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Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice
Somber mood in Charlottesville as schools prepare to open
Corey Mitchell, Education Week
During her days as a 4th grade teacher in Charlottesville, Va., Janette Martin remembers taking students on field trips to the site of the city’s controversial statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. The place Martin often used to enliven Civil War history lessons has now become synonymous with something else entirely: a textbook example of hate.
In the wake of a violent white nationalist and neo-Nazi protest that erupted last week at the site that resulted in three deaths and dozens of injuries, preparations for the Aug. 23 start of the school year in this racially mixed district of 4,200-students have taken on a somber tone. District students and staff were among those injured during the violence—and parents, including the school board president, now have reservations about allowing their children to walk and bike the streets. “We saw it, we felt it, and it was my hope that children in the 21st century, our children today, would never have to have images like that in their minds. Visible images of hate and racism,” Charlottesville schools Superintendent Rosa Atkins said in an interview. “But unfortunately they do.”
How do teachers talk about hate speech?
All Things Considered, NPR
One Charlottesville, Va., elementary school teacher grapples with how to have this conversation with her students the week after the violence erupted in her city just as a new school year is about to begin.
State superintendent candidates agree teacher shortage must be top priority
John Fensterwald, EdSource
At an education conference Thursday, the two announced candidates for state superintendent of public instruction called for more strategies to counter a teacher shortage they said is gripping the state. The comments by Marshall Tuck and Tony Thurmond indicate the issue will factor heavily in their campaigns to replace retiring State Superintendent Tom Torlakson next year. “The shortage is a massive crisis that few are talking about,” said Tuck, a former president of the Green Dot charter network in Los Angeles, who is making his second run for the office. Adopting short- and long-term approaches “must be the number one priority in the state,” he said. “How can we close the achievement gap with a huge teacher shortage?” asked Assemblyman Thurmond, D-Richmond, a former member of the West Contra Costa Unified School District school board who touted several bills he is authoring this year to address the issue. “We need teachers who are ready and well-trained to teach; that is one of the huge challenges in education right now,” he said.
Language, Culture, and Power
Five years in, what’s next for DACA?
Claudio Sanchez, NPR
Demonstrators came from across the country to gather at the White House in support of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as toddlers and children. Five years ago today, President Obama signed an executive order protecting them from deportation. It’s known as DACA — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Now immigrant rights groups — and immigrants themselves — worry that opponents and President Trump’s administration are quietly working to revoke protection for DACA participants — young people like Claudia Quiñonez from Bolivia: “I wouldn’t be able to get a higher education, go to school, pay for my car. My whole life would end.” And Fatima Romero, who was born in El Salvador, and was 13 years old when her parents entered the U.S. illegally: “I’m no less American than anyone who was born in this country. I’ve never committed a crime, I pay my taxes, we follow the law and all we want is to stay and contribute to the country that has given so much to us.”
‘We have 14 Black deaf Americans with Ph.D.s—14’
B.R.J. O’Donnell, The Atlantic
In many ways, Gallaudet University looks like any other liberal-arts college in America: Brick buildings and leafy walkways are abundant on its campus in Washington, D.C. But at Gallaudet, American Sign Language (ASL) is the lingua franca, and creating space for deaf culture a main priority. Walking to class, students sign in rapid-fire bursts of kinetic language. Franklin Jones Jr. is one of those students. Though he is thriving now—having gotten his undergraduate degree and now attending graduate school at the university—his path has been a difficult one. In fact, Franklin wasn’t sure college was for him at all. But Dr. Carolyn McCaskill, a professor of deaf studies at Gallaudet who researches the history and structure of black ASL, worked with Franklin to make sure he reached graduation. Not only did he do that, but he graduated magna cum laude with a degree in ASL, linguistics, and deaf studies, and he was selected to deliver remarks at his graduation ceremony. For The Atlantic’s series on mentorship, “On The Shoulders Of Giants,” I spoke with Jones Jr. and McCaskill about their bond, the experience of being black and deaf in America, and how mentorship can promote inclusion.
UC Berkeley chancellor unveils ‘Free Speech Year’ as right-wing speakers plan campus events
Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times
Carol T. Christ, UC Berkeley’s 11th chancellor and the first woman to lead the nation’s top public research university, unveiled plans Tuesday for a “Free Speech Year” as right-wing speakers prepare to come to campus. Christ said the campus would hold “point-counterpoint” panels to demonstrate how to exchange opposing views in a respectful manner. Other events will explore constitutional questions, the history of Berkeley’s free speech movement and how that movement inspired acclaimed chef Alice Waters to create her Chez Panisse restaurant. “Now what public speech is about is shouting, screaming your point of view in a public space rather than really thoughtfully engaging someone with a different point of view,” Christ said in an interview. “We have to build a deeper and richer shared public understanding.”
