Teachable moment, not censorship

In my almost 40 years in education, never have I ever seen off-the rail parents impact curricula as I have in the last six months. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had plenty of off-the rail parents, but none of them ever said a word about what I was teaching. It seems unrealistic that one parent can make a fuss about something being taught, and it is pulled and questioned. I would not want one parent deciding for me what my kids can and cannot learn.

Florida.

At North Shore Elementary School in St. Petersburg, a mom raised concern that her child’s school was showing the Disney movie about Ruby Bridges, a movie shown during Black History Month for years. The movie, as many say, is historically accurate and tells the story of 6-year old Ruby who, surrounded by Federal Marshals, entered her elementary school as the first Black student, thus desegregating the public schools in New Orleans.

The mom in Florida said that the use of racial slurs and scenes of white people threatening Ruby as she entered the school might result in students learning that white people hate Black people (news.yahoo.com). Right, because there’s no historical evidence of that being true.

Ric Davis, president of Concerned Organization for Quality Education for Black Students said, “Many from historically marginalized communities are asking whether this so-called integrated education system in Pinellas county can even serve the diverse community fairly and equitably” (news.yahoo.com).

Lawmakers in Florida say they don’t want books, movies, or lessons about race to create student discomfort, and speaking from the other side of their mouth, said they want facts presented honestly. What about the non-white children? At North Shore Elementary School, the enrollment is 57% white, 24% Black, 12% Black. Why, again, do white parents get to decide what history is taught?

My co-authors and I wrote a book, William Frantz Public School; A story of race, resistance, resiliency, and recovery in New Orleans, that tells the story of the school that Bridges entered on November 14, 1960. You may have seen photos showing Bridges surrounded by four Marshals. But in a single focus, the photos do not show, as the movie did (in part), the vitriolic white mothers – some with their children- who stood across the street protesting Bridges’ enrollment. There were angry mobs of protestors who yelled angry, awful epithets at Bridges, and smiled for the cameras. One mother made a casket and put a doll in it with a rope around the neck. Bridges was afraid to eat lunch every day because a parent had threatened to poison her. That’s the truth. But it was very much tempered in the movie.

I use our book in a class I teach college students, and as students write weekly journals in response to the readings, so often students will say they are angry they have never been taught the full story of Ruby Bridges until college.

Here are some of their comments:

• “I, as a young biracial woman, was never educated to the fullest in my K-12 history classes. It could have maybe been the fact that all of my educators growing up were young white males and females straight out of student teaching who had no idea the first thing about racial disparities, or poverty, or segregation, and had never been discriminated against in their entire privileged life.”
• “In general, I never knew how much this impacted Ruby Bridges because my education kept everything censored, and I wonder whose benefit that was for, mine or the United States history?”
• “As I read William Frantz Public School (WFPS), I kept learning new information. Information I believe is critical, but the thing is, I never knew this information. If this information is vital, why did I never learn it? Why did my history curriculum never show the full story?”
• “I remained ignorant to the fact because no one taught me how bad it is, but I stayed ignorant because I did not do my own research.”
• This knowledge has me struck like lightning. And the sting will forever be a reminder of the privilege of my race. I am grateful for this book I am proud to have taken this class.

To put this into perspective, when asked about their reaction to reading our book, 40.7% of students felt blindsided as they were reading about things such as Ruby Bridges, Desegregation vs Integration, (and Hurricane Katrina) for the FIRST TIME and 59.3 % of students had heard about the events mentioned in WFPS, but were NOT fully aware of the significance these events played and the impact they had on history. Many claimed that they merely “scratched the surface” when they were taught about these events.

Further, less than 15% of the students were aware of the “white-history” of education, that is – their awareness of the knowledge of how the history of education has been written and taught in favor of the white race.

About 20% of students identified that after reading William Frantz Public School, they feel compelled to do more research and become more educated about the true history of public education, urban education, and racism. As one student said, “Not as a requirement  But as a personal necessity.[The story of William Frantz]”. Another student said, “I think that by becoming more informed through this class I feel propelled to defend public education and help inform others.”

