High School

Page 2 of 4
1 2 3 4

Ghana: “Free SHS, most people centered policy»

Noticias

Africa/Ghana/ghana.gov.gh

Reseña:  La Jefa Suprema del Área Tradicional de Yagaba, Naa Sugru Wuni Mumuni, describió la implementación de la Política de SHS por parte del gobierno, como una de las estrategias más centradas en el ser humano que ayudaron a aliviar la pobreza en el país. El jefe, por lo tanto, ha exaltado al presidente Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo por el cumplimiento de la mayoría de sus promesas de campaña de 2016, que incluyen la implementación de la política de la escuela secundaria gratuita. Naa Mumuni dijo «muchos de los que dijeron que nunca cumplirían esta promesa de campaña. De hecho, los escépticos dijeron que simplemente estaban desesperados por el poder, de ahí las promesas jugosas e inalcanzables. Sin embargo, la historia ha cambiado hoy. Gente de esta parte «El país nunca podría soñar con inscribirse en las prestigiosas escuelas conocidas, en su mayoría ubicadas en el sector sur». Dirigiéndose a los jefes y al pueblo de Yagaba, el viernes 17 de mayo de 2019, en un durbar celebrado en honor al presidente Akufo-Addo, en la Región Noreste, el Jefe de Yagaba confirmó que no menos de 20 estudiantes del distrito de Mamprugu Moagduri tenían admisión en escuelas como Prempeh College, Adisadel College y las otras escuelas secundarias de prestigio en el país.

The Paramount Chief of Yagaba Traditional Area, Naa Sugru Wuni Mumuni, has described the government’s implementation of the Free SHS Policy, as one that will go down in history as the most human-centred strategy that helped in alleviating poverty in the country.

The Chief has, therefore, extolled President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for the fulfilment of most of his 2016 campaign promises, which include, the implementation of the Free Senior high school policy.

Naa Mumuni said “many were those who said you will never fulfill this campaign promise. In fact, the skeptics said you were simply desperate for power, hence the juicy and unattainable promises. The story has, however, changed today. People from this part of the country could never dream of enrolling into the known prestigious schools, mostly located in the southern sector.”

Addressing the chiefs and people of Yagaba, Friday, 17th May, 2019, at a durbar held in honour of President Akufo-Addo, in North East Region, the Yagaba Chief confirmed that not less than 20 students from the Mamprugu Moagduri district had admission into schools such as Prempeh College, Adisadel College and the other prestigious senior high schools in the country.

“The Free SHS has helped in reducing kayayei in Mamprugu Moagduri, because your government takes care of school fees, and students do not need to travel down south to engage in menial jobs in order to enable them to pay their fees,” the Chief added.

Naa Mumuni apprised that “ever since you were voted into power by the overwhelming people of this country, you have never let us down. You inspire and keep inspiring hope in the good people of this country.”

He expressed the appreciation of the Chiefs and people of Yagaba to the President for initiating pro-poor policies to help cushion the people of Yagaba and all Ghanaians.

“Mr. President, this area is predominantly a farming community. Your social intervention policy of Planting for Food and Jobs led to a bountiful harvest in this district. Fertilizer subsidies under this flagship programme have boosted our local economy,” he said.

The Chief also thanked President Akufo-Addo for the “expansion of the LEAP programme”, which, he said “has equally reduced economic and social suffering. We continue to pray that all of these initiatives and those yet to come will move Ghana beyond aid as you have envisioned.”

Fuente; http://www.ghana.gov.gh/index.php/media-center/news/5632-free-shs-most-people-centered-policy-in-ghanaian-history-yagaba-chief

Comparte este contenido:
Leer más »

More school choice strengthens public education

Ron Matus

By: Ron Matus.

 

Over the past 20 years, Florida public schools have improved as much as any in America. At the same time, educational choice here revved from fringe to mainstream. That’s a point worth noting to those who keep insisting, with zero evidence, that expanding choice hurts public schools.

