Remember when folks said I “didn’t deserve my doctorate Bc I will never get on that BIPOC train”? Well, this is what you get. Almost instantly.
Congrats Stockton, no more #BHM in favor of Indigenous History month. Those terms leave us with the bill but erase us from the benefit. pic.twitter.com/OtbJDidxvb
Now I don’t know about y’all but as long as I’ve been alive, February has always been Black History Month. And for those who don’t know, America didn’t just give us a Black History Month because it loves the hell out of us and thought we should have some time in the year commemorating and teaching our history … oh, absolutely not! It was Carter G. Woodson and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History that kicked it off in 1926 with announcing the second week of the month as “Negro History Week.” And when it became a more widespread and month-long celebration, President Gerald Ford made it official in 1976.
So when I saw this screenshot, I immediately got irritated. Not because I’m against the celebration and representation of all indigenous people but because it’s an example of the continued disrespect, watering down and erasure of Black history in education.
This resolution was not passed, but the fact that this was even considered and proposed for February is still an ashy, heavy-handed slap to the face—hell, as I’ve said before, it’s added pressure from the knee that’s been on the neck of public education.
And as an education advocate and activist, my message is this: In order for America to take its knees off of our necks, it must also take its knees off the neck of public education. https://t.co/sP5kn5bEN5
Stuff like this makes me keep asking myself and others why we—Black people—continue to entrust this raggedy, hateful and oppressive system with our most prized possessions? Because time and time again, we’ve proven that we are capable of doing this education and building strong communities thing ourselves—and, might I add, we do a damn good job at it.
There’s a blueprint for success that exists in our history, y’all. On one of our episodes of Talk Dat Real Shit, we dove into the significance of HBCUs to Black communities as esteemed centers of higher learning, as well as breeding grounds for liberation movements and self-determination. We built these institutions because we had to and they have not only transformed our educational experiences but also our lives.
Just imagine how many more parents are having to choose between going to work to feed their kids and staying at home to care for kids that are starving because they can't feed them? Criminalizing the poor is one of the things America does best.https://t.co/PaVMQImj6b
And through all of this, Black families remain political pawns in this everlasting power struggle between school districts and teachers unions in the decision to reopen schools.
But our community has and continues to pull it together in these dark and desperate times.
Because school districts still aren’t giving our kids what they need, organizations like Serve Your City and The Oakland REACH have stepped up to deliver hot spots, laptops, learning hubs and pods, activities to keep youth engaged and mutual aid for families–all while continuing to advocate and activate for relief and reparations from the government.
— Serve Your City – Ward 6 Mutual Aid (@ServeYourCityDC) February 24, 2021
This is the work we’ve always done. This is the work we need right now.
So here’s the point I’m trying to make. The gatekeepers to white supremacy are going to continue to stand guard in protecting their racism and privilege while launching attacks on our history and existence. And while we’re fighting that battle, we’re losing the people fighting for.
Going forward, we need not devote all of our time and energy to what this country hasn’t given or what it isn’t doing for us because our communities are suffering and need us in this moment. We have to dedicate more effort to strategizing around how we can better do for ourselves.
We’ve built strong and self-sustaining communities before and we can have those again. It’s in the history this country keeps trying to suppress and erase, it’s in the power derived from our ancestors and it’s in the self-determination born in struggle and brilliance. We gotta tap in now.
By: Tanesha Peeples Title: February Is Black History Month. Periodt. Sourced From: educationpost.org/february-is-black-history-month-periodt/ Published Date: Sat, 27 Feb 2021 00:05:15 +0000
A lot of us have been confused, angry, and frustrated by the reluctance of some teachers, and particularly their unions, to resume in-person instruction. It defies not just science, but common sense, and feels like an exercise in shifting the goalposts or flexing political muscles. No in-person class until teachers are vaccinated. Or until kids are vaccinated. No, until everyone’s vaccinated and Covid-19 is eradicated. Then and only then will it be “safe” to return to something approximating normal schooling.
Over the weekend, a New York math teacher named Michael Pershan tweeted an astute observation, later expanded into a blog post, which suggests one possible cause of many teachers’ reluctance to resume in-person instruction: It’s less that they’re scared of Covid. They’re scared of hybrid teaching. And this, Pershan argues persuasively, is “an entirely reasonable concern about working conditions.”
“I bumped into an elementary teacher friend yesterday who I admire a great deal. She has been fully vaccinated and I know she cares a lot for her students,” Pershan writes. “She understands that vaccines are effective. She works hard for kids. Still, she’s praying that they don’t return in-person. And she even said she has colleagues who are afraid of getting their shots, for fear that they will have to come back to school. This is seemingly crazy—sure, ventilation is awful in a lot of places, but are they less safe than not being vaccinated?”
What’s actually happening, Pershan posits, is that the response to the pandemic has made teaching much more difficult and a lot less satisfying, and this is manifesting itself in a reluctance to further entrench the practices that are making teachers miserable, specifically having to simultaneously teach students in class and online. His blunt but accurate observation (just ask a teacher who is doing it) is that this common form of hybrid teaching “hardcore sucks.”
For a significant percentage of teachers, in-person schooling for the foreseeable future is going to mean hybrid instruction, with some combination of “roomies and Zoomies.” It’s certainly not going away in the current school year and maybe not the next one either, owing to parental choice and CDC guidelines. Even where in-person instruction is currently an option, a significant percentage of parents don’t want their kids back in physical school buildings, and health guidelines make it all but impossible for most schools to fit a full complement of students in a classroom without violating social distancing requirements. For the time being, this makes a certain amount of hybrid learning inevitable, which materially alters the act of teaching.
I spoke to Pershan after reading his blog post. He cited the work of the late University of Chicago sociologist Dan C. Lortie, who noted that teaching is rooted in “psychic rewards” for teachers. When your contact with students is inconsistent or unpredictable, the emotional day-to-day payoff of teaching isn’t always there. It’s a struggle to build trusting relationships and a positive and effective classroom culture among a rotating and unpredictable roster of students. It’s also easy for a low level of rigor and sophistication to creep into the work. Student indifference and lack of motivation becomes hard to ignore or combat. In sum, hybrid instruction not only makes the job harder, “it also strips away a lot of the things that people love about the job,” explains Pershan, who notes that many teachers have students they’ve never even met in person.
Not all hybrid teaching is created equal. Pershan makes the subtle but important point that “synchronous” hybrid learning, with only a few kids present in-person is really hard; when just a few kids are online it’s more manageable. “When most kids are in the classroom and a few are online…it’s not more effective for the kids who are online,” he notes. “But at least I feel like my presence at school is worthwhile. I can more easily help kids with things, I can keep an eye on everyone, and more important, it feels like there’s a real social environment.” When the numbers are flipped, with only a few kids physically present, “that’s a recipe for frustration,” Pershan observes. “That feels like you might as well have everyone stay at home, since you’re basically teaching online anyway.” But you’re also responsible for the kids who are physically present.
My own sense is that teachers needn’t be consciously “afraid” of hybrid teaching for Pershan’s thesis to make sense. Confirmation bias seems enough to tip the balance. Much like putting off recommended dental work if you’re not in pain, it’s human nature to avoid unpleasant tasks if they can be avoided. Teachers might simply be more susceptible to cite concerns for their “safety” if it forestalls returning to a job that has been made more difficult or unpleasant due to circumstances beyond their control. A crisis or public health emergency brings out the best in us. But as the emergency goes from an acute to a chronic condition, creating permanent changes in the structure and rewards of the job, it makes sense that teachers might resist, even unconsciously, putting themselves in harm’s way—psychologically, if not physically.
Some will perceive this analysis as merely another flavor of excuse-making and putting adult interests ahead of kids, or argue that any in-person instruction is better than none, therefore teachers should just suck it up and get back in to class. But teacher effectiveness matters under any scenario. The proof of Pershan’s provocative hypothesis may be in teacher retention. Economic uncertainty tends to reduce teacher turnover. If the economy shows signs of life and the job market improves—with the demands of teaching remaining high and the psychic rewards diminished—we shouldn’t be surprised by a sudden rush for the exits.
It may already be underway. A new RAND study suggests that Covid-driven changes to schooling are pushing some teachers out of the profession before their scheduled retirement dates. Almost half of public school teachers who left the classroom after March 2020 did so because of the Covid-19 pandemic. “At least for some teachers, the Covid-19 pandemic seems to have exacerbated what were high stress levels pre-pandemic by forcing teachers to, among other things, work more hours and navigate an unfamiliar remote environment, often with frequent technical problems,” according to the RAND report.
Pershan’s astute observation and the RAND report post offer, for me at least, a kind of hammer through glass moment, offering a different context for my own frustration with teachers’ reluctance to return to the classroom. The resolution is not entirely clear. Perhaps schools and districts might curtail synchronous hybrid learning in favor of full-time online academies for parents who demand a remote option. At the very least, it’s another argument for dispensing with the “new normal” and returning to the old normal with urgency, for everyone’s sake—parents, students, and teachers.
Robert Pondiscio is senior fellow and vice president for external affairs at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
This post originally appeared on the Fordham Institute’s Flypaper blog.
It’s up to us to make sure Congress knows they need to pass this $1.9 trillion plan and prioritize people over corporations. We’re talking to progressive grassroots leaders and hearing from Senators Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer to learn what we can do to get Congress to pass the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill.
Let me congratulate the workers at Amazon for having the incredible courage to stand up and to fight for a union. The fight you are waging will send a message to workers all across the country that if they stand up, stand together, and fight, they can win.
For many years, rural education has been a back-burner issue. For decades, education reformers have focused on urban school systems, which are big and highly visible. Meanwhile, even as businesses have departed rural communities, leaving them isolated and impoverished, their educational challenges have drawn scant notice.
What can be done about this? In a new essay for AEI Education’s Place-Based Philanthropy series, Bellwether Education’s Juliet Squire, who has done a lot of work with funders and rural communities in recent years, sketches a number of ideas on how philanthropy can better help rural communities.
These communities, Squire points out, need resources and support. However, funders inclined to step up are rarely from rural America, and they can too readily breed resentment by coming across as self-impressed, wealthy, cosmopolitan know-it-alls (not that this reaction is unique to rural communities, of course; plenty have raised similar concerns in places like Newark, N.J., and New Orleans).
Hoping to do better, donors are contemplating place-based approaches, in which they focus on one rural community at a time. Squire believes that, done right, this place-based approach has “enormous potential to revitalize rural communities.” Because this approach “requires philanthropies to shift their mindset from that of a benefactor to that of a partner committed to learning and working alongside local leaders,” it helps mitigate the resentment often caused by outside philanthropists, while still providing the rural communities the support they need.
The trick is, it’s tough to get this sort of approach right. Squire offers a number of suggestions. Three particularly stuck out to me.
First, philanthropy requires local capacity. In hard-hit rural communities, that can mean building from the ground up. In urban locales, philanthropies tend to partner with local nonprofits since established groups are more likely to understand the culture and needs of their community, to be known by local leaders, and to continue the work after a donor has moved on. But in struggling rural communities, Squire points out, civil society has frequently been hollowed out. This means philanthropies can’t rely on partners but wind up trying to build local connections and credibility on their own. A place to start, Squire suggests, is showing one can help by providing tangible things—like playground equipment. She says that only after donors have shown they can help are they able to earn the trust they need to move on to favorite funder activities like “conven[ing] community leaders” or “seed[ing] local partners.”
Second, place-based giving requires “acknowledging the interconnectedness of community challenges and being willing to invest across multiple domains.” Squire observes that, because rural communities tend to be small, close-knit, and invested in a shared history, changes in one venue are likely to introduce unintended consequences elsewhere. For instance, as Squire illustrates, “A rural school may need to restructure its staffing, but eliminating positions is a vastly different proposition when the school is the largest employer in town.” In rural America, school improvement is inextricably linked to employment (again, this is true everywhere, but it’s a more urgent concern in locales where schools account for a huge fraction of the workforce). While funders may view the need to invest across multiple domains as a drawback, Squire says there’s a benefit, too; a community’s small size means that modest investments can go a long way. Moreover, rural communities are able to “act nimbly and independently,” meaning that positive change may happen more rapidly than in large, sprawling urban centers.
Third, rural philanthropy requires setting aside preconceived notions of how to think about “impact” and “scale.” Foundations, relates Squire, “often quantify and evaluate [their] grants based on what, how much, and how well a grantee executed against expectations.” Squire believes that this translates poorly to small, fragile rural communities. She says that measuring impact in these communities usually involves a “more informal process,” where “interviews, focus groups, site visits, and trend analyses” can be more useful than formal reports. And when considering scale, Squire notes that, “a turnkey approach is antithetical to place-based philanthropy’s principal of community ownership.” She suggests that scale means showing other communities what’s possible and offering what they learned as a resource, not supplying a paint-by-numbers template.
There’s a lot of practical wisdom here. I hope funders and reformers looking to help rural communities will give Squire’s paper a read. And, having published three books on education philanthropy over the last couple decades myself, it strikes me that much of what Squire has to say should be heeded by funders working pretty much anywhere.
Frederick Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and an executive editor of Education Next.
The owners of Walmart, the Walton Family, are the richest family in the country. They’re worth $200 billion. They currently pay at least HALF their workers less than $15 an hour. That is absurd. The richest family in America can afford to pay their workers a living wage.
The executive director of the Center for Assessment, Scott Marion, joins Education Next editor-in-chief Marty West to discuss the uncertainty surrounding annual math and reading assessments this spring, and what schools can do to maintain instruction and accountability in 2021.
By: Education Next Title: EdNext Podcast: On State Standardized Testing, Flexibility Is Key Sourced From: www.educationnext.org/ednext-podcast-on-state-standardized-testing-flexibility-is-key-marion/ Published Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2021 09:59:25 +0000
Reyna Morales lives in Oakland, California, and is the parent of two students at a high-performing charter school located in an area with a dearth of quality school options for Black and Latino/a, low-income families. Instead of supporting this school, which is popular with families and has a long waitlist, the Oakland school board has tried to suffocate the school out of existence. Reyna and the other parents at Aspire ERES Academy are not going to lose their school without a fight.
Tomorrow, (February 24) ERES families and supporters are holding a Car Caravan rally to fight for quality schools like ERES to stay open and to keep access to school choice information. You can watch live here starting at 2:30 pm PST.
“I can’t believe that this is happening,” my 10-year-old daughter responded when I told her that her beloved public school, Aspire ERES Academy in Fruitvale, plans to close at the end of the school year. The school isn’t closing due to poor performance or lack of interest. ERES has a waitlist of 200 families and is serving Hispanic students better than every nearby school according to SBAC math and English language scores. ERES plans to close because Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) prioritized its own anti-charter politics over Oakland children’s futures.
ERES, which means ‘you are’ in Spanish and stands for Education, Responsibility, Empowerment and Success, is a campus of Aspire Public Schools, a network of nonprofit public charter schools in California. I have been on the front lines of ERES’ 10-year battle with OUSD to increase its enrollment to meet community demand and become financially sustainable, and to identify a school building that would meet our community’s needs.
