Category: Beyond Ferguson

What Scott Walker Hath Wrought

Generally speaking, the largest group of least advantaged children in the United States, those most in need of protection, are the impoverished descendants of enslaved Africans. We might then ask,…

Generally speaking, the largest group of least advantaged children in the United States, those most in need of protection, are the impoverished descendants of enslaved Africans. We might then ask, when directing our attention to Milwaukee, the largest city in the once progressive state of Wisconsin – and part of the home base of now-politically endangered Gov. Scott Walker – what has come of that duty of care?

The latest release of findings from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the “gold standard” for such matters, shows that nationally 13 percent of Black students eligible for the National Lunch Program—a good enough proxy for poverty—read at or above grade level in  eighth grade.  This is half the percentage of White, non-Hispanic, students at a similar family income level and a quarter of the percentage of White, non-Hispanic students from more prosperous households.  Less than a third of Black students from families with incomes high enough to make them ineligible for the National Lunch Program read at or above grade level in grade 8.  The issue appears to be the layering of economic deprivation over racial discrimination in educational opportunities: multi-generational economic deprivation as a consequence of continuing racial discrimination.

In Milwaukee there are considerably higher percentages of Black K-12 than White K-12 students in the city’s schools.  There are more than twice the percentage of White than Black college students (and three times the percentage of White male (44 percent) than male Black college students (14 percent)) These distributions are considerably different from national figures, which show approximately equal Black and White enrollment at every level.  Just over a quarter of White residents of Milwaukee have only high school diplomas (including equivalents), as do considerably more, just over a third, of Black residents.  On the other hand, 34 percent of White residents have a Bachelor’s degree or higher, but only 13 percent of Black residents have that increasingly necessary qualification.

In a nutshell college graduation is achievable for a third of White residents of Milwaukee, but for only just over a tenth of Black residents of the city. This is unusual. Nationally, although the figure is the same for White, non-Hispanics, it is nearly twice as high as the comparable Milwaukee figure for African-Americans (20 percent?).

Just five percent of Black students in Milwaukee eligible for the National Lunch Program read at or above grade level in  eighth grade. More than half—nearly two-thirds—of these economically deprived Black students in Milwaukee are assessed as being at the “below Basic” level.  They can’t read middle school material.  Five percent is meaningful beyond its comparative value. It points to chance factors predominating in measurement:  students answering questions at random and getting lucky; transfer students from Ghana; children of university faculty; cosmic rays.

For all reasonable intents and purposes the Milwaukee public schools are not teaching Black students to read.

The percentage of Black students in Milwaukee eligible for the National Lunch Program scoring at or above “proficient” in Mathematics in eighth grade is 3 percent. Cosmic rays as a causal factor for this achievement seems most likely.

The Milwaukee public schools are not teaching math to their Black students.

In Milwaukee, African-Americans go to school, but they rarely receive a good enough education so that they can read proficiently or perform elementary mathematics tasks or to take them into and through college. It is not then surprising that the unemployment rate for Black residents of the city is between two and three times that of White residents, that the percentage of Black residents of the city in white collar jobs is half that of White residents, that median Black household income is half that of White household income and that the poverty rate for Black families is nearly three times that for White families.

These issues are so common as to seem abstract, or to be accepted, like the weather.  But like the weather, or, rather, the climate, they are not either abstract or acceptable.  The condition of the descendants of enslaved Africans now living in Milwaukee is directly attributable to the decisions of politicians at the state and local level.  Those decisions have reduced funding for the public schools, segregated housing and employment opportunities, criminalized daily life.

All of this brings us back to Gov. Walker, who is likely to lose his post this November (though, as he has proven in elections past, you can never fully count him out).

He has been governor of Wisconsin since 2011.  Before that he was Milwaukee County executive and before that he represented a district in Milwaukee County.  He has been responsible for the well-being of residents of Milwaukee, its surrounding area and the state for a quarter of a century. If residents of Milwaukee seek a monument for him, they have only to look around them.

Comments Off on What Scott Walker Hath Wrought

Bad Schools Alabama

There’s a lot for Alabama to be ashamed about these days — and we’re not just talking about a history of state-sanctioned bigotry that reached its apex under the infamous…

There’s a lot for Alabama to be ashamed about these days — and we’re not just talking about a history of state-sanctioned bigotry that reached its apex under the infamous George Wallace. From the presence of disgraced jurist-turned-senator Jeff Sessions as U.S. Attorney General under the Trump regime, to the current occupant of the White House’s race-baiting against Black athletes for their protests against police brutality to the cheers of a crowd at an event in Huntsville, to Tuesday’s election of the twice-remove jurist Roy Moore, an avowed bigot against Muslims and gay people, as the Republican nominee for Session’s former senate seat, there is little about which citizens of the Yellowhammer State can take any pride.

But Alabama’s biggest shame lies with its public education systems. Already among the worst-performing among the generally low-performing super-clusters within American public education, Alabama’s districts seem bent on suspending and arresting as many Black children as possible. That’s the only conclusion that can be reached from a Dropout Nation analysis of data submitted by the state to the U.S. Department of Education.

Black children account for six out of every 10 children arrested or referred to juvenile justice systems by traditional districts in Alabama in 2013-2014, according to data from the Civil Rights Data Collection. This is in spite of the fact that Black children make up just 33.4 percent of the statewide student population. White children account for a mere three out of every 10 kids arrested (29.7 percent) that year, even though they account for 57 percent of children attending Alabama schools.

One thousand five hundred eighty-five Black children were either arrested at school or referred to juvenile justice systems in 2013-2014, according to data in the Civil Rights Data Collection. While that equates out to six-tenths of one percent of all Black children attending school in the state, that percentage four times higher than the one-tenth of one percent rate of arrest and referrals for their White schoolmates (of which a mere 750 were either arrested or referred to courts that year).

Disgraced jurist-turned-Republican senatorial nominee Roy Moore is just the most-prominent disgrace for the Yellowhammer State. Its schools do even worse.

Being arrested or referred to courts, of course, are just two of the consequences poor and minority children can face as a result of adults in schools over-disciplining children. Most children are subjected to other harsh forms of punishment, often for behavior that can be addressed through other means, especially by addressing illiteracy and other learning issues.

Districts and other school operators in Alabama meted one or more out-of-school suspensions to 32,706 Black children in 2013-2014. That equals out to 13.2 percent of all Black children attending school that year. That rate is double the 6.9 percent statewide average, and the 3.8 percent out-of-school suspension rate meted out to White peers. Again, Black children account for six out of every 10 children suspended from school despite making up barely a third of the state school population, while White peers account for only three out of every 10 children suspended.

Districts mete out corporal punishment — yes, spankings — to 6,055 Black children in 2013-2014. Put simply, 2.4 percent of Black children were given the kinds of harsh punishments normally reserved for parents (who researchers argue also shouldn’t spank children, either). That’s just slightly higher than the 2.2 percent rate for all children in the state, and the 2.2 percent rate for White peers. Corporal punishment is one of the few areas in which White children are more-likely to suffer more; they made up seven out of every 10 children spanked that year, versus four out of every ten Black peers. Altogether, 16,223 children in regular classrooms were spanked in 2013-3014, making Alabama the third most-permissive state (after Mississippi and Arkansas) in that category.

An even harsher punishment meted out by Alabama districts comes in the form of restraints (children being tied up) and seclusion (also known to prison inmates as solitary confinement). Both practices are used by districts in their discipline of children condemned to special ed ghettos. But even Alabama children in regular classrooms get subjected to this harsh discipline. Especially if they are Black.

Black children accounted for three out of every four children in regular classrooms restrained and secluded by districts in 2013-2014; that’s 76 percent of the 648 children restrained and sent into solitary confinement that year. Again, this despite the fact that they account for a mere 33 percent of all children in schools statewide. White children account for just one out of every five kids (20 percent) restrained and secluded.

Districts subjected 490 Black children in regular classrooms to restraints and seclusion in 2013-2014. That’s two tenths of one percent of all Black kids in the state. But that rate is higher than the 87-hundredths of one percent rate for all children statewide and the three-hundredths of one percent rate for White peers.

Put simply and succinctly: When a child is disciplined in an Alabama school, it is usually the descendant of enslaved Black people.

Certainly given the political climate of the state, none of the results are shocking. But the issues go beyond politicians who have tangential relationships to public schools.

Little has changed educationally for Black children in Alabama since the day of Bull Connor and the Birmingham Campaign.

Two years ago, a federal court judge ruled that Birmingham’s traditional district, along with the city’s police department, were unconstitutionally using pepper spray and other so-called nonlethal weapons on children who posed no threat of violence. Some 110 incidents of pepper-spraying (involving 300 children) occurred in the district since 2006, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center in that lawsuit, which was filed on behalf of eight students sprayed with Freeze +P. [The tort is under appeal.]

Another district, Dothan City Schools, was forced to overhaul its discipline policies last year after it was revealed that Black children accounted for all of its expulsions in 2015-2016, and 85 percent of those suspended and disciplined through other means. Half of all out-of-school suspensions in the district were meted out at three predominantly-black elementary schools. In one particular incident mentioned in a complaint to the U.S. Department of Education, the district meted out a month-long out-of-school suspension to a seven-year-old Black boy with medical issues with his bladder and no previous history of misbehavior after wetting his pants; his teacher wouldn’t let him go to the bathroom and threatened to lower his grade because of frequent trips to the restroom.

Meanwhile Alabama’s districts has been on the national radar for its overuse of harsh school discipline. It was ranked fourth in the nation for meting out high levels of out-of-school suspensions on young Black men and boys (based on 2011-2012 data), according to the Civil Rights Project at UCLA; young Black men made up 36 percent of all boys and young men suspended  one or more times by Yellowhammer State districts despite making up far less of the student population; white men and boys only made up 12 percent of those suspended one or more times. Alabama also ranked fifth in the nation for suspending young Black women; they made up 23 percent of all young women suspended versus a mere six percent of white female counterparts.

One of the problems lies with the fact that Alabama is one of 15 states that explicitly allows teachers and school leaders to spank and otherwise administer corporal punishment on children. Such leeway essentially means that adults who are charged with the care of children often end up spanking kids as a tool to keep them in line. This despite decades of evidence that corporal punishment is more-likely to make children misbehave than help them manage themselves and their behavior.

Another problem lies with the state’s school discipline code. Seclusion was long prohibited by the state. But by 2011, districts were allowed to put children in solitary confinement so long as the space was unlocked “appropriately lighted,” “appropriately ventilated”, and an adult is there to monitor the child. While the state officially bars mechanical restraints, districts still manage to violate those prohibitions, with nearly all of them being Black.

Meanwhile districts in Alabama have a tendency to focus on minor incidents of student misbehavior that can be addressed through other means. Disruptive behavior, defiance, disorderly conduct, profanity and “disruptive demonstrations” account for 57 percent of incidents reported by Autauga County’s traditional district in 2013-2014, according to Dropout Nation‘s analysis of data from the state’s department of education. Such focus on minor incidents is particularly troublesome for Black children because data shows that they are more-likely to be suspended in such cases than their White peers. As John Wallace of the University of Pittsburgh showed in his  2008 study on referrals to dean’s offices, young black men in 10th grade are 30 percent more-likely to be sent to dean’s offices for punishment than their white male peers — and 330 percent more-likely to be suspended afterwards than white counterparts.

But this isn’t shocking. At the heart of the overuse of harsh school discipline in Alabama (as well as in the rest of America) is the belief that only some children are worthy of receiving high-quality education. This can be seen in other indicators — including the fact that only 7.5 percent of Black seventh- and eighth-graders in the Yellowhammer State receive Algebra 1 courses needed for success in college and career, a rate far lower than the already abysmal 10.3 percent rate for the state as a whole (and the 11.7 percent for White peers). The use of harsh school discipline is less about the children than about the adults making the decisions. And in nearly all cases, school operators in Alabama use harsh school discipline as ways to excuse themselves from dealing with the learning issues of the children they are supposed to serve.

When districts are suspending and disciplining 16 percent of Black children year after year, they are guaranteeing that those children will not learn, will fall behind academically, and will end up in poverty and prison. When the adults working in those districts are treating Black children in their care like criminals, they also teach adults outside of schools to do the same. What is clear in Alabama is that many teachers and school leaders think Black children aren’t supposed to learn. Which is sadly reflective of the bigotry the politicians in that state believe of anyone who isn’t White or Christian.

There are plenty of solutions to this problem, many of which have been outlined in previous essays and analyses on these pages. Given the resistance of the Trump Administration to advancing reform of school discipline, it will take reformers on the ground as well as advocates on the national to address these issues. Most importantly, though, ending this form of educational abuse requires changing the hearts and minds of those who work in the schools that serve Alabama’s Black children. That is a long-term fight that we must do. Especially in Alabama.

Comments Off on Bad Schools Alabama

St. Louis Fails Black Kids

On Friday, Black and Brown children in St. Louis learned, thanks to Circuit Court Judge Timothy Wilson, that a police officer can get away with murder and planting evidence even…

On Friday, Black and Brown children in St. Louis learned, thanks to Circuit Court Judge Timothy Wilson, that a police officer can get away with murder and planting evidence even if he is caught and admits to doing both. More importantly, they learned that their own lives, and that of their parents, don’t matter at all.

That day, they were told about the other murders of young Black men and others by rogue cops that have happened in America. Including the 2014 slaying of Michael Brown in Ferguson by now-former police officer Darren Wilson, for which justice will never come. They learned that justice doesn’t happen for people like them.

Then during the weekend, they saw their parents and other caring adults (including an elderly woman) arrested, tear-gassed, and assaulted by cops because of their protests against the verdict, which allowed former police officer Jason Stockley to get away with his 2011 murder of Anthony Lamar Smith.

They heard cops say “Whose streets? Our streets” as they arrested citizens who pay their salaries. They listened to acting Police Chief Lawrence O’Toole declare with pride that “Police owned tonight”. They learned that Mike Faulk of the Post-Dispatch was arrested, tear-gassed, with a foot on his head, because he did his job.

For Black children at Kirkwood High and other schools in the St. Louis area, protests aren’t just for the murder of young Black men by cops on city streets. [Photo courtesy of St. Louis Public Radio.]

They learned that as far as their local and state governments are concerned, their constitutional rights to free speech, assembly, and protest are meaningless. Because they are Black and Brown.

They found out that the protection of rogue policing is more-important than the lives of the people who are supposed to protected and served by law enforcement. Again, because they are Black and Brown.

They now realize that they must stand up and advocate as earlier generations have to ensure that the promises of liberty and freedom granted by the Founding Fathers are continuously extended to them and their kin. These lessons, by the way, are being learned by Black and other minority children elsewhere in America.

Which is why we must be gladdened by the news yesterday that teens at three local high schools — Kirkwood, Webster Groves and University City — walked out of their schools to protest the Stockley verdict.

But they were also protesting because of what has long been happening in the traditional districts they attend. Facts that can be seen in the most-recent statistics submitted by districts in the St. Louis area to the U.S. Department of Education.

As reformers, we must be as fierce for children in St. Louis as the men and women who have taken on rogue policing this week.

There’s the fact that in 2011-2012, the most-recent year available, the St. Louis District meted out one or more out-of-school suspensions to 31.9 percent of Black children under its care. [Your editor says most-recent because St. Louis never submitted its 2013-2014 Office for Civil Rights data to the federal government.] This rate is higher than the 28.3 percent of all children suspended district-wide, and the atrocious 15.1 percent of their White peers. Even worse, seven Black children were referred to law enforcement (and thus, put on the path to juvenile justice systems) by the district, a punitive step that wasn’t done to children from other backgrounds.

Black children in St. Louis are less-likely to be provided the college-preparatory courses they need for lifelong success.

Just 9.1 percent of Black high schoolers in the district took Advanced Placement Courses in 2011-2012. This is lower than the 13 percent rate district-wide and the 26.7 percent rate for White high school students. Just 3.6 percent of Black high school students took calculus, trigonometry, elementary analysis, analytic geometry, statistics, pre-calculus and other advanced mathematics that year. This is lower than the awful five percent average for the district as a whole and the low 10.5 percent rate for White classmates in the district.

What the St. Louis district is doing to children is unacceptable and immoral. But it isn’t the only one committing educational abuse and condemning Black children to the school-to-prison pipeline.

In the Kirkwood district, the epicenter of yesterday’s protest, officials meted out-of-school suspensions to 7.3 percent of Black children in the district. That’s three times the district-wide average of 2.3 percent and seven times the mere one percent of White students suspended. Just 22.1 percent of Black children took calculus and other advanced mathematics, a rate lower than the 26.8 percent district-wide average, and the 28.3 percent rate for White peers. Just 12.3 percent of Black high school students took AP courses, lower than the 26.9 percent rate district-wide and the 31 percent rate for White high schoolers.

The University City district meted out-of-school suspensions to 17.6 percent of Black children in 2011-2012. That is higher than the 15.6 percent average for the district, and the 4.5 percent rate for White students. Just 14 percent of Black high schoolers took advanced math, lower than the 17.7 percent rate district-wide and the 42 percent rate for White high school students. Just 5.1 percent of Black high schoolers — 37 of them — took AP courses, lower than the awfully low 9.2 percent district-wide average and the rate of 38.6 percent for White high schoolers.

Meanwhile the Webster Groves district meted out-of-school suspensions to 7.2 percent of Black students. That’s three times higher than the 2.5 percent average for the district overall, and the 1.3 percent suspension rate for White students. -[The district arrested or had referred to juvenile court equal numbers of Black and White kids that year. Twelve altogether.]  A mere 6.8 percent of Black high school students (23 Black children) took calculus and other advanced math courses, a rate far lower than the 20.5 percent rate district-wide and the rate of 25 percent for White high schoolers. Only 5.6 percent of Black high schoolers (19 teenagers) took AP courses, three times lower than the district-wide rate of 17.9 percent and the rate of 21.6 percent for White high school students.

These numbers aren’t shocking. As Dropout Nation reported just after the Ferguson protests three years ago, the Ferguson-Florissant district is also notorious for shortchanging Black children of high-quality education, overusing harsh traditional forms of school discipline, and turning schools into police zones. This includes arresting or referring to juvenile court two percent of its students — 268 children — in 2011-2012, as well as meting out-of-school suspensions to 13.3 percent of all students (including 15 percent of Black children) in the district.

Another awful district is the one in Normandy, whose academic malpractice has essentially made it something other than an educational going concern, meted out-of-school suspensions to 28.6 percent of children (including 28.9 percent of Black students) left in its care in 2011-2012. Just 12 high school students, all but two of them Black, took AP courses that year (that’s eight-tenths of one percent of the district’s high schoolers); another 52 students (including 46 Black children) took calculus, trigonometry and other advanced math that year, which means only 3.5 percent took those courses.

The good news, at least for some Black children and others, is that there are some high-quality charter schools from which they can flee the worst traditional public education in the district offers. But with only 52 open in the entire state, there aren’t enough for children to flee. Expanding school choice should be on the list for Missouri’s state leaders to do on the education front. This doesn’t just include adding charters or even launching a voucher program. Ending the gatekeeping of high-quality education within districts, which starts with teachers and guidance counselors keeping poor and minority children out of gifted-and-talented programs, would go a long way to increase the learning they need and deserve. Reformers nationally can support efforts in St. Louis and other communities to make these opportunities a reality.

Even with a massive expansion of high-quality choice, the need to address the overuses of harsh school discipline would remain. That is a problem. What happens in our schools ends up in our streets. When districts overuse harsh school discipline, they teach law enforcement outside schools that poor and minority children are only criminals. The lawlessness of police departments in the St. Louis area — and the evil they have shown toward the black people who live their and pay their wages — is mirrored by the unwillingness of those working within its schools to provide all kids with high-quality education. With the Trump Administration all but abandoning the previous administration’s efforts to end overuse of harsh discipline, reformers in St. Louis are teaming up with Black Lives Matter activists to push for better alternatives. Reformers in the rest of the nation should do the same — and even give allies in St. Louis a helping hand.

Our children in St. Louis deserve better lessons than the ones taught by courts and cops over the past few days. They also deserve high-quality education and to be able to go to school without worrying targeted as miscreants in the places that are their second homes.

Comments Off on St. Louis Fails Black Kids

The Confederacy of Illiteracy

The Great Migration of the early 20th century colonized some northern cities by descendants of enslaved Africans in search of better living conditions than those they had endured in the…

The Great Migration of the early 20th century colonized some northern cities by descendants of enslaved Africans in search of better living conditions than those they had endured in the former slave states of the south.  Some were successful in this endeavor, for a time.

Over the past couple of generations conditions for many African-Americans living in northern cities—from Buffalo to Cleveland—have worsened.  The realization that the promise of equality that was the “pull” of the migration (Jim Crow constituting the “push”), the realization that that promise was false, has focused attention on the failure of public education in those cities, the rise of mass incarceration, and the maintenance, if not strengthening, of segregation.

While contemplating the hypocrisy of responsible officials in, say, New York City, with their increasingly tiresome expressions of astonishment that their neighborhoods and schools have been segregated into inequality we should not forget the persistence of similar conditions in some of the core states of the Confederacy.

Old times are truly not forgotten in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina. In those states an average of just 15 percent of Black adults are allowed to attain enough education for a Bachelor’s degree or better, compared to an average of 26 percent for White residents of those states.  South Carolina is the champion in this matter, supporting 31 percent of its White adults in gaining that amount of education, but only the regional average of 15 percent for its Black residents.  At the other end of the educational attainment scale, the region leaves an average of 22 percent of its Black adults without any education qualifications whatsoever, but only 14 percent of its White adults are without high school diplomas.  The national averages for these measures are 30 percent for college graduates, 14 percent for those without high school diplomas.

In other words, these states educate White residents to U.S. national averages, leaving their Black residents in an educational condition not found elsewhere among the developed countries of the world.

Just like old times.

As a consequence, or, perhaps, just another part of the same effort at maintaining the status quo pro ante, the average Black family income in these states is just over $34,000, that of White families nearly $64,000.  Here the champion is Louisiana, with a $35,000 spread, the $68,000 White family income more than double that of Black families in the state. Hence the contrast, for example, between the Ninth Ward of New Orleans and that city’s Garden District.  The average poverty rate of White individuals in these states, 13 percent, is actually lower than the national average (16 percent), and, of course, less than half that of the 32 percent for Black “citizens”.  The poverty rate of South Carolina’s Black residents is three times that of their White neighbors.

Income is largely determined by education, at least among people who work for a living, rather than inheriting, say, real estate fortunes.  Given the racial disparities in educational attainment in these states, the racial disparities in income follow directly.  But how do these racial disparities in educational attainment come about?

A good way to accomplish this is to limit reading ability.  If a person is unable to read at, say, the level expected of middle school students in eighth grade, they are unlikely to learn much in their remaining school years, unlikely to earn a meaningful high school diploma (of which more below), unlikely to go to and graduate from college or to earn an income above the poverty level (see above).

Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina do well at this task.  The usual measure used for such comparisons is the National Assessment of Educational Progress’ eighth-grade results.  These bi-annual tests are reported out by the U.S. Department of Education as Below Basic (or functionally illiterate), Basic (reads with difficulty), Proficient (meets grade level expectations) and Advanced (hurrah!).  The NAEP reports include outcomes by race and whether or not a student’s family income makes them eligible for the National Lunch Program.

The dividing line between “eligible” and “ineligible” is a family income of about $44,000.  In Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina, about two-thirds of Black students and one-third of White students have family incomes low enough to make them eligible for the National Lunch Program. That is something to keep in mind as we look at reading achievement scores in these states.

First, the overall percentage of Black students in these states who read well enough in eighth grade to be assessed by NAEP as “Proficient or Above” is 11 percent.  That is, nearly 90 percent either read eighth grade material with difficulty or not really at all.  Thirty-four percent of White students in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina are assessed as “Proficient or Above” when they are tested on eighth grade reading. As a matter of interest, the national percentage for all students in public schools is 33 percent. The schools in these states manage to teach only one-third the percentage of their Black students to read at the national average for all students or as they do for their White students.  The champion here is Mississippi, which teaches necessary reading skills to four times the percentage of White students as Black students.

We can look a little more deeply into this.  Among the two-thirds of Black students in these states whose family incomes are below the National Lunch Program cut-off, on average just nine percent are taught to read fluently, as compared to 25 percent of the one-third of White students from families with those low incomes. Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina have a tight range of these scores for White students from relatively impoverished families: 24 percent to 26 percent.  Despite that, Mississippi is the clear winner, with an 18 percent point spread between the seven percent of its Black students and 25 percent of its White students scoring at the Proficient or Above levels.

Among the one-third of Black students from more prosperous families, 22 percent are brought to the level expected of eighth graders, compared to 41 percent of the two-thirds of White students from prosperous families.  Here, it is South Carolina that is the definite winner in the inequality competition with a 23 percent point spread, based on a remarkable 46 percent record with its White students from comparatively prosperous families.  Perhaps these racial differences among students from families with similar incomes have something to do with differing qualities of education on offer.  Just a thought.

The final step in the public schools toward educational attainment typical of that in developed countries is high school graduation. For the nation as a whole, the graduation rate for Black students is 75 percent, that for White students 88 percent.

Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina report that an average of 78 percent of their Black students graduate, as do 86 percent of their White students.  This is remarkable, considering that only 11 percent of their Black students and 34 percent of their White students could read at grade level in middle school and just 15 percent of the former and 26 percent of the latter turn out to be well enough prepared to continue on to a college degree.

The regional outlier in these matters is Georgia.  That state, with a similar history of slavery, Civil War devastation, Jim Crow and “massive resistance” to school integration, exhibits socio-economic and education indicators remarkably close to national averages.  Educational attainment for Black adults (23 percent B.A. or above) is slightly higher than the national average of 20 percent.  Median income for Black families is about the same as the national average for Black families and the poverty rate is lower.

Sixteen percent of Georgia’s Black students in eighth grade are brought to grade level in reading, compared to the national average of 15 percent for Black students, and the percentage of Black students eligible for the National Lunch Program reading at grade level (12 percent) is identical to the national average for eligible Black students.  The percentage of African-American students who are ineligible for the National Lunch Program, those from middle class families is 31 percent. That is quite a bit higher than the national average for this group of 26 percent.

It is probably not great praise to observe that Georgia does not do worse than most states in attempting to overcome the heritage of slavery and Jim Crow, but Georgia’s record is certainly notable in contrast to the disgrace of its neighbors.  It shows what can be done and the challenges that remain.

Comments Off on The Confederacy of Illiteracy

Walter Scott and School Reform

Yesterday’s mistrial in the proceedings against former North Charleston Police Officer Michael Slager for murdering Walter Scott wasn’t shocking. After all, the jury had announced the Friday before that one…

Yesterday’s mistrial in the proceedings against former North Charleston Police Officer Michael Slager for murdering Walter Scott wasn’t shocking. After all, the jury had announced the Friday before that one juror declined to find Slager guilty. Just as importantly, even in cases such as that of Scott in which there is irrefutable videotaped evidence of rogue policing, jurors rarely find cops guilty for misconduct and wrongfully using deadly force. Considering that cases such as that of Scott and Eric Garner (whose murderer, New York City Police Officer Daniel Pantaleo, was allowed to go free by a grand jury) are rarely adjudicated, it is amazing that Slager was indicted at all. The good news, if that can be claimed, is that at least six people thought Slager should be convicted — and that the district attorney in the case will retry him again.

this_is_dropout_nation_logoAll that said, it is impossible to understate the pain Scott’s family is going through. They lost their loved one in what should be the enjoyable years of middle age all because Slager, who had already been cited in two complaints for abusive behavior with tasers, decided to stop him for a broken brake light, then murder him in broad daylight. Slager brutally slain a man for no reason other than for his own ego — and for that, he deserves nothing less than God’s judgement and prison time. And Scott’s family continues to need our prayers for them to find justice and peace beyond understanding.

For communities black and brown, the mistrial was just another reminder that their chances of gaining any measure of human justice, especially when they are victimized by rogue police officers, is slim to none. It is also a reminder that black men often take the brunt of harm in their interactions with law enforcement; numerous studies, including the controversial analysis from Harvard’s Roland Fryer, have shown consistently that cops are more-likely to be stop and subject black men to harsh force regardless of incident than they are against white peers. Which puts black men at higher risk of ending up in body bags.

What does the Slager mistrial have to do with school reformers? Plenty. As I wrote two years ago, you can’t proclaim to be a champion for all children if you are not championing them at all times. After all, you can only reach people when your care and consideration for the matters of their greatest concern. Just as importantly, the school reform movement cannot sustain its efforts without support from communities who are also dealing with the other issues that result from (and contribute to) low-quality education.

As you already know, there are many in the school reform movement who disagree with this assessment. Within this year alone, folks such as Robert Pondiscio of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute have complained that efforts by peers to support criminal justice reform — especially the Black Lives Matter movement that emerged in 2014 after the murder of Michael Brown — is essentially an effort to push conservative reformers out of school reform altogether. For folks like him, the emergence of civil rights-oriented reformers into the vanguard essentially crowds out the more-conservative thinking that has long-dominated the movement.

Other conservative reformers such as Jay P. Greene argue that even discussing Black Lives Matter and social justice issues causes division when the focus should only be on transforming education. As far as Greene and his colleagues are concerned, the last thing reformers need to do is engage in discussing matters on which there is no consensus and therefore, becomes harder to rally support for solutions to the nation’s education crisis.

As far as Pondiscio’s argument is concerned, there isn’t really more to say other than you can’t call for ideological diversity (as he has) and then complain when you get it. As Pondiscio’s former colleague at Fordham, Kathleen Porter-Magee, rightfully argues, embracing new voices and new ideas is critical to systemic reform. More importantly, we should be as morally concerned about stopping state-sanctioned racism civil rights against black and brown children and their families as we are about failure mills that also damage their lives and futures.

As for Greene’s point: It is pure nonsense. One of the most-interesting aspects of the criminal justice reform movement is that it has been as championed by many conservatives and libertarians (including Radley Balko of the Washington Post, Jonathan Blanks of the Cato Institute, Congressman Justin Amash, and Atlantic Monthly‘s Conor Friedensdorf) as it has been by progressives and Black Lives Matter activists. Cato, in particular, is holding a conference this week tackling such issues as mass incarceration and militarization of police departments (including those harming children in our schools).

Supporting the work of Black Lives Matter and other criminal justice reform advocates is one key way reformers can help our children live beyond their days in school.If conservatives and libertarians who spend little time on education can find common cause with Black Lives Matter activists, why can’t those who are primarily concerned with building brighter futures for children?

Meanwhile there is another reason why reformers should work together with criminal justice reform advocates that has become more-important than ever: The threat to the movement’s very aims posed by the incoming administration of Donald Trump.

As Dropout Nation has argued repeatedly last month, the President-Elect’s appointment of longtime reformer Betsy DeVos as U.S. Secretary of Education (as well as the association of some conservative reformers with the transition) threatens to associate the laudable goal of helping poor and minority families gain access to high-quality educational opportunities with an incoming administration already associated with bigotry, nativism, and anti-Semitism. This isn’t just a threat to choice. The success of the movement itself continues to depend on a bipartisan and socioeconomically diverse coalition that includes progressives, Centrist Democrats, and black civil rights activists for whom bigotry against children black and brown is a major concern.

Tackling criminal justice reform — which will be opposed at every turn by the incoming Trump Administration — is an important way to signal bipartisanship as well as show poor and minority communities that we will stand up for them.

This isn’t to say that reformers shouldn’t focus most of their time on transforming American public education. That is paramount. But there are plenty of ways reformers can partner with criminal justice reform advocates on addressing the rogue policing and criminalization of lives black and brown that affect the lives of our children as much as laggard and criminally abusive teachers.

As your editor noted yesterday in the analysis of National Education Association’s political spending, the union has figured out that putting a little money toward something as simple as a ballot initiative can win allies among progressives for their cause of defending their influence over education policymaking. Reformers can do similar things. Write letters in support of legislation calling for abolishing the use of grand juries in use of deadly force cases. Back ballot measures on such criminal justice reform matters as the use of traffic tickets (which necessitate traffic stops) to generate revenue for municipal coffers. Even endorse criminal reform-minded candidates running for district attorney posts and state legislative seats.

Reformers can also work together with criminal justice reform advocates on addressing the prominent role American public education plays in putting kids on the path to prison.

Remember this: Schools account for three out of every 10 status cases referred to juvenile courts in 2011, the second-highest source of referrals after law enforcement, according to data from the U.S. Department of Justice. This is particularly problematic because juvenile court judges are ill-equipped to deal with matters that should be handled by schools, and juvenile jails are often beset by incidents of sexual assault and other abuse. Reformers can easily work with Black Lives Matter activists and others to reduce (if not end altogether) the number of children put on the path to courtrooms and jails.

One way to do this: End the overuse of harsh traditional school discipline. Decades of studies from researchers such as Russell Skiba of Indiana University have determined that overuse of suspensions are harmful to student achievement, especially for children from poor and minority households (including black students) who disproportionately suspended at higher rates (and often for minor offenses) than white peers. When districts over-suspend poor and minority children, they perpetuate perceptions among law enforcement and the wider community that black and Latino children are only criminals. Just as importantly, as Dropout Nation has noted time and time and time again, the overuse of harsh school discipline allows lets teachers and school leaders off the hook for their failures to address underlying issues such as illiteracy that lead to children acting out.

Supporting solutions on this front — from new concepts such as restorative justice, to existing efforts such as overhauling how we recruit, train, and evaluate teachers, even to recruiting and supporting talented collegians and mid-career professionals of minority backgrounds to work with kids who look like them — help children both in and out of school.

Reformers can even help criminal justice reform advocates by sharing the lessons they have learned about tackling teacher quality and contract issues. This is already happening. The police union contract database developed by Campaign Zero, the outfit formed by the cadre of Black Lives Matter activists that include Deray McKesson and Brittany Packnett, is modeled in part off National Council on Teacher Quality’s famed TR3 database. Reformers can use their experiences in developing alternative teacher training regimes to help their counterparts address how cops are recruited and trained — a key culprit behind the murders of Scott, Tamir Rice, and other black lives.

Now, more than ever, reformers have opportunities to work hand-in-hand with other advocates in building brighter futures for all of our children. It is our moral duty to ensure that our children grow up with the knowledge they need for success in adulthood — and can live safely in their communities without threat by police officers consumed by dark desires to engage in thuggery, bigotry, and venality.

Comments Off on Walter Scott and School Reform

Milwaukee: America’s Syria

Aleppo, once, but perhaps not still, the largest city in Syria, is divided into one section occupied by President Assad’s government of Syria and another besieged section.  Recently, Russian airplanes…

Aleppo, once, but perhaps not still, the largest city in Syria, is divided into one section occupied by President Assad’s government of Syria and another besieged section.  Recently, Russian airplanes have been bombing the latter, causing deaths and immense suffering to children as well as adults. The story runs on the news, worldwide, every day.  The United Nations and other entities are in nearly continuous session to consider what can be done.

this_is_dropout_nation_logoMilwaukee, the largest city in Wisconsin, is divided as starkly into two sections: one White, one non-White. According to one of a recent series of articles in The New York Times, schools in metropolitan Milwaukee “are as segregated now as they were in 1965. Nearly three in four black students attend schools where at least 90 percent of the students are not white . . . Only 15.7 percent of Milwaukee Public School students tested proficient in reading in 2013-14, and 20.3 percent in math . . . Nearly one out of every eight black men in Milwaukee County has served time behind bars . . . The black unemployment rate in Milwaukee County is 20 percent, nearly three times greater than for white people.”

That sounds familiar.  Nearly three years ago, in a Dropout Nation essay, I compared Milwaukee to Mississippi. The bad news is that Mississippi came out better. Back then, I pointed out such data as:

  • More than 40 percent of Black families with children in Milwaukee had incomes below the poverty line.
  • The median household income of Black families in Milwaukee was $26,600. The poverty line for a family of four in Wisconsin was $23,550.
  • Seventy percent of male Black students in Milwaukee scored at the Below Basic level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress Grade 8 Reading examination. For most purposes that meant they couldn’t read.
  • Of the 3,100 male Black students in grade 9 in the 2007-08 school year in Milwaukee, 1,300 made it to grade 12 by 2010-11 (42 percent).
  • Wisconsin’s incarceration rate for Black people was 4,416 per 100,000, ten times the rate at which it imprisoned White people.

Some things have improved. The percentage of male Black eighth-graders in Milwaukee schools who can read at grade level has increased from three percent to four percent.  At this rate, most Black male eighth-graders will be able to read at grade level by the year 2100, give or take a few years.

On the other hand, of the 2,506 Black male ninth-graders in the 2010-11 school year, 1,004 made it to senior year of high school by 2013-14 (a drop from 42 percent to 40 percent). At that rate, by the year 2100 no male Black students would be promoted from freshman to senior year.

The percentage of Black families with children with incomes below the poverty line has increased from 40 percent to 47 percent. The median household income for Black families in Milwaukee has declined to $24,967 (just above the current poverty line for a family of four of $24,300).

The Times article emphasized housing segregation, using as its human interest hook an affluent Black family to illustrate the ghettoization of Black families achieved by redlining of loans and White hostility.  A nearly simultaneous Boston Globe op-ed focused on the way that now-Governor Scott Walker has manipulated mass transit to isolate Black residents of Milwaukee and increase Black unemployment.  There is little or no access to mass transit for Black residents of Milwaukee and, as Lois Quinn and her colleagues at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, have demonstrated for years, driving while Black in the area is a gateway to mass incarceration.

Milwaukee is not Aleppo. County Sheriff Clarke is not President Assad. Governor Walker is not Putin. It is more banal than that. Black men in Milwaukee have faced incarceration and unemployment as normal events for many years now.  Black families have been forced to live in restricted and deteriorating neighborhoods as a matter of routine.  Black children have been forced into schools that do not educate them—for many years now.  This goes on, year after year.  It is normal.  No conferences are called.  Unless there is violence, as there was recently, occasioning the articles in the Times and the Globe, there are no headlines in the mainstream media.

When will something be done? What is to be done?  Who is to do it?

Speaking of President Putin, about ten years ago he crushed a rebellion in the region of Chechnya, killing large numbers of people and leveling the city of Grozny, which was then rebuilt, sparing no expense. One can imagine Governor Walker sending uniformed forces into Milwaukee with Ferguson-style armored vehicles. One can imagine the Black neighborhoods of the city burning.  However, one cannot imagine Governor Walker and his supporters subsequently rebuilding those neighborhoods, improving the schools, ending redlining and mass incarceration.

They have had plenty of time to do those things. It is quite evident that they like things the way they are.

Comments Off on Milwaukee: America’s Syria

Type on the field below and hit Enter/Return to search