A Closer Look at Black History Month | Cloaking Inequity

A Closer Look at Black History Month | Cloaking Inequity

A CLOSER LOOK AT BLACK HISTORY MONTH

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From 88.9 WEKU

Every president since Gerald Ford has honored Black History Month in February. 

But Blackness is still not celebrated year-round. WEKU talked with people about Black History Month. 

Carol Taylor-Shim is Director of the Office of Equity and Social Justice under the office of student success at the University of Kentucky. She said while she thinks Black History Month is a necessity, it brings up a complicated set of emotions for her. 

“It is hard to continue to see your history, which again, is American history, just be centered on one month. So if the only time you’re engaging with Blackness,  the only time you’re engaging with the Black community is during February, then I really do question why are you engaging at all because there’s a whole set of other months where the Black community is still Black. What are you doing the rest of the time?”  asked Taylor-Shim. 

Harriet Tubman Theater: Suite for Freedom Film at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center A star- field lights the ceiling above in the same formation as the morning President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.Credit Farshid Assassi / NURFCEdit | Remove

In 1926, the scholar Carter G. Woodson initiated Negro History Week which was the second week of February.  Chris Miller, Senior Director of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati said one reason Woodson chose February is because by 1926 many people in the Black community were celebrating the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln, who issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Miller said over the years and decades Woodson’s Negro History Week advanced into Black History Month.  

 “His intention was never for it to be relegated to a week or a month. This is an essential   part of American History that needs to be in the textbooks, that needs to be in our educational curriculum, but we still have not made it to that destination.  If we started to integrate the history into the textbooks as it should then there wouldn’t be a need for a Black History week or month,” said Miller.  

For some people, every February there’s a debate about the usefulness of Black History Month.  Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig, Dean in the College of Education at the University of Kentucky said the important role African Americans have played definitely needs to be integrated into our daily lives. He also feels it’s important and appropriate to continue to set aside a month for a community that’s been so integral to this nation.  

 “We set aside time for people who have been an important part of our history, people whose history has been silenced. A lot of people didn’t know that the Capitol was actually built by slaves. That was recently brought again to the fore with the events at the Capitol on January 6th,” said Vasquez Heilig.  

Vasquez Heilig said when he was growing up in the 70s’ and 80s’ Black history was sidelined. He recalls visiting a local department store that just five years ago did not have books about Black History Month available. This year, he said, is different.   “Not only do they have books but they have shirts that say Harriet, Martin, Malcolm, you know, Black history- themed apparel,” reported Vasquez Heilig. 

Dean Vasquez Heilig thinks the death of George Floyd has made a difference in the national conversation.  “There was no one that could watch what happened to George Floyd and justify it to themselves. You could see with your own eyes. And there was no way that, that situation there could be spin placed on it. Clearly you can point to last summer and you can see there is change happening,” said Vasquez Heilig. 

The complexity of Black History Month makes Albert Shumake,  Executive Director of the River City Drum Corp Cultural Arts Institute in Louisville think of the reason that Black people were brought to America in the first place. 

“And that was for chattel slavery, and to build society and be used as work and not to be looked at as equals or contributing members of society . And so what Black people have done historically, is taken the worst of what there was to offer and been able to make something good out of it. But it’s complex because we have to shine a light on it,” said Shumake. 

Northern Kentucky resident and social justice advocate Chris Brown suggests everyone take time this month to learn something they didn’t know about Black History. 

“And even try to find some parallels to how Black History has affected their own personal lives. Please know that our history is  definitely not isolated to the month of February. You don’t have history, without Black history, period,” exclaimed Brown.

A Closer Look at Black History Month | Cloaking Inequity

CURMUDGUCATION: Mark Weber's Three Critical Testing Questions

CURMUDGUCATION: Mark Weber's Three Critical Testing Questions

Mark Weber's Three Critical Testing Questions

This is not the first time I've piggy-backed on a post from Mark "Jersey Jazzman" Weber, but sometimes what he posts just sets a bright blazing lightbulb off in my head. Weber is a certified PhD-carrying academic of data crunching, and he is an absolute master of rendering complicated ideas comprehensible to civilians, and that's what he's done with his post  about why "We Don't Need Standardized Testing In A Pandemic."  

