Archives for category: Civil Rights
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Jan Resseger: What Linda Darling-Hammond Wrote about the Kerner Commission Report Today

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2018 //
27

 

Jan Resseger summarizes Linda Darling-Hammond’s reflections on the Kerner Commission Report. 

“Darling-Hammond traces a mass of factors showing that as a society we identified the wrong problem, satisfied ourselves with blaming somebody, and ignored our responsibility collectively to confront primary social injustices that are the real cause of achievement gaps. What we accomplished instead was discrediting public education and undermining support for teachers.

“Darling-Hammond believes our problem is that we have stopped trying to do anything about racial and economic segregation: “In a study of the effects of court-ordered desegregation on students born between 1945 and 1970, economist Rucker Johnson found that graduation rates climbed by 2 percentage points for every year a Black student attended an integrated school… The difference was tied to the fact that schools under court supervision benefit from higher per-pupil spending and smaller student-teacher ratios… During the 1960s and ’70s, many communities took on efforts like these. As a result, there was a noticeable reduction in educational inequality in the decade after the original Kerner report…. (S)ubstantial gains were made in equalizing both educational inputs and outcomes. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 targeted resources to communities with the most need, recognizing that where a child grows up should not determine where he or she ends up… However, the gains from the Great Society programs were pushed back during the Reagan administration, when most targeted federal programs supporting investments in college access and K-12 schools in urban and poor rural areas were reduced or eliminated, and federal aid to schools was cut from 12% to 6% of a shrinking total…By 1991, stark differences had reemerged between segregated urban schools and their suburban counterparts, which generally spent twice as much on education.”

Categories Accountability, Civil Rights, Education Reform

Norm Hill: Dr. Martin Luther King’s Last Crusade: For Sanitation Workers in Memphis

By dianeravitch
February 22, 2018 //
21

Trump, DeVos, and other Republican enemies of a good and decent society falsely claim to be leading “the civil rights movement of our time,” that is, for vouchers and charters and school choice and against teachers’ unions. It is worthwhile to remember why Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was in Memphis on the day he was assassinated. He was fighting for the city’s sanitation workers. They were ill-paid and worked in dangerous conditions. They wanted to form a union to demand their rights. He was there to help them.

Norm Hill was a close associate of Dr. King. He was with him in Memphis on the day he was murdered.

He tells the story here. 

He reminds us that “at the 1961 AFL-CIO convention, King warned that black people should be skeptical of anti-union forces, noting that the “labor-hater and race-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other.”

Organized labor is under attack today. The far right wants to obliterate it. They want all workers to be part of the “gig” economy, with no pensions, no benefits, no collective bargaining, no representation. Voucher schools do not have unions; they are free to discriminate against students and staff. Let us not forget that more than 90% of charter schools are non-union, which explains why the anti-union Walton Family Foundation, the Koch brothers, the DeVos family, and ALEC are devoted to opening more charter schools. They are not interested in better education or civil rights. They want to break the last powerful unions: the AFT and the NEA.

Dr. King understood that powerless workers need unions to fight for them.

Hill ends like this:

While Memphis Mayor Henry Loeb continued to oppose the unionization of the sanitation workers, in the end, his opposition was overridden by the city council that felt the pressure from mounting constituent complaints about tons of garbage reeking in their streets.

Success.

Yet, on the 50th anniversary of the Memphis sanitation workers strike, organized labor faces new and powerful challenges. For example, the case of Janus v. AFSCME, which the U.S. Supreme Court is taking up, raises whether unions have the fundamental right to expect public workers they represent to pay union dues. The matter is likely to be decided this year. The implications of a decision, for obvious reasons, could be profound regarding public sector unions like, for instance, the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of Teachers, affecting millions of workers.

In response to a White House and far right that appears determined to not only turn back the clock — but break it — regarding organized labor in America, arises a new necessity. We must, following the example of Randolph and Dr. King, harness an emerging coalition of progressive forces that today must include not only traditional civil rights and labor groups, but also Black Lives Matter, and the #MeToo and related women’s movements.

At the same time, demonstrations of this collective power must be felt at the ballot box nationwide, especially as midterm elections draw near.

Randolph left us an indelible blueprint for action when he said, “At the banquet table of nature, there are no reserved seats. You get what you can take, and you keep what you can hold. If you can’t take anything, you won’t get anything, and if you can’t hold anything, you won’t keep anything. And you can’t take anything without organization.”

 

Categories Civil Rights, Unions

Trump’s Appalling Nominee to Lead the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department

By dianeravitch
February 3, 2018 //
8

 

If you want to put an end to civil rights enforcement in the nation, Trump has your guy to do it.

I received this mauling from CREDO ACTION.

“Don’t confirm Eric Dreiband as director of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.”

Dear Diane,

Tell the Senate: Don’t confirm Eric Dreiband as director of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division

Donald Trump hates equality. When he promises to “make America great again,” he’s talking about undoing decades of civil rights gains and doing everything he can to institutionalize white supremacy and misogyny.

That’s why, when it’s time to appoint heads of civil rights offices across the government, he picks people who will undermine the very principles they are supposed to defend.

Eric Dreiband, Trump’s nominee to lead the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice is a perfect example. Instead of having years of experience defending civil rights, he comes with decades of work defending people and corporations accused of discrimination.1 We need to do everything we can to keep him from being confirmed.

Tell the Senate: Don’t confirm Eric Dreiband as director of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. Click here to sign the petition.

Our country’s civil rights laws are part of a generations-long effort to come to terms with and make amends for a country founded on both the systematic oppression and dehumanization of people of color and the misogynistic subjugation and disenfranchisement of women. The Civil Rights Division has a history of defending voting rights, holding rogue police departments accountable, fighting housing discrimination and ensuring equal rights in education. Eric Dreiband’s career has done the opposite. He defended:

The University of North Carolina over challenges to North Carolina’s anti-LGBTQ HB2;
A Catholic challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s birth control benefit;
Abercrombie & Fitch’s attempt to deny a Muslim woman employment because of her headscarf; and
R.J. Reynolds’ policy of weeding out job applications from “older” applicants.2,3
He also spoke out personally against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act and efforts to “ban the box” as a way to minimize discrimination against job applicants with criminal convictions.4

In advance of Dreiband’s committee hearing, Sen. Patrick Leahy said he “honestly couldn’t think of a more uniquely unqualified nominee to defend and enforce the core civil rights laws that codify the values of a just and tolerant society.”5 But Dreiband’s unique disqualifications are what make him a perfect choice for Trump and extreme right-wing Republicans who want to dismantle civil rights protections and use government to protect racists, misogynists, xenophobes and anti-LGBTQ bigots.

We have to put massive pressure on every Senate Democrat and any Republican with a conscience to block Dreiband’s confirmation.

Click the link below to tell the Senate: Don’t confirm Eric Dreiband as director of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division:

https://act.credoaction.com/sign/Block_Dreiband?t=7&akid=27083%2E4147912%2EosCF3c

Thank you for everything you do,

Heidi Hess, Senior Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets

Add your name:

Sign the petition ►
References:

Deena Zaru, “Civil rights activists raise alarm over Trump’s DOJ pick,” CNN, Aug. 14, 2017.
Tess Owen, “Trump’s civil rights pick has made a career fighting for corporate rights,” VICE News, June 30, 2017.
The Leadership Conference et al., “Oppose the Confirmation of Eric Dreiband to Serve as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights,” Aug. 31, 2017.
Ibid.
Paul Gordon, “Republicans Advance More Dangerously Unqualified Nominees,” People for the American Way, Jan. 19, 2018.
photo: House Committee on Education and the Workforce Democrats

 

CREDO action
© 2018 CREDO. All rights reserved.

 

Categories Bias, Civil Rights, Inequity, Injustice

Ed Johnson on the Hypocrisy of School Choice Advocates

By dianeravitch
January 21, 2018 //
17

Edward Johnson is an advocate for high quality public schools for all children. He lives in Atlanta. He has studied the works of G. Edwards Deming, who understood that you don’t blame frontline workers for problems with the system. If things go wrong, fix the system.

He wrote the following letter to Rev. Diane Daugherty about the absurdity of “choice” as a fix for the system (see her letter after his). In fact, “choice” is an abdication of responsibility by those who have the power to fix the system. They turn problems over to the market and hope for the best, ignoring the well-documented fact that the market deepens pre-existing inequities.

Of course, anyone who thinks that the Walton family, the DeVos family, Trump, ALEC, and other plutocrats are committed to civil rights and equity is either hopelessly naive or on their payroll.

He writes:

 

Rev. Diane Daugherty,

Thank you for lending your voice to the matter. Interestingly, one may take your understanding as a key aspect of the law research paper Opt-Out Education: School Choice as Racial Subordination, by Osamudia R. James, currently Vice Dean, University of Miami School of Law.

