Archives for category: Equity
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FairTest: Eliminating Admissions Tests for College Promotes Equity and Quality

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2018 //
40

A new study reports that the ACT and SAT are useless and unnecessary:

Bob Schaeffer (239) 395-6773
mobile (239) 699-0468

for release with “Defining Access” report Thurs. April 26, 2018

TEST-OPTIONAL ADMISSIONS LEADER APPLAUDS NEW STUDY:

“DEFINING ACCESS” SHOWS ELIMINATING ACT/SAT SCORE REQUIREMENTS
PROMOTES EQUITY AND ACADEMIC QUALITY

A major study released today provides strong evidence that ACT/SAT-optional schools increase campus diversity without harming classroom performance. Defining Access: How Test-Optional Works analyzes records from nearly one million students at 28 undergraduate institutions.

The data show that test-optional policies promote both academic quality and equity,” said Bob Schaeffer, Public Education Director of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest). “This report should encourage even more colleges and universities to drop their ACT/SAT requirements.”

FairTest has led the movement to de-emphasize admissions test scores for three decades. The group’s website currently lists more than 1,000 test-optional four-year colleges and universities (http://fairtest.org/university/optional). The database includes more than 300 institutions ranked in the top tiers of their respective categories. There are now test-optional schools in 49 states, the District of Columbia, and most U.S. possessions

Among the key findings of today’s report, according to FairTest:

– Test-optional policies perform well at a wide range of undergraduate institutions..

– Larger percentages of African American, Latino, first-generation, Pell recipient, and female students choose not to submit scores than whites and male applicants.

– Eliminating ACT/SAT requirements Increases the enrollment of historically underrepresented groups in almost all case

– Applicants admitted without consideration of test scores graduated at equal or higher rates than those who submitted ACT/SAT results.

The new study is available online at https://www.nacacnet.org/HowTest-OptionalWorks

– – 3 0 – –

– A timeline of schools de-emphasizing ACT/SAT scores over the fifteen years and the list of 300+ top-tier, test-optional institutions are available on request.

Categories Equity, Higher Education

The Teachers’ Strikes Are Just the Beginning

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2018 //
31

 

The spring of 2018 may well be remembered as the beginning of a mass movement by working people against the domination of corporations and the 1%.

The leadership in red states and the federal government have tilted the tax system to favor the very wealthy, while demanding sacrifices from the powerless majority.

The teachers in West Virginia were first to say “Enough!”

But they are far from last.

The ALEC-inspired Republican legislatures killed collective bargaining, and the Supreme Court in expected to hobble labor unions with the Janus decision.

But that’s not going to stop working people from organizing and demanding a fair share of the bounty that they produced.

For all of Facebook’s sins and transgressions, it has nonetheless created a way for voiceless people to organize and act. Teachers and others created collectives on Facebook and used them to mobilize for mass actions.

The teachers’ strikes were organized by grassroots efforts that began on Facebook. Powerless teachers discovered that by acting in concert, they became powerful. They have used their numbers to demand fair pay and benefits and have stood up courageously to legislatures known to be in the pockets of the oil and gas industries and other malefactors of vast wealth.

Piece by piece, day by day, as they lead us, we will recover our democracy. We will rebuild the institutions now under assault by Trumpism and its variants. The names of the leaders are not well-known. They won’t be on the covers of magazines or interviewed by late night TV hosts. They are ordinary citizens who have stepped forward to demand justice, equity, and fairness and to revive our democracy.

 

Categories Courage, Democracy, Equity, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Resistance, Teachers, West Virginia

Journey For Justice and Its Fight Against Destructive Education “Reform”

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2018 //
7

 

The Schott Foundation is one of the few philanthropies that unabashedly supports public education and recognizes its importance in a democracy. Schott has supported the civil rights group, Journey for Justice, whose leader Jitu Brown has a powerful voice. (Jitu is a member of the board of the Network for Public Education.)

Schott underwrote the production of a video about the work of J4J. 

