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Another Tennessee measure signed into law recently will create parent contracts that give them step-by-step guidelines for pitching in. The report card bill – which would initially apply to two struggling schools – passed the Legislature, and the governor has said he is likely to sign it. Participation in the programs is voluntary.
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Only a few states have passed laws creating evaluations or contracts that put helping with homework or attending teacher conferences into writing. Tennessee is the only one so far to do report cards, though Utah has parents fill out an online survey and Louisiana is also considering parent report cards.

The measures are meant to address a complaint long voiced by teachers and principals: Schools can’t do it alone.

“It’s a proven fact that family engagement equals students’ success,” said James Martinez, spokesman for the National Parent Teacher Association.

“It’s one of the key ingredients to education reform, to turning around schools, to improving our country’s children’s knowledge base compared to the rest of the world.”

Under Tennessee’s contract legislation, parents in each school district are asked to sign a document agreeing to review homework and attend school functions or teacher conferences, among other things. Since it’s voluntary, there’s no penalty for failing to uphold the contract – but advocates say simply providing a roadmap for involvement is an important step.

Michigan is the only state that has enacted a similar measure, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

In the case of Tennessee’s report card proposal, a four-year pilot program will be set up involving two of Tennessee’s struggling schools. Parents of students in kindergarten through third grade will be given a blank report card at the same time as the students, and the parents will do a self-evaluation of their involvement in activities similar to those in the parental contract. Parents will give themselves a grade of excellent, satisfactory, needs improvement or unsatisfactory

Tennessee Rep. Antonio Parkinson, a Memphis Democrat and the House sponsor of the measures, said the program may be expanded depending on how many parents participate.

“What we’re hoping will happen with the parents grading themselves is that they will, at a minimum, become aware of either the good job that they’re doing in regards to children’s education, or possibly become aware of some areas where they may be able to make some improvements,” said Parkinson, adding that educators can review the report cards with the parents if they choose.

Utah recently passed legislation that creates an online survey where parents can evaluate their involvement, but the school does not assign them a grade and it’s voluntary. Louisiana is currently considering legislation to grade parent participation, according to the NCSL.

While cajoling parents through state laws is a new trend, the underlying idea is one that few would deny. A 2002 study by the National Center for Family and Community Connections with Schools at the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory found that no matter the income or structure of the family, when parents are involved students have higher grades, stay in school longer and are more likely to go to college.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam said he’s likely to sign the report card legislation, but like the other proposal he wants to see how it’s implemented.

“The spirit behind it is 100 percent right,” said the Republican governor. “The question is, if folks could mandate parental involvement, other people would be doing it before.”

The state has previously been praised as a leader in education reform by U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan for other changes in state law including toughening the curriculum and teacher evaluations.

The Michigan measure that created the parental involvement contract also set up a “Parent Engagement Tool Kit” website that provides ideas on engaging parents, said Bob Kefgen, assistant director for government relations with the Michigan Association of Secondary School Principals.

“That contract language was one really important piece and we’ve gone much further than that,” he said. “It’s really about having a host of resources at your disposal because there’s really no silver bullet.”

Nada Fouani, principal at Iris Becker Elementary School in Dearborn, Mich., said she’s noticed more parents getting involved since the measure was enacted in 2001.

“Our PTA has become larger and much stronger,” she said.

Nashville resident Christi Witherspoon favors the measures. Despite her busy schedule as a doctor, she and her husband, Roger, spend as much as three hours each night helping their two young daughters with homework.

“I think it’s of the utmost importance because I don’t think children can be consistently successful without parental involvement,” Witherspoon said.

Her daughters appreciate the help.

“I really enjoy my mom going over my homework,” said 9-year-old Gabrielle. “If it’s wrong, she helps me out with it.”

And if mom isn’t around, Rachel, 6, knows who to turn to: “I have my dad, or my sister.”

Some families, though, face greater obstacles.

Corey Jenkins is a single father of three children ages 10, 12 and 14. The recently divorced 39-year-old just got a new job after looking for work for months. But he said he hasn’t let his problems interfere with his involvement in his children’s schooling.

“I can make excuses, but there are none that make sense,” Jenkins said. “My children are most important in my life and so I make time when they need it. I enjoy attending parent/teacher conferences.”

James W. Lewis, president of the National Society of High School Scholars, said that whether parents are single or married, they can make more of an impact when they know ways to help.

“In the state of Tennessee, they’ll have to make sure those resources are put out there to allow for fair and equitable distribution of this training for parents,” he said. “And if that’s done correctly, I think there could be a very positive move toward helping students understand the value of education and also allow the parent to understand the value and the connectivity between education and their students’ opportunity for learning.”

Gera Summerford, president of the Tennessee Education Association, agrees. The teacher said she’s encountered a number of parents in her 30-year career who seem disengaged and need direction.

“There are ways that the schools can promote that parental connection,” she said.

The SEDL study identified several ways that schools can assist parents in supporting their children’s education. A key way was providing information about how to help their children at home.

Tennessee Education Association lobbyist Jerry Winters said he believes the state’s parental proposals will be effective because they seek to forge a partnership between parents and schools.

“Parents don’t need to go it alone, they need support,” he said. “Schools certainly don’t need to go it alone, they need support. A parental-school partnership is the ideal environment for improving student achievement.”

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“I could understand if he was fondling her, looking up her skirt, trying to look in her shirt. That, to me, is sexual harassment,” said Stephanie Meadows. “I’m just, I’m floored. They’re going to look at him like he’s a pervert. And it’s like, that’s not fair to him.”

District spokeswoman, Paula Hans, wrote this in response:

“Aurora Public Schools is committed to providing equitable learning for all students. We have policies and protocol in place to prevent any disruption to the learning environment. Due to privacy laws, we are unable to discuss appropriate disciplinary consequences about a specific student.”

Ms. Meadows had no such qualms about privacy, revealing to 7 News that D’Avonte got in trouble for the same thing last month. — with the same girl. This time, though, he added a “little booty shake” for good measure:

“[I told] my son not to shake anything in the girl’s face again,” said Meadows after a meeting with an assistant principle. “I’m going to definitely have to sit with him and see if he understands exactly what the song means.”

While it’s easy to say that the punishment was excessive, what about the little girl? She was obviously uncomfortable with the attention to the point of reporting it to someone. What message would a lighter punishment have sent to her? Perhaps that a learning environment free from “booty shakes” and “sexy” lyrics is not in the cards for her? Should she also expect and accept similar actions as an adult in the workplace?

It’s true that D’Avonte is a young child; however, he received a fair warning — more importantly, so did his mother. At some point, he has to learn that there are consequences for his actions — and 6-years-old doesn’t seem too young to start.

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The president will speak with students and parents at an Arlington high school about his efforts to prevent interest rates on federal subsidized student loans from doubling on July 1.

Obama will hold a morning round-table discussion with a group of seniors and their parents. Then he’ll speak to a larger group of parents, juniors and seniors about the importance of having a fair shot at an affordable higher education and the skills needed to find a good job.

In the afternoon, the president will welcome members of the University of Kentucky men’s basketball team to the White House to celebrate their 2012 NCAA championship.

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“Kids are being arrested for being kids,” said Shannon Kennedy, a civil rights attorney who has filed a class-action lawsuit against Albuquerque’s public school district and its police department on behalf of hundreds of kids arrested for minor offenses over the past few years, including having cellphones in class, destroying a history book and inflating a condom. Civil rights advocates and criminal justice experts say frustrated teachers and principals are calling in the police too often to deal with the most minor disturbances. But other teachers say a police presence that has grown in response to zero tolerance policies of the 1990s and tragedies like the Columbine High massacre is needed to keep teachers and well-behaved students safe.

From sexual harassment in elementary and middle school to children throwing furniture, “there is more chronic and extreme disrespect, disinterest and kids who basically don’t care,” said Ellen Bernstein, president of the Albuquerque teacher’s union. Experts point to a number of factors that lead to the arrests: Some officers are operating without special training. School administrators are desperate to get the attention of uninvolved parents. And overwhelmed teachers are unaware that calling in the police to defuse a situation could lead to serious criminal charges. “I have had some concern for a while that the schools have relied a little too heavily on police officers to handle disciplinary problems,” said Darrel Stephens, a former Charlotte, N.C., police chief and executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association.

There is little national data to back those assertions; no numbers are tracked nationally on how often police are called in to arrest students. Whether the children are actually charged and saddled with criminal records varies by case and jurisdiction. Some youngsters are charged with felonies. Some are freed without further incident. Others receive tickets. In Milledgeville, Ga., a city of 18,000 some 90 miles from Atlanta, Salecia Johnson was accused of tearing items off the walls and throwing books and toys in an outburst Friday at Creekside Elementary.

Police said she also threw a small shelf that struck the principal in the leg, and jumped on a paper shredder and tried to break a glass frame. Police didn’t say what set off the tantrum. Baldwin County (Ga.) schools Superintendent Geneva Braziel called the student’s behavior “violent and disruptive” and said the police were needed to keep the student, other classmates and the school staff safe. Salecia was handcuffed and taken away in a patrol car to the police station, where she was taken to a squad room and given a soda, police said. She won’t be charged with a crime. Salecia was taken to a squad room and given a soda, and won’t be charged with a crime, police said. Her aunt, Candace Ruff, said Tuesday the girl had complained about the handcuffs; “she said they really hurt her wrists,” she said.

The department’s policy is to handcuff everyone arrested regardless of age for safety reasons, police said. In Florida, the use of police in schools came up several years ago when officers arrested a kindergartner who threw a tantrum during a jelly bean-counting contest. A bill was proposed this year to restrict police from arresting kids for misdemeanors or other acts that do not pose serious safety threats. In Connecticut, court officials began tracking student arrests after becoming concerned about referrals for minor offenses. Since last March, nearly 1,700 students were arrested, almost two-thirds of them for breach of peace, minor fights and disorderly conduct.

In Texas, a December report from the nonprofit Texas Appleseed, a public interest group, says more than 275,000 non-traffic tickets are issued to juveniles each year. While it is unclear how many are written at school, the group says the vast majority are for offenses most commonly linked to incidents like disrupting the class and disorderly conduct. Texas Sen. John Whitmire said educators and police need to better distinguish between who they are afraid of and who they are mad at. “If you are afraid of someone because they bring a gun or drugs, of course we come down hard,” Whitmire said. “It’s the kids that just make you mad that you don’t need to make a crime.”

In Albuquerque, which started tracking arrests after noticing more minor cases coming from schools, more than 900 of the district’s 90,000 students were referred to the criminal justice system in the 2009-2010 school year. Of those, more than 500 were handcuffed, arrested and brought to juvenile detention, officials said. More than 200 were arrested for minor offenses, including disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, refusing to obey and interference with staff.

Preliminary numbers indicate arrests have fallen 53 percent since the class-action lawsuit was filed in 2010, prompting law enforcement officials to order more caution. Albuquerque school officials have declined comment on school arrests, citing the pending litigation. But juvenile advocates and parents say first arrests could lead to more trouble. Annette Montano says her 13-year-old son was arrested at a middle school for burping in gym class. The tension between him and school officials led to several more run-ins, she said, including a strip search after he was accused of selling drugs. In Georgia, Salecia’s family said the girl has been suspended for the school year. Her aunt said, “We would not like to see this happen to another child, because it’s horrifying.”

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Citing a range of factors, from school violence to curricula that places more emphasis on test results than engaging lesson plans, some Black parents are reportedly choosing to educate their children themselves.

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It’s an attitude that seems in stark contrast to efforts in previous eras where there was a huge push toward school desegregation. Now some parents are disillusioned with the promise of public schools in urban areas.

Though only a rough estimate, there are reportedly about 2 million, or 4 percent, of American children that are home schooled, according to the National Home Education Research Institute. In some states, families do not have to register with the authorities that their child is being home schooled.

Still, Joyce Burges, co-founder of National Black Home Educators, says the practice is growing “exponentially” in the African-American community.

Burges, who home schooled all five of her children, aged 16 to 35, told the BBC:

The failings of public schools have caused all of us, whether we are white or black, to come up with creative ideas about how we can educate children. That explains the rise of the co-ops and African Americans seeing that this is not just a white thing any more.

For others, such as Monica Utsey, who runs a home schooling co-operative for African-American children in Washington, D.C., the move to home schooling is a way for some Black parents to instill certain values, provide a more nurturing environment, and teach more in-depth lessons on Black history.

Utsey, who explained that she didn’t want her kids “to believe that their history begins with slavery,” added, “African-American mothers, especially those who have boys, have a lot of trouble in the school system. The way the classroom is designed is more conducive for girls.”

Others even say home schooling is a way to protect their children from public school educators who might otherwise be quick to prescribe drugs like Ritalin or Adderall for children who might exhibit some behavioral problems.

Whatever the reason, it seems that home schooling, for those Black families who can fit it in to their schedules, may be an emerging alternative.

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Brett Johnson is a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based writer and the founder of the music and culture blog VeryArtistical.com.

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McDowell is just one of countless parents who live in impoverished areas across the country yet still want their children to have a fighting chance at getting an education that is solid.

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The inequalities in education among the haves and have-nots has been the subject of many staunch debates throughout the years.  McDowell’s cause célèbre is a clear-cut case that depicts the gaping disparities in both the wealth and quality of education across this country.

Due to the subpar teaching students face in low-income areas, many parents risk imprisonment and fines just so that their children can get an education that can give them a fighting chance at succeeding.

Now some boundary-hopping parents are even relinquishing legal custody of their children to the hands of others, who reside in areas that have better school districts, so that their kids can reap the educational benefits.

“I gave my sister custody of my son,” a Hartford, Connecticut, a woman who asked to remain anonymous, told The Daily. The woman’s sister lives in a nearby school district with better performance scores. “I had to do what I had to do as a Mother.”

Yolanda Miranda, who lives in Rochester, N.Y., gave up her parental rights to her mom, who also lives in a better school district. The 36-year-old woman was initially arrested in 2009 for sending her kids to an out-of-district school.  She was charged with grand larceny for “stealing education,” but the charges were reduced to a misdemeanor.

The new trend to keep illegal students from entering better public school districts now involves hiring special investigators. Companies, such as VerifyResidence.com, have agents follow children from school to home to determine if they truly reside at the addresses that they have provided to the schools.

A Queens, New York, Black grandmother talked with NewsOne about a time when district-hopping was a common practice:

“Sending ghetto children to better schools is nothing new, this is a practice that has been around for years. I remember there was plenty of talk back-in-the-day of people in my old neighborhood putting their kids in schools that were in prime neighborhood districts. All you had to do was know someone, mail a letter with your name and address on it to that person’s address, then show that same letter to school officials.  It’s only recently that the schools have decided to toughen up and send people to jail, which is a shame. Why should trying to give your child the best education get you jail time?”

What lies beneath all of the crackdowns is no surprise, according to Susan Eaton, research director at the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School.  Eaton tells the Daily, “Racial discrimination was at the very root of how these districts were created,” she said. “But no one wants to really open up that discussion again.”

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Kids are still going to be tested, but the tests are not going to be measured against federal standards.  Instead, state standards will be used, giving states the right to define their own objectives.

The original No Child Left Behind Act was signed by former President George W. Bush in 2002.  It sanctions schools that fail to meet particular standards by busing students to better schools and replacing staff.

“If we’re serious about helping our children reach their potential, the best ideas aren’t going to come from Washington alone,” Obama said.

“The question is, did kids win?” Amy Wilkins from the Education Trust said to USA Today. “We won’t know that until we see how it plays out in classrooms across the country.”

There are also those who wonder if it is inherently contradictory for President Obama to dismantle No Child Left Behind, while continuing with a system that focuses on testing and uniform standards as the sole measures of student performance.  Professor Christopher Emdin of Columbia University applauds the decision made by Obama but still has his reservations.

“No Child Left Behind was the most powerful systematic way to keep students of color in the position that they’ve been … not successful.  It really focused on one single form of assessment.  It has never considered the fact that students are more complex than just receiving information and spitting it out,” said Dr. Emdin. “The big issue we have in education is acknowledging that our kids are different.”

Dr. Emdin is also concerned that President Obama’s move might be considered contradictory, given that his new system also relies on tests.

“His attempt to try to get rid of No Child left behind means he’s talking out of two sides of his mouth.  He created another system that is just another version of NCLB,” says Emdin. “The new system is just a reincarnation of the current system.  You’re saying, ‘No more teaching to the test,’ but your Race to the Top program is built on a single test.”

On the issues of racial inequality, economic inequality, and mass incarceration, the Obama Administration has come up short.  These issues have rarely been mentioned by the administration and this continues to be a disappointment.  But in the area of education, there is clear evidence that the Obama Administration is seeking to create productive change.

One can’t rightly determine Obama’s reasons for tip-toeing his way to an end to NCLB, but the president’s value systems appear to be in line with the notion of improving the educational system for all students of every background.

What is certainly clear, though, is that improving the educational system, particularly in the inner city, is critical for our nation’s future.  When we don’t educate our children, our national security is threatened and our economic future gets dimmer by the second.  The “War on Terror” during the last decade should be replaced by the “War on Inferior Education.”  It is a war we simply cannot stand to lose.

Dr. Boyce Watkins is a Professor at Syracuse University. To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.

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The first 10 states to receive the waivers are Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Tennessee. The only state that applied for the flexibility and did not get it, New Mexico, is working with the administration to get approval, a White House official told the AP.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the states had not yet been announced. A total of 28 other states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have signaled that they, too, plan to seek waivers – a sign of just how vast the law’s burdens have become as a big deadline nears.

No Child Left Behind requires all students to be proficient in reading and math by 2014. Obama’s action strips away that fundamental requirement for those approved for flexibility, provided they offer a viable plan instead. Under the deal, the states must show they will prepare children for college and careers, set new targets for improving achievement among all students, reward the best performing schools and focus help on the ones doing the worst.

In September, Obama called President George W. Bush’s most hyped domestic accomplishment an admirable but flawed effort that hurt students instead of helping them. He said action was necessary because Congress failed to update the law despite widespread bipartisan agreement that it needs fixing. Republicans have charged that by granting waivers, Obama was overreaching his authority.

The executive action by Obama is one of his most prominent in an ongoing campaign to act on his own where Congress is rebuffing him. No Child Left Behind was primarily designed to help the nation’s poor and minority children and was passed a decade ago with widespread bipartisan support. It has been up for renewal since 2007. But lawmakers have been stymied for years by competing priorities, disagreements over how much of a federal role there should be in schools and, in the recent Congress, partisan gridlock.

For all the cheers that states may have about the changes, the move also reflects the sobering reality that the United States is not close to the law’s original goal: getting children to grade level in reading and math.

Critics today say the 2014 deadline was unrealistic, the law is too rigid and led to teaching to the test, and too many schools feel they are labeled as “failures.” Under No Child Left Behind, schools that don’t meet requirements for two years or longer face increasingly tough consequences, including busing children to higher-performing schools, offering tutoring and replacing staff.

As the deadline approaches, more schools are failing to meet requirements under the law, with nearly half not doing so last year, according to the Center on Education Policy. Center officials said that’s because some states today have harder tests or have high numbers of immigrant and low-income children, but it’s also because the law requires states to raise the bar each year for how many children must pass the test.

In states granted a waiver, students will still be tested annually. But starting this fall, schools in those states will no longer face the same prescriptive actions spelled out under No Child Left Behind. A school’s performance will also probably be labeled differently.

The pressure will probably still be on the lowest-performing schools in states granted a waiver, but mediocre schools that aren’t failing will probably see the most changes because they will feel less pressure and have more flexibility in how they spend federal dollars, said Michael Petrilli, vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education think tank.

While the president’s action marks a change in education policy in America, the reach is limited. The populous states of Pennsylvania, Texas and California are among those that have not said they will seek a waiver, although they could still do so later.

On Tuesday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said states without a waiver will be held to the standards of No Child Left Behind because “it’s the law of the land.”

Some conservatives viewed Obama’s plan not as giving more flexibility to states, but as imposing his vision on them. Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., who chairs the House Education and Workforce Committee, said the president allowed “an arbitrary timeline” to dictate when Congress should get the law rewritten and set a dangerous precedent by granting the education secretary “sweeping authority to handpick winners and losers.”

Duncan maintained this week that the administration “desperately” wants Congress to fix the law.

In an election year in a divided Congress, that appears unlikely to happen.

A Senate committee last fall passed a bipartisan bill to update the law, but it was opposed by the administration and did not go before the full Senate for a vote.

Kline released a draft of a Republican-written bill to update the law, earning the ire of California Rep. George Miller, the committee’s ranking Democrat. Miller said such partisanship “means the end” to No Child Left Behind reform in this Congress. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who chairs the Senate committee with jurisdiction over education, has said he believes it “would be difficult to find a path forward” without a bipartisan bill in the House.

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Five years later, Mncube was joyful she stayed. On Saturday, he gazed proudly at his daughter, dressed elegantly in white for the first graduation ceremony at Winfrey’s school. Bongekile Mncube is headed to the University of Johannesburg to study politics and economics, and vows to one day help “build the economy of this country.”

“We are so thankful to Oprah,” said her father, a pastor and small businessmen who never went to high school. “We pray that God helps her to fulfill the vision that she had.”

Elgar’s “Pomp and circumstance” rang out Saturday as the graduates marched in, some unsteady on new high heels. The ceremony saw cheers and tears, including Winfrey’s own.

Winfrey’s school is an attempt to wield philanthropy and celebrity against South Africa’s social and educational crises. High-achieving students from poor families were admitted after a rigorous application process in which Winfrey was deeply involved, and she has visited regularly to counsel her girls. She held a last, late-night “pajama party” with the graduates Friday.

Winfrey told reporters after the ceremony that her girls would continue to be able to rely on her support. A counseling unit had been set up to help the graduates budget time, money and priorities in university.

In a graduation speech, Winfrey praised the teachers, administrators, social workers, psychologists and family members she said had ensured the students succeeded. Winfrey said she has learned it takes a team to support students, especially those who have experienced the poverty and personal trauma that define so many South African lives.

Winfrey said she sees the students as her daughters, and listed the blows they have experienced: “Divorce. Violence. Molestation. The loss of one parent. The loss of another parent. Sorrow. Sadness. Grief.”

The first class to graduate from the school overcame adversity to see 72 of the 75 original members graduate. All 72 are headed to universities in South Africa and the United States. Across South Africa, more than half a million members of the class of 2011 disappeared before the 496,000 remaining took their final exams, and only a quarter of those who graduated did well enough to qualify for university study, according to government figures.

“I’m one proud momma today,” said Winfrey, who wore eye shadow and a flowing gown in green, a school color.

Quoting Maya Angelou, she called the graduates “phenomenal, phenomenal, phenomenal women.”

Graca Machel, whose husband former South African President Nelson Mandela inspired Winfrey to open the school, called on the graduates to change the world. Mandela has retired from public life and did not attend the ceremony. He attended the opening of the school in 2007.

“You are leaders,” Machel said in her graduation speech. “But be humble. Listen. Learn. Try, and try again.”

Winfrey, among the wealthiest women in the world, spent $40 million to build the school, giving it facilities many South African universities might envy. But she said the school’s success was owed to teachers who came early and stayed late, social workers like one who traveled hundreds of miles (kilometers) to rescue a student who had encountered violence during a visit home, and parents who instilled discipline despite difficult home lives.

Winfrey asked staff and family members to stand for applause during the ceremony.

Winfrey encouraged all South African schools to raise their expectations, saying the experience of her school showed young people would respond by excelling. From the start, Winfrey’s students were told they should set their sights on university.

Despite the money and intentions, the school has had trouble. Soon after opening, a woman working as a dormitory matron was accused of abusing students. She was acquitted in 2010. Winfrey, who has spoken of being abused as a child and called the allegations against the matron crushing, and has said the trial’s outcome was “profoundly” disappointing.

Winfrey settled a defamation lawsuit filed in Philadelphia by the school’s former headmistress, Nomvuyo Mzamane, who claimed Winfrey defamed her in remarks made in the wake of the scandal.

Last year, a baby born to a student at the school was found dead.

Winfrey said Saturday there were times when she was discouraged, but that “I always held the vision that this day was possible.”

Winfrey noted the gradates were born in 1994, the year apartheid ended, “into a nation that said: You are free. You are free to rise. You are free to soar.”

Graduate Bongekile Mncube took Winfrey’s words to heart.

“The world should watch out,” she said. “We’re about to take over.”

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A recent study by the Yale University Child Study Center shows that Black children — especially boys — no matter their family income, receive less attention, harsher punishment and lower marks in school than their White counterparts from kindergarten all the way through college. A subsequent article published in “The Washington Post” reported that Black children in the Washington, D.C. area are suspended or expelled two to five times more often than White children. It’s a national trend that needs to be addressed.

Judith Browne Dianis, co-director of the Advancement Project joined Roland Martin on Washington Watch to discuss this disturbing trend.

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More than 75 schools are asking to override a plan approved in October to allow multi-year athletic scholarships rather than the one-year renewable awards schools currently provide. That’s the minimum number of dissenters needed for reconsideration by the Division I Board of Directors when it meets next month in Indianapolis at the annual NCAA convention. The NCAA announced the change the Friday before Christmas.

On Dec. 15, the NCAA suspended plans to give athletes a $2,000 stipend for living costs not covered by scholarships after at least 125 schools objected. The higher number of protests allows the organization to immediately put the change on hold.

Both measures were pushed by Emmert and adopted as emergency legislation after a presidential summit in August.

“The NCAA and presidents step up with this legislation and then the universities want to vote it down,” said Christian Dennie, a former compliance officer at Missouri and Oklahoma who now practices sports law in Fort Worth, Texas, and writes an NCAA oversight blog.

“They say, `We don’t have enough money,’ and then the coach gets a $2 million raise,” Dennie added, speaking in general terms rather than about a specific school. “It’s really a resource allocation issue.”

The Division I Board of Directors now faces three options: scrap the two reform measures and operate under previous NCAA rules; modify the rule or create a new proposal that would go back to the schools for another 60-day comment period; or allow members to vote on the override, which needs a 5/8ths majority of the roughly 350 Division I members to pass.

A permanent reversal could force the NCAA and its schools to have two sets of standards, with an obligation to honor multi-year scholarship offers and stipend payments for some students but not others.

David Berst, the NCAA’s vice president of governance for Division I, said that most schools support the concept of multi-year scholarships but have concerns about how to enact such a change.

“The overriding concern had to do with the time to prepare and plan (for a change) rather than objecting to the concept,” he said. “I’m anticipating the rule will still be in effect (after the next board meeting).”

The list of schools objecting to the multi-year scholarship plan, obtained by Dennie and provided to The Associated Press, includes Boise State, Boston University, Indiana State, Marquette, Marshall, Rutgers, Utah, Vermont and Wyoming.

Boise State called the move a “recruiting disaster” that would encourage a “culture of brokering” and pit wealthy schools with larger recruiting budgets against their less well-heeled brethren, while also obligating schools to long-term commitments that may not make competitive sense.

“There is never a guarantee that the incoming student-athlete will be a good fit for the program and the institution,” the school wrote in its override request. “If it is a poor fit, the program is put in a difficult situation to continue to keep a student-athlete on scholarship.”

Indiana State offered a more blunt assessment, suggesting the change could “create some real nightmares.”

The “problem is, many coaches, especially at the (Football Championship Subdivision) level, in all sports, are usually not around for five years and when the coach leaves, the new coach and institution may be `stuck’ with a student-athlete they no longer want (conduct issues, grades, etc.) or the new coach may have a completely different style of offense/defense that the student-athlete no longer fits into,” the school wrote. “Yet, the institution is `locked in’ to a five-year contract potentially with someone that is of no athletic usefulness to the program.”

“The current system works. We don’t need to get into bidding wars where one school offers a 75 percent (scholarship) for two years and the other school then offers 85 percent for three years, etc., etc. This puts the kid into a situation where they almost need an agent/advisor just to determine the best “deal.” Again, if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Berst, who collects the complaints, has previously said the opposition to the stipend is coming primarily from FCS schools and those that do not play football. Most of the Football Bowl Subdivision conferences, he said, have informed the NCAA they plan to expand their scholarship limits.

The one-year renewable scholarship, with a limit of five years of athletic aid, has been in place since 1973. And while the National Letter of Intent signed by most top recruits includes that caveat, some athletes say coaches on the recruiting trail routinely make more grandiose promises they know they can’t fulfill.

In October 2010, former Rice University football player Joseph Agnew sued the NCAA over its one-year athletic scholarship policy. Agnew played two seasons for the private Houston school before coaches told him in 2007 his scholarship would not be renewed. He appealed the university’s decision and received a scholarship his junior year but did not receive any tuition money as a senior.

A federal judge in Indiana dismissed that complaint in September.

Earlier this month, former Missouri women’s soccer player Ann Alexandra Charlebois sued coach Brian Blitz and the university’s governing board, claiming that she agreed to attend Missouri only after Blitz vowed in writing to provide more than $106,000 in support through 2015, with the player and her family needing to contribute only half of her college costs in her first year.

Charlebois received a 50 percent partial scholarship in 2010 as a freshman. After complaining about receiving a similar amount of financial aid this year, she was kicked off the team in September, her attorney said.

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Better Education Place

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The duo along with several other teachers were judged based on seven different categories including, ability to capture and maintain attention, the ability to move their audience or create interaction, the ability to inspire, effective use of language, use of memory devices, ability to transform behavior or make them do as you do and the quality of the content.

Of all of the categories, Lil Wayne and Niki Minaj had the lowest scores in … wait for it … “Quality of Content.” The company’s CEO, Melvin El, said the controversial MCs were chosen because of their “swagger” and their “methods” in connecting with youth:

… The methodologies the two stars are using are undeniable forces in learning. Children learn their stuff because they have all the right methods. Apparently students are drawn in by the “swagger….” If you are a teacher today and you don’t have any swagger, you are going to struggle to get your students attention. It turns out a teacher can learn a lot from Lil Wayne and Nicki Minaj.

Better Education Place uses media, such as TV, film, and theater, to create products that will facilitate literacy and promote culturally diverse entertainment. El adds:

With the help of hip hop we can make education fun again. Better Education Place is a company with a vision of helping children to develop a passion for reading and learning so they can excel at education and ultimately succeed.

Do you think this self-described “hip-hop education company” should be celebrating Lil Wayne and Nicki Minaj as “teachers” other instructors should emulate or is this award a disgrace? Sound off below.

Read more at Afro.com.

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Marks states that if he were a poor Black kid, he would utilize technology and attempt to get into private or charter schools and focus on academics. What Marks does not explain is if he were a poor Black kid, how he would have knowledge of the various technologies, websites and schools he advocates.

If I was a poor black kid I would first and most importantly work to make sure I got the best grades possible. I would make it my #1 priority to be able to read sufficiently. I wouldn’t care if I was a student at the worst public middle school in the worst inner city. Even the worst have their best. And the very best students, even at the worst schools, have more opportunities. Getting good grades is the key to having more options. With good grades you can choose different, better paths. If you do poorly in school, particularly in a lousy school, you’re severely limiting the limited opportunities you have.

And I would use the technology available to me as a student. I know a few school teachers and they tell me that many inner city parents usually have or can afford cheap computers and internet service nowadays. That because (and sadly) it’s oftentimes a necessary thing to keep their kids safe at home then on the streets. And libraries and schools have computers available too. Computers can be purchased cheaply at outlets like TigerDirect and Dell’s Outlet. Professional organizations like accountants and architects often offer used computers from their members, sometimes at no cost at all.

Read More At Forbes

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“The site touches on subjects like, the rewards of hard work and importance of learning manners as well as the idea that doing good deeds for others will bring good into your life – which is the meaning of the word Karma,” said Ludacris said of the site. “The music and lyrics, games and stories on the site are all original and were created by me, my daughter and my creative team.

Karmasworld.com teaches children from grades 1 to 3 and 4 to 6 academic lessons about math, science and geography, as well as ethical and social responsibilities like manners, honesty and kindness.”

Learn more about Karmasworld.com at Allhiphop.com.

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The number of students recieiving subsidized lunch rose 17 percent since the 2006, according to Department of Agriculture data gathered by the New York Times. Eleven states had four-year increases of 25 percent or more.

“These are very large increases and a direct reflection of the hardships American families are facing,” said Benjamin Senauer, a University of Minnesota economist who studies the meals program, adding that the surge had happened so quickly “that people like myself who do research are struggling to keep up with it.”

Read more at the New York Times.

“The victim was an 8-year-old male classmate, whom the three allegedly attacked in a bathroom at West Philadelphia’s Bryant Elementary School.”

The community is in a state of complete shock. The mother of the boy who was attacked was simply quoted as saying:

“I felt helpless,” the victim’s mother told WPVI. “It took him almost 7 hours to try to tell me what happened.”

