maneuvers have presented opportunities for hoarding resources for the white and affluent and even profiting at the expense of children of color — a phenomenon Rooks calls “segrenomics.”

From the earliest days of tax-supported public education, states found ways to deny African-American communities equal educational opportunity. One method was to simply refuse to fund African-American schools.

In 1914, South Carolina spent on average $15 per pupil for white schools but fewer than $2 per pupil for black schools. Appalled at the conditions in which African-American children were forced to learn, that state’s superintendent of education remarked: “It is not a wonder that they do not learn more, but the real wonder is that they learn as much as they do.”

As Rooks chronicles, officials in the South outlawed integration, double-taxed African-Americans, refused to build African-American schools and engaged in violence. Public money, even if raised by African-Americans, almost exclusively benefited white students.

Some white philanthropists resolved to help African-Americans — on their terms. They required poor African-American communities to front money for schools that the philanthropists would match. Determined African-American communities all over the South expended herculean efforts to raise the required money.

The philanthropists had a constricted vision of education for African-Americans. To them, it was a means to provide effective and subservient laborers to ensure the South’s economic health. As one organization put it, the goal was “to train these people as we find them to a perfectly ideal life where they are.”

Rooks illustrates how officials and “reformers” have virtually ignored successful models for education, such as: adequate funding, integration, and community-initiated reforms.

As she demonstrates, inequality, hoarding and profiting off the backs of poor children of color continue today. Schools have Wendy Lecker: The segrenomics of U.S. education - StamfordAdvocate: