Coverage of the Reform of American Public Education

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Reformers Can Help Fulfill the Dream

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There has been some important news on the future of the 780,000 undocumented immigrant children, young adults and even teachers protected from deportation under the now-cancelled Deferred Action for Childhood…

There has been some important news on the future of the 780,000 undocumented immigrant children, young adults and even teachers protected from deportation under the now-cancelled Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and now facing the possibility of being removed from the country they have called home for nearly their entire lives. That news should rally school reformers to do more to help the Dreamers who are in our schools and teaching in classrooms — and stand up against a political regime engaged in what can best be called low-grade ethnic cleansing.

First came yesterday’s ruling by a U.S. District Court Judge in Brooklyn that, along with a ruling handed down earlier this month, halts the Trump Administration’s effort to fully shut down the program. In the case, Vidal et. al. v. Nielsen, Judge Nicholas Garaufis ruled that the plaintiffs, which include TK Dreamers under threat of deportation, will likely win their effort to stop the cancellation of DACA because the regime didn’t offer “legally adequate reasons” to do so.

In his injunction, Garaufis found that the Trump Administration’s main justifications for ending DACA — that it would be found unconstitutional if challenged in court by a group of attorneys general that had threatened a lawsuit over the initiative, and that it violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the Immigration and Naturalization Act — were “legally erroneous” and were based on faulty interpretations of both laws. Just as importantly, the administration’s own files prove lie to those justifications; essentially, the judge found that the regime was making things up as it went along. Finally, as Garaufis points out, the fact that the Trump Administration cannot reconcile its argument that DACA would be found unconstitutional (and places the federal government at “litigation risk”) and still continue to operate certain aspects of DACA; either it had to shut down the program entirely or keep it operating and find another justification for shutting it down.

You can expect the Trump administration to appeal the ruling as it has the similar injunction handed down last month by U.S. District Judge William Alsup in University of California v. Department of Homeland Security. Nor does the ruling help those Dreamers whose protections from deportation have already expired; they are probably unable to reapply for those protections because their deadlines have already passed. But it can help those Dreamers still covered under DACA even after March, when the administration planned to end the program altogether.

The bigger and more-important play is happening on the floor of the U.S. Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, in his usual unwillingness to lead, has allowed a free-for-all debate on immigration policy that has often added more-confusion over matters than anything concrete.

The Trump Administration has already staked its ground, calling for Congressional Republicans to support a proposal from Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley that would allow Dreamers (including an additional one million who could either not qualify for DACA or didn’t apply out of fear of being tracked down and deported if an administration decided to cancel it) to gain citizenship after 12 years after meeting a series of steps that include gaining a higher education credential and not getting a criminal record. It is essentially a version of the immigration restriction plan Trump proposed last month.

As it was the case last month, Congressional Democrats and some Republicans, including Arizona’s Jeff Flake and John McCain, have already balked at the Grassley plan because of the restrictions and because Dreamers who have already spent their entire lives in this country shouldn’t have to wait another 12 years to become citizens. It has also been rejected by nativists among Congressional Republicans who want to do even more to keep out Latino, Asian and African (in short, non-White and non-European) emigres from becoming part of the American Dream. They would prefer a plan offered two months ago by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, which would be even more-restrictive than what Grassley has offered.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, in his unwillingness to lead, has brought even more chaos to the discussion around helping DACA youth.

Meanwhile the other plans being offered up — including bills that would simply focus on giving Dreamers the citizenship status that nearly all of them have rightfully earned by being good citizens in all but paper — face tough odds of passage. Which isn’t shocking. Over the past two decades, thanks to opposition to expansive immigration as well as political machinations by both parties geared towards denying political victories for both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, little movement has been made on either granting Dreamers citizenship or addressing the immigration system itself, which is a legacy of America’s racialism and bigotry toward Asians, Eastern European Jews and the Irish (who were deemed too Catholic and loyal to the Pope to be sufficiently American).

With the future of Dreamers needlessly in flux, there’s a need for all Americans to stand up and fight for youth who have been Americans and good citizens in all but name. The school reform movement, in particular, can help in some important ways.

At the national level, there are already reform outfits such as Teach For America, Emerson Collective and the Education Trust who have actively advocated for Dreamers to gain the citizenship they deserve. Yet as I have noted on Monday and over the past few months, the movement itself hasn’t done enough on their behalf. Given that 606,000 of DACA youth (both eligible and already covered) are in elementary, secondary and postsecondary schools (and another 9,000 are teaching children in classrooms), it is absolutely immoral for reformers to not fight for them. That it is also the politically savvy thing to do (you know, a way to win allies for transforming American public education) is also true. But first and foremost, do right for children.

One simple and easy reformers, especially Beltway players, can help out: Sign onto to letters and petitions being circulated on Capitol Hill by outfits such as United We Dream; a simple call or e-mail to these groups to become signatories is easy to do. [Calling up Teach For America to help with its efforts also makes sense.] Reform outfits with stronger connections to Congress, including National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, can do more by sending letters and asking their members to call their senators and representatives to demand a reasonable (that is, not 12 years of hoops) path to citizenship. They can even bring up the issue during meetings with congressional staffers during day visits to Capitol Hill. On a financial level, individual reformers and organizations can support efforts such as the Journey to Stay Home, a march from New York City to Washington, D.C., to bring further attention to the individual plight of Dreamers.

What about on the ground? There are things that can be done. Charter school operators who have DACA youth (as well as children of undocumented emigres) can take the step of being sanctuaries for those children. This means not cooperating with ICE cops in their inquiries as well as keeping watch for attempts by immigration officers to round up parents and children in front of their schools. Traditional districts such as Chicago Public Schools have already taken similar steps. Reformers working in communities can also talk to immigration rights activists about how they can provide support and cover on the ground.

The most-important thing reformers can do for DACA youth and other Dreamers is to stand up, speak up, and be counted. As individuals, you can write to your senators and representatives and ask them to defend Dreamers by supporting legislation that focuses solely on their path to citizenship. If you work in schools and know a Dreamer, let them know that you have their back. Within your organizations, make the case for leadership to stand up and be counted; how can an outfit be a credible advocate for kids when it isn’t working for all of them?

Champions for children must stand up at all times for every child no matter who they are. The time to defend the lives and futures of Dreamers is now.

 

Featured photo courtesy of NBC News.

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School Leadership

Betsy DeVos’ Silence is Deafening

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Last night, during his State of the Union Address, the current Occupant of the White House did what he almost always does when it comes to undocumented immigrant children and…

Last night, during his State of the Union Address, the current Occupant of the White House did what he almost always does when it comes to undocumented immigrant children and the native-born offspring of undocumented (and even documented) immigrant parents: He denigrated them.

The mother of four who serves Trump as U.S. Secretary of Education, an avowed Christian charged with transforming American public education as well as defending the futures and lives of those very children and youth, sat there, tacitly agreeing with every profanity he lodged against them and their communities.

Given her past record, this is certainly not shocking. But it also shouldn’t be this way. This silence in the face of demagoguery, this acquiescence to policies, practices and ideas geared toward harming our most-vulnerable children and the communities who love them, is one more example of how Elizabeth Prince DeVos is unqualified to lead in American public education.

Contrary to the statement of American Enterprise Institute scholar (and Maryland State Board of Education President) Andrew Smarick, there was a lot of awfulness about Trump’s speech, both in its delivery and its rhetoric. Elizabeth Bruenig of the Washington Post astutely noted that his speech was little more than a litany of “ethnically-inflected nationalism”, that consisted of “scapegoating” and appeals to “creating thick borders between us and them so that we will feel more like an us.” As Dropout Nation readers already know, Trump and is ilk think mothers, fathers, and children who aren’t White or of European descent are the ‘them’ that need to be cleansed from American society.

The fact that Trump didn’t offer much in the way of a thought on education — other than touting vocational education programs long used to keep poor and minority children from high-quality college-preparatory education (as well as fail in terms of addressing the reality that the knowledge needed for success in traditional colleges are also needed for success in technical schools and apprenticeships run by community colleges) — was the only comforting thing about it. Because he didn’t tar systemic reform with his endorsement.

But the worst of his vitriol was reserved for immigrants regardless of legal status.

Trump wrongfully argued that America’s immigration laws, a dysfunctional messy legacy of racial, ethnic and religious bigotry, allows too many emigres to sponsor “unlimited numbers of relatives for citizenship when, in fact, they can only spouses, children, parents and siblings (and even for the last group, it can take as long as 20 years to gain legal entry in the first place). He also claimed that the immigration system’s so-called “visa lottery” — which actually involves a background check, an interview and requirements such as having a high school diploma or two years of training in a high-skilled job — doesn’t have any requirements for entry.

Trump also insinuated that undocumented emigres were little more than criminals. This  prominently mentioning MS-13, the gang originally formed in Los Angeles, Calif., that has become a menace to Central American nations since the early 1990s thanks to U.S. foreign and immigration policies (including deporting its members to Central American nations such as Honduras and El Salvador) that have led to more people from those nations (including so-called Border Children that several Congressional Republicans have denigrated) fleeing to our shores. Despite the fact that most MS-13 members are native-born Americans, Trump still claimed that they were an invading horde because of supposedly open borders.

Betsy DeVos has been a silent and willing collaborator in Trump’s bigotry against Black, Brown, and immigrant children as well as their families and communities.

Even worse than that, Trump insinuated throughout his speech that Dreamers, the 780,000 children, youth, and young adults (including 9,000 teachers working in classrooms) who now face deportation thanks to his move last September to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, weren’t worthy of protection or even contributors to American society. This included his declaration that “Americans are dreamers too”, essentially arguing that only native-born Americans are worthy of consideration He also doubled down on the proposal his administration issued last week, which would only allow Dreamers to gain citizenship after a cumbersome 12 year process– even though most of the youths have already been in this country all but a few years of their lives, end up gainfully employed as adults, and been citizens of this country in all but paper.

There was nothing in Trump’s speech that acknowledged how Dreamers working in our traditional public, charter and private schools (including those recruited by Teach For America) are helping native-born and immigrant children gain the knowledge they need for lifelong success. Not one word accepting the reality that America has always been a nation of immigrants, men and women who, despite state-sanctioned bigotry (which always extended to the descendants of enslaved Africans as well as American Indians and Alaska Natives already on this soil), managed to be contributors to the nation’s political, social and economic fabric. What he did instead is engage in even more of his bigoted demagoguery, doubling down on his nasty statements about immigrants made earlier this month during a meeting to work out a deal to help Dreamers gain citizenship.

What did DeVos do while Trump smeared the immigrant children under her watch and the emigres who teach in schools? Nothing. Last night, she issued one statement focused on a meeting she will have with the Occupant today. Then this morning, she issued another, calling on Congress to “to act in the best interest of students and expand access to more education pathways“, a nice way of she wants to keep poor and minority children from accessing traditional higher education and gaining college-preparatory learning.

Sad. Immoral. But not shocking. Because this isn’t the first time Betsy DeVos has had little to say about President Donald Trump’s bigotry.

As chair of the American Federation for Children, she was silent after he won the Presidential election back in November 2016. Instead of demanding that he apologize for his rank demagoguery against immigrant and minority children during his campaign, she declared  that she would work with him.

When Trump nominated her to become Secretary of Education, she neither refused his invitation nor called on him to recant his bigotry nor sought to distance herself from his nastiness. Again, she said nothing at all, and, in fact, appeared at one of his events celebrating his victory.

Months later, when Trump false claimed that White Supremacists participating in the Unite the Right terrorism in Charlottesville, Va. were only partly responsible for the violence that resulted, DeVos, now firmly in her job as Secretary of Education, still said nothing. Save for a memo to her staff that condemns bigotry, she stayed silent.

A month later, when the administration announced that it was ending DACA and putting undocumented immigrant children, youth and adults on the path to deportation, DeVos and her minions at the Department of Education offered nothing in the way of a plan to help them. She kept her silence while proceeding to scale back the agency’s role in protecting the civil rights of poor and minority children.

DeVos only seems willing to speak out when it comes to denigrating systemic reform, especially when it comes to the focus on stemming achievement gaps and protecting the civil rights of children. But when it comes to defending children, especially those targeted by the Trump regime, she utters nothing and proves her complicity in the administration’s efforts at low-grade ethnic cleansing.

Of course, DeVos hasn’t been alone in her silence in the face of Trump’s bigotry. Far too many erstwhile school reformers have been all too willing to say nothing. Rick Hess and his team at the American Enterprise Institute, along with other conservative school reformers, have spent more time being the amen corner for DeVos and the administration than being moral champions for our most-vulnerable children.

Save for civil rights-oriented reformers, a few in the conservative and centrist Democrat camps such as former Thomas B. Fordham Institute President Chester Finn Jr., and, most-notably, Education Trust, Emerson Project, and Teach For America (the latter of which has been criticized for its steadfast support for Dreamers), other camps within the movement have stood idly by or have chosen to focus on other things. This is especially clear from weak and lackluster responses from reformers before and after yesterday’s State of the Union Address.

For a number of reasons, including an unwillingness to work with traditionalists such as the American Federation of Teachers (which has also been steadfast in defending DACA youth), they have offered little support for helping undocumented immigrant children, either on the policy front or on the ground in places such as Philadelphia, where they face the risk of detention and deportation just for trying to gain knowledge they need and deserved.

All of these reformers deserve shame. But DeVos, whose family remains a major player in subsidizing the movement, should be especially ashamed. By being more-concerned about ideology and agenda than about defending every child no matter who they are, she has made mockery of her professed faith, violated God’s Commandments (especially in the Beatitudes), and denigrated what was once a respectable legacy of expanding public charter schools and other forms of school choice. Like any Christian, DeVos is supposed to be a living sanctuary, not the tool of evil men. As Jesus Christ, who commanded all of us to do for the least of us, the Children of God, would not approve.

Each and every day, DeVos continues to prove that she is unfit for her office. Yesterday was just another example. For shame!

 

Featured photo courtesy of the New Yorker.

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Three Thoughts

Rosa Maria’s Challenge for School Reform

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A lot of people will be talking about the indictment of Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort and his former business partner, Rick Gates, on charges of money laundering…

A lot of people will be talking about the indictment of Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort and his former business partner, Rick Gates, on charges of money laundering and failure to register as foreign agents on behalf of Ukranian and Russian interests. After all, the move by Special Counsel Robert Mueller on that front, along with the guilty plea by George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy advisor to Trump during his successful run for president, are the first steps in what might end up being Trump’s impeachment for colluding with the Russian government in its alleged effort to influence the 2016 presidential election.

But your editor is far more concerned about how the current Occupant of the White House’s regime is harming the life of a 10-year-old undocumented emigre child with cerebral palsy who was detained last week in the midst of a medical emergency. That case is the latest example of how the Trump Administration’s goal of harming the lives of poor and minority children — and another reason why reformers from all sides must stand against the administration’s abuse.

The child, named Rosa Maria Hernandez, was detained by the Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Patrol on her way to emergency surgery for a ruptured gall bladder. The child, who was brought to the country as a three-month-old in order to get better healthcare than she could in Mexico, suffers from a level of cognitive disability that renders her more like a four-year-old than a child in the fourth grade. Even though the Trump Administration has the discretion to let Rosa stay at home with her family in Laredo, Texas, in order to recover from the surgery —  and despite having a cognitive disability that renders her unable to protect herself from the kinds of sexual and physical abuses that happen in immigration jails — it decided instead to detain her in a jail 156 miles away in San Antonio, from which she will likely be sent to a country that she has never known.

As you would expect, Rosa’s case has attracted media attention as well as the presence of the American Civil Liberties Union, which now represents her. It has demanded the Trump Administration to release Rosa from jail within the next 24 hours or find itself facing another of many suits it has filed over the regime’s denial of due process for (and criminal abuse of) undocumented emigres. The administration, having been willing to engage in propaganda campaigns instigated by former Homeland Administration Secretary (and now White House Chief of Staff) John Kelly that smear undocumented emigres as “rapists” and “bad hombres”, and has sparred with congressional leaders such as Florida Rep. Frederica Wilson over the president’s insensitivity to the widows of servicemen killed in action, has shown no willingness to back down.

The Trump Administration is keeping Rosa Maria from her mother and father at a time she when needs them the most.

Given Rosa Maria’s condition, what the Trump Administration has done to her and her family is morally unacceptable. Yet it is the norm for this regime.

President Donald Trump himself has made nativism and White Supremacy the hallmarks of his tenure in the White House — and his demagoguery has been on display long before he ran for the presidency. On the campaign trail, he accused Mexican immigrants, undocumented and legal, of being “rapists” and “bad hombres”; embraced conspiratorial rhetoric from the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion in a speech given a month before his victory; denigrating the family of a dead soldier who was also a Muslim; and accusing Gonzalo Curiel, a federal judge presiding over a case involving one of his business of being biased against him because of his Mexican heritage.

Since taking office, Trump’s efforts against immigrants and refugees has continued unabated.This includes the executive orders banning Muslims from several countries from entering the country; to the repeal of the Obama Administration’s executive order requiring traditional districts and other public school operators to allow transgendered children to use bathrooms of the sex with which they identify; to the round-ups and deportations of undocumented immigrants who contribute greatly to the nation’s economy; to even claiming in July that Mexican emigres wanted to take young women and “slice them and dice them with a knife because they want them to go through excruciating pain before they die.”

The major step came last month when the Trump Administration ended Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama-era initiative that protected 760,000 children, youth and young adults (including 20,000 teachers working in America’s classrooms) brought to the country as children from deportation. Since then, the Trump Administration has worked to frustrate efforts by DACA recipients in states affected by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma to register under the program for protection.

By ending DACA, Trump signaled clearly that his low-grade ethnic cleansing would extend to the most-vulnerable, boys and girls who have only known America as their home. Helpless children in the midst of learning now being told by the federal government and by the Trump regime that they are undeserving of being treated humanely like the Children of God and members of the Family of Man that they are. Teachers helping poor and minority children gain the knowledge they need for lifelong success being tossed from this country just because their parents brought them here to have better lives and be builders of this nation. Collegians who will be the nation’s future leaders and builders of society kicked out because they aren’t White or native.

But the Trump Administration hasn’t limited its bigotry to immigrant children. Through the U.S. Department of Education, the regime is working hard not to enforce its civil rights obligation to poor and minority children in American public education. This includes a move to limit evidence that can be used by investigators in determining if districts and charter school operators are overusing such harsh discipline as out-of-school suspensions and solitary confinement.

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has been a collaborator in the Trump regime’s agenda against poor and minority children.

Last week, Politico reported that the administration planned on delaying or eliminating a rule enacted under the Obama Administration that requires districts to limit the number of Black children condemned to the nation’s special education ghettos (and denied opportunities for the high-quality education they need and deserve). By delaying or eliminating the rule, DeVos and Trump would give districts and other school operators free reign to use special ed as a way to not address the literacy issues of young Black men and others, setting back an important part of the school reform effort George W. Bush began in the last decade.

Meanwhile the administration hasn’t lifted a finger on behalf of the 8.9 million poor children who were receiving health care through the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program after Congress let the authorizing legislation expire last month. Without CHIP, those children will now lose out on medical treatments that allow them to thrive in school and make it to adulthood.

Now comes the case of Rosa Maria and her plight in a San Antonio immigration prison. Once again, the Trump Administration has proven that it will do ill to even those children who are disabled all because of who they are and who gave birth to them.

Plenty of reformers, from Teach to America to TNTP, have condemned the Trump Administration’s other actions against poor and minority children. There are still others who remain silent. Particularly among conservative reformers (including those with ties to DeVos and her philanthropies), it is much-easier to change the subject than it is to confront the reality of this administration’s evil towards children for whom they proclaim concern.For them, the case of Rosa Maria should serve as the last straw and should push them to condemn the administration.

Certainly reformers can’t spend the bulk of their time on immigration reform. But they can sign on to the ACLU’s letter demanding her release and ultimately, a path towards citizenship for her and her family. They can go further and demand that DeVos weigh in by expressing support for a plan to help DACA emigres gain the citizenship they deserve.

Finally, those who haven’t actively condemned Trump’s bigotry should do so. If they can take time to castigate traditionalists for defending the superclusters in American public education that fail Black and Brown children daily, they can also denounce an administration that wants to further those failures.

Rosa Maria deserves better. So do other poor and minority children. The time to call out the Trump Administration for its evil is now.

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Three Thoughts

Protect Our Immigrant Children

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As you already know, the Trump Administration has declared open war on undocumented immigrant children and their families, as well as the 5.9 million native-born children of emigres to this…

As you already know, the Trump Administration has declared open war on undocumented immigrant children and their families, as well as the 5.9 million native-born children of emigres to this country who fled economic despair, political oppression and violent crime. For the school reform movement, it is another reminder of why we must fight harder to oppose what the regime is doing (and plans to do) to our most-vulnerable children and their families.

President Donald Trump made clear his bigotry toward Latino children (as well as his contempt for the rule of law) last Friday night when when he pardoned former Maricopa County (Ariz.) Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The disgraced law enforcement official, whose long list of misdeeds includes failing to investigate alleged sexual assaults of undocumented emigres (including the molestation of 32 children), was convicted this month of contempt of court for violating a federal court order to stop discriminatory profiling of Latinos (including those native-born and undocumented who had no criminal record) to ascertain their citizenship status.

By pardoning Arpaio, Trump gives rogue cops and police departments the carte blanche to engage in criminal abuse of immigrants as well as blessed all kinds of police brutality and other violations of civil liberties of all Americans. Given the wide criticism he received over the last two weeks for failing to condemn White Supremacists who committed murder and mayhem earlier this month in Charlottesville, Va., the pardon is also a clear sign of where his administration stands when it comes to the federal role of protecting the civil rights of poor and minority communities.

Arpaio’s pardon comes on the heels of new reports that the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents are engaging in all kinds of roguery.

Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union revealed in a lawsuit on behalf of three undocumented immigrant youth that the federal agency is teaming up with police departments (including the 250 law enforcement agencies operated by traditional district schools) to pick up, detain, and ultimately, deport unaccompanied refugee children and other undocumented minors. The children, already vetted by other federal agencies, are supposed to be turned over to their parents or to the Department of Health and Human Services. Instead, ICE is violating federal law by placing them in detention centers halfway across the country from where they live, putting them in danger of being molested and assaulted.

In the particular case being represented by the ACLU, ICE teamed up with Suffolk County, N.Y., police officers to pick up three unaccompanied refugees from Honduras and El Salvador attending high school in New York’s Brentwood district for allegedly being members of the MS-13 gang. ICE agents and Suffolk County cops have proclaimed in court that the children admitted gang affiliation even though they have been unable to provide any physical evidence or corroboration.The Brentwood district allegedly conspired with ICE and Suffolk County cops by suspending students who were suspiciously picked up for deportation days later.

Through ICE, the Trump Administration has attempted to pry data from districts in order to conduct their operations as well as standing outside schools so they can pick up kids and parents entering schoolhouse doors. Such data is prohibited from being disclosed to ICE by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, the law governing the release of school data, but district staffers aren’t always aware of this. As a result of the tactics, traditional districts are issuing guidance to school leaders and others to not release any data.

Meanwhile the Trump Administration has taken particular aim at “border children” from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala who fled to this country to escape violence. Two weeks ago, Homeland Security canceled the Central American Minors Parole, which allowed 3,000 such kids to remain in the country. This will likely lead to those kids, some as young as 11, to be deported, and shortchanging them of schooling they need and deserve. The move by ICE this month to deport Lizandro Claros-Saravia, who was set to attend Louisberg College on a partial athletic scholarship, shows that collegians who are destined to contribute greatly to America’s economy and society, will also be shown the door.

Things will likely get worse for immigrant children will likely in the next few months if the Trump Administration moves to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the initiative started under the Obama Administration to exempt emigres brought to the country as children from deportation. Some 760,000 children and young adults ages nine and older are protected under DACA. This includes 100 Teach for America recruits who are working in the nation’s traditional public and public charter schools.

 If Trump goes ahead and ends DACA, as many expect, children in elementary, secondary, and schools of higher education will be tossed out of the country when they should be learning and ultimately becoming the nation’s future leaders and builders of its economy. It also means that teachers who are improving the quality of education for poor and minority children will also end up being deported, harming the futures of the children they serve.

As it is, the Trump Administration has already begun targeting DACA emigres for deportation. This has resulted in even more allegations of roguery by ICE agents. In the case of Riccy Enriquez Perdom, who was briefly detained last week and then released after public outcry, ICE agents allegedly told her that her DACA status had expired even though it had been renewed seven months ago.

The consequences for children of undocumented emigres and those kids who are undocumented themselves can already be seen in our schools. As the New Yorker detailed back in March, children are skipping school out of fear that their parents and themselves may end up detained and deported, or, in the case of native-born children, end up in the nation’s child welfare systems. Those kids whose parents are rounded for deportation suffer dramatically; on average, the household of those children, whose parents were working, paying taxes, and contributing to communities, declined by 50 percent, according to a 2014 study by Robert Warren and Donald Kerwin of the Center for Migration Studies.

It is almost impossible for children to learn and gain the knowledge they need for brighter futures if they are in conditions of instability and poverty caused by government action.

That many undocumented immigrant children (along with their families) came to this country to find safety, political oppression and economic stability makes the efforts of Trump Administration to get rid of them even crueler than it first appears. Given that they are undocumented because of the nation’s broken immigration system (whose quotas are a legacy of the racial bigotry against earlier generations of Latinos, Jews, Irish and Chinese emigres), and that most have never committed a felony, the administration’s effort is  arbitrary, capricious, and unconscionable.

But the problem for undocumented immigrant youth extends beyond losing out on teaching and learning. Once picked up for deportation, a child is ensnared in an overwhelmed immigration court system that offers them no opportunities for due process.

The end of the day at Albertville Middle School. Statistics say the student body is 30% latino, but teachers think its higher. Many students were taken out of school when Alabama’s immigration laws were passed.

Judges aren’t required to give an undocumented immigrant child a lawyer who help them obtain a fair trial; 34 percent of the 56,663 children in immigration court in the 2013-2014 fiscal year had no lawyer representing them. When kids aren’t represented by lawyers, they are more-likely to be deported or placed in detention than those who aren’t; 68 percent of undocumented immigrant children without lawyers were ordered out of the country in 2013-2014, compared to just 6.1 percent of those with lawyers.

Even worse is what can happen to those children if they detained end up in detention centers (prisons and jails) in which sexual and other forms of criminal abuse is rampant. The likelihood of those abuses being addressed or even being reported is abysmally low. Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General investigated a mere 570 of the 33,126 allegations of abuse lodged by undocumented emigres in detention centers between 2010 and 2016, according to Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement. Given that ICE is now looking to destroy documentation of such complaints, the likelihood of even more abuse is greater than ever.

This discrimination against undocumented immigrant children and native-born progeny of undocumented Americans (as well as against their families) is that it is based on an intellectually indefensible and absolutely immoral premise: That immigrants are a scourge to the nation. This thinking, almost as old as the racialism that is America’s Original Sin (and has often intertwined with racism to detrimental effect on generations of poor and minority children), continues to be embraced by the Trump Administration, many Congressional Republican leaders, and their supporters despite the overwhelming evidence that immigrants contribute greatly to this country’s economy and society. [The fact that Trump, along with nearly all of his staffers, are the descendants of emigres of the last two centuries, makes their nativism hypocritical.]

The good news is that some reformers have already stepped out to demand that the Trump Administration keep DACA in place. This includes Chiefs for Change, which issued a public call today asking for retain protections for undocumented immigrant children, as well as former U.S. Secretary of Education John King (who called out the administration in a speech last week to a group of school leaders. But reformers can do more.

One step lies in working with districts and school operators to help them give sanctuary to the undocumented. Districts such as Chicago have already taken these steps, refusing to cooperate with ICE and other law enforcement agencies in their deportation efforts. But those districts need help. The movement can reach out to immigration reform groups and others to develop ways to help those families evade deportation; this includes running bus services that can transport children from homes to schools without endangering their families, as well as work with community groups such as San Francisco’s Arriba Juntos to provide schooling to those in fear of appearing in schools.

Reformers can also offer their experience on the school data front to help immigration reform activists hold ICE and the federal government responsible. This includes advocating alongside immigration reform activists to oppose destruction of  records and complaints of abuse lodged by undocumented immigrants in detention center.

The longer-term step starts with supporting immigration reform efforts on overhauling the nation’s immigration system. Certainly reformers can’t help in directly crafting policy. But they can help give political support by simply signing on to letters, teaming up on advocacy efforts that advance both immigration and school reform.

Meanwhile school reformers can work on eliminating the presence of police officers in schools. Besides the documented evidence that the presence of law enforces leads to overuse of harsh school discipline and exacerbates the school-to-prison pipeline, they can also end up being used by ICE as tools to identify and deport undocumented immigrant children and their families. As a result, getting cops out of schools helps improve school cultures for all children.

The Trump Administration has once again made clear its policy agenda of harming the futures of poor and minority children. As reformers, we must make sure it fails in its immoral goal.

Featured photo courtesy of Chip Somodevilla.

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Three Thoughts

Beyond Charlottesville

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In the wake of yesterday’s Dropout Nation commentary, there has been plenty of reformers stepping up to call out President Donald Trump’s defense of White Supremacists committing terrorism last weekend…

In the wake of yesterday’s Dropout Nation commentary, there has been plenty of reformers stepping up to call out President Donald Trump’s defense of White Supremacists committing terrorism last weekend in Charlottesville. Even better, they have stepped up and called on those who have aided and abetted the administration to resign or disassociate themselves from the regime.

This includes former Tennessee Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman, who took to Twitter today to call on U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to step down from the administration. Marc Porter Magee and the leadership of 50CAN also stepped up with an open letter disavowing the president’s demagoguery.

Meanwhile Eva Moskowitz, the founder of Success Academy, finally and belatedly announced in a letter to supporters and others that she was distancing herself from the administration. As typical for Moskowitz, she decided to cast blame on critics of her courting of the administration, complaining that political polarization has somehow led folks to think of “my silence as tacit support of President Trump’s policies”. But at least Moskowitz finally took the time to do the right thing.

Of course, there are still reformers who refuse to say anything. American Enterprise Institute education czar Frederick (Rick) Hess has remained silent so far, while Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform is too busy touting her latest Wall Street Journal op-ed castigating American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten’s race-baiting to address the Demagogue in Chief’s even more-rancid and bigoted remarks. DeVos just broke radio silence this afternoon with a memo to her staff that condemns bigotry, but doesn’t call out her boss for his sophistry. The good news is that more reformers are recognizing that they cannot remain silent in the face of an ever-present danger to the futures of our children.

But as your editor noted yesterday, school reformers (especially those who have aided and abetted the Trump Administration) have to do more than just condemn the president’s latest demagoguery and end any meaningful association with his regime. This is because the racialism that the current occupant of the White House has stirred up has existed long before he ran for office — and is embedded in many ways in American public education itself.

The legacies of the nation’s Original Sin can be seen today in data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. There’s the fact that a mere 16 percent of Black eighth-graders in 2014-2015 read at Proficient and Advanced levels (or at grade level) — and that the remaining 84 percent are either functionally illiterate or barely able to read. As Contributing Editor Michael Holzman has detailed in his latest series of analyses, American public education perpetuates a caste system in which poor and minority children are condemned to poverty and prison. [Holzman’s piece on Virginia itself will debut on these pages tomorrow morning.]

The outcomes are in many ways a deliberate result of how our public education systems are designed and operated.

This includes the rationing of high-quality education, often done by districts and their school leaders in order to win political support from White middle class families at the expense of poor and minority households. This has often been the case with magnet schools and is now happening with language immersion programs originally geared toward helping Latino and other children from immigrant households improve their English fluency. The fact that just 23 percent of Black seventh- and eighth-graders in seven states took Algebra 1 (as of 2011-2012) is one example of how poor and minority kids lose out on college-preparatory education they deserve.

[The politics of rationing education is a reason why districts and other traditionalists also oppose the expansion of public charter schools and other forms of school choice that are helping Black and Latino children attain high quality education; charters fall outside of the control of districts and therefore, open the doors of opportunity for those historically denied great teachers and college-preparatory curricula.]

But as Dropout Nation readers also know, Black and Latino children are also denied high-quality education because there are many within American public education who think lowly of them. Reformers and others have documented this problem for some time. As Seth Gershenson, Stephen B. Holt and Nicholas Papageorge detailed last year in a study of teacher expectations, 40 percent of White teachers don’t expect Black children in their classrooms to graduate from high school. This is a problem given that White women and men account for 82 percent of teachers in the nation’s classrooms.

Another problem lies with how public education mismanages the recruitment, training, management, and compensation of the nation’s teachers. Not only do the nation’s university schools of education fail miserably to recruit teachers who care about kids regardless of background, they also fail to train them properly for success in teaching children, a fact the National Council on Teacher Quality demonstrates in its reviews of teacher training programs. Add in certification rules that keep mid-career professionals with strong math and science skills out of teaching, near-lifetime employment policies and discipline processes that keep laggard and criminally-abusive teachers in the profession, and practices that all but ensure that low-quality teachers are teaching the poorest children, and shoddy teacher training perpetuates the nation’s educational caste system.

Meanwhile American public education fuels the nation’s school-to-prison pipeline that traps Black, as well as other minority and immigrant children, onto paths of despair. This includes overusing out-of-school suspensions and other forms of harsh school discipline. Three decades of evidence has long ago proven that Black and other minority children are more-likely to be harshly disciplined for behaviors that would otherwise be dealt with differently if they were White. Black children, in particular, are less likely to be viewed as children as their White peers. Penn State University professor, David Ramey, detailed in a study two years ago that black children are more-likely than white peers to be suspended, expelled, and even sent to jail for the same acts of misbehavior; white children, on the other hand, are more-likely to be referred to psychologists and other medical professionals.

When you consider all the ways in which American public education harms the lives of children black and brown as well as denies them brighter futures, it is critical that reformers put as much energy into transforming the systems as some are doing in taking down Confederate statues in public parks. This is because those systems, resulting from the same racialism that led to the construction of those odes to bigotry, do even more damage across generations.

Expanding school choice and high-quality options within districts is part of the solution. Teacher quality and school discipline reforms are part of the solution. Bringing back strong accountability that was once ensconced in federal law is part of the solution. Continuing to implement high-quality standards and curricula — as well as making sure that includes honest history on how the nation has dealt with Black people as well as those from American Indian communities — is part of the solution. Finally, making sure that every child has high quality teachers who care for them is part of the solution.

The good news is that the school reform movement has worked avidly to end the bad practices, and move away from a traditional district model that prevents minority children from accessing high-quality schools. This work will get harder thanks in part to a Trump administration that means harm to those who aren’t White, as well as the efforts of traditionalists to oppose systemic reform. But it must be done and it means working harder as well as more-closely with activists outside of education policy whose efforts also touch the lives of our children.

Charlottesville is another wake-up call to reformers to bend the arc of history away from bigotry and towards progress for all of our youth. We must recommit today to that most-important goal.

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Research teacher quality

More on H-1B School Districts

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A full list of districts with three or more H-1B teachers can be found here, while the original list of H-1B users is here. Let me note three things of…

A full list of districts with three or more H-1B teachers can be found here, while the original list of H-1B users is here.

Let me note three things of things. The first: The list doesn’t include charter schools such as DC Prep, which are also using a good number of H-1B students. The second: It doesn’t include employment agencies that may be employing H-1B teachers on behalf of districts such as Global Teachers Research. The latter would add plenty more to the number of foreign teachers employed by the nation’s public school systems. And I didn’t add all the schools with one or two H-1B teachers for the sake of brevity.

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