Education and Schools

Ever since the Trayvon Martin shooting, people across the country have engaged in an important dialogue about the challenges faced by African American boys and young men in this country, and rightly so. A focus on – and substantial investment in – the success of males of color in this country is critical and long overdue.

But as the National Women’s Law Center has said time and again, there has been very little attention to the barriers to education that girls and young women of color face, which should not be underestimated in terms of their gravity or their impact. I saw only one piece after the verdict, the Washington Post’s ‘Bolster’ black boys, but don’t forget about black girls (and quoting President Obama’s remarks) pointing out that the important focus on African American boys does not have to be at the exclusion of African American girls, who face very real – but sometimes different – obstacles in education, the juvenile justice system, and beyond.

That’s why I was so excited to read this excellent interview with Dr. Monique Morris conducted by New American Media and shared by the National Opportunity to Learn Campaign with the headline “Are Girls Invisible in the Movement for Boys and Men of Color?”. Read more »

When the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was signed into law by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, its goal was to enhance educational opportunities for disadvantaged children. As Senator Tom Harkin, Chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, asserted in an Education Week blog last month, ESEA was meant to help lift children out of poverty by making high-quality education accessible to all.

That is still the goal today. And while the 2001 reauthorization of the law, also known as No Child Left Behind, was well intentioned and helped expose the stark disparities in our education system, leaders from both parties acknowledge that the law needs improvement. Republicans and Democrats in the both the House and the Senate have come up with their own revised versions of ESEA this summer (New America’s blog put out a helpful side by side comparison here [PFD]).

Today, the House will begin debate on the so-called “Student Success Act” (SSA), the version of ESEA reauthorization proposed by John Kline, chairman of the Education and Workforce Committee. Despite the clever title, the bill is a giant step in the wrong direction for students. Read more »

The best thing about the last week of the Supreme Court's term is that the waiting ends and we can move from predictions (gloomy or otherwise) to analysis.

Here's the bottomline from the much anticipated Fisher v. UT Austin decision — affirmative action in higher education can and should continue (please see our amicus brief for a whole host of reasons why). This is one of those decisions that deserves a close read — I've now done so and have included five key points from the decision that should not go unnoticed. 

1. Grutter was not overturned. In fact, the Supreme Court followed the decision in Grutter v. Bollinger, that an admissions policy that carefully considers racial and ethnic diversity as one of many factors is constitutional. 
2. The Court acknowledged the importance of diversity to institutions of higher education. The Court reiterated that it defers to a university's judgment that such diversity is essential to the educational mission. As the Court explained, a diverse student body "serves values beyond race alone, including enhanced classroom dialogue and the lessening of racial isolation and stereotypes." 

Yesterday, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee debated Senator Harkins’ reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which included an amendment to add the High School Data Transparency Act to the ESEA. The amendment would require high schools to publicly report data on how many girls and boys are playing sports and how much money schools are spending on their teams. Read more »

Last week, Senator Tom Harkin, Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, introduced the Strengthening America’s Schools Act of 2013, a bill to reauthorize (fancy word for “update and fix”) the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), also known as No Child Left Behind.

The “mark-up” of the bill—when the HELP Committee votes on amendments and hopefully sends the bill to the full Senate—starts tomorrow.

The National Women’s Law Center supports http://www.nwlc.org/resource/letter-help-committee-support-strengthening-americas-schools-act this bill, and urges the Senate HELP Committee to further strengthen it during tomorrow’s mark-up. Read more »

My senior year of college, two of my roommates and I watched Teen Mom CONSTANTLY. I liked to pretend I wasn’t watching it, but the conversation usually went something like this:

Becka (standing in doorway): “Oh jeez, guys. You’re watching this?”

Arielle: “Yes. Absolutely.”

[10 minutes later]

Rachel: “…Do you want to sit down?”

Becka (still standing in doorway): “…..Yes. FARRAH’S CRYING FACE IS CRAZY.”

When you watch the show, the difficulties of teen parents and pregnant students become painfully clear. Recently, I was re-watching Season 1 on Netflix Instant, and it clicked – wow. The Pregnant and Parenting Student Access to Education Act would REALLY help these girls.

Title IX already affords a number of protections to pregnant & parenting students. This law requires that schools receiving federal funds not discriminate against students on the basis of sex, which includes pregnancy and related conditions like childbirth, pregnancy termination, and recovery. This prohibition against discrimination comes in a number of forms – for example, students must not be forced to attend a different program or school than their peers, must be given the opportunity to make up missed work for pregnancy-related absences, must be treated the same as if they had a temporary disability, and may not be excluded from sports or extracurricular activities.

The Pregnant and Parenting Student Access to Education Act (PPSAE) is designed to go beyond nondiscrimination by giving students the tools they need to succeed. It would enable school districts to – among other things – create graduation plans for pregnant and parenting students; provide academic support, parenting and life skills classes, strategies to prevent future unplanned pregnancies, and legal aid services; help pregnant and parenting students gain access to affordable child care, and revise school policies and practices to remove discouraging barriers. Pretty great, huh? Read more »

Just when I thought I had seen it all, and right on the heels of our announcement two days ago of a great Title IX pregnancy discrimination settlement with the City University of New York, my colleague forwards me this article and video from HuffPo. Apparently last summer a North Carolina high school allowed its rising seniors to pose for senior photos with props that represented their achievements, who they are, what they like, etc. Some students posed with footballs, some even posed with their family pets, and teen mom Caitlin Tiller posed with her baby. Touchingly, Caitlin explains that her son “helped me get to where I am today.” She said that after giving birth she started to work harder in school – she even graduated early, began college classes in January and got a part-time job working 30 hours a week. She added: “I wouldn’t be the person I am today without him.”

Still, a month ago school officials told Caitlin that they would not print the photo of her with her baby. They said the baby should not be pictured because he is not “school related.” Boy, would I love to hear them explain how a family pet is “school related.” Read more »

The Nutty Professor was a landmark role for both Jerry Lewis and Eddie Murphy. As I’m sure you all know, the main plot line is driven by the scientific prowess of the professor, who develops a serum that transforms him from a science-loving nerd into a smooth-talking, lady-chasing hunk. The movie is a parody of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and, fittingly for the comedians who have played the main character, it is hilarious. The original 1963 film was even selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

However, the recent transformation of a 16 year old girl, who “mixed some common household chemicals in a small 8 oz water bottle on the grounds of Bartow High School . . . [which] caused a small explosion that . . . produced some smoke, [but] . . . [n]o one was hurt and no damage was caused,” into a felon stretches the limits of my imagination. Unfortunately, this type of story is also culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant: the school-to-prison pipeline disproportionately affects youth of color, and women (especially women of color) continue to be underrepresented in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) fields – a topic even NASA has begun to address head-on.

I guess truth really is stranger than fiction.

According to reports, the student was taken into custody by a school resource officer (“SRO”) and charged with “possession/discharge of a weapon on school grounds and discharging a destructive device.” The student was subsequently expelled from school and will be charged as an adult. Read more »

A few months ago, my employer, the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), filed an administrative complaint against the City University of New York (CUNY) for violating Title IX by discriminating against a pregnant student, and just this morning we settled the case with CUNY, which has agreed to take some important steps to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.

A little background: Stephanie Stewart, a student at the Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC), was pregnant at the start of the Spring 2012 semester. Because BMCC, like the vast majority of colleges and universities, receives federal funding, it is prohibited from discriminating on the basis of sex by Title IX. Unfortunately, BMCC left it up to instructors to determine their own policies for absences and make-up work and didn’t explain that pregnancy-related absences must be excused.

Stephanie’s professor in her anthropology course called “Roles of Women” refused to accede to Stephanie’s request that, if she had to miss class to attend a pregnancy-related medical appointment or to deliver her baby, she be allowed to make up the work she missed. The professor told Stephanie that she doesn’t allow make-up tests or assignments, even in cases of unforeseen emergencies – including Stephanie’s pregnancy, and refused to grade homework turned in via email when Stephanie had to attend a doctor’s appointment.

Stephanie didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. She brought her case to the attention of NWLC and helped score a BIG-TIME victory for all CUNY students. As a result of the settlement, CUNY will adopt a policy regarding the treatment of pregnant and parenting students, making it clear that absences for conditions relating to pregnancy are excused and students will be allowed to make up missed work. Read more »

When applying to college several years ago, I was privileged to be able to consider women’s colleges without being concerned that my gender identity would present any problem in the application process. This is because I am cisgender – a term used for people who have a gender identity that “matches” the sex they were assigned at birth. For transgender applicants like Calliope Wong, things were more complicated.

Calliope, who identifies as a transgender woman, applied with high hopes to Smith College, a women’s college in Massachusetts. Her application was returned to her, unreviewed, with a letter from the admissions office that because her federal financial aid paperwork indicated her sex as male, they could not accept her application.

When I think about Calliope, I also think about how much we need the Student Non-Discrimination Act (SNDA), a bill that was reintroduced today in the House of Representatives. Read more »