About this series:  This post is the 4th in a series on how activists shape history, particularly the “Art of Movement Building.” Guest Blogger Saulo Colon and I, each week, will discuss our continued lessons learned from studying successful movements over the last 100 years.  We call these lessons “hypotheses” because we know they represent only some of the lessons and we want you to test them out against your experience and knowledge.  We would love to have you as part of this conversation. 

The examples we use in this series come from many different aspects of a larger human rights movement -- it should be applicable to most who are working to change the structures of our society, not just students and educators. The unfairness in education is a microcosm of the unfairness of our economic system.  The quest for increased opportunities to public education is part of the same quest for increased opportunities throughout our society (whether it be access to health care, housing, food, clean air, etc.).  Thus we seek the opinions of all critics, movement activists, organizers and leaders.

In today’s blogpost, I’ll further expand on our first hypothesis:

Hypothesis 1:  Movement success starts with visionary shifts in thinking and behavior.

All successful social movements are driven by bold visions that expose the roots of the problem and are sufficiently ahead of their time that they are unfathomable to the mainstream of society.  Over time, these visions that seemed unthinkably bold become mainstream.  Successful movements model the future that they envision, and act on this “future” before their time has come. This modeling prefigures and embodies the desired society.

Transformative educators and activists see and embrace new possibilities for our collective future.  They take old ideas and breathe fresh life into them.  Pioneers, like Harriet Tubman, freeing the slaves in the 1800’s, modeled living the future before that future had arrived.  She and her colleagues held the belief that African Americans were equal to European “white” Americans.  While today, that belief is mainstream, at that time it was a radical belief.  (“Radical” means relating to the most important features of something, it means far reaching and favoring major changes but most importantly it means “root” or going to the root of a problem.)  Otto Scharmer calls this ability to sense the future and usher it in, “presencing.”  Tubman and her peers along the freedom trail did more than just believe that Blacks were equal, they role modeled it by freeing slaves and offering them safe harbor.  Breaking the law and risking their lives, they attracted attention to the potential of their beliefs.  Simultaneously, transformative actions like Tubman’s debunked the myth propagated by slave owners) that slaves are “happy” in a “benevolent” slave system.  Transformative movements debunk false visions and beliefs.  Transformative movements usher in the future by creating alternatives to the way we live and allow us to see new possibilities for our collective futures. At their best, Transformative Movements unify our society around humane values. 

In another example, Fannie Lou Hamer and the movement that helped create the Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party modeled and piloted a future voting system in the 1960s. While Blacks could not register legally, they created their own system of voting and in that system garnered more votes than the white segregationists did in their system. They did not wait for top-down change, but brought the future into existence on their own. Fannie Lou Hammer and her associates in the Freedom Party piloted the future by bottom-up self-governing and self-organizing.   My colleague Jorge Diaz says, “The working class has to create their own institutions before we can hope that we and our ideas can take power. There must be structures created and run by working class people to support the interests of the working class.” Transformative solutions come from grassroots visionary levels of thought rather than those that created the problem.  To take root they need to be piloted in some way. 

Byrant Muldrew’s most recent blog on authentic student assessment puts fresh life into a vision of evaluating students out of the mainstream test mania.   Some applaud this and some have discussed the obstacles to such a vision.  All transformative visions come with obstacles that need to be surmounted.  By living the future, Bryant and the Algebra Project breathe possibility into that future. 

“Radicals are in many ways social artists. They restate the hidden truths of society through working with people and social movements . . . they teach people to see with a fresh vision . . . laying bare the full absurdities of treasured hypocrisies.”  
-Judith Niles, Nine Women: Portraits from the American Radical Tradition

Each week Saulo Colon and I will add another hypothesis. Bryant Muldrew will lead a discussion on what future classrooms and schools might look like and on the National Student Bill of rights.  We appreciate you observations and you contributing your ideas on how movements succeeded.

