Why Civil Rights Groups Oppose the Obama Agenda

[proud2BlibKansan]

by Diane Ravitch

In late July, the nation's leading civil rights organizations issued a withering critique of the Obama administration's education policies. Did you see it? It would be understandable if most people never even heard about it because of the circumstances under which it was released. The statement was issued by the NAACP, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the National Urban League, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the National Coalition for Educating Black Children, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the Schott Foundation for Public Education. The press briefing was canceled at the last minute, when the leaders were invited to meet with Secretary Arne Duncan at the very hour they had scheduled their press briefing.

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Secretary Arne Duncan often says that "education is a civil right," but if that is the case, then states and districts should not have to compete for federal funding to guarantee the civil rights of their students. Logic suggests that the neediest students should have the greatest claim on federal funding. But, as we saw in Race to the Top, the children in 39 states saw no benefit at all from billions in federal education spending. Poor and minority children in states such as Mississippi, Alabama, California, Texas, Louisiana, and Illinois were left out. If the money were truly intended to strengthen education as a civil right, then it should have gone to those who needed it most, not to those who wrote the best proposal or had the best consultants. "The civil right to a high-quality education," say the civil rights groups, "is connected to individuals, not the states, and federal policy should be framed accordingly." By delivering extra funding to states that compete and win, they warn, "the majority of low-income and minority students will be left behind."

Nor were the civil rights groups complimentary about other components of the Obama education agenda. They complained that: "For far too long, communities of color have been testing grounds for unproven methods of educational change while all levels of government have resisted the tough decisions required to expand access to effective educational methods." Instead of providing high-quality, early-childhood education and supporting policies that would provide "a stable supply of experienced, highly effective teachers," current reforms are "stop-gap" measures that rely on "quick fixes" and "offer no real long-term strategy for effective systemic change." The absence of these strategies in affluent communities indicates "the marginal nature of this approach."

These "quick-fix" strategies include closing schools, which is a central feature of the Obama-Duncan education agenda. Although, as the report says, this strategy has little or no evidence to support it, it will be inflicted primarily on low-income and minority communities. School closings have "increased disruption but ha not improved achievement for the students in these communities. And in some communities, the new schools created do not admit or retain the most educationally needy students." Schools in poor communities should be closed only as a last resort, and only after intensive efforts to help the school improve, and only after close collaboration with parents, the community, and teachers, and only after development of a clear plan to relocate the students to better schools.

The report also takes issue with the Obama administration's reliance on charter schools: "...we are concerned about the overrepresentation of charter schools in low-income and predominantly minority communities. There is no evidence that charter operators are systematically more effective in creating higher student outcomes nationwide...while some charter schools can and do work for some students, they are not a universal solution for systemic change for all students, especially those with the highest needs."

Nor do the civil rights groups support the idea of using test scores as a "sole or primary measure of teacher effectiveness." They believe that schools in low-income and minority communities need a stable and effective staff that is committed to schools over the long haul, and they propose that "any measure of teacher effectiveness must account for the degree of difficulty of the teaching environment so that high-quality teachers will not be deterred from working in high-need schools."

more . . . http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/2010/09/dear_deborah_in_late_july.html

[katandmoon]

1. K&R

[Hannah Bell]

2. No, wait, arne just said "waiting for superman" was a "rosa parks moment".

I mean, it's so obvious, a lying shilling propaganda piece for hedge fund billionaires = rosa parks refusing to sit in the back of the bus.

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/09/arne-duncans-rosa-parks-moment.html