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Matthew Lynch published in Diversity, Education Leadership

The economic argument for ethnic studies

**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.**

A guest column by Jim Estrada

Our nation is undergoing a cultural evolution as a result of an ethnic population explosion. In a blink of the eye, Hispanics, Latinos, and mestizos have grown to 54 million in 2015 and are projected to reach 132.8 million by 2050, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Much of this growth will come from natural childbirth among U.S. citizens, not immigration as many in the U.S. have been led to believe to believe.

But what else do we not know about our nation’s largest and fastest-growing ethnic neighbors? Simply stated, very little!

We have a substantial information gap in the USA’s educational curricula regarding our nation’s non-European white populations. Exposure to accurate unbiased information about them, their histories, and contributions to our nation can lead to a better understanding of their increasing influence and contributions as the fastest growing consumers, K-12 students, taxpayers, voters, and members of the workforce. This gap represents a glaring need, as they are already the “majority” of the population in many metropolitan areas across the nation.

According to the Selig Center at the University of Georgia, consumer spending among Latinos increased appreciably and grown at a faster rate than that of the overall U.S. population. Since 1990 the nation’s Hispanic buying power grew dynamically. In sheer dollars, their economic clout rose from $212 billion in 1990, to $489 billion in 2000, to $978 billion in 2009, and was estimated to reach over $1.5 trillion by 2015.

To effectively interact with this diverse and fast-growing ethnic group, mainstream society must become better informed of its members’ histories, cultures, and contributions to our nation. Already, U.S. Spanish-language media has recognized the historical void in positive programming images and limited news coverage related to the Latino segment of U.S. society and is addressing that need. In a world of increasingly diverse information sources and content, Spanish-language media is demonstrating that cultural relevance works; and more importantly, that it is profitable—for itself and its advertisers.

Questions many non-Spanish speaking professionals and managers need to answer are: “Do you possess the necessary skills to deal with the growing influence of this ethnic population on your “bottom line”? Is the traditional white-Eurocentric “one size fits all” approach to marketing and advertising still profitable?” If the answer is no, then the next question must be: “Are the nation’s educational systems, companies, government, and non-profit organizations prepared to invest in preparing experts who can provide them with culturally competent professionals?”

There are many thoughts on how to create cultural competency. The logical place to start is in our nation’s school systems, which are charged with expanding the knowledge base that affect the goals and objectives of our society and the marketplace. The most successful private companies and public service delivery sectors must increase their number of culturally competent, career-specific, degreed individuals when creating a diverse employee team that more accurately reflects the demographic changes occurring in our population.

Due to these rapidly changing demographics, employers must increasingly rely on employees who demonstrate knowledge of their respective organization’s diverse consumers and possess the cultural proficiencies to manage new brands or services, communications, and outreach initiatives that address the organization’s integrated operational and marketing efforts. Having culturally competent “aces” in all the right places insures increased market share, profits, and sustainability in an increasingly diverse and competitive marketplace.

Ethnic studies are important to the fast-growing non-white segments of our country’s population for a variety of psychological and social reasons; but from an strictly economic point they may of equal importance to non-minority individuals who must become culturally aware of those who are already affecting their professions and careers—as well as related revenue streams.

Our nation’s educational institutions must address this critical need for preparing tomorrow’s multi-culturally trained workforce, for especially in the marketplace (and workplace) “adapt or perish” remains nature’s inexorable imperative.

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Jim Estrada is a nationally recognized expert in ethnic marketing, communications, and public relations. The author of the award-winning book, “The ABCs and Ñ of America’s Cultural Evolution,” has provided his counsel to the most respected corporations and nonprofit organizations in the USA. A former TV newsman and corporate executive, he attended San Diego State University, Boston College, and Harvard Business School.

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Matthew Lynch published in Equity, Policy & Reform, Secondary Education

Will the pending ESEA actually move funding backward?