Whole Children and Strong Communities
How students’ brains are in danger on the field
Linda Flanagan, The Atlantic
When Olivia Hayward was smacked to the ground during an especially scrappy soccer game, she didn’t worry about her head. It was her wrist that seemed off. A 90-pound high-school freshman playing varsity ball, Hayward routinely drew the attention of sturdier players on the opposing side. “I got knocked around a lot in every game,” she said. Hayward hauled herself up off the muddy field, played until the end of the match, and went directly to a hospital, where x-rays indeed revealed a broken wrist. Three days later, her head started to throb. Light bothered her eyes, and nausea killed her appetite. The athletic trainer at school insisted that she take the concussion test, the regular protocol after a blow to the head; like all athletes, she had taken the test for a baseline read at the start of the school year. This time, Hayward struggled to follow the shapes and colors flashing across the screen. “I failed!” she recalled. A doctor surmised that when Hayward snapped her head back, she’d suffered whiplash, which had concussed her brain. This was her second concussion.
4-H is helping kids plant the seeds for healthy relationships
Kayla Latimore, NPR
“Remember, it’s Vegas rules, guys. What happens here, stays here,” says Alexander Chan to a room full of giggling high school teenagers as he goes over the ground rules for a workshop all about healthy relationships. Chan’s background is in marriage and family therapy. Now he’s an educator with 4-H in Prince George’s County, Md., where he leads a youth development program, through University of Maryland Extension, to help local teens understand and cultivate positive romantic partnerships. In his experience working with young people across Maryland, he says he has come to understand that they see a myriad of relationships. His goal with the healthy relationships workshop is to create a space for teens to learn good habits and to ask those questions that can sometimes be embarrassing.
What it means when a school district declares itself a ‘safe haven’ or ‘sanctuary’: a quick guide
Carolyn Jones, EdSource
Since Donald Trump was elected president, more than 100 California school districts have declared themselves “sanctuaries” or “safe havens” for undocumented immigrant children. As the debate over immigration heats up, more districts are expected to follow suit. But do these resolutions have much impact? Do they really protect students, or are they just a rhetorical band-aid? And are these districts risking federal funding? Here are some answers.
Access, Assessment, and Advancement
The high-speed preschool experiment
Patrick Wall, The Atlantic
When they arrived, many of the soon-to-be kindergarteners in Miami Elementary School’s summer preschool program in Lafayette, Indiana, could not spell their names or grip a pencil. They hadn’t learned to line up silently or raise their hands. At lunch, a few tried slurping their applesauce through straws. Many working-class families in this manufacturing city across the Wabash River from Purdue University cannot afford to send their children to private pre-kindergarten, nor can they rely on government-funded programs—like Head Start and subsidized childcare—which serve a fraction of eligible children. The city resembles Indiana as a whole, where 60 percent of children miss out on preschool. So instead, some 275 Lafayette families sent their 4-and 5-year-olds to schools across the district for the free, month-long summer program, which aims to cram the basics of preschool into 20 half-day sessions.
Andreas Schleicher: What are the keys to a successful education system?
TED Radio Hour, NPR
Andreas Schleicher created PISA, an exam that compares the knowledge of 15-year-olds from around the world. He says the test can help us understand why some countries perform better than others.
Getting into college was the easy part. Staying there is becoming harder than ever, experts say.
Valerie Strauss, The Washington Post; Brennan Barnard, Derryfield School
Shower caddy? Check. Earplugs? Check. Tupperware bins? Check. Enough socks and underwear to last until vacation? Check. August has arrived and many recent high school graduates are preparing for their first year of college in a few weeks. But are they truly prepared for what lies ahead? Immeasurable energy, attention (okay … obsession) and resources are devoted to “getting in” to college. Throughout high school, students and parents fixate on admission and the “prize” of college, often neglecting what lies between: the transition process. For many young people, college represents a rite of passage — the onset of adulthood — which ought to be a time of healthy focus on a major life transition. Instead, the experience is anticlimactic and often wrought with disappointment, as it is overshadowed by admission fatigue and the acceptance itself. The hype around selective college admission would have families believe that acceptance is the pinnacle of high school success. Meanwhile deceptive marketing and promotion provides an unrealistic perception of the endless joy and perfection that supposedly await students on campus. Heath Einstein, dean of admission at Texas Christian University, said: “In some ways, the struggle to adjust from their cocoons to a new environment are no different from decades past. The difference, though, is that they arrive less equipped to handle independent living.” Further, he said that today’s students have “been so beaten down by the high school experience that they carry with them significant emotional baggage which manifests in unhealthy choices.”
