education
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Too Good to Be True? New Report Raises Concerns About DC High School Where Every Graduating Student Was Accepted to College
Last June was a triumphant moment for Frank W. Ballou Senior High School, a predominantly black school located in Southeast Washington, D.C. After years of dismal student test scores and graduation rates, Ballou made headlines that could make the school and its students proud: Their entire senior class had been accepted to college. It was…
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New Study Shows Black Students Receive Harsher Discipline; Does Not Investigate if Fire Is Hot or Water Is Wet
A new study in the budding academic field of spending valuable research dollars to prove stuff we already know has exposed the little-known fact that racism exists in the education sector. Tulane University’s Education Research Alliance for New Orleans released a policy brief examining discipline records from Louisiana’s Department of Education and found startling disparities…
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HBCUs Can Revive US Cities
Looking to move to a new city to live or to set up a business? Consider a town where there’s an HBCU. “I didn’t realize that it wasn’t normal for your barber to live next to your professor until I left Grambling [in Louisiana],” said Grambling State University President Richard Gallot Jr. If there’s anyone…
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Black Excellence: 10 African-American Students Named Rhodes Scholars
The Rhodes Trust has announced its newest Rhodes scholars, and 10 of the 32 American students selected (pdf) to attend the United Kingdom’s Oxford University for postgraduate studies are African American, the most ever to receive the prestigious honor. This is the first time that the number of African Americans in a single class to…
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Federal Court Orders Md. to Fix Its Lack of Investment in HBCUs
This week a federal judge ruled in favor of Maryland’s historically black colleges and universities in a decadeslong legal battle over disparities in higher education in the state. As the Washington Post reports, Judge Catherine C. Blake ordered Maryland to address its historic lack of investment in the state’s HBCUs. In her injunction, Blake barred…
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Replacing Confederate Fables With Black-Girl Magic: UVA Honors Vivian Pinn
Editor’s note: Once a month, the National Interest column will tackle broader questions about what the country should do to increase educational opportunities for black youths. “I still remember my first trip to UVA, to the hospital, was in the ’50s,” the renowned physician Vivian Pinn recounted to board directors of the National Medical Association…
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Betsy DeVos, Our Educational System Helps Produce Harvey Weinsteins and We Need to Change That
Editor’s note: Once a month, the National Interest column will tackle broader questions about what the country should do to increase educational opportunities for black youths. The New York Times’ explosive revelations of Harvey Weinstein’s three-decades-long career of sexual assault laid bare the prevalence of rape culture in our society. Sexism is a national problem…
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The Black Renaissance Is Real: HBCUs See Record Growth in 2017
Last week I went to Howard University’s homecoming, and like Deon Cole, Chance the Rapper and Malia Obama at the 2012 inauguration, I was reminded that once you see the bands stomping, the music playing and the quad popping, you know that nobody throws a party like an HBCU. In between panels on the future…
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Ga. Elementary School Finally Puts an End to Civil War Dress-Up Day, but Mom Whose Child Was Called a Slave Wants More Done
It’s been about a month since a 10-year-old black student was called a slave during a Civil War dress-up day at his elementary school in Kennesaw, Ga. And that’s how long it took for school officials to realize that there’s really no reason to host a dress-up day to discuss the Civil War, and to…
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School Apologizes for Photo That Seems to Show Black Student on Leashes
A Massachusetts school has apologized and added some much-needed context to a racially insensitive photo that appears to show a young black grade-schooler tethered to two white children. WBZ-TV reports that the photo was taken during a history lesson in a third-grade class at Mitchell Elementary School in Bridgewater on Oct. 13. The lesson showcased…