I will be a participant in a summer school program on Critical Race Theory. You are invited to sign up. I am part of the panel on July 20.
Greetings Friends and Colleagues,
The African American Policy Forum is so excited to be Teaching Truth to Power this year at Critical Race Theory Summer School! It is crucial that we prepare racial justice advocates to defend the right to teach truth in classrooms. This powerful and urgent program runs July 18 to July 22, 2022.
Seats are limited, so register here today! Events will be held daily between 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. ET throughout the week. Be sure to sign up for our listserv so that you don’t miss any updates.
CRT Summer School 2022 will include a variety of plenaries, breakout sessions, and networking opportunities aimed to inform, activate, and inspire. We’re inviting parents, educators, students, social workers, legal practitioners, media professionals and concerned community members from all walks of life, because there is something for anyone to learn from the sheer breadth of options available this year!
Daily Plenary Sessions
July 18 – Everyday CRT: A Commonsense Framework for Racial Liberation
July 19 – Public Schools, Private Agendas: How the Assault on Racial Justice Undermines Education
July 20 – Strange Bedfellows: The Left/Right Convergence that Enabled the Normalization of White Nationalism
July 21 – Define, Do Not Defend: How to Resist the Disinformation Campaign Against CRT
July 22 – Transforming a Moment to a Movement: Building A New Coalition to Secure our Multiracial Democracy
Discounts and Purchase Orders
Group sales (registration in increments of ten and five) are available and yield a 25% discount. For Purchase Orders please contact crt@aapf.org for more information.
Individual recipients of this email are eligible for a 10% discount using the following code during check-out: TSICAF-992000-IWANJ.
Full and partial scholarships are available. For more information visit our website: www.aapf.org/crtsummerschool.
On Demand Content
Great news! This year, all CRT Summer School content will be available to all registrants after the close of the event until Labor Day. You can watch anything you missed or revisit your favorites to ensure that you are a prepared racial justice advocate ready to defend the right to teach truth in schools.
We hope to see you at CRT-SS 2022! Please also share this email with your network – friends, colleagues, and constituents.
As is typical in many towns and cities across the nation, not many people show up for local elections, or in this case, the town meeting. One of the members of the Croydon board of selectmen, Ian Underwood, proposed cutting the town budget for schools by more than half, from $1.7 million to $800,000.
In pamphlets he brought to the meeting, Mr. Underwood asserted that sports, music instruction and other typical school activities were not necessary to participate intelligently in a free government, and that using taxes to pay for them “crosses the boundary between public benefit and private charity.”
The pamphlet did not note that its author was a 1979 graduate of the public high school in Chesterton, Ind., where he starred on the tennis team, ran track, played intramural sports and joined extracurricular activities in math, creative writing, radio and student government. Also: National Honor Society member, National Merit finalist and valedictorian.
One person not completely gobsmacked by Mr. Underwood’s proposal was the school board chairwoman: his wife, Jody Underwood. The Underwoods, who do not have children, moved to Croydon from Pennsylvania in 2007 in part to join the Free State mission; they are now considered a Free State power couple.
Underwood’s radical proposal passed by 20-14. It was a victory for the Free Staters. As the Underwoods did media interviews, they gloated:
Mr. Underwood asked what for him appears to be a fundamental question — “Why is that guy paying for that guy’s kids to be educated?” — and denied that he and his wife were “in cahoots.”
Many people in Croydon were “livid.” They realized this radical act was the result of their indifference.
But they were also chastened. They hadn’t attended the town meeting. They hadn’t fulfilled their democratic obligation. They hadn’t kept informed about the Free State movement. To some observers, they had gotten what they deserved…
From this muddle of anger, confusion and regret, though, a movement was born. It came to be known as We Stand Up for Croydon Students.
Conservatives, liberals and those who shun labels — “an entirely nonpartisan group,” said Ms. Damon, one of the members — began meeting online and in living rooms to undo what they considered a devastating mistake. They researched right-to-know laws, sought advice from nonprofits and contacted the state attorney general’s office to see whether they had any legal options.
They did: Under New Hampshire law, citizens could petition for a special meeting where the budget cut could be overturned — if at least half the town’s voters were present and cast ballots.
Ms. Beaulieu, 44, a project manager for a kitchen and bath store, helped to gather enough signatures for the necessary petition. Once a date in May was set for the special meeting, she and other volunteers spread the word, knocking on doors, conducting phone banks and planting lawn signs…
The crisis in Croydon generated a curious democratic dynamic. Since the law required that at least half the town’s electorate participate in the special meeting’s vote for it to be binding, those trying to overturn the Underwood budget encouraged people to attend, while those hoping to retain it encouraged people to do just the opposite and stay home.
On the chilly Saturday morning of May 7, Croydon residents filed into a spacious building at the local YMCA camp for their special meeting. The We Stand Up contingent needed at least 283 voters.
The turnout: 379.
The vote in favor of overturning the Underwood budget: 377.
The vote against: 2.
The We Stand Up crowd cheered and hugged, leaving Mr. Underwood to vent online with posts titled “Your House Is My A.T.M.” and “Possibly Dumbest Thing I’ve Heard Someone Say, Ever,” and Dr. Underwood to frame the moment as both an impressive voter turnout and a victory for “mob rule.”
“It felt to me like a bunch of woke people came to Croydon,” she said.
What happened in Croydon is a lesson for us all.
Get out and vote.
Do not let the neo-fascists, neo-Confederates, racists, and conspiracy theorists take over.
Gary Rubinstein, teacher and blogger, reviewed state data for Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter chain. SA has been widely acclaimed for its high test scores. But Gary found that the attrition rate was astonishing. If low-scoring students leave, it boosts the overall scores.
Gary knew that the overall attrition rate was high but was surprised to see how high it is for students who enter ninth grade.
Over the years I’ve tracked the attrition at Success Academy. They are a K-12 program and I’ve found that generally when I compare the number of kindergarteners entering the school with the number of 12th graders that graduate 13 years later, they lose approximately 75% of their students over the 13 years.
Success Academy has argued that losing 75% over 13 years isn’t actually that bad since it equates to about 10% attrition per year, which is what district schools also have. One flaw in that reasoning is that district schools fill in those 10% of seats each year while Success Academy stops ‘backfilling’ in the 4th grade. Another problem with comparing attrition rates from Success Academy to district schools is that a student can pretty easily move from one district school to another and those schools won’t be all that different. But for Success Academy which are supposedly the best schools in the country, it is a major life change to leave Success Academy for a district school so if they really are as good as they say, you would expect their attrition to be less than the 10% per year that district schools have.
I recently got some data from New York State that puts the attrition of Success Academy in a different and scary context. Since Success Academy is a K-12 school and you can’t get in after 4th grade, any student who makes it to 9th grade there has been at the school for anywhere from 5 to 9 years. After making it that long, the last four years should be pretty easy. It’s like running a marathon and getting to the 25 mile mark, of course you are going to finish the race. But some new data I got reveals that this isn’t the case with Success Academy. In general, only about 60% of the students who become 9th graders there eventually graduate within 6 years. And with certain subgroups it is a lot less than that….
This data is really scandalous. Have you ever heard of a school that sheds almost half their students in a four year period from 9th to 12th grade even though those students have been in the school since kindergarten or maybe 4th grade at the latest? A question I wonder is why do so many students leave the school so late in the game after succeeding there for so many years?
A few weeks ago, a story surfaced that Biden planned to nominate an anti-abortion lawyer in Kentucky to a federal judgeship. Apparently, he cut a deal with Mitch McConnell to speed up judicial confirmations in exchange for speeding up some of Biden’s judicial appointments.
WASHINGTON — The White House is abandoning plans to nominate a Kentucky lawyer who opposes abortion rights and is backed by Senator Mitch McConnell to a federal court seat, citing opposition from Senator Rand Paul, Mr. McConnell’s home-state colleague.
The resistance from Mr. McConnell’s fellow Republican marked a new twist over a potential nomination that had prompted outrage on the left. Democrats were incensed that President Biden’s team had agreed to advance a conservative chosen by Mr. McConnell to fill a district court vacancy as the party is stepping up its focus on countering new abortion restrictions.
The prospective nominee, Chad Meredith, had successfully defended Kentucky’s anti-abortion law as a lawyer for the state. Mr. Biden’s plan to nominate him was made public by The Louisville Courier-Journal just before the Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade precedent that established abortion rights…
The blue slip tradition followed by the Senate Judiciary Committee effectively gives home-state senators veto power over the selection of federal district court judges for their states.
“In considering potential district court nominees, the White House learned that Senator Rand Paul will not return a blue slip on Chad Meredith,” Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said Friday in a statement. “Therefore, the White House will not nominate Mr. Meredith.”
I started receiving these mailing recently. I don’t know why.
Please click on the links below to see how easy it is to buy a killing machine. No background check. No age limit. No waiting period. On the Internet, a killer’s bonanza. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s latest decision about the right of every person to “bear arms” almost anywhere (not in courtrooms!), I could buy one or more of these weapons, strap it on, and carry it to the grocery store, to a movie theater, or to a restaurant. That’s what the Founding Fathers wanted, say the six extremists on the High Court. I disagree. The Founding Fathers wanted a land where people could live in freedom and peace, not in terror.
As a high school teacher in Louisiana, Mercedes Schneider has followed John White’s meteoric career with interest. He started in education as part of Teach for America, then gained a leadership role in TFA. Vaulted up the ladder of success working for Joel Klein’s administration in New York City. Quickly was named Superintendent of Schools in all-charter New Orleans. And in a flash, he was State Superintendent of Education in Louisiana. He insisted he was a “teacher at heart.” But Mercedes now finds that he is selling Common-Core aligned Eureka Math.
She writes:
White is an education opportunist at heart. Prior to his exit as Louisiana state superintendent, White started a nonprofit, Propel America, with fellow TFA alum Paymon Rouhanifard, and while still Louisiana superintendent, contracted with two Louisiana districts to pilot his product and apparently blindsiding then-state board president, Gary Jones, with the decision...
The 2018-19 school year was White’s last full school year as state superintendent. On January 08, 2020, White announced his resignation effective March 11, 2020.
Even as he touted his accomplishments, White, who was leaving mid-school-year, included no mention of a subsequent professional destination.
According to his LinkedIn bio, the Waltons picked up the tab for him, providing income for his as a Walton Family Foundation “fellow” from April 2020 to the present (July 2022).
Of course, White also had his own consulting firm, Watershed Advisors, which provides a place for a number of his former-La.-Dept.-of-Ed. cronies to land (or at least to provide indispensable resume decor to make the floundering professional seem busy climbing some ladder).
White also mentions being a member of the education advisory council to flagship in incompetence at a price, consulting firm, Alvarez and Marsal. Lots of background here. Alvarez and Marsal have their controversial fingerprints on Louisiana, New York, St. Louis, Montana, Rhode Island, and DC….
In DC, Alvarez and Marsal was hired to investigate cheating under then-chancellor (and former TFAer) Michelle Rhee, the March 08, 2012, Washington Post observes, “It is not known how much experience Alvarez and Marsal has in test security.” None. But that is how education opportunism works– just get the contract, charge the fees, offer something (or nothing, or chaos), then leave.
Education opportunism. And the findest of education opportunists, John White, is on this opportunistic business’ education advisory counsel. Perfect resume dressing.
Ahh, but “teacher at heart” White has found his place, in curriculum sales for Common-Core-associated Great Minds.
It was a casual remark exchangedamong hikers on Mount Monadnock’s White Dot Trail last Thursday: “Isn’t this a beautiful day to be alive?”
But the words stuck with Gary Cohen.
Just a short while later, the 63-year-old Boston man would slip and fall on his descent from the mountain’s summit, taking a treacherous slide headfirst into a boulder. Dazed and bloodied, Cohen soon found himself on a stretcher, being carried down the steep and rugged trail by a ragtag group of volunteers and park rangers.
And all he could think about was that he was lucky to be alive.
In southwest New Hampshire, Mount Monadnock is said to be one of the most frequently climbed mountains in the world, drawing tens of thousands of hikers each year to its 3,165 foot summit. But as the fraught rescue of Cohen last week makes clear, even a well-trodden day hike can turn dangerous.
The conditions on Monadnock could not have been more pristine on the afternoon of June 30, a cool breeze offering a reprieve from the bright sun and the skies were so clear at the summit that the Boston skyline 75 miles away was etched on the horizon.
Cohen, a retired tech entrepreneur and dedicated user of the AllTrails app, had back surgery several years ago and was gradually increasing the distance and elevation of his outings. He was nothing if not prepared, carrying, as always, a first aid kit and GPS tracking device.
The group that came together to rescue hiker Gary Cohen.MAULLY SHAH
Monadnock was new to him but was well within his capabilities.
Still, Cohen could not have anticipated what would happen to him once he made the summitand then headed back down. Just 15 minutes into his descent, he lost his footing on a slope, got spun around, and fell headfirst, his skull thudding into the rocks 10 to 20 feet below.
The blood began flowing instantly.
Cohen’s first bit of luck was that his fall was witnessed by 17-year-old Neil Bennett. The teenager was on the mountain with his girlfriend and his mother, Maully Shah, a pediatric cardiologist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Shah was snapping photos of the pair when Bennett saw the hiker go down.
“He immediately started yelling, ‘Help me, help me,’ so I knew he was pretty badly hurt,” Bennett said.
Shah, 56, and her son take a trip to the region annually, and together they have climbed Monadnock for a decade now, since Bennett was just a boy.
For all that experience, Bennett said,“I’ve never seen anything like that on Mount Monadnock before.”
Once Shah heard the cries for help and her son’s shouts, she rushed to Cohen, who was splayed on the ground, blood streaming from his head and splattered on the surrounding rocks. Hewas unable to move his neck and told Shah he feared potential paralysis.
Once she checked Cohen’s breathing and determined he was fully conscious, Shah was confident he was not in imminent danger.She cleaned and bandaged the “good-sized gash” at the back of his head. To keep Cohen’s neck stable, they fashioned shirts into a makeshift cervical collar.
The group who helped rescue Gary Cohen smiled on Mount Monadnock and Cohen gave a thumbs up.MAULLY SHAH
By that time, two others hikers who also work in the medical field had joined in to help: Amanda Herd Wilson, a physician assistant, and Alicia Lipton Lheureux, a psychiatricnurse. With a 911 call placed, they awaited the arrival of park rangers, who assisted in the rescue effort along with conservation officers from the New Hampshire Fish and Game Departmentand search-and-rescue volunteers.
With two rangers on the scene, the small group loaded Cohen onto a collapsible stretcher by sliding a thin thermal blanket underneath him and gently lifting him up. Then they began an hours-long journey over exposed rock ledges and thick mixed woods. The destination: a helicopter landing zone on the mountain, where a Dartmouth-Hitchcock Advanced Response Team was to meet them to transport Cohen to Elliot Hospital in Manchester for treatment.
“It was a treacherous descent,” Shah said, recalling the balancing act of everyone trying to keep their footing while also checking on Cohen. The sun beat down on their backs and their drinking water was quickly depleting.
For much of the trek, the group only numbered about eight people, including the two rangers — a far cry from the 18 or so volunteers rangers say would be ideal for such a rescue. More hikers along the trail eventually offered to help, and about halfway down, they were met by additional rescue staff. Others included a college student from Northeastern University and a father with his young kids in tow.
Despite his evident pain, Cohen remained upbeatand brave throughout — often asking how the team was holding up, Shah said. He later credited the mother-son duo and all the others as being “angels among us.”
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After nearly two decades as a physician, Shah is familiar with “sort of high-drama situations,” but the makeshift “trauma center in the mountain” was hardly comparable to a hospital setting. Their efforts were punctuated by moments of humor and camaraderie,with people quietly taking over more strenuous tasks like lifting when it was apparent another was struggling with the weight.
“The sort of trail magic that happens where strangers came together in a very critical situation,” Shah said. “This was not assigned to us. We just happened to be there. It actually got in the way of everyone’s day, but everyone went home probably with the best feeling in their heart because they helped a human being.”
About 15 minutes after theband of hikers made it to the landing zone, the helicopter touched down. Bennett said the moment Cohen was lifted into the aircraft and flown to safety is one he will remember “for the rest of my life.”
Lisa Haver is a retired teacher and prominent advocate for the public schools of Philadelphia. Those public schools have been subject to state takeover, privatization, and every other failed reformy tactic. She hoped that those bad old days were over. They are not. The new board hired an inexperienced superintendent who needed the help of a much-criticized consulting firm at a cost of $450,000.
After years of pain and frustration that included the closing of neighborhood schools, privatization driven by standardized tests, crumbling infrastructure, and more than one debacle, the people of Philadelphia were psyched for new leadership in the school district.
The door to new priorities seemed to open with the arrival of Tony Watlington as the next superintendent.
But that door slammed shut before his tenure had even begun with the news that he’d brought in a Tennessee-based consulting firm to help him navigate his first year in the job. In May, the Board of Education voted unanimously and without deliberation to approve a one-year contract with Joseph & Associates. Price tag: $450,000. The board approved this contract — the last on a list of 92 official items — near the end of an 8-hour meeting.
According to a recent Chalkbeat article, the board hired the consulting firm to help Watlington “connect with people,” assist in assembling his transition team, and develop a 5-year plan for the district. Watlington said he asked for the contract so he could “hit the ground running by Day 1,” according to The Inquirer.
Apparently, Watlington decided the district’s current leadership of 16 department chiefs and 15 assistant superintendents could not help him do that, and that people from Tennessee could educate him about the district’s history and needs better than the people who live and work in Philly.
The Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, the organization I co-founded, has reported on and analyzed the spending priorities of the district since 2012. We intended to ask the board directly why they hired Joseph & Associates, but all five APPS members who tried to sign up to speak at the June meeting were denied.
Last winter, in public town halls held for the three superintendent finalists, Watlington told parents, students, and educators he had a plan and wanted to meet with district stakeholders to hear their concerns. He didn’t say he could only do that by hiring an out-of-town consulting firm at a price higher than his own $340,000 salary.
The first official act of the new administration signals a continuation of those before him: hiring consultants and outsourcing work that should be done by district personnel. Sending resources into classrooms remains on the back burner.
The scope of the Joseph & Associates contract raises concerns for families and public education advocates for a number of reasons. Watlington said he wants the consultants to help him assess how the district can best meet the board’s “Goals and Guardrails” — a set of priorities based on standardized test data. This approach does not lend itself to creative learning or teaching. The Watlington administration should commit to funding proven reforms: smaller class size, more support staff, and reinstating school librarians.
But it’s the final phase of the Joseph & Associates contract that should sound the alarm for defenders of public education: the compilation of a 5-year “strategic plan” for the district. Many recall what happened a decade ago after the last long-range plan from an outside firm, the Boston Consulting Group: school closings and more privatization of neighborhood schools. Any plan that determines the future of the district and its ramifications for families and neighborhoods should be discussed and formulated in public meetings — not the private boardrooms of an out-of-state consulting firm.
After a consistent flow of decisions tearing down the wall of separation between church and state, readers have proposed that the U.S. Supreme Court should henceforth be known as the Supreme Christian Court of the United States. Others call it the Supreme Christian Taliban Court.
In every decision involving religion, the Christian Court makes no effort to balance freedom of religion and the Constitutional prohibition against establishment of religion.
This Court agreed that a baker open to the public may refuse to bake a cake for a gay couple because gay marriage violates his religious beliefs.
This Court requires Maine to fund two evangelical schools in Maine that openly discriminates against those who do not share their beliefs. The state is thus compelled to subsidize discrimination that federal and state law forbid.
This Court supports a school coach’s right to pray in public while he is working and influencing students to follow his lead. Will they next support teachers who are moved to pray in their classrooms?
What next, a revival of school prayer?
This Court, in true Taliban style, allows states to revoke women’s reproductive rights, the decision to control their own bodies.
The Court is drunk with its unchecked power. With a certain majority of 5 hard-core extremists, and the likely vote of a powerless Chief Justice, this Court is set to remake American society, to roll back the rights and freedoms that most Americans take for granted.
Do they want to take us back to 1868, as Justice Thomas wrote, when people of color and women could not vote?
Or do they want to transport us to an imaginary world where father knows best, women know their place, Black people quietly acquiesce to indignities, and everyone is forced to pray the same prayers?
A newly published analysis of how dollars are distributed to schools in the U.S. posits that funding allocation models continue to disadvantage those in low-income communities, despite long-standing evidence that equitable funding is critical to students’ capacity to learn and achieve.
Due to the reliance on local property values to fund schools, property poor districts are prevented from increasing or equalizing school revenue to the level of wealthier districts. This poverty is unequally distributed across racial and ethnic backgrounds. Recent peer-reviewed research has shown that in gentrifying urban communities, as the proportional intensity of white students increases in schools, so do the resulting resources and demands for schools, the authors write.
“Education is a human right and a civil right, but our school finance policies are failing to treat it as such,” Martínez said. “Access to quality education is necessary for communities to thrive. When there are major educational disparities that exist between communities, it impacts everyone. This is demonstrably true if those educational disparities are predicated on community wealth, or race and ethnicity. Policy makers must do more to understand the history of school finance disparity in their community, and take steps to ameliorate its impact.”
Martínez and Vasquez Heilig say in their analysis that, despite countless attempts to reform school finance policy, the U.S. has historically been unable to improve school funding inequity and injustice. Without creating a more equitable system, resolving challenges for marginalized students will continue to be difficult.
“We looked at numerous studies showing increases in funding resulted in greater academic success for marginalized students. For instance, when more resources were put into majority LatinX urban schools, reading and math achievements increased,” Vasquez Heilig said. “Quite simply, money does matter and investing in education early and often matters in the everyday life of a student.”
The authors suggest federal policymakers adopt a framework known as Opportunity to Learn that would put in place a set of minimum standards for equitable learning in U.S. schools. These standards would include well-trained and certified teachers and administrators, timely curriculum and texts, up-to-date facilities and wrap-around services to support neuro-divergent learners and the health, nutrition, housing and family wellness of students. As a civil right, the authors argue for complete and differentiated levels of service for every student and funding that allows for the provision of those services.
After these standards for learning are set, it would enable state policymakers to raise revenue to proper levels of fiscal support for meeting the standards. The authors say this model deviates from past school reform and finance models that have focused on test scores and the need for increased student achievement. They, instead, support a model where success is determined by how policymakers are supporting high-quality educational access and availability in every community, promoting alternatives to the historical resource disparity that has oppressed BIPOC students and families.
“Ultimately, as a civil right, we need to support students through the P-20 pipeline, which includes high school completion and earnings later in life, with the ultimate goal of reducing adult poverty,” Vasquez Heilig said.
Diane Ravitch's blog 