Tag Archives: education

This List Shows You How Divided America’s Schools Are

by IolaHopkins Posted on August 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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In the wealthy West Jefferson Hills School District in western Pennsylvania, a new high school with an eight-lane swimming pool and terrazzo flooring was recently approved for construction. Meanwhile, in neighboring Clairton, where the district’s poverty rate is 48 percent, officials wrestled with whether to close schools earlier this year.

That striking disparity is just one of many in a new report that maps the country’s 33,500 school district borders and highlights places where high-poverty districts bump up against wealthy neighbors. The report, put out by the nonprofit EdBuild, sheds light on how these well-established boundaries create “barriers to progress that segregate children” and even worse inequities in the public education system. It also notes that existing school finance system, in which districts rely heavily on property taxes as a source of local funding for schools, creates an incentive for wealthier families to move across district lines to more well-resourced areas.

Between 1990 and 2010, income-based segregation among American school districts grew, according to Stanford’s Center for Education Policy Analysis. Such disparities among districts result in unequal access to resources, such as underqualified teachers and subpar facilities, and could lead to gaps in academic achievement. Another recent Stanford study found that children in the wealthiest school districts performed, on average, four grade levels above children in the poorest school districts. In May, on the anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, the Government Accountability Office found that the share of schools with a high concentration of poor, black, and Hispanic students increased from 9 to 16 percent between 2000 and 2014.

“We’ve created and maintained a system of schools segregated by class and bolstered by arbitrary borders that, in effect, serve as the new status quo for separate but unequal…” conclude the authors of the EdBuild report. “Increasingly, the story of American school districts is a tale of two cities, one well-off and one poor—one with the funds necessary to provide its children ample educational opportunities and one without adequate resources to help its children catch up.”

Here’s a look at the biggest disparities in poverty between neighboring districts:

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This List Shows You How Divided America’s Schools Are

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Why Did Black Lives Matter and the NAACP Call for an End to More Charter Schools?

by OnitaKXCUdkj Posted on August 15, 2016

Mother Jones

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A few weeks ago, the Movement for Black Lives, the network that also includes Black Lives Matter organizers, released its first-ever policy agenda. Among the organization’s six demands and dozens of policy recommendations was a bold education-related stance: a moratorium on both charter schools and public school closures. Charters, the agenda argues, represent a shift of public funds and control over to private entities. Along with “an end to the privatization of education,” the Movement for Black Lives organizers are demanding increased investments in traditional community schools and the health and social services they provide.

The statement came several weeks after another civil rights titan, the NAACP, also passed a resolution, calling for a freeze on the growth of charter schools. The NAACP had equated charters with privatization in previous resolutions, but this year’s statement—which will not become policy until the National Board meeting in the fall—represents the strongest anti-charter language to date, according to Julian Vasquez Heilig, a professor of education leadership and education chair of the NAACP’s California State Conference. “The NAACP is really concerned about unregulated growth of charter schools, and says it’s time to pause and take stock,” says Vasquez Heilig, who posted a copy of the resolution on his blog.

Such policy positions come at a time when parents, legislators, and philanthropists across the country—from Boston to Philadelphia to Los Angeles—are embroiled in fierce debates over the role of charters, particularly in poor, urban areas where most of these schools have been growing. Since 2000, the number of charters more than tripled, from about 1.7 percent to 6.2 percent of public schools.

Charter proponents—including prominent black educators like Secretary of Education John King Jr., Geoffrey Canada, and Steve Perry—argue that legislators need to continue this momentum for “choice” and competition among schools, citing the high test scores and college acceptance letters that many charter schools deliver. “We should not have artificial barriers to the growth of charters that are good,” King told reporters at the recent annual National Association of Black Journalists–National Association of Hispanic Journalists convention, adding that “charters should be a part of the public school landscape and can be a driver of opportunity for kids.”

Skeptics counter that charter schools contribute to racial and socioeconomic segregation, and that high percentages of charter school students in poor, urban districts can also contribute to the fiscal stress and the downward spiral of the traditional schools. Throughout the country, Vasquez Heilig noted, state charter laws vary dramatically: Some charter schools find ways to exclude disadvantaged children; others are created with explicit commitment to serve the most disadvantaged students. Vasquez Heilig argued that a moratorium would allow the public to investigate current practices and promote those that work the best.

“It’s time to pause and investigate: Should there be so many entities that are allowed to open them?” he said. “If you are not an educator, should you be allowed to open a charter school? Is there a due process for parents who feel that their kids were pushed out? How do charters schools make decisions about firing and hiring? How do they spend public money?”

Here are some of the most significant concerns charter school critics have cited over the years:

Some charter schools practice “skimming.” There is growing evidence that some charters accept only the least difficult (and that means the least expensive to educate) students. Earlier this month, a report by the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and the public interest law firm Public Advocates found that 1 in 5 California charter schools practice restrictive admissions requirements or other exclusionary practices—even though charter schools are required by law to admit all students who wish to attend. Some of these practices included denying enrollment to students with lower grades or test scores; expelling students who struggle academically; or requiring students and parents to write essays and go through admission interviews.

Researchers at the University of California-Los Angeles’ Center for Civil Rights Remedies also expressed similar concerns when they noticed a national pattern in their 2016 study: Some charters had both high test scores and very high suspension rates, they noted, prompting the authors of the report to conclude, “Although beyond the scope of this report, the possibility certainly exists that some charter schools are artificially boosting their test scores or graduation rates by using harsh discipline to discourage lower-achieving youth from continuing to attend.”

Meanwhile, traditional schools tend to educate students with greater challenges that cost more. One study in Philadelphia, for example, found that students with severe needs—those who have been in foster care, involved with the juvenile justice system, or whose families are on welfare—are concentrated in traditional public schools in Philadelphia. Traditional schools in Philadelphia also educate 10 percent more students living in poverty, 4 percent more English learners, and 2 percent more students with special needs.

Unregulated growth and lack of strong oversight. In June, the New York Times published a scathing investigation of Detroit’s school district, which has a bigger share of students in charters than any other city except New Orleans. Reporter Kate Zernike concluded, among many other findings, that insufficiently regulated growth—including too many agencies that are allowed to open new charter schools—contributed to a system with “lots of choice, with no good choice”:

The unchecked growth of charters has created a glut of schools competing for some of the nation’s poorest students, enticing them to enroll with cash bonuses, laptops, raffle tickets for iPads and bicycles. Leaders of charter and traditional schools alike say they are being cannibalized, fighting so hard over students and the limited public dollars that follow them that no one thrives. Michigan leapt at the promise of charter schools 23 years ago, betting big that choice and competition would improve public schools. It got competition, and chaos.

Other districts and states with high percentages of students in charter schools have come under similar criticism. In April, the general auditor of Pennsylvania published a report concluding that the state’s charter laws are the “worst in the US,” contributing to questionable financial practices in some charters in the district of Philadelphia, as well as fiscal woes in the state’s largest school district.

Unregulated explosion of charters drains money from traditional public schools. In most districts, per-pupil money follows students, but many expenses, such as building costs, salaries for teachers, and principals don’t go away when a student leaves for a charter school. Students in charter schools can also create extra costs. In Philadelphia, for example, the district has to pay for transportation for students attending charter schools that are often not in their neighborhood. The city also found that 30 percent of all charter students come from outside the district, but the city still has to pay for their education. As a result, a study by the Boston Consulting Group estimated that each new student in a charter school in Philadelphia creates as much as $7,000 in additional costs for the district.

Charter schools suspend more black students and children with disabilities. This year, UCLA’s Center for Civil Rights Remedies published a study that for the first time looked at the numbers of “out-of-school” suspensions for 5,250 charter schools and 95,000 public schools. The researchers found that while overall suspension rates have been going down since 2012, in charter schools, black students and students with disabilities were suspended at higher percentages in all grades than their peers in traditional schools. In middle and high schools, 12 percent more students with disabilities and 2.5 percent more black students were suspended in charters compared with noncharters.

Paying attention to this data is important, because researchers have found that being suspended is a strong indicator that a student will eventually drop out. And students who drop out are much more likely to end up in prison, becoming part of the “school-to-prison pipeline.” This issue disproportionately affects black students (in charter and noncharter schools), who are suspended at a rate four times greater than white students.

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Why Did Black Lives Matter and the NAACP Call for an End to More Charter Schools?

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The Supreme Court Just Blocked This Trans Kid From the Bathroom of His Choice

by EJZAugusta Posted on August 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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The Supreme Court on Wednesday blocked a lower court order that would have allowed a transgender boy in Virginia to use the boys’ bathroom at his school when he returns for classes in September.

The student in question is 17-year-old named Gavin Grimm who was born female but identifies as male. After he was diagnosed with gender dysphoria in 2014, doctors recommended that he live and be treated like a boy. For about two months, his school allowed him to use the boys’ bathroom, but after receiving complaints from parents, his school board adopted a policy that prevented him from doing so.

On Wednesday, in a 5-3 order, the justices temporarily blocked Grimm from the boys’ bathroom while the Supreme Court considers whether to take up a case concerning the Virginia school board’s policy. If the justices agree to hear the case, it would be the first time the Supreme Court has weighed in on the question of whether trans students should be allowed to use bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity, rather than the sex listed on their birth certificates. Twenty-three states are currently suing the Obama administration over a guidance from the Department of Education that says it’s discriminatory to block transgender kids from bathrooms of their choice.

With help from the American Civil Liberties Union, Grimm sued the Gloucester County school board in June 2015, arguing that its policy blocking him from the boys’ bathroom violated Title IX, a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in schools that receive federal funding. Grimm initially lost his case in district court, but in April this year, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in his favor, kicking the case back to the district court and urging it to respect the Obama administration’s guidance. The district court then granted an injunction allowing Grimm to use the boys’ bathroom.

In July, the Virginia school board filed an emergency appeal with Chief Justice John Roberts to put the district court case on hold until the justices determine whether they will review the appeals court decision. The school board also asked Roberts for permission to prevent Grimm from using the boys’ bathroom when school resumes, arguing that parents might otherwise pull their kids out of school.

The Supreme Court agreed on both counts. In a concurring statement, Justice Stephen Breyer said he agreed to temporarily block the lower court order as a “courtesy” because the high court was on recess until October. “Granting a stay will preserve the status quo,” he wrote. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan dissented.

