Education and Schools

What a great way to start the day! I sat down at my desk, opened my email, and was immediately greeted with good news. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano announced that young people who were brought to the United States before age 16 and who meet several key criteria will no longer be subject to deportation immediately. Instead, they will be considered for relief from removal proceedings for a period of two years, subject to renewal, and will be eligible to apply for work authorization. I applaud the Obama Administration for taking this huge step forward for our country’s immigration policy.

This is also a big step forward for education policy, because to be eligible for this relief the youth has to be in school, have graduated from high school, have obtained a GED, or be an honorably discharged veteran of the armed forces. Creating a clear path to work authorization (and taking away the stress of possible removal) for eligible, hard-working students will provide them with a powerful incentive to stay in high school and graduate. Read more »

This week, we had a small piece of good news about federal investments in child care and early education. On June 12, the Senate Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee approved a fiscal year 2013 appropriations bill that included increased funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), Head Start, and early intervention services and provided new funding for Race to the Top, with a portion set aside for the Early Learning Challenge.

The bill would increase Child Care and Development Block Grant discretionary funding by $160 million, to $2.438 billion. (Discretionary funding is set each year; there is also $2.917 billion in mandatory CCDBG funding.) The increase includes $90 million to support training, education, and other professional development opportunities for the early care and education workforce, which is key to improving the overall quality of early care and education, and $70 million to help more families pay for care and raise reimbursement rates for child care providers. By providing funding to expand the availability of child care assistance as well as to enhance the quality of the workforce, the Senate Subcommittee is signaling that it recognizes investments in both areas are essential in giving families access to higher-quality child care options. Read more »

Welcome to NWLC’s first weekly roundup for April. April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, so I thought I’d kick things off by sharing a few ideas of how you can support victim of sexual assault and help raise awareness during the month. Also this week: our latest infographic, some lady athletes making history, and more.

All throughout April, the National Sexual Violence Resource Center will be providing resources and ways to get involved with Sexual Assault Awareness Month, or SAAM for short. The 2012 SAAM Day of Action passed us already (it was this past Tuesday, April 3), but you can see what other current campaigns are in the works here, including Tweet About It! Tuesdays every Tuesday in April at 2pm ET. SAAM activists from around the country will be using the hashtag #Tweetaboutit for these weekly chats, in addition to #SAAM and #SAAM2012.

You can also check out Take Back The Night’s calendar to see if there will be a TBTN event in your community in the coming weeks.

Yesterday we published a new infographic detailing what tax breaks for millionaires cost. The

 average tax cut per millionaire in 2012 – $143,000 – could help support a number of programs, like Head Start or Pell Grants. Want to learn more? Check out the graphic – it opens in full size if you click on it.

Read more »

My 5-hour trip to a New York theater this weekend was the longest I have ever traveled to watch a movie, but the 1.5-hour “Bully” film was an even longer emotional journey.

It’s hard to sit in a theater and eat popcorn as kids are being brutalized and taunted in front of your eyes. “This can’t be happening,” you think, before remembering your childhood - it does. This isn’t a John Hughes’ movie. Jokes about “geeks” aren’t funny. It’s real life and kids go home thinking their lives are not worth living.

Alex, 12, is stabbed with pencils, strangled, punched and pushed, but it’s what he says that makes you really cry. When asked how the abuse makes him feel, Alex replies, “I don’t feel anything anymore.”

The film shifts between the stories of five children, capturing the struggles of these different families and their powerful stories in context of a systemic crisis. With more than 13 million children falling victim to bullying each year, the problem transcends geographic, racial, ethnic and economic borders.

It forces us to look at greater issues, including violence, homophobia, and a pervasive “kids will be kids” attitude that perpetuates bullying culture in schools, rather than focusing our anger on the faceless child issuing beat-downs on the skinny kid in glasses who has trouble making friends. Read more »

Earlier this week, the federal district court for the District of Columbia dismissed a case brought by the American Sports Council against the U.S. Department of Education, in which ASC tried to stop the Department from applying to high schools Title IX’s three-part test for determining whether schools are providing males and females with equal opportunities to play sports. Of course, the law has always applied to high schools; this was merely the latest attempt to weaken Title IX’s application to sports.

You would think that everyone would be in favor of treating our sons and daughters equally, but ASC and similar groups have long argued that the law hurts males by requiring schools to cut their opportunities in order to provide girls and women with opportunities that they don’t really want, because they are inherently less interested in playing sports. Fortunately, the federal courts of appeals have unanimously rejected such arguments, which are premised on the very stereotypes that Title IX was enacted to combat. Read more »

On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) released the 2009-2010 civil rights data collection which tracks a number of equity indicators from schools around the country, everything from discipline rates to rates of sexual harassment, from schools around the country. We at NWLC were thrilled to see that  the CRDC data has been cross tabulated by sex and race.

Cross tabu-what?

Let me digress. When data is collected, it can be disaggregated. That means that rather than just take a count of how many kids are suspended in a year, disaggregated data would count how many White kids and how many Native American kids are suspended in a year. Or you can disaggregate by sex and count how many girls and how many boys were subject to physical restraint in school. Cross tabulation takes that one step further and lets you look at one or more of these categories together.

Which is how we found out that 1 out of every 10 African American girls was subject to an out of school suspension last year. Boys made up about two-thirds of suspensions, but African American girls were more likely to be suspended than all other girls, White Boys, Hispanic boys, and Asian boys.

Over the past twenty-five years, there has been a lot of attention paid to the plight of African American men and boys in this country, and with good reason. Black men in the U.S. face shockingly high drop-out rates, unemployment rates and rates of incarceration. As Michelle Alexander has pointed out, there are currently more Black men in prison or on parole in this country than were enslaved before the Civil War began.

Unfortunately, the emphasis on the serious educational crisis for boys of color has resulted in little focus on the challenges facing girls of color. In fact, girls at risk — particularly girls of color — have alarmingly low graduation rates. Over 45% of Native American female students fail to graduate on time, if at all; the same is true for 38% of female African American and 39% of Latina students. Cross-tabulated data help us to ensure that problems faced by different subgroups of students are not masked, so educational interventions (or lack thereof) will be data driven, not based on stereotypes. Read more »

This blog is cross-posted at ACSBlog.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, a challenge to the affirmative action plan used by the University of Texas at Austin. Currently, the university allocates over 80 percent of its slots to students who graduate in the top ten percent of their public high school. For the final 20 percent, the university considers many factors, including grades, a personal essay, character, special talents, socio-economic circumstances, and race. As the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held last year in upholding the constitutionality of the plan, UT-Austin carefully crafted its plan to comply with the Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling in Grutter v. Bollinger, which held that consideration of race in public university admissions could properly forward the compelling interest in diversity in education.

One of the great promises of public education, at every level, is its potential to create a student body drawn from a wide variety of backgrounds and perspectives, enhancing the educational experience of all students. As the Supreme Court recognized in Grutter, “Numerous studies show that student body diversity promotes learning outcomes, and better prepares students for an increasingly diverse workforce and society, and better prepares them as professionals.”

Racial diversity within schools breaks down stereotypes that feed and perpetuate inequality. This is particularly important for women because many of the most poisonous racial stereotypes are also gender stereotypes—for example, that black women are promiscuous, that Asian women are subservient, or that Latina women are domestics. Read more »

We have all seen tragic headlines like this: Student Commits Suicide over Homophobic Slurs. School Cancels Prom over Lesbian Couple. Parents of Gay Teen Say Bullying Caused Death.

Students who are or are perceived to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) are especially at risk for bullying and harassment at school. Every day, students across the country endure the devastating impacts of this kind of bullying; sinking academic performance, health risks, and dropping out.

Title IX prohibits discrimination based on sex, but did you know there is no federal law prohibiting LGBT discrimination in schools? You can help provide a safe learning environment for all students.

Make a call today and ask your Senators to co-sponsor an important piece of legislation, the Student Non-Discrimination Act, to prevent LGBT discrimination in K-12 public schools. It's easy. Dial (202) 224-3121 TODAY and ask to be connected to your Senators' offices. Read more »

Take that, Larry Summers.   Read more »

At a time when the unemployment rate remains at a staggering 9% overall, young people are frustrated. Ideas are continuously being bandied across political news programs and between politicians. Unfortunately, it is rare to hear the ideas of those in my generation who may be the most affected by the lack of a real economic recovery in the long run.

Last week, alongside about 40 college students and recent graduates, I had the opportunity to attend the conference, “Jobs for Young Americans Day on the Hill” hosted by the Young Invincibles.

Commencing the day- long conference, we visited the offices of both Democratic and Republican law makers to discuss ways in which young people can obtain employment under the American Jobs Act; specifically the Pathways Back to Work Fund, which would provide industry based training for young adults, helping to prepare for long-term employment. Read more »