Bridges was the first Black student to integrate the public schools in New Orleans. This was six years after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision acknowledging that segregation was unconstitutional. There is a great lesson in the movie, with historically accurate events. But parents are afraid their children might get the wrong message. What’s that message? These events happened. Teach them, talk about them, use them as lessons in empathy so we don’t repeat history. These are teachable moments.

These are my reflections for today.

April  7, 2023

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Recent publication: William Frantz Public School:  A Story of Race, Resistance, Resiliency, and Recovery in New Orleans Connie Schaffer, Meg White, and Martha Graham Viator. Peter Lang Publishing. Available on amazon.com

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Once a symbol of desegregation…

Once a symbol of desegregation, Ruby Bridges’ school now reflects another battle engulfing public education

This Sunday marks the 61st anniversary of the desegregation of public schools in New Orleans. Today’s blog is a reprint of a story published last year in The Conversation. While much of our most recent book deals with the story of William Frantz Public School, Ruby Bridges plays a key role in the events of that day, as well as the history of the school.

Connie L. Schaffer, Associate Professor of Teacher Education, University of Nebraska Omaha Martha Graham Viator, Associate Professor Emeritus of Education, Rowan University Meg White, Associate Professor of Education, Stockton University

On Nov. 14, 1960, after a long summer and autumn of volleys between the Louisiana Legislature and the federal courts, Ruby Bridges, a 6-year-old Black girl, was allowed to enroll in an all-white school.  Accompanied by federal marshals, Bridges entered William Frantz Public School – a small neighborhood school in New Orleans’ Upper Ninth Ward.

If that building’s walls could talk, they certainly would tell the well-known story of its desegregation. But those same walls could tell another story, too. That story is about continued racism as well as efforts to dismantle and privatize public education in America over the past six decades.

As scholars of education, we combed through multiple archives to uncover this story.

A Civil Rights Landmark
News outlets covering the Ruby Bridges story published numerous photographs at the time. But the Frantz school, and racist reactions to desegregating it, really captured America’s attention in 1964, after Look magazine ran a photo of Norman Rockwell’s iconic painting of Bridges walking to the school.

Disney’s movie “Ruby Bridges” and an award-winning children’s book solidified the school’s iconic role in the civil rights movement. In 2005, just months before Hurricane Katrina caused serious structural damage to the school, Frantz was added to the National Register of Historic Places. A viral illustration of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris walking alongside a silhouette of Bridges as depicted in Rockwell’s painting has captured that attention again.

rubybridgesofficial instagram

Resistance of white residents
For the remainder of Bridges’ first school year, crowds protested outside the school building. They threatened Bridges, her family and the families of the few white children who continued to attend. Most parents withdrew their children from Frantz and enrolled them in all-white, private schools instead.

Racism drove many white families from the neighborhoods near the school and other areas of New Orleans to abandon the city. White enrollment steadily declined throughout New Orleans’ public schools, dropping more than 50% between 1960 and 1980.

By 2005, only 3% of the students enrolled in the city’s public schools were white – far below average for midsize American cities.

Still, Frantz teachers and students persevered. The school offered Black history events, special science programs, anti-drug campaigns, and classes in African dance and social skills. At one point, Bridges volunteered at Frantz as a liaison between the school and families.

National reform and charter trend
However, the resilience of the students and the teachers at Frantz proved no match for powerful forces promoting a disruptive approach to public school accountability.

In the late 1980s, school choice advocates like Albert Shanker promoted charter schools as a means to reform public education in America and to replace academically struggling schools like Frantz. Some school reformers believed these publicly funded yet independently run schools could offer more instructional innovations than centralized school districts.

