education reform
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The Movement for Black Lives Is Standing Up for HBCUs
Of the 4,726 degree-granting institutions, 100 institutions educate and train almost 10 percent of black college students. Yet since their inception, HBCUs have been in a war for their very existence, whether facing Congress or state legislatures. HBCUs have even found themselves repeatedly at odds with President Barack Obama. As economist and author Julianne Malveaux,…
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Black Children Deserve the Stability That Neighborhood Schools Offer
School closure is a tactic we don’t have to take. Under the new national education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act, states have been freed to employ strategies they deem fit just as long as they act on the bottom 5 percent. When we’re talking about improving urban districts, though, we always seem to land…
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The NAACP Charter School Ban: Good Intentions Take a Bad Turn
Based on its century-long mission and in-the-trenches fight for social justice, it certainly goes without saying that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is an organization built on good intentions and good causes. It’s one of the few reliably steady organizations African Americans can depend on when freedoms are compromised by generations…
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Black Folk Hate White Tears and Blatant Racism More Than Charter Schools
To the chagrin of charter advocates, on Friday the national board of the NAACP ratified an earlier resolution (pdf) that called for a moratorium on charter schools. Given the ample sources of opposition to charter schools, as well as mixed results, we should only be surprised that it’s taken this long for a major black civil…
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Nationwide School 'Walk-ins' Organized to Demand Educational Justice for Black and Brown Communities
On Thursday the union-affiliated Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools organized “walk-ins” in 200 cities and 2,000 public schools in black and brown communities to fight against “the long-standing and systematic underfunding of their public schools,” AROS said in a press release. Hundreds of affiliated parent, education and student groups rallied behind a six-point platform, which includes: a call for the…
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'Educational Choice' Is a Slogan Slick Enough for Donald Trump
Donald Trump outlined his policy and philosophy for K-12 education in a speech Thursday at Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy or CASSA, a for-profit charter school in the largest city of the battleground state of Ohio. The Republican presidential nominee and founder of Trump University accused Democrats of trapping black and Hispanic youths in…
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Let White Leaders Defend Institutional Racism; Let Black Leaders Defend Black Lives
If one looks and listens closely, black reform advocates and charter leaders are responding to the mythology that black people don’t want charter schools or reform in general. For most black folk, however, not liking reform equates to not liking institutional racism, which impacts our communities no matter how many black and brown people an organization hires.…
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#M4BL: New Policy Agenda Centers Black Demands as Presidential Campaign Hits Full Stride
August will mark the two-year anniversary of the killing of Michael Brown and the uprising of black youths in Ferguson, Mo. Many of us are asking ourselves, “What has changed?” Black people and our allies have since taken to the streets by the thousands, and a massive online movement proclaimed that “Black lives matter.” But two…