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LGBT

Long Island School Inexplicably Suspends Student For Class Project About Bullying

By Zack Ford on May 25, 2012 at 9:52 am

After Jessica Barba (right) was suspended, some of her friends, like Hannah Babbino (left) made t-shirts to support her and her anti-bullying video.

As a project for a persuasive speech class, 15-year-old Long Island student Jessica Barba created a video about a fictional girl named Hailey who committed suicide after experiencing extensive bullying and cyberbullying. For that, Longwood School District suspended her for five days, with Superintendent Allan Gerstenlauer calling the video “unfortunate in that it created a substantial disruption to the school.” The school also told her that removing the video would help “soften the blow” of her punishment, but after her suspension was passed down anyway, she reuploaded it. The school also took down the fictional Facebook page Barba had created for the character in the video.

Yesterday, however — after Barba had already missed several days of class — the school decided to lift her suspension and wipe it from her record. She reacted to the decision:

BARBA: I’m going back to school, and that’s what I wanted… The school did the right thing… they turned a wrong into a right, and that’s all that matters. It feels great to have made [the video] go around the world and made it get to different children’s eyes, and I hope made kids be inspired to be not bullies, and stand up for bullying. Speak up, speak out, and that’s what I’ve been saying.

Neither Jessica nor her father would comment on the school’s intention for suspending her in the first place. As one Longwood alum wrote in response to the incident, “The disruption was there before Barba’s project. It is she who is bringing the disruption to light and challenging others to talk about and deal with a real and dangerous problem.”

Watch Barba’s video, which now has over 130,000 views on YouTube:

Alyssa

With ‘Won’t Back Down,’ The Charter School Movement Gets Its’ Oscar Bait

By Alyssa Rosenberg on May 24, 2012 at 11:37 am

Won’t Back Down is careful not to speak the words in the trailer, but it’s clear from the decisions the characters make and the protest signs they’re waving that these moms are setting up a charter school:

This is the kind of movie that always give me pause about how well popular entertainment, particularly popular entertainment that’ll clock in at under two hours, can lay out policy solutions instead of articulating policy problems. Narrative fiction can be very, very good at the former. The Wire handled Baltimore public schools well over the course of a season. Brooklyn Castle, my favorite documentary from SXSW uses the jeweler’s lens of a competitive middle school chess team to examine New York City public school budget cuts and the city’s high school exam system. But the solutions it presents are all temporary, individual fixes rather than system-wide reforms. One student wins a scholarship through a chess competition, but that means of achieving escape velocity isn’t available to all students. The school manages to do some stop-gap fundraising, but not everyone has the extremely dedicated parent base and an extracurricular program that can be a massive rallying point.

I’ll be curious how much Won’t Back Down presents setting up a charter school as a difficult endeavor, and if and how meaningfully it acknowledges charter schools’ closure rates. Triumphal narratives feel good, and I’m all for movies that push back against stereotypes of poor parents as uninvested in their childrens’ education. But if you actually want to mobilize people, you have to valorize the effort, not just the end result. And promising outcomes that are far from guaranteed is a recipe for disappointment.

Politics

Anonymous Group Of Scott Walker Supporters Attacks ‘Radical’ Public School Teachers Who Criticized Education Cuts

By Adam Peck on May 23, 2012 at 3:30 pm

An anonymous organization in Rock County, Wisconsin is distributing flyers targeting public school teachers for fighting back against Governor Scott Walker’s (R) cuts to education and accusing them of “false indoctrination,” the “sexualization of minor children,” and advancing a “Marxist/Globalist agenda in Wisconsin’s Schools.”