In his South Florida Sun Sentinel column, Randy Schultz wrote that lawmakers who’ve proposed a new private school voucher are trying to “undermine public education” and “turbocharge the privatization of Florida’s public schools.” They’re trying to make education profitable instead of better, he wrote. They’re ignoring questions and contrary evidence.

They’re not alone. Florida’s high school graduation rate now stands at 86 percent, up from 52 percent in the 1990s. We now rank third (behind Massachusetts and Connecticut) in the percentage of graduating seniors who’ve passed college-caliber Advanced Placement exams.

We now rank No. 1, No. 1, No.3 and No. 8 on the four core tests that make up the National Assessment of Educational Progress, once adjusted for demographics. Education Week just ranked us No. 4 in K-12 achievement, after a decade in which we ranked no lower than No. 12.

Schultz mentioned none of this.

Clearly, expansion of choice didn’t “undermine public education.” We have one of the biggest charter school sectors in America, one of the biggest private school voucher programs, the biggest tax credit scholarship, the biggest education savings account.

We also have, not coincidentally, some of the biggest and best district choice programs, from magnets and career academies to IB and dual enrollment. All in all, 47 percent of Florida students in PreK-12 — 1.7 million children — now attend something other than zoned neighborhood schools. And guess what? No apocalypse. Just more students getting the increasingly customized education their parents want for them.

Schultz also wrote, “No one knows how well the state’s voucher students are doing.” How odd. Just last month, the respected and left-leaning Urban Institute released a report that found students using the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship for low-income students are up to 43 percent more likely to attend four-year colleges than like students in public schools, and up to 20 percent more likely to earn bachelor’s degrees. Schultz didn’t mention this. Clearly, it didn’t fit the narrative about “unaccountable” schools.

Accountability is different for public and private schools. But it’s hard to argue that private schools don’t have enough when dissatisfied parents can, unlike parents in public schools, leave at any time. Balancing regulatory accountability with parental choice is a work in progress, but the Urban Institute findings suggest that when given discretion to determine quality, parents choose wisely.

It’s true, too, there are shysters and scandals in the private school space. More is being done to keep them out or exit them sooner. But private schools hardly corner the market on rotten apples. If somebody pieced together all the maddening headlines generated by districts and district schools, they could paint the most damning portrait. But nobody with a fair mind would do that.

Schultz seems most torqued by the possibility the new voucher may extend eligibility into the middle class. That, too, is odd. None of Florida’s other “vouchers” — which provide state support for private school tuition — are means tested. We don’t tell millionaires they can’t get state money for VPK, or a Bright Futures scholarship for college, or a McKay Scholarship for students with disabilities, because they’re too wealthy. Does Schultz’s outrage extend to those programs as well?

I’m encouraged lawmakers want to ensure low-income parents get priority for the proposed voucher. I also don’t see a mass exodus. The vast majority of middle-class parents, like me, like their public schools a lot. If some want options, for whatever reason, they should have that freedom.

One last point: The lion’s share of private schools participating in Florida scholarship programs are tiny nonprofits. The value of the tax credit scholarship, and the proposed new scholarships, is about 60 percent of total per-pupil spending for Florida district schools, which are among the lowest-funded in America. Yet Schultz concludes that what lawmakers really want to do is to make education “profitable.” That just doesn’t add up.

Source of the article: https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/commentary/fl-op-com-more-school-choice-20190321-story.html

Comparte este contenido:
Leer más »

Japan: Programs aim to keep youth in rural areas

Noticias

Asia/ Japan/ 28.01.2019/ Source: www.japantimes.co.jp.

A two-day event on topics related to satoyama (mountains and woods shared and maintained by residents of the adjacent rural communities) was co-hosted by the Japan Times Satoyama Consortium, the Chugoku Region Governors Association and the town of Jinsekikogen in Hiroshima Prefecture at the Jinseki Kogen Hotel on Oct. 20 and 21.

In the second panel discussion of the first day, Retsu Fujisawa, the representative director of RCF, an association that specializes in coordinating social projects in collaboration with diverse stakeholders, led the discussion as a facilitator. Three panelists shared their insights on regional promotion and the role of education with about 200 attendees.

Masahiro Ohnishi, a regional revitalization consultant who heads an organization called Socio-Design, puts entrepreneurial education as the core of the regional revitalization in the town of Kamikatsu in Tokushima Prefecture.

Ohnishi thinks that a local high school is an important asset in a rural community.

“If children have to leave their hometowns and live elsewhere to attend high school, it becomes difficult for them to come back after graduation, making it harder to put an end to the depopulation trend in rural areas,” he said.

According to Ohnishi, it has been a conventional fear shared among the people in rural villages that educated young people who have grown up in remote areas tend to move to cities.

“People have to let go of that fear and make the community itself into a school where not only teachers, but everyone in the community is responsible for educating children,” he said.

Ohnishi emphasized that it is important for children to learn to create answers rather than always being given choices to acquire skills to start their own businesses wherever they are.

“Spending at least 12 years of school in your hometown helps nurture pride and attachment to the place,” he said.

Career Education Designer and CEO of Jibunnote Inc. Keiji Ohno is based in Suo Oshima, an island in Yamaguchi Prefecture. Ohno provides original career education programs designed to foster entrepreneurship based on regional resources.

“Families differ greatly, but everyone can learn equally at school,” he said.

At one of the junior high schools where he offers his entrepreneurial program, second-year students work in groups to set up four imaginary companies to create and sell products or services using local resources. Each company makes presentations and they sell their company shares for ¥500 per share to their parents and neighbors.

“We have been doing this every year for seven years. The longer we continue, the more people we can involve, gradually changing the whole community,” Ohno said.

It has been almost 15 years since Ohno returned to his home island from Tokyo where he had worked. He found that only three out of 13 former classmates from his junior high school were still living on the island.

“I hope that starting a business will be one of the options for those children who are now experiencing the fun of taking on new things in the community,” he said.

Yoshinori Irie, the mayor of Jinsekikogen, said, “I believe it’s the role of local governments to offer an environment where everyone can take on new challenges.”

The town supports various educational projects including the Namazu (catfish) Project conducted by a group of students at Yuki High School. The catfish grown in ponds the students created with the help of area residents on abandoned farmland are cooked and served at local festivals and at professional baseball games in Hiroshima.

The town also collaborates with the Keio Research Institute at SFC in a project called the “Jinsekikogen Drone Academy Organized by Yuki High School Students” launched last autumn.

“When people gather to work on the drone project, for example, they won’t talk only about drones the whole time, they’ll talk about all sorts of other things. It is from such conversations that people’s connections form and new ideas sprout,” Irie said.

Fujisawa concluded the session by saying that it is important to provide the kind of education that helps people notice and think about how they can use the existing resources in the community to try new things in their own ways.

Source of the notice: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/satoyama-consortium/2019/01/27/satoyama-consortium/programs-aim-keep-youth-rural-areas/#.XE4sJVUzbIV

Comparte este contenido:
Leer más »

Perceived dearth of freedom in Japan’s schools reflects wider woes

Michael Hoffman

By: Michael Hoofman. 

What a strange place a school is — a world within a world, a society within a society. Kids grow up in it asking themselves, “Is the real world like this?”

Yes and no. It is and it isn’t.

In December, the weekly Aera published the results of an online survey asking parents and teachers, “Are schools, from the children’s point of view, not free?” Yes, said 93.3 percent of 6,821 respondents.

How free should schools be, given the special nature of their mission? It’s a free society the children will enter upon maturity. It’s also a disciplined society. Freedom and discipline both make demands on education, but the overwhelming disapproval — almost disgust — that Aera elicits conveys such dissatisfaction and frustration that readers can’t help wondering: If parents and teachers feel this way, how must the kids be squirming under rules that demand obedience — not for any rational end they serve but simply because obedience is deemed a virtue?