“We are disappointed that the court has issued a stay and that Gavin will have to begin another school year isolated from his peers and stigmatized by the Gloucester County school board just because he’s a boy who is transgender,” ACLU senior staff attorney Joshua Block wrote in a statement. “We remain hopeful that Gavin will ultimately prevail.”

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The Supreme Court Just Blocked This Trans Kid From the Bathroom of His Choice

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10 More States Sue Federal Government Over Transgender Bathroom Rules

by Adan36Vsqcmfib Posted on July 8, 2016

Mother Jones

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Ten more states sued the federal government Friday over rules allowing transgender kids to use bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity—rather than the sex listed on their birth certificates—in public schools. They join a group of 13 other states already suing the Obama administration over the same mandate.

A May 13 directive from the Department of Education and the Department of Justice, which does not carry the force of law, said schools that forced transgender kids to use bathrooms matching their birth sex would be violating Title IX and could lose federal funding.

The lawsuit filed Friday is being brought by the states of Nebraska, Arkansas, Kansas, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Wyoming. They argue the Obama administration’s directive was an overreach and a misinterpretation of Title IX.

“The recent action by these two federal agencies to require showers, locker rooms, and bathrooms to be open to both sexes based solely on the student’s choice, circumvents this established law,” Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson wrote in a statement. “It also supersedes local school districts’ authority to address student issues on an individualized, professional and private basis. When a federal agency takes such unilateral action in an attempt to change the meaning of established law, it leaves state and local authorities with no other option than to pursue legal clarity in federal court in order to enforce the rule of law.”

On May 25, another lawsuit was filed against the federal government over the same directive by the states of Texas, Alabama, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Utah, and Georgia; the governor of Maine; the Arizona Department of Education; and school districts in Texas and Arizona. Kentucky and Mississippi later signed on to that lawsuit.

The Obama administration argues that transgender kids are already a vulnerable minority and that blocking them from bathrooms of their choice is discriminatory.

“We’re talking about kids, and anybody who’s been in school, been in high school, who’s been a parent, I think should realize that kids who are sometimes in the minority—kids who have a different sexual orientation or are transgender—are subject to a lot of bullying, potentially they are vulnerable,” President Barack Obama said in an interview with BuzzFeed defending the directive.

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10 More States Sue Federal Government Over Transgender Bathroom Rules

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The Surprising Way Parents Sabotage Their Daughters

by DessieC90438 Posted on May 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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Caroline Paul frantically tried to get her ice pick to take hold in the slushy snow. Her friend had fallen into the bottom of an ice canyon and her other friend, strapped to the rope that held all three of them, was headed in the same direction.

Paul needed to anchor herself and pull them both up. But the unusually warm weather on Mount Denali prevented her ice pick from staying put. In those moments on the United States’ largest peak, Paul had to take everything she knew about climbing (very little) and everything she feared about dying (a lot) and set some priorities.

Caroline Paul calls her latest book the Lean In for girls, with cliffs, trees, and rivers. Bloomsbury USA

Before becoming an author, Caroline Paul worked as a firefighter for the San Francisco Fire Department. Photo courtesy CarolinePaul.com

Paul lived to tell the tale, and it’s become one of the 10 so-called “misadventures” that the scuba diver, paraglider, luge champion, pilot, and firefighter-turned-writer shares in her book.

The Gutsy Girl: Escapades for Your Life of Epic Adventure, isn’t as dramatic as it is thrilling, hilarious, and packed with tips on ways to practice bravery every day. The Gutsy Girl, published March 1, is for young girls but also has a message for parents: Stop telling your daughters to be careful.

We caught up with Paul the day before she went flying in an experimental plane she describes as “a hang glider with a go-kart underneath.” She talked about how we learn to be brave and why the outdoors is the best place to cultivate it. If we want our girls to grow into strong women, we’ve got to let them be gusty, she says.

Mother Jones: What made you want to write The Gutsy Girl?

Caroline Paul: Over the years I had seen that my female peers often said they were too scared to do something, and it struck me because often what they were talking about was not that big of deal, like picking up a bug and putting it outside, like going on bike rides. I didn’t think a lot about it until my friends who are parents lamented to me that their daughter was a real scaredy-cat. In watching her, I saw that her parents were telling her all the time: “Be careful,” “watch out,” “no,” “don’t.” I realized that it was the parents who were really anxious and fearful for her, and that was something she caught from them. I’ve noticed this more, not only with girls but with women. It seems to start at a very, very young age.

MJ: The Gutsy Girl is full of tales of scuba diving, paragliding, ice climbing, and even your eight-mile crawl around a track in an attempt to beat the world record. Not all of your stories are about your successes. How did you choose what to include?

CP: I picked 10 of my misadventures, and I’ve had more than that unfortunately, because it’s the misadventures that really teach the lessons that I want girls to learn. Lessons like bravery, resilience, camaraderie, decision-making, risk assessment, which is a boring word but so important. I feel really strongly that girls are not taught these things; they sort of pick them up as they get older in other areas that aren’t the outdoors.

Caroline Paul in front of her ultra-light aircraft Photo courtesy Caroline Paul

MJ: Why is that a great place for girls to be gutsy?

