Black To School With The New Book, “Teaching for Black Lives”: “Every school in the country needs this.” – I AM AN EDUCATOR

Black To School With The New Book, “Teaching for Black Lives”: “Every school in the country needs this.” – I AM AN EDUCATOR

Black To School With The New Book, “Teaching for Black Lives”: “Every school in the country needs this.”

It has been exhilarating to read the reviews that are steaming in about Teaching for Black Lives, the new book I co-edited with Dr. Dyan Watson and Dr. Wayne Au. Recent reviews include The Washington Post who called the book, “A handbook to help all educators fight racism” and Lily Eskelsen Garcia, president of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest labor union, who wrote, “I consider it a must-read—the kind of book with ideas so interesting, you want to chew them over with others.(Reading group, anyone?) The bonus is the book’s rich, evocative art, which is as intense as the essays.”

At the early book tour stops I have spoken at in Minneapolis and Chicago the reception has been overwhelming—selling out of the copies of the books we came with and engaging in many wonderful discussions with educators and organizers about how to fight for racial justice in education.

I am hearing from educators across the country on social media who are reading the book closely as they prepare to return to the classroom. Teachers from Denver and Philadelphia have organized study groups around Teaching for Black Lives. The editors of the book are lining up book tour stops this school year in Seattle, Maryland, Philadelphia, New Jersey, and in New York City at the Schomburg Library for Research in Black Culture.  One of the things people love about the book is the gorgeous artwork. Black artists from around the country contributed vivid illustrations that bring the essays alive. The beautiful cover illustration by Ekua Holmes has become what I imagine freedom to be when I close my eyes.

Our hope is that this book is used both to bring antiracist pedagogy into the classroom and to help build the growing Black Lives Matter at School movement. The BLM at School movement started in Seattleand then became a week of action in Philadelphia during the 2016-2017 school year. Then the movement exploded nationally during the 2017-2018 school year with educators in over twenty cities participating in a week of action for racial justice in the schools from February 5-9.

Check out the below reviews for Teaching for Black Lives. If you’re convinced, order the book, organize a study group, invite the editors of the book to come speak to your campus, join the #BlackLivesMatterAtSchool action during the first week of February, and teach for Black lives every day of the year.

“‘Teaching for Black Lives’ — a handbook to help all educators fight racism.”

—WASHINTON POST

“Teaching For Black Lives book presents ideas for empowering marginalized students.”

—SEATTLE TIMES

“Teaching for Black Lives offers a rich array of essays that help build a school-to-justice pipeline.”

—TRUTH OUT’S “Progressive Pick”

This book is not just for teachers in the classroom, but also for those of us who 
care about making Black lives matter in the community. It should be required reading for all who care about the future of Black youth.”

—OPAL TOMETI, #BlackLivesMatter co-founder and executive director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration

By OLIVIA WISE

This book is for all the educators who want to look at what they are teaching—and how they are teaching it—to help students figure out this era of upheaval… The writers are educators, reporters, authors, and activists. Their eloquence and passion force us to challenge our assumptions about other people and ourselves. To me, that’s the very best kind of reading.

—LILY ESKELSEN GARCIA, president of the National Education Association

“Teaching for Black Lives … is the one you need.”

— KELLY WICKHAM HURST, from her article for the Medium, “Teachers Need to Prepare for the 2018–19 School Year. Here’s How.”

“In this edited volume, we learn that Black Lives Matter is not just a rallying cry in the movement against police abuse and violence, but it is also a critical framework for understanding the persistent attacks on public education. As public schools face withering attacks on the national, state, and local level, this important collection edited by Watson, Hagopian, and Au will educate, inspire, and rally those in the struggle for education justice. From students, to educators, to a public that cares about public education, this book is a must- read to know the issues at stake and the strategies necessary to win.”

—KEEANGA-YAMAHTTA TAYLOR, Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation

By ERIN ROBINSON

“This is essential. Every school in the country needs this. No book better unpacks and gives color to the modern movement we’re in than this.”

—SHAUN KING, activist and journalist

“I love Teaching for Black Lives because it’s a bible to understanding both the contributions of Black and Brown people to America as well as the struggles and chains of institutional racism.”