Nine times we have asked for a facility. And nine times, OUSD offered facilities they knew wouldn’t work—whether in a too-small building, one that needed millions of dollars of renovation, or one that was in a faraway neighborhood inaccessible to ERES’ working families. OUSD has become so obstinate that in 2018, OUSD’s then-Board President Aimee Eng spoke at an Oakland City Council meeting to demand that the city deny the sale of an unused parcel of city land to build a new facility for ERES with a $30 million grant from the State. ERES was forced to return the grant and begin yet another search for a facility to house its growing school. After 10 years, ERES simply cannot continue operating without action from OUSD to provide an adequate facility that would allow the school to increase its enrollment.
I fight for ERES because this school fought for my family when we needed it most. When my oldest daughter came to the United States from Guatemala at 8 years old, she didn’t speak English. The ERES community helped her learn the language and build an academic foundation. In 2019, when I was recovering in the hospital after being hit by a car, the ERES community rallied around my family by providing meals, arranging transportation for my daughters to get to and from school, and raising more than $10,000 to support us while I was out of work due to rehabilitation. This is more than a school; it’s a family.
The OUSD Board should be ashamed. Rather than listen to the voices of the Black and brown families they are elected to represent, they prioritize anti-charter politics over what is best for Oakland’s families. They’ve ignored our pleas to help us find a solution. A decade of willful inaction has caused our community needless suffering only exacerbated during the pandemic. ERES’ planned closure doesn’t just hurt ERES families. This is a loss for all of Oakland, and I am gravely worried for the future of our district because OUSD has shown us that they will ignore parents’ voices when the politics don’t serve them.
It may be too late to save ERES Academy. After more than 12 years of advocacy, we seem to be out of time to find a solution. But this fight has taught me to believe in the power of our voices. As parents, we know what is right for our children, and we must hold our public officials accountable when they use their power to undermine us. OUSD must listen to parents’ needs and make decisions that put children and communities ahead of political agendas. I will be helping parents demand that accountability from their elected school board officials.
An earlier version of this Opinion Editorial appeared in the East Bay Times.
By: Reyna Morales Title: Oakland’s School Board Cares More About Politics Than It Does About Kids and Families Sourced From: educationpost.org/oaklands-school-board-cares-more-about-politics-than-it-does-about-kids-and-families/ Published Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2021 22:33:34 +0000
“I am a white ally,” the 30 something-year-old white teacher declared emphatically in the diversity and inclusion professional development session. She snapped her fingers to co-sign a colleague’s comments about Black Lives Matter, changed her Facebook profile picture to commemorate Breonna Taylor, and talked at length about brown and Black lives.
She knew the importance of using “She/her/hers” adjectives at the beginning of each virtual work session. She joined the book club where Dr. Kendi’s work was being discussed. By every metric, large or small, she showed that she was, inevitably and truly, an ally. But therein, laid the problem. She had characterized herself as an anti-racist ally. Black and brown educators and children around her would not label her in the same way.
In the background, students of color—largely Black and Latinx—would complain to other teachers of color that their voices were not being heard. They would pushback against the teacher-centric approach in the classroom and the unilateral way that power and privilege played out in the school.
When those suggestions and feedback were brought up to the white leaders, there was pushback: This teacher did not intend to have a harmful impact. She was leading with good intentions. She simply forgot to implement the feedback. All and all, this teacher was protected by the systems of white supremacy and power. Instead of her being held accountable, the messenger was classified as simply being uninformed. The messenger had a Ph.D. in culturally responsive pedagogy.
However, there is limited acknowledgment that all of these innovations are functioning in a society where white supremacy is interlaced in social, political and educational institutions.
Education is disproportionately a white woman’s professional space. The underlying politics and added pressure of what it means to navigate that space is difficult for Black and brown leaders who come to schools without the networks that their white colleagues lean into.
While there are efforts at recruiting and retaining talented people of color as educators and educational leaders, there is extensive research that those efforts are falling short. Part of the paradox lies in the naming of white allyship. To be a true ally, white teachers and white school leaders need to acknowledge that their actions and behavior perpetuate systems of oppression and inequity for their staff and students of color. Reflexivity is at the heart of anti-racist practice and that reflexivity needs to be the groundwork for purposeful, actionable change.
If these actions do not take place, then the status quo will prevail. While this reignited interest in cultural responsiveness, anti-racism, diversity, and inclusion is heartening, there just simply is not time for the same conversation. There needs to be a shift within each school’s leadership that acknowledges the insidious nature of white supremacy, has an authentic desire to push systems-level change, and demonstrates an alignment of actions—both short and long-term—that steward that change.
Culturally responsive spaces, like any type of change management, require clear definitions and metrics for success. If that does not happen, we will continue the same cycle: There will be many white allies, but no substantial change.
By: Sana Shaikh Title: Educators Who Consider Themselves ‘White Allies’ Are Dangerous When It Comes To Developing Anti-Racist Classrooms Sourced From: educationpost.org/educators-who-consider-themselves-white-allies-are-dangerous-when-it-comes-to-developing-anti-racist-classrooms/ Published Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2021 20:21:27 +0000
Among California’s many distinctions, the state stands out for the minimal requirements it imposes for high-school graduation, among the most lenient in the United States. California is one of a handful of states that require just three years of English and two years of math to earn a high-school diploma. The last revision to the list of 13 required courses was back in 2003, when state lawmakers added Algebra I.
Now, educators and elected officials are engaged in a prolonged pedagogical, cultural, and political debate to amend those requirements again. In a move more in line with its trendsetting reputation, California is on the verge of becoming the first state in the country to require that every high-school student take an ethnic studies class to graduate.
By an overwhelming margin, the state legislature approved a bill in its 2020 session that would have added one semester of ethnic studies to the requirements for a high-school diploma, ensuring that students study the history and experiences of Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans. Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed the measure. The veto was not due to objections to the mandate per se, but to concerns over the unfinished draft ethnic studies curriculum that will serve as a template for school districts as they create their own versions of the class. A K–12 ethnic studies bill is likely to end up on the governor’s desk again in 2021, and in all probability, the outcome this time will be different.
While some national conservative voices have denounced the entire concept as political indoctrination, support for some form of ethnic studies coursework has been widespread in California. Last year, the legislature mandated that all students in the California State University system complete a three-credit ethnic studies class to earn their degrees. The debate over the complex and often charged subject has focused not on whether ethnic studies is necessary, but on how best to define it. Whose stories will be told, and how?
California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, vetoed an ethnic studies bill that had been passed by the state legislature. He said the proposed curriculum needed further revision.
Understanding Ethnic Studies
The case for ethnic studies is multipronged. It begins with the material itself: history and literature about the struggles and triumphs of people whose voices often have been omitted from traditional texts and classroom readings. That could mean people like Filipino leaders in the farmworker movement or Mexican guest workers participating in the Bracero Program, or topics like the systematic redlining of African Americans and the genocide of Native Americans. A second layer of argument stresses the need for students to understand and discuss how various racial and ethnic groups have been oppressed by a white ruling class, as well as the social movements and civil-rights struggles sparked by that oppression. Appreciating the history of different racial and ethnic groups, advocates argue, is vital to make students more engaged, responsible citizens.
Stanford University historian Albert Camarillo, a founder of the discipline of Chicano studies, harkens back to John Dewey’s arguments about the importance of civic education in a democracy. In the diverse society of California, Camarillo argues, ethnic studies “should be a fundamental component of California public education in the 21st century,” crucial to building the informed, socially conscious citizenry essential to democracy. Writing and speaking in support of mandatory ethnic studies for high-school students, Camarillo pointed to a passage in the state’s draft curriculum: “By affirming the identities and contributions of marginalized groups in our society, Ethnic Studies helps students see themselves and each other as part of the narrative of the United States.” Camarillo testified that he has seen the benefits firsthand, not only while teaching at Stanford but also in his work with social-studies teachers at two charter high schools in the San Francisco Bay Area that require ethnic studies.
Advocates concede the importance of using care when teaching material that can be politically controversial. Some of California’s early stumbles gave ammunition to those concerned that ethnic studies can easily morph into divisive political rhetoric or become a pretext for leftist indoctrination. But as the state nears consensus on a model high-school curriculum, the most persistent criticism has come from those who want to expand the definition beyond the four major groups traditionally considered the focus of the discipline—Blacks, Latinos, Asians and Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans. In a state that often boasts the largest population of immigrants from a host of countries, hundreds of complaints have been registered from groups seeking greater representation, including Sikhs, Armenians, and Arab Americans. The most vocal and organized opposition has come from some Jewish groups demanding a greater focus on antisemitism.
Another core argument for ethnic studies is that its benefits extend far beyond the coursework itself. In a state struggling to improve academic outcomes that remain relatively poor, with a high percentage of English-language learners and students from low-income families, ethnic studies is framed as crucial to closing persistent achievement gaps. Although the research is limited, it suggests that students of all races exposed to ethnic studies become more engaged in school and show significant improvement in general academic performance. In a widely cited journal article, Thomas Dee and Emily Penner examined the academic and attendance records of 1,400 struggling 9th-grade students in San Francisco and found that those assigned to a yearlong ethnic studies course showed significant, lasting improvement—a jump in attendance rates of 21 points and an increase in grade-point average of 1.4 points.
Stanford University historian Albert Camarillo, a founder of Chicano Studies, has supported an ethnic studies mandate for California schools.
Anecdotally, there are abundant testimonials to back up that data. Before José Medina was elected to the California Assembly in 2012, he taught social studies at Riverside Polytechnic High School in Riverside, a predominantly Latino city east of Los Angeles. One of his five classes was ethnic or Chicano studies. Medina supplemented the few available textbooks with literature, poetry, public-television documentaries, and field trips to see live theater by Chicano playwrights. “I really saw in my classes how turned on students were, how the light went on, and how they became engaged,” he said. “I know that for some of them it was the first time they had ever been so engaged.” He still runs into students he taught more than a decade ago who tell him how important the class was for them, he said. Now Medina, chair of the Assembly Higher Education committee, is the sponsor of the bill to make ethnic studies a graduation requirement.
Among the significant caveats in the bill is that it would only take effect if funding for new ethnic studies courses is included in the state budget. By law, the state is obligated to fund the mandates it imposes; in this case, legislative analysts estimated spending in the “low millions” of dollars annually and potentially more if school districts claim greater expenses. Funding a new mandate may be difficult in coming budget cycles, with longstanding fiscal crises exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Some districts have already made commitments to expand existing programs, but those commitments will be subject to fiscal pressures as well. Last year, the Los Angeles Unified Board of Education voted to make ethnic studies a graduation requirement by the 2023–24 school year. And Fresno Unified, the state’s third-largest district, plans to require two semesters of ethnic studies starting with the class of 2021–22.
A Diverse Heritage
That California may become the first state to mandate ethnic studies, increasingly taught as an elective around the country, stems in many ways from the state’s demographics and its history. From its earliest days of statehood in 1850, California has had a high percentage of foreign-born residents and an unusually diverse population. Today, its 6.2 million K–12 students are 55 percent Latino, 22 percent white, 12 percent Asian or Pacific Islander, and 5.3 percent African American.
The history of ethnic studies as a discipline is rooted in California. Demands for African American, Chicano, Asian, and Native American studies grew out of student movements in the Bay Area in the late 1960s. A five-month strike at San Francisco State University organized by a coalition known as the Third World Liberation Front ended in March 1969 with an agreement that included the first College of Ethnic Studies in the United States. Similar protests the same year across the Bay at the University of California, Berkeley, also ended with the establishment of a new Department of Ethnic Studies.
Before José Medina was elected to the California Assembly in 2012, he taught social studies at Riverside Polytechnic High School.
In 1976, the California superintendent of public instruction released “An Analysis of Curriculum Materials for Ethnic Heritage Programs,” the culmination of a two-year project to help teachers incorporate ethnic studies in K–12 classrooms. In contrast to the current push for standalone ethnic studies classes, the approach then was to incorporate more diverse materials and content throughout the existing curriculum. But the goals were similar: “Afford students an opportunity to learn more about the nature of their own heritage and to study the contributions of other ethnic groups in the United States … Recognize the educational gains that can result from cultural pluralism in a multiethnic nation … Engender in the citizens of our pluralistic society intercultural competence: self-acceptance, acceptance of one’s culture, and acceptance of persons of other cultures.”
In the ensuing decades, ethnic studies courses expanded on college campuses across the United States, with more than 700 programs in existence by the early 1990s. But in California, budget constraints impeded much growth at the K–12 level. Ironically, it was a controversy across state lines in Arizona that sparked interest anew.
In 2010, Arizona lawmakers banned ethnic studies classes from the state’s K-12 public schools, spurred by a controversy over a Mexican American studies course in Tucson schools. After a court challenge, a federal judge ruled that Arizona had been motivated by racial discrimination rather a legitimate educational purpose and barred the state from enforcing the ban. The episode served as a catalyst for renewed interest in ethnic studies, particularly in California.
“My response, and the response of activists in Los Angeles, was, ‘If they shut it down over there, can we spring it up over here?’” recalled Jose Lara, then a teacher at Santee Education Complex in Los Angeles. Lara ran for school board in the small district of El Rancho, a working-class Mexican American community east of Los Angeles. He delivered on a campaign pledge in 2014, when El Rancho became the first district in California to adopt ethnic studies as a graduation requirement.
Lara credits his career as both a teacher and political leader to his exposure to ethnic studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, a campus he initially found foreign and intimidating as a low-income, Mexican American student from Orange County. “It was the first time in my life I saw myself as an intellectual,” he recalled about classes with scholar Juan Gómez-Quiñones. “I couldn’t believe this guy who looked like he sold oranges on the freeway was writing these massive books about Chicano history. It was a whole new world for me.”
A Black Students Union leader in front of a crowd of demonstrators at College in December 1968. Ethnic studies were among the demands of students in the 1960s.
Evidence of Impact
Lara helped found the Ethnic Studies Now Coalition, which successfully lobbied the Los Angeles school board to adopt an ethnic studies graduation mandate in 2014. Then-Superintendent Ramón Cortines overruled the plan, saying the district could not afford the estimated $72 million expense. In 2016, Los Angeles opted instead to create a yearlong elective. About 40 of the city’s 150 public high schools already offered at least one related elective in fields such as Afro-American history, Afro-American literature, American Indian studies, Asian literature, Mexican American literature, or Mexican American studies.
Meanwhile, in San Francisco, 10 social-studies teachers who had worked for several years with faculty from San Francisco State University’s College of Ethnic Studies had launched an ethnic studies curriculum in five high schools in 2010. That pilot program, later expanded to all 19 high schools in the district, became the source of a significant research effort that would be widely cited in debates across the country.
The study grew out of the district’s longstanding partnership with Stanford University and the research of Thomas Dee, a professor at the Graduate School of Education and director of the Stanford Center for Education Policy Analysis. In 2014, he and a colleague began to study the impact on 1,405 9th graders who were at risk of dropping out and who had been assigned to an ethnic studies course. “To be honest, certainly I and some of the district officials went into this thinking, ‘Well, ethnic studies was sold as solving so many problems,’” Dee said. “Many of us were very skeptical about whether a close examination of the data would support that.”
The data surprised him. It showed that enrolling in the elective improved general academic performance, measured by attendance, grades, and credits earned. Dee’s analysis suggested a link to his earlier research, which looked at a group of Tennessee elementary-school students and found that students tended to do better on standardized tests when taught by a teacher of the same race. In particular, Black students earned higher test scores when they were taught by a Black teacher (see “The Race Connection,” research, Spring 2004). This helped forge a consensus around the benefits of teacher diversity, and Dee saw some of the same factors at work in his San Francisco study.
“Ethnic studies resembles an unusually intensive and sustained social-psychological intervention that kind of buffers student identities in the classroom,” Dee said. That intervention helps combat anxiety from perceived stereotyping, affirms students’ personal values, and promotes a growth mindset, he said. And unlike short-term interventions to address those problems, “it’s embedded in the course every day.”
Moving Toward a Mandate
As Dee released the results of the San Francisco study, legislators in Sacramento were advocating to increase ethnic studies offerings statewide. A 2016 state law—which passed overwhelmingly with virtually no organized opposition—directed the state board of education to adopt a model ethnic studies curriculum. The original deadline of March 2020 has since been extended by one year; the curriculum is now to be completed by March 2021. Though not directly linked to the idea of mandating ethnic studies for graduation, the curriculum has been a major stumbling block.
The first draft, written with input from an advisory committee of college professors, high-school teachers, and ethnic studies experts, was essentially dead on arrival. Commenters ridiculed the politically correct “glossary” of terms such as “herstory” and “hxrstory” and the politically charged definition of capitalism as a system of oppression and exploitation. The Los Angeles Times editorial board denounced the draft as an “impenetrable mélange of academic jargon and politically correct pronouncements.” Of the approximately 57,000 comments received by the state, more than 30,000 related to concerns about the absence of lessons on antisemitism, the lack of material relating to Jews, and the draft’s definition of a campaign to boycott Israel as a “global social movement that currently aims to establish freedom for Palestinians living under apartheid conditions.”
The state board of education president, Linda Darling-Hammond, rejected the draft before it could even move toward review by the board. “A model curriculum should be accurate, free of bias, appropriate for all learners in our diverse state,” she said in a statement. “The current draft model curriculum falls short and needs to be substantially redesigned.” Education-department officials began a yearlong process of soliciting and reviewing comments and rewriting the document, which culminated in a second draft released for public review on August 13, 2020.
By then, Medina was growing concerned about his bill despite its broad-based support. The move to require ethnic studies had passed the state Assembly in May. But it was stalled in the Senate, stuck in the Appropriations committee, where dozens of bills go to die. With just two weeks remaining in the session, Medina made a last push, summoning the momentum of the Black Lives Matter protests and the aftermath of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis to lobby the legislative leadership to move the bill.
“You’ve heard people refer to a racial reckoning in our society or an inflection point,” historian Camarillo said in testimony about the state ethnic studies curriculum. “We will refer to this as a benchmark in American history … Democracy is at stake if we don’t equip our young people with the knowledge and the education so they can effectively navigate our diverse society.”
The bill made it out of committee and passed the full Senate on the last day of session, August 31. Medina had accepted amendments to meet concerns of the legislature’s Jewish caucus, of which he is a member. (He’s the only legislator in both the Latino and Jewish caucuses; his first wife is Jewish and was raised partly in Panama, and they raised their children in the Jewish faith.) Language in the bill specified that nothing in the curriculum would teach or promote religious doctrine. That met the concerns of legislators and all the Jewish caucus members voted in favor. The bill was supported by the California State PTA, the California Federation of Teachers, the California Teachers Association, the California Faculty Association, and numerous school districts. The only opposition on record came from the Sacramento-based Charter Schools Development Center, an advocacy group that objected to its members being subject to the requirement.
Curriculum Concerns
The mandate would not have applied until the graduating class of 2029–30, long after the deadline for the state to adopt a model curriculum. And the bill explicitly allowed districts to create their own lesson plans. But the measure’s fate was nevertheless tied to controversy over the state’s draft model curriculum.
“Last year, I expressed concern that the initial draft of the model curriculum was insufficiently balanced and inclusive and needed to be substantially amended,” the governor wrote in his veto message. “In my opinion, the latest draft, which is currently out for review, still needs revision.”
But Medina said that, in a subsequent conversation, Newsom was clear about the concerns he left vague in his veto. “The governor made it clear to me in conversation after his veto—it was about the Jewish community,” Medina said.
After a year of extensive feedback from the public as well as experts, the state education department posted a revised draft model curriculum. It was modified and approved in November by the Instructional Quality Commission, which advises the state board of education. Over two days and going line by line, the commission reviewed the proposed changes made by the education department. Members debated whether capitalism should be included in a list of forms of oppression and reviewed new sections on antisemitism. They agreed with a proposal to list in an appendix lesson plans that include a range of ethnic groups, including Arabs, Sikhs, and Armenians, to address complaints that they were omitted or marginalized in the document.
The curriculum is designed to be a guide for teachers and includes sections explaining thematic approaches to the concepts underlying the discipline, course outlines, sample lesson plans, primary-source documents, and lists of resources. The material is organized around the key themes of identity, history and movement, systems of power, and social movements and equity.
It remains centered on the four major groups: African Americans, Chicano/Latinos, Asian Americans, and Native Americans. But in response to complaints, the draft emphasizes that districts may adapt the curriculum to reflect the composition of their communities. “We believe that we have found a way to create a kind of balance of honoring with fidelity what core ethnic studies is but also creating a bridge to talk about interconnectivity of other groups whose stories need to be told,” said Tony Thurmond, the state superintendent of public instruction.
Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, who created an ethnic studies program at San Diego State University, said the original focus was on “American racism,” not “the problems of the world.”
That tension remains central to the ongoing deliberations; the two hours of public comment at the commission meeting on the topic focused almost entirely on demands to broaden the curriculum’s focus. “We have a tendency to forget why we started the ethnic studies piece, and now it’s designed to solve all the problems of the world when it was very clear that it was an American thing focused on American racism and those kind of issues that exist in this country,” Assemblywoman Shirley Weber told fellow commission members. Weber, an academic who created an ethnic studies program at San Diego State University, said she understood why lesson plans on Jews, Arabs, Armenians, and other groups were included in the revised curriculum. But she stressed that they need to be connected strongly to the basic ideas and tenets of ethnic studies.
“This is a very political decision that’s being made, not necessarily an academic one,” Weber said. “And I don’t mind the politics of it, providing that the connections are clear.”
After another public comment period and proposed revisions by the state education department, the curriculum is expected to be voted on by the state board of education in March. Jewish groups that have lobbied and organized petition drives praised the recent revisions but are unhappy with the lack of a definition of antisemitism. “While the curriculum is headed in the right direction, there are still key changes we all have to fight for,” said Roz Rothstein, chief executive officer of StandWithUs, a Los Angeles-based organization dedicated to supporting Israel and fighting antisemitism, in a statement.
From Curriculum to the Classroom
A number of districts have not waited for the state to complete its work on the curriculum and are offering their own courses. The number of California high-school students enrolled in ethnic studies classes more than doubled between 2014 and 2016. Still, the 17,354 students who took classes at 555 schools was less than 1 percent of all high-school students in the state.
Districts also are not waiting for a state mandate but setting their own. In addition to Los Angeles and Fresno, Riverside, where Medina taught, has adopted a requirement to take effect in the 2023–24 school year.
Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest school district, offered ethnic studies electives at about 100 high schools last year based on its own curriculum. The school board has directed the superintendent to report back with a strategic plan to enact the mandate by the 2023–24 school year. Noting that Los Angeles enrolls 90 percent students of color, the board said that “prolonged exposure to curricula that normalizes and perpetuates white supremacy, colonialism, and the erasure of minority groups can be alienating and traumatic for students of color and contribute to the opportunity and achievement gaps we see today.”
Implementation of the mandate will, again, depend on funding, at a time when the district is facing major budget challenges. “They’re never going to not have fiscal problems,” said Lara, now an assistant principal in Orange County. “It’s a matter of will.”
Thomas Dee’s research found that enrolling in an ethnic studies class improved students’ general academic performance.
At least eight other states—Connecticut, Indiana, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington—have enacted measures over the last decade to set standards and curriculum and require schools to offer some form of ethnic studies as an elective. Whether ethnic studies is intended to be a standalone class or incorporated into existing courses varies from state to state. In 2017, Indiana became one of the first states to require all high schools to offer an ethnic studies class under a bill signed by Republican Governor Eric Holcomb. In Oregon, a committee is developing ethnic studies standards to incorporate in its social-studies curriculum. And in Connecticut, all high schools will be required to offer courses in Black and Latino studies by the fall of 2022. Those classes will be based on a curriculum approved by the state education department under the direction of former commissioner Miguel Cardona, President Biden’s nominee to head the federal Department of Education.
Adding ethnic studies classes on a far more widespread basis creates a need for teachers, which poses a pedagogical concern as well as a financial one. Dee, who says he is “agnostic” on the question of instituting ethnic studies as a graduation requirement, has some concerns about the teacher training required for successful programs. His San Francisco research involved highly motivated teachers who had spent years constructing and refining the units they taught, he noted.
“I’ve been a little frustrated by the intense political focus on the state curriculum,” he said, referring to the discussions in California. “There are some broader lessons for pedagogy that kind of get lost in that mess. The debate over the curriculum was very much about culture wars and not, ‘what are we learning about pedagogy?’”
That’s where Dee thinks the focus should be: How to properly train the teachers who will be needed to scale up ethnic studies, especially in smaller districts that are not already teaching it. He hopes to see discussion on different ways to share knowledge and build instructional expertise, such as consortiums that could offer training and tailor curriculum for local regions. “By and large, I’m heartened that ethnic studies is getting more attention,” he said. “I just worry that the rush to implement at scale may at some level snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.”
Miriam Pawel is a 2020–21 Radcliffe Fellow and the author of The Browns of California: The Family Dynasty that Transformed a State and Shaped a Nation. Rachel Harris provided research assistance for this article.
By: Miriam Pawel Title: Ethnic Studies in California Sourced From: www.educationnext.org/ethnic-studies-california-unsteady-jump-from-college-campuses-to-k-12-classrooms/ Published Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2021 10:00:08 +0000
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By: Education Next Title: The Education Exchange: At Relay Graduate School of Education, a Practice-Based Approach to Preparing Teachers Sourced From: www.educationnext.org/the-education-exchange-at-relay-graduate-school-of-education-a-practice-based-approach-to-preparing-teachers/ Published Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2021 09:59:22 +0000
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