CP: The great thing about the outdoors is that it’s so obvious out there. When you’re standing on the edge of the cliff with your paraglider and you’re asking yourself whether it’s too dangerous, you’re going to assess your skills, you’re going to look at your fear, you’re going to access your confidence. All of that stuff is super important when we’re adults.

MJ: How can women be more brave in daily life, say, in the workplace?

CP: I often see women’s unwillingness to take initiative in things. First of all, men will do it for them and that really needs to change. I think we as women know that; I do it, too. But men have been taught for so long to try everything.

MJ: What do you recommend for girls who don’t have access to mountain climbing, ski trips, or other extreme activities?

CP: Adventure can happen super close to home. You don’t have to go to far-off countries and you don’t have to climb big mountains and buy fancy equipment at all. An adventure is getting on your bike with your friends; an adventure is hiking through a new park. It’s really about getting outside your comfort zone—then you have become successful adventurer.

MJ: Who are some of your heroes?

Elizabeth “Bessie” Coleman went to France to get her pilot’s license in 1920 when she wasn’t allowed into American flight schools. wikipedia commons

CP: When I was growing up, I didn’t have any. The only hero I knew of was Amelia Earhart; it seemed like she was the big exception to the rule. In other words, women didn’t do adventuring. But upon researching this book I realized there were a lot of women I could have been told about. My favorite is Bessie Coleman, a storm pilot and parachutist. She was African American and female, and since none of the flight schools would allow her to study with them, she went to France. Not only the fact that she wanted to fly back then (in the early 1900s), which is an obstacle psychologically as well as logistically, but then to face all that prejudice and all those naysayers and still do it? That’s the ultimate definition of gusty.

Caroline Paul says it’s not about being fearless, but learning how to manage the emotion. Photo courtesy Caroline Paul

MJ: What’s the hardest part about being gutsy?

CP: Managing fear, which I think a lot of girls and women don’t bother to do because we are infiltrated by this idea that we should be fearful. I’m seeing from other people just how deeply they feel that girls are more fragile than boys. What they’re not thinking about is that before puberty girls are actually stronger than boys, most of the time they’re ahead in terms of coordination and emotional maturity. But studies show that they are already inculcated with the idea that they could get hurt when they think about things like riding bikes. We teach them at such a young age that they are fragile. I hope that this book combats that.

MJ: How are you gutsy in your everyday life?

CJ: Well as a writer, just putting words on the page is such a heartrending and awful, soul-crushing experience. When you start with a book and tell yourself, really, you’re going to finish this, that takes all the life lessons you learn in the outdoors and you have to apply them. It takes bravery and it definitely takes teamwork. I applied a lot of these things. On more than one occasion, I remember Wendy (MacNaughton, who illustrated the book) looked at me and said, “Why aren’t you being gutsy about this?” And of course people call you on your own stuff and you have to knuckle down.

MJ: Anything gutsy you did recently?

CP: Recently when my dishwasher broke my first reaction was, “I can’t do this, I have to call one of my guy friends.” But the truth is, these days it’s all on YouTube—there’s nothing that any one of us can’t do. I fixed my own dishwasher and I felt smug. And great.

MJ: How can we ignore, or defeat, our fear?

CP: I’m not against fear. I think people think I’m fearless, and I’m not. I do believe it’s important that when you do feel fear you take it out and look at it, and then put it in it’s rightful place. What’s ahead is exhilaration and focus and anticipation—all these emotions that will make what you’re about to do super fun. The fear is just reflective, so put it where it should go, which is often the back of the line.

In the book I also encourage girls to practice acts of micro-bravery. The concept comes from Rachel Simmons, co-founder of Girls Leadership (in San Francisco). She says that bravery is learned, and so we need to teach ourselves and be taught it, and one way is by taking small steps. As you do those you start to learn so much about yourself, where your boundaries are, and what the feeling of fear versus the feeling of excitement is, because they often feel similar and chemically they’re similar. So by practicing daily acts of micro-bravery you’re teaching yourself how to recognize the difference between exhilaration and fear.

We have to start so much earlier teaching girls to stand up in the ways that women want to when they’re in the office. At work, it’s just so late by then.

MJ: Is your book sort of a “no boys allowed” space?

CP: I feel strongly that boys should read this book as well. Girls have to sit through so many books with boy characters, white boy characters. There’s no reason at all that boys should be told that this book isn’t necessary for them. They need to see that there are bad-ass girls out there.

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The Surprising Way Parents Sabotage Their Daughters

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This Bill Could Make More Kids Obese—and No One Is Talking About It

by DarrenLashbrook Posted on April 27, 2016

Mother Jones

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You probably haven’t heard much about it with the presidential election sucking up all the oxygen, but US lawmakers are mulling one of the nation’s most important and influential pieces of food legislation: a once-every-five-years bill that sets the budget and rules for school meals. And it hasn’t been a very appetizing process.

In a recent episode of Bite—the new podcast I host with colleagues Kiera Butler and Maddie Oatman—the excellent school lunch analyst and blogger Bettina Elias Siegel lamented that there’s no push to increase our miserly annual outlay on the lunch program, which serves about 30.5 million kids each school day. Currently, we spend about $13 billion in federal dollars on it each year—equal to about 2 percent of annual defense spending. That leaves cafeteria administrators with a bit more than a dollar per meal to spend on ingredients, leading to generally dismal-quality food, often served reheated from a box.

