in brief [2-28-22]
the weekly review of education advocacy, news, and progress
in brief is A Free Mind’s weekly news review with light commentary.
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
― Issac Asimov
the upside
PERFECT SCORE: Look at this picture (below) and know this is what excellence looks like. Mario Hoover, a junior at Chicago’s Providence-St. Mel School, has become the first student in his school’s history to earn a perfect score on the ACT.
His principal says "He is the future of Black history, in the sense that he has made history here in the present and that’s going to live on forever.” (MORE)
HBCU: Tech founder and philanthropist Reed Hastings gives $10 million to Tougaloo College in Mississippi. STATEMENT: “HBCUs have been vastly undervalued for a long time…[t]hey have an incredible track record of graduating so many Black leaders across the U.S. — doctors, lawyers, engineers and more…By investing in the extraordinary students who attend Tougaloo and Brown, we’re investing in America’s future.”
According to McKinsey & Company, HBCUs have an outsized impact on preparing Black students for careers:
HBCUs represent just 3 percent of all higher-education institutions in the United States, but 10 percent of all Black students matriculating through US colleges are enrolled at HBCUs. What’s more, 17 percent of all bachelor’s degrees and 24 percent of all STEM-related bachelor’s degrees earned by Black students in the United States were conveyed by HBCUs, according to a 2019 report.7 HBCUs also supply more Black applicants to medical schools than non-HBCU institutions.8 And HBCUs have graduated 40 percent of all Black engineers; 40 percent of all Black US Congress members; 50 percent of all Black lawyers; and 80 percent of all Black judges.
NCTQ BLOG: Seven ways to make improving teacher evaluation worth the work. (HERE)
LEARNING PODS: The pandemic inspired desperate parents to form small, self-directed “pods” to educate their children while schools were closed. For many families the results were better in terms of their overall satisfaction than pre-pandemic schools. (HERE)
TEACHER PIPELINE: When university researchers studied 176,000 new teachers from 2000 to 2015, they found a connection between how long teachers stay in the profession, how they were trained, and where they taught for their first job. FINDING: “We found that a traditionally certified teacher in a traditional public school has a 67.5% chance of staying in education, while a teacher who went through an alternative certification program and started out at a charter school has a 48.4% chance.”
AUTONOMOUS SCHOOLS: During the pandemic, “charter schools thrived on the freedom to make quick decisions and appeal to like-minded families.” PER REASON: “Starting at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Stanford University's Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) examined how charter schools responded to the public health threat in comparison to traditional public schools. Looking at schools in California, New York, and Washington for the period from March to June 2020 and then for the 2020-21 school year, researchers found that charters were able to pivot from in-school teaching to remote instruction remarkably quickly.” (HERE)
AUTONOMOUS SCHOOLS II: Parents from Success Academy charter school network in New York held a week-long series of meetings with State lawmakers. The topic: lifting the state’s cap on the number of charter schools in New York City. PER SUCCESS ACADEMY: “Parents stated that they deserve a choice about where and how to educate their children — and to be able to ensure that their children get the education they deserve.”
They cited a number of reasons to increase the cap:
Overwhelming demand: Approximately 81,000 families applied for only 33,000 available seats in NYC charter schools for the 2019-20 school year, leaving 48,000 children on waitlists.
… Which continues to increase: During the pandemic, enrollment continued to climb, with charter schools seeing a 7% increase during the 2020-21 school year. For the 2021-22 school year, NYC district schools saw a 5.6% drop in enrollment.
Educational equity: The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated educational inequity, which was already a serious issue in New York City. Parent choice can help level that playing field.
Educational excellence: Charter schools such as Success Academy provide an excellent education to students, many of whom are children of color from low-income households in disadvantaged neighborhoods.
MATH, TOMORROW: Just Equations is hosting its fourth annual “Mathematics of Opportunity” conference March 1-3, 2022. PER JUST EQUATIONS: “In today’s data-rich, technology-enhanced world, math learning opportunities are central to the path to higher education and 21st century careers. Math classes must serve as stepping stones rather than stopping points on students’ journeys. Ensuring that happens means policies, practices, and perceptions must change to lower the systemic barriers that block some students’ paths forward, especially by race and gender.”
THE OTHER MOMS: A national network of 300,000 “mostly Democratic suburban women” is creating resistance to the anti-diversity campaign funded by conservative think tanks to divide and conquer school communities. WAPO: “Their mission has taken on new urgency after the wave of Republican parents who began showing up at school board meetings last summer using scripts written by right-wing think tanks, denouncing the teaching of topics such as transgender rights and labeling anti-racism curriculum as critical race theory — a college-level academic framework that examines systemic racism. They then moved on to books, mostly those focused on race and racial history, including by some of the country’s most renowned authors — as well as books with LGBTQ content. They often were the same parents who protested mask mandates and school closures related to the coronavirus pandemic.”
BOOK UN-BANNED: A month ago the Wentzville school board in Missouri made news for removing “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison from their libraries after a parent complained about sexual themes in the book. Students filed a federal lawsuit aided by the ACLU to fight back against censorship in their district. The school board has now reversed itself by voting to return the book to shelves. But, according to CNN, the following books remain banned: "Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic Paperback," by Alison Bechdel; "All Boys Aren't Blue," by George M. Johnson; "Heavy: An American Memoir," by Kiese Laymon; "Lawn Boy," by Jonathan Evison; "Gabi, A Girl in Pieces," by Isabel Quintero; "Modern Romance," by Aziz Ansari; and "Invisible Girl," by Lisa Jewell.
the downside
WHITEWASH 2022
IDENTITY POLITICIAN: Welcome to Virginia. Youngkin chooses to reboot the lost cause.
Virginia’s governor has made good on his campaign promise to remove “divisive concepts” (as defined by anything that conflicts with the world view of suburban whites) from the public schools. Glenn Younkin’s state superintendent of public instruction, Jillian Balow, issued an interim report listing all of the diversity-focused programs, initiatives, and reading lists that will be rescinded for violating VA’s newly established white codes.
The list of prohibited content is far-ranging. A math program by the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics is gone because it “has advocated for equitable outcomes in math for students.”
Virginia L.E.A.R.N.S. - a state-level data and resource clearinghouse meant to address pandemic-era “unfinished learning” - dies because of a “Substantial focus on building an equitable culture to remedy the learning loss caused by COVID-19and school closures” and it states “education equity is achieved when we eliminate the predictability of student outcomes based on gender, zip code, ability, socioeconomic status or language spoken at home.”
Equity audit tools get the ax too. Because, equity, bad.
Notable authors that are targeted for removal from a list of school leader resources: Dr. Christopher Emdin, Ta-Nahisi Coates, and Dr. Ivory Toldson.
Someone should tell the governor to pace himself. Virginia is supposed to be for lovers.
POLL: A new poll of Virginians by Christopher Newport University should temper national culture warriors who extol the Youngkin bumpkins for successfully deploying a white fear election strategy. The poll shows “mixed approval” for the new governor and his culture issues.
The CNU poll found that Youngkin’s job approval is mixed, with 41% saying they approve of the job the governor is doing and 43% indicating disapproval; 16% say they don’t know.
Virginians were also asked about other issues and data showed voters support teaching how racism continues to impact American society (63% to 33%) and oppose a ban on the teaching of Critical Race Theory in public schools (57% to 35%).
BOOK BURNERS BEWARE: A CBS News/YouGov poll shows that the bad faith anti-diversity education campaign funded by the D.C. martinis-for-lunch crowd has raised the ire of 86% of Republicans against “Critical Race Theory,” but that doesn’t translate into support for banning books:
…more than 80 percent of Americans agree that books should never be banned from schools for criticizing U.S. history, depicting slavery, discussing race, or including political ideas with which respondents disagree.
Opposition to book banning is also high among right-leaning Americans. Eighty-five percent of conservatives, 88 percent of Republicans, and 88 percent of Trump voters said books should never be banned for depicting slavery.
IDENTITY POLITICIAN II: Welcome to Florida. DeSantis chooses culture war and hate.
There are school choice advocates who make the argument that anti-CRT crusades would be unnecessary if parents had choice in education.
Have the seen Florida, the state that leads the nation with most robust school choice market?
See:
And, yet, Florida is also jockeying to be a national leader in top-down bigotry encoded in law. Sure, DeSantis wants parents to have the power to choose a school, but not for schools to have no right to choose their educational content.
Because it’s not about choice. It’s about white hegemony.
IDENTITY POLITICIAN III: Welcome to Texas. Abbott chooses scapegoating. SEE: “Texas governor calls on citizens to report parents of transgender kids for abuse.”
JUST CONCERNED PARENTS: Hana O’Looney is a high school senior in Montgomery County, MD, where she is also a student representative on her local board of education. We should applaud when young people participate in the civic systems that serve them.
At a recent meeting she made comments in support of mask requirements, and then things when sideways for her. The National Review published a whole piece on her comments, which was followed by an online harassment campaign so bad that the Montgomery School Board published a statement denouncing the “cyberbullying” and addressing the people who chose “to use vile language and personal insults to attack Ms. O’Looney.”
JUST CONCERNED PARENTS II: A 12-year-old student at Justice Alan Page middle school in Minneapolis wrote a piece for the student newspaper on how to support local protests for racial justices. You may know that Minneapolis has been home to a string of fatal incidents involving police officers and dead Black men. Families, young people, and community members of every stripe have consistently banded together to fight the racial injustices. It would not be out of line with local values in this blue city for a young person to participate in protests for racial justice in Minneapolis.
But…
Suddenly, 12-year-old’s article landed a recurring role in right-wing media as an example of anti-White CRT in public schools. As you might expect, the school community became the target of online harassment, bullying, and death threats. Their PTA held an emergency meeting this past Friday to discuss the problem, and to strategize on how to stand together.
SCOTUS: The Supreme Court may kill Affirmative Action. Ironic given the fact that its one Black member only gained his seat on that high branch of government through race-based Affirmative Action.
RACI$M PAY$: “The East Penn School Board approved a $45,000 settlement Monday concerning a lawsuit filed by parents who objected to lessons concerning the Black Lives Matter movement.” (HERE)
MONKEYISM: “On February 22nd Achai Deng, a Sophomore student at Prior Lake High School in Minnesota received a note from her teammates….note the read, “Get off our team monkey.”
The coach resigned. The school district investigated the incident and decided to end their basketball season early.
You may remember the Prior Lake High School district from a viral video in 2021 where a white student bullied her schoolmate, Nya Sigin, suggesting that she take her own life. The bully ranted unmoored in the video, "nobody likes niggers…f*#%ing kill yourself right this time, do it f*#%ing right…Cut deep enough this time or f*#%ing tie the rope higher."
MONKEYISM II: Students staged a walkout in a suburban Illinois school district to protest racism they experience. Most recently that racism came in the form of anti-mask protesters making monkey noises at them, flipping them off, and calling them niggers. STUDENT: "I should not have to come to school every day ready to defend myself verbally from racial attacks…I should be able to get my education I've worked for and be a teenager."
Apparently, monkeyism enjoys an abundant life in education. Examples: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here.
But, CRT is the problem?
CRAP THE BED: The American Federation of Children (AFC) funded a mass mailer to Georgia voters attempting to connect Republican lawmakers to the “radical left,” including Stacey Abrams and Vice President Kamala Harris. The aggressive advocacy tactic has imperiled school choice legislation for this year.
In an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article titled “A ‘deceitful attack by school voucher group backfires in Georgia,” the Republican House Speaker David Ralston complained:
“I am livid. I’ve been around politics for a long time, but this is the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen in my career and one of the most deceitful…these are people we have tried to help over the years, and they turned to attack us very viciously…That voucher legislation will not move at all in the Georgia House of Representatives this year, period.
Let this be a lesson for advocates who are high on the “school choice wave” rhetoric that exists more in language than in reality. Regardless your position, bad faith campaigns aren’t good for any cause.
the bottom line
We can have an America that works for everyone and we can have an education system that works for every child, but only if we work together in good faith.