I encourage you very much to go read the whole post. But sometimes saying, "This! This! This!" isn't enough for me. So. What I'm going to center on is his three-question response to anyone who says that students must take a standardized test.

1) What are you going to do with the results?

This question is hugely powerful and by far the least answered. Here's Weber:

A core concept of assessment is that tests must be shown to be valid for the purposes in which they will be used. In other words: you should make a separate argument for every proposed use of a test. A test that may be valid to use for, say, determining whether there are enough overall resources in the education system isn't necessarily valid for the purpose of determining whether a student should pass to the next grade.

Psyshometricians often speak of making a validity argument in favor of the use of a test for a particular purpose. That argument should touch upon the relevancy of the outcomes to a specific use, the consequences of making decisions based on these outcomes, the opportunity to learn the content in the test, and other factors.

This is just so key. As Weber notes, one of the huge problems with the current Big Standardized Test system is that one test is supposed to serve a variety of purposes. Evaluate schools, evaluate teachers, assess curriculum, inform parents, plus serve as a CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Mark Weber's Three Critical Testing Questions

Parents & school administrators agree: Michigan Republicans are holding children hostage for political power | Eclectablog

Parents & school administrators agree: Michigan Republicans are holding children hostage for political power | Eclectablog

Parents & school administrators agree: Michigan Republicans are holding children hostage for political power

Nearly two months ago, the federal government made billions of dollars in COVID-19 relief funds available to the states. Michigan is in line for over $5 billion in relief funding, including $2.1 billion to re-open schools in our state. However, so far, none of that money has been allocated and, if its not used by the end of March, we will forfeit it. The only reason the money has not been accepted is because Republicans will not agree to accept it until Governor Gretchen Whitmer cedes her authority to keep our state safe and allows local school districts to decide for themselves when and how to reopen schools. The condition they are putting on the acceptance of over two billion dollars is nothing short of a power play to maintain their gerrymandered control over our state.

This morning, a group of parents from around the state held a press conference demanding that Republican legislators stop using the lives of their children as a bargaining chip in the quest to diminish Governor Whitmer. Tinu Roland, a parent in the Detroit Charter School District, was blunt: “People like [State Representative] Thomas Albert think it’s okay to play games with our children,” she said. “It feels like our kids are in a different pandemic than he is.” Rep. Albert, a Republican from Lowell, is the Chair of the House Appropriations Committee. In addition to his demand that Gov. Whitmer relinquish her authority to protect all Michiganders, he refuses to release all of the funding from the federal government at once, instead making the funds available only on a quarterly basis. “If the governor performs in that time period, then we’ll continue on with the next installment,” he told The Detroit News.

Dallas Flippen, a parent and pastor with a child in the Jackson Public School system, pointed out CONTINUE READING: Parents & school administrators agree: Michigan Republicans are holding children hostage for political power | Eclectablog

Foundation Leaders Should Use Their Cash and Connections to Advocate for a Federal Racial-Equity Stimulus | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Foundation Leaders Should Use Their Cash and Connections to Advocate for a Federal Racial-Equity Stimulus | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Foundation Leaders Should Use Their Cash and Connections to Advocate for a Federal Racial-Equity Stimulus

Originally published in The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

With the stroke of a pen less than a week after his inauguration, President Biden did something no amount of philanthropic dollars could accomplish. He signed four executive orders to combat racial inequity. In quick succession, these measures strengthened anti-discrimination housing policies, ceased new federal contracts with private prisons, increased tribal sovereignty, and initiated government efforts to fight xenophobia against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

These were just first steps toward the administration’s larger efforts to promote racial justice in the United States, but they should send a signal to philanthropy: All the increased giving to address systemic racism, as welcome as it is, can never substitute for the power and purse strings of the federal government. Nor should it.

Instead, philanthropic leaders should heed the words of President Franklin Roosevelt when a prominent labor and civil-rights activist urged him to take bold action against the Depression-era economy: “Go out and make me do it.”