—MICHAEL BENNETT, author of Things That Make White People Uncomfortable

“Every teacher in America needs to pick up this book.”

—LINDA SARSOUR, national co-chair of the Women’s March and co-founder of MPower Change

“Teaching for Black Lives is a moral lifeline for all educators looking to rehumanize our schools and society through education, love, and action.”

—AWO OKAIKOR ARYEE-PRICE, educator and national co-organizer of Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action

Richie Pope

“Again, the folks at Rethinking Schools have stepped out to produce a timely volume that should become a central staple in how we understand race and the radical imaginary in K–12 classrooms.”

—DAVID STOVALL, Professor of African American Studies and Educational Policy Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago

“Anyone who teaches Black students or has a Black child in school must read this book.”

—DARNELL M. HUNT, Dean of Social Sciences and Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at UCLA

“Teaching For Black Lives is not just a recommendation, but a liberating ultimatum.”

–Busted Pencils Podcast

Black To School With The New Book, “Teaching for Black Lives”: “Every school in the country needs this.” – I AM AN EDUCATOR

The Secret Network of Black Teachers Behind the Fight for Desegregation - The Atlantic #educolor

'The Lost Education of Horace Tate' and Desegregation - The Atlantic

The Secret Network of Black Teachers Behind the Fight for Desegregation

In her new book, Vanessa Siddle Walker reveals how African American educators became the ‘hidden provocateurs’ who spearheaded the push for racial justice in education.

For 25 years, the Emory University professor Vanessa Siddle Walker has studied and written about the segregated schooling of black children. In her latest book, The Lost Education of Horace Tate: Uncovering the Hidden Heroes Who Fought for Justice in Schools, Walker tells the little-known story of how black educators in the South—courageously and covertly—laid the groundwork for 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education and weathered its aftermath.

The tale is told primarily through the life of Horace Tate, an acclaimed Georgia classroom teacher, principal, and one-time executive director of the Georgia Teachers and Education Association (GTEA), an organization for black educators founded in 1878. Later in his career, he became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky; at the time, Georgia still banned black students from state doctoral programs. Walker first met Tate in 2000. Over the course of the next two years, he told her about clandestine meetings among and outreach to influential black educators, lawyers, and community members tracing back to the 1940s. He also revealed black teachers’ secret and skillful organizing to demand equality and justice for African American children in Southern schools. After Tate’s death in 2002 at the age of 80, Walker continued a 15-year exploration, relying on Tate’s extensive archives to expose the full picture of how black educators mounted civil rights battles—in the years preceding and immediately following the Brown decision—to protect the interests of black children.

The resulting account, which features anecdotes about and cites wisdom from prominent black leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and W.E.B. Du Bois, offers an intriguing look at black education and helps inform the ongoing discourse on school desegregation. I recently spoke with Walker about the crucial role black educators played in the evolution of public education in the South. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

---

Melinda D. Anderson: The traditional narrative surrounding the history of school integration is filled with fearless NAACP attorneys, well-timed lawsuits, and national civil-rights leaders. As you write, this history is not incorrect. But in what ways is it incomplete?

Vanessa Siddle Walker: To overturn Plessy v. Ferguson—the 1896 Supreme Court case upholding the separate-but-equal doctrine—you have to have access to the people in the South. But if you’re in the NAACP’s national office in New York, how do you know who in the South will be a plaintiff? How do you launch a movement when you can't really work well in the South because of the hostile climate? At the same time, black teachers in the South have data on school Continue reading: 'The Lost Education of Horace Tate' and Desegregation - The Atlantic

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GULEN FRAUD IN OAKLAND: BayTech Charter School Under Investigation | East Bay Express

BayTech Charter School Under Investigation | East Bay Express

BayTech Charter School Under Investigation 
The principal suddenly resigned after the school's board accused him of fraud, but the controversy raises questions about the school's links to the Gülen movement.

Just before the end of the last school year, the principal of Oakland's Bay Area Technology School, Hayri Hatipoglu, suddenly resigned. At least four other senior staff and two of the charter school's five board members also abruptly quit. As a result, the organization was thrown into chaos. And then Hatipoglu disappeared. According to several sources, he left the country with his family for Australia, where he is a citizen.

Afterwards, the Oakland Unified School District, which is responsible for overseeing the BayTech charter school, opened an investigation. BayTech's three remaining board members also hired an independent party to carry out their own internal review.

While OUSD and BayTech have both attempted to keep the mini-crisis under wraps, the Express has learned that BayTech's three remaining board members are accusing Hatipoglu of defrauding the school. They allege that Hatipoglu surreptitiously changed his employment contract to provide himself with three years' worth of severance pay totaling about $450,000, an unusually large sum for a small school with an annual budget of approximately $3 million. His previous contract provided for only six months of severance pay, a standard in the education sector.

"We believe he changed his contract," said BayTech board member Fatih Dagdelen in a recent interview. "According to his contract, he'd get paid a six-months salary if he resigned, but all of a sudden his contract said he'd get paid two-and-a-half years further."

As to why Hatipoglu resigned, Dagdelen declined to say, but he added, "we have a lot of evidence and believe there's a fraud."

Hatipoglu has countered that he did nothing wrong. Instead, he alleges that Dagdelen and two other BayTech board members are part of a "shady network" trying to "take over" the school.

In an unusual and unsolicited email to the Express sent on June 28, Hatipoglu wrote that the school's Turkish board members conspired to punish him for his decision to break ties with a Southern California-based nonprofit. The nonprofit, Accord Institute, happens to be controlled by the followers of a powerful Turkish imam who leads a global Islamic political force called the Gülen movement.

Founded in the 1970s by the religious leader Fethullah Gülen, the Gülen movement is an Islamic-inspired social and political force that Continue reading: BayTech Charter School Under Investigation | East Bay Express

Teachers are getting targeted anti-union emails from conservative groups | PBS NewsHour

Teachers are getting targeted anti-union emails from conservative groups | PBS NewsHour

Teachers are getting targeted anti-union emails from conservative groups

Conservative, free-market groups across the country have launched campaigns aimed at persuading teachers to drop out of their unions, in the aftermath of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that will put a dent in unions’ finances and membership numbers.

For the past year, union officials had been preparing to face both an adverse ruling in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Council 31 — which in June determined public-employee unions could no longer collect fees from nonmembers for collective bargaining—and subsequent efforts by anti-union groups to get teachers to end their memberships. But the speed and scope of the anti-union messaging has been striking.

In some cases, school district officials have even stepped in to block the flow of these outside messages on school system email servers.

Right-leaning think tanks and advocacy organizations have placed anti-union ads on Google and social media and sent targeted emails to teachers across the country. Some plan to go door to door to reach educators during the summer.

Ashley Elpern Chapman, a public school teacher and union member in Newton, Massachusetts, received a message from one of these groups, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the day after the Janus decision came down on June 27.

“The wording of [the email] sounded very manipulative, and very, ‘We’re here to help you,’” she said. “They’re there to push an agenda — not looking out for teachers.”

National unions and state affiliates have been quick to highlight that many of these organizations receive funding from prominent conservative donors and have ties to the Koch family foundations, which have donated millions of dollars to conservative and libertarian groups. The groups see the Janus decision as an opportunity to gut money from the unions, who support Democratic candidates and issues. The Mackinac Center also receives funding from The Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation, a philanthropic group started nearly three decades ago by the now-U.S. secretary of education and her husband. Unions argue that these email and social-media campaigns are designed to suppress workers’ rights and benefit corporate interest.

But Patrick Wright, the Mackinac Center’s vice president for legal affairs, says that his organization is simply providing teachers with the facts necessary to Continue reading:  Teachers are getting targeted anti-union emails from conservative groups | PBS NewsHour

Despite LeBron’s admirable efforts, most black millionaires can’t save public education

Despite LeBron’s admirable efforts, most black millionaires can’t save public education

Despite LeBron’s admirable efforts, most black millionaires can’t save public education

To improve America’s public schools, we need community-based decision-making, redistributed wealth and better leadership

LeBron James speaks at the opening ceremony for the I Promise School in Akron, Ohio, on July 30. The I Promise School is supported by The LeBron James Family Foundation and is run by the Akron Public Schools. Phil Long/AP Photo

LeBron James has partnered with Akron Public Schools in Ohio to open I Promise, a beautiful new $8 million public elementary school in his hometown. James is one of the most prominent athletes in the world and he has repeatedly used this platform to speak out in support of underserved communities and social justice causes.

