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:

Charter Schools Are Reshaping America’s Education System for the Worse | The Nation

Charter Schools Are Reshaping America’s Education System for the Worse | The Nation:

Charter Schools Are Reshaping America’s Education System for the Worse

High faculty turnover, high student attrition, and booming funding are making charters into the perfect weapon to destroy our public school system.

Charter schools have been hailed as the antidote to public-school dysfunction by everyone from tech entrepreneurs to Wall Street philanthropists. But a critical autopsy by the advocacy group Network for Public Education (NPE) reveals just how disruptive the charter industry has become—for both students and their communities.

Charter schools are technically considered public schools but are run by private companies or organizations, and can receive private financing—as such, they are generally able to circumvent standard public-school regulations, including unions. This funding system enables maximum deregulation, operating like private businesses and free of the constraints of public oversight, while also ensuring maximum public funding. 

According to Carol Burris of NPE, charter schools “want the funding and the privilege of public schools but they don’t want the rules that go along with them.” She cites charter initiatives’ having developed their own certification policies, as well as disciplinary codes and academic standards—a tendency toward “wanting the best of both worlds” among both non- and for-profit charter organizations.

In California, a nonprofit charter industrial model has flourished. The California Virtual Academy (CAVA) network runs hundreds of schools, delivering online-based programs through “cyber” outlets, often concentrated on students in low-income communities of color. CAVA’s political influence has expanded along with its brand.

 California’s 2016 primary elections saw fierce battles funded through charter-school industry groups, particularly the Parent Teacher Alliance, which spent several million dollars on races for local superintendents and legislators. Reflecting the ambitions of charter proponents to aggressively expand the sector statewide, the charter boosters pushed candidates who favored lifting district limits on opening new charters. Such policies have sparked controversy, since charter growth is associated with budget erosion for public schools and resistance to staff unionization in the host district. Another measure opposed by the charter sector would “make charter board meetings public, allow the public to inspect charter school records, and prohibit charter school officials from having a financial interest in contracts that they enter into in their official capacity.”

The Los Angeles Unified School District has seen dramatic effects from the expansion of charter schools as it wrestles with budget crises. The teachers’ union recently estimated that charter funding imposes costs on the district of about $590 million annually (the figure is disputed by charter Charter Schools Are Reshaping America’s Education System for the Worse | The Nation:

#MeTooK12 Campaign | Stop Sexual Assault in Schools #MeToo

#MeTooK12 Campaign | 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

#MeTooK12 Campaign

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

Click Here To Go To The #MeTooK12 Campaign On FaceBook

 

Click Here To Go To The #MeTooK12 Campaign On FaceBook

FacebookG

#MeTooK12 Movement in the medi

 MeTooK12 Resources

Combating rampant K-12 sexual harassment and assault

by Esther Warkov, Executive Director, Stop Sexual Assault in Schools

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

Read more >

#MeTooK12: Centering Young Students in the Fight to End Sexual Violence

by Sabrina Stevens, Senior Digital and Mobilization Manager, National Women’s Law Center

A few weeks ago, when #MeToo was first beginning to spread online, I was chatting on a friend’s Facebook wall after she wrote a piece asking whether schools should teach boys to respect girls. Seeing some skeptics already popping up in the thread, I chimed in to affirm her stance, and expand it with some observations of my own.
Read more >

Coming soon: Vlog by professor and activist Caroline Heldman.

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.

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

#MeTooK12 Campaign | Stop Sexual Assault in Schools:

ME

I CAN'T ESCAPE ME

THE MAN DEVOURS THE FRIEND, THE PERSON

OF THIS I LONG TO BE FREE

THE MAN TOOK SO MANY YEARS TO DO

THE PERSON, THE FRIEND IS ALL TOO NEW

THE MAN LEARNED ALL THE CUSTOMS AND TRADITIONS

EACH PART OF LIFE WITH ITS LIMITS AND CONDITIONS

THE FRIEND, THE PERSON DEALS WITH WHAT IS NOW:

LEARNING EACH MOMENT...WHERE, WHEN, HOW

THE MAN FILLS ME WITH SUCH DISGUST

WITH HIS EMBODIMENT OF LOVE WHICH IS LUST

THE FRIEND, THE PERSON ONLY WITH TRUST

THE MAN FLEXES HIS MUSCLES TO SHOW HIS STRENGTH

IT'S A SHAME IT'S MEASURED IN SIZE AND LENGTH

THE FRIEND, WELL THE FRIEND SHARES

ALL THAT THE PERSON IS IN KNOWLEDGE AND CARE

ALAS IT IS, I AM BUT ME

THE MAN, THE FRIEND, THE PERSON FOR YOU TO SEE

WHAT I AM MUST ALWAYS SHOW

BUT HOPEFULLY IT WILL BE THE FRIEND, THE PERSON

THAT YOU WILL KNOW

US charter schools put growing numbers in racial isolation - ABC News

US charter schools put growing numbers in racial isolation - ABC News:

US charter schools put growing numbers in racial isolation

The California schools where the kids are all the same race, all in one map | 89.3 KPCC - https://www.scpr.org/news/2017/12/03/78190/the-california-schools-where-the-kids-are-all-the/

(Click here view this map in its own window.)

Charter schools are among the nation's most segregated, an Associated Press analysis finds — an outcome at odds, critics say, with their goal of offering a better alternative to failing traditional public schools.