“Schott grantee partner Journey for Justice Alliance released a compelling short documentary chronicling the fight against education reform in the age of Trump and DeVos. Beyond the rhetoric coming from DC, for years Journey for Justice has been raising the voices of those most impacted by budget cuts and privatization. Following J4J’s cross-country trip from Detroit to Washington, D.C. to oppose Betsy DeVos’ appointment as Education Secretary in early 2017, this film not only shows the profound hurt that these policy changes cause, but the inspiring organizing done to resist them.

“As J4J National Director Jitu Brown is led away from the Senate hearing room, he says “it’s an act of cowardice to run toward privatization and away from equity. We are as far away from Brown v. Board as we were in 1957.”

“Film Description:

“Many are voicing concerns that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is unqualified, motivated by profit, and advancing a harmful agenda.

“Over a year ago, we organized a group of parents, educators, and students to travel from Detroit to Washington to raise their voices at DeVos’ confirmation hearing. We came to advocate for a public education system based on equity and democracy. We came because we had already lived with the consequences of policies that undermine those values, policies that DeVos had advocated for in Michigan. We came to speak truth to power and we were silenced—shut out.

“Please watch and share this 30 minute documentary made by 180.”

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Education Industry, Equity, Justice, Privatization

The Schott Foundation Proposes A New Way to Measure Cities and Their Support for Good Schools and Healthy Children

By dianeravitch
March 16, 2018 //
6

 

The Schott Foundation for Public Education is one of the small number of foundations that unabashedly supports public educations and understands its importance in a democratic society. Under the leadership of its dynamic president, John Jackson, it seeks not to privatize schools but to make them much, much better places for children to learn and grow to their full potential.

Schott recently developed a new measurement, which it calls “the loving cities index.” 

The brilliance of this measure is that it quantifies not test scores or other measures that can be corrupted and gamed, but measures the environment and those who hold the levers of power.

“As racism and hate continue to dominate the national dialogue, the Schott Foundation for Public Education released the Loving Cities Index, a multi-state report that aims to reverse historical local policies and practices rooted in racism and bias and replace them with policies that create local loving systems from birth and promote an opportunity to learn and thrive.

“By providing this new framework, the Loving Cities Index helps cities evaluate how well they are doing at providing all children – regardless of race, gender or zip code – with the supports and opportunities they need to learn and succeed. Noting that after decades of education reform, parental income remains the top predictor of student outcomes, the report challenges the notion that school-based reforms alone can provide students a fair and substantive opportunity to learn.

“The report also highlights a large and growing body of research showing a clear connection between economic and racial inequality and opportunity gaps in areas like housing, health care and community involvement. These issues lie outside of the traditional education realm, but are intimately linked to high school and college attainment.”

Categories Data, Education Reform, Equity, Health, Love

National Education Policy Center: How to Give All Children a Chance to Succeed

By dianeravitch
March 3, 2018 //
20

The National Education Policy Center released a video about “Schools of Opportunity.” The video highlights schools that support students instead of penalizing them. It was viewed almost 200,000 times within 24 hours.

You should watch it too.

In Less than a Day, New #SchoolsofOpportunity Video Has Been Viewed 190,000 Times

Key Takeaway: Please watch and share the new Schools of Opportunity video and the 2018 Application.
Facebook Twitter Email
Find Documents:
Press Release: http://nepc.info/node/9077
Watch Video: http://schoolsofopportunity.org
Contact:
Michelle Renée Valladares: (720) 505-1958, michelle.valladares@colorado.edu
Adam York: (303) 735-5290, adam.j.york@colorado.edu

Learn More:

NEPC Resources on Schools of Opportunity

BOULDER, CO (March 1, 2018) – For more than 25 million children, the connection between education and the American Dream is eroding, but a new video is shining a spotlight on schools closing the opportunity gap.

The two-minute video tells the story of how students benefit when they have access to much-needed educational and social supports. “It puts a face on the students whose lives change when they get access to Schools of Opportunity,” said Michelle Renée Valladares, NEPC Associate Director.

To date, 45 schools have been recognized by the National Education Policy Center’s Schools of Opportunity program. These schools provide rich, engaging opportunities to learn for all their students, often helping those students overcome obstacles linked to poverty and racism in our larger society. One of this year’s honorees—Seaside High School—is highlighted in the video.

The video introduces us to Dayshaun, a young man whose drop in school performance might have resulted in sanctions and lowered expectations at other schools. Instead we learn how systemic supports at Seaside helped him get through the immense challenge of his mother falling ill. Because of that support, Dayshaun is now a school leader.

The Schools of Opportunity project was born out of the research-based fundamental truth that students learn more when they have rich opportunities to learn; when denied those opportunities they fall behind. The opportunity gap then drives the achievement disparities between students who come from well-resourced communities and those from economically and socially marginalized communities.

“The Schools of Opportunity project offers a positive vision of what school quality and school improvement can look like,” says CU Boulder Professor Kevin Welner, who directs the NEPC. “This project highlights an alternative to judging schools based on test scores.”

This video “sparks our imaginations about what our high schools can be,” says Welner. “We hope it reaches educators and school leaders throughout the country, as we all learn from the 45 exemplary schools we’ve recognized to date. Please watch, share and let us know what you think.”

The video is a product of ATTN:, an issues-driven media company, and The Partnership for the Future of Learning, a network of educators, advocates, leaders, and supporters dedicated to an affirmative, equitable, evidence-based vision of a remodeled education system.

NEPC is scouting for the next round of schools to lift up through the Schools of Opportunity Program. Schools can apply for recognition directly, or others can nominate them. Applications are welcomed until April 9, 2018. Information and forms are available online at: http://www.SchoolsofOpportunity.org.

Sharing Information

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/BfwF27Og0LE/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/attn/status/968922751502290945
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/attn/videos/1674665095902276/
Tweetables

New @attn video with @NEPCtweet shows how every student can learn with the right tools and supports. https://twitter.com/attn/status/968922751502290945 #schoolsofopportunity

You shouldn’t need rich parents to get an education in this country. These @NEPCtweet #SchoolsofOpportunity are showing how it’s done in a new @attn video. https://twitter.com/attn/status/968922751502290945

All students can learn and achieve with the right supports. New video highlights how these #SchoolsofOpportunity are making it happen. https://twitter.com/attn/status/968922751502290945
You can judge a school based on test scores, or you can watch what happens when #SchoolsofOpportunity give every student a shot at success. New @attn video with @NEPCtweet. https://twitter.com/attn/status/968922751502290945

 

Categories Education Reform, Equity, National Education Policy Center

The Kerner Commission Report, 50 Years Later: An Agenda for theFuture

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2018 //
52

 

On Tuesday, I went to D.C. for a meeting to discuss the state of civil rights in the half-century since the release of the Kerner Commission Report. The nation was rocked by civil disorders and riots in the early 1960: cities like Detroit and Newark experienced devastating clashes between angry black people and police, and many of our cities were in flames. President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed a commission to analyze the causes of the riots and report back. The commission acted expeditiously and released a devastating indictment of American society, memorably warning that unless we acted to reverse and remedy the root causes, America would be two societies, separate and unequal.

The root causes of the violence, the commission concluded, were racism, poverty, segregation, and police brutality. President Johnson was not pleased with the report and did not endorse its conclusions, but the report was on target.

The sole survivor of the Commission, Senator Fred Harris, and his ally, Alan Curtis, now president of the Milton Eisenhower Foundation (founded by the public-spirited brother of President Dwight D. Eisenhower), organized a fifty-year retrospective devoted to the Kerner Commission Report. I was invited to write a chapter about what has changed in education over the past 50 years. Others wrote about jobs, the economy, mass incarceration and policing, housing, and the other issues raised by the report. You can read the essays in a book just out called “Healing Our Divided Society.” It is an agenda for a better future.

Senator Harris, by the way, ran for president in 1972 and 1976. His campaign slogan was “The issue is privilege.” He didn’t win, obviously, but the issue is still privilege.

The theme of the meeting Tuesday was, we are all in this together. Whatever our race or religion, we must work together for a better society where everyone—everyone—has a decent standard of living, good housing, good medical care, good education, and just treatment.

