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Elbert Starks III: I am a Black Man, a Human, Like You

By dianeravitch
July 9, 2016 //
32

Elbert Starks III posted this essay on Facebook. He is a journalist who lives in Indiana, where he attended public schools. A friend in Indiana was so moved by his words that she forwarded the essay to me.

He writes:

Over the years, I’ve posted a lot of things — I’ve acknowledged that some use Facebook for things like family accomplishments and achievements, understood that not everyone has wanted or appreciated my posts about politics and public policy and poverty and race.

I’m black, male. During my time on FB, I’ve posted multiple times about how those two things have resulted in odd treatment — students in parking decks veering away from me, hiding their eyes, tensing up.

Sitting in classrooms with not a single person in a desk next to me — in classes that have a few dozen other students, some complete strangers, who sat next to each other automatically.

Walking into public meetings and getting the look of “are you sure, and we sure, you are supposed to be here.”

Stopped while attempting to enter a voting place while on assignment, while people filtered in around me.

Living in this country as a black male means stuff like that is going to happen. Change doesn’t happen overnight. It was only five years before my birth that segregation was legally abolished, and it’s going to take a long time, apparently, for some to stop fighting the Civil War and treating black people as subhumans.

I get that.

But here’s my point. Here’s why I post the stuff I do:

There’s a price being paid for that. By all people in this country, no matter what skin color you have.

Being human, being a part of society, requires all of us to give and receive from a place of empathy and understanding. You don’t have to love every person. But understanding the world in which they live, even if you disagree with the fundamental choices they make, is crucial for growth and advancement.

When we hate and fear those who are different, we make them less than human. We take away from them the basic tenets of decency. We reduce them to little more than animals, beasts to be put down and destroyed.

We do this at a cost to our souls, our own humanity. We become numb to injustice, numb to the suffering, of people we don’t know and have never met, because they aren’t like “us.” They aren’t “normal.” Whatever happened to them…they must have done something to deserve it, right?

I’m posting this because I’m tired, people. I’m tired. I’m tired of having to explain, over and over, how fear and hatred leads to the minimization of minority suffering, to the degree where systemic violence takes place and it’s just another statistic.

Racism is a real thing. It leads the majority to grow to believe that minorities are less than human.

It leads politicians to reduce benefits to needy families so little kids struggle to eat. It leads average people to believe immigrants are rapists and terrorists.

It leads police officers to believe that black people they run across are not humans. Instead, they are animals, super predators, poised to rampage and rape and pillage and murder.

Even when sitting in a car with your girlfriend and a kid, at a traffic stop that you initiated.

Philando Castile should be alive today. He isn’t because he is black.

There’s no more to it. There’s nothing more to that. He is dead because he is black.

But that didn’t happen last night. Because this country refuses to openly acknowledge racism, refuses to have the ugly conversations about racism is and what racism does in the open, Philando Castile was killed a long time ago. Because he had already been reduced to less than human in the eyes of some and wasn’t worthy of the one life we all get.

I don’t know how to explain it any differently than this, or any better. I don’t know what else to say to make people understand that this country is not what it says it is.

I see it consistently — not constantly, but consistently — in the eyes of strangers who see me, an aging black male who sucks at math and can’t get my biking over 10 miles, as a threat to their existence. A threat to their very lives. And we’ve never met.

I want to believe that people can change. That this country can be better than this. I have always believed that people can overcome their worst aspects and be better.

I’m just tired today. Because it shouldn’t take yet yet another person being murdered for being black to make people stop and think and listen to those of us who are begging, pleading…we are just asking for people to stop reducing people who look like me to less than humans.

You don’t have to like me or love me. Just start with assuming that I am a human being who doesn’t mean you any harm.
Start there.

Categories Race

New Orleans: Why History Matters

By dianeravitch
July 9, 2016 //
8

Al Kennedy, PH.D., of the University of New Orleans contends that it is important to understand the history of public schools in New Orleans. Reformers think they were writing on blank sheet of paper with no history. Not so. The history of white supremacy is the context in which control of the schools must be understood.

He writes:

“Ten years after the flood waters from negligently constructed federal levees inundated New Orleans, public education reformers have unhitched their narrative from the pre-Katrina history of the Crescent City. They cleverly placed the blame for the condition of the schools on the backs of the teachers–and their union. The reformers contend that New Orleans was a “blank sheet of paper” upon which they put in place a successful system of charter schools. Perhaps the reference to the “blank sheet of paper” makes more sense as an effort to paper-over a long and painful history that includes the lingering effects of white supremacy.”

Reform began by firing 7500 teachers, mostly African American, and blaming their union for the failings of the schools. They lost their livelihood and their health insurance. Kennedy writes: “An immoral action became the foundation of reform.” The public schools were taken over by white-led organizations, renamed, obliterating their history.

His paper, 24 pages long, is worth reading because there is no escaping the past. We ignore it at our peril. Ignorance is not bliss.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Race

Ken Bernstein: Would Americans Elect a Racist?

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2016 //
29

Ken Betnstein, NBCT high school teacher and blogger, asks whether Americans would elect a racist.

http://m.dailykos.com/story/2016/6/7/1535415/-But-will-it-matter

Ken looks at two columns today. Both say Trump has demonstrated his racism.

“I find myself asking that question after glancing at two very pointed columns in today’s Washington Post. One, by Dana Milbank and titled Republicans finally discover that Trump is an actual racist, goes through all the elements of Trum’s’ expressions that support that assertion, but quite possibly could be summarized in one sentence partway through the column:

‘You know you’re in trouble when you’re being lectured on sensitivity by Newt Gingrich.’

“The other is by the inimitable Eugene Robinson and titled Endorsing Trump will leave a mark, begins with a similar assertion:

‘Bluffing is Donald Trump’s one great talent, and he brazenly bluffed his way to the Republican nomination. Now he is showing his cards, however, and they are utter garbage: racism, ignorance, capriciousness, egomania and general unfitness for office. That should be — it must be — a losing hand.

“The question of course is on whom will that mark really fall.

“Yes the press is now willing to challenge Trump. As Milbank phrases it

‘A confluence of three factors has caused a sudden and sharp change in Trump’s fortunes. The media scrutiny has increased significantly since he secured the nomination, and journalists, rather than chasing his outrage du jour, are digging in to report more on Trump University, Trump’s stiffing of charities, his lies and his racism. Hillary Clinton has, finally, made the shift to attacking Trump vigorously over his instability. And Republicans are, belatedly, discovering that their presidential candidate wasn’t putting on a show during the GOP primaries: He’s an actual racist.'”

Categories Democracy, Education Reform, Politics, Race, Trump

Reformers Debate the Black Lives Matter Movement

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2016 //
22

If you wonder what reformers are thinking about in private, here is a peek behind the curtain.

Elizabeth Green, founder of Chalkbeat, writes about the debate among reformers about the Black Lives Matter movement.

African American reformers questioned why there are so few people of color in leadership roles in the education reform movement, and whether it can even be called a movement because it is led by people who are white and privileged. Those are questions about power and control, which are important.

Among the questions that were not raised:

Why do reformers think that black children benefit by taking standardized tests that label most of them as failures beginning in grade 3?

Why do reformers express so little concern about class size, budget cuts, funding, and segregation?

Do reformers believe that black children benefit by being in classrooms filled with exploration and joy, rather than test pressure?

Why are reformers eager to open charter schools with no-excuses discipline, where black children are treated like robots and trained to obey?

Do reformers worry that the expansion of charters harms the remaining public schools, which enroll far greater numbers of black children than charters?

Do reformers worry about directing so many inexperienced, first-year teachers to the schools that enroll black children?

Are reformers at all concerned that charter schools are more segregated than the public schools in the same district?

Why do reformers think that giving black children a voucher to enroll in a church school with uncertified teachers will prepare them to thrive in the 21st century?

Why aren’t the leaders of reform fighting for schools that black children attend that look like the schools their own children attend?

Are reformers worried about the disparate impact that “reform” policies have had on black teachers?

Do reformers think twice about union-busting and supplying scabs for non-union schools?

Do reformers understand the role that unions have played in building a middle class?

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Race, Testing

The Brown Decision at Year 62: Resegregation on the Rise

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2016 //
11

Lest we forget, today is the 62nd anniversary of the historic Brown v. Board of Education, which ruled that separate but equal could never be equal. It began the long and painful process of disestablishing legally sanctioned separation of the races in different schools. As we have observed, de facto segregation has replaced de jure segregation and resegregation is on the rise.

 

The UCLA Civil Rights Project has been tracking the trajectory of racial segregation and desegregation for many years. Its newest research brief has bad news.

 

As the anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education decision arrives again without any major initiatives to mitigate spreading and deepening segregation in our nation’s schools, the Civil Rights Project adds to a growing national discussion with a research brief drawn from a much broader study of school segregation to be published in September 2016. Since 1970, the public school enrollment has increased in size and transformed in racial composition. Intensely segregated nonwhite schools with zero to 10% white enrollment have more than tripled in this most recent 25-year period for which we have data, a period deeply influenced by major Supreme Court decisions (spanning from 1991 to 2007) that limited desegregation policy. At the same time, the extreme isolation of white students in schools with 0 to 10% nonwhite students has declined by half as the share of white students has dropped sharply.

 

This brief shows states where racial segregation has become most extreme for Latinos and blacks and discusses some of the reasons for wide variations among states. We call the country’s attention to the striking rise in double segregation by race and poverty for African American and Latino students who are concentrated in schools that rarely attain the successful outcomes typical of middle class schools with largely white and Asian student populations. We show the obvious importance of confronting these issues given the strong relationship between racial and economic segregation and inferior educational opportunities clearly demonstrated in research over many decades.

 

 

The most intensely segregated states are New York, Maryland, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, and California.

 

It is worth noting that the two major federal initiatives of the past 15 years–No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top– completely ignored racial segregation.

 

Racial integration is no longer a federal or a national priority. It is no longer unusual to see the media celebrating the academic success of schools that are 100% nonwhite, without mentioning their racial isolation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Race, Segregation, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration

U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Will Hold a Hearing on Funding Inequities, Poverty, and Racial Isolation on May 20: Attend or Listen in

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2016 //
7

I received this notice today. I responded and asked if the Commission might investigate how school choice via vouchers and charters was affecting racial resegregation. The growing resegregation of America’s schools should be an urgent concern for this Commission.

 

 
U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Announces Date for Briefing Related to its Report, Public Education Funding Inequality in an Era of Increasing Concentration of Poverty and Resegregation

 
WASHINGTON, April 26, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights announced today that it will hold a public briefing on Friday, May 20, 2016, to examine the funding of K-12 education and how the inequitable distribution of these funds negatively and disproportionately impact the educational opportunities of low-income and minority students. The briefing will also address how the practice of underfunding public schools has exacerbated the academic achievement gap in an era where the nation’s most vulnerable children are increasingly educated in highly segregated and under-resourced schools.

 
The Commission’s public briefing and report titled “Public Education Funding Inequality in an Era of Increasing Concentration of Poverty and Resegregation” will address federal and state law related to public education funding, including Title I of the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The report will also offer recommendations on how federal, state, and local government can independently and collaboratively help ensure that all children in the United States have an equal opportunity to quality education regardless of race, national origin, and zip code.

 
Commission Chairman Martin R. Castro stated, “Education is the great equalizer in the United States. When we make access to education for our minority children more difficult and less equal and when the education they received is of less quality, whether de jure or de facto–it is unjust and must be changed. When we diminish educational opportunities for the least among us we diminish ourselves as a nation.”
Commissioner Karen K. Narasaki stated, “Despite Brown v. Board of Education, schools attended by minority children are still more likely to be racially isolated and lacking in sufficient resources with high concentrations of poverty. All students should have meaningful access to a quality education.”

 
WHAT:
Briefing on Public Educational Funding Inequality in an Era of Increasing Concentration of Poverty and Resegregation.
WHEN:
May 20, 2016, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. EST
Please arrive early as seating is limited or participate via teleconference.
WHERE:
U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
1331 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Suite 1150
Washington, DC 20425 (Entrance on F Street NW)

 
LISTEN IN:

 
To listen to the Commission’s Briefing via telephone, please follow the instructions below:
Dial toll-free number 1-888-572-7034; Provide operator conference # 7822144.

 
DOCUMENTS:
The Commission is going green! Electronic versions of the briefing documents will be made available online the day before the briefing.
Deaf or hearing-impaired persons who require the services of a sign language interpreter should contact Pam Dunston at (202) 376-8105.
Follow, share, and be a part of the conversation on Twitter @USCCRGOV

 
Contact: Gerson Gomez
Media Advisor
(202) 376-8371
publicaffairs@usccr.gov

Tweet: https://Twitter.com/USCCRgov/status/725072639279124480

Categories Funding, Poverty, Race, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration

Paul Thomas: Look at the Norm, not Outliers

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2016 //
25

Paul Thomas, professor at Furman University in South Carolina, takes note of the recent story in the New York Times about the weight of poverty and race on academic outcomes and writes that policy must be based on evidence, not outliers.

 

The story showed the powerful impact of race and poverty. The subtitle was: “Sixth graders in the richest school districts are four grade levels ahead of children in the poorest districts.”

 

The story identified two districts that were outliers. Two small districts beat the odds. That set off a discussion about how they did it. What could we learn from Unuon City, New Jersey, and Bremen, Georgia? (I too am guilty of pointing to the outliers as models.)

 

Thomas writes:

 

“But then there is this:

 

[Quoting the story in the Times] The data was [sic] not uniformly grim. A few poor districts — like Bremen City, Ga. and Union City, N.J. — posted higher-than-average scores. They suggest the possibility that strong schools could help children from low-income families succeed.

 

“There are some outliers, and trying to figure out what’s making them more successful is worth looking at,” said Mr. Reardon, a professor of education and lead author of the analysis.
Well, no, if we find outliers—and virtually all data have outliers in research—we should not waste our time trying to figure out how we can make outliers the norm.”

 

Thomas vigorously dissents:

 

“The norm is where we should put our efforts in order to confront what is, in fact, not “puzzling” (used earlier in the article) at all; the data are very clear:”

 

[Quoting the story]: “What emerges clearly in the data is the extent to which race and class are inextricably linked, and how that connection is exacerbated in school settings.”

 

“Not only are black and Hispanic children more likely to grow up in poor families, but middle-class black and Hispanic children are also much more likely than poor white children to live in neighborhoods and attend schools with high concentrations of poor students.”

 

Thomas writes:
“Our great education reform failure is one of failing to rethink our questions and our goals.

 

“Let’s stop trying to find the “miracle” in a rare few schools where vulnerable students appear to succeed despite the odds against them. With time and careful consideration, we must admit, those appearances almost always are mirages.

 

“Let’s instead put our energy in eradicating the poverty, racism, and sexism that disadvantages some students, vulnerable populations easily identified by race and social class, so that we can educate all students well.”

 

 

 

 

Categories Education Reform, Hoax, Poverty, Race

Race, Family Income, and Test Scores: A New Study

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2016 //
43

The New York Times features a new study of the intersection of race, family income, and test scores by Sean Reardon, Demetra Kalogrides, and Kenneth Shores.

 

It shows beyond doubt that family income and test scores are tightly correlated. A chart of educational attainment in school districts, arrayed by family income, shows that: “Sixth graders in the richest school districts are four grade levels ahead of children in the poorest districts.”

 

That is a huge test score gap.

 

We’ve long known of the persistent and troublesome academic gap between white students and their black and Hispanic peers in public schools.

 

We’ve long understood the primary reason, too: A higher proportion of black and Hispanic children come from poor families. A new analysis of reading and math test score data from across the country confirms just how much socioeconomic conditions matter.

 

Children in the school districts with the highest concentrations of poverty score an average of more than four grade levels below children in the richest districts.

 

Even more sobering, the analysis shows that the largest gaps between white children and their minority classmates emerge in some of the wealthiest communities, such as Berkeley, Calif.; Chapel Hill, N.C.; and Evanston, Ill. The study, by Sean F. Reardon, Demetra Kalogrides and Kenneth Shores of Stanford, also reveals large academic gaps in places like Atlanta and Menlo Park, Calif., which have high levels of segregation in the public schools….

 

 

Why racial achievement gaps were so pronounced in affluent school districts is a puzzling question raised by the data. Part of the answer might be that in such communities, students and parents from wealthier families are constantly competing for ever more academic success. As parents hire tutors, enroll their children in robotics classes and push them to solve obscure math theorems, those children keep pulling away from those who can’t afford the enrichment.

 

“Our high-end students who are coming in are scoring off the charts,” said Jeff Nash, executive director of community relations for the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools.

 

The school system is near the flagship campus of the University of North Carolina, and 30 percent of students in the schools qualify for free and reduced-price lunch, below the national average.

 

The wealthier students tend to come from families where, “let’s face it, both the parents are Ph.D.s, and that kid, no matter what happens in the school, is pressured from kindergarten to succeed,” Mr. Nash said. “So even though our minority students are outscoring minority students in other districts near us, there is still a bigger gap here because of that.”

 

By contrast, the communities with narrow achievement gaps tend to be those in which there are very few black or Hispanic children, or places like Detroit or Buffalo, where all students are so poor that minorities and whites perform equally badly on standardized tests….

 

What emerges clearly in the data is the extent to which race and class are inextricably linked, and how that connection is exacerbated in school settings.

 

Not only are black and Hispanic children more likely to grow up in poor families, but middle-class black and Hispanic children are also much more likely than poor white children to live in neighborhoods and attend schools with high concentrations of poor students.

 

One school district stood out as a district that beat the odds: Union City, New Jersey.

 

David Kirp wrote a book about Union City, called Improbable Scholars: The Rebirth of a Great American School System and a Strategy for America’s Schools.  

 

What did they do in Union City? Time to read Kirp’s book and start implementing real education reform.

 

Or read an article by Kirp about what he discovered. No charter schools. No Teach for America. Steady work, careful planning, collaboration, no heroics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Poverty, Race, Testing

Kate Taylor: Race and Standardized Testing

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2016 //
9

Kate Taylor of the Néw York Times wrote a balanced review of the debate about how standardized testing is viewed through the prism of race.

No Child Left Behind was premised on the claim that testing would raise up all children and close the achievement gaps between racial and income groups. Congress believed this, despite the lack of evidence from Texas, which supposedly had achieved miracle status by testing every child every year.

No one noticed that the high-performing nations of the world do not test every child every year.

In the not-distant past, civil rights groups filed lawsuits to block standardized testing on grounds that it is racially biased. They were right. It is no accident that standardized tests accurately reflect family income and parent education. This disadvantages kids from poor backgrounds, who cluster in the bottom half of the bell curve. And many of those so affected are children of color.

Why did some prominent civil rights groups demand that the new federal education law retain annual testing, even though it labels and stigmatizes many of the children they represent? I can’t say for sure. I don’t know. Either they still believe the lies at the heart of NCLB or they were persuaded by certain funders to argue that we need testing to keep measuring the score gaps.

It is important to remember that tests are a measure, not a remedy. Di we keep pouring millions or billions into testing but not spending on the remedies, like small classes.

Taylor’s article shows that there are black students, teachers, and scholars who understand that standardized testing is hurting, not helping, in the pursuit of equality. Some see it as a tool that widens the school to prison pipeline, since it marks many as failures even in elementary school.

One of the scholars quoted is Warren Simmons of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University.

Simmons “said test scores can’t offer policy makers much guidance in the absence of qualitative assessments — of the curriculum, of teacher training, of the support a school is receiving from the district and state.

“Student testing is like using a thermometer to try to diagnose what kind of cancer an individual has,” Mr. Simmons said.”

Taylor

Categories Equity, Race, Standardized Testing

Steven Singer: The Sordid, Racist History of Standardized Testing

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2016 //
51

This is a story that needs to be told: the sordid history of standardized testing. I wrote about it in chapter four of my book “Left Back” (2000). Many scholarly dissertations have documented the story. Others have tried to alert the public about the assumptions embedded in the fabric of standardized testing. But the policymakers don’t read or don’t care.

 

The very idea that the essential intelligence and worth of a human being can be scientifically measured by multiple choice questions is fraught with flawed and dangerous assumptions. When we then use those measures to judge the worthiness of teachers and schools, the damage the tests do is multiplied.

 

Steven Singer has done excellent research on the history of standardized testing and summarizes it here.

 

The standardized test was created in an era when the new field of psychology was trying to establish itself as a “science.” The psychologists earnestly believed that intelligence was innate, inherited, and could not be changed. They also believed that intelligence varied by race and ethnicity. Tomes were written about the superiority of whites over other races, and among whites, the superiority of Northern Europeans over Southern Europeans. This belief was conventional wisdom among psychologists.

 

One of the men who wrote and believed this was the Princeton psychologist Carl C. Brigham. He joined the College Board as its senior psychologist and created the first Scholastic Aptitude Test.

 

Once you know this story, you will never forget it. It will change the way you view the tests forever. You will ask why federal and state officials are so determined to impose them. You will wonder why anyone takes these biased instruments so seriously. They are social constructions, neither objective nor scientific.

 

Singer writes:

 

“Make no mistake – standardized testing has been a tool of social control for the last century. And it remains one today.

 

“Twisted statistics, made up math, nonexistent or biased research – these are the “scientific” supports for standardized testing. It has never been demonstrated that these kinds of tests can accurately assess either intelligence or knowledge, especially as that knowledge gets more complex. But there is an unspoken agreement in political circles to pretend that testing is rock solid and produces scores that can be relied on to make decisions that will have tremendous effects on the lives of students, teachers, parents and communities.

 

“Our modern assessments are holdovers from the 1910s and ‘20s, an age when psychologists thought they could isolate the racial markers for intelligence and then improve human beings through selective breeding like you might with dogs or cats.

 

“I’m not kidding.

 

“It was called eugenics.

 

“Psychologists like Carl Brigham, Robert Yerkes, and Lewis Terman were trying to find a way to justify the social order. Why is it that certain people are at the top and others at the bottom? What is the best way to decide who belongs where?”

 

Their tests justified the social order. Those at the top deserved their privilege. They had the highest test scores. Those at the bottom had the lowest scores and were where they belonged. At the bottom. A few might rise, just enough to keep the fraud going. They would lecture those they left behind to try harder. And the social order would remain unchanged.

 

 

Categories Education Reform, Race, Standardized Testing
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