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How do we explain acts of violence like this to ourselves, let alone our children? Is this a situation of broken families, broken school systems or is American society falling apart? Please post your thoughts below. See the full story at The Huffington Post.

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The event, put on by New York Non-Profit Entertainers for Education Alliance (E4EA), aims to encourage and inspire young people to live their dreams while emphasizing the importance of education.

“That’s one good thing about education in our country,” said Terrence J. “We’re a country where it comes free to everybody. And as long as you do your thing in school and as long as you keep up with your grades, you are able to get a post high school education as well under the government.”

Read more at the Grio.

The answer turns out to be a complex equation of self-doubt, stereotypes, discouragement and economics – and sometimes just wrong perceptions of what math and science are all about.

The percentage of African-Americans earning STEM degrees has fallen during the last decade. It may seem far-fetched for an undereducated black population to aspire to become chemists or computer scientists, but the door is wide open, colleges say, and the shortfall has created opportunities for those who choose this path.

STEM barriers are not unique to black people. The United States does not produce as high a proportion of white engineers, scientists and mathematicians as it used to. Women and Latinos also lag behind white men.

Yet the situation is most acute for African-Americans.

Black people are 12 percent of the U.S. population and 11 percent of all students beyond high school. In 2009, they received just 7 percent of all STEM bachelor’s degrees, 4 percent of master’s degrees, and 2 percent of PhDs, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

From community college through PhD level, the percentage of STEM degrees received by blacks in 2009 was 7.5 percent, down from 8.1 percent in 2001.

The numbers are striking in certain fields. In 2009, African-Americans received 1 percent of degrees in science technologies, and 4 percent of degrees in math and statistics. Out of 5,048 PhDs awarded in the physical sciences, such as chemistry and physics, 89 went to African-Americans – less than 2 percent.

Several factors are cited by scientists, educators and students. One is a self-defeating perception that STEM is too hard. Also mentioned are a lack of role models and mentors, pressure to earn money quickly, and discouraging academic environments.

The impact reaches beyond the black community as America struggles to produce enough scientists to prosper in a world ruled by technology.

“White men make up less than 50 percent of the U.S. population. We’re drawing (future scientists) from less than 50 percent of the talent we have available,” says Mae Jemison, the first black woman astronaut, who has a medical degree and a bachelor’s in chemical engineering.

“The more people you have in STEM,” she says, “the more innovations you’ll get.”

—

Jemison says the problem begins for children of all backgrounds in grade school, where they are usually asked to memorize facts out of a book instead of satisfying their natural curiosity through experiments and exploring. She also says many primary school science teachers took little science in college.

Allen Gordon has been teaching math in Oakland, Calif., for seven years. He always tries to apply real-word situations to his lessons – coupons, compound interest on bank accounts, album sales.

“If math and science seem boring and of no use on a primary education level, who would want to pursue it while in college?” he says. “Especially when you don’t see many, if any, black men or women teaching.”

“Math and science are not something that black men and women sit around and pontificate about at home, dinner parties, the sports bar, hair salon, et cetera,” he says. “It doesn’t fit into their social idea of status.

“Let’s face it, there is no glory in saying, `I teach math or science.’ Career school teachers still seem to be very proletarian.”

Even some of Gordon’s fellow teachers ask how he can teach math, saying, “Funny, you don’t look like the nerd type.”

That’s a stereotype Jemison knows well.

“The media images you see of scientists are older white males who are goofy or socially inept in some way,” she says. “That’s the mad scientist, the geek” – and it doesn’t include role models for young black and Hispanic students.

Jemison, who watched “Star Trek” growing up, declines to call the black female character Lieutenant Uhura an inspiration, but the fictional space traveler did affect her.

“Her character was really an affirmation that my assumptions about going into space were shared by others, and that everyone had a right and a role to play. So that affirmation, for a little kid growing up, it’s an image of possibilities.”

—

Growing up in Murfreesboro, Tenn., Christopher Smith used to tutor fellow black students at his high school.

The students would often start solving a complicated math problem by doing everything right. “Then they would say, `I don’t know what I’m doing!’” recalls Smith, now pursuing a PhD in biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

He thinks some African-Americans psych themselves out of STEM.

“Today I talk to friends back home, and they say, `I wouldn’t be able to do good in college anyway.’ A lot of it is just confidence,” Smith says. “If people convince you that science and math is harder than everything else, and you already have low self-esteem, maybe that’s one reason there are so few black scientists.”

“Few” is a generous term in Smith’s field of biological and biomedical sciences, where 6,957 PhDs were awarded in 2009. Only 88 went to black men – that’s 1 percent. (176 went to black women.)

LaMont Toliver also sees a problem with what he calls “self-doubt.” He is director of the University of Maryland Baltimore County’s Meyerhoff Scholars Program, a national leader in increasing STEM diversity.

“Advanced placement courses, calculus, chemistry, these are hard courses,” Toliver says. “Some of them believe that they just can’t do it. . Then you couple that with a lack of encouragement.”

“If we were more supportive as a community, as parents and providing guidance and mentoring at an early age, then more African-American students would do it.”

—

Money is another factor in the STEM disparity. It takes many years after college to get the advanced degrees needed to become leaders in math and science fields – university professors, directors of research labs, heads of engineering departments – and some black students can’t afford to wait that long.

Before one recent New Year’s Eve, Smith, the Johns Hopkins student, was debating whether to purchase a bus ticket from Baltimore to New York City to hang out with friends. It was a tough decision – the ticket cost $37.

Smith, 27, received a fellowship for black scientists this year from Merck and the United Negro College Fund. As he works toward his PhD, Smith lives on a salary and stipend of about $25,000 per year.

Like many black students, Smith comes from modest means. His mother was a homemaker with a high school diploma; his father earned a GED, became an electrician and eventually owned a business.

“I get paid to go to school, so I don’t want to complain,” Smith says.

But he’s still several years away from completing his PhD, and he’s tired of agonizing over a $37 bus ticket. Even after he gets that degree, he’ll need to do a year of post-doctoral study. “If I stay here at Hopkins” for post-doc work, he says, “I’ll make the same or less than a city sanitation worker.”

At each stage of science education, many black students feel pressure to stop studying and start earning real money. Smith, who has an undergraduate degree from MIT, says he could be making as much as $115,000 per year in a corporate job.

Yet it’s hard to advance far in science without at least a master’s, if not a doctorate.

Joseph Francisco, a black chemistry professor at Purdue and past president of the American Chemical Society, has a PhD from MIT. He says his undergrad students are always telling him, “I got to think about a job.”

