Civil Rights

MLK Speaks To Educators and Parents

~ Ann Policelli Cronin ~ Leave a comment
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The function of education is not to make students successful takers of timed, standardized tests which correlate with only one factor: the socio-economic status of the test takers’ parents.
Education is our best means for creating learners and thinkers who are impassioned to imagine and create the world anew.
We can design schools in which the curricula is learning centered and character building, but first we must put aside the mind-numbing Common Core and assess students in ways other than by timed standardized tests that serve only one purpose: to make money for those who produce the tests.

The Count on July 8, 2018: 3,000 Children

~ Ann Policelli Cronin ~ 2 Comments

According to the U.S. government, almost 3,000 children have been separated from their parents and are incarcerated by the U.S. government. Those actions deserve our attention because they are being done in our name by our government.

Separating children from their parents and incarcerating them tells a clear story. There is no ambiguity. The practice is cruel. It is producing trauma in children. It will prevent some of those children from ever seeing their parents again. Inhumanity is being visited upon children in our name.

Each day on this blog, I will report the number of children still separated from their parents and incarcerated by the U.S. government.

My hope is that one day we will each look at that number, even if the number is only one child, will rise up, and will say STOP: No more separated families in my name. No more cruelty to children in my name. I insist upon us being a better country.

The NAACP Tells It As It Is

~ Ann Policelli Cronin ~ 3 Comments

An English teacher friend of mine was a finalist for Connecticut Teacher of the Year in the mid 90’s.  As one of the culminating steps in the selection process, the four finalists were assigned a topic little was known about at the time. They were instructed to research it and present their findings to an audience.

The topic was charter schools.There were no charter schools in Connecticut at the time. My friend concluded that the worth of charter schools would depend on the answers to two questions:

1) Will the innovations created at charter schools inform and improve the public schools that the vast majority of children and adolescents in the U.S. attend?

2) Will charter schools be held accountable to address student needs as traditional public schools are required to do?

Fast forward to 2017: We now have had charter schools in Connecticut for 21 years. The answers to my friend’s two questions came from the NAACP.

The NAACP, long concerned about the education of children of color, in 2016 passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on opening any more charter schools across the country. Then, from December 2016 through April 2017, a NAACP task force conducted a listening tour, focusing on seven states (including Connecticut), to gather information about existing charter schools and K-12 public schools in general. The answers to my friend’s two questions were part of the report of the NAACP Task Force entitled “Quality Education For All … One School At A Time” . 

The NAACP Task Force Report answered the first question with an emphatic NO. The report states: “Charter schools were created with more flexibility because they were expected to innovate and infuse new ideas into the traditional public school system. However, that aspect of the promise never materialized”. There has been no carryover from the charter schools to the traditional public schools. Charter schools have not been learning labs, free from the restrictions imposed on public schools, which try out new ideas that benefit the larger population of students in public schools. Charter schools have failed in fulfilling their original purpose.

The NAACP Task Force Report also states that, in addition to not improving education in general, the education that charter schools provide to their students is questionable. The report quotes a large scale study of student data from the Center for Research Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute that found that 17% of charter schools produced academic gains better than traditional public schools, 37% of charter schools performed worse than their traditional public schools counterparts serving similar students, 46% of the schools showed no difference.  The NAACP Task Force Report goes on to state that there are better ways, other than charter schools, to improve student achievement, such as reducing class size.

The NAACP Task Force Report answered the second question with a resounding NOT YET and made specific recommendations for holding existing charter schools accountable.  The NAACP report criticizes charters for taking public tax money but not letting the public know how they spend that money. The report also criticizes charter schools for not accepting its share of children with learning issues and children who do not speak English as their first language and for counseling out students who will not be successful on measures such as standardized tests or graduation rates. In addition, the report criticizes charter schools for giving students inexperienced and uncertified teachers and for suspending and expelling students for behavioral issues at a much higher rate than traditional public schools.