The flyers, sent to parents across the Janesville School District, list hundreds of teachers and their annual salaries, along with a plea for residents to contact the school district administration and ask that their child “be assigned to a classroom taught by a non-radical teacher.” Another brochure claims that teachers “dumbed down” the curriculum and teach revisionist and “anti-American” history. “Parents, do you want your children to be free Americans or slaves to the United Nations?” it asks. See the flyers, obtained by ThinkProgress:

All of these false allegations appear to be in response to the union’s resistance to Walker’s draconian cuts to educational institutions around the state. As part of Act 10, the same measure that stripped away collective bargaining last year, some teachers have seen their salaries fall by as much as 30 percent. Teachers were also one of the largest constituencies to protest Walker’s budget at the state capital in Madison last year, and their unions have been outspoken supporters of the recall efforts.

While there is no indication that the fliers are in any way tied directly to the Walker campaign, in several different instances the authors of the documents explicitly defend the governor’s fiscal policies and attack teachers who have supported the recall. The most recent document encourages parents to visit the website iverifytherecall.com to see if their child’s teacher signed a recall petition.

The fliers can be viewed in full here and here.

Education

Romney Tells Latinos Education Is ‘Civil Rights Issue Of Our Era,’ Promises Donors Massive Education Cuts

By Josh Israel on May 23, 2012 at 2:31 pm

In a speech today to The Latino Coalition, a pro-business group led by President George W. Bush’s Small Business Administrator, Mitt Romney said the nation’s public education is in “crisis.” But while he publicly claimed that improving education for minority children is the “civil-rights issue of our era,” his recent closed-door remarks to donors suggest that his real plan for education is massive cuts.

Romney said today:

Our public education system is supposed to ensure that every child gets a strong start in life. Yet, one in four students fails to attain a high school degree. And in our major cities, half of our kids won’t graduate. Imagine that. Imagine if your enterprise had a 25% to 50% failure rate in meeting its primary goal. You would consider that a crisis. You would make changes, and fast. Because if you didn’t, you’d go out of business. [...]

Here we are in the most prosperous nation, but millions of kids are getting a third-world education. And, America’s minority children suffer the most. This is the civil-rights issue of our era. It’s the great challenge of our time.

Watch the video:

Last month, however, the Wall Street Journal reported that Romney told donors at a private fundraising event that he would pay for his proposed 20 percent income tax cut by making massive cuts to education spending. Romney promised to consolidate the Department of Education with another agency or to make it “a heck of a lot smaller.” During Wednesday’s speech, Romney referenced his plan to block grant education funding, but did not specify how he would reduce the education budget.

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Telemundo poll of Latino voters released today shows Romney losing to Obama, 61 percent to 27 percent.

Economy

CHART: How Income Inequality Contributes To A Growing Education Gap That Is Jeopardizing Our Middle Class

By Travis Waldron on May 17, 2012 at 5:00 pm

As ThinkProgress has reported, American income inequality has skyrocketed over the last three decades. The wealthiest Americans have captured a large share of the nation’s economic prosperity, and their incomes continue to rise even as middle class wages remain stagnant. This income inequality has serious repercussions for the middle class, jeopardizing their economic ability and their political power.

But it doesn’t just affect people who are currently in the workforce. It has also contributed to a growing education gap that is affecting low- and middle-income children, according to a Center for American Progress report on income inequality and the middle class. The lowest-achieving students from high-income backgrounds are more likely to obtain a college education than the highest achieving students from low-income backgrounds, the report showed:

Perhaps most stunningly, there is evidence that low-income children who demonstrate aptitude for postsecondary education do not have the same access as children from higher-income backgrounds. The U.S. Department of Education reports that the probability that a top-scoring low-income student completes college is about the same as the probability that a low-scoring high-income student does, while the probability that a top-scoring middle-income student completes college is about as likely as a middle-scoring high-income student.

As income inequality continues to increase, the gap in educational attainment is growing too. The achievement gap between high- and low-income students is 30 to 40 percent larger than it was a generation ago, according to the paper, and income inequality is the primary reason. Areas of the country in which the middle class makes a higher share of income, meanwhile, demonstrate higher scores on achievement tests.

These problems lead to cycles of inequality that persist through generations. As Alan Krueger, chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, notes, the future economic mobility of American children is more closely tied to their parents’ income than it is in any other developed country. That means that rising income inequality, and the growing education gap it leads to, is jeopardizing the future for millions of American children before they even have a chance to change it.

Justice

DOJ Official Criticizes Harsh Alabama Immigration Law For Contributing To Thirteen Percent Drop-Out Rate for Hispanic Students

By Tara Culp-Ressler on May 7, 2012 at 10:32 am

Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez

Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez

ThinkProgress has noted the hardly unsurprising fact that HB 56, Alabama’s draconian anti-immigrant law, has caused Hispanic children to be subjected to increased bullying in the state’s public schools, so it’s not a stretch to imagine that drop-out rates within Alabama’s Hispanic community have risen as students no longer feel welcome. It’s easy to see that the harsh enforcement of the HB 56 legislation is inappropriate in an educational setting; in fact, members of the Birmingham Board of Education passed a resolution last year to oppose HB 56 for this very reason.

Last week, a U.S. Justice Department official added to the mounting criticism of HB 56, saying the harsh legislation has already had “lasting” negative effects on the state’s Hispanic students. Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez, head of the federal department’s Civil Rights Division, addressed a strongly-worded letter to Alabama’s education department on HB 56′s consequences for school children:

Hispanic students absence rates tripled while absence rates for other groups of students remained virtually flat. [...] The rate of total withdrawals of Hispanic children substantially increased, with 13.4% of such children having dropped out between the beginning of the current school year and this February.

As Perez goes on to point out, the Constitution guarantees immigrant students’ right to an education — and even on top of that, nearly 99% of all of Alabama’s K-12 public school students are, in fact, U.S. citizens. After conducting interviews with students, parents, and teachers in the state’s public school districts, the DOJ official has determined that many school children of Hispanic origin feel “unwelcome in schools they had attended for years” regardless of their immigration status.

Just as Perez makes clear, the harmful HB 56 legislation has already begun to do its damage. In order to prevent even more negative effects on Alabama’s children — both immigrants and U.S. citizens — it has to go immediately.

Economy

With Education Budgets Drained, Atlanta Wants To Use Taxpayer Money To Replace A 20-Year-Old Stadium

By Travis Waldron on Apr 26, 2012 at 6:00 pm

Georgia Dome

The Georgia Dome is a world-class sporting facility that serves the National Football League’s Atlanta Falcons and often hosts the Southeastern Conference basketball tournament, the SEC football championship, an annual bowl game, and the NCAA Tournament. In 2013, it’s slated to host the NCAA Men’s Final Four — college basketball’s biggest event — and it’s been home to two NFL Super Bowls. Judging by the fact that major events keep coming back, the place is in fine shape.

In the eyes of its inhabitants, though, the Georgia Dome is old, crumbling, and wholly inadequate, and if the Falcons and the city of Atlanta get their way, the Dome won’t stand much longer — even though it’s only 20 years old. According to new plans announced by the city of Atlanta and the Falcons yesterday, the Dome will soon be replaced by a $950-million, state-of-the-art facility with a retractable roof. The Georgia Dome — built a measly two decades ago — will be imploded, and taxpayers will be footing at least part of the bill, as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports:

The new plan comes with a higher price. A GWCC-commissioned study released Wednesday put the cost of a new retractable-roof stadium at $947.7 million, up from the $700 million estimated last year for an open-air stadium. Under either plan the public-sector contribution would be an estimated $300 million from an extension of the hotel-motel occupancy tax, passed by the Georgia Legislature in 2010, according to Frank Poe, executive director of the GWCC Authority, the state agency that operates the Dome.

The hotel-motel occupancy tax was originally passed to help finance the construction of the Georgia Dome. It was supposed to expire in 2010, but when the owners of the Falcons threatened to pursue a new stadium in the Atlanta suburbs, the Georgia legislature rushed to extend it so as to keep the team downtown. The extension included an agreement that the Falcons could pursue a new stadium on the same site. Less than two years later, they’re doing exactly that.

The recession and a sluggish economic recovery, meanwhile, crunched Georgia’s state budget and forced deep cuts into areas like education. The state owes local school districts more than $5 billion collectively — Atlanta-area school districts are millions of dollars short. In 2011, the state cut $403 million from its education budget after taking cuts of $300 million and $275 million in the previous two years.

The Falcons want a new stadium because they feel they’re missing out on the riches that come with new skyboxes and luxury suites — amenities the Georgia Dome lacks compared to newer NFL facilities. Still, the team’s value has increased nearly $300 million since owner Arthur Blank bought it in 2002. If the Falcons want a new stadium, they should build one. They just shouldn’t come to taxpayers asking for help.

LGBT

STUDY: LGBT-Inclusive Curricula Make Schools Safer And More Accepting

By Zack Ford on Apr 26, 2012 at 11:35 am

(Click on the graphs to see them full size.)

GLSEN has released a new research brief based on data collected for its 2009 school climate survey, which found that 9 out of 10 LGBT students had felt unsafe in school at some point because of their identity. The new report (aptly titled “Teaching Respect”) examines the impact when a school offers a curriculum that is LGBT-inclusive — that is, that it includes positive representations of LGBT people, history, and events. Resoundingly, such curricula can greatly reduce the levels of anti-LGBT victimization while improving levels of peer acceptance. In addition, students with such programs feel safer coming to school and are more comfortable talking to their teachers about LGBT issues. Here are a few of the effects an inclusive classroom has on students:

  • They are half as likely to experience high levels of victimization based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
  • They are 20 percent less likely to feel unsafe in school because of their identities.
  • They are half as likely to miss school because they don’t feel safe attending.
  • They are 20 percent more likely to feel comfortable discussing LGBT issues with a teacher.
  • They are 24 percent more likely to report that their classmates are accepting of LGBT people, and are thus less likely to hear homophobic language.
  • They are twice as likely to report that their peers intervene when they hear homophobic remarks.

In 2009, only 13 percent of students reported that they had an inclusive curriculum in their school. Surely, the passage of California’s FAIR Education Act last year could help increase this number, but proposed “don’t say gay” measures in Tennessee and Missouri threaten threaten to make classrooms even less welcoming for students.

Students’ physical and mental health hang in the balance. Negative community attitudes, bullying, stigma, and victimization can lead to depression, substance abuse, and suicidal thinking that can last a lifetime. In contrast, students who are supported when they come out experience significant emotional benefits, and gay-straight alliances in schools can enhance the effect. Conservatives insist that young people must be “protected” from homosexual indoctrination, but the research is clear that acknowledging and supporting LGBT students is what’s best for them.

NEWS FLASH

Living Near A Good School Costs More Than $200,000 | According to a new study from the Brookings Institution, “home values are $205,000 higher, on average, in neighborhoods with high-scoring public schools versus schools with low scores.” This pushes up housing costs in areas around good schools by an average of $11,000 per year. The Huffington Post’s Peter Goodman notes that the study “brings home the fact that many people now behind on their mortgages got there not because of stupidity or gluttony, but because of the high cost of satisfying a societal imperative: They wanted to put their children in good schools.”

Education

Romney Blames Teachers Unions For Decline Of California Schools, Ignoring Roll Of Tax Cuts

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Apr 4, 2012 at 6:25 pm

Appearing on Fox News host Greta Van Susteren’s show Monday night, Mitt Romney said that America’s schools have gotten worse because “we’ve basically given our school system to the teachers unions.” As an example, he pointed to California, noting, “it used to have some of the best schools in the country, and now it’s ranked near the very bottom.”

Watch it:

While Romney is right that California’s schools have gone from among the best to among the worst in the past 30 years, he misses one of the main reasons why, and he might not like it — tax cuts.

Specifically, a ballot initiative enacted in 1978 called Proposition 13 that capped property taxes, which were, at the time