VERBATIM: Non-Affirmative Action and other things
My weekly odds and ends from education world.
Friends,
I’m out of the office for a brief relaxation trip with my wife. We’re far from the flatlands of Minnesota, deep in the green trees and elevated country of Colorado, I’m looking for meaning in life.
That doesn’t mean I can’t fire off this missive to you while my partner isn’t looking.
I’ll start with the biggest news of the week.
If you hear the sound of champagne corks popping, it’s coming from conservative Washington think tanks and their oligarchs celebrating legal victories that make up for the fact that they’ve been losing the culture war for years.
This week the Supreme Court blunted Affirmative Action, made discrimination against LGBTQ people legal, and apparently ended President Biden’s ill-conceived attempt to forgive college loan debt for millions of borrowers. Following the loss of Roe, they right is showing might.
Years of talk radio and dirty money have paid off.
Your algorithm has given you enough think pieces about the court’s rightward shift this week, but if you want one more, I wrote about the wealthy families and their grantees working to restructure our institutions to their favor. While they fight to install a whitewashed ideal of what our nation should be, I call for the diverse majority to fight for democratic systems that work equally well for all.
I say:
There are something like 400 languages spoken in American public schools. Our communities boast of foods, music, and cultural expressions from all over the world. Religions? We’ve got them all. Diversity is our norm, and the idea of a single way to be American is un-American.
While conservatives invest heavily in reconstructing a homogenous and whitewashed American ideal created solely in their image and for their continual advantage, the rest of us, the growing majority, have to work toward innovating our common systems so they can effectively negotiate differences and promote the common good. It’s not a nice to have. It’s imperative. Our peace depends on it. There is no future in constantly disabling our institutions from finding ways to accommodate all the shapes and sizes of our humanity.
And, now for some good news:
ACHIEVEMENT GOSPELS: This one feels like the Benjamin Button of education stories. A student who goes to college before middle school. Fiona Currie used dual enrollment to start taking classes at Los Angeles City College when she was just nine. VERBATIM: Earlier this month, at age 12, she received an associate degree in studio arts with a 4.0 GPA. She stood in a crowd of her classmates on commencement day amid a standing ovation while becoming the school’s youngest graduate. Next up for the history-making 12-year-old: high school. #MagnetSchool [NBC]
ACHIEVEMENT GOSPELS II: Earlier this year, Merissa Wilson requested the Pearl Public School District in Mississippi to allow her daughter, Zuri, to wear an eagle feather on her graduation cap and be wrapped in a traditional star quilt. These cultural traditions hold great significance for their Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. The district denied this mother’s request. “She reached out to the Native American Rights Fund (NARF), which helps students denied the right to wear tribal regalia at graduation.” VERBATIM: NARF, along with the ACLU and ACLU of Mississippi, sent a letter to school board members explaining that Mississippi law requires public schools to allow Native American students to wear tribal regalia and objects of cultural significance, such as eagle feathers, at graduation. The letter also pointed out that the Native American practice of presenting graduates with a traditional quilt, which is made by close friends or family members and features a star in the center, also falls within the spirit of the statute. After receiving the letter, the school board reversed course, and Zuri was able to wear her eagle feather and receive a star quilt at graduation. #RacialJustice [ACLU]
ACHIEVEMENT GOSPELS III: Middle schooler Rithvik Suren has won Connecticut's 3M Young Scientist Challenge for 2023. Suren, a student at the Capitol Region Education Council Academy of Science and Innovation in New Britain, was among the 24 State Merit Winners and four honorable mention recipients announced by 3M and Discovery Education. His project focused on a muon-powered electricity generator. #YoungScientist [Patch]
INNOVATIVE ED FOR ALL: A diverse group of Detroit residents aged 18 to 64 has graduated from Apple Academy, a 10-month program supported by Michigan State University that trains students to develop apps. “Some of the new apps they worked on are now available on the App Store.” VERBATIM: "We started in October during the school year, so, I'd go to four classes at Renaissance in the morning, and then at noon I'd leave to work on our apps," Paul Campbell, a recent Renaissance High School graduate, tells Axios. # [Axios Detroit]
YOUTH LONELINESS: In a new report, the U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community warns that we are experiencing an epidemic of youth loneliness.
Being disconnected and experiencing loneliness has harsh consequences:
A 29% increase risk of heart disease
A 32% increased risk of stroke
A 50% increased risk of developing dementia for older adults
A 60% risk of premature death
My friends at the Search Institute have years of deep research on how improving young people's structural relationships and connectedness improves their learning and life outcomes. In one study, they found that only 42% of youth “reported that they have strong developmental relationships with the staff in their schools and programs.” That’s troubling. We can do better.
Luckily, this isn’t a newsletter about admiring problems without highlighting solutions. The Search Institute has a blog post offering an evidence-based antidote to the youth loneliness crisis. #YouthRelationships [Search Institute]
HAPPY GILMORE: There is a real-life golfer named Happy Gilmore. He’s going to college. He tweeted about it. Adam Sandler saw it and tweeted, "Go get em Happy. Pulling for you.” Happy Gilmore’s response: “My life is now complete.” #90sMovies [ABC]
THE POD: I was joined this week by Robert Enlow from Ed Choice, a civil but spirited debate on Education Savings Accounts. We agreed on the general premise that students need many opportunities to learn, but we clashed on the idea that ESAs represent “educational freedom,” especially since those who push them most also push education censorship laws that limit what students can learn.
You can hear it here:
Ok, now I’m going back to my search for meaning in these mountains. Wish me luck.
I’ll see you next week.
Love,
Chris