Harris and Curtis wrote an article in the New York Times summarizing the findings of the 50-year retrospective. It may be behind a pay wall. I hope not. The graphics tell the story. Progress, then backsliding.

The story in education is well documented: a sharp decline in segregation, then the courts release school districts from court orders to desegregate, followed by a reversion to segregated schools. The problem is national, not limited to the south. When court orders end, segregation resumes. States never under court order have intense segregation. Right now, the most segregated schools in the nation are in California, followed by Texas, New York, Maryland, Nevada, and Connecticut. When you consider that only 13% of the population is black, the concentration of black students in majority black schools is shocking.

Over the past fifty years, inequality has deepened:

“The disheartening percentage of Americans living in extreme poverty — that is, living on less than half the poverty threshold — has increased since the 1970s. The overall poverty rate remains about the same today as it was 50 years ago; the total number of poor people has increased from over 25 million to well over 40 million, more than the population of California.

“Meanwhile, the rich have profited at the expense of most working Americans. Today, the top 1 percent receive 52 percent of all new income. Rich people are healthier and live longer. They get a better education, which produces greater gains in income. And their greater economic power translates into greater political power.”

Mass incarceration of poor black and brown people has become a new normal:

”At the time of the Kerner Commission, there were about 200,000 people behind bars. Today, there are about 1.4 million. “Zero tolerance” policing aimed at African-Americans and Latinos has failed, while our sentencing policies (for example, on crack versus powder cocaine) continue to racially discriminate. Mass incarceration has become a kind of housing policy for the poor.”

What have we learned in fifty years? We know what works, and our government doesn’t do it.

“Policies based on ideology instead of evidence. Privatization and funding cuts instead of expanding effective programs.

“We’re living with the human costs of these failed approaches. The Kerner ethos — “Everyone does better when everyone does better” — has been, for many decades, supplanted by its opposite: “You’re on your own.”

“Today more people oppose the immorality of poverty and rising inequality, including middle-class Americans who realize their interests are much closer to Kerner priorities than to those of the very rich.

“We have the experience and knowledge to scale up what works. Now we need the “new will” that the Kerner Commission concluded was equally important.”

The article then contrasts what doesn’t work with what does work.

In education, what doesn’t work: Racial segregation, vouchers, charters, and school choice.

What does work: Racial integration, investments in public school equity, quality teachers, early childhood education, community schools and other proven models

This report updates an epochal one. The Trump administration won’t read it or act on it. If we want a better future, a better society, a real commitment to equality of opportunity and the realization of the American dream for all, this new report is a great starting point.

 

 

Categories Education Reform, Equity, Justice, Poverty, Segregation

The Topic That Reformers Forget: School Funding Is Not Fair

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2018 //
16

 

The latest report of the Education Law Center demonstrates the unfairness of funding in many states. When funding is unfair, equal educational opportunity is sacrificed. Somehow, this crucial topic never makes it onto the agenda of corporate education reformers. They want to cut costs, not assure that funding is both adequate and equitable.

“The nation’s continuing failure to sufficiently invest in public schools stands in stark contrast to a growing body of research demonstrating that increased funding leads to better outcomes for students. Studies show that school finance reforms that increase spending in low-income districts result in improved student achievement in those districts and a narrowing of achievement gaps. In fact, these benefits have been shown to last into adulthood in the form of greater educational attainment, higher earnings, and lower rates of adult poverty.

“The National Report Card (NRC) uses data from the 2015 Census fiscal survey, the most recent available. The NRC goes beyond raw per-pupil spending calculations by analyzing factors crucial to educational opportunity: whether states provide a sufficient level of school funding and then distribute that funding to address greater student need, as measured by student poverty.

“The latest NRC results confirm a disturbing trend: almost no improvement since the end of the Great Recession in those states that do not provide additional funding to districts with high student poverty. There is also no change in the vast disparities in levels of funding for K-12 education across the states, even after adjusting for cost. The states with the highest funding levels (New York and Alaska) spend more than two and a half times what states with the lowest funding levels spend (Arizona and Idaho).