He explicitly stated that the founding of the school is the greatest achievement of his career — one that also includes multiple NBA championships and individual accolades. James and the school deserve all of the praise that they have received. However, as admirable as James’ philanthropic efforts are, they are not a solution to the problems in public education.

The public praise and excitement over the opening of I Promise are also a testament to the erosion of our society’s collective commitment to public education and public institutions generally. Over the course of the last 30 years, a new bipartisan common sense has emerged about public education. This common sense presumes that corporate reorganization, public-private partnerships, charitable donations and philanthropy can provide what should be a guaranteed public good: public education.

This policy turn promoting privatization, the proliferation of charter schools, school voucher programs, and reforms based on “choice,” has contributed to the social dislocation of black students, black educators, and black neighborhoods — particularly in Ohio. In their study Closed By Choice, researchers found that the growth of privately managed charter schools in Chicago contributed to the mass closure of public schools in black neighborhoods, “education insecurity,” “fiscal stress” on the entire district, and “the widespread denigration of public education.” While James’ school is not a charter school or a private school accepting vouchers, his involvement still suggests that private wealth is necessary to create quality public education.

The personal-origins story that James credits with inspiring the opening of the school really is an indictment of the ravages of racism and capitalism that created prolonged urban crises for African-Americans in cities such as Akron. Families who settled in Akron and other Rust Belt cities for decent-paying jobs in the industrial economy were devastated when these same jobs evaporated with the onset of deindustrialization. James credits teachers, mentors and family with helping him to find his way. However, structural factors beyond personal relationships created the conditions that led James to miss 83 days of school in the fourth grade. His family did not have secure housing, adequate employment, or sufficient public transportation to get him to school. His phenomenal talent as a basketball player provided him with a lane out of these conditions, a lane not available to so many other children.

Black educational organizers have long argued for the very type of  Continue reading: Despite LeBron’s admirable efforts, most black millionaires can’t save public education

The Undefeated — Sports, Race, Culture, HBCUs and More - http://bit.ly/1Cz30d6 on TheUndefeated

The King and the Queen: How LeBron James and Beyoncé are rewriting the rules of celebrity - https://undf.td/2M4c2Zk by etoddbreland on TheUndefeated

LeBron bankrolls I Promise School in Ohio

LeBron bankrolls I Promise School in Ohio

LeBron is dishing out assists to a local school district in Ohio

The basketball player opens his I Promise school to widespread applause

Last week President Trump scoffed – albeit indirectly – at basketball icon LeBron James’ intelligence in a tweet, stating, “Lebron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon,” Mr. Trump wrote. “He made Lebron look smart, which isn’t easy to do. I like Mike!” But it looks like LeBron is the one taking Trump to school.

Last week, LeBron announced the opening of his I Promise School. It is open to 240 low-income, at-risk third- and fourth-grade students in his hometown of Akron, in northeast Ohio. Each year, the school will add grades, expanding to first through eighth grades by 2022.

I Promise is a public-private partnership between the Akron School District and the LeBron James Family Foundation, a unique model that exemplifies LeBron’s exceptional abilities to see the bigger picture in the role education plays in community development.

The new school is open for more days than the traditional school year, provides parents with job placement services, has a food bank on site, gives each kid a free bicycle and helmet, guarantees college tuition for every student who graduates and offers social and emotional support and other wrap-around services, something researchers and practitioners recognize as important. The school accounts for and addresses the structural discrimination that has long hurt black families — and black school districts. In a way, by connecting social assistances to the school, I Promise is providing wrap-around services for the entire district.

