NANCY BAILEY: The Racism Behind Firing Librarians and Closing School Libraries

The Racism Behind Firing Librarians and Closing School Libraries

The Racism Behind Firing Librarians and Closing School Libraries

Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.  ~Frederick Douglass

If a school has no school library or a flimsy excuse for a library, students are denied access to books and reading material. They miss opportunities to learn information and become proud of who they are. Look for racism behind the decision.

When school districts diminish school libraries and those who run them, they fail to address the critical issues involving history, civics, and race relations. With all the talk of schools and equity, it’s unconscionable that closing school libraries and firing school librarians are accepted practices.

In May 2020, the Washington D.C. school district passed a $70 million budget increase. In January 2021, the American Rescue Plan infused over $368 million of COVID relief and new aid to DC Schools. Today, school librarians there are begging to keep their jobs. Here’s the petition!

The dismal account of dwindling libraries and librarians is happening across the nation, especially in poor schools and schools with children of color. If your child’s school CONTINUE READING: The Racism Behind Firing Librarians and Closing School Libraries

A Case for Critical Race Theory, and More – radical eyes for equity #CRT #blm #BLACKLIVESMATTER

A Case for Critical Race Theory, and More – radical eyes for equity

A Case for Critical Race Theory, and More

White privilege is a system of advantage that benefits all white people (or to be more clear, all people who are perceived of as white).

That racial privilege, however, is no guarantee of success or shield of protection for some individual people who are white. White people fail, white people suffer inequity and disadvantages (such as poverty), and white people in some individual cases are substantially worse off than individual Black people.

Racism is a system of power and race that disadvantages all Black people in the U.S. (or to be more clear, all people who are perceived of as Black).

Racism is not a universal barrier to success or happiness or achievement, but it is a pervasive burden that tints every aspect of living for any Black person.

Black people are typically more starkly aware of racism (nearly moment by moment) than white people are of white privilege; white privilege works in an invisible way for white people while racism is a blunt object for Black people.

Race, however, is not biological; race is a social construction that has very real CONTINUE READING: A Case for Critical Race Theory, and More – radical eyes for equity

ANDRE PERRY: If you don’t want critical race theory to exist, stop being racist - The Hechinger Report

COLUMN: If you don’t want critical race theory to exist, stop being racist

COLUMN: If you don’t want critical race theory to exist, stop being racist

Conservatives campaigning against critical race theory are making it even more popular

Conservative legislators across the country are passing laws to ban books and courses that espouse critical race theory — scholarship born in the 1970s that examines the role that racism plays in our daily lives. For instance, the Idaho House of Representatives passed a higher ed bill based on some lawmakers’ beliefs that critical race theory and similar work “exacerbate and inflame divisions on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, or other criteria in ways contrary to the unity of the nation and the well-being of the state of Idaho and its citizens.”

You’d think that after the white supremacists defiled the halls of the Capitol on January 6, policymakers would be compelled to uproot clear and present sources of racial division. After four years of Trump falsely equating white supremacists with activists fighting for racial justice, you’d also think policymakers would see critical race theory as a way to make sense of systemic racism in the U.S. But, alas, racists find a way to use what should be teachable moments as a twisted opportunity to perpetuate their worldview.

A culture built upon a false racial hierarchy can only be maintained through lies, force and duplicity — all of which are on full display in the asinine attempts to ban critical race theory. Those who are threatened by any systemic analysis of racism and its underpinnings reveal exactly where they stand on white supremacy. 

The reasons this country is literally divided are clear to any reasonable person: slavery, Jim Crow segregation, housing and education discrimination, a biased criminal justice system and feckless conservative CONTINUE READING: COLUMN: If you don’t want critical race theory to exist, stop being racist

Black Student Struggle: 2021 Study Exposes the Gap - LA Progressive

Black Student Struggle: 2021 Study Exposes the Gap - LA Progressive

Black Student Struggle: 2021 Study Exposes the Gap

For more than a year health experts, researchers and sociologists have loudly proclaimed the obvious: The COVID-19 pandemic has unequally affected people and communities of color in the United States, causing disproportionately higher rates of infection and death. It’s a conclusion so clear that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention dedicates part of its website to this reality.

“Racism is a serious public health threat that directly affects the well-being of millions of Americans,” CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a statement distributed by the agency last month. “As a result, it affects the health of our entire nation.”

Equally obvious, though, is that the pandemic’s ravages are illuminating problems of inequity that already were long in existence. It’s the urgency of the fight against disease that has given those problems a new currency. And long after COVID-19 is no longer a subject of daily conversation, the issues will remain.

A new report from the University of California, Los Angeles, brings this notion into close focus. Produced by UCLA’s Center for the Transformation of Schools, the report makes it clear that the consistent underperformance of Black public school students in the L.A. area is directly tied to economics, environmental and living conditions, a lack of strategic planning by school districts and administrators, and the same structural inequities that beset other areas of life.

“Much of what we saw prior to the pandemic has only been exacerbated,” Dr. Stanley Johnson Jr., CONTINUE READING: Black Student Struggle: 2021 Study Exposes the Gap - LA Progressive

Jesse Hagopian Joins CBS News to Counter GOP Bills Outlawing The Teaching of Structural Racism: “I will not lie to kids” – I AM AN EDUCATOR

Jesse Hagopian Joins CBS News to Counter GOP Bills Outlawing The Teaching of Structural Racism: “I will not lie to kids” – I AM AN EDUCATOR

Jesse Hagopian Joins CBS News to Counter GOP Bills Outlawing The Teaching of Structural Racism: “I will not lie to kids”

Ijoined CBS News anchor Tanya Rivero on her program to discuss the request from Republican lawmakers to rescind any support of the 1619 Project and to talk about the proliferation of bills in state legislatures around the country that would ban teaching about structural racism. In the interview I called on educators to sign the new petition from the Zinn Education Project that calls on teachers to pledge that they will teach about the long legacy of structural racism, sexism, heterosexism, and other forms of oppression–regardless of the law.

It’s time to begin preparing for civil disobedience and for teachers to openly defy these neo-McCarthyist laws that would have educators lie to students about the fact that our country was founded on the genocide of Native Americans and African peoples and that structural racism and other forms of oppression persists in many ways today.

Visit the links to the Zinn Education Project below to sign the pledge! #TeachTheTruth

Onward,

–Jesse Hagopian

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Jesse Hagopian Joins CBS News to Counter GOP Bills Outlawing The Teaching of Structural Racism: “I will not lie to kids” – I AM AN EDUCATOR

Education Matters: DCPS approves charter with racist and anti-LGBTQ ties

Education Matters: DCPS approves charter with racist and anti-LGBTQ ties

DCPS approves charter with racist and anti-LGBTQ ties

 I sent below to the school board after seeing their plans to approve a second classical charter school. I knew it was going to pass, to fight back against what is wrong takes courage, and as we have seen all year long, the board lacks it, but I had hoped for some toke resistance, but apparently thinking racism doesn't exist and gay people are going to burn in hell doesn't move the needle for our school board.

  I have grave concerns about the expansion of the Classical Charter school. 

They get their curriculum from the Hillsdale Barney Charter school initiative. 

https://www.jaxclassical.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=424057&type=d 

Hillsdale is a small far-right liberal arts college out of Michigan, and recently they have sent out a series of mailers to locals.   

https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Imprimis_Mar_3-21_6pgNM.pdf 

 

They espouse some pretty radical theories where they basically say racism is a made-up tool to divide society so the radical left can seize power. 

 

For as long as I can remember, the right has accused public schools of trying to indoctrinate kids; well, friends, this seems like some straight-up far-right indoctrination on their part. 

 

Furthermore, last year, Hillsdale sent out a Facebook poll asking how afraid of socialism people were; I kid a little, but the answers were basically really scared, and really #$@%ing scared, 

 

https://jaxkidsmatter.blogspot.com/2020/02/troubling-details-about-jaxs-new.html 

 

How can we be sure that far-right indoctrination isn’t going on? Then, however, it gets worse. 

 

If you wanted to contact the classical charter school, the link takes you to the Optima Foundation.  CONTINUE READING: Education Matters: DCPS approves charter with racist and anti-LGBTQ ties

Education Matters: With the school name changes, the district sets up the racists to win even if they lose (draft)

Education Matters: With the school name changes, the district sets up the racists to win even if they lose (draft)

With the school name changes, the district sets up the racists to win even if they lose (draft)

DCPS has set up a system where people can vote to change the name of Lee High School, but Robert E. Lee can still get the most votes. This is failure a failure in leadership and it would not surprise me if it was by design.   

I wish I could vote to change the names of all the schools, as a citizen of Jacksonville it is an embarrassment that in 2021, we have any schools named after slavers and traitors let alone six. Furthermore, four of the six schools are minority-majority too which means most of the children that attend them attend schools named after somebody who thought they were subhuman. 

The process that DCPS has set up has been a slog. I guess they have never heard of just ripping the band-aid off and instead went with the slow painful way, a way that has seen racists emboldened, teachers doxed and a community unnecessarily divided.     

All of this could have been avoided had the district had any sense of urgency but of course, they had none. 

When the district decided to go on this arduous journey, who exactly was it for? It was not for the CONTINUE READING: Education Matters: With the school name changes, the district sets up the racists to win even if they lose (draft)

How Racism Affects Children of Color in Public Schools - LA Progressive

How Racism Affects Children of Color in Public Schools - LA Progressive

How Racism Affects Children of Color in Public Schools

he unaffected parts of the world refuse to acknowledge that racism is alive and kicking even when it stares us all in the face. The truth is, we have to eventually face and deal with this monster, even if it means tearing down fickle castles we have built in the air for centuries. Only when we accept that children of color get a lower quality of education when compared to their Caucasian counterparts and find a way to rectify this can we say we are finally working on racism. This is long overdue, of course.

Although many people are blind to it, racism is still a big issue in learning institutions. Many essay writers have penned papers and opinion pieces with examples on how this issue has been affecting – and continues to affect – children of color. There are so many racism essay topics online that show the unseen extents of this practice. Poor representation in gifted programs and significantly lower quality of education are results of those in power refusing to acknowledge racism.

When you withhold quality of education from children of color high, they will forever lag behind and eventually believe that they are indeed inferior to their Caucasian counterparts.

One of the reasons most people refuse to see racism is in the way it is packaged. It’s in disparities in the disciplinary measures taken against students of different ethnicities, less funding for some school districts, and subtle segregation. Research has shown children of color in US public schools have to do with less than their white counterparts in most parts of the country.  

What Is Racism in the Modern World?

Just like a virus, racism mutates. These days, it presents itself in subtle ways where if one is not keen, they might miss it completely. It is in people of one race avoiding contact with those of a CONTINUE READING: How Racism Affects Children of Color in Public Schools - LA Progressive

Minnesota: Elites Propose Constitutional Amendment to Enable Segregated Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Minnesota: Elites Propose Constitutional Amendment to Enable Segregated Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Minnesota: Elites Propose Constitutional Amendment to Enable Segregated Schools

Minnesota was the first state to pass a charter law in 1991. As blogger Sarah Lahm wrote in the Progressive in 2019, the new charters were exempt from most state regulations, including desegregation. A number of its charters are segregated by race and ethnicity, intentionally so, because the charter industry believes that segregation is culturally affirming. This situation led to a lawsuit to assure the rights of children of color in the state.

So now leading figures in the state charter lobby want to pass an amendment to the state constitution that would make segregated schools acceptable, while adding that school quality would be determined by standardized tests.

Blogger Rob Levine explains:

The Page Amendment is best understood if you recognize these foundations’ overall public education strategies. For 30 years the Minneapolis Foundation and its allies have been creating, funding, and persuading the CONTINUE READING: Minnesota: Elites Propose Constitutional Amendment to Enable Segregated Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Education Matters: The Southern Poverty Law Center says DCPS is on the wrong side of what is right

Education Matters: The Southern Poverty Law Center says DCPS is on the wrong side of what is right

The Southern Poverty Law Center says DCPS is on the wrong side of what is right

The Southern Poverty Law Center is a premier social justice organization that has fought against white supremacists, anti-semites, Islamaphobes, and all manner of malcontents on the wrong side of decency. Well, friends, you can now add Duval County Public Schools to that list. 

They have even represented Florida's public schools in their fight for fair funding, a lawsuit I testified in. It is manifestly disappointing that DCPS is on the opposite side of them. Disappointing but sadly not unexpected.  

From the Southern Poverty Law Center:

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the private employment law firm Scott • Wagner and Associates filed suit in federal court today on behalf of a Florida high school teacher who was removed from her classroom and reassigned to administrative duties in retaliation for displaying a Black Lives Matter (BLM) flag over the objection of school administrators.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, claims that officials at Duval County Public Schools (DCPS) violated her First Amendment rights and other constitutional and statutory protections because of her advocacy on behalf of Black students.

Amy Donofrio is a white teacher at Robert E. Lee High School in Jacksonville, a school where about 70% of CONTINUE READING: Education Matters: The Southern Poverty Law Center says DCPS is on the wrong side of what is right

CURMUDGUCATION: RI: Another Dumb Bill For Protecting White Folks

CURMUDGUCATION: RI: Another Dumb Bill For Protecting White Folks

RI: Another Dumb Bill For Protecting White Folks

Three Rhode Island representatives have proposed a bill to protect students in the state from what the legislators imagine, I suppose, what critical race theory or any of those other nasty anti-racist programs might be.

The three legislators are:

Rep. Patricia Morgan, who has also proposed that mail-in balloting be "tightened up," that the house condemn major tech companies "for their attack on the free speech rights of the American public," and that the house commemorate the life and career of Rush Limbaugh.

Rep. George Nardone, who has also proposed that charter schools be allowed to "engage in non-traditional approaches to learning," that ESAs be established in Rhode Island, and, well, he's on that Rush Limbaugh bus, too.

Rep. Sherry Roberts, who has also proposed the mail-in ballot thing, the Rush Limbaugh thing, and an act providing for the authorized taking of mushrooms from public lands.

Their bill is HB 6070, prohibiting the teaching of "divisive concepts." 

The divisive concepts in question do not, it turns out, include issues such as whether or not the earth is flat, whether Han shot first, or whether Mary Ann is hotter than Ginger. Instead, the legislators are concerned that some naughty teacher might choose to teach-- CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: RI: Another Dumb Bill For Protecting White Folks

Chicago Charter Chain Apologizes for “Racist, No-Excuses” Regime | Diane Ravitch's blog

Chicago Charter Chain Apologizes for “Racist, No-Excuses” Regime | Diane Ravitch's blog

Chicago Charter Chain Apologizes for “Racist, No-Excuses” Regime

The Noble Network is the leading charter chain in Chicago. It boasts of high test scores. It is the darling of the Chicago white elite, including such luminaries as former Republican Governor Bruce Rauner and billionaire Penny Pritzker, who served as Obama’s Secretary of Commerce. White apologists and admirers of the strict no-excuses discipline policy claimed that black and brown children needed the tough rules so that they could learn middle-class behaviors. David Whitman published a book praising “no-excuses” schools called Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism, in which he praised the high-performing schools (mostly charters) that enforced “no excuses.” His book was published in 2008; in 2009, he became the chief speech-writer for Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who often lavished praise on “no excuses” charter schools.

The Noble Network wrote a letter to its alumni, apologizing for its strict “no excuses” policy, which it acknowledged was “racist.” Over the years, critics have said that the practices of “no excuses” schools are racist, but they were defended by charter advocates based on their test scores. They argued that the ends justified the CONTINUE READING: Chicago Charter Chain Apologizes for “Racist, No-Excuses” Regime | Diane Ravitch's blog

The Crumbling Facade of “No Excuses” and Educational Racism – radical eyes for equity

The Crumbling Facade of “No Excuses” and Educational Racism – radical eyes for equity

The Crumbling Facade of “No Excuses” and Educational Racism

Sarah Karp offers a long overdue and somewhat surprising opening lede for WBEZ Chicago, home to a number of charter school chains:

Chicago’s largest charter school network sent a letter to alumni this week admitting that its past discipline and promotion policies were racist and apologizing for them. The apology is notable not just as an acknowledgment of misguided policies, but as a repudiation of the “no-excuses” philosophy adopted by many charter schools during the 2000s.

 TOP CHICAGO CHARTER SCHOOL NETWORK ADMITS A RACIST PAST

“No excuses” ideologies and practices have been a foundational staple of charter schools disproportionately serving Black students, Hispanic students, and poor students well back into the 1990s but blossoming in the 2000s since both political parties jumped on the charter school bandwagon. By the late 2000s, mainstream media and the Obama administration were all-in on charter schools as “miracles.”

There were always two problems with the charter school mania and propaganda—data never supported the “miracle” claims (see my “Miracle School Myth” chapter), and worse of all, “no excuses” ideology has always been racist, shifting the blame and gaze onto students and teachers in order to ignore systemic inequity and racism.

“No excuses” schools always began with the assumption that Black, Hispanic, and poor students are fundamentally “broken” and must be “fixed”—an ugly and racist version of deficit thinking.

Almost a decade ago, I spoke at the University of Arkansas after the publication of my book on poverty and education; in that work and talk, I CONTINUE READING: The Crumbling Facade of “No Excuses” and Educational Racism – radical eyes for equity

Dr. Seuss and “Cancel Culture” | Diane Ravitch's blog

Dr. Seuss and “Cancel Culture” | Diane Ravitch's blog

Dr. Seuss and “Cancel Culture”

The publisher of the many books written by Theodor Geisl (“Dr. Seuss”) announced that it was suspending publication of six books that contained demeaning drawings of Asian and African figures.

The books that will no longer be published are:

“And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street”

“If I Ran the Zoo”

“McElligot’s Pool,”

“On Beyond Zebra!,”

“Scrambled Eggs Super!”

“The Cat’s Quizzer.”

Having written a book in 2003 called The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Children Learn, I have a long-standing interest in censorship of books, textbooks, and tests. In that book, I came down on the side of free speech and freedom of expression. I did not grapple, however, with the real dilemma presented by books that contained hateful images, even if they were not seen as such when they were first published. I was CONTINUE READING: Dr. Seuss and “Cancel Culture” | Diane Ravitch's blog

Is the Dr. Seuss controversy a tempest in a teapot? Hell no. – Fred Klonsky

Is the Dr. Seuss controversy a tempest in a teapot? Hell no. – Fred Klonsky

IS THE DR. SEUSS CONTROVERSY A TEMPEST IN A TEAPOT? HELL NO.

You’ve may have heard all you want to hear about poor Dr. Seuss and Cancel Culture.

The publishers of Theodore Geisel’s books have decided that six of them won’t be published anymore because they are explicitly racist in the way Geisel drew some of his characters.

They are absolutely right.

The right wing went all cancel culture.

But the liberal’s defense may have bene worse. Geisel’s early racist depictions of Black and Asian people were excused as an issue of context. “That’s the way it was in those days,” some said. Nonsense. They were racist when he drew them.

The defenders of Geisel are reacting way too defensively. They act as if this is all taking up too much of our time.

I don’t think so.

I always made a practice of starting off my art classes, particularly with kindergarten CONTINUE READNG: Is the Dr. Seuss controversy a tempest in a teapot? Hell no. – Fred Klonsky

Six Dr. Seuss books to stop being published over ‘hurtful and wrong’ racial portrayals - Raw Story - Celebrating 16 Years of Independent Journalism

Six Dr. Seuss books to stop being published over ‘hurtful and wrong’ racial portrayals - Raw Story - Celebrating 16 Years of Independent Journalism

Six Dr. Seuss books to stop being published over ‘hurtful and wrong’ racial portrayals

Six Dr. Seuss books are being retired after decades of criticism over racist imagery in the illustrated children’s stories. Dr. Seuss Enterprises, the organization that carries on the author’s legacy, announced Tuesday that it will stop publishing and licensing “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street,” “If I Ran the Zoo,” “McElligot’s Pool,” “On Beyond Zebra!,” “Scrambled Eggs Super!” and “The Cat’s Quizzer.” “These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong,” the organization said in a statement Tuesday morning, adding that the decision was made last year with a panel of e...

Read More Six Dr. Seuss books to stop being published over ‘hurtful and wrong’ racial portrayals - Raw Story - Celebrating 16 Years of Independent Journalism