In the 1990s, Louisiana developed LEAP, an accountability system based on mandatory high-stakes testing. Like similar programs that were popping up in school districts across the country, it didn’t account for the impact of poverty on test scores while generating report cards for Louisiana schools. Frantz’s report cards categorized the school as “unacceptable” or “below average.” In June 2005, the school district voted to close Frantz

Guise of recovery
A year before the school closed, Louisiana passed legislation authorizing the takeover of schools the LEAP system labeled as failing. As local officials shuttered Frantz, state officials stripped the New Orleans school board of its authority and transferred responsibility of five schools to the newly formed Recovery School District. The state Department of Education, which oversaw the schools, promptly converted them to charters. When Americans turned their attention to New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, many wrongly assumed the Recovery School District was part of the massive, multifaceted federal response to the hurricane

In reality, Katrina provided a convenient opportunity for charter school advocates. They capitalized on the post-Katrina recovery to rewrite the story of public education in New Orleans by establishing a system completely dominated by for-profit and not-for-profit charter schools.

School reformers touted the system as a model to improve struggling education systems. In fact, after Hurricane Maria destroyed much of Puerto Rico, the island’s secretary of education declared it an “opportunity to create new, better schools,” and called New Orleans a “point of reference.” Meanwhile, the building that had housed Frantz sat abandoned and in need of massive repairs. Following renovation, it reopened in 2013 as a charter school, Akili Academy.

An all-charter district The historic building now tells a contemporary story of an all-charter district. In the past, New Orleans voters held the school board accountable for its oversight of the former Frantz school and other neighborhood public schools like it. Unlike Frantz, Akili is a charter school that students throughout the city are eligible to attend. It is under the direction of the private board of Crescent City Schools, a charter management organization.

Government funding provides 90% of Akili’s current revenue. The Crescent City board and others like it spend those tax dollars and determine how to educate the city’s children. Privately appointed charter board members face no accountability to voters. Such a system can mute voices of local voters, most of whom – in this part of New Orleans – are Black.

Today, a large Akili Academy banner hangs outside the new main entrance, beneath smaller lettering that reads: William Frantz School. Only an inscription by a rarely used side entrance bears the school’s full historic name: William Frantz Public School. A statue of Bridges, erected in 2014, stands in a far corner of the school’s back courtyard.

We see the fate of Ruby Bridges’ historic school as a stark indicator that the public education system she fought to integrate as a little girl may be a relic of the past.

These are my reflections for today.

November 12, 2021

Recent publication: William Frantz Public School:  A Story of Race, Resistance, Resiliency, and Recovery in New Orleans Connie Schaffer, Meg White, and Martha Graham Viator. Peter Lang Publishing. Available on amazon.com

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How Discrimination Feels

In 1968, prompted by the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Jane Elliot, a third grade teacher in Iowa, wanted to do something to help her young student understand discrimination and racism. She created an exercise to determine how children learn bias and prejudice. To begin, Elliot divided her students into two groups based on eye color. She explained that people with brown eyes were superior to those with blue eyes. Brown-eyed people, she said, were smarter, and more civilized than blue-eyed people.

Throughout the day, Elliot praised the blue-eyed students, rewarded them with a longer recess and put them at the front of the line for lunch. Blue-eyed children had to wear an armband made out of construction paper and were ridiculed and criticized by their teacher. On the second day the roles were reversed.

The students, to Elliot’s shock, began to internalize, and accept, the characteristics they’d been arbitrarily assigned based on the color of their eyes.

“What happened over the course of the unique two-day exercise astonished both students and teacher. On both days, children who were designated as inferior took on the look and behavior of genuinely inferior students, performing poorly on tests and other work. In contrast, the ‘superior’ students — students who had been sweet and tolerant before the exercise — became mean-spirited and seemed to like discriminating against the ‘inferior’ group” (PBS.org).

The next day, Elliott reversed the exercise, making the blue-eyed children superior. While the blue-eyed children did behave similarly, Elliott noted it was much less intense. She asked the children to write down what they had learned. Elliot realized that she had created a “microcosm of society in a third-grade classroom” (PBS.org). Students who had been cooperative and thoughtful turned discriminating in a short period of time.