Questions for Movement Activists, Students, and Educators Today:

How do you think we can change the trajectory of public education to make it more accessible, excellent and fair?  What are the avenues of change?  What are your hypotheses? Click the comment button below with your ideas.

How can we engage in Transformational Change by beginning to see education issues from the the perspective of the future we would like to see and then look backwards?  Can we pilot our models of the future, our own version of a freedom party or desegregated lunch counters? Can we succeed if we don’t?  How can we help the most negatively impacted, those students in poor schools, see the future, taste it and be part of it. How can we provide models of future schools and preschools and colleges to provide hope in the yet-to-come, then organize and advocate for those models. What are other ways we can usher in public education’s transformative future? Let us know.  We promise to let you know our answers, our hypotheses and more questions to ponder in the coming weeks.

Please let me know if you, your students or colleagues want to guest blog on this topic of the art of transformative movements or our larger theme of leadership in education and movement building.

Past Blogs in this series: 

• more on hypothesis 1:  Movement success starts with visionary shifts in thinking and behavior.
• Introduction -- How movement activists can “bend the arc of history” and overturn the “redlining” in our first post
• Second post Saulo Colon developed the theme: The Current Moment: Social Justice Movements Bending the Arc Toward Justice 

Posted by Greg Jobin-Leeds at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Guest blogger Bryant Muldrew shows us some possibilities for a better, qualitative student assessment system, which doesn't rely on the increasingly-discredited regime of standardized tests. Have you participated in or seen compelling alternatives in your experience? Post in the comments below! -- Greg

What would a more democratic student assessment look like?

The expectation of all parents who place their children in any school is that their children learn useful knowledge by the time of their graduation. I believe that students, principals, teachers, and other administrators share this same expectation; however, we all have a disagreement on the terms of evaluation of learning process. More specifically, I believe the most significant difference of opinion pertains to the evaluation of student academic growth.

Some believe the most accurate assessment of growth is through testing, whether it is a general classroom test or standardized testing. After eight years of teaching and tutoring in mathematics, I think there are more efficient ways to evaluate academic growth. Before I give a specific example, I must say that students should be involved in the decision of how to evaluate their development.

In my teaching with the Baltimore Algebra Project, we used presentations as a means to evaluating our students. After each mathematical concept, students were responsible for presenting their understanding in front of the class. In addition, students in the audience are required to give substantive comments and ask questions. The results of these presentations are intimate discussions of math concepts. The other benefit of this process is the teachers get to clearly see which portions of concepts their students do not completely understand. I've also seen similar evaluation processes in other subjects.

There is a secondary evaluation process we use called Exhibitions. An exhibition is a larger scale presentation that includes the entire semester's material. Exhibitions are done in the presence of teachers, parents, and administers, giving them all an opportunity to see and assess the growth of students. I must say that this process has help teachers I've worked with tailor lessons to the understanding of their students increasing their ability to learn the concepts.

Truly such a design of assessment can be to the benefit of all students. The most important part is having a process that students can agree upon is helpful. In our classes, we believe students have the right to decide how things should be in the classroom. Through a democratic process we (students and teachers) voted several times on how to assess their growth. The teachers always lost the vote to the students. Interestingly enough, our students were initially against the presentation process; however, they appreciate the process after understanding the value of experience. This is the true key to assessment; making room at the decision making table for students.

The National Student Bill of Rights embodies the idea of student driven assessment and evaluation. Educators must make room for new innovative ideas, especially when it comes to student assessment.

Posted by Greg Jobin-Leeds at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Guest blogger Saulo Colon considers the twin roles of vision and practice in social movements. In public education, an institution designed from the start as a way of prefiguring society's future in the here and now, such lessons are of crucial importance -- the values we prioritize and reward in schools, good or ill, will eventually manifest themselves in society at-large. --Greg

In this post I elaborate on an issue that Greg and I think is critical for real reform work.

Hypothesis 1: Movement success starts with visionary shifts in thinking and behavior (prefigurative praxis).

In order to think about what educational reforms we need, we first have to envision the society we want those reforms to help create.

Transformative thinkers and leaders see and embrace possibilities for our collective future that seem beyond the realm of conventional wisdom. Transformative solutions come from visionary, "outside the box," and utopian thinking. They require a capacity and a willingness to consider changes of a sort and scale beyond mainstream discourse. In many ways, this is analogous to what Thomas Kuhn described as "paradigm shifts" in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. When existing ways of conceptualizing the world no longer work, or, in a society, do not promote justice and equity, newly-minted ideas are needed.

Social justice thinkers and organizers have visions of a changed world when the future looks unclear to most. They approach current social problems as challenges to be overcome in order to move towards and shape the future, as the visionary utopian Edward Bellamy did in Looking Backward and William Morris did in News from Nowehere.

Transformative movements help usher in a better tomorrow by creating alternatives to life today and enabling us to see new possibilities for our collective futures. Such movements model the future that they envision, and act on this "future" before it has come. Such "prefigurative" movements foster behaviors and create structures and institutions that are a microcosm of the future they are trying to build. They plant seeds that grow the future.

"The crux of prefigurative politics . . . [is] to create and sustain within the live practice of the movement, relationships and political forms that 'prefigure' and embody the desired society," New Left theorist Wini Breines wrote. Activists not only advocate for change but the structure and actions of the movements they create are microcosms of the more humane society they want to bring into being.

They "walk out" of failing systems, as authors Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze write. They not only refuse to work for oppressive, alienating circumstances but also "walk on" to "champion values and practices that respect people, that rely on people's inherent motivation, creativity, and caring to get quality work done." They are already creating a better future through the ways they live and act in the present.

Many communal movements, from the kibbutzim to the Bruderhof Communities, attempt to prefigure a changed social order through the very ways that they live. Thus, the form and practice of those participating in the movement become a template and even an advertisement for the larger goals of the movement.

This is what inspires many about the Occupy Movement. The fact that while it resists the status quo of capitalist realism, it also develops the People's Library, the Communal Kitchen, the General Assembly that point the way to how society could be. In order to Occupy the future we have to build it now.

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I'd like to reintroduce Bryant Muldrew. Bryant is a leader in the National Student Bill of Rights movement. This piece is second installment of No Groping Please. Join us in welcoming Bryant back.

Fishing for Solutions

Safety. How do we define it? Can it be provided by metal detectors? Or by searching every "suspicious" character in sight?

Our country has an interesting method to providing safety for Americans. The major issue with this "safety" is that it is being integrating into the local school systems, conditioning youth to consider it normal.

On a daily basis, millions of students are required to attend school. As soon as they walk into the school building, many students are herded through metal detectors like sheep to the slaughter houses we call a schools. I paint this image because we know that no groups of animals have been herded where the ultimate end was to safety. Similarly, adults are herded through detectors as they travel by airplane. Now I understand argument of keeping guns, drugs, and knives out of school, but at what expense does this safety come? The violation of a student's right not to unjustly search. We already experience this unjust practice one sphere of our lives. Why should we expand this practice in the schools? Is this an acceptable price for this safety?

To that end, the heightened security within schools has not solved the problem of school-based violence. Violence cannot be attributed to the weapons use to carry out acts. From my experience, being a student and a student teacher, violence in schools has slightly increased. If the end goal of school security is to create a safe environment, then we can conclude that the strategy has not worked as desired.

So what is a real solution to dealing with in school violence? And how do we protect students from unwarranted searches and seizures while promoting safety?

I ask these questions in sincerity, that we may a have an honest conversation about creating a safe environment in which students. I urge all to participate in this discussion of safety and rights. Thanks for reading!

Posted by Greg Jobin-Leeds at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Student loans are structural barriers to quality education, meaningful work, and economic contribution for students post-graduation. As the wonderful documentary Default shows so vividly, everything is stacked against you as a borrower: the contract itself, the institutional policies of the lending companies, and the Federal regulations that govern the loans. Add in administration-heavy universities with their own priorities and state legislatures eager to spend money elsewhere, and we see a system truly out of control.

On this auspicious day, May Day, It is my pleasure to introduce our newest guest blogger Mahogany Bosworth. She is junior in college and the President of the Baltimore Algebra Project. Like her peers, Mahogany is contributing a blog related to the National Student Bill of Rights. Welcome Mahogany and contribute your thoughts to her ideas. -- Greg

College: Educational Opportunity or Big Business?

The Obama Administration is looking to increase the availability of federal student aid. One way this is done is by keeping the maximum yearly disbursal of the Pell Grant at $5,550; however, this benefit for undergraduate students comes with a sacrifice for graduate students. The Pell Grant is not available for graduate students at all and the only federal loans that grad students can receive are unsubsidized loans.

Federal aid is supposed to be available for those who "need" it; however, no one should have to pay for education out of their own pocket. It should be your right as a citizen of our country. In my opinion, there is no distinction between grade school and college. Both learning experiences teach you what you need to know to be successful in your career choice and life in general. Therefore, both should be free. In other countries, such as Denmark, Greece, Argentina, all levels of education are free, including college and university. In Denmark, students over the age of 18 get a monthly stipend. Denmark wants its students to be successful. It provides the students with money to provide for themselves, so they can focus on (free) school. It does not seem like the United States wants its students to be successful. If so, the cost of education would not be so high; it would be free.

I am currently a junior at Morgan State University. My GPA is a 3.0. To me, this is low. I am an A student, not a B student. School is not hard for me at all. It just comes naturally. However, I cannot focus completely on school because I must work to provide for my family. I would not have to work if more financial aid was available for me. My expected family contribution is $0, but I am still forced to take out loans to pay for my books. I do not think this is fair. If I can prove that I cannot afford to pay for school, why should I have to take out loans? If federal aid is available to those who "need" it (and I definitely need it), why am I taking out loans, especially at a significant interest rate? Why do students have to pay directly for school at all, instead of funding it like we do any other public institution?

School is about learning and growth; it is not supposed to be a business or a corporation. This is what the college and universities have become over the years. A National Student Bill of Rights, which includes a right that requires all levels of education to be free, would eliminate the business aspect of colleges and universities and get college back to being about choosing and mastering your career path. Therefore, I am in full support of a National Student Bill of Rights.

Posted by Greg Jobin-Leeds at 9:10 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The following blogpost is by our frequent guest blogger Saulo Colon, who raises some serious questions for the growing movement for justice in public education. -- Greg

Economic inequities have become much more pronounced in the United States and other societies since the 1970s. As we witness what Robert Reich called the "secession of the successful," poverty and near-poverty rates are at 40-year highs and much of the middle class has been squeezed into extraordinary economic insecurity, while the top few percentiles of the economic ladder do stunningly well. While some economists are calling the current period "The Great Recession," there is no economic crisis for millionaires. The brunt of the economic crisis is hitting the poor, the working and middle classes, and our public infrastructure. This is an enormous economic and moral detriment to our society, a condition that calls for economic justice and a movement or movements to bring it about.

Many see in our education system the problems they see in the economy and society: individualistic conceptions of education and a market-based system that replicates, indeed exacerbates, the inequalities in our society. There is a growing realization that education is now being treated as a consumer good, that parents are being treated as customers who now have to purchase education, instead of it being the right of every human. This market-based logic created by the 1% is being spread by corporate owned media and think tanks as the best way to deliver social services. The success of this corporate-led education reform campaign is evidenced by the increasing privatization of our American educational system (as seen by the recent proposal to privatize the entire Philadelphia school system). This campaign is leading many parents to believe that the only way to save our public education system is to give up on it (thus giving up on a key part of our Democracy).

Universal public education has been a shining principle of democracies such as the United States, and public education--despite its imperfections--has contributed immensely to improving the quality of life of millions in America and throughout the world. Yet, the lack of adequate financing and--more recently--cutbacks in financing of public education have meant that too many children and young people never have access to quality schools and are shut out of higher education.