By Derek Black of Law Professor Blogs Network

Last week, Nora Gordon focused on one of the more technical aspects of the pending Senate bill to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act: the supplement not supplant standard. The standard requires that Title I funds for low income students only be used to supplement the resources that state and local entities were already providing those students, not supplant them. Gordon summarized the new revisions and her sense of their importance:

The larger legacy of the Every Child Achieves Act may well be how it cleans up supplement not supplant, a little discussed and often misunderstood fiscal rule with a big impact on how schools actually spend the $14 billion of NCLB Title I funds. The proposed legislation makes two important changes: (1) it requires districts to show they are distributing their state and local funds across schools without regard to the federal funds that each school receives; and (2) it increases local autonomy over how to spend Title I funds.

The problem she says is that:

Under current law, those Title I schools that do not operate school-wide programs must demonstrate that every single thing they buy with Title I funds helps only the neediest students, and would not be purchased with other funds absent the federal aid. In my research, I’ve found this rule often has the unintended consequence of preventing districts from spending money on the things that might help those students most, pushing schools to work around the edges of their central instructional mission. They buy “interventionists” instead of teachers, or “supplemental” curricular materials rather than “core” ones, and are discouraged from investing Title I funds in technology.

Gordon is correct that the supplement not supplant has been a disaster.  As I wrote in The Congressional Failure to Enforce Equal Protection Through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, 90 B.U. L. Rev. 313 (2010),

Although well meaning, the prohibition on supplanting has not met its goal. In fact, in a recent report, the GAO recommended eliminating the supplement-not-supplant standard altogether. The GAO concluded that the standard has become almost impossible to enforce. Enforcing the standard requires too much speculation about what a school district would have spent on education and also requires extremely detailed tracking of spending in thousands of school districts. In short, the prohibition on supplanting funds relies on unreliable projections and unusually labor-intensive work. Possibly for these reasons, the Department of Education has effectively stopped attempting to enforce the standard, treating it as a non-priority. The standard, however, remains the law and a measure that well-intentioned schools may expend effort attempting to meet.

But at this point, the question is not whether we should discard the current supplement not supplant rule.  The question is what we should replace it with.  It is far from clear that moving toward more district autonomy (so long as they provide data) fixes the funding inequities and inept state and local funding effort that Congress needed to tackle with supplement not supplant and other related standards.

The new fix in the pending bill is a compromise that dodges that fundamental problems, and has the potential to incentivize backsliding by state and local districts unless other new protections are added.  Yes, the new bill would provide more information on funding inequality from states so that we can see what they are doing.  But that data is generally available anyway.  The challenge is that data’s complexity, not its unavailability.  So the new freedom for states looks like a give away that runs the risk that states will engage in the very behavior it formerly sought to prohibit (even if Congress and the Department of Education never did a good job of prohibiting it).  Under the proposed new approach, federal money could even more easily become part of districts’ general operating budget, which would allow the money to be seriously diluted or state and local dollars to decrease when federal dollars are available to fill the gap.

So what should we do in reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act?  I laid out the solutions in painstaking detail in the article noted above.  But in short, the Elementary and Secondary Act should 1) demand comparability of resources both within and between districts and 2) distribute federal funds to incentivize states to meet student need (get states to progressively fund high poverty schools), and 3) incentivize integration and punish segregation.  The first two proposal are intuitive, but the third is also necessary because the existence of segregation provides the platform for inequality and drives up the cost of delivering an equitable education in high poverty schools.  Unfortunately, there are longstanding headwinds against these solutions, which explains why the Senate’s proposed supplement not supplant approach does so little.

Get my full explanation of how to fix ESEA here.

 

This post originally appeared on the Law Professor Blogs Network and has been republished with permission.

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Matthew Lynch published in Diversity, Equity

When researchers ask for data on penalization of black kids, schools resist, cover up

**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.**

 

Muhammad Khalifa, Michigan State University & Felecia Briscoe, University of Texas at San Antonio
Students of color are more likely to be suspended. Rod Library, CC BY

That students of color bear the brunt of the zero tolerance discipline policies in schools has been well-established. What is not so well known is that some school administrations are actually complicit in this act of racial disciplining.

Nationally, students of color are more likely to be suspended than white students. On average, black boys are suspended four times more than white boys. Latino students are also suspended more frequently than white students, and female students of color are also disciplined more frequently than white female students.

The policy ‘problem’

But this is not all. A recent study that we conducted over a period of two years in Texas found that schools were in fact negligent when it came to addressing such practices of disciplining. The study covered four school districts in Texas with a population of nearly 200,000 students.

As researchers, we have been studying this issue since 2010. But what prompted this study was the suspension of one of the researcher’s sons from school. The child was given a US $500 court citation. And when we showed up for our court appointment, we saw that all the children were either black or brown. Did it mean that white children never fought in school?

We knew this was part of what is now known as the school-to-prison pipeline for children of color. It led us to take on a scholar-activist role.

Most schools and districts claim to be following “race-neutral” discipline policies. School officials even point to their race-neutral suspension and expulsion policies to show how they are “fair” with students of all race and ethnic subgroups.

However, researchers have found that the problem lies in the application of these policies.

For example, black students are more likely to be suspended for breaking subjective school rules such as a lack of respect for teachers than for objective ones, like having a weapon. Researchers point to cultural stereotypes and misunderstandings from a primarily white teaching force as the reasons for the “disciplining gaps.”

Data on discipline

Our recent study found that some schools are, in fact, negligent and even defensive when it comes to addressing the problem of school discipline practices and the discipline gap.

The kind of responses we got when we asked for school districts’ discipline data resembled a “corporate cover-up.”

Some school administrators resisted our attempts to provide information under the  Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and some others released data that were not helpful. For example, in the discipline data submitted by a school district, we were not able to discern the race of the children who had been suspended or expelled from school.

Some schools have been found to be negligent about school disciplining issues. Student image via www.shutterstock.com

It is hard for us to imagine that schools are not keeping track of usable disciplinary data, considering that in recent years, widespread attention has focused on the disciplinary treatment of black boys and other students of color. President Obama has even initiated My Brother’s Keeper, a national program intended to help black and Latino boys succeed.

Responses from schools

Our biggest surprise was finding out that districts perceived our request for data as a threat. We found that school administrations became secretive, defensive and even more protective of the data. It seemed to us that districts were essentially complicit in the process of oppression of youth of color.

Even the districts that provided the data were very defensive when informed of the discipline gaps that occurred in their schools. For example, when presented with data in his district, one data administrator responded, “Well, other districts in Texas are higher than us” and “We are not far off from the state average.”

It was very troubling for us to see schools reacting in this way, especially when lives of youth were at risk. These responses were unacceptable and deflected the district’s responsibility.

In the end, only one school district, out of four, instituted a district-wide program for the principals of their schools to learn more about the racial discipline gaps. It was the only one to take steps on how to begin reducing and eliminating racial discipline gaps at both the school and at the district level.

As we conducted the study, we also realized that there is no national legislation that prompts schools to address disparities in education. While No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and other national legislation have at least attempted to draw attention to racial disparities in achievement, no legislation exists that actually compels schools to address the problem.

This is unfortunate, given the close connection between the academic achievement gap and the discipline gap.

What must be done?

It is important that schools make policies and goals for racial and ethnic groups more explicit. For example, a goal for “75% proficiency for students in math” is not as impactful as “75% proficiency for each student subgroup based on their racial, gender or language-based identity.” The reason we say this is: what if the population of a school is 25% Latino and that happens to be the same population of nonproficient math students?

At the policy level, what is needed is intensive training on implicit racial bias in most districts. In addition, school districts should be required to report overall suspension rates and discipline gaps within each of their schools.

Furthermore, state or federal policies must begin to regulate both the collection of discipline data and the rate of compliance of schools.

Parents too need to pay more attention. Parents of color and from other subgroups should begin to identify which schools are more likely to suspend students of color.

All this together can be a powerful impetus for districts and schools to attend to this problem. Otherwise, disciplining practices will continue to have devastating consequences for our kids.

Click here to read all our posts concerning the Achievement Gap.

