Huffington Post - 1-29-2013 - Joy Resmovits
WASHINGTON -- "The standards-based education reform movement calls
school change "the civil rights issue of our time." But about 220 mostly
African American community organizers, parents and students from 21
cities from New York to Oakland, Calif., converged on Washington Tuesday
to tell U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan he's getting it
backwards on school closures.
Members of the group, a patchwork of community organizations called
the Journey for Justice Movement, have filed several Title VI civil rights complaints with the Education Department Office of Civil Rights,
claiming that school districts that shut schools are hurting minority
students. While most school closures are decided locally, the Education
Department's School Improvement Grant gives under performing school
districts money for shakeups or turnarounds, including closures.
The meeting became heated at times. "The voices of the people
directly impacted can no longer be ignored," said Jitu Brown, an
organizer from the South Side of Chicago. "This type of mediocrity is
only accepted because of the race of the students who are being served."
He called school closures "a violation of our human rights," since many
communities are left without neighborhood schools after districts shut
them down."
“I have been denied the right to a quality education,” said Gavin
Alston, 12, whose Chicago school was shuttered last year. “We have no
middle or elementary schools in my neighborhood anymore.”
Dallas ISD almost lost another experienced teacher this week.
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Diane Ravitch January 31, 2012 9:54 AM
"When I saw Linda Darling-Hammond last week in California, she gave me
charts from the U.S. Department of Education's Schools and Staffing
Survey which show that the modal years of teaching experience in 1987-88
was 15 (meaning that there were more teachers with 15 years of
experience than any other group); in the latest published survey,
2007-08, the modal years of experience was one. That means that in 2008
there were more teachers in their first year of teaching than any other
group. This is frightening. What sane nation would want to lose its
experienced teachers and rely increasingly on newcomers?" Click Here
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