A transformative movement is emerging to show economic equity as a human rights issue and generate public will for economic change. Student and teacher organizing throughout the country is building, as we have seen in Wisconsin, NY, CA and many other places. Given the recent Supreme Court decision, paradoxically called "Citizens United", granting huge corporations more control of electoral campaigns than individual citizens, there has never been a better moment in our lifetime for movement building that calls into question the anti-democratic fundamentals of our economic system, including its impact on public education, housing and voting. Can we use this moment so that one day a person is elected president who is not backed by Wall Street, and who will use America's vast resources to fully fund schools in Dorchester and the South Bronx?

Americans are ready to act. Grassroots movements that go to the root of problems are waking up but elitist exclusionary ("right-wing") forces are alert. Foundations and non-profits can develop our capacity to find and fund inspirational campaigns that unleash the frustration and anger of parents, students, and the most affected communities. Polls show education as the top priority that Americans have for government spending, not military action. They show Americans supportive of more funding for public colleges, public schools and health care. The time to act is now.

We are at a turning point in the history of organizing for social justice. As the group Social Justice Leadership has written: "The environment is changing rapidly, (but) the organizing models that are most prevalent date from 40 years ago or more. There is a major opportunity for the social justice movement to reassess its approach, envision a new way of organizing, and greatly increase its impact.

The question is: Do social movements always win? And when they do, is their win durable? The point of this is to be able to say that supporting organizations that specifically intend to build social justice movements while developing campaigns for policy reforms is the most effective way to win those reforms. But is this true?

The idea of this series of blog posts is not so much to chronicle past or ongoing movements as to explore 11 hypotheses about the nature of, and ingredients for, successful popular transformative change. These lessons and principles then would be tested by looking at contemporary arenas and issues that cry out for social justice. In short, this blog will propose a theory of social change--"the art of social transformation"--based on historical and contemporary experiences in order to inform current and future movements on how to more effectively achieve their goals.

Please join our discussion.

Posted by Greg Jobin-Leeds at 5:15 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

My recent post about the "redlining" or apartheid in American education linked to research about how New York City's public schools keep lower income kids out of the schools with the most experienced teachers. Bryant Muldrew's recently posted about the birth of a student movement to turn this apartheid around and create a National Student Bill of Rights. Saulo Colon has written here about Occupy Education. Dr. John Jackson said of the Schott Foundation's Education Redlining report, we need to "use the data to drive action" and he called for increased public will.

Many of us at this blog know there is a need for a national movement to transform education. We know we need to create the public and political will to turn our educational system into one that nurtures children and allows then to thrive and, as Michael Holzman posted, become "capable of contributing to their civilization and public life".

How do we create such a movement? I have posted a lot at this blog about the current student movement in Chile and about the Occupy movement in the US. Over the next few months I want to foster a dialogue about lessons from the past. Bryant and Saulo will participate in this discussion and we would like to hear from our readers as well.

For years, many of us have been working hard to build the political and public will needed to give every child the opportunity to learn and thrive. We saw access to quality public schools increase from the 1950's into the early '80s. We worked to bend the arc of educational history toward justice and succeeded. We tasted the movement fruits with public school desegregation (and Brown v. Board of Education), increased resources for schools, housing and family nutrition; and increased NAEP scores across society (National Assessment of Educational Progress). We saw the opportunity gap lessen and then the achievement gap narrow. There was an art to how these movements were built and succeeded. Then, since the 1980's we've seen a decrease in movement traction. Like other economic justice issues during this period, we witnessed more gains for billionaires and their corporations than for the average working family. We've seen a deliberate campaign by lobbyists and media firms working on behalf of the wealthy. We've seen policy priorities in state government becoming more and more exclusive, greedy and harmful for the historically underserved.

Over the next few months guest blogger Saulo Colon and I will explore what are the elements that undergird the success of all social movements, what are the struggles and backlashes they must take on--and we invite you to enrich this dialogue with your thoughts.