Atlanta superintendent Meria Carstarphen, Atlanta school board members, and BOOK, including especially its supporters UNCF and Andrew Young Foundation, would do well to learn from Vice Dean James’ paper.

But it may be unreasonable to expect any of them would. For example, this AJC article makes clear the superintendent, arguably Atlanta school choice proponents’ leader, holds an unshakable mindset fixated on commercializing public education in Atlanta by transforming it from a systemic public good into disparate private consumer goods, à la KIPP and others. So transformed, and unlikely to have resulted in improved schools, parents as consumers may then choose a school for their child just as they would choose a McDonald’s Happy Meal for the child. So goes the superintendent’s reasoning.

The pushback that arose in response to the superintendent’s profane conflation of consumerism and public education prompted school choice advocate Robert Holland to rise in her defense, with an attempt to say what the superintendent really meant to say. Holland, at the conservative and libertarian public policy think tank The Heartland Institute, blogged “The School Choice Generation Wants a Full Educational Menu.”

The Atlanta superintendent, school board, and BOOK would also do well to take from their partner and supporter, Walton Family Foundation, a lesson about how consumerism’s choice really works. Last week, the AJC and other media reported that, “based on a number of factors, including financial performance,” the Waltons made the decision to close their Lithonia Sam’s Club at Stonecrest. Was the store’s consumer community consulted or otherwise involved beforehand? Nope. Did the store’s consumer community have a choice? Nope. Now that once consumer community fears the Waltons have put upon it more problematic, if not new, food desert they did not “choose.”

The lesson, then, is who, in consumerism’s commercialized world, truly has choice and who truly does not.

Diane Ravitch offers an excerpt from Vice Dean James’ paper that amplifies the lesson (my emphases):

“James advocates for limitations on school choice ‘to prevent the disastrous social consequences–the abandonment of the public school system, to particularly deleterious consequence for poor and minority schoolchildren and their families–that occur as the collective result of individual, albeit rational, decisions. I also advocate for limitations on school choice in an attempt to encourage individuals to consider their obligations to children not their own, but part of their community all the same….The actual impact of school choice cannot be ignored. Given the radicalized realities of the current education system, choice is not ultimately used to broaden options or agency for minority parents. Rather, school choice is used to sanitize inequality in the school system; given sufficient choices, the state and its residents are exempted from addressing the sources of unequal educational opportunities for poor and minority students. States promote agency even as the subjects supposedly exercising that agency are disabled. Experience makes clear that school choice simply should not form an integral or foundational aspect of education reform policy. Rather, the focus should be on improving public schooling for all students such that all members of society can exercise genuine agency, initially facilitated by quality primary and secondary education. Ultimately, improving public education begins with preventing its abandonment.’”

 

This is Dr. Daugherty’s letter to the Atlanta Board of Education:

 

From: Diane Dougherty [mailto:doughertyadd@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 17, 2018 8:01 PM
To: EdJohnsonAfQPE <edwjohnson@aol.com>
Cc: AfQPE@aol.com; bamos@atlantapublicschools.us; cbriscoe_brown@atlanta.k12.ga.us; epcollins@atlantapublicschools.us; jesteves@atlantapublicschools.us; lgrant@atlantapublicschools.us; nmeister@atlantapublicschools.us; pierre.gaither@atlanta.k12.ga.us; mjcarstarphen@atlanta.k12.ga.us; annwcramer@gmail.com; Erika Y. Mitchell <eymitchell@gmail.com>; Kandis Wood <kandiswood@gmail.com>; Michelle Olympiadis <michelle.olympiadis@gmail.com>; education@naacpatlanta.org; president@naacpatlanta.org; info@bookatl.org; david.mitchell@bookatl.org; Naomi.Shelton@uncf.org; sekou.biddle@uncf.org; cmeadows@morehouse.edu; mbinderman@geears.org
Subject: Re: BOOK and newly installed Atlanta Board of Education Members

BOOK seems to promote better outcomes outside any effort to make existing public education better. Their methodology seems to create parallel academic structures diminishing schools that need an infusion of structures and funds. To me their short term efforts will not evolve into a sustainable plan 30 years from now. Without any data that supports their perceived “Better Outcomes, BOOK’S emphasis on School Choice has proven a poor strategy in decimated African American schools in Tennessee, Michigan and Louisiana….in spite of billions spent…why would there be improved outcomes here if it has not worked there? Rev. Diane Dougherty

Diane Dougherty, ARCWP

Avondale Estates, GA 30002

678-918-1945

doughertyadd@gmail.com

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Civil Rights, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Equity, School Choice, Walton Foundation

Osamudia R. James: “White Like Me”: School Choice as Racial Subordination

By dianeravitch
January 18, 2018 //
3

I posted this law review article in 2015. It remains one of my favorites. Her argument is straightforward. Abandoning the public school system is an assault on the rights of most children, especially the most vulnerable.

I wrote when I posted it nearly three years ago:

Osamudia R. James is a law professor at the University of Miami School of Law. She is a scholar of race and equity. She has written a scholarly article that was published in the Iowa Law Review titled “Opt-Out Education: School Choice as Racial Subordination.” I hope that readers of this blog will take the time to read it. It is an important legal analysis of the social inequities caused by school choice.

As more children are induced to leave the public school system, the public schools are less able to provide a decent education for those who remain behind. Many of those who leave will attend charter schools and voucher schools that are no better and possibly worse than the public school they abandoned. The harm done to children by this strategy is powerful, and the harm done to society is incalculable.

James advocates for limitations on school choice “to prevent the disastrous social consequences–the abandonment of the public school system, to particularly deleterious consequence for poor and minority schoolchildren and their families–that occur as the collective result of individual, albeit rational, decisions. I also advocate for limitations on school choice in an attempt to encourage individuals to consider their obligations to children not their own, but part of their community all the same….The actual impact of school choice cannot be ignored. Given the radicalized realities of the current education system, choice is not ultimately used to broaden options or agency for minority parents. Rather, school choice is used to sanitize inequality in the school system; given sufficient choices, the state and its residents are exempted from addressing the sources of unequal educational opportunities for poor and minority students. States promote agency even as the subjects supposedly exercising that agency are disabled. Experience makes clear that school choice simply should not form an integral or foundational aspect of education reform policy. Rather, the focus should be on improving public schooling for all students such that all members of society can exercise genuine agency, initially facilitated by quality primary and secondary education. Ultimately, improving public education begins with preventing its abandonment.

Categories Civil Rights, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Racism

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Inspires Young Children Today

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2018 //
9

 

At a time when the White House is a source of vulgarity and racism, it is inspiring to read about the young children who entered a contest to display their understanding of Dr. King’s message as it applies today.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2018/01/13/i-may-not-look-like-dr-king-but-i-believe-like-dr-king-a-childs-stirring-homage-to-mlk/?utm_term=.144588f0f530

I have a dream. My dream is that these young people will spend an hour in the White House tutoring Mr. Trump.

Categories Civil Rights, Equity, Love

Valerie Strauss: The Most Ridiculous and Disturbing Things DeVos Said in 2017

By dianeravitch
January 2, 2018 //
19

 

Valerie Strauss has collected the most memorable, ridiculous, and disturbing things that Betsy DeVos said in her first year as Secretary of Education. She is the most unpopular member of ztrump’s cabinet, possibly because of her hostility to public schools, possibly because of her lack of qualifications, possibly because of her permanent supercilious sneer.

She made a big first impression at her confirmation hearings when she defended guns in schools to protect against possible intrusions by grizzly bears.

That was not funny.

But what was not funny was when she refused to say that she would act against schools that excluded students because they were black or LGBT.

Even worse than her words have been her actions, which gave preference to charter schools, voucher schools, and for-profit schools, which whittled or hacked away at the rights of students with disabilities, students defrauded by fake for-profit colleges, and transgender students.

DeVos is a proud reactionary, determined to destroy public schools and student rights.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

Paul Krugman: The Republican War on Children

By dianeravitch
December 8, 2017 //
20

Nobel-Prize winning economist Paul Krugman asks a simple question:

“Would you be willing to take health care away from a thousand children with the bad luck to have been born into low-income families so that you could give millions of extra dollars to just one wealthy heir?

“You might think that this question is silly, hypothetical and has an obvious answer. But it’s not at all hypothetical, and the answer apparently isn’t obvious. For it’s a literal description of the choice Republicans in Congress seem to be making as you read this.

“The Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, is basically a piece of Medicaid targeted on young Americans. It was introduced in 1997, with bipartisan support. Last year it covered 8.9 million kids. But its funding expired more than two months ago. Republicans keep saying they’ll restore the money, but they keep finding reasons not to do it; state governments, which administer the program, will soon have to start cutting children off.