The mother of a first-grader describes her shock, on entering her daughter’s classroom on parents’ day at lunchtime, to hear — nothing. Silence. Why? It’s the rule, she was told. Children talking dawdle over their meal. Yes, but enforced silence at mealtime is morbid. Well, anyway, that’s the rule.

A junior high school teacher in his 30s ruefully counts among his extra-curricular responsibilities that of inspecting the outdoor footwear students leave in the shoe cupboard before donning indoor shoes and proceeding to class. What’s the point? It’s part of taking attendance. Isn’t roll call enough? No. Why? Well — it’s not, that’s all. It’s always been done this way. If it’s absurd, it’s absurdity sanctioned by time. Does time sanction absurdity? Who has time to consider such questions?

Japanese teachers are said to be the busiest in the developed world. Fourteen-hour days are not unusual. Teachers not teaching are preparing lessons, or doing office work, or enforcing meaningless rules, or supervising extra-curricular sports or craft clubs, or supervising lunch, or placating ever-more-demanding parents who feel their children are being overlooked, or undermarked, or under-recognized for latent genius, or something. More children in recent years come from broken homes or abusive families. This can involve teachers in social problems that are — says one teacher to Aera — beyond their competence. They are teachers, not social workers. Then of course there’s the hoary old problem of bullying, technologically magnified by the virtual powers at every student’s fingertips. A teacher who consulted police about an online slander campaign against one of his students was given short shrift. Insults are not a crime. Threats, yes; not insults. Insults are a moral issue, not a legal one.

In an age of expanding diversity, Aera finds, schools remain wedded to uniformity — down to the color of students’ underwear, fumes one parent. The mother of an elementary school girl works at a day care center where, she feels, kids are free in ways her child is not. She explains: “When (a pre-schooler) is cold, I say, ‘Put on a sweater.’ If an item of clothing gets dirty I say, ‘Change into something else.’ Then the kids move on to elementary school, and suddenly they’re not allowed to use their own judgment about anything. Everyone has to be the same as everyone else. Maybe it’s easier for teachers and students if nobody has to think, but it seems to me there’s more loss than gain.”

Teachers, if not students — probably students, too — are too busy to think. In terms of working hours, 30 percent of elementary school teachers and 60 percent of junior high school teachers are “past the karōshi line,” according to an education ministry report Aera cites. “Karōshi” means death due to overwork. The “line” beyond which that becomes an officially acknowledged danger is 80 hours a week. Stress builds. It must be vented on somebody. “Power harassment,” a familiar affliction of the adult or “real” world, haunts schools too, driving some students, Aera says, into chronic absenteeism.

Life’s a pressure cooker, a jungle — choose your time-honored metaphor. Power harassment we get from our jungle forebears, the apes, writes neurologist Nobuko Nakano in the bimonthly Sapio (November-December). Male apes have their power displays, we have ours. Ours are more complex, more nuanced. We don’t beat our breasts; instead we “dress for success,” bully our subordinates, drive ourselves to exhaustion chasing quantifiable results to brandish as symbols of having “arrived” — where? That’s another question. But today’s young people are different, Nakano says.

A kind of apathy has set in, she finds, that sets the current young generation apart from those of the high-growth and bubble periods, circa 1960-90. Then the goal was clear — growth; and the path to it sure — hard work. Today — what are we striving for? Doubts outweigh certainties. Will my company still exist 10 or 20 years from now? Will my job, my occupation? Will artificial intelligence elbow me aside? “Young people must seem spiritless to their bosses,” Nakano reflects. Shaped by different times, they nourish different ambitions, pursue different status symbols. Yesterday’s goals were promotion, performance, luxury. Today’s, she says, are more likely to be “likes” and “followers” on social media.

There’s another uncertainty weighing on the young: the old. In a separate Sapio article, novelist and essayist Akira Tachibana compares the swelling ranks of Japan’s elderly to the needy foreign refugees and migrants straining Europe’s liberal tolerance. Will the social welfare costs implicit in Japan’s historically unprecedented demographic — more and more elderly increasingly dependent on fewer and fewer young — shred the latter’s post-retirement safety net? Whether or not they end up doing so, the fear that they will is corrosive to morale. The steadily declining birthrate is both symptom and symbol.

So Japan, as Tachibana would have it, is a “refugee” society in spite of itself, its “refugees,” unlike Europe’s, native born and home grown. “Of course,” he writes, “Japan is not on the verge of collapse, like Zimbabwe or Venezuela. … Still, with more and more people living past age 100, there’s no guaranteeing that people now in their 20s, still less generations unborn, will enjoy a secure and prosperous old age.”

In school or beyond school, one way or another — rules here, economic and demographic pressures there — freedom fights for survival, its ultimate victory by no means certain.

Big in Japan is a weekly col

Source of the article https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/01/12/national/media-national/perceived-dearth-freedom-japans-schools-reflects-wider-woes/

Comparte este contenido:
Leer más »

Canada: Wabanaki Collection launched to improve education about Maritime Indigenous peoples

Noticias

North America/ Canada/ 05.11.2018/ Source: www.cbc.ca.

‘We are all treaty people,’ says curator of a portal aimed at better mutual understanding

The Wabanaki were New Brunswick’s first peoples, but David Perley says many students in the province are graduating from high school without knowing much about them.

«My ancestors identify themselves as Wabanaki people,» Perley said.

«In my language, that means people of the dawn.»

The Wabanaki Confederacy was around long before contact with European settlers, said Perley.

«They were dealing with other Indigenous nations, such as the Mohawks and so on. It was always discussing boundary lines, for example, or the need to have alliances against a common threat, political discussions on what they had to do in terms of internal governance and so on.»

After contact, said Perley, «It became a strong confederacy because of the need to have unity in terms of dealing with settler society.»

The director of the Mi’kmaq-Wolastoqey Centre at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton said textbooks make barely a reference to Wabanaki history, let alone the culture and traditions that have been passed down for thousands of years.

The centre has launched a new online resource to try to rectify that.

It’s available to anyone looking for information about Indigenous peoples of the Maritimes.

Perley said the project was spawned by the many requests he used to get — dating back to the 1990s — from students and teachers looking for reliable reference material.

At the time, there was little to be found.

«And especially not any resource that was written by or produced by Wabanaki people — the Wolostoqiyik, the Mi’kmaq, the Passamaquoddy and the Abenakis,» Perley said during an interview with Information Morning Fredericton.

«So from that point on, I thought it was important for us to ensure that teachers have the proper tools to use in the classroom.

The collection includes this film about a contemporary Indigenous justice issue, the wrongful conviction of Donald Marshall Jr. (Justice Denied. 1989 © National Film Board of Canada)

«And also from the Wabanaki perspective, to share information about the history of the Wabanakis — the world views, the traditions and the ceremonies and the knowledge systems and so on.»

The Wabanaki Collection includes some carefully selected historical documents.

«I don’t want to recommend anything that would reinforce stereotypes and misconceptions,» said Perley.

Among the items that have stood the test of time are the Peace and Friendship treaties, documents that date back to the mid-1700s, which set forth mutual obligations of First Nations and the Crown.

One of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action was to renew treaty relationships based on principles of mutual recognition, mutual respect and shared responsibility for maintaining those relationships into the future.

«Within New Brunswick, I am promoting the fact that we are all treaty people,» Perley said.

«We should get to know one another. And we have to have more communications so that we will have a better understanding of one another and respect one another as well.»

The collection includes language apps and other resources for children, including an animated short by Françoise Hartmann that tells the tale of the great spirit Glooscap and how he battled with the giant Winter to bring Summer to the North and the Mi’kmaq people. (Summer Legend. 1986 © National Film Board of Canada)

The collection also includes a number of National Film Board productions about contemporary issues, such as the violent dispute over the burgeoning Indigenous fishery in Esgenoopetitj in the early 2000s.

There are CBC News items, language-learning apps for adults and children, and interactive maps with Wabanaki legends, to name just a few offerings.

Another of the commission’s calls to action is «developing and implementing kindergarten to Grade 12 curriculum and learning resources on Aboriginal peoples in Canadian history, and the history and legacy of residential schools.»

George Daley, the president of the New Brunswick Teachers’ Association, said that organization hadn’t known the  collection was in the works, but the Education Department has given its seal of approval.

«It is an appropriate resource for our New Brunswick teachers to supplement their curriculum,» Daley said.

Source of the notice: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/indigenous-education-wabanaki-collection-1.4889167

Comparte este contenido:
Leer más »

United States: Michigan needs more post-high school education, says state superintendent

Sheila Alles

By Sheila Alles 

One of the most important things my parents did was to tell my three younger siblings and me that we were college material. Unfortunately, there are a lot of children who aren’t as lucky as we were, and many of them don’t receive the same message from their support system.

As students head back to school this year, I encourage them to put postsecondary education on the top of their mind. To succeed personally and professionally, students need to extend their education beyond high school. This includes a degree from a college or university, or a professional certification.

Providing information and access for all students to postsecondary education is woven throughout through the first goal of Michigan’s plan to become a Top 10 education state in 10 years.

In 2016, Gov. Rick Snyder declared October as “College Month,” and for the third year in a row, this October schools across the state will participate in College Month events. This includes helping high school seniors submit college applications, apply for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and apply for at least one scholarship.

Analysis from Gov. Snyder’s 21st Century Education Commission reinforces the same message I was told by my parents as a child – that personal and professional success requires education beyond high school. Our state needs to prioritize postsecondary education for our children to position our state for prosperity. For Michigan to thrive and continue its comeback, the need to prioritize talent and higher education is vital.

Having an educated workforce will entice more new businesses to come to our state, and strengthen businesses already located here. According to a report released in March by Business Leaders for Michigan, businesses in our state cite their struggle to find and retain talent as a hindrance to economic growth.

Higher education rates have improved, but we still have work to do. Michigan’s postsecondary educational attainment rate has increased for seven years in a row – from 35.7 percent of 25-to-64-year-olds possessing at least an associate degree in 2008, to 39.4 percent in 2015. Additionally, it is estimated another four percent of Michiganders have a high-quality certificate, bringing Michigan’s true postsecondary attainment rate to more than 43 percent.

According to the Lumina Foundation, the average percentage of the national workforce with a degree after high school is 46.9 percent. Despite our steady progress, Michigan still has work to do to meet and surpass the national average.

We can do better – for our students and our state.

Some students may think because they weren’t on the honor roll that they might not be college material. Some may believe their shyness or reluctance to ask for help means they weren’t meant for college. Many see the affordability of college as intimidating and aren’t sure how to navigate that process. For these students and many others, it takes just one person to make a difference. I encourage you to be that person who makes a difference in the educational journey of a student.

Learning should be a lifelong commitment. Together, we can all do our part to spark change, for our students, and for our great state.

Source of the article: https://www.bridgemi.com/guest-commentary/opinion-michigan-needs-more-post-high-school-education-says-state-superintendent

Comparte este contenido:
Leer más »

School Choice Is the Enemy of Justice

Erin Aubry Kaplan

By  Erin Aubry Kaplan

In 1947, my father was one of a small group of black students at the largely white Fremont High School in South Central Los Angeles. The group was met with naked hostility, including a white mob hanging blacks in effigy. But such painful confrontations were the nature of progress, of fulfilling the promise of equality that had driven my father’s family from Louisiana to Los Angeles in the first place.

In 1972, I was one of a slightly bigger group of black students bused to a predominantly white elementary school in Westchester, a community close to the beach in Los Angeles. While I didn’t encounter the overt hostility my father had, I did experience resistance, including being barred once from entering a white classmate’s home because, she said matter-of-factly as she stood in the doorway, she didn’t let black people (she used a different word) in her house.

Still, I believed, even as a fifth grader, that education is a social contract and that Los Angeles was uniquely suited to carry it out. Los Angeles would surely accomplish what Louisiana could not.

I was wrong. Today Los Angeles and California as a whole have abandoned integration as the chief mechanism of school reform and embraced charter schools instead.

This has happened all over the country, of course, but California has led the way — it has 630,000 students in charter schools, more than any other state, and the Los Angeles Unified School District has more than 154,000 of them. Charters are associated with choice and innovation, important elements of the good life that California is famous for. In a deep-blue state, that good life theoretically includes diversity, and many white liberals believe charters can achieve that, too. After all, a do-it-yourself school can do anything it wants.

But that’s what makes me uneasy, the notion that public schools, which charters technically are, have a choice about how or to what degree to enforce the social contract. There are many charter success stories, I know, and many make a diverse student body part of their mission. But charters as a group are ill suited to the task of justice because they are a legacy of failed justice.

Integration did not happen. The effect of my father’s and my foray into those white schools was not more equality but white flight. Largely white schools became largely black, and Latino schools were stigmatized as “bad” and never had a place in the California good life.

It’s partly because diversity can be managed — or minimized — that charters have become the public schools that liberal whites here can get behind. This is in direct contrast to the risky, almost revolutionary energy that fueled past integration efforts, which by their nature created tension and confrontation. But as a society — certainly as a state — we have lost our appetite for that engagement, and the rise of charters is an expression of that loss.

Choice and innovation sound nice, but they also echo what happened after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, when entire white communities in the South closed down schools to avoid the dread integration.

This kind of racial avoidance has become normal, embedded in the public school experience. It seems particularly so in Los Angeles, a suburb-driven city designed for geographical separation. What looks like segregation to the rest of the world is, to many white residents, entirely neutral — simply another choice.

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that in 2010, researchers at the Civil Rights Project at U.C.L.A. found, in a study of 40 states and several dozen municipalities, that black students in charters are much more likely than their counterparts in traditional public schools to be educated in an intensely segregated setting. The report says that while charters had more potential to integrate because they are not bound by school district lines, “charter schools make up a separate, segregated sector of our already deeply stratified public school system.”

In a 2017 analysis, data journalists at The Associated Press found that charter schools were significantly overrepresented among the country’s most racially isolated schools. In other words, black and brown students have more or less resegregated within charters, the very institutions that promised to equalize education.

This has not stemmed the popular appeal of charters. School board races in California that were once sleepy are now face-offs between well-funded charter advocates and less well-funded teachers’ unions. Progressive politicians are expected to support charters, and they do. Gov. Jerry Brown, who opened a couple of charters during his stint as mayor of Oakland, vetoed legislation two years ago that would have made charter schools more accountable. Antonio Villaraigosa built a reputation as a community organizer who supported unions, but as mayor of Los Angeles, he started a charter-like endeavor called Partnership for Los Angeles Schools.

This year, charter advocates got their pick for school superintendent, Austin Beutner. And billionaires like Eli Broad have made charters a primary cause: In 2015, an initiative backed in part by Mr. Broad’s foundation outlined a $490 million plan to place half of the students in the Los Angeles district into charters by 2023.

I live in Inglewood, a chiefly black and brown city in Los Angeles County that’s facing gentrification and the usual displacement of people of color. Traditional public schools are struggling to stay open as they lose students to charters. But those who support the gentrifying, which includes a new billion-dollar N.F.L. stadium in the heart of town, see charters as part of the improvements. They see them as progress.

Despite all this, I continue to believe in the social contract that in my mind is synonymous with public schools and public good. I continue to believe that California will at some point fulfill that contract. I believe this most consciously when I go back to Westchester and reflect on my formative two years in school there. In the good life there is such a thing as a good fight, and it is not over.

Source of the article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/14/opinion/charter-schools-desegregation-los-angeles.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FEducation&action=click&contentCollection=opinion&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=3&pgtype=collection

Comparte este contenido:
Leer más »
Page 2 of 4
1 2 3 4