“With first-generation college students, there is enormous pressure,” Francisco says. “Without a mentor who can tell you about what to expect beyond undergrad, who can explain what are the opportunities after a postgraduate degree, they just stop at a bachelor’s degree.”

—

Francisco mentions another source of pressure affecting black STEM students: isolation.

In 1981, Francisco was studying at MIT when he heard about a national organization for black chemists. He went to its convention, in Chicago.

“It was incredible,” Francisco remembers. “I remember having the feeling, `you are not alone.’ That sense of isolation can be powerful.”

It was different when he was growing up on the black side of segregated Beaumont, Texas. He was raised by his grandmother, who had a third-grade education, and his grandfather, who laid concrete pipes. There was a black pharmacist in his neighborhood, and Francisco worked part-time in the shop. There was a black doctor, teachers, a college professor.

That changed when he went to the University of Texas and then MIT, where there were few black faces.

In a 2010 Bayer Corp. survey of 1,226 women and underrepresented minority chemists and chemical engineers, 40 percent said they were discouraged from pursuing a STEM career. Sixty percent said college was where most of the discouragement happened.

Jemison, the astronaut, says that while at Stanford, “some professors were not that thrilled to see me in their classrooms.”

“Stereotypes impact the people who have an opportunity to influence your career,” she says. “They don’t see you as a peer.”

After receiving his PhD, Francisco had several job offers. He chose Wayne State University in Detroit, and would later become president of the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers.

“I saw an opportunity at Wayne State to do good science in a supportive place that gave me the flexibility to make a contribution to the community,” he says. “To give something back, to a black community.”

—

In the world of atoms and numbers, does the color of the person who studies them really matter?

Many of America’s technology giants say, yes. Merck has funded tens of millions of dollars in United Negro College Fund scholarships. Bayer has a special focus on recruiting and promoting minorities. Technology giants such as Boeing, General Electric and Xerox support organizations dedicated to raising black STEM participation.

Their motivation is simple math. If bright and capable students’ talents go undeveloped, “this represents a loss for both the individual and society,” the National Science Board said in a 2010 report.

The report said that after the Soviet Union beat America into space with Sputnik, the U.S. was inspired to educate a new generation of innovators. This national urgency faded by the 1970s, the report said, and was replaced by complacency.

Some 16 percent of all U.S. undergraduates major in natural science or engineering, compared with 25 percent in Europe, 38 percent in South Korea and 47 percent in China, the report said.

To reverse this decline, the report said America must “cast a wide net to identify all types of talents and to nurture potential in all demographics of students.”

Jemison identifies another incentive. Even though scientists may use the same methodology, “what topics they choose to research, even the interpretation of facts or what they choose to look at is influenced by experience.”

“So many times it’s the diversity of thought and perception and experience base that starts to make the difference in the problems you research and the solutions you consider,” she says.

“It’s a much more robust reason for diversity that just the head count.”

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Karina Sanchez, Pearl Quick and Anthony Pittman, three best friends better known as “the tripod,” join a poetry writing program, “Power Writing,” at University Heights High School in the Bronx. This 87-minute documentary takes you through the transformation of these friends as you watch Karina grow and overcome abusive issues with her mother, Anthony’s struggle to remove himself from street life, and Pearl’s journey to accepting and loving herself enough to believe that life can be better for her.

In the film’s opening Pearl shows her room and her wall of negativity. On her list of things she views as negative characteristics are “minority” and “Black.”  Her journey to overcoming these insecurities is evident throughout Power Writing program.

“I’ve learned that this is who I am and that accepting and loving myself first is the most important thing,” said Pearl.

In a world where they had no one else, they had each other and relied heavily on the three legs of their “tripod.” Throughout the Power Writing program, they grew closely with their teachers and mentors, Amy Sultan and Roland Legiardi-Laura who served as co-directors and producers on the documentary.

“As far as I was concerned, I didn’t have a mother,” remembered Karina Sanchez, now 24. “Amy was my mother.”

The documentary follows the kids through their high school years and beyond, and shows the character change each of them go though in that time period. Anthony Pittman’s progression was especially challenging trying to leave his life in the streets behind. His story is heart-wrenching as your hopes grow for him throughout the film, and then die.

These three are resilient and using words and their weapons of choice, only brings them closer to the life they never thought they’d have.

To Be Heard has been shown and prized in film festivals including Seattle International Film Festival, Nantucket Film Festival, Doc NYC Documentary Film Festival and many more across the country. To Be Heard opens in selected theaters on October 12, 2011.

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I agree that this topic needs to be discussed but it needs to be discussed from a viewpoint that takes the children’s needs into effect instead of just looking at the issue based on dollars and cents and a skewed perspective on percentages. If you read this article, you would believe that these software programs offer moderate improvement at best, and are not cost efficient in most cases. The point that this article does not discuss is that these programs are looking to fill the gap of the lack of skill reinforcement that is not available in most public schools, and how most of those schools are mostly comprised of people of color. Articles like this that just lay out data points in a casual way do more to continue people’s misconceptions about how technology can improve and supplement learning to the benefit of students, especially students in areas with low resources. What was even more disturbing than the myopic approach the writer used to communicate issues, were the images that were used.

When I was first presented with the article this was the image I was presented with:

Now the first question I ask is what does this image convey to you? Some of you would say confusion, lack of understanding or an overall inability to utilize and understand the technology. Now imagine what the image would convey to some teenage African Americans who are on the fence about whether to take the leap to become computer literate. The image is a grave contrast to the image I found that they used on an earlier story.

What’s even more interesting is the story that image was used for painted a more dire picture that the article I found. Its title was ”In Classroom of Future, Stagnant Scores,” but imagery of these children ( not people of color) is upbeat and full of promise. Why the difference? We could spend months trying to get an explanation but regardless of that reason the result is no less damaging.What the writers of these pieces may or may not realize is that even though these  programs may not have ideal results, they are doing some things that are core to solving some key issues that contribute to the digital divide.

These programs help students develop a real comfort level with using computers and the internet. By using the software the kids develop  an understanding the repetitive learning is key to skill development.  This will also give the students the urge to want to have computer and internet access at home, which is key to adoption.

What most people don’t realize is that the biggest roadblock in closing the digital divide is not cost but digital literacy. Many African Americans and Hispanics see digital literacy as an impossible goal for them mainly because they don’t see the value in it for them. Stories and images like these only help to continue to discourage people against making the effort to adopt technology. We need more examples of minorities utilizing and succeeding with technology to change the perception that technology is not “for us”  Let me know what you think of how the two images were used below in the comments .

You can follow Navarrow Wright on twitter @navarrowwright

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Some believe Anderson’s dramatic approach is unfounded and likely to fail. While others believe the plan is exactly what is needed to revitalize a school systems crippled by low achievement and high dropout rates.