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Muhammad Khalifa is Assistant Professor of Educational Administration at Michigan State University.

Felecia Briscoe is Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at The University of Texas at San Antonio

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Read the original article.

 

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Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, Teachers

Spend less time searching for classroom resources

A teacher’s job does not end when the school bell rings. From grading papers and prepping classroom materials, to creating lesson plans and seeking out professional development opportunities, to say that educators have a lot on their plate would be an understatement.

Finding classroom resources and quality training has been an even more arduous task with the adoption of the Common Core State Standards. According to a report from the Center on Education Policy, a majority of educators are creating new curricula independently—more than two-thirds of districts reported that their teachers were designing their own curricula to meet the new standards.

This has left many teachers looking for tools that can help them find high quality lesson plans, worksheets and other resources to aid their instruction. The process of sifting through irrelevant content can be a drain on educators, who are often spending their own money on classroom materials and resources. Educators need an effective and affordable way to find peer-reviewed content so they can spend less time searching and more time focused on the classroom.

Unlimited Resources, On-Demand

Teachwise Inspire, a new online platform for educators, can most easily be described as the “Netflix” of teaching resources. For a low monthly subscription, members gain access to unlimited, on-demand classroom and professional development resources, eliminating the potential for buyer’s remorse.

The online tool currently includes 28,000 teacher-reviewed, teacher-approved K-12 resources that are aligned to the Common Core and connected to curriculum goals. Content is curated in partnership with Lesson Planet based on their rigorous review criteria. The platform allows users to easily search for resources by subject area, grade level, and specific standard-alignment so they can find exactly what they are looking for. Members also have the ability to rate and review resources, making it easy to see how other educators are using the resources in their own classrooms.

There are also professional development videos and coursework for teachers, with topics ranging from behavior management to implementing new teaching strategies.

Save Time and Money

Teachers spend too much time and money finding resources to use in the classroom. Teachwise Inspire is an affordable tool that can give educators back some of that time, allowing them to focus on their number one priority—students.

Basic membership is available at a monthly cost of $7.99, and for a limited time is available for a seven-day free trial.  To sign up for the free trial, educators can visit inspire.teachwise.com.

Read all of our posts about EdTech and Innovation by clicking here. 

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Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation

Data secrecy violating data democracy in D.C. public schools

**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.**

A guest post by Audrey Amrein-Beardsley

The District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) is soon to vote on yet another dramatic new educational policy that, as described in an email/letter to all members of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) by AFT President Randi Weingarten, “would make it impossible for educators, parents and the general public to judge whether some of DCPS’ core instructional strategies and policies are really helping District children succeed.”

As per Weingarten: “Over a year ago, the Washington [DC] Teachers’ Union filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to see the data from the school district’s IMPACT [teacher] evaluation system—a system that’s used for big choices, like the firing of 563 teachers in just the past four years, curriculum decisions, school closures and more [see prior posts about this as related to the IMPACT program here]. The FOIA request was filed because DCPS refused to provide the data….[data that are]…essential to understanding and addressing the DCPS policies and practices that impact” teachers and education in general.

Not only are such data crucial to build understandings, as noted, but they are also crucial in support of a functioning democracy, to allow others within a population concerned with a public institution test the mandates and policies they collectively support, in theory or concept (perhaps) but also via public taxes.

Regardless, soon after the DC union filed the FOIA, DCPS (retaliated, perhaps, and) began looking to override FOIA laws through “a radical new secrecy provision to hide the information that’s being used to make big decisions” like those associated with the aforementioned IMPACT teacher evaluation system.

Sound familiar? See prior posts about other extreme governmental moves in the name of secrecy, or rather educational policies at all costs, namely in New Mexico here and here.

You can send a letter to those in D.C. to vote NO on their “Educator Evaluation Data Protection” provisions by clicking here.

