Marian Wright Edelman has known dark days in her lifelong quest to
help poor and minority children.
This includes 20,000 teachers, including some 1,000 teachers working in traditional public and public charter schools thanks to Teach for America, who are
helping poor and minority children gain the knowledge they need for lifelong success.
Not exact matches
Together these leaders — long identified with the struggle for racial
and economic justice — demand a test of vouchers with one basic criterion in mind: «Do public scholarships
help or hurt our
poorest children and the
children of ethnic
minorities?
Well - intentioned school leaders want to ensure that
poor,
minority children get what they need to improve their reading scores
and have been told that
helping such students requires direct
and explicit teaching of literacy skills.
The proposed reforms, outside
and inside schools — to reduce the test - score gap between whites
and poor minorities; to
help poor minority families increase their income through steady work at livable wages
and then their
children's test scores will improve; to establish research - proven reading programs for every single,
poor, or
minority child; to give each kid a laptop computer — are endless
and uncertain in their outcomes.
Instead, it is about an important lesson reformers should be learning today from Doug Jones» victory yesterday over the notorious Roy Moore in yesterday's Alabama U.S. Senate special election: The need to rally
poor and minority communities in advancing systemic reform to
help all
children.
What has become clear is that explicitly focusing on the educational concerns of
poor and minority children regardless of where they live,
and expanding that to the criminal justice reform
and other the social issues that end up touching (
and are touched by) American public education, is critical, both in
helping all
children succeed as well as rallying long - terms support for the movement from the parents
and communities that care for them.
More importantly, the most - successful efforts to expand school choice (including Virginia Walden Ford's work in Washington, D.C., Steve Barr's work with Latino communities in Los Angeles,
and Parent Revolution's Parent Trigger efforts), have been ones led by
poor and minority communities who explicitly made the case for
helping their own
children escape failure mills that damaged their families for generations.
While Coates doesn't touch on education policy, he essentially makes a strong historical case for why reformers (especially increasingly erstwhile conservatives in the movement) must go back to embracing accountability measures
and a strong federal role in education policymaking that, along with other changes in American society, are key to
helping children from
poor and minority households (as well as their families
and communities) attain economic
and social equality.
As I have noted, stronger standards alone aren't the only reason why student achievement has improved within this period; at the same time, the higher expectations for student success fostered by the standards (along with the accountability measures put in place by the No
Child Left Behind Act, the expansion of school choice, reform efforts by districts such as New York City,
and efforts by organizations such as the College Board
and the National Science
and Math Initiative to get more
poor and minority students to take Advanced Placement
and other college prep courses), has
helped more students achieve success.
And it is important to remind some Beltway reformers that focusing on poor and minority children will not only help all kids, but can even win suppoet from middle class blacks and Latinos, who will make up the majority of all Americans by mid-centu
And it is important to remind some Beltway reformers that focusing on
poor and minority children will not only help all kids, but can even win suppoet from middle class blacks and Latinos, who will make up the majority of all Americans by mid-centu
and minority children will not only
help all kids, but can even win suppoet from middle class blacks
and Latinos, who will make up the majority of all Americans by mid-centu
and Latinos, who will make up the majority of all Americans by mid-century.
That it means pushing for a rollback of federal education policy that have
helped black
and brown
children as well as a return to the bad old days when states
and districts were allowed to ignore their obligations to
poor and minority children doesn't factor into any of their thinking.
As Dropout Nation has noted ad nauseam, few of the accountability systems allowed to replace No
Child's Adequate Yearly Progress provision are worthy of the name; far too many of them, including the A-to-F grading systems put into place by such states as New Mexico (as well as subterfuges that group all
poor and minority students into one super-subgroup) do little to provide data families, policymakers, teachers,
and school leaders need to
help all students get high - quality education.
More - importantly, because the quality of teaching varies more within schools (from classroom to classroom) than among them, the racial myopia of teachers (
and their low expectations for the
poor and minority children in their care) are matters that have to be addressed in order to
help all
children succeed.
Yet education traditionalists, ivory tower civil rights activists,
and dyed - in - the - wool progressives, still stuck on integration as school reform, would rather criticize charters for supposedly perpetuating segregation (even though most urban communities largely consist of one race or class) than embrace a tool for
helping poor and minority families give their
children opportunities for high - quality education.
No
Child also
helped force states
and districts into taking the first key steps in providing all
children, especially those from
poor and minority backgrounds, with the strong, comprehensive college preparatory curricula.
As Data Quality Campaign correctly notes, policymakers realized that shining a light on student achievement, especially for
poor and minority children, would
help in holding states
and districts accountable.
The Trump Administration's proposed $ 250 million increase in funding for the federal Charter School Fund (as well as another $ 1 billion in Title I funds devoted to expanding intra-district choice for low - income
children) is offset by the elimination of $ 2.2 billion in funding for Americorps, the program that
helps districts provide
poor and minority children with Teach for America recruits proven to improve their academic achievement.