children

In Massachusetts, we encourage our advocates to begin their organizing efforts at an early age.  The fifth grade students at Brickett School in Lynn were concerned about the affects of idling vehicles on people and the environment.  This is a great story about all the steps these students went through to research this issue and the professionals with whom they spoke to see what they could do to make a positive and lasting difference in their community.  [Itemlive.com]

The students, under the direction of their teacher Donna Whalen, took part in Disney's Planet Challenge, a nationwide environmental competition that urges students to develop ways to make a positive impact on their community and the planet.

Student Juliana Beratis told the councilors about their research, while Alexander Patten talked about McGee's role in their project. Students also warned what could happen if the issue of emissions isn't taken seriously, including an increase of greenhouse gases in the environment and possibly increased cases of asthma.

It's an interesting exercise to go into the mainstream and ask people to name a Supreme Court Justice, inquire about the components of our Constitution, and name the three branches of government.  The (incorrect) answers would be amusing if not for the fact that the government is us, the people of the USA.  We elect the people who set our laws and the budgets by which we must live.  What's the saying...we get the government we deserve.  That's why the iCivics program to educate young children about how our government works is fantastic! [Los Angeles Times]

This slim knowledge of civics — and the potential risk it poses to American democracy — captured the attention of retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.  "It's very disturbing," said O'Connor, 81, the first woman to serve on the nation's highest court. "I want to educate several generations of young people so we won't have the lack of public knowledge we have today."

Civics education involves explaining the structure of U.S. government, including the meaning and influence of the Constitution and its evolution over time. Advocates also emphasize the importance of getting students to engage in the democratic process, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Philadelphia-based Annenberg Public Policy Center.

One problem may be a consequence of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which emphasized reading and math instruction with required testing.

Massachusetts is in line to get $50 million dollars from the federal government for specific early education initiatives.  That's a good thing.  The more we provide quality early education and care to our youngest children, addressing their social, emotional, cognitive and language development in the early years, the more ready our children are to embrace their future as life-long learners. [Governor's press release]

“This award will enable Massachusetts to accelerate the implementation of our plan that is designed to yield improvements in our early childhood system that significantly raises the level of quality opportunities and experiences for children and families,” said Department of Early Education and Care Commissioner Sherri Killins. “The Early Learning Challenge recognizes the importance of early learning in providing the foundation for children’s healthy growth and brain development and ensuring the collective future prosperity of our Commonwealth and our nation. Both educators and families alike will benefit from this award.”

The New York Times conducted research on virtual schools, focusing on K12, Inc.  What they found is not encouraging for us who care about quality education for our children and who are also concerned about the dwindling funds available for public education.

Here's some startling quotes about the funding:

“What we’re talking about here is the financialization of public education,” said Alex Molnar, a research professor at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education who is affiliated with the education policy center. “These folks are fundamentally trying to do to public education what the banks did with home mortgages.”

Here's less encouraging information about the performance of these virtual schools:

A Stanford University group, the Center for Research on Education Outcomes, tracked students in eight virtual schools in Pennsylvania, including Agora, comparing them with similar students in regular schools. The study found that “in every subgroup, with significant effects, cyber charter performance is lower.”

Devora Davis, the center’s research manager, said the group’s analysis of Pennsylvania online schools showed that students were slipping. “If they were paired with a traditional public schools student, the public school student kept their place in line, and the cyberstudent moved back five spots,” she said.

School choice and privatization are hot political issues.  But educational rights, equitable and quality education for all our children, is the 1964 civil rights movement of the 21st century.  We need to provide better education for all our children.  It's certainly not about profits for the corporations.

The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education determined that Lawrence was not providing quality and equitable public education to all its children, and therefore voted to place the school system in receivership.  As you can imagine, parents, students, and teachers had a lot of questions regarding that decision.  DESE Commissioner Mitchell Chester, was on hand at a three-hour meeting in Lawrence, to try to answer these questions. [Full Article: Eagle-Tribune]

"Some students are receiving an excellent education and outstanding instruction, but lots of our youngsters never make it through, they never make it to the finish line," Chester said. "Without receivership we had little chance of all students getting a strong education," he said.

Once a receiver is appointed, the board will hold a stakeholder's meeting made up of residents, School Committee members, teachers and business people to develop a turnaround plan. They will be finalized by winter and implemented by next fall.

Parents' concerns included what was going to happen to the schools after the problems were fixed and the receiver left....Other comments from parents and students were about teachers and what to do to reengage drop-outs.

Natalie Hopkinson observes how school choice has adversely affected the educational opportunities for her son and other children in her community in Washington, DC.  Clearly school choice has winners and losers...and it comes down to economic and social justice.  Again an education policy has gained political traction and funding that is failing to provide quality educational opportunities, equally, all our children.

Such inequities are the perverse result of a “reform” process intended to bring choice and accountability to the school system. Instead, it has destroyed community-based education for working-class families, even as it has funneled resources toward a few better-off, exclusive, institutions.       

The idea was to introduce competition; good schools would survive; bad ones would disappear. It effectively created a second education system, which now enrolls nearly half the city’s public school students. The charters consistently perform worse than the traditional schools, yet they are rarely closed...Meanwhile, failing neighborhood schools, depleted of students, were shut down. Invariably, schools that served the poorest families got the ax — partly because those were the schools where students struggled the most, and partly because the parents of those students had the least power. [Full Opinion: The New York Times]

Here's the case of penny wise, or so the schools thought, and pounds (literally) foolish.  Schools going the privatization route in providing cafeteria food and service are not seeing the health and education performance results they were expecting with supposedly healthy food in the schools.  Our children's health and education performance are suffering accordingly.

An increasingly cozy alliance between companies that manufacture processed foods and companies that serve the meals is making students — a captive market — fat and sick while pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars in profits...The money is ill spent. The Center for Science in the Public Interest has warned that sending food to be processed often means lower nutritional value and noted that “many schools continue to exceed the standards for fat, saturated fat and sodium.” A 2008 study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that by the time many healthier commodities reach students, “they have about the same nutritional value as junk foods.”  [The New York Times]

There's a reprise, of some sort, in Alabama where the worst in the nation immigration law was to take effect on Thursday.  The federal judget temporarily blocked implementation of this law while she reviews it to determine whether it is constitutional.

[U.S. District Judge Sharon L. Blackburn]... said she needed more time to consider lawsuits filed by the Justice Department, private groups and individuals that claim the state is overstepping its bounds...Similar laws have been passed in Arizona, Utah, Indiana and Georgia. Federal judges already have blocked all or parts of the laws in those states.  [Full Article: The New York Times]

There's a struggle in our country about immigration.  Without a comprehensive, thoughtful national immigration policy, individual states are drafting their own legislation...some more egregious than others.  Alabama legislature and the Governor have the dubious distinction of being the leader in passing and signing the cruelest immigration law in our country.  Most importantly though, people in Alabama are protesting this horrible legislation and have sued to block it.

Just how bad is this legislation.  Not only it is a crime to be an undocumented immigrant in Alabama, but Americans are not spared.  Anyone knowingly “concealing, harboring or shielding” an illegal immigrant could be charged with a crime, say for renting someone an apartment or driving her to church or the doctor.   [Full Editorial:  The New York Times]

The income gap has been widening in Massachusetts, and is especially prominent in Western MA  .  20% of families in North Adams earn less than $20,000 and half of those earn less than $10,000.  In Berkshire County and the Pioneer Valley, median incomes for the poorest, adjusted for inflation, have decreased to $16,000 - similar to areas in Appalachia.  Yet median incomes in Greater Boston have increased over the same amount of time by 54%, to $230,000.

The statistics provide one picture of the story.  This article also provides you the human profile of Mindy Shoestock, single mother, and her struggle to feed her children, provide a safe and clean place to live, stay in a community that has a support system for her family, and find a job(s) with a living wage.  [Full Article:  The Boston Globe]