As per another post on this topic, in GFBrandenburg’s Blog — that is “Just a blog by a guy who’s a retired math teacher” — Brandenburg did leak some of the data now deemed “secret.” Namely, he “was leaked,” by an undisclosed source, “the 2009-10 IMPACT sub-scores from the Value-Added Monstrosity (VAM) nonsense and the Teaching and Learning Framework (TLF), with the names removed. [He] plotted the two [sets of] scores and showed that the correlation was very, very low, in fact about 0.33 [r-squared=0.13], or nearly random, as you [can] see here:”

 

vam-vs-tlf-dc-2009-10

In the world of correlation, this is atrocious, IF high-stakes (e.g., teacher termination, tenure, merit pay) are to be attached to such output. No wonder DCPS does not want people checking in to see if that which they are selling is true to what is being sold.

In Brandenburg’s words: “Value-Added scores for any given teacher jumped around like crazy from year to year. For all practical purposes, there is no reliability or consistency to VAM whatsoever. Not even for elementary teachers who teach both English and math to the same group of children and are ‘awarded’ a VAM score in both subjects. Nor for teachers who taught, say, both 7th and 8th grade students in, say, math, and were ‘awarded’ VAM scores for both grade levels: it’s as if someone was to throw darts at a large chart, blindfolded, and wherever the dart lands, that’s your score.”

Read all of our posts about EdTech and Innovation by clicking here. 

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This post originally appeared on the blog VAMboozled! and has been republished with permission.

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Matthew Lynch published in Diversity, Equity, Policy & Reform

Bilingual Education: 5 Reasons it should be Required

By Matthew Lynch

This generation of K-12 students is growing up in a society that is increasingly bilingual.  While foreign language requirements have long been a core requirement for high school graduation—second language classes at an earlier age would improve overall fluency for most students.  It’s time to introduce second-language concepts to the youngest of K-12 students, and here are just a few of the reasons why:

1. Bilingual Children have an Academic Advantage.  Studies in language development show that when young children have more exposure to all languages at an early age, it actually gives them a distinct academic advantage throughout life. There is often an argument that students should first master the English language before branching out to others – but why can’t both be taught simultaneously? Bilingual children are able to focus more intently on the topics at hand and avoid distractions from academic pursuits. They are also able to demonstrate higher levels of cognitive flexibility, or the ability to change responses based on environment and circumstances.

2.  Bilingualism Improves Life-Long Learning Skills. For children to truly see the full potential multi-lingualism has on learning, exposure to non-native languages should actually begin long before Kindergarten.  However, even children who learn their first Spanish words at the age of 5 can benefit from dual language curriculum. Learning is learning. The more that children can take advantage of new concepts, the more in tune their brains will be to all learning throughout life. Some studies have also found that the aging of the brain is slower and the employment rate is higher in adults with bilingual capabilities. Why not set kids up for success and strengthen long-term brain health while we are at it?

3. It Helps to Remove International Language Barriers.  There are also the cultural benefits to children learning two languages together. The children who come from English-speaking homes can lend their language expertise to friends from Spanish-speaking homes, and vice versa. Contemporary communication technology has eliminated many global barriers when it comes to socialization and even doing business. It makes sense that language boundaries should also come down and with help from our K-12 education system, that is possible.

4.  It Leads to Collaborative Learning.  Dual language programs show students a broader world-view, whatever the native language of the student, and lead to greater opportunities for collaborative learning. We should not limit what children learn based on outdated principles masked in patriotism.

5. Early Bilingual Education Increases Fluency in Later Years. It generally takes 5–7 years to be proficient in a second language.  Second-generation Hispanic children raised in the United States usually learn to speak English very well by adulthood, even though three-quarters of their parents speak mostly Spanish and are not English proficient.  However only 23 percent of first-generation immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries—those that began learning later in life, say they speak English very well.  Pew Hispanic Center statistics have shown that 88 percent of the members of the second generation—those children that were introduced to English at an early age, described themselves as strong English speakers.  This phenomenon should apply to children who speak English as their first language as well.  In other words, U.S. students should be introduced to a second language at a young age in order to be fluent by adulthood.  In fact, I believe that all K-12 students should have Spanish and English fluency by graduation.

By implementing bilingual options even younger, K-12 students stand to benefit long-term – both academically and in life. There really should be no reason why these students are not introduced to a second language as early as Kindergarten.

What is your opinion on mandating bilingual education programs in the future?

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Matthew Lynch published in Equity, Policy & Reform

Educational Change Starts with Equality

By Matthew Lynch

Substantial educational change will never occur until we as a country decide that enough is enough and make a commitment to change, no matter what it takes. When America realizes all children deserve a stellar education regardless of who their parents are, their socioeconomic status or where they happen to live, we will be able to reform our education system. Specifically, Americans have to stop treating minority students in underperforming urban environments like collateral damage.

The disheartening reality is that America has billions of dollars to fight a two-front war, but cannot or will not properly educate its children. If a hostile country attacked the U. S., it would take less than 24 hours for American troops to be mobilized into battle. However, we seem unable to mobilize a sea of educated teachers and administrators to wage war against academic mediocrity, which is a bigger threat to our national security than Iran or North Korea.

Over the last century, many reform movements have come and gone, but in the end, it seems, there have been no substantial changes. Some might even believe the American educational system is now worse off than ever. That’s because the word “reform” is primarily used as campaign rhetoric, and when it comes time to take real action, the politicians simply unveil a grandiose plan with all the bells and whistles amounting to a dog and pony show. There has been a lot of talk about educating our kids, but not a lot of action. This is especially true when it comes to groups of at-risk or disenfranchised students, like minorities.

America’s schools were originally intended to ensure that all citizens were literate but it seems today that in some districts, and for some students, even this concept is not taking place. When you add on the additional constraints of K-12 education today, it becomes quickly clear why some students fall through the cracks and are not able to achieve the type of education that should be a right for all American children.

Americans must have the courage to realize that in order for us to remain a world power, we must institute change. It is not enough for just some of our kids to succeed; each one must make it across the high school graduation stage, knowing what their peers also across the country also learned during the journey. The risks have never been greater: the future of our country and its children is at stake.

Education reform is possible, but it depends on what the nation is willing to do to achieve its educational goals. Will America develop and pass effective educational legislation aimed at creating viable solutions to the problem at hand? Or will America continue to develop legislation, such as No Child Left Behind, that operates under the fallacy that 100% of our students will be proficient in their core subjects by the end of 2014? The bar for education should be set higher, but there has to be exceptions and differentiated goals in order to effectively accommodate all the differences among teachers, students, administrators, and school cultures.

 

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Matthew Lynch published in Equity, Policy & Reform

How to Improve the School Climate for LGBT Students

While the social climate of any school is complex enough, Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender, or LGBT, students have additional barriers to overcome. Dealing with discrimination toward LGBT students is a very real concern for teachers and though students have come a long way, they can still be cruel to those that they perceive as different. Peers of LGBT students frequently single them out for bullying and physical and verbal abuse. The levels of harassment targeting LGBT students sometimes lead to absenteeism, and even to dropping out of school completely and never obtaining that very important high school diploma.

LGBT students of color are three times more likely to skip school because they do not view schools as safe places, adding to the achievement gap between the races that educational policymakers are so desperately trying to narrow.

So, how can we make our K-12 classrooms safe havens for LGBT students where they can learn and flourish alongside their peers? Here are just a few starting points:

  1. Disallow discrimination based on sexual orientation. The National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development have all passed resolutions asking their members and all school districts to step forward to improve the educational experiences of LGBT students. These resolutions call for providing a safe environment, support groups, and counseling options for LGBT students and by employing anti-harassment rules and practices.  In nine states, the state government has instituted legislation prohibiting the harassment and discrimination of LGBT students. We need to continue this trend until every state has these rules in place, in every district and school – no exceptions.
  2. Expand “inclusion” policies.  There are some schools in which LGBT students are accepted and accommodated.   Same-sex couples are invited to school dances and there are unisex washrooms for transgender students.  School districts in some states include LGBT students in non-discrimination policies with the goal of making schools safe places for all students, parents, faculty and staff.  However, there are also states where it is illegal to even utter the word homosexual and in which the word homosexual (or lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender) can only be portrayed in a negative light within the classroom.  This makes it difficult for teachers to teach about sexual orientation diversity or to make their classrooms and school environment safe and accepting of LGBT students.  Regardless of location, teachers can explain to students that they don’t have to agree it is okay to be gay or lesbian, but they do have to agree that it is not okay to discriminate against them.
  3. Promote LGBT student groups.  It is important that all students, regardless of who they are or their sexual orientation, have a safe environment in which to learn and grow as an individual.  Gay and lesbian organizations have been at the forefront of trying to create safe and accepting environments for LGBT students.  Students have also taken up the cause and student groups have begun springing up in schools all over the country.  There are currently approximately 4,000 Gay-Straight Alliance Groups registered with the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN).  These groups are alliances between straight and LGBT. They work together to support each other and promote education as a means for ending homophobia.

Biased and homophobic comments are rampant in many schools, with a staggering 90 percent of LGBT students experiencing verbal harassment related to their sexual orientation.  This is unacceptable.  By schools taking the reins on this issue, real change will eventually be realized.

What do you believe are some additional steps that can be taken to improve the school environment for LGBT students?

Click here to read all our posts concerning the Achievement Gap.

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Matthew Lynch published in Diversity, Equity

Wearing a suit equals success? It just might to these kids

Photo via Timefrozen Photography

Work hard, get good grades in school, and you’ll eventually find some semblance of the American dream in life.

It’s what all kids are taught as they matriculate through grade school. It’s why we so often hear the saying that one should “dress for success.”

It’s also why 100 men of color wearing suits greeted elementary school students on their first day of school last week.

An attempt to present a varying image to kids of color of what men of color may actually turn out to be: successful.

Statistics state that black male “students in grade K-12 were nearly 2 1/2 times as likely to be suspended from school in 2000 as white students” and that most of the nearly 2.5 million people in prisons and jails “are people of color…and people with low levels of educational attainment.”

From pictures to videos, so many kids of color see men of color as effigies of what not to become. The criminal on the news is likely a man of color and so is the high school drop-out.

Seeing a roaring crowd of black men cheering on young students from kindergarten to fifth and sixth grades was not only heart warming, it was inspiring.

A suit represents so much more than just a tailored look. It’s success; it’s happiness; it’s an ability to overcome; it’s positive; it’s anti-everything we’ve been feed to believe that’s negative about black men.

For each kid seeing that image, it’s eternal.

I applaud this action and know it will have even more of a long term impact than it did initially.

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Matthew Lynch published in Equity, Policy & Reform

With harsher disciplinary measures, school systems fail black kids

**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.**

Esther Canty-Barnes, Rutgers University Newark

Although it has been over 60 years since the Brown v Board of Education decision, black students are still more likely to receive out-of-school suspensions for minor violations of the code of conduct. As a result, they are more likely to drop out of school or enter the juvenile justice system.

Black students constituted 32%-42% of those suspended during the 2011-12 school year, even though they represented 16% of the student population.

As racial tensions resurface in the aftermath of the conflicts and riots in Ferguson and Baltimore, we need to consider whether some of these issues have their origins in the manner in which children of color are treated in our schools.

As a clinical professor of law at the Rutgers University Law School’s Education and Health Law Clinic, I provide legal representation to parents and their children in cases where they are being denied an appropriate education or are suspended from school.

This includes filing legal complaints, attending meetings and assessing the appropriateness of a student’s educational program. At the clinic, my colleagues and I have seen firsthand the disparities in the treatment and resources provided by schools. And often, I have seen that suspension of young black students begins as early as kindergarten.

Educational inequities for black kids

Our educational system continues to fail children of color.

Research shows that black males are disproportionately more likely to be placed in special education and classified as mentally retarded and emotionally disturbed.

They are also more likely to be placed in segregated placements, more likely to be educated in poorly performing schools and more likely to be referred to the juvenile justice system for infractions that occur in school.

They are also the least likely to be provided the positive supports and the assistance that they need in order to succeed.

None of this is new.

Children of color have historically been subjected to educational inequities. After the landmark decision of Brown v Board of Education in 1954, where the Supreme Court held that it was unconstitutional to maintain segregated schools, practices and policies were developed to maintain segregated settings.

States in the South refused to comply with Brown, while other parts of the country developed practices such as IQ testing and tracking students into specific programs that often kept children of color in different classes from their white counterparts.

The Children’s Defense Fund (CDF), headed by Marian Wright Edelman, was one of the first organizations to look at the disparities in access to education. In its groundbreaking report in 1975, “School Suspensions: Are They Helping Children?,” the CDF analyzed the reports submitted to the Office of Civil Rights.

Although black students accounted for 27.1% of the students enrolled in the school districts reporting to the Office of Civil Rights in the 1972-73 school year, the report found that they made up 42.3% of the racially identified suspensions.

At the high school level, black students were suspended at more than three times the rate of white students: 12.5% versus 4.1%.

Persistent patterns of suspensions

These inequities in suspensions and removal from school continue to persist.

In recent times, the term “school-to-prison pipeline” is often used to describe systemic practices that ultimately lead students of color into the criminal justice system. These policies often cause the suspension or removal and sometimes the arrest of students from school for nonviolent or minor violations.

Arrested students fall behind the class, thus perpetuating the cycle of poverty.
Meg Stewart, CC BY-SA

The vast majority of suspensions are not for serious or violent offenses. Most are for minor infractions such as tardiness, dress code violations or disruptive behavior.

Why suspension matters

Students who are suspended for substantial periods lose valuable instruction time and fall behind in school.

The unfairness of these practices increases gaps in learning and eventually makes it difficult for black kids to keep up in school. Researchers have found that the use of harsh punishment for minor offenses has a negative impact on children, including increasing the chances of dropping out of school.

The US Department of Education Office of Civil Rights in its 2014 Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) on discipline provides a stark example of how the educational system continues to fail children of color.

For the 2011-12 school year, for out-of-school suspensions by race/ethnicity and gender, black students on average were suspended or expelled at a rate three times greater than white students.

At the preschool level, although black children represented 18% of enrolled students, they represented 48% of the students suspended more than once.

Although black students represented 16% of the student population, they accounted for 27% of the students who were referred to law enforcement and 31% of the students who were arrested.

Prejudices against students with disabilities

Students of color with disabilities are also disproportionately suspended from school compared to their white counterparts. They are twice as likely to be suspended than their non-disabled peers. And they are referred to law enforcement at greater rates.

Although students in special education represent 12% of enrollment, they constitute one-quarter of students arrested and charged with juvenile offenses.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) outlines specific protections for parents and their disabled children and requires that school districts provide an appropriate education and services such as counseling, social skills and other supports to meet their unique needs. However, the needs of these children are often not met.

Moreover, there are many protections that apply before a disabled student could be considered for suspension or removal for substantial periods of time. Often, these protections are ignored, and the services that should be provided are not.

Change is needed

Suspension of students for minor infractions is certainly not the solution. We don’t have to look far to see the consequences of policies that take students out of school and place them in vulnerable, nonproductive settings.

The cost – a life of poverty or incarceration – further continues to perpetuate a cycle of failure.

Myriad systems have worked against poor children of color to deprive them of the educational opportunities that their white counterparts have taken for granted. Poverty, violence, inadequate housing and other systemic inequities place these children in a pipeline for failure. Most of us would not be able to endure the burden, if placed in their small shoes.

A great deal of change is needed to combat these pervasive educational inequities. The US Departments Of Education and Justice have begun to take some important steps by issuing guidelines to school districts to reduce the numbers of students who are being removed or suspended from school and encouraging schools to find alternatives to suspensions.

These are important steps, but much work remains to be done.

______The Conversation

Esther Canty-Barnes is Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Education and Health Law Clinic at Rutgers University Newark .

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Read the original article.

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