The report recommends that only local boards of education, which are responsive to the voters in the school district, be allowed to authorize and supervise charter schools, not appointed state boards of education or appointed state departments of education.  Charters then would be required have the same level of fiscal transparency and accountability as the traditional public schools in the district. The report also calls for charter schools to have open enrollment and to “not select and reject students based on their educational or behavioral histories and needs”. In addition, the report calls for charter schools to hire certified teachers and to follow the same regulations as traditional public schools regarding suspending and expelling students.

The NAACP Task Force Report insists that children of color have the same rights as white suburban children. How sad that in 2017 that right still needs to be demanded. But it does. The NAACP Task Force Report must be listened to and enacted in order to make real the civil rights of children.

 

 

Future Birthdays: The Best Ones

~ Ann Policelli Cronin ~ 1 Comment

Over this July 4th weekend, I watched the classic movie, 1776, with my 12 year old granddaughter and was reminded that racism was at our beginning as a nation.

The Declaration of Independence had to be signed by all of the thirteen colonies.  South Carolin and North Carolina would sign only if a part of the Declaration of Independence, as originally written by Thomas Jefferson and citing slavery as a moral evil, was stricken from the document. Jefferson had written that slavery was “violating the most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither”.  John Adams from Massachusetts vehemently objected to cutting the section, speaking eloquently against slavery. Edward Rutledge from South Carolina pointed out that those in the Northern colonies also profited from the slave trade because they owned  the slave ships. After a lengthy debate, Jefferson cut the section in order to get the Declaration of Independence signed. Without eliminating that section condemning slavery, we would not have had a nation in 1776 and would not be celebrating its 241st birthday on this Fourth of July.

But that is not the end of the story of our country. Please listen to this valedictory speech, given recently at Hill House High School in New Haven. The valedictorian, Coral Ortiz, speaks to what we can yet become as a country. Coral, a graduate of a public high school in a city which struggles with poverty and racism, shows us a future worth celebrating.

May our country move forward and fulfill its promise, a promise that Coral Ortiz demonstrates so clearly.

 

Protect Transgender Students

~ Ann Policelli Cronin ~ Leave a comment

What have we come to as a country when we no longer protect our children? What have we come to as a country when we are afraid of our own children?

The removal yesterday of Obama era protections for transgender children in our schools shames us as a country. The fact that our government sees those children as people to fear embarrasses us as a country.

Please read “DeVos Concedes to Sessions and Fails her First Civil Rights Test”.  It was written by Jason Courtmanche, who is Director of the Connecticut Writing Project at the University of Connecticut and conducts professional development for teachers across the state of Connecticut. Jason cites research that tells us that 30% of transgender youth have attempted suicide, 42% have self-injured, 63% have been bullied, and the suicide and self-injuring rates are four times the rates for straight or gender-conforming youth. Also, more than 50 percent of transgender youth avoid school on a regular basis, drop-out of school at staggering rates, and 75% of them report feeling unsafe in school.

Yet our government has decided to increase the risk to these children. Why?  Because Jeff  Sessions and Donald Trump have the power to do so. We, the voters, gave them that power. Shame on us.

The new federal ruling, because it preferences states’ rights, leaves in place Connecticut’s 2011 law that outlawed transgender discrimination, but we in Connecticut must not be complacent. Other states do not offer that protection. We must speak for those students. We must also show our Connecticut students that we are people of integrity and oppose injustice wherever we see it. We, as adults, must be the voice for all children. We, as educators, must stand up for students throughout our nation.

If you are a teacher or a school administrator, please post “DeVos Concedes to Sessions and Fails her First Civil Rights Test” in your faculty room. If you are a parent of a school age child, please bring a copy of “DeVos Concedes to Sessions and Fails her First Civil Rights Test” to your next parent meeting at your child’s school and share it with other parents and teachers. If you are the parent or grandparent of a transgender child, hug that child with a fierce tenderness in the name of all of us who oppose the shameful and fear-mongering ruling of the Trump administration.