Recent years have seen a growing emphasis on the notion that America’s children should be spending more time in school. The idea that more schooling will enhance learning outcomes bears an awkward resemblance to the notion that additional money will amplify happiness; both points of view seem to reflect an unwillingness to work creatively with the material already at hand.
In opposition to a bill in the California State Senate allowing public universities and colleges to consider race, gender, ethnicity
This year in May, Georgia passed “one of nation’s the toughest immigration measures.” It is one of the many copycat laws modeled after Arizona’s severe immigration legislation. A month after its passage, a federal judge blocked provisions of the law that required police officers to check the immigration status of suspects without an identification card and that punished people who knowingly harbor or transport illegal immigrants. The judge found that the law reflected a misinterpretation of federal law and could violate civil rights.
The Supreme Court has declined to take the case of a Texas high school cheerleader who was kicked off the squad after refusing to cheer for the basketball player whom she alleges raped her. The Fifth Circuit ruling not only upheld the school’s right to punish her for refusing to cheer, but dismissed her suit as frivolous, requiring her family to cover the school’s legal fees.
Arizona, home of SB 1070, has proven itself to be ground zero in the nation’s immigration debate. At the center of racially charged controversy is Tom Horne, former Superintendent of Public Instruction and current state Attorney General, who has waged a four-year campaign to eradicate the Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican-American/La Raza Studies Program.
Trial for Lobato v. State started this week in a Colorado district court, a case in which 14 school districts from the relatively low-property tax area of San Luis Valley sued the State of Colorado, the State Board of Education, and the Governor, arguing the state has violated Colorado’s constitution by mandating programs in low-income schools that are already underfunded. The plaintiffs have asked for ongoing injunctions requiring the state to restructure school funding and ensure adequate education for all students via judicial oversight until the overhaul of the funding scheme is complete.
Educational inequity is a civil rights issue. Just choose your statistic – numerous studies show how educational achievement maps onto race and socioeconomic status (such as the finding that “by the end of high school, black and Hispanic students’ reading and mathematics skills are roughly the same as those of white students in the eighth grade.”) This inequity undercuts the provision in every state constitution that grants every child a right to education.
The past two decades have seen the filing of dozens of cases of so-called “educational adequacy” litigation, state court cases in which plaintiffs have charged that the state has a responsibility to offer all of its children an adequate education. State Supreme Courts throughout the country have held, in clear and forceful terms, that students have a right to an education that will allow them to make effective life decisions, play a meaningful role in the political process, and compete favorably in the job market.
It turns out it may the schools, and not the kids, who are causing the discipline problems. A new study from Texas tracked every Texas seventh-grader from 2000, 2001, and 2002 for six years or more to examine the interaction between school discipline, poverty, race, and the juvenile justice system.
Wesleyan University’s Prisoner Education Program provides educational opportunities to violent offenders in a maximum-security facility. Alexis Sturdy—the program’s fellow—discusses some of the challenges that the program has encountered, as well some of the program’s achievements and aspirations.
In the wake of controversy over Yale University’s response to the Delta Kappa Epsilon march–where students chanted, “No means yes!