Related: Clusters of black science majors offer a map for future investment

Amplifying the school’s offerings so far beyond the curriculum certainly isn’t conventional, but LeBron is deliberately stepping out-of-bounds, and kudos to him for that.

“Everything these kids are going through — the drugs, the violence, the guns, everything they’re going through as kids, I know,” said LeBron, the son of a single parent, during his remarks at the school opening. “For me to be in the position where I have the resources, the finance, the people, the structure and the city around me — why not?”

There have been other celebrities who’ve opened charter schools in the past, such as former basketball player, now sports analyst, Jalen Rose; entertainment mogul Sean “P. Diddy” Combs; former tennis standout Andre Agassi; and rapper Pitbull, to name a few. Those who see opening a school as a means of giving back, like LeBron, have also leveraged charter school legislation to do so, to the applause of education reformers.

Charters, which are publicly financed but independently managed, give founders the freedom to do more than what a traditional school may provide. So it’s perhaps unsurprising that the launch of I Promise spurred comparisons with the charter and education reform movements, which prize school choice, voucher systems, and competition.

“[T]he fact that this school opened only because of the good graces of a very wealthy, civic-minded athlete underscores the continuing problem with education funding in this country,” wrote education writer Valerie Strauss in her blog for the Washington Post. She gives him props for situating his school within the public school district, as opposed to launching a charter, but argues that this isn’t how civic institutions should be run. “America’s public schools should not have to depend on any wealthy individual or private entity to be sustained or improved.”

Reform advocate and writer Robert Pondisco replied to Strauss’ column with this short-sighted tweet: “As ever, no one asks ‘What about the other kids?’ when white parents move to affluent towns, or pull their kids out of zoned district schools. But it’s a problem when poor black and brown parents want something better — and when someone tries to offer it.”

Related: Disrupting education, the NFL way

It’s clear that LeBron has done his homework. His school offers a considered response to criticisms that have been levied against charter schools — that they impose what outsiders believe black kids need to learn, sidestep structural inequality, reduce the number of experienced black teachers and purposely erode locals’ voting power on school boards.

First, LeBron is a son of Akron. Local communities have learned to be Continue reading: LeBron bankrolls I Promise School in Ohio

Senate Democrats Want Answers From Jeff Sessions Over Repealed Memos On Racial Diversity In Schools

Senate Democrats Want Answers From Jeff Sessions Over Repealed Memos On Racial Diversity In Schools

Senate Democrats Want Answers From Jeff Sessions Over Repealed Memos On Racial Diversity In Schools
The lawmakers asked Attorney General Sessions and the Education Department to hand over records.

Twenty-one Senate Democrats criticized Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Tuesday for his decision to rescind guidance memos on affirmative action — which instructed schools how they can legally consider the race of applicants to promote diversity — and pressed him to hand over records on racial discrimination complaints.

“We are deeply concerned your actions will make it more difficult for institutions to open up doors of opportunity to students and communities that have been historically underrepresented or have been left behind,” said a letter to Sessions and Education Sec. Betsy DeVos.

Guidance documents don’t amount to law, but they carry particular weight for education institutions, which rely on the Education Department for billions of dollars in federal grants.

Rescinding the memos in July, along with a swath of other guidance memos, came after the Justice Department has grown increasingly hostile toward affirmative action policies and threats of litigation around a case at Harvard University.

The lawmakers asked for a list of the complaints of discrimination based on race or ethnicity made to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights since January 1, 2016. Further, they asked, “How will the Department advise schools about how to seek diversity in their student body consistent with the Constitution?”

Led by Sen. Patty Murray of Washington State and Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the lawmakers also pressured Sessions and DeVos’s larger rollback of civil rights enforcement more broadly.

“With almost daily attacks from your Administration on the protections for immigrants, women, children, people of color, people with disabilities, survivors of sexual assault, and LGBTQ students, it is clear there is a coordinated and systematic effort to undermine the law, divide communities, and destabilize American values at every level and in every community,” the senators wrote.

On July 3, Sessions rescinded seven so-called guidance documents that explain how the Continue reading: Senate Democrats Want Answers From Jeff Sessions Over Repealed Memos On Racial Diversity In Schools