The time has come for the very foundations of our country, good and bad, to face a reckoning; we’re dealing with long-standing racial disparities and injustices while trying to attain equity and equality, and the educational system is where it starts. In a recent column, Andre Perry said, “We must dismantle the structures that generate […]
Search results
Posted inColumnists
Baltimore students need more than space heaters; they need justice
Broken boiler heaters forced numerous students in Baltimore to learn in freezing conditions and once again put Baltimore under scrutiny for its treatment of black residents. Students shivering in winter coats while trying to learn is horrific in itself, but the malfunctioning boilers are a metaphor for the wider problems with the criminal justice systems, […]
Posted inElementary to High School
Charter schools aren’t measuring up to their promises
In 2008, a few years after Hurricane Katrina, school officials in Louisiana asked aspiring charter-school leader Andrew Shahan to consider taking over the failing Dr. Charles Drew Elementary School in New Orleans’ Upper 9th Ward. This story also appeared in The Times Picayune Shahan submitted a 170-page application, outlining his plans for Drew, which he […]
Posted inAndre Perry
OPINION: Charter backers can stop the NAACP moratorium — by meeting these four demands
Since the NAACP at its national convention voted on a resolution that placed a moratorium on charter schools, the backlash from charter advocates has been angry, well-financed and sometimes just plain mean leading up to a vote of ratification by the national board, which occurred this past weekend. By singling out the NAACP with multiple […]
Posted inColumnists
Saving academic freedom from Trump’s “post-truth” nation
The world is not flat; dinosaurs didn’t walk with humans and white supremacy is built on a foundation of lies to preserve power and racial hierarchies. If we are going to find cures for cancer, global warming and racism we have to maintaining the integrity of our institutions of learning. Tenure – giving a teacher […]
Posted inColumnists
A haircut won’t end gun access, poverty or under-resourced schools. But let’s admit it comforts a desperate parent
“I see my child about to die every day.” That’s what one despondent mother told me when she phoned looking for help for her teenage boy; all she wanted was for her son to get out of the drug game. Tattoos, the smoke-blackened lips and sagging pants were the in-the-face reality experienced by this mother. […]
Posted inAndre Perry, Columnists, Elementary to High School
“Educational Choice” is a slogan slick enough for Donald Trump
Donald Trump outlined his policy and philosophy for K-12 education in a speech at Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy (CASSA), a for-profit charter school in the largest city of battleground state of Ohio. The Republican presidential nominee and founder of Trump University accused Democrats of trapping black and Hispanic youth in failing public schools […]
Posted inColumnists
Black children deserve the stability that their neighborhood schools can offer, despite studies that may indicate otherwise
School closure is a tactic we don’t have to take. Under the new national education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act, states have been freed to employ strategies they deem fit just as long as they act on the bottom five percent. When we’re talking about improving urban districts, though, we always seem to land […]
Posted inAndre Perry, Columnists, Elementary to High School, New Orleans, The South
With the nation in turmoil, Ed Secretary King’s quest to diversify schools is the right pursuit
Here is something worse than the current racial tensions in New Orleans and other cities: The outcomes caused by racial biases in our policing, schooling practices and stark economic inequality between black and white families. Negative quality of life outcomes and racial strife evidence our failure to learn how to live together, which compromises our […]
Posted inColumnists
Do you really believe all children can learn? Then stop disciplining black students out of the system
If we viewed students as learners and not uneducable criminals, then we wouldn’t kick them out of schools. We certainly wouldn’t shuttle children through an adult justice system. Education’s original sin of not believing children are actually children erodes even the most strident of educators’ belief that all children can learn and should be educated […]