Instead of pushing for more resources, advocates are having to play defense, fighting to preserve reforms made in the previous Child Nutrition Reauthorization (as the bill is known). That act, passed in 2010, included a tiny per-meal budget increase but also required cafeterias to serve more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and to cut back on sugar, fat, and salt. It also limited the amount of junk food that can be served in a la carte lines—restricting a practice that has been linked to higher obesity rates. And it adopted a program to allow schools in high-poverty areas to automatically offer all students free lunches—a provision widely praised in anti-hunger circles.

The 2010 reforms have largely proven a success, Steven Czinn, the chair of the department of pediatrics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, recently showed in a Washington Post op-ed. While the new rules got off to a rough start in some districts, things have improved, and tales of rejected lunches and fresh fruit piling up in cafeteria trash cans are overblown, he wrote.

Even so, those healthier food provisions provoked a furious backlash from tea-party-associated Republicans. In a notorious 2014 rant on the House floor, US Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) thundered against what he called “nanny-state lunches.” Then there’s the School Nutrition Association, a group that represents cafeteria administrators but gets about half its $10 million budget from the food industry. As Politico‘s Helena Bottemiller Evich reported in 2014, the group initially fought for the changes, but suddenly, in 2014, it began “standing shoulder to shoulder with House Republicans” in an effort to gut them.

In January, the Senate Agriculture Committee cobbled together a bill that preserved the 2010 reforms. But now its counterpart in the House, the Education and Workforce Committee, is pushing a bill that would ease restrictions of sales of junk like chips and cookies in cafeterias. “Children as young as five could go from having cookies or fries with their lunches once in a while to buying and eating them every day,” writes Jessica Donze Black, who directs the the Kids’ Safe and Healthful Foods Project for the Pew Charitable Trusts.

More egregiously, the proposed House bill would undermine universal free-lunch programs for many high-poverty schools. Under the 2010 bill, when at least 40 percent of students in a school qualify for free lunches, the school can claim “community eligibility”—meaning all students automatically have access to free lunches. The program eases the administrative burden for these financially strapped schools, allowing them to “shift resources from paperwork to higher-quality meals or other educational priorities,” writes Zoë Neuberger of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. It also eliminates the “stigma that sometimes accompanies free meals” and increased meal participation, which, in turn, “improves student achievement, diets, and behavior,” she adds.

The House bill would raise the threshold from 40 to 60 percent. If it becomes law, Neuberger writes, more than 7,000 schools—with nearly 3.4 million students—”would have to reinstate applications and return to monitoring eligibility in the lunch line within two years.”

Happily, none of these rollbacks are likely anytime soon, said Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy for the Center for Science in the Public Interest and a veteran of the school food wars. That’s because first lady Michelle Obama pushed hard for the 2010 reforms, and her husband will veto any school lunch reauthorization bill that attempts to roll them back. Until a new bill passes, the 2010 reforms hold sway, she said. “For once, the status quo is on the side” of people pushing to widen access to free lunch and remove junk food from the cafeteria, she added.

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This Bill Could Make More Kids Obese—and No One Is Talking About It

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What White Teachers Can Learn From Black Preachers

by ijgmyne6n Posted on April 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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When Chris Emdin, now an associate professor of math, science, and technology at Columbia University, was a senior in a Brooklyn high school, most of his teachers were quick to punish him for things like doing a little celebratory dance in his chair after he nailed a teacher’s question or standing up and stretching without permission in the middle of a long assignment. Emdin’s teachers often called him a “disobedient” and “troubled” student. Emdin badly wanted to go to college, he writes in his new book, For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood…and The Rest of Y’all Too, so he learned to suppress his “unabashed urbanness,” or what he describes as his tendency to be loud, conspicuous, and prone to question authority. “I became conditioned to be a ‘proper student’ and began to lose value for pieces of myself that previously defined me.”

Years later, when Emdin started teaching in a predominantly black high school, an older teacher told him, “You look too much like them, and they won’t take you seriously. Hold your ground, and don’t smile till November.'” Emdin followed the advice. But then, during his first year of teaching, he realized he had become the same authoritarian he resented when he was in high school. Like his fellow teachers, Emdin viewed students who spoke too loudly, laughed without permission, or exuded too much confidence as “problem students.” Kids who were demure, quiet, and followed the rules were viewed as “teachable.”

Researchers have found that such mental sorting is commonplace in American classrooms and has huge impact on a student’s ability to succeed. When teachers think a student is “teachable,” he or she supports that student in hundreds of invisible ways: by giving them more time to answer questions, or through visual cues such as nodding and smiling. What’s more, new research found that when a white teacher and a black teacher evaluate the same black student, white teachers are almost 40 percent less likely to think the black student will graduate high school. That same bias often translates into a white teacher being less rigorous with the student and more prone to discipline him or her.

Emdin and a few other scholars are now trying to focus policymakers’ attention on classroom interventions that reduce such racial biases—a focus that has been lacking in the mainstream public debate about school reforms. Emdin’s new book—based on his research, observations, and work with other educators in traditional, charter, and private schools over the last decade—is full of insights and practical tools that can often be foreign to white teachers who work with black and Latino students. He argues teachers need to be exposed to a broader range of cultural norms, rules for engagement, and ways to express knowledge.

For example, Emdin once invited a Teach for America school leader—who struggled to engage his students and blamed their inability to pay attention—to a black church in Harlem. Emdin wanted to show the young teacher how black preachers keep people of all ages enthralled in their sermons, which are often three hours long. The preacher was clearly in charge, Emdin pointed out, but he also allowed his congregation to participate and guide the service. The preacher was engaged in a conversation with his audience, paying attention to how people responded and often improvising when something wasn’t working.

Emdin took other teachers to barber shops and hip-hop concerts to help them get to know the communities where their students live. If urban educators can learn to appreciate these diverse forms of intellectual expression as valuable tools, Emdin argues, their teaching will improve—no sweeping federal policy changes, new tests, or extra funding required.

We caught up with Emdin during his book tour to talk about the changes he’d most like see in urban schools.

Mother Jones: In your book, you often compare strict discipline tactics practiced in classrooms to police brutality. Can you explain the connection?

Chris Emdin: When I see young people who are not allowed to express their culture or use their voice, or have to control their physical body in a certain way to make their teacher feel more comfortable, I see those acts as violence against students. Those are not physical acts of violence, but violence on their spirits, on their souls, on their personhood, and it robs them of joy.

Emotional violence is equivalent to the physical violence they suffer at the hands of a police officer. In schools, students’ enthusiasm, spirit, passion can be incarcerated. I’ve taught in prisons. I’ve spoken to inmates. I’ve seen the physical structure of these places and it reminds me so much of urban schools.

MJ: You’ve worked with teachers from a number of charter schools like Success Academy, KIPP, and Uncommon Schools that deliver high test scores and use strict discipline tactics, such as sending kids out of class—and eventually home—for a long list of disciplinary infractions like untucked shirts or calling out the right answers without permission. What is your opinion of that approach?

CE: I get in trouble all the time for my critique of charter schools. I’m not anti-charter. I’m anti-oppressive teaching practices. I’m for young people. When I watch that infamous video from Success Academy where a teacher tears up the homework of one student in Brooklyn, I’m less worried about the teacher yelling; the most troubling aspect of that video to me is that fear in the eyes of all the other children when that child was being yelled at. It’s no different to me when a police officer dragged that young woman in Spring Valley High, South Carolina out of a chair. Both of those groups of kids—in high school and elementary school—had the same kind of emotional responses on their faces.

“No excuses” all the time means no space to be a child: making mistakes, laughing out of turn, joking. You are robbing children of the opportunity to be children. This robbery of black and brown joy in our society is deeply problematic. When Cam Newton quarterback for the Carolina Panthers is called a “thug” after he dances to celebrate a touchdown, that’s a societal robbery of an expression of black joy. When a young person can’t celebrate something in the classroom in their own way after they got the answer right, we are seeing the same practice.

MJ: Secretary of Education John King Jr. is a big supporter of “no excuses” teaching approaches and a co-founder of Roxbury Prep, a charter school that has some of the highest test scores in the state, but that also suspended more students than any other charter in Massachusetts in 2014. Journalist Elizabeth Green summarized his position on the use of strict discipline—and the arguments of other supporters—stating, “Defenders argue that, subtracting freedom in the short term is actually the more radical path to defeating poverty and racism in the long term.”

CE: I think such arguments are ridiculous, if you consider yourself an educator. It’s so damaging. When you cite high test scores, what about broken spirits, souls, and kids who are pushed out of these schools because they have a different way of knowing or being? No one is talking about the low retention rate of these kids in college. No one is talking about kids who can’t go to these schools because they don’t test well. No one is talking about kids who are viewed as less intelligent because they don’t score well. People who changed the world—Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin—were often not successful in traditional schools. If we start focusing everything on a few metrics, we are squeezing the imagination out of young people.

Today knowledge is expressed through digital tools, your ability to write, your ability to be creative and artistic, and your ability to perform or be an effective orator or presenter, but our assessments of brilliance only come in a few stifling metrics. The whole system of assessments has to change.

MJ: How many of the teachers you coach are implementing the new practices you are you promoting?

CE: I don’t want to brag, but we’ve got teachers who are changing the world. Brian Moony is one of my students. He was able to do an amazing lesson plan on Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and bring Kendrick Lamar to his school in New Jersey. He is a white dude who comes from a community that is very different, but he was able to change himself for his kids.

Is there resistance? Absolutely. “You are telling me to go into a barber shop in a community that I don’t know? What if something happens to me? What if I get robbed?” I usually say, “If you are afraid of getting robbed in the community where your students are from, you probably shouldn’t be teaching those kids.”

But it’s a small minority of teachers who resist. The majority of teachers want to be good. They come with a savior narrative but it comes from a place of wanting to do what’s right. When you show them evidence of good teaching, they want to do it.

MJ: You write that this book is for all teachers, not just white educators. Are you saying that black teachers can sometimes be prejudiced toward black students too?

CE: Absolutely. It may be harder for white folks who don’t have racial, ethnic, cultural similarities to learn how to build relationships with black students and incorporate diverse forms of intellectual expression into classrooms, but the strategies I describe in my book are also for folks of color who hold those biases—like the one I held when I started out teaching. By virtue of going through our teaching and learning system, you inherit these biases and you have to get rid of them.

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What White Teachers Can Learn From Black Preachers

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Disturbing Video Shows Cop Body-Slamming 12-Year-Old Girl at School

by DIFAdantfywuy Posted on April 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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Authorities in San Antonio are investigating a video that surfaced Tuesday showing a uniformed police officer restraining a middle-school student from behind and slamming her to the ground. The video, recorded on a cellphone at Rhodes Middle School, shows a scene that quickly turns tense, with one student repeatedly asking 12-year-old Janissa Valdez if she’s okay as Officer Joshua Kehm handcuffs Valdez on the ground.

San Antonio Independent School District spokeswoman Leslie Price told MySanAntonio.com that Kehm intervened after two female students “became verbally aggressive toward each other” in the March 29 incident. Kehm has been placed on administrative leave while the district and its police department conduct the investigation.

Also: Chokeholds, Brain Injuries, Beatings: When School Cops Go Bad

The video has reignited the debate over the use of force by school resource officers. As Mother Jones has previously reported, at least 28 students have been seriously harmed by sworn police officers on K-12 campuses over the last five years. The incidents raise questions over the officers’ lack of training and oversight, along with the disproportionate impact such incidents have on minority and disabled students. Data released by the Department of Education in March 2014 found that of 92,000 students arrested enrolled in the 2011-12 school year, black students accounted for 31 percent of arrests and students with disabilities made up a quarter of arrests, despite comprising 16 percent and 12 percent, respectively, of total enrolled students.

What’s more, as education news site The 74 recently reported, 4 of the 10 largest public school districts in the country have more security officers than school counselors.

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Disturbing Video Shows Cop Body-Slamming 12-Year-Old Girl at School

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Bill Nye should moderate the next GOP debate

by HYYLes421611432 Posted on February 26, 2016

Bill Nye should moderate the next GOP debate

By on 26 Feb 2016commentsShare

If you’ve been paying attention to the 2016 presidential debates, you may have noticed one topic that has been absent. While the GOP candidates have discussed everything from the price of tractors in China to killing baby Hitler to Carly Fiorina’s face, they have been almost silent on the gravest global threat of our age: climate change.

Now, this isn’t entirely the candidates’ fault (although not accepting climate change science certainly is), since the moderators in charge have barely mentioned the environment during the debates. But even though the presidential hopefuls — and debate moderators — are ignoring climate change, one man is not: Bill Nye, The Science Guy. In an op-ed published on CNN (the network that hosted Thursday’s Republican debate in Houston, Texas), Nye lays out the questions that should have been asked. He writes:

Here’s hoping someone can manage to ask the candidates a question like: “Mr. _______, you’ve stated repeatedly that you feel that climate change and global warming are not things we need to worry about in the short or even long term; why do you disagree with the world’s science community and the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change?”

Then, I’m hoping that the same person or another citizen asks a follow-up: “Mr. _______, would you say that you believe your intuition and experience with weather are more scientifically correct than the research done by the world’s climate scientists, and do you believe that the world’s scientists are part of a conspiracy?”

Of course, neither question made it into the debate in Houston.

The one brief mention of the environment on Thursday night was in the context of the budget: CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer followed up with Donald Trump about his plan to eliminate the EPA in order to save the country $8 billion, though it still only accounts for roughly 0.2 percent of the federal budget. (Trump, by the way, also says he’s going to eliminate the Department of Education, so if you have plan on having school-aged children during the Trump reign, you may want to consider Cape Breton.)

But even if Blitzer or the other moderators had brought up climate change, four out of the five candidates onstage deny its very existence. This isn’t just terrifying for those of us who care about the planet; it should also be terrifying for those who care more about the economy than the Earth. The fossil fuel industry is facing intense turmoil: Coal-fired power plants are closing, oil prices are at record lows, natural gas extraction has a huge PR — and earthquake — problem, and the decreasing cost and increasing availability of solar and wind power means the future just isn’t dirty energy anymore: It’s in renewables. Or, at least, it should be.

But even though Texas is the home to a big oil and gas industry and wind industry, none of this came up in Houston. And if past performance is any indication, it won’t in the debates still to come. Until moderators and network hosts force the candidates to explain themselves, they’ll talk about fruit salad and building walls across North America and who would defund Planned Parenthood the fastest — and they’ll certainly bicker over each other like divorcing parents — but as for climate change? On that, they won’t say a word.

Unless, that is, Bill Nye gets to moderate.

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Bill Nye should moderate the next GOP debate

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What Happens When a Campus Rape Expert Gets Accused of Sexual Assault?

by UteAunger29908 Posted on February 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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Jason Casares, the associate dean of students and deputy Title IX coordinator at Indiana University’s flagship campus in Bloomington, has built a reputation as an expert on college sexual assault. He’s well known enough among his peers to have been voted president, in November 2014, of the Association for Student Conduct Administration, a professional group of around 2,700 college officials. Last year, he helped write the curriculum for the group’s training program for campus rape investigators.

For the ASCA’s annual conference this month, Casares had planned to teach seminars on Title IX and on using a “trauma-informed approach” in sexual misconduct investigations. Then, during the conference keynote on February 3, ASCA board member Jill Creighton circulated a letter accusing him of sexual assault.

Creighton’s letter described an evening last December when the two had drinks at a convention for fraternity and sorority advisers in Fort Worth, Texas. “I made the mistake of letting my guard down while socializing with Jason about Association business,” Creighton wrote. “Jason took advantage of me after I had had too much to drink…I did not consent to sexual contact.”

Casares declined to be interviewed, but a statement released by his lawyer says that he “categorically denies the false accusations of sexual misconduct leveled against him by a colleague.”

Creighton, an administrator at New York University who had recently been voted the ASCA’s next president, provided Mother Jones a statement detailing her experience in the days after the alleged assault. According to the statement, she confronted Casares in a text message, requesting that he resign from the ASCA—they were slated to work together on the board for at least two more years—and step back from his position as a public leader on the issue of sexual assault. When Casares refused, Creighton filed an incident report with law enforcement in Fort Worth on December 9.

Detectives are still reviewing the report, officer Tamara Pena confirmed. Meanwhile, IU has placed Casares on paid administrative leave. A school spokesman said that IU also is conducting its own investigation and will review all student sexual-misconduct hearings in which Casares participated this academic year.

Perhaps the most troubling development, though, came when Creighton asked the ASCA board to impeach Casares after she filed her police complaint. The organization—which is made up of people trained in investigating campus sexual assault—mounted an investigation resembling an on-campus sexual-assault inquiry, but, Creighton says, without the same concern for protecting the accuser.

“I was repeatedly told that this isn’t a Title IX matter, and while I understand that, I am speaking my truth to make sure that our Association takes a hard look in the mirror before it claims national leadership on sexual misconduct,” Creighton wrote in her letter.

The ASCA’s leadership had never been faced with a claim like Creighton’s before, according to Anthony Icenogle, the group’s attorney. As student conduct officials, they knew how to investigate sexual assault without the involvement of law enforcement. But in an interview with Mother Jones, Creighton says the inquiry did not reflect their training. “The processes that we run on our campuses are designed to be fundamentally fair to everyone involved,” she says. “At no moment was I provided with fairness.” Among other things, Creighton says that Casares was allowed to hear and respond to her presentation to the board, while she wasn’t allowed to do the same for his.

“The scope of our process was to determine whether or not there was board member misconduct,” says Jennifer Waller, the ASCA’s executive director. “Although we completely adhere to as much as possible the principles of fundamental fairness, the process that ensues from that is very different from a campus process.” (The ASCA later released a letter outlining the procedures they followed in Creighton’s case).

Upon receiving Creighton’s claim, the board’s first move was to temporarily suspend both her and Casares. The ASCA then hired an independent investigator, attorney Shannon Hutcheson, to help determine whether the board should impeach him.

Hutcheson’s investigation, however, leaned on “ancillary witnesses,” Icenogle says—people who could testify to Creighton and Casares’s general honesty. Icenogle made a point to say that Casares and Creighton had gone to multiple bars. (“This wasn’t a one-transaction event.”) Still, Hutcheson “didn’t go through the process of going to the bars,” Icenogle said. “There’s a possibility there could have been third-party witnesses, but nobody was identified to us.” After almost six weeks and at least $30,000 in expenses, Hutcheson presented her conclusion to the ASCA board: Creighton’s story “could not be substantiated.”

When Creighton received an excerpt of Hutcheson’s report, she says she was shocked: “The report blames me for being in the same hotel room, blames me for not crying out for help in the moment, blames me for not taking physical pictures of my injuries…and blames me for confronting him.”

The board’s deliberations remain under wraps, but Casares stepped down on January 29, according to an ASCA letter released on February 4. He remains a member, with “the same rights as other members to attend and present at ASCA events,” the letter says.

The decision to allow Casares to appear at last week’s conference is part of what prompted Creighton to go public with her story. She posted the letter to her Twitter timeline on February 3, after Casares’ presentation on “trauma-informed” sexual-assault investigations. “I felt unsafe in ASCA,” Creighton’s letter says. “I also could not stand the hypocrisy of Jason parading his expertise on Title IX, knowing how he had behaved with me,” she wrote, adding:

This is not something the Association can afford to be ambivalent about. We cannot claim national leadership in addressing sexual misconduct, only to fail miserably in our first test within our own Association…I don’t want to hurt the Association by speaking out, I want to strengthen it, cause us introspection that this can happen even within our own profession, and challenge us to walk our talk not just on our campuses, but in all phases of our professional engagement.

Casares’ lawyer has discussed a possible defamation suit against Creighton. And if an ASCA member makes a complaint about Creighton’s conduct, Waller confirms, she could receive a warning or even face impeachment from the board.

For now, Creighton remains the ASCA’s newest president-elect, though she will take a leave of absence from the organization rather than immediately stepping into the role of president. “These are my friends and colleagues and my professional family,” Creighton says. “To me, it felt like the safest place in the world where I could have possibly reported, and it turned out to be the exact opposite.”

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What Happens When a Campus Rape Expert Gets Accused of Sexual Assault?

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