Harvard lawsuit is not what it seems

By Jeff Yang

What this lawsuit is really is just the latest attempt to derail an apparatus that has given hundreds of thousands of blacks, Hispanics and, yes, Asians a means to climb out of circumstances defined by our society's historical racism. 

It is hardly a coincidence that Blum has chosen to use the Asian American community as his tool to do so. There are millions of Asians who, like my parents, see a prestigious-university education as not just a goal for their children but a virtual entitlement, the product of years of aspiration and preparation. 

But there are millions of other Asian Americans -- a significant majority, in fact, at 69% -- who support affirmative action as a necessary way for us to achieve a better society, and who recognize that we have benefited and continue to benefit from its fruits, both directly and indirectly. 

As Loyola University Chicago assistant professor of higher education OiYan Poon puts it, "The question Asian Americans face now is, 'Do we care about justice or just us?'" She adds, "If we care about justice, we have to see that we're only being used as cover to dismantle a policy initiative that is about racial equity, which ultimately benefits everyone."

"White People Feel Targeted by the Ferguson Protests—Welcome to Our World"

Time Magazine:

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: White People Feel Targeted by the Ferguson Protests—Welcome to Our World

We read this article in our Leadership Team meeting at school.  It sparked a lot of conversation about what it means for us as educators and as members of the leadership team supporting/representing/leading other educators at a school with a student population that is predominantly students of color.  What are our responsibilities toward our students?  How do we create the type of school where all students are respected? How do we create the type of school where we are actively fighting against the oppression of black male students (in particular) and other students of color?  Where do our conversations and efforts toward acknowledging and celebrating our diverse staff and students (including a successful Day of Pride that was organized recently) fit into all this?  What actions can we take in a practical way to fight injustices and inequities in the space that we occupy... while continuing to provide quality education? ... while also recognizing that fighting/acknowledging/identifying injustices and inequities with/for students should be a part of the "quality" education that they receive from us?  

Many thoughts.  Some answers.  A lot of hard work.

"For Officer Liu’s Funeral, Blending Police Traditions With Chinese Customs"

NYTIMES: 
For Officer Liu’s Funeral, Blending Police Traditions With Chinese Customs

by Vivian Yee and Jeffrey E. Singer

I just thought that this was really interesting. I heard that there were tons of policemen who showed up in New York from out of state to show support/respect for Officer Ramos and I'm sure that they want to show respect to Officer Liu as well. On the other hand, apparently "[s]everal family friends [of Officer Liu] have said they plan to attend only the wake on Saturday, intimidated by what is sure to be a large showing by the Police Department on Sunday."  If the expression of solidarity and respect by the policement (most of whom didn't know Officer Liu) is serving to suppress the expressions of grief and respect by the family member and friends who did know him, I feel like something is falling through the cracks.

While Officer Ramos’s wife appeared “courageous and dignified in the face of such great loss,” containing her emotions during her husband’s funeral on Saturday, Mr. Mo said, “if you look at a typical Chinese funeral, that is not the way to behave. Should we bend the tradition in order to make it more palatable for Westerners? Those are all issues.” 

...  

“We have to understand these customs and norms,” he said. “We can’t just say, ‘I’m Roman Catholic; this is the only way I know how to do this.’ ”

Charter Schools

AFT: Restoring Shaker's Vision for Charter Schools by Richard D. Kahlenberg and Halley Potter 

(The website version is here)

I didn't know that charter schools were originally suggested by an AFT president.  It was an interesting article about the history of charter schools and how the concept of "free market" and the "competition breeds excellence" mentality skewed his original concept for charter schools:

Under Shanker’s program, proposals for charter schools would be reviewed, evaluated, and approved or rejected by panels that included union representatives, school board members, and outsiders. Charters would be schools of choice—no student or teacher would be compelled to be part of one. And Shanker proposed that the schools be given independence for a five- to 10-year period to prove themselves, because new education ideas need time to be nurtured and cultivated. In order to make these new schools successful, he outlined two critical conditions: that the schools provide their teachers with strong voice, and that the schools educate kids from all walks of life. 

”Friends Without Words”

New York Times: "Friends Without Words"

This article is not about race or education per se - it's about Jaime Herrera, who is a janitor at the main branch of the New York Public Library.  What caught my eye was that Mr. Herrera has been has deaf since he was a child, but as a 14-year old veteran, he's often assigned to train and help the new hires.

At first, this seems odd to them, since Mr. Herrera, 56, is deaf and does not speak.

“When they put me with him, to train, I was like, ‘How am I going to learn from a deaf guy?’ ” recalled Mr. Herrera’s current cleaning partner, Emrah Bektesevic, 22. “But after about 10 minutes, I could totally understand what he meant. He was a great teacher.”

"How Dare You?" Satirical article on the test prep industry

A funny-because-it's-about-a-real-life-thing-that's-not-that-funny satire from McSweeney's:
"THE VIEW FROM WHERE I STANDARDIZE: RUMINATIONS FROM THE TEST-PREP INDUSTRY"

Great concluding question:

Is education something that should be at the whim of the free market? And what elements of an education can be considered “extras?”

The "Bamboo Ceiling"

Author, N. Va. native Helen Wan on the ‘bamboo ceiling’

In our discussions, we focus mainly on the inequities that students of different racial/ethnic backgrounds face in high school and in those comparisons, Asian/Asian American students often seem to be doing "better" than other ethnic groups (better test scores, high school graduation rates, etc.).  But it was interesting to read that despite those benefits in high school, Asian Americans are equally underrepresented in corporate America (which, admittedly is already a pretty privileged subsection of society):

In the annals of American employment discrimination, “quiet” and “hardworking” may not seem like the worst way to be characterized, Wan acknowledges. But such seemingly benign stereotypes, much like the term “model minority,” mask a less benign truth backed by reams of research: Members of the country’s most highly educated racial group are among the least likely to make it to the top in corporate America.

...

Despite higher educational attainment, however, Asian Americans fare as poorly as other minority groups when it comes to the top jobs at the nation’s 500 largest companies. Only eight of those companies are led by Asian Americans, and only 2.6 percent of the seats on the corporate boards of Fortune 500 companies are held by Asian Americans, according to research by Diversity­Inc and the think tank Catalyst. (Six African Americans are Fortune 500 CEOs, and 7.4 percent hold corporate board seats; eight Hispanics are Fortune 500 CEOs, and 3.3 percent hold corporate board seats. Nearly 87 percent of corporate board seats at the companies are held by white workers.)

Anyways, just shows that change needs to happen systemically everywhere - not just in high school or in pre-K or for a certain group of students or for a certain city or area.  

"Social Media Is a Conversation, Not a Press Release"

So, this article is not directly related to race or to education.  It's just a random article that I happened upon... a response to the way that some journalists (Bill & Emma Keller) critiqued a cancer patient's social-media presence.  Like I said, nothing that's directly related to race or to education.

However, I thought that the article was well-written and there was one particular quote that resonated with me.  I can't put it into words, but I feel like there's something here about the power of empowering youth and teachers and other allies to speak up... (emphasis mine)


If anything, social media has helped move us to a world in which people are no longer passive, silent subjects of journalists (or academics or other gatekeepers of public discourse). We can no longer speak of people at them, without them talking back of their own experience, and articulating their own narrative in their own terms. And how to deal with that reality, not whether cancer patients should tweet that much, is the real ethical question before us.

I don't know... I'm not finding the words... But anyways, it was an interesting read... :)
"Social Media Is a Conversation, Not a Press Release" by Zeynep Tufekci

Teach for America

(Recommended by Larry)

"The history of TFA reveals the ironies of contemporary education reform. In its mission to deliver justice to underprivileged children, TFA and the liberal education reform movement have advanced an agenda that advances conservative attempts to undercut teacher’s unions. More broadly, TFA has been in the vanguard in forming a neoliberal consensus about the role of public education—and the role of public school teachers—in a deeply unequal society."

Read here: http://jacobinmag.com/2011/12/teach-for-america/

Race and Ethnicity in an Integrated School

Blogpost: Race and Ethnicity in an Integrated School
By Spencer Pforsich

Another perspective on how important (and difficult) it is to find constructive and supportive ways to talk about race & ethnicity in our schools:

It was February 2008 at High Tech High. As my first period students arrived and settled in, I distributed copies of an email the entire faculty received the evening before from celebrateblackhistry@gmail.com. The email, signed only “Concerned Student,” expressed outrage because the author felt not enough attention had been paid school-wide to Black History Month, currently in its last week. It read, “I’m not saying that every teacher in this whole school needs to drop whatever they already have planned and change the curriculum to do ONLY Black History, but people need to do something.” 

... 

“Let’s pause here for a moment,” I said. “Look around the room at who has done most of the talking. Also look around at whose voices you haven’t heard.” As students slowly took this in, a few surprised sounds and awkward giggles emerged. They began to notice, as I had, that almost every student who had spoken throughout the conversation had been white; about half the class had remained silent. The two black students had said nothing. 

One point from the email that the students hadn’t addressed was a sentence that read, “I’m choosing to be anonymous because I don’t feel I can talk to a teacher or my advisor about this.” In our small school, many of us felt that the best part about it was the close-knit sense of community that we could create. The thought that there were possibly students here who didn’t feel comfortable approaching their teachers about issues that mattered to them was deeply alarming to me—and I began to question why my classroom had such conspicuously silent voices.

Race vs. Class: The False Dichotomy

Article: "Race vs. Class: The False Dichotomy"

By SHERRILYN A. IFILL

I don't have a conclusive position on affirmative action, but the two things from this editorial that spoke to me are that:

1) Race and Class are often pitted against each other as if we can or should only examine one issue at a time.  

2) On the contrary, because of how interrelated the issues are, I do believe that we need to be working on multiple fronts at a time... and that to do so doesn't necessarily have to mean that we're diluting our efforts or that we're not acknowledging the relative importance of the issues.

What we might learn from the decades-long (and painfully incomplete) experience of desegregation is the need to deploy multiple efforts to address a chronic problem. In the context of higher education, that menu of efforts should include considering income (if not wealth), as well as an aggressive campaign to raise the quality of K-12 public education.

I know that these points - particularly the second one - seem fairly obvious, but it's one that I've had to grapple with a lot myself this year, since I tend to want to work on issues in a linear, hierarchical fashion.  And unfortunately, real life and circumstances doesn't work like that.

Availability/Accessibility of Tutors as an example of a class divide

Article: Some Tutors Are Shouldering a Wider Load

By ABBY ELLIN

Published: December 14, 2012

Instead of just helping a student catch up, a new sort of tutor has taken on duties of therapists, personal assistants and even parents.

 

I'm posting this article because it reminded me of a common argument that's made in urban education, which is - "The parents aren't doing enough.  Families need to do more and get more involved in their children's education."  But according to this article, it seems like the parents at the other end of the socio-economic spectrum aren't doing more - they're in fact doing less.  The only difference is that they have the money to pay somebody to pick up the slack for them.  Again, another example of a class divide in the success of students in schools and in higher education.

Original Article: Please Stop Using the Phrase 'Achievement Gap'

Here is Camika Royal's original article on the phrase "achievement gap".

ARTICLE: "Please Stop Using the Phrase 'Achievement Gap'

Here's the beginning of her piece...

Recently, I've been more and more troubled with the phrase "achievement gap." I was a 1999 Teach For America corps member and recently, in my occasional work with the organization, I've begun to share my concerns about what this concept suggests.

Because of America's racial history and legacy, the cross-racial comparison that holds up white student achievement as the universally standard goal is problematic. Further, the term "achievement gap" is inaccurate because it blames the historically marginalized, under-served victims of poor schooling and holds whiteness and wealth as models of excellence. And, as with all misnomers, the thinking that undergirds the achievement gap only speaks of academic outcomes, not the conditions that led to those outcomes, nor does it acknowledge that the outcomes are a consequence of those conditions.

I'm still mulling over what I think about her comments, but here's one quote that I thought was really powerful: "Words count because they indicate place, position, and power."

Stop using the phrase "achievement gap"

Blogpost: "Camika Royal Responds to Critics"
(via Diane Ravitch's blog)
Camika Royal, a historian of education and Teach for America alum, write a provocative post in which she called on people to stop using the term “achievement gap.” In her original post, she said the term is offensive and demeaning and explained why. The post generated many responses. I invited Dr. Royal to respond to her critics, and she does so here.

I haven't read Camika Royal's original post about the term "achievement gap", but here are the two quotes I found particularly striking from her post here:

The first quote...
This is why when people suggest the difference in test scores between Whites and Asians is an “achievement gap” that supposedly disparages Whites, thus disproving the argument of Anglo-normativity, it does not. Even within the comparison of White and Asian students’ test scores, Whites’ test scores are seen as normal and Asians’ high test scores are seen as exotic and exceptional, hence the model minority myth. Both the so-called achievement gap and the model minority myth are racist constructs.

and

The second quote...
This messiah complex compels top-down reforms and resists partnerships with parents and listening to communities because these reformers truly believe they know best. Education reform fueled by martyrdom and the messiah complex is missing the mark. One of my mentors, Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings, said recently, “Catching up is made nearly impossible by our structural inequalities.” In agreement with her and with you, Dr. Ravitch, I believe that until education reform corrects structural inequalities teeming in under-resourced, historically marginalized communities, education reform will continue to fall short of its goal.

How Washington, D.C., Schools Cheat Their Students Twice

ARTICLE: "How Washington, D.C., Schools Cheat Their Students Twice"by CALEB ROSSITER
Kids who fail their courses go to phony Credit Recovery classes. No wonder so many high-school graduates are at or near a fifth-grade level.(Originally on WSJ.com, via Diane Ratvitch's blog)

I see this phenomenon in my school too!  Personally, I'm not convinced that computer-based lessons are actually able to teach students to fully understand content.  I'm not saying that any teacher is better than a computer program - there are definitely a lot of bad teachers out there who essentially just babysit the students - but in terms of actual learning (by which I mean comprehension and not just being able to click the right answers on the "assessment" at the end of the program), I just don't see how a computer program can help students reach their full potential.

Beyond Black and White in the Mississippi Delta

ARTICLE: "Beyond Black and White in the Mississippi Delta"

by Gene Dattel

In three small-town Southern elections, community and trust trumped race.
This op-ed doesn't really delve into any real issues, but I thought that the way the author articulated the following comment was nice:

Each of these towns experienced the civil rights movement. They also experienced mechanization, which displaced the black labor force. When the promise of the civil rights revolution was challenged by the realities of deindustrialization, hope was replaced by disappointment and disillusionment. The moral clarity of the struggle against legal segregation was replaced by de facto segregation and self-segregation — a problem hardly unique to the South.

It reminded me of the conversation we had last week, where Ann was talking about how students don't think about all the reasons behind the surface "reality" of what their observations.  Similarly, I think that when people talk about problems rising from racial discrimination, they often don't think about how class/the economy compounds/compounded those issues.  The article I posted before about the housing market also speaks to this point.

Speaking in Colors: A Window into Uncomfortable Conversations about Race and Ethnicity in U.S. Bilingual Classrooms

ARTICLE: "Speaking in Colors: A Window into Uncomfortable Conversations about Race and Ethnicity in U.S. Bilingual Classrooms"
by Tatyana Kleyn

(Shared by Larry)
I am attaching a short piece on a study dealing with race in bilingual classrooms.

"The Liberal Gloat"

ARTICLE: "The Liberal Gloat"

by Ross Douthat

I'm posting this opinion piece, because I think that this opinion piece and one of the comments responding to it, were both very thought-provoking.

In his editorial, Douthat posits a common refrain/warning that Republicans make, namely that: 

     [There is a ] growing failure of America’s local associations — civic, familial, religious — to 
    foster stability, encourage solidarity and make mobility possible.

To his credit, this piece isn't a mindless attack on liberals, per se, but still, the arguments he makes seemed a bit skewed.Then I read one of the comments responding to the article and I felt like it did a good job of explaining what I was thinking:

• winiznayne
• albuquerque, nm

NYT Pick

The problem with the right is that they see the failure of social institutions as the cause of societal decay instead of the other way around. It's not the failure of the family, community, church that is the core of the problem. The core of the problem, (and the cause of the downfall of these institutions) is the rising inequality enacted by thirty years of Republican policies of deregulation, tax cuts, union busting, etc.

Republican economic policy is completely at odds with conservative social positions. It's an economic policy that openly embraces inequality and a social policy that demands that people help themselves. A policy that embraces privatization of everything, forcing people to make more purchases of every day products, but one that resists wage increases among workers at every point. The list goes on.

These contradictions breed a cynical attitude among society. Low-wage families can't thrive under such pressures, and churches refuse to acknowledge the insensitivity and absurdity of these policies. It is really hard not to see the Republican party, and conservatives in general, as a group of out of touch elitists who can't seem to understand why poor people aren't richer, why immigrants aren't maintaining families, why working-class people aren't intellectual. The core of the problem is the economics. Focus on the inequality, not the ramifications.

What do you guys think?

The Houses that Racism Built

ARTICLE: "Racial Preferences for Whites: The Houses that Racism Built"
By Larry Adelman

San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, June 29, 2003

We read this article in our PD last month and I thought that it was really powerful.  Here's one excerpt from the article that encapsulates the main message:

Racism doesn't just come dressed in white sheets or voiced by skinheads, but lies in institutions that, like the FHA, have quietly and often invisibly channeled America's wealth, power, and status disproportionately to white people. Those advantages are passed on and accumulate, generation to generation, giving us a head start in life. As Ohio State University law professor john a. powell observes: "The slick thing about whiteness is that whites are getting the spoils of a racist system without themselves being personally racist." 

When Pineapple Races Hare, Students Lose, Critics of Standardized Tests Say

ARTICLE: When Pineapple Races Hare, Students Lose, Critics of Standardized Tests Say

ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS

Part of an eighth-grade English test has baffled students and given ammunition to activists who say that it shows the absurdity of standardized testing.

This is hilarious... and ridiculous...