We will present our hypotheses and encourage discussion on these questions:

• What are the lesson learned from how the movement pulled off overturning Apartheid in South Africa, winning women's suffrage in the U.S. (and girls the right to play Little League) and how Gay rights has become a mainstream issue?


• What were some of the roles of students, educators, the media and philanthropists in these changes? What lessons could we apply today?


• What are some reasons why movement progress slowed down in the 1980's and became reversed in the last 30 years? What is social transformation (as opposed to episodic reforms)?

This blog will continue to share ideas on movement building and encourage discussion on innovative ideas on other current public education equity issues. You will continue to hear from Saulo Colon, Bryant Muldrew, Michael Holzman, me and our readers. Please let me know if you would like to guest blog by sending me an email at gjl.democracy.education@gmail.com.

Posted by Greg Jobin-Leeds at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Welcome again, Bryant Muldrew, as one of our most consistent and long-term guest bloggers! Bryant is helping build our Democracy and Education conversation. As readers may recall, Mr. Muldrew is a leader in the National Student Bill of Rights Movement. He is a powerful advocate for students' voices. Below, he shares with us an important story about what drove many students in Baltimore to join the campaign for a National Student Bill of Rights. - Greg

The Case for the National Student Bill of Rights
By Bryant Muldrew

In 2003, students from the Baltimore Algebra Project (BAP), were told that the Baltimore City Public School System (BCPSS) was not going to renew BAP funding because of the BCPSS' budget issues. BAP is a highly successful nonprofit math tutoring organization Students were distraught to hear this news from the BAP's executive director Jay Gillen. A leader in the organization, Chelsea Carson, said, "It's heartbreaking to hear such news when we [tutors] are doing such great work and there is much more work to be done."

BAP's members see a clear connection between their work and the Civil Rights movement. They have identified the right to a quality education as just as essential as the right to vote in terms of participating in society as full citizens. Carson further explained that their tutoring advances math literacy, math literacy advances access to higher education, higher education helps youth approach economic stability, and economy stability allows people to participate in society as full citizens. "Only when we are economically stable can we focus on the political and social justice issues we experience in our everyday lives," Carson said. The BCPSS' plan to suspend funding of the BAP would greatly hinder their efforts to promote full citizenship.

The tutors of the BAP weren't interested in ending their work so they set out to discover why the BCPSS was having funding issues. In their research, BAP members found out that the BCPSS was underfunded by the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE). In 1994, the MSDE was taken to court over this very same issue. In the case Bradford v. Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE), Judge Kaplin ruled in favor of Bradford, city school parents Keith and Stephanie Bradford represented by the ACLU, declaring the MSDE was underfunding the BCPSS in comparison to other districts in the state of Maryland in 1996.

The ACLU's argument was centered on the Maryland state constitution guarantee to a "thorough and efficient" education, explaining that students were experiencing a different reality. Students faced overcrowded schools, outdated instructional materials, and greater chance of going to jail than graduating high school.

After the ruling, Baltimore City, Maryland, and the ACLU established a consent decree which was suppose to result in a gradual increase in funding to the BCPSS over the next 5 years ending in an evalution of the results. In 2000, an independent investigation of the agreement showed that Maryland was still inadequately funding the BCPSS. States created the Thornton Commission, a 27 member bi-partisan committee, was given the task of developing figuring out how to ensure adequate funding resulting in a formula for correcting the underfunding issue. The Thornton Commission's recommendation was for Maryland to increase BCPSS annual funding by $1.1 billion. Despite of the Thornton Commission's solution to the underfunding crisis, the State of Maryland never complied with Judge Kaplin's ruling.

"We couldn't believe the State would blatantly ignore court orders. We decide were going to take to the streets," said Carson. From 2003, on the student from the BAP having been actively engaged in the pursuit of the funds the BCPSS never received. Students lead strikes, hosted rallies, and tried to citizen arrest the Maryland State Department of Education's Superintendent, Nancy Grasmick.

In the spring of 2006, BAP members filed a motion in court to enact Article 6 of the Maryland State Constitution which would allow the students to take over the MSDE for non-compliance of Kaplan's previous rulings. Article 6 of the Maryland State Constitution reads: That all persons invested with the Legislative or Executive powers of Government are the Trustees of the Public, and, as such, accountable for their conduct: Wherefore, whenever the ends of Government are perverted, and public liberty manifestly endangered, and all other means of redress are ineffectual, the People may, and of right ought, to reform the old, or establish a new Government; the doctrine of non-resistance against arbitrary power and oppression is absurd, slavish and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.

They planned to sit themselves on the one the MSDE and grant the BCPSS full funding because they felt that they had exhausted all other means of redress thus believing they were within their legal rights.

"In 2006, we even took the MSDE back to court. We reopened the case with the same judge. It was crazy. You'd have to see something like that for yourself. Baltimore City Government lawyers actually testified against us saying we didn't need the funding for the BCPSS," Carson explained. Judge Kaplan requested more information from the city and state governments proving their claims, but it was never provided. BAP members felt there was not real power within the state to the underfunding crisis.

At this point in the BAP, students became more vested in larger social reform. As a result, students were invited to participate in social justice conferences like the United States Social Forum and the Free Minds, Free People Conference. At these conferences, BAP students met students from NY, MA, CA, IL, MN, UT, and more. "We learned that Baltimore City students weren't the only students getting screwed by their states," said Carson. The students quickly learned that there was a need for power to force the states to provide a quality education to its youth.

At the Free Minds, Free People Conference in Houston, students from Chicago introduced the concept of a National Student Bill of Rights (NSBR). Students across the country believe that there should be federal protection of a quality education so that states cannot ignore direct court orders without government intervention.

Since 2009, the BAP has centered all its youth advocacy work on NSBR asserting that students should have access to a quality education and it should be a constitutional right.

Carson said, "It's a shame we have to force states to treat students fairly, but we have to be educated."

How do YOU think we can build power around the right to a quality education?
Sources:

• Chelsea Carson


• http://www.aclu-md.org/uploaded_files/0000/0173/bradford_summary.pdf


• http://www.aclu.org/racial-justice_womens-rights/aclu-maryland-applauds-education-funding-increase-calls-it-important-st


• http://www.schoolfunding.info/resource_center/MDbrief.php3


• http://www.baltimorealgebraproject.org/#!timeline

Posted by Greg Jobin-Leeds at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Today, the Schott Foundation, whose Board I am proud to chair, released the results of an analysis that they conducted on New York City schools, the nation's largest school system. The report, A Rotting Apple: Education Redlining in New York City, documents that in New York City student education outcomes and their opportunity to learn are more determined by where they live than their abilities. In addition to documenting the problem, the report lays out solutions.

Here are the KEY FINDINGS:

1. Districts with higher poverty rates have fewer experienced and highly educated teachers and less stable teaching staffs.


2. A student of any race or ethnicity eligible for free or reduced-price meals is most likely to be enrolled in one of the city's poorest performing high schools; an Asian or a White, non-Hispanic student is highly unlikely to be enrolled in one of the city's poorest-performing schools.


3. Students from low-income New York City families have little chance of being tested for eligibility for gifted and talented programs.

This is exactly what the Occupy movement has been protesting. Call it "Redlining" or "Apartheid," lower income kids are barred from entering the schools with well trained teachers. The 1% get the best public schools, the 99% are not included in the gifted and talented programs. No longer do we have signs that say "Whites Only," but we might as well put similar signs back up. "Wealthy Only" could be posted outside certain schools or classrooms. It would be more honest than the myth of equal education.