“Hey, Mrs. Elliott, how come you’re the teacher if you’ve got blue eyes?” a brown-eyed boy asked. Before she could answer, another boy piped up: “If she didn’t have blue eyes, she’d be the principal or the superintendent” (Smithsonianmag.com).

For the next two years, Elliot repeated the exercise, and in 1970 it was recorded for a PBS Frontline documentary A Class Divided. The documentary brought back many of the classmates from 1970 class. As they watched the documentary, Elliot noted how much they had retained from the exercise. “Nobody likes to be looked down upon. Nobody likes to be hated, teased or discriminated against,” says Verla, one of the former students (PBS.org).

Another former student, Sandra, tells Elliott: “You hear these people talking about different people and how they’d like to have them out of the country… I wish they would go through what I went through, you know” (PBS.org).

Elliot concludes, “After you do this exercise, when the debriefing starts, when the pain is over and they’re all back together, you find out how society could be if we really believed all this stuff that we preach, if we really acted that way, you could feel as good about one another as those kids feel about one another after this exercise is over. You create instant cousins,” says Elliott. “The kids said over and over, ‘We’re kind of like a family now.’ They found out how to hurt one another and they found out how it feels to be hurt in that way and they refuse to hurt one another in that way again” (PBS.org).

The exercise has since been taught by generations of teachers to millions of people- kids and adults- across the country. Last year, PBS caught up with Jane Elliot, now 87 to talk about her lifelong dedication to teaching people about racism. Elliott said the last few years have brought out America’s worst racist tendencies. The empathy she works to inspire in students with the exercise, which has been modified over the years, is necessary, she said (NPR.org).

Scholars have evaluated Elliott’s exercise, in trying to determine if the exercise is a positive way to reduce racial prejudice or poses a psychological risk to them. The results, as one would expect, are mixed (Smithsonianmag.com). While some say it is effective and necessary, others say it is unethical. The exercise, or some form of it, is still very much needed today.

What if we modified and taught this exercise in schools? What if we were able to observe these behavioral changes, and work with students to acknowledge them and work toward change. Maybe more White people need to feel for a few hours what it feels like for people of color feel every day. I imagine it wouldn’t feel good, but isn’t that the point?

These are my reflections for today.

October 22, 2021

Recent publication: William Frantz Public School:  A Story of Race, Resistance, Resiliency, and Recovery in New Orleans Connie Schaffer, Meg White, and Martha Graham Viator. Peter Lang Publishing. Available on amazon.com

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Racism in public education

Critical Race Theory supports that racism is a social construct, and not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, rather it is something embedded in legal systems and policies.

To see in our history an example of how systemic racism, along with neglect, corruption, and a natural disaster, impacted public education one city, one district, one school, my colleagues and I extensively researched and wrote, William Frantz Public School:  A Story of Race, Resistance, Resiliency, and Recovery in New Orleans. Over the next few weeks, I will be posting and discussing several passages from the book that are relevant to the discussion of racism in public education.

The book is a place-based history of William Frantz Public School in New Orleans, perhaps notable from the story of Ruby Bridges who, in November 1960, became one of the first Black students to attend a public school in New Orleans. This was six years after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. The book chronicles the history of the school from its opening in 1938 through 2018.

This first passage is from the preface.

Why should it matter to you what happened to William Frantz Public School?  …It matters that society has historically marginalized Black students and continues to do so. It matters that the discrimination and systemic racism in public education is indicative of that which occurs in other social institutions.  It matters that racism deeply divides the United States…

Difficult issues related to race, poverty, corruption, and a natural disaster culminated in New Orleans at the turn of the century. For some, this provided an opportunity to abandon traditional public education and replace it with a system comprised of charter schools led by private boards of directors. Hailed as innovative and overdue reform, this new system fundamentally changed public education in New Orleans. Consider what happened in New Orleans and carefully contemplate the ramifications. Why should it matter to you what happened to William Frantz Public School? When you give up on one public school, one school district, one city—it becomes easier to give up on the next and the next and the next.

This school and this story are important in understanding how we desegregated, and ultimately re-segregated public schools, especially in low-income areas. This story is important to see how many of the same issues from 80 years ago are still prevalent today. To not teach this; to not understand this, only perpetuates the problem, when it needs to be resolved.

These are my reflections for today.

6/11/21

Recent publication: William Frantz Public School:  A Story of Race, Resistance, Resiliency, and Recovery in New Orleans Connie Schaffer, Meg White, and Martha Graham Viator. Peter Lang Publishing. Available on amazon.com

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William Frantz Public School

On September 1, our book, William Frantz Public School; A Story of Race, Resistance, Resiliency, and Recovery in New Orleans will be released by Peter Lang Publishing. This book tells a complex story. We started out writing it because we wanted to tell readers what happened to William Frantz Public School in the decades following its desegregation in 1960. As we learned more about the school, we found common threads that drew disparate events together and created a multi-faceted story. The story could not be told without centering the narrative on race and the never-ending resistance to any effort that might end years of de jure and de facto segregation. The resiliency of those the system oppressed—the poor students, Black students, and at times demoralized educators of William Frantz Public School—is equally important as is the so-called recovery of public education in the post-Katrina era.

You may not know the name of the school, but you are likely to recognize photographs of the building that were taken in 1960. Those pictures show a Black 6-year-old girl and four U.S. Federal Marshals walking into the school. The first- grade student entering the school was Ruby Bridges, and while she is a prominent figure in this story, Bridges is not the central character. This book is about events spanning the history of William Frantz Public School. If the walls of this elementary school could talk, they would retell the well-known story of its desegregation in 1960. They would also recount lesser-known, yet important stories, that provide further examination of public education in New Orleans and its intersections with race, resistance, resiliency, and recovery.

This book is an in-depth examination of stories specific to William Frantz Public School, located in the Upper Ninth Ward in New Orleans, Louisiana. These stories are interwoven into the broader saga of public education in New Orleans.  To some extent, the school and the Orleans Parish school district represent a microcosm of public education in the United States. However, the unique context of New Orleans cannot be discounted. It is located in the Deep South; it has a large Catholic population. In the late 20th century, many people considered its public schools to be the epitome of all that was broken in the U.S. education system. Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city in 2005, and the aftermath created a public education model based almost exclusively on charter schools.

Over the next few weeks I will be sharing excepts from our book.  Kindly share with friends and colleagues you think might be interested in our book, now available for pre-order on amazon: https://www.amazon.com/William-Frantz-Public-School-Resistance/dp/1433183005/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=meg+white&qid=1597150567&s=books&sr=1-1

These are my reflections for today.

8/14/20

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William Frantz Public School:  A Story of Race, Resistance, Resiliency, and Recovery in New Orleans Connie Schaffer, Meg White, and Martha Graham Viator (September  2020 release) Peter Lang Publishing.

Hateful. Racist. Discriminatory.

 

My recent post, Unequal distribution, was about Betsy DeVos’ plan to divert public funding related to the coronavirus.  Funding guidelines include an Education Stabilization Fund, which provides $13.5 billion in K-12 formula grants to states. Grants are distributed to states based on their share of ESEA Title I-A funds. Title 1 funds are distributed to elementary and secondary schools based on a formula driven by how many poor children they serve.

The new provision in the guidelines revealed DeVos’ plan to force a recalculation of the distribution of this money, and allow districts to calculate what share of all students in the area attend private schools, and not just the share of low income students, which is what Title 1 funding is intended (NCSL)

The Washington Post reported, “She also has used $180 million from the stimulus fund for a ‘microgrant’ program for parents to pay for educational expenses, including private school tuition.”  DeVos is trying to use the relief funding to advance her goals of allowing financial support from taxpayers to pay the tuition for private and parochial schools. In yet another display of ignorance and gall, last week DeVos doubled down as she defended her decision on how to redistribute the federal money.

In an interview with Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, Dolan asked DeVos if she was trying to utilize this particular crisis to ensure that justice is finally done to our kids and the parents who choose to sent them to faith-based schools.  DeVos responded, “Yes, absolutely…  For more than three decades, that has been something I’ve been passionate about,” she said. “This whole pandemic has brought into clear focus that everyone has been impacted and we shouldn’t be thinking about students that are in public schools vs. private schools.” Washington Post.

Several members of Congress have voiced their concern with DeVos’ plan.  Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), chairman of the Senate Education Committee and noted ally of DeVos, said,  ” …..that the money should be distributed in the same way Title 1 money is distributed”.  Reps. Bobby Scott (D-VA.), chairman of the House Education committee,  Rosa L. DeLauro (D-CT), chairwoman of the House Appropriations subcommittee, and Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA.), the top Democrat on the Senate Education Committee asked DeVos to immediately revise her guidance to conform with the law.  The guidance “seeks to repurpose hundreds-of-millions of taxpayer dollars intended for public school students to provide services for private school students, in contravention of both the plain reading of the statute and the intent of Congress” Washington Post.

DeVos participated in a question and answer session last week that featured executives from private companies, private and charter schools, and public schools. She said,

“It’s our interpretation that [the funding] is meant literally for all students, and that includes students no matter where they’re learning” Washington Post.

That is LITERALLY NOT the intention of the funding.

Here is the definition of Title 1 funding from her US Department of Education:

Title I, Part A of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, as amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) provides financial assistance to local educational agencies (LEAs) and schools with high numbers or high percentages of children from low-income families to help ensure that all children meet challenging state academic standards.

Here’s a definition from USLEGAL.COM

Title 1 is the largest federally funded educational program. The program provides supplemental funds to school districts to assist schools with the highest student concentrations of poverty to meet school educational goals. A Title 1 school is a school receiving federal funds for Title 1 students.

The basic principle of Title 1 is that schools with large concentrations of low-income students will receive supplemental funds to assist in meeting student’s educational goals. The number of low-income students is determined by the number of students enrolled in the free and reduced lunch program. Title 1 funds can be used to improve curriculum, instructional activities, counseling, parental involvement, and increase staff and program improvement. The funding assists schools in meeting the educational goals of low-income students.

The types of students served by Title 1 funds include migrant students, students with limited English proficiency, homeless students, students with disabilities, neglected students, delinquent students, at-risk students or any student in need. Schools must make adequate yearly progress on state testing and focus on best teaching practices in order to continue receiving funds.

Here is a definition from the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES).

Title I, Part A of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, as amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) provides financial assistance to local educational agencies for children from low-income families to help ensure that all children meet challenging state academic standards.

The majority of Title I funds are allocated at the district level in all states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, based on mathematical formulas involving the number of children eligible for Title I support and the state per pupil cost of education.

In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson proposed and Congress passed several initiatives in response to a 19% national poverty rate. In his inauguration speech, Johnson first used the term ‘war on poverty’.  The term refers to the initiatives created to fight the war on poverty, one of which was the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA, 1965) that established the Title 1 program subsidizing school districts with a large share of impoverished students (Washington Post).

As Johnson said in his 1964 State of the Union address announcing the effort, “Our aim is not only to relieve the symptoms of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it.”  This is the premise behind Title 1.

DeVos has so completely misinterpreted the law and the allocation of funds to Title 1 schools to the detriment of low income children across this country. This should be a call for her immediate dismissal. This is not simply a misunderstanding.

DeVos’ family’s wealth exceeds $2 billion yet over the four years she has served this administration she will have charged an unprecedented $26 million to taxpayers for her security detail which no other education secretary has ever done (CNN). Imagine what $26 million could do for low-income schools. In 2017, DeVos said, “HBCUs {historically black colleges and universities} are real pioneers when it comes to school choice.” During her confirmation hearing she said she though guns should be allowed in schools to protect students from grizzly bears. She said she believes traditional public schools are a dead end. She refused to say whether the government should prevent private schools that accept public money from discriminating against some students. And she admitted to Leslie Stahl on 60 minutes she had never “intentionally” visited a low-performing traditional public school.

Every decision Mrs. DeVos makes to defund public schools, support charter school growth, and support vouchers will do nothing to narrow the achievement gap. On the contrary, it further divides the quality of education children receive in this country.  Her response to Cardinal Dolan clearly indicates her intention – which is fully supported by this administration – and at its core is hateful, racist, and discriminatory.

These are my reflections for today.

5/29/20

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William Frantz Public School:  A Story of Race, Resistance, Resiliency, and Recovery in New Orleans Connie Schaffer, Meg White, and Martha Graham Viator (spring 2020 release) Peter Lang Publishing.

 

 

 

Unequal Distribution

If you are a frequent reader of this blog, you know two things about me – I am an advocate for public education – especially in low-income areas – and I am not a supporter of Mrs. DeVos, this administration, or their efforts to undermine public education. I often write about the Secretary of Education not only because she is so often in the news, but also to make readers aware of the decisions she makes impact public schools and students.

Today I’m writing about new guidelines for a relief package the department released  which will allow private schools to receive more funding from the federal coronavirus relief package, while high-poverty schools receive less.

To fully understand the implications, here’s a little background. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, was signed into law in late March by the president to provide funding and flexibility for states to respond to the COVID-19 emergency in K-12 schools (NCSL).

The bill includes an Education Stabilization Fund, which provides $13.5 billion in K-12 formula grants to states. This grant is distributed to states based on their share of ESEA Title I-A funds. State education agencies will then distribute at least 90% of funds to school districts and public charter schools based on their share of Title I-A funds. State agencies may choose to use a portion or all of the remaining K-12 funds to respond to emergency needs as determined by the state agency (NCSL).

Districts who serve low-income students receive Title I money. “If 5% of low-income students who live within the boundaries of Title I public schools go to private school, for example, 5% of the district’s Title I dollars must be used for services for certain private school students, like after-school programs, tutoring, or counseling” (Chalkbeat.org).

The new provision in DeVos’ plan forces a recalculation of the distribution of this money. The plan will allow districts to calculate what share of all students in the area attend private schools, and not just the share of low income students. The ramifications of this recalculation will deal another devastating blow to schools already working with smaller budgets. Consider an area with affluent families (more likely white) whose children attend private schools. These families will receive an equal redistribution of money which takes it directly away from schools who serve low-income Black and Hispanic students. Put into context,

“East Baton Rouge, LA, a district where most of the 41,000 students are black and from low-income families, will have to send 25% of its relief money to private schools, even though those schools only serve 5% of the area’s low-income students. The shift redirects $3.7 million in federal aid” (Chalkbeat.org).

Noelle Ellerson Ng, Associate Executive Director of the National School Superintendents Association said, “The guidance as released allows for wealthy children in private school – ineligible for Title I — to receive CARES funding that was allocated to districts based on the low-income students they serve” (Chalkbeat.org).

The inequity in this decision is unbelievable – or is it? Is this a shock to anyone? It really shouldn’t be because Mrs. DeVos has consistently undermined so much funding to public schools while in full support of unregulated, unaccountable, and often unlawful charter schools. Charters take money directly from public schools while not being held to the same standards.

The inequity of this decision by DeVos also shows how she again favors wealthy families and works against low-income families. There is certainly a pattern to her decisions which favor private school vouchers and charter alternatives to traditional public schools.

There is a term used in situations such as this – disaster capitalism which can be defined as taking advantage of a major disaster (in this case the coronavirus pandemic) to adopt policies that would be less likely to be accepted under normal circumstances. DeVos’ decision to push these guidelines through during the pandemic is deplorable. We have come to expect such decisions from this administration. But let’s be transparent about who benefits from her decisions.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

End note:  Another example of capitalizing on a disaster can be seen in the privatization of public schools in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. My co-authors and discuss this at length in our soon-to-be-released book, William Frantz Public School:  A Story of Race, Resistance, Resiliency, and Recovery in New Orleans (spring 2020) Peter Lang Publishing. Stay tuned…

These are my reflections for today.

5/8/20

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Knots on a counting rope

***There have been a few changes to my original post. I was fortunate enough to have a conversation with Ms. Leona Tate who provided a few additional details and changes to the events originally noted in the blog.

Years ago when I was teaching fourth grade, I read a story to my students called Knots on a Counting Rope. The story is about a Native American child who asks his grandfather to tell the story of the night he was born. Every time he tells the story he puts a knot in the rope. The grandfather explains that when he’s gone, the rope will be full of knots and the boy will be able to tell the story on his own.

I recently traveled to New Orleans to research for a book my colleagues and I are writing about civil rights and segregation. I was able to visit two schools known for their fight to desegregate the public schools in New Orleans. In November 1960 there were two schools that desegregated – William Frantz Public School where six-year old Ruby Bridges entered, and McDonogh 19 where six-year old Leona Tate, Tessie Prevost, and Gail Etienne entered.  When I visited Frantz it was very well-kept, in part because Ms. Bridges fought to have the school become a National Historic site- which it became just 80 days before Hurricane Katrina hit.

I drove by the other school, McDonogh 19 and found it fenced in, and boarded up.

On November 14, 1960, surrounded by Federal Marshals ordered by President Eisenhower, the McDonogh Three as they became known, entered the doors of McDonogh 19 becoming the first Black children to attend this previously all White school. There were no other children in the building – no other Black children, and no White children. When it was revealed McDonogh 19 was one of the two chosen schools to desegregate, families chose to keep their children home, rather than attend school with Black children. The girls had previously attended an all Black school.

Though the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision had come in 1954, schools in the south were very slow to begin desegregation. It took the courage of several Judges including James Skelly Wright to uphold the Brown decision and hold New Orleans accountable for desegregation.

Not one child who had previously attended McDonogh 19 returned that year, nor did they return in the first six months of the following school year. Etienne, Tate, and Prevost were the only children attending for a year and a half. The girls had only one teacher during the year.

There was one exception to the enrollment.  As parents arrived to remove their children from McDonogh 19, only two brothers remained.  When angry White protestors heard the boys were still enrolled a week later, they found out the father worked at Walgreens and sent protestors to picket outside their local Walgreens. Picket signs included many (offensive) suggestions of Walgreens hiring practices, along with racial slurs I choose not to include here. The man was so concerned he would lose his job, he went back to McDonogh 19 the next day and pulled his children from the school.

McDonogh 19 is situated on a four lane divided road in the Lower Ninth Ward. The building closed in 2004 due to low academics. During Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the levee breaches flooded this historic neighborhood with up to 18 feet of water, destroying homes and buildings – including McDonogh 19. Tate, Etienne, and Prevost have worked hard to save the building. As a result of their efforts, McDonogh 19 will be come the Tate, Etienne, and Prevost Interpretative Center slated to open in late 2020. According to Ms. Tate this initiative has taken ten years to come to fruition.

There is a plaque on the island in front of the school. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of that fateful day in New Orleans, The Leona Tate Foundation for Change and the Plessy & Ferguson Foundation created this memorial site to remember the brave actions of the McDonogh Three. They wanted to honor the past and inspire future generations.

If you live in New Orleans, you know the story because many people still live there who remember that fateful day in 1960, and they remember what happened to the Lower Ninth Ward after that when White families fled the neighborhood rather than have their children attend school with Black children.

If you go to New Orleans and truly want to learn about the city, I suggest spending time away from the French Quarter. This is how you get to know the people and their struggles before and after Hurricane Katrina and the levee breaches. This is a story worth telling, and a story worth remembering.

Ms. Tate, I hope you, Ms. Etienne, and Ms. Prevost will write your memories of the days before and after November 14, 1960. It is a story worth telling and re-telling – like knots on a counting rope – until we know it by heart.

And thank you Ms. Tate for speaking with me today, and ensuring your story is accurate.

Watch this touching video on Leona’s vision for McDonogh 19.

These are my reflections for today.

6/14/19

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