At the same time, as philanthropy increases its own investments in racial equity, it can use its influence to insist on the bold solutions and government spending needed to close deep racial disparities in wealth, health, and education and put an end to discriminatory policies and practices in our criminal-justice system.

That bold action should stop at nothing short of a major federal racial-equity stimulus package.

Historically, when our nation has faced challenges so severe that normal self-correction was nearly impossible, policy makers have infused cash into the economy to stave off financial hardship and alleviate American suffering.

A little over a decade ago, the more than $800 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act helped pull the country out of the worst economic crisis since the Depression. The Biden administration’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, if passed by Congress, will bring total federal pandemic stimulus spending to nearly $5 trillion in less than a year.

‘More Difficult Than Rocket Science’

Eliminating 400 years of systemic racism certainly deserves a targeted economic stimulus of its own. Achieving such massive change requires a significantly greater level of resources than philanthropy has at its disposal. During the Clinton CONTINUE READING: Foundation Leaders Should Use Their Cash and Connections to Advocate for a Federal Racial-Equity Stimulus | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Black Educator Hall of Fame Member Maria L. Baldwin + DR. AMBROSE CALIVER - Philly's 7th Ward #BLM #BLACKLIVESMATTER #BLACKHISTORYMONTH #openonlywhensafe

Black Educator Hall of Fame Member Maria L. Baldwin - Philly's 7th Ward

BLACK EDUCATOR HALL OF FAME MEMBER MARIA L. BALDWIN

E’ry day this month, the Center for Black Educator Development, in partnership with Phillys7thWard.org, will highlight a Black Educator Hall of Famer.

But, don’t forget, e’ry month is Black History Month…February is just the Blackest.

Today, our featured Black Educator is Maria L. Baldwin.

Maria Louise Baldwin was born in 1856 in Massachusetts. She graduated from Cambridge High School in 1874 and the city’s teacher training school a year later. She was encouraged to go teach in the south, “to…work for those with more limited educational opportunities.” She taught for seven years in Maryland after graduation, before returning to Cambridge to teach primary grades for the Cambridge Public Schools – thanks to the advocacy of Black residents. She was the first Black public school teacher in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Baldwin taught at the Agassiz school for 8 years before reluctantly becoming principal in 1889. In 1916, Baldwin was made master of the school. A Black person being a school master was unheard of and Baldwin was only one of CONTINUE READING: Black Educator Hall of Fame Member Maria L. Baldwin - Philly's 7th Ward

DR. AMBROSE CALIVER, BLACK EDUCATOR HALL OF FAME

Today, our featured Black Educator is Dr. Ambrose Caliver.

Dr. Ambrose Caliver dedicated his entire career to the pursuit of educational justice for the Black community. Ambrose Caliver was born in Virginia in 1894. An opportunistic learner, Caliver obtained three degrees within the span of three years; bachelor’s degree (Knoxville College), industrial arts (Tuskegee University), and personnel management (Harvard). Caliver would later earn his master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin and his doctorate from Columbia University’s Teacher College.

Caliver also served as a high school teacher and principal.

Eventually, Caliver left the K-12 world for the world of higher education. He accepted an appointment at Fisk University in 1917 to implement its vocational education program. In 1927, Caliver was made dean of the University.  

Caliver’s education and work earn him the post of Senior Specialist in the CONTINUE READING: DR. AMBROSE CALIVER, BLACK EDUCATOR HALL OF FAME

Summer School & Learning Loss | Teacher in a strange land

Summer School & Learning Loss | Teacher in a strange land

Summer School & Learning Loss

It is with some trepidation that I put both ‘summer school’ and ‘learning loss’ in the title of this blog. Trepidation, because both terms have been widely and egregiously mis-used in the month that we’ve had an actual president again.

We are now discussing What to Do About School in terms of safety and instructional efficacy, rather than how to force ‘unions’ (another word deserving scare quotes these days) to push their teachers into a workplace where potentially lethal viruses may be circulating.