“Key findings include:

*Funding levels show large disparities, ranging from a high of $18,719 per pupil in New York, to a low of $6,277 in Idaho.

*The ten states with the lowest funding levels – less than $8,000 per pupil — include Florida, Mississippi, and Oklahoma. Three of those states, Arizona, Idaho, and North Carolina, provide less than $7,000 per pupil.

*Many low funding states invest a low percentage of their economic output to support public education. These “low effort” states include California, Utah, North Carolina, and Tennessee.

*Seventeen states, including Connecticut, Maryland, Maine, and Illinois, have “regressive” school funding. These states provide less funding to their higher poverty school districts, even though students in these districts require more resources to achieve.

*Students in the South and Southwest face a “double disadvantage” because their states provide low funding with no boost in funding for high poverty districts. States with flat or regressive funding include Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida in the Southeast, and, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico in the Southwest.

*Only a few states, including Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Wyoming, provide high levels of school funding and distribute more funding to their high poverty districts. Notably, New Jersey and Massachusetts are the top performing states on student outcomes.

*States with low or flat school funding have poor results on resource indicators crucial for students to succeed in school. In these states, access to early childhood education is limited; wages for teachers are not competitive with those of comparable professions; and teacher-to-pupil ratios in schools are unreasonably low.

“The NRC released today is a sobering reminder of why unfair school funding is the most significant obstacle to improving outcomes for our nation’s public school students,” said David Sciarra, ELC Executive Director and report co-author. “The stark reality is most states still fund their public schools based on pure politics, not on the cost of delivering quality education to all students.”

“School finance reform is long overdue,” said Bruce Baker, the Rutgers University Graduate School of Education Professor who developed the report’s methodology. “It’s long past time for states to develop, and then fund, finance formulas built on the costs of providing essential education resources, accounting for diverse student needs and local fiscal capacity.”

Categories Equity, Funding

One of the Nation’s Most Influential Education Scholars: Julian Vasquez Heilig!

By dianeravitch
February 10, 2018 //
5

 

Julian Vasquez Heilig has been acknowledged as one of the nation’s most influential scholars.

He is a professor at Sacramento State, chair of the Education Committee of the California chapter of the NAACP, and a board member of the board member of the Network for Public Education.

He is a prominent scholar in studies of equity, TFA, and charter schools. His blog, Cloaking Inequity, is exemplary in its mid of erudition, policy analysis, graphics, and humor.

Congratulations, JVH!

Categories Charter Schools, Equity, Privatization, Teach for America

“This Land Belongs to You and Me,” not Trump, DeVos, and the Koch Brothers

By dianeravitch
February 4, 2018 //
77

 

One of my favorite non-education bloggers is Andrew Tobias (except on the rare occasions when he ventures into education), who cuts through the economic morass with a fine scalpel and recognizes Trump for the phony that he is. I subscribe (free) at AndrewTobias.com. He gave me his permission to post his latest. Open here to read his links. 

Tobias writes:

YOU Get $930! And YOU Get $930!”

John Grund, one of your fellow readers, offers this wonderfully clear analysis (thank you, John):

Here’s another way to think about the Republican tax bill: Think like an owner.

Sit down quietly and let your mind inventory all that you own as an American. I like to start with the Statue of Liberty. It was a gift from France to the American people; I’m an American person, so that includes me. And the Park Service charges admission, so there’s that.

From there, I like to fly over the country in my mind, surveying all that you and I own. All the beaches and waterways. All the roads and bridges. All the public lands and forests. All the great national landmarks and parks. All the wonderful buildings our fathers and mothers built for us: the libraries and colleges and theaters. 

Take your time. It takes time to even touch on how much there is. The public hospitals and clinics. The harbors and canals. The lighthouses and navigation markers. The reservoirs, rivers, lakes and water systems. The radio and television airwaves. The courts and city halls and schools. The warships, guns and warplanes.

And now reflect that corporations are granted a charter by the state (which you and I own, of course) that allows them to do business. And think of corporate taxes as the rent those corporations pay for using all that we own – the roads to deliver their products, the monetary system the underpins commerce, the police to keep their trucks safe, the schools to train their workers, the military to protect it all.

The Republican tax bill cuts the rent you earn on all that property. The corporate tax rate drops from 35 percent to 21 percent of profits.

Now perhaps you are a gracious and benevolent landlord, and you say you don’t really mind giving your renters a break. You’re feeling generous.

But remember you have a mortgage against all that property, too. It’s the national debt, and you use the rents – the taxes – you receive as owner to pay off that mortgage. And remember that the rents have to pay for upkeep on all that property. Are the roads and bridges in great shape, with plenty of money squirreled away to keep them that way? Or are they in dire need of long-delayed maintenance and restoration?

This is one case where it is right to think like an owner, because that is what you are. Be a calculating landlord when you consider the Republican tax bill.

Isn’t that kinda great?

One could certainly tinker with the implementation. For example, how about revenue-neutral corporate tax reform? Adopt the more-globally-competitive 21% were adopted — but pay for it by closing loopholes that most big corporations have been using to pay far less than the nominal 35% rate.

But the gist of John’s essay, I think, is exactly right.

Again, I urge you to watch Reagan budget director David Stockman’s critique of the massively ill-advised tax cut.

And again, note how beyond nuts — how bizarro-world — it is that this tax bill, designed to help the middle class (yeah, right), and that’s gonna cost Trump a fortune, “believe me” (yeah right), includes a special provision for real estate developers like Trump.

I’m all for the much-heralded $1,000 bonuses a few million employees (maybe 5% of American workers?) have gotten from corporate employers . . . perhaps in part to curry favor with the strong man in the White House, perhaps in part to help Republicans hold Congress in the next election, and surely in part because they’d like to do something nice for their valued employees. That’s great.

And I’m all for the modest but real tax breaks many middle-class Americans will see (if we can afford them; though: can we afford them?). Bloomberg estimates $930 a year for people in the middle fifth of taxpayers ($60 for people in the bottom fifth). But don’t you get it? The motivation here is to help those at the top. You get $930! And you get $930! And you get $930! And — if I’m in the top 1% — I get $51,140. Unless I’m in the top tenth of that group — $193,380. Unless I’m in the top tenth of that group — where Trump and his friend Carl Icahn and his pal Wilbur Ross and his pals Sheldon Adelson and the Mercers and Betsy Devos presumably are. That number Bloomberg doesn’t even try to estimate, but it would be a lot higher.

When the ultra-rich were taxed at a 90% top federal tax rate (Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower), it was too high (though designed to lower our National Debt, relative to the economy as a whole, which it did help do). And when they were taxed at 70% (Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter) it was still too high (though it, too, helped shrink the Debt relative to the economy as a whole). Even when they were taxed at 50% (Reagan’s first cut), I would argue it may have been too high.

But, with his second cut, Reagan, and then Bush 43, and now Trump have exploded the National Debt — borrowing not to build infrastructure that’s been crumbling for 35 years, but to enrich the already-rich by cutting their taxes to record-low levels.

Criminal.

Well, not literally. But immoral.

And dishonest (Bush told us “by far the vast majority” of his tax cut would go to people “at the bottom”).

And . . . well, tragic.

Only Clinton and Obama managed to turn the deficits around, leaving their successors with economies growing faster than the debt . . . thus shrinking the debt relative to the economy as a whole.

This massively irresponsible Republican tax cut reverses that, once more. It puts us back over $1 trillion in deficit spending . . . gets the debt growing faster than the economy again, as under Reagan, Bush, and Bush . . . and is sold to the voters as, “Look! You get $930! And you get $930!” (And me? Don’t bother your pretty little head with that. If you can’t trust Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan and Devin Nunez and Vladimir Putin — Trump trusts him, why shouldn’t we? — whom can you trust?)

Right?

Copyright © 2018 Andrew Tobias
All rights reserved.
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Categories Billionaires, Economy, Equity

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
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