“What’s the problem? The other day Senator Orrin Hatch, asked about the program (which he helped create), once again insisted that it will be funded — but without saying when or how (and there don’t seem to be any signs of movement on the issue). And he further declared, “The reason CHIP’s having trouble is that we don’t have money anymore.” Then he voted for an immense tax cut.”

Maybe children’s health is “the Civil Rights issue of our time,” not school choice.

Any chance we could persuade Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump, DFER, billionaire Daniel Loeb, Ted Cruz, and the rest of the school reform gang to agree?

Categories Childhood, Civil Rights

Will Betsy DeVos Gut Civil Rights Enforcement?

By dianeravitch
December 6, 2017 //
14

David Bloomfield and Alan Aja are concerned that Betsy DeVos’s effort to reduce regulations is a barely disguised assault on civil rights protections for students.

“Since taking office last February, the U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has eliminated dozens of education directives to school officials. Now the Education Department is reconsidering a rule intended to hold states to a higher standard when determining if districts have overenrolled minority students in special education. It has also signaled an intention to pull back on considering “systemic” causes of discrimination during civil rights investigations at schools.

“The unprecedented cleansing and revisions of Department of Education guidance to states, school districts, and private schools is passed off largely as a response to President Donald Trump’s simplistic Jan. 30 executive order that agencies remove two regulatory documents for every one issued. Even if, as has been reported, large swaths of the documents the department has eliminated so far have been out-of-date or superfluous, other guidance revisions have grave implications for marginalized students. The department’s headline-making withdrawal of Obama-era policy guidance permitting transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identities is just one such example.”

As a private citizen, DeVos was not known for hpsupporting civil rights causes. She and her family were known for their support for vouchers, anti-gay organizations, creationism, and libertarian activism. She appointed a woman to run the Office for Civil Rights who is known for anti-feminism and opposition to affirmative action. Advocates for students must keep close watch over the activities of the U.S. Office for Civil Rights.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Civil Rights

Arthur Camins: “Americans: At Long Last, Have You Left No Sense of Decency?”

By dianeravitch
December 2, 2017 //
19

Arthur Camins refers to the famous line of attorney Joseph Welch, challenging Senator Joseph McCarthy.

“Don’t let Republicans take away your self-respect and humanity– your claim to be a decent person. Tell them enough. Stop. Tell the Democrats to stand up and fight back for all of us or get out of the way for politicians who will.

“Self-respect, humanity and decency are what is at stake in the Republican give-to-the-rich tax plan, their effort to undo environmental and financial regulations, their unrelenting push for charter schools and vouchers instead of public schools, their efforts to undermine voting and labor rights, their endless attempts to undo the advances of the Affordable Care Act, cut back on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and support for the disabled, their drive to control access to information on the Internet, and their opposition all reasonable controls on guns.

“Republican ascendancy in federal, state, and local government marks the triumph of an immoral moral principle: Their gain comes at my expense. Historically, the identity of them (Native Americans, African Americans, the latest immigrants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, women, LGTBQs, the disabled, and always the poor) has been fluid, as suits the political exigencies of the moment, but the core principle and morality is consistent.

“In just one day, Donald Trump managed to stir more hatred by re-tweeting extremist anti-Muslim videos and defend proposed tax gifts to the already obscenely wealthy by promising to help struggling workers by curtailing government benefits to people who do not work. “Welfare reform, I see it, and I’ve talked to people,” he said. “I know people that work three jobs and they live next to somebody who doesn’t work at all. And the person who is not working at all and has no intention of working at all is making more money and doing better than the person that’s working his and her ass off.”

“The New Deal and perhaps later the Great Society, marked the American apotheosis of institutionalizing–through collective government action– the moral principle that that everyone is worthy of a decent life. Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, and myriad other programs all represented the idea that people should not be left to fend for themselves in difficult times and circumstances. All manner of health, safety, environmental, and financial regulations were all enacted to protect people from unrestrained profiteers without concern for the wellbeing of others. Voting, civil and labor laws were enacted to move the nation closer to its founding principle, the unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

“Republicans aim to undo it all. That is indecent.”

He is appalled by what Trump and the Republican Party are doing. They are crushing the lives and rights of millions of people while sanctimoniously claiming that they are doing the opposite.

How long can we stand for their lies, hypocrisy, indecency, and malice?

Let our anger turn into resolve, into determination to reverse the damage they are inflicting.

Join the Indisibles. Support the Flippables, a group of young people who crowd-source funding to flip seats from red yo blue.

Target: 2018.

Model: Virginia.

Categories Civil Rights, Corruption, Inequity, Injustice
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