National enrollment data shows that charters are vastly over-represented among schools where minorities study in the most extreme racial isolation. As of school year 2014-2015, more than 1,000 of the nation's 6,747 charter schools had minority enrollment of at least 99 percent, and the number has been rising steadily.

The problem: Those levels of segregation correspond with low achievement levels at schools of all kinds.

In the AP analysis of student achievement in the 42 states that have enacted charter school laws, along with the District of Columbia, the performance of students in charter schools varies widely. But schools that enroll 99 percent minorities — both charters and traditional public schools — on average have fewer students reaching state standards for proficiency in reading and math.

"Desegregation works. Nothing else does," said Daniel Shulman, a Minnesota civil rightsattorney. "There is no amount of money you can put into a segregated school that is going to make it equal."

Shulman singled out charter schools for blame in a lawsuit that accuses the state of Minnesota of allowing racially segregated schools to proliferate, along with achievement gaps for minority students. Minority-owned charters have been allowed wrongly to recruit only minorities, he said, as others wrongly have focused on attracting whites.

Even some charter school officials acknowledge this is a concern. Nearly all the students at Milwaukee's Bruce-Guadalupe Community School are Hispanic, and most speak little or no English when they begin elementary school. The school set out to serve Latinos, but it also decided against adding a high school in hopes that its students will go on to schools with more diversity.

"The beauty of our school is we're 97 percent Latino," said Pascual Rodriguez, the school's principal. "The drawback is we're 97 percent Latino ... Well, what happens when they go off into the real world where you may be part of an institution that's not 97 percent Latino?"

The charter school movement born a quarter of a century ago has thrived in large urban areas, where advocates say they often aim to serve students — by and large, minorities — who have been let down by their district schools. And on average, children in hyper-segregated charters do at least marginally better on tests than those in comparably segregated traditional schools.

For inner-city families with limited schooling options, the cultural homogeneity of some charters can boost their appeal as alternatives to traditional public schools that are sometimes seen as hostile environments.

They and other charter supporters insist that these are good schools, and dismiss concerns about racial balance.

Araseli Perez, a child of Mexican immigrants, sent her three children to Bruce-Guadalupe because she attended Milwaukee Public Schools and she wanted something different for her children. The schools in her family's neighborhood are more diverse racially, but she said race was not a factor in her decision to enroll her children at the charter school five miles away.

"We're just happy with the results," she said. Her youngest child, Eleazar, now in seventh grade, is on the soccer team and plays the trumpet at the school, which boasts test scores and graduation rates above city averages. Perez said her children frequently came home from Bruce-Guadalupe showing off an award they won.

Her daughter Monica Perez, 23, went on to a private school and then college before becoming a teacher's assistant.

"I don't think I felt the impact of going to an all-Latino school until I went to high school," Perez said. "When you go to a Latino school everyone is Roman Catholic and everyone knows the same stuff."

There is growing debate over just how much racial integration matters. For decades after US charter schools put growing numbers in racial isolation - ABC News:

Wendy Lecker: Education miracle was a lie - StamfordAdvocate

Wendy Lecker: Education miracle was a lie - StamfordAdvocate:

Wendy Lecker: Education miracle was a lie

Last week, the New Orleans Tribune, a venerable news magazine of the New Orleans African-American community, published a devastating editorial about the fallacy of New Orleans school reform.

After Hurricane Katrina, education reformers swooped in to transform New Orleans into an all-charter school district, operated by host of different charter companies. These reformers promised to improve New Orleans’ schools by enhancing autonomy and choice.

In the years that followed, pro-charter groups and pundits proclaimed the “miraculous” improvements in New Orleans schools. Nina Rees declared in U.S. News & World Report that the results were “nothing short of amazing.” Jonathan Chait called them “spectacular.” Then-Secretary of Education Arne Duncan declared that Katrina was “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans.”

Reformers across the country pushed to replicate the New Orleans model of state takeover and school privatization. Michigan established the Educational Achievement Authority, Tennessee, the Achievement School District. States closed struggling schools and opened charters in Chicago, Philadelphia and beyond. Even here in Connecticut the charter lobby ConnCAN featured New Orleans as a model for school turnaround, claiming that New Orleans’ “miracle” dramatically improved performance, particularly for African-American students.

The problem with this miracle, as the Tribune notes, is that it was a lie. The improvements were the result of manipulated cut scores and a lack of oversight. The state raised the bar to make New Orleans schools “fail” and thus be susceptible to state takeover, then lowered the bar to disguise charter school failures allow charter operators to retain control. Louisiana was castigated by the legislative auditor for relying on unverified self-reported data to renew charters, and for failing to ensure charters have fair admissions policies. The auditor also slammed New Orleans charters for financial improprieties.

The tragic story of New Orleans is the story of the past 20 years of American school reform: “some arbitrary determination (of school failure) that fits the end goal of those wielding power and influence — no matter the impact on our communities.” The impact was severe.

Parents are forced to navigate a complex admissions maze — where the schools are the ones exercising “choice” — and to send their children to schools far from their neighborhoods. Charters have astronomical suspension and expulsion rates. They also exclude students, especially students with disabilities. Families have nowhere to bring complaints, as each charter operates as its own district, with its own unelected board.

Veteran teachers of color were fired en masse, decimating the city’s black middle class. They were replaced by Wendy Lecker: Education miracle was a lie - StamfordAdvocate:

Wendy Lecker: Education miracle was a lie - StamfordAdvocate: