“Precious Knowledge” aired on the PBS series “Independent Lens” in May. This is a must see film by Ari Luis Palos and Eren Isabel McGinnis of Dos Vatos Productions. Do check it out. Here’s the description: At Tucson High School, ethnic studies programs have improved graduation rates among Latino students. But some state politicians think ethnic studies promote “racial solidarity” and anti-Americanism. When books are banned and the programs eliminated, teachers and students fight back in a modern civil rights struggle.
Very few people will say this, but this has been a big week for President Obama. The “Big Deal” tax cuts are moving forward, and today’s Senate vote (61 – 35) to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was yet another victory for the Obama administration. Critics of the administration’s slow peddling, DOJ filings against court actions, and the refusal to issue an executive order to repeal on DADT fell on deaf ears. It was an act of Congress that was and always has been the goal of the administration on this issue. And now there’s no turning back.
Now as for “The Dream Act”….(Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act)…Sigh. Sadly 5 Democrats bailed on Harry Reid and the debate is shut down. Senator Dick Durbin (D) of Illinois was not one of them. He’s posted moving stories of “Dreamers” on this site. I guess the Senate vote says “Keep dreamin'”
Oh, and there’s that START thing (per the President’s Weekly below — Transcript here).
Text of OFA email about DADT:
Moments ago, the Senate voted to end “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
When that bill reaches my desk, I will sign it, and this discriminatory law will be repealed.
Gay and lesbian service members — brave Americans who enable our freedoms — will no longer have to hide who they are.
The fight for civil rights, a struggle that continues, will no longer include this one.
This victory belongs to you. Without your commitment, the promise I made as a candidate would have remained just that.
Instead, you helped prove again that no one should underestimate this movement. Every phone call to a senator on the fence, every letter to the editor in a local paper, and every message in a congressional inbox makes it clear to those who would stand in the way of justice: We will not quit.
This victory also belongs to Senator Harry Reid, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and our many allies in Congress who refused to let politics get in the way of what was right.
Like you, they never gave up, and I want them to know how grateful we are for that commitment.
Will you join me in thanking them by adding your name to Organizing for America’s letter?
I will make sure these messages are delivered — you can also add a comment about what the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” means to you.
As Commander in Chief, I fought to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” because it weakens our national security and military readiness. It violates the fundamental American principles of equality and fairness.
But this victory is also personal.
I will never know what it feels like to be discriminated against because of my sexual orientation.
But I know my story would not be possible without the sacrifice and struggle of those who came before me — many I will never meet, and can never thank.
I know this repeal is a crucial step for civil rights, and that it strengthens our military and national security. I know it is the right thing to do.
But the rightness of our cause does not guarantee success, and today, celebration of this historic step forward is tempered by the defeat of another — the DREAM Act. I am incredibly disappointed that a minority of senators refused to move forward on this important, commonsense reform that most Americans understand is the right thing for our country. On this issue, our work must continue.
Today, I’m proud that we took these fights on.
Please join me in thanking those in Congress who helped make “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal possible:
Today, DC Public Schools chancellor Michelle Rhee announced her resignation effective at the end of October. Rhee’s deputy chancellor Kaya Henderson will be interim chancellor until the next Mayor (presumably Council Chair Vincent Gray) selects a new chancellor. Below is the text of a DCPS issued letter from Rhee about her resignation.
October 13, 2010
Dear DCPS Parents and Community,
Today Chairman Gray and I have reached the mutual decision that I will leave my post as Chancellor of the DC Public School System.
This is not a decision we made lightly. But it is one that I believe is essential to allow Chairman Gray to pursue our shared goal of uniting this city behind the school reforms that are making a difference in the lives of our children. In short, we have agreed – together – that the best way to keep the reforms going is for me to step aside so that he may appoint a schools chancellor who shares his vision and can keep the progress going.
Kaya Henderson, currently deputy chancellor, has been named Acting Chancellor. This decision by Chairman Gray should put to rest any question of whether reform will continue under the Gray administration. Chairman Gray is committed to continued and uninterrupted reform.
Thank you to each of you. You’ve emailed me, you’ve called me, you’ve come to the coffees and the office hours, you’ve never been shy about telling me when you disagreed with me, and because of you, we are bringing change into every corner of this city.
I have confidence in this reform’s continued success because I know you – our valued partners – will continue to play a critical role in creating a world class educational system for our students.
Nothing would be more detrimental to our prospects for success than cutting back on education. It would consign America to second place in our fiercely competitive global economy. But China and India aren’t playing for second. South Korea and Germany aren’t playing for second. They’re playing for first – and so should America.
Education continues to be the hot topic, at least for now. It’s ground zero for the direction and identity the country will take. It’s highly debatable in terms of what is applicable and what is useless knowledge for life. Education has many measurements, yet may also be the least valued asset. In the President’s weekly, he wants to make more of an investment.
That’s why, from the start of my administration, we’ve been fighting to offer every child in this country a world-class education – from the cradle to the classroom, from college through a career. Earlier this week, I announced a new Skills for America’s Future initiative that will help community colleges and employers match what’s taught in the classroom with what’s needed in the private sector, so we can connect students looking for jobs with businesses looking to hire.
One of my Facebook friends drew our attention to Glen Greenwald’s post “Collapsing Empire” on Salon.com:
…as recently as 1999, the U.S. was ranked by the World Health Organization as 24th in life expectancy. It’s now 49th. There are other similarly potent indicators. In 2009, the National Center for Health Statistics ranked the U.S. in 30th place in global infant mortality rates. Out of 20 “rich countries” measured by UNICEF, the U.S. ranks 19th in “child well-being.” Out of 33 nations measured by the OECD, the U.S. ranks 27th for student math literacy and 22nd for student science literacy. In 2009, the World Economic Forum ranked 133 nations in terms of “soundness” of their banks, and the U.S. was ranked in 108th place, just behind Tanzania and just ahead of Venezuela.
What about “the children”? What about the banks? What about jobs?
Recently urban education reformists (superintendents and chancellors) such as Joel Klein (NY), Michelle Rhee (DC), Andres A. Alonso (Baltimore), Paul Vallas signed onto a “manifesto” that was published in the Op-Ed Sunday section (Outlook) of the Washington Post on Sunday.
Test #1. Ask students “what is a manifesto?” Watch certain segments of the population get nervous. But here these education leaders stand:
As educators, superintendents, chief executives and chancellors responsible for educating nearly 2 1/2 million students in America, we know that the task of reforming the country’s public schools begins with us. It is our obligation to enhance the personal growth and academic achievement of our students, and we must be accountable for how our schools perform.
How will that accountability be measured?
As President Obama has emphasized, the single most important factor determining whether students succeed in school is not the color of their skin or their ZIP code or even their parents’ income — it is the quality of their teacher.
To which another education expert, Keven J. Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center, offered this rebuttal:
If the president did in fact say this, he is wrong. While no researcher could offer precise numbers, regression models tend to attribute a far greater role to out-of-school factors such as parental educational level and family income.
While teacher quality is, in my opinion, the most important in-school factor, there are many others: school leadership, class size, facilities (e.g, working bathrooms, heating, air conditioning, lighting, etc), learning resources (books, computers), and curriculum.
….It is disgraceful for these leaders who are in charge of 2.5 million students – disproportionately students in impoverished, urban areas – to act as enablers for those who dismiss the need to address issues of concentrated poverty.
Meanwhile, a Superman (Geoffrey Canada, founder of the Harlem Children’s Zone) has happened across kryptonite aka The New York Times:
After a rocky start earlier this decade typical of many new schools, Mr. Canada’s two charter schools, featured as unqualified successes in “Waiting for ‘Superman,’ ” the new documentary, again hit choppy waters this summer, when New York State made its exams harder to pass.
….The parent organization of the schools, the Harlem Children’s Zone, enjoys substantial largess, much of it from Wall Street. While its cradle-to-college approach, which seeks to break the cycle of poverty for all 10,000 children in a 97-block zone of Harlem, may be breathtaking in scope, the jury is still out on its overall impact. And its cost — around $16,000 per student in the classroom each year, as well as thousands of dollars in out-of-class spending — has raised questions about its utility as a nationwide model.
How did my 5th grade public school teacher do it? He promised my mother he’d raise my math scores by the end of the semester (by the next test). He accomplished his goal. We had daily drills. Prizes for improvement. Score sheets posted on the wall (competition). And once I reached my goal, my job was to teach a fellow student who was still behind. Sometimes the best way to learn is to teach. But that’s not a manifesto.
Maybe the success factor goes back to my answer to the pollster’s question on education reform: “It’s too soon to tell.”
Update: The Washington Post is reporting that DC School Chancellor Michelle Rhee will announce her resignation from her position effective the end of October. The mayoral election for DC is November 2nd. The school year is just entering its 2nd quarter (out of four).
The good news about public education is everyone’s talking about, and fighting over it these days. For a long-long time it was mighty quiet out there. Those were the good old days when the white collar working classes could afford private school and Harvard or Yale too. Not so much now with lay-offs, credit card debt, out-of-control mortgages, and rising college costs. Public education is now an attractive and affordable option in these downsized times.
This morning, President Obama appeared on the Today Show for a one-on-one with Matt Lauer for a special report “Education Nation” transmitted live to an audience outside NYC for Q&A. I’d rather feature that link in place of the President’s weekly. I encourage readers to watch/listen to the interview in its entirety, or read the transcript. Already, the soundbytes are sending the topic in a controversial orbit. Headline already: “No DC Schools for Obama Girls.”
Washington, DC has for decades been a testing ground, even battleground for the rise or yet another fall for public education reform. The media soundbytes from this month’s DC primary elections for Mayor (City Council Chair Vincent Gray winning over the incumbent Mayor Adrian Fenty), framed the vote on whether or not DC residents wanted education reform. Are they with smart or stupid. To put any and all outcomes of education reform on the shoulders of one individual, Chancellor Michelle Rhee, was from the beginning a risky proposition for the city and public school students. Kryptonite always lands somewhere. The reactions to the election outcome became part of an inaccurate narrative of the school reform movement. And, in its on-going reach for conflict, colorful characters, and controversy, what better media frame than race to put the election and its implications for school reform in a simple and polarizing box. Because no one with the mic can have a sane and meaningful discussion about race, it’s the conversation that keeps on going without going anywhere.
As someone who was educated in DC Public Schools from pre-school through high school, I’ve got stories that would fit into any narrative of what good schools and teachers can inspire in a student; and bad schools and teachers can inhibit. But there were no debates about it during my enrollment. Magnet schools were gaining traction, and I qualified to attend one. Private schools saved the rest. The majority of DC’s students had no other choices. We made the most of it. And most of all, parents filled in and made sure we didn’t fail in what was labeled a failed system. I went on to college at a prestigious private institution. I have a lot to say on DC’s public education, but I want to bring attention to three op-eds that addressed the city’s election, education reform in DCPS, and the misinformed narratives circulating among the uninformed. I would also add, there’s a lot the Obama administration can learn from the DC election as they set their sites for 2012.
Education reform must also be about communities, because in our country, education is subject to the democratic process. Whether schools are under direct mayoral control or governed by a school board or board of education, voters have the ultimate say. If they aren’t persuaded that education reform is in their best interests, or if the tribunes of reform institute their changes in ways that alienate the people who vote in city elections — even if they are the people who stand to benefit from those changes — the reformers will find their mandate to reform abruptly terminated. That is what Fenty and Rhee discovered.
Natalie Hopkinson, Washington writer and author of the forthcoming Go-Go Live: The Musical Life and Death of a Chocolate City was featured in The Atlantic online, the day after the election. Here’s an excerpt.
As a former DCPS PTA mom, I am among the many DC voters who had grown weary of the endless churning in the system. The D.C. public school my child won an out-of boundary “lottery” to attend in the early 2000s had passionate teachers and dedicated families, but inept administration and a dangerously neglected building forced us to leave after three years. We enrolled in a private school just as Rhee came into office in 2007 when the school board was abolished and the mayor was given control of the schools. But we’ve been shopping for a reason to come back into the system ever since.
And columnist Colbert King, responded to the race hysteria in this weekend’s Washington Post which got a thumbs up on DCist.
….among mayoral and council candidates, the person pulling the most votes citywide was [Phil] Mendelson, with 71,704. Gray came in second with 66,526. Fenty, with 54,424 votes, registered fourth behind Kwame Brown, who garnered 62,837 in his winning bid for the council chairman slot.
People pontificating about race in this city, based on parachute jumps into black neighborhoods where they conduct two or three interviews and then scoot back to file reports on what black folks are up to, don’t know what they are talking about.
Phil Mendelson is white and won the primary vote for Councilmember-At-Large.
So before you write DC off, do some homework, hang out with some people who’ve actually attended and graduated from DC public schools. College basketball scholarships expanded in DC thanks to a Harvard-educated physical ed teacher named Edwin Bancroft Henderson. Parents marched for better conditions in schools that were separate and unequal in the 1950s. They went as far as the Supreme Court with several other cases. And Warren Buffett graduated in 1947 from a DC public high school, Woodrow Wilson. And, “yes,” people who’ve been through it can be sensitive about this. There are some gems worth cheering about including a long history of reform in DCPS. But this may not be the time for the city to rest on its laurels. There’s work to be done today from this point forward. But it’s going to require a tremendous investment by the city’s community at large who are willing to see the benefits beyond just personal interests.