“I believe a strong principal is the key to almost everything,” Ms. Anderson said in an interview. “Where you have great performance, you have great principals, period, full stop. Where you have low performance, you have struggling principals. It’s not that complicated.”

Read more at the New York Times.

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Already, three new alternative schools have been opened with the Facebook money. At the same time, teachers seem to approve of Anderson’s hands-on approach.

“Every principal I’ve talked to, I’ve never heard them speak so highly of a superintendent, and it’s because they feel they have a direct connection to her,” Newark mayor Cory Booker said.

The mayor, who has long been a champion of education reform, said it’s too premature to outline fully how the Zuckerberg donation has specifically affected the city, but he expects to have an in-depth strategy in place by the actual date of the anniversary, Sept. 24, and after Superintendent Anderson “finishes her top-to-bottom diagnostic of her school openings and efforts.”

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First grade teacher Jennifer O’Brien of Paterson, N.J. made headlines last week back after referring to her class of mostly Black and Latino kids as “future criminals.” In a status update on her Facebook page O’Brien wrote, “I’m not a teacher – I’m a warden for future criminals,” according to NorthJersey.com. Six hours later she continued, “They had a scared straight program in school—why couldn’t I bring 1st graders?” referring to a school event where sixth graders talked to prison inmates about the consequences of crime.

O’Brien is currently awaiting the school board’s decision on whether or not she will be allowed to keep her job.

O’Brien’s sentiments are not shocking, nor are they uncommon. She just happened to make a bad judgment call in vocalizing her opinion on a social networking site.

As someone who has substitute taught in a 60 percent Latino, 40 percent Black school district, I understand the frustrations of teachers. Students as early as sixth grade can be unruly, rude, uninterested, use foul language, etc. And some teachers are clueless as to how to deal with students whose culture and background is unlike their own. But as frustrated as I’ve been on days where I did more disciplining than actual teaching, my god, I’ve never once thought those children were “future criminals.” Never. What chance do Black and brown students have if by the first grade their teachers already think so poorly of them? It’s one thing to express frustrations of having an overly active or rowdy class. It’s quite another to use the terminology “future criminals.” It’s bad enough the U.S. government builds prisons based on the reading scores of fourth graders. But the teacher responsible for teaching these same students is criminalizing six and seven-year-old kids. O’Brien has to go. Her beliefs are far too dangerous for the classroom where she has already determined her students are destined for failure.

Rev. Kenneth Clayton, the president of the local branch of the NAACP who was called to testify, called O’Brien’s comments stupid and said they “help us realize again that racism has not been erased from our country.”

“I know that children can be testy and tedious and all those things, but to say in first grade there that you’re a warden for them, that’s reprehensible … if a teacher or any adult leader could look at children like that in the first grade and think that, then the children are doomed,” Clayton went on to say.

Read the full story on Colorlines.

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The choice — whether to attend college, drop out or forsake school all together.

It is a choice that’s becoming increasingly prevalent across the country as Congress considers deeper cuts into federal student aid and loans. In response to this crisis, Allstate, and the Tom Joyner Foundation are uniting to assist African-American college students pay for school.

Today’s struggling economy and distressed job market make it more important than ever to secure a college education,” said Tom Joyner, Founder of The Tom Joyner Foundation.

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The new “neighborhood schools” platfrom would assign students to schools closer to where they live, rather than busing students to schools outside of their neighborhood in order to maintain racial and social economic diversity throughout the county.

Critics of the plan say poor and minority students would lose out on the resources that white schools receive. They are currently drafting new ideas to offer as alternatives to the proposed neighborhood school plan, but thus far nothing has stuck.

“Our issues is how are the children, both black and white going to be cared for,” said the Rev. WIlliam Barber, who heads the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP. “When we argue for diversity it is not simply people need to be in close proximity to each other. Whenever you have racially identifiable, high-poverty schools, you also have corresponding with that under resources and high teacher turnover.”

Read more at the Huffington Post.

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By infusing rap lyrics into subjects like language arts and history, Fresh Prep is helping students memorize lessons and increase their scores on New York’s required Regents exam.

Just recently, Fresh Prep expanded it program, teaching for the first time to students still learning English.

So far, Fresh Prep has shown strong results in the high school where it started with 30 students in 2009 — significantly more students passed that year — and promising results in some classrooms at seven high-poverty high schools where it was used last year, the organization said.

Read more at the New York Times.

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Currently only 64% of middle schools and 38% of high schools in New York City teach a recommended Sex Education curriculum.

“We must be committed to ensuring that both middle school and high school students are exposed to this valuable information so they can learn to keep themselves safe before, and when, they decide to have sex,” Chancellor Dennis Walcott said in an email to colleagues.

Read more at the New York Daily News.

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Born out of the Civil Rights era, when teaching poor Blacks meant supplementing reading, writing and arithmetic, the six-week-long program’s goal is to re-invent summer school for kids who lack options when school is not in session.

“We have to go back and kind of shore up the things that are not being done within our schools,” according to Aaron Burleson, Manager of the Freedom school.

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Last week, NewsOne reported that Josephine Minnow, a UConn alumna started a petition to get Autum reinstated at the institution, which is now signed by nearly 500 people.

However, UConn’s Communications Officer Michael Kirk told NewsOne Tuesday, that Autum was never accepted.

“The story that she was offered admission and then had it rescinded is not true,” Kirk said in an email.

Contrastingly, Autum’s father Batin Ashante told NewsOne that his daughter was indeed accepted, and that UConn’s spokesman Richard Veilleaux confirmed it to a reporter at the NY Daily News.

See Story In NY Daily News

Kirk denies Veilleaux said such a thing. According to him, the spokesman told the journalist that the institution doesn’t generally say if someone is accepted or not, but that “no one by that name is enrolled at UConn.” According to Kirk, not releasing such information to press is against the university’s courtesy policy. Nonetheless, he adamantly made it clear that no one by the name of Autum Ashante is enrolled, and has never been enrolled at the institution.

Somewhere there was an obvious miscommunication, as the report from the NY Daily News said otherwise.

Mr. Ashante told NewsOne that the institution has caused his family a lot of grief for “going back on their word,” and as a result have been dragged through the media. He said that he was told that he and his daughter needed to formally enroll, but upon doing so, the admission’s office told him that Autum was not “academically” ready. Autum is reported to have an IQ of 149.

Ashante condemned the institution and accused them of “covering their a—”

Meanwhile, the Ashante’s had to halt initial plans to relocate to Connecticut, as they originally were under the impression that Autum would begin classes at UConn this fall.

Instead, Mr. Ashante is looking into enrolling Autum at other institutions such as Hampton University, a historically black college in Virginia, and the University of Bridgeport.

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