To clarify: When I say ‘summer school,’ what I mean is some kind of age-appropriate, enriching and FREE experience for kids, K-12. Things like music camp, Lego teams, outdoor sports and recreation, river canoeing, book clubs, arts and crafts, coding, Young Writers workshop–or volunteering to pull garlic mustard in conservation areas and getting school credit for your work.

I know that a definition of ‘summer school’ generally comes with the stink of the punitive: having to go into a hot, dusty building to ‘catch up’ to your classmates while the custodians strip and rewax the floors outside your classroom. It’s not supposed to be fun, for teachers or pupils. The implication of summer school is that you screwed up—or, worse, were deficient—and need to be fixed.

I am also well aware of the fact that everyone, K-12, needs a break right now. A long, healing break. And what better time to take one than now, when most of the country can be outdoors, and vaccinated families will be able to re-unite and kids can run around and play?

It’s worth pointing out, however, that not all families will be vaccinated, come June, CONTINUE READING: Summer School & Learning Loss | Teacher in a strange land

Civility and the Steady Retreat from Truth – radical eyes for equity

Civility and the Steady Retreat from Truth – radical eyes for equity

Civility and the Steady Retreat from Truth

“I hope I live to see the day,” reads the subject line of an email I received a few days ago; the body continues: “That you are dead and rotting in hell along with your grandparents.”

This email arrived two days after another email posed two questions: “Did you really say those vile comments about Rush Limbaugh? Do you like civility or have you been misquoted?”

In the wake of Limbaugh’s death from cancer, conservatives and right-wing media have rushed to confront and chastise the incivility of anyone (especially professors) who expressed everything from glee to stating the facts around Limbaugh’s hate-mongering career, swamped with daily examples of mean-spiritedness, blatant racism, xenophobia, and misogyny.

In my own social media situation concerning Limbaugh, let me return to the two questions above. To whether or not I expressed “those vile comments” or if I have been misquoted, the answer is very complicated.

Of the handful-plus angry emails and voicemails I have received, a couple included my university president and other administrators (those annoying efforts at passive-aggressive intimidation); in one of those I can see the source of outrage at my claimed lack of civility since one email quoted from a right-wing media posting that in effect literally added words to my Tweet CONTINUE READING: Civility and the Steady Retreat from Truth – radical eyes for equity

Standardized Testing During the Pandemic is Corporate Welfare Not Student Equity | gadflyonthewallblog

Standardized Testing During the Pandemic is Corporate Welfare Not Student Equity | gadflyonthewallblog

Standardized Testing During the Pandemic is Corporate Welfare Not Student Equity

We’ve got to be able to tell how badly the pandemic is affecting student learning.

So let’s give standardized tests.

That’s the rationale behind the Biden administration’s mandate that schools across the country still struggling just to keep buildings open somehow manage to proctor standardized assessments.

Nearly 29 million people have contracted Covid-19 in the United States. More than 514,000 people have died from the virus.

Only about half of the nation’s schools are open for in-person learning, and many of those are operating on a hybrid basis. The rest are completely virtual.

Children have lost parents, siblings, family members, friends, teachers. Families are struggling just to survive with some members still recovering from the longterm health consequences of contracting Covid.

It is absurd to claim that only standardized tests can show whether the pandemic has impacted student learning.

It has. Nearly everywhere.

Insisting on testing is like bringing a thermometer into a burning building to tell CONTINUE READING: Standardized Testing During the Pandemic is Corporate Welfare Not Student Equity | gadflyonthewallblog

NYSAPE Urges Parents to Opt Out of Biden Testing | Diane Ravitch's blog

NYSAPE Urges Parents to Opt Out of Biden Testing | Diane Ravitch's blog

NYSAPE Urges Parents to Opt Out of Biden Testing

New York State Allies for Public Education has led the successful opt out movement in their state for years. As much as 20% of all eligible students have refused the annual tests in most years, in some schools and districts, a majority of students don’t take the test.

They reacted angrily to the news that the Biden administration plans to require annual testing after Joe Biden publicly promised not to.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 23, 2021More information contact:Lisa Rudley (917) 414-9190; nys.allies@gmail.com

Jeanette Deutermann (516) 902-9228; nys.allies@gmail.com

NYS Allies for Public Education – NYSAPE

The Biden Administration Fails to Put Children First; NYSAPE Urges Parents to Opt Out

In a recent letter released by Ian Rosenblum, Acting Secretary of Education and former Executive Director of the reformer organization Education Trust NY, the USDOE and the Biden Administration have signaled that testing waivers submitted by the states will be denied this year. Although the ESSA accountability measures will be granted waivers, the insistence on forging ahead with ESSA-mandated student assessments completely ignores the damaging impact that administering state assessments in the midst of a pandemic will have on our children. 

Unfortunately, the Biden Administration believes that traumatized children, including those who have yet to set foot in their school buildings since last March, will be best served preparing for and taking standardized tests, even though this will only add to the stress they are already experiencing. 

However, parents are not without recourse. New York State parents can, and will, exercise their right to refuse to allow their children to participate in the grades 3-8 state assessments. NYSAPE’s New York State Test Opt Out parent letter can be found here.

NYSAPE applauds the New York State Education Department (NYSED) for announcing “Regents Exams would not be required to meet graduation requirements and to cancel any Regents Exam that is not required by USDOE”.

NYSAPE now calls on the New York State Board of CONTINUE READING: NYSAPE Urges Parents to Opt Out of Biden Testing | Diane Ravitch's blog

Teacher Tom: Young Children Don't Need Adults to Make Their Play Meaningful

Teacher Tom: Young Children Don't Need Adults to Make Their Play Meaningful

Young Children Don't Need Adults to Make Their Play Meaningful

I was watching a boy named Henry carry a yellow traffic pylon across the playground. He carefully placed it on the ground, not on it's base, but on it's side, taking care to get it "just so," before climbing atop an old packing crate. He stood poised atop the crate for a moment then launched himself, coming down on the pylon. Crack! I heard the sound of the pylon breaking from across the yard.

Stupidly, I asked him, "Henry, why did you do that?"

Without missing a beat he replied, "I wanted to see if I could break it." Duh.

We had a brief conversation about property after that, although in hindsight I think that "property" has a somewhat different meaning when we spend our time on a junkyard playground like ours, but I keep this episode in mind whenever people begin to talk about "play with a purpose," a mantra for those who have accepted the importance of play CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: Young Children Don't Need Adults to Make Their Play Meaningful

In “NY Times” Piece, Eve Ewing Ignores Economic Catastrophe for Public Schools of Charter School Expansion | janresseger

In “NY Times” Piece, Eve Ewing Ignores Economic Catastrophe for Public Schools of Charter School Expansion | janresseger

In “NY Times” Piece, Eve Ewing Ignores Economic Catastrophe for Public Schools of Charter School Expansion

I am a great fan of Eve Ewing’s book, Ghosts in the Schoolyard.  I have read the book twice, visited in Chicago some of the sites she describes, given the book to friends as a gift and blogged about it.  In that book, Ewing documents the community grief across Chicago’s South Side, where the now three decades old Renaissance 2010 “portfolio school plan” pits neighborhood public schools and charter schools in competition and closes the so-called “failing” neighborhood public schools when too many families opt for a charter school.

In a column published in Monday’s NY Times, Eve Ewing wants to make peace with charter schools.  She writes that we should allow families to choose and ensure that neighborhood schools and charter schools can all be well resourced and thriving. Ewing grasps for a third way—some sort of amicable compromise in a very polarized situation.

Ewing is a University of Chicago sociologist, and, in her column she examines many of the factors by which neighborhood public schools and charter schools have been compared and rated. She points out that academic quality is a mixed bag with neighborhood and charter schools sometimes besting each other in terms of student achievement. Then she wonders, “What would it look like if we built an education policy agenda dedicated to ensuring… resources for all students?

