#educational justice

[monstrous-femme]

More than a year ago, Joe [Biden] announced a comprehensive plan to address injustices in our education system by expanding community schools, fully funding the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, tripling federal investment in Title I schools, and investing in children starting from birth-- including high-quality, universal pre-kindergarten for all 3- and 4-year-olds.

Joe says that the country need “a bold plan for education and training beyond high school” and has proposed investing $750 billion to ensure free community college. He also supports boosting resources for historically Black colleges and universities and tribal colleges, in addition to funding “facility and technology upgrades.”

If elected, he will push for all students to have access to higher education. Joe knows that unless we address the phenomenon of crushing student debt, higher education will quickly become limited to those from families who can afford to write a check.

More than 50 percent of all children in public schools are from low-income families, and the number of homeless children in public schools has doubled since the 2008 recession-- numbers that will only get worse in the wake of the pandemic.

Educators know that having a partner in the White House to help work for progress would be game-changing for public schools.

-NEA Today newsletter, August 2020

As an educator this is really important to me. Title I schools are schools at which a high percentage of students are low income. I’ve worked at Title I schools, and I can tell you that tripling federal funding to them would allow for resources that change lives.

The Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) is another thing that is very dear to me. I work primarily in special education programs, and IDEA is why these programs exist and continue to grow and change to better meet the needs of all students. When congress passed IDEA, they promised to cover 40% of the cost of special ed. In 2017, they covered less than 15%.

Biden’s plans on education are strong, and fill necessary gaps. Voting for Biden will make a difference to public schools and particularly to low-income students and students with disabilities, two demographics who face large opportunity gaps in educational justice.

[progressiveactiondaily-blog]

Article of the day: there are a lot of guides to political action in the Trump era out there.  The Resistance Manual stands out both for its open-source, Wikipedia-like format, and for its roots in the Black Lives Matter movement.  It offers educational resources and suggested actions on a wide range of topics, going beyond some of today's headline items to include mass incarceration, educational justice and disability rights.

[diaryofthisperson]

Our public education system was just sold to the highest bidder, and low-income communities of color are at risk of losing the most. DeVos’s agenda to redirect public funding for school vouchers, virtual charter schools, for-profit charter schools, unaccredited private schools, and schools that regularly discriminate against children is a direct attack on one of our country’s last universally-acknowledged public goods, education. We will continue to reject DeVos’s attempts to weaken the rights of our children and parents, and we will fiercely defend our public education.

Kesi Foster of the Urban Youth Collaborative and Natasha Capers of New York City Coalition for Educational Justice | Chalkbeat “New Yorkers celebrate, mourn and buckle down as Betsy DeVos is confirmed as U.S. education secretary”

[bobonbooks]

Review: We Want to Do More Than Survive

Review: We Want to Do More Than Survive

We Want to Do More Than Survive, Bettina L. Love. Boston: Beacon Press, 2019.

Summary: A plea and argument for abolitionist teaching that advocates for educational justice in our schools, that understands and is in solidarity with the struggle people of color face in our often racialized schools, and affirms the goodness and joy of one’s ethnic, sexual, and gendered identity.

This book is an…

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[edj-youth-blog]

POSTER CAMPAIGN

The greatest stakeholders in education are students. We believe that education can never reach its potential without the input of students, whose investment is necessary to their engagement. Further, young people have a unique knowledge and perspective because they are currently students in schools. Without this unique knowledge and perspective, attempts at changing education are lacking critical and insightful information. This is why we have created this poster campaign - to highlight the experiences of students across Memphis, TN. We hope that you share our work far and wide! 

[edj-youth-blog]

OUR FIRST POST! EDUCATION JUSTICE IN MEMPHIS!

We are a diverse group that is able to share experiences from our different worlds. Our relationship with Bridge Builders, a respected organization in Memphis, lends us resources internally and credibility externally. As current high school students, we are able to affect change within the system, communicating with those most intimately involved in educational injustice. Our goals are to work for equality and justice in our education system. EDJ is unique because our group is made up of high school students who are passionate about changing the current policies and cultures in our educational system that are negatively affecting students

Our knowledge of educational injustice begins with our personal experiences, how we have been affected by it and how we see it affects our fellow students. These experiences include personally receiving unreasonable disciplinary action, being talked down to by teachers, and seeing the way negative school culture and racial bias inhibit education.

Further, we have spoken with key informants, including teachers and incarcerated youth. Incarcerated youth have told us that out of school suspensions were part of what pushed them to become involved with gangs. You can learn more about Incarcerated Youth Speaking Out for Change in Memphis by visiting their website incarceratedyouth.weebly.com .

We have also compiled academic research. Websites like freechild.org have given us insights into what youth voice could look like in schools, including being policy-makers and directing in class activities. The best practices of restorative justice in schools have been well documented and we’ve taken advantage of all the online sources on the subject; from what we’ve found, and from our personal experiences, we know they can be very effective here in Memphis.

Educational injustice is an incredibly broad and nuanced issue. We believe that we can create change by attacking specific problems that are producing educational injustice in our city. First, we believe that if we replace punitive disciplinary policies with restorative justice practices, we can reduce the educational injustice that marginalized students experience when they receive unfair and unhelpful responses to rule-breaking. We are confident that if we begin to break down the individual pillars which uphold oppression and inequity in our schools, we will create educational justice.

Additionally, we believe that policy change  is most effective when it is supported by the community. For policy change to work effectively, the people who implement the policy must believe in it. To ensure this, we believe it is necessary to create a foundation within the educational community that supports the policies we want to implement. Many students, teachers, parents, administrators, and policy makers must be willing and motivated to change their perspectives on the intent and impact of disciplinary policy.. Others may simply need to be rallied into fervency over beliefs and experiences they already have. We believe that when people are ready and excited for a policy it will have real impact on the community. Similarly to how a rock tied to a balloon may move the balloon but the balloon will not move the rock, a policy change alone cannot alter how people think about something.

[protoslacker]

Beyond the names and marble likenesses, it is the wealth—its formation, its inheritance, its persistence—that haunts American institutions.

Tressie McMillan Cottom in The Atlantic. Injustice at Universities Runs Deeper Than Names Correcting past wrongs at colleges requires programs that commit to educational justice, not mere discussion—or erasure—of racist symbolism.

[soulbrotherv2]

Racism and Educational Injustice: Some teachers ARE Part of the Problem

by Adrienne Wallace While there are a lot of people who advocate against racism, many people fail to address how it plays out in schools, affecting our students and their futures. A study by the Center for America Progress that came out in early October highlights some difficult but important truths that we must confront – that there are teachers in our public school system that act on racist beliefs and harm the educational outcomes of brown and black students. That’s a nice way of saying what most parents and students of color already know to be true: Some teachers perpetuate racism in their classrooms. 

[Continue reading article at For Harriet.]