Inequality, Poverty, Segregation
Why suburban schools are inflating kids’ grades
Jon Marcus, The Atlantic
Monet Spencer remembers traveling to affluent suburban high schools when she was a member of the marching band at Brashear High School in this city’s low-income, high-crime Beechview neighborhood. The suburban band members’ uniforms were brand new, Spencer noticed—not passed down and worn-out like hers. So were their instruments, unlike the scratched and tarnished castoffs her school loaned her and her bandmates, including the secondhand flute she played. The experience sticks in her mind as a symbol of the gulf between the opportunities she had compared to those enjoyed by students living in the suburbs just a few miles away. “Everyone knows they’re treated differently,” said the soft-spoken Spencer, 19, who was left homeless when her mother died but continued taking herself to school and is now entering her sophomore year in college. Here’s the latest, more profound way in which wealthier students have an advantage over lower-income ones: Those enrolled in private and suburban public high schools are being awarded higher grades—critical in the competition for college admission—than their urban public school counterparts with no less talent or potential, new research shows.
Linda Cliatt-Wayman: What can we do to empower students living in poverty?
TED Radio Hour, NPR
As principal of a low-performing high school, Linda Cliatt-Wayman’s students faced huge challenges. She describes how she transformed her school while providing unwavering love and support for her students.
‘Academy’ model boosts high school grad rate for at-risk students, study says
Catherine Gewertz, Education Week
High school students with the biggest dropout risks graduate at significantly higher rates than their better-situated peers if they attend—and complete—programs in a network of “academy” model schools. A study of schools in the NAF—formerly known as the National Academy Foundation—network examined the trajectories of students who are likely to drop out or fail. It found that if students stick with a NAF program throughout high school, they graduate at a rate that’s 10 percentage points higher than that of their peers at other schools: 72.7 percent, compared to 62.5 percent. The researchers categorized students as at-risk of dropping out if their attendance, credit-accumulation, and grades in English and math are poor. The NAF model blends an academic curriculum with career-themed instruction and work-based learning. Its 675 schools currently serve more than 96,000 students, primarily in high-minority, low-income neighborhoods. Researchers from ICF, a Virginia-based research group, studied more than 600,000 students in six states: NAF students, and demographically similar non-NAF students in those same districts, as they progressed from freshman year in 2011 through graduation in 2015.
Public Schools and Private $
Betsy DeVos: School voucher program could be included in tax overhaul discussion
Sally Ho, TIME
More than a third of U.S. states have created school voucher programs that bypass thorny constitutional and political issues by turning them over to nonprofits that rely primarily on businesses to fund them. But the programs are raising questions about transparency and accountability at a time when supporters are urging that they be expanded into a federal program. Unlike traditional school vouchers, which are directly funded by the states or in the case of Washington, D.C., the federal government, these programs don’t use any public money. Instead, those who contribute to the voucher program get tax credits. Seventeen states now have the so-called tax-credit scholarships. Both President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have promoted the scholarships as a way to give parents greater choice in deciding where their children will go to school. Supporters are pushing the administration to launch a federal program extending the tax credit scholarships nationwide.
Charter schools take a hit in nationwide poll
John Fensterwald, EdSource
The public’s support for charter schools fell significantly from a year ago nationwide and among both Democrats and Republicans, according to an annual poll by the magazine Education Next.
Although a small plurality still favor charters, the 12 percentage point drop in support, from 51 percent to 39 percent, marked the biggest shift in this year’s survey results, released Monday (see full results with survey questions). In its 11th annual poll, Education Next, a research and opinion magazine published by the conservative-leaning Hoover Institution at Stanford University, surveyed 4,214 adults over 18. That was a large enough sample to explore views on some topics in-depth by asking variations of questions to half of respondents. The latest survey was taken in May and June.
This ALEC state report card speaks volumes about Betsy DeVos’s education agenda
Valerie Strauss, The Washington Post
Quoting from the late British Prime Minister Margaret “Iron Lady” Thatcher, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos recently said that there is “no such thing” as society, trashed the federal government and hailed the spread of school “choice.” She was speaking at the annual conference of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and espoused a philosophy that mirrored that of the powerful conservative organization. If you don’t know about ALEC, you should. It is a member organization of corporate lobbyists and conservative state legislators who craft “model legislation” on issues important to them and then help shepherd it through legislatures. It describes itself as being dedicated to promoting “limited government, free markets and federalism,” though the New York Times called it essentially a “stealth business lobbyist.” When it comes to big education issues, there appears to be no light between DeVos and ALEC, so let’s take a look at how ALEC views individual states and their schools. Every year ALEC puts out an education “grades and school choice report card” that ranks states on principles important to the group. The latest report card was issued seven months ago, and it is highly revealing. The introduction says that the states were graded in six categories — “academic standards, charter schools, homeschool regulation burden, private school choice, teacher quality, and digital learning,” but it concedes that the most weight went to charters and vouchers “because they represent the parent-centered, choice-driven future of education in the 21st century.” DeVos has also made clear that school choice is her priority and that “accountability” is more about offering parents private options than about how well those options provide services to students.
Other News of Note
There is no apolitical classroom: Resources for teaching in these times
Standing Committee Against Racism and Bias, NCTE
The members of NCTE’s Standing Committee Against Racism and Bias have felt an urgency since we each joined the committee to stand against racism and bias. We have been working on ways to encourage each member of NCTE to speak out against the systemic and individual acts of racism that disenfranchise our students in and out of the classroom. We know that racism exists in our classrooms and in our communities. We feel that silence on these issues is complicity in the systemic racism that has marred our educational system. We see no place for neutrality and urge each member of NCTE to educate as many people as possible about the ways that systemic racism affects all of us in negative ways. There is no apolitical classroom. English language arts teachers must examine the ways that racism has personally shaped their beliefs and must examine existing biases that feed systems of oppression. In light of the horrific events in this country that continue to unfold, and the latest terrorism in Charlottesville, Virginia, we would like to share resources that we hope will encourage all NCTE members to speak out against the racism and bias that have been a part of our nation’s fabric since the first immigrants disembarked from European ships.
Resources for educators to use in the wake of Charlottesville
Anya Kamenetz, NPR
How should educators confront bigotry, racism and white supremacy? The incidents in Charlottesville, Va., this past weekend pushed that question from history to current events. One teacher wondering aloud about his role is Derek Weimer. He taught James Alex Fields Jr., the man charged with murdering a woman and injuring multiple others by driving his car into a crowd of anti-racist marchers this weekend. Weimer says he taught Fields in three classes at Cooper High School in Union, Ky. As NPR reported, he told member station WVXU reporter Bill Rinehart: Weimer says Fields was intelligent and didn’t cause trouble. But he says the quiet boy was also deeply into Adolf Hitler and white supremacy. Weimer says he did his best to steer Fields away from those interests and thought he had succeeded in doing so. On hearing about the incident in Charlottesville, Weimer said he felt that he failed as a teacher. For 40 years, the nonprofit Facing History and Ourselves has been training teachers to confront racism and bigotry. By studying the moral decisions facing people at historical moments, from Reconstruction to Kristallnacht to the civil rights era, they hope “to empower students to work against bigotry and injustice or improper uses of power,” says Roger Brooks, president and CEO. “We sum everything up by saying people make choices and choices make history.”
The first thing teachers should do when school starts is talk about hatred in America. Here’s help.
Valerie Strauss, The Washington Post
#CharlottesvilleCurriculum: That’s the new Twitter hashtag for educators, parents and anyone else looking for resources to lead discussions with young people about the violence that just erupted in Charlottesville, when white supremacists, neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members marched and clashed with counterprotesters. One woman was killed and 19 were injured when a car rammed into the counterprotesters, and two state police officers assisting in the response died when their helicopter crashed on the outskirts of town. The 2017-2018 school year is getting started, and teachers nationwide should expect students to want to discuss what happened in Charlottesville as well as other expressions of racial and religious hatred in the country. While such discussions are often seen as politically charged and teachers like to steer clear of politics, these conversations are about fundamental American values, and age-appropriate ways of discussing hatred and tolerance in a diverse and vibrant democracy are as important as anything young people can learn in school. Civics and history education have taken a back seat to reading and math in recent years in “the era of accountability,” but it is past time for them to take center stage again in America’s schools.