The problem in Ewing’s column this week is that she never identifies or addresses the matter of public funding for education. I assume she wants to equalize school funding across both sectors. But when charter schools compete for students with public schools, there are now two separate education sectors to split what has proven to be a fixed pot of money.  In every single place I know about where charter schools have been allowed to open up, this is a zero sum game.  A sufficient and growing body of research demonstrates that there is no way to split CONTINUE READING: In “NY Times” Piece, Eve Ewing Ignores Economic Catastrophe for Public Schools of Charter School Expansion | janresseger

Resilient Public Schools: Bright and Dark Sides (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Resilient Public Schools: Bright and Dark Sides (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Resilient Public Schools: Bright and Dark Sides (Part 1)

For the past few months I have been thinking a lot about the upending of public schools by the Covid-19 pandemic. As someone who has studied the history of school reform in the U.S., I have been trying to make connections with the past that might inform present-day debates over district policies and classroom practices. So I am beginning a multi-part series of posts on the central point I have found that connects the past with the present: the resiliency of public schools over the past century and a half.

When educators speak of resiliency, they more often than not speak of it as a personal trait that individuals have such as perseverance, grit, the capacity to bounce back from adversity, and similar points. In these posts, I use the concept to capture one critical institutional feature of a well-known community institution that too often goes unnoticed.

In doing the research on the institutional resiliency of public schools over the past 150 years, I have also discovered that there is a bright and dark side to this important concept as applied to public schools. I welcome comments on these draft posts.

Hurricanes, earthquakes, and viral pandemics have closed schools in the past. These temporary disruptions forced parents, government officials, and school leaders to find alternative ways to organize schooling and teach the young. Each emergency revealed anew the interconnectedness of our lives. Parents realized the complexities of home teaching of content and skills, the need for enormous patience, and, yes, the importance of schools to the rest of society. Each upheaval CONTINUE READING: Resilient Public Schools: Bright and Dark Sides (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

SSPI Issues Statement on USDOE Testing Guidance - Year 2021 (CA Dept of Education)

SSPI Issues Statement on USDOE Testing Guidance - Year 2021 (CA Dept of Education)

State Superintendent Tony Thurmond Issues Statement in Response to U.S. Department of Education Guidance on Standardized Testing

SACRAMENTO—State Superintendent Tony Thurmond today issued the following statement in response to the latest guidance from the U.S. Department of Education on administering statewide standardized tests this year:

“Standardized tests are imperfect measures at best and often provide snapshots of student performance that are far too narrow to help educators in any given year, let alone during a once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic.

“Most years, the results of statewide testing simply reflect the deep and systemic inequities that have placed generations of students at a historic, ongoing academic disadvantage. Those are the students whose families have been hit hardest by COVID-19—households in poverty and communities of color—and every resource dedicated to taking a test is a resource that could be better spent on helping students recover from this crisis and accelerate learning.

“Even as more schools reopen in the weeks and months ahead, it seems unlikely there is enough time to meaningfully prepare our students for statewide tests. And for the hundreds of thousands of students who still lack internet access at home, remote testing is simply not a viable option.

“The most valuable metrics we can use to understand a student’s academic progress will always remain the ones that are collected by educators and schools on a regular, ongoing basis in classrooms—even virtual ones—where individual relationships with students are fostered and strategies for support can be designed in real-time. The impacts of this pandemic have taught us the necessity of identifying and investing in better ways to measure learning that don’t involve high-stakes, costly testing that lines the pockets of a billion-dollar assessment industry. We should be looking for ways to reinvest in programs that support learning and offset gaps that have been exacerbated during the pandemic.

“Our students, families, and educators have experienced extraordinary trauma this past year. As our classrooms continue to slowly welcome students back in the weeks and months ahead, we must resist the urge to rush into stressful, high-stakes testing, when in fact our students will be in a better position to learn if we first prioritize positive connections, relationships, and their mental health and well-being.

“We recognize the need to measure the impacts of distance learning, and my team at the California Department of Education will be making recommendations that urge the U.S. Department of Education to provide maximum flexibility to our school districts this year by offering a range of testing timelines, including the option to delay assessments until this summer or fall if needed.”

The California State Board of Education will consider updated recommendations at its Wednesday meeting, and the agenda can be found here.

# # # #

Tony Thurmond — State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Communications Division, Room 5602, 916-319-0818, Fax 916-319-0100

SSPI Issues Statement on USDOE Testing Guidance - Year 2021 (CA Dept of Education)