In the past, our society nurtured the belief that whites were better than blacks, men were better than women. And the Civil Rights and Women's Rights Movements emerged. The movements called this form of superiority a disease and they named that disease "racism" or "sexism." But now that form of exclusivity is more and more based on inherited wealth or income. And like racism and sexism it is a disease that is running deeper and deeper in our society. It is a disease that says people with wealth are superior and deserve more. That if your grandparents made a lot of money you should be given more opportunity to go to a gifted and talented program or go to college. That if a kid's parents run a hedge fund that made lots of money, even if it wrecked our economy, that kid should be given better teachers. That those with money (capital) should have access to better opportunities. I am not sure what we should name this disease? "Classism"? "Capitalism"? Perhaps our readers can suggest a name after you read more of the report.

Here are the KEY Recommendations:

1. New York State should restore and increase funding that has been dramatically cut in the past two years, cuts that have effectively reversed the impact of CFE v. State of New York; November 2006, which requires the state to provide a "sound basic education" to all children.


2. All New York City middle schools should offer the courses necessary for the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test, and tutoring should be offered free to all students eligible for free and reduced-price meal programs.


3. The NYC DOE should administer the Gifted and Talented program test to all prospective kindergarten students; tutoring should be offered free to all students eligible for free or reduced-price meal programs.


4. Every school should conduct an "opportunity audit" to determine if they are offering each student a fair and substantive opportunity to learn. The NYC DOE should then set a goal of bringing every school's Opportunity to Learn Index up sufficiently to indicate an improvement in available resources for students who attend.

Read more and download the report here.

Posted by Greg Jobin-Leeds at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The following piece is by Michael Holzman. I have worked with Michael over the past eight years in his role as a researcher for the Schott Foundation for Public Education, which I chair. To me, Michael's most amazing research has been on how Black Boys are given "Half the Chance" or half of the opportunities of their white counterparts. His most recent book is Guy Burgess: Revolutionary in an Old School Tie, forthcoming.

How has it come to this? In their recent, much publicized, report from the Council on Foreign Relations, Joel Klein of the Murdoch organization and Condoleezza Rice of the Hoover Institution would have us believe that the purpose of American education is to better educate the military. It is difficult to think of a precedent for this astonishing view. Sparta? Prussia? Nazi Germany? Even Imperial Rome thought that the purpose of education is to produce good citizens, capable of contributing to their civilization and public life.

But no: "With the support of the federal government and industry partners, states should expand the Common Core State Standards, ensuring that students are mastering the skills and knowledge necessary to safeguard the country's national security." Nothing is said concerning the skills and knowledge necessary to lead a better, more humane life.

The report does make important points concerning the underfunding of public education and the wide disparities in its quality. However, in regard to funding of public education, as the Report's dissenters (Stephen Walt, Carole Artigiani, Linda Darling-Hammond and Randi Weingarten) point out,

"[E]ven though key recommendations, such as raising teacher quality, cannot be realized without additional public investment, the report offers only a bland statement that 'increased spending may well be justifiable.' It then declares that 'money alone is not the answer,' creating the unfortunate impression that the Task Force is trying to solve an alleged national security threat on the cheap."

In regard to funding disparities, according to the report, "There are large differences in the levels of funding allocated to schools. This means that the resources dedicated to educating a student are different from school to school, district to district, and state to state . . . the United States spends less to educate needy students than it does to educate well-off students." This could be construed as advocating for federalization of public education funding or, at least, for the equalization of school funding across districts and states, presumably by federal legislation. If this is what Klein and Rice mean, one could only congratulate them on their bold vision.

But they probably do not mean that.

One might defend Klein and Rice by claiming that they are not entirely sincere in advocating militarization of the raison d'être of education, just as they are probably not advocating the federalization of school funding.

That said, it is clear that the main purpose of the report, which is sincere enough, is to build support for privatizing public education. As the report's dissenters have pointed out, the report ignores evidence that voucher programs and charter schools are not as, or no more, effective than public schools and, nonetheless, advocates the diversion of public funds to the private hands of those benefiting from voucher schemes and to charter school entrepreneurs. Qui bono?, as the Romans would ask. Not the children. Not even, in all probability, the Army.

Posted by Greg Jobin-Leeds at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend