Dear Black students, The last seven months have presented you with a whirlwind of challenges that undoubtedly disrupted your schooling: The coronavirus pandemic, police killings of unarmed Black people, uprisings for racial justice, Western wildfires and a contentious presidential election in which efforts to disenfranchise voters in Black-majority cities have been bold and deliberate. You […]
Search results
Posted inRace and Equity
OPINION: Donald Trump and the white achievement gap
There is a learning gap that is threatening economic and social productivity in the U.S. that must be addressed. The untreated white achievement gap continues to tear our country apart. Voting can be considered a test of sorts for assessing our knowledge and comprehension of the world around us. Voting data gives us insight into […]
Posted inEarly Education
COLUMN: Time for white people to have ‘the talk’ with their kids
Every black parent, at some point, has to have “the talk,” the proverbial sit-down where we engage our children in a serious discussion about how black people are treated by police. We explain how to converse with police, how to make eye contact, how or when to show respect, how, when necessary, they must sometimes genuflect to unjust authority in order to protect themselves.
Posted inNews
No son, war is not necessary
Like many people, I perched on my sofa to watch cable news after reports rolled out last week about the U.S. airstrike that killed Qassem Soleimani, leader of Iran’s elite Quds military force. Noticing my interest, my son nestled beside me. We watched President Donald Trump say he authorized the strike “to stop a war,” […]
Posted inRace and Equity
COLUMN: Teachers need to talk about Breonna Taylor
No one has been held accountable for the killing of Breonna Taylor, another innocent victim of police, who shot her at least five times in the hallway of her home during the disastrous execution of a search warrant. A grand jury declined to indict the two police officers who killed Taylor, 26, in her Louisville […]
Posted inOpinion
Can teachers live where they work?
Many kids grow up thinking their teachers live at school. Children become stupefied at the sight of their teacher at a grocery store or a restaurant. They can’t fathom their teachers having lives outside of the schoolhouse. Kids’ parents, on the other hand, may be shocked to learn that many teachers can’t afford to live […]
Posted inOpinion
We must not allow bigots on campus to hide behind free speech
If your professor at a public university regularly tweets out articles like “Are Women Destroying Academia? Probably” you would probably be confused as to why he taught students. If, after class, you read tweets by the same professor saying that black students are “generally inferior academically to white students” and that members of the LBGTQ […]
Posted inColumnists
As Republicans stress political fiction over facts, students’ math and reading scores fall
Last week, the National Center for Education Statistics released the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for mathematics and reading in the fourth and eighth grades. The top-level findings of the report, also known as the Nation’s Report Card, show that academic achievement across the United States in these critical subjects has stalled. Gaps […]
Posted inOpinion
Elizabeth Warren shows she understands education in ways charter advocates did not
Last week, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren released a federal education policy proposal that recognizes a fundamental truth about students: Kids don’t live in schools, they live in communities. In addition to matters of curriculum and instruction, factors outside the school — food, housing, transportation, safety, recreation — also affect the degree to which […]
Posted inNews
Educating our way to love is a lesson we sorely need
Last week, a video was released of Keanon Lowe, a football and track coach at Parkrose High School in Portland, Oregon, disarming a would-be student attacker, hugging him until authorities arrived. The incident occurred in May, but the superintendent of schools didn’t want to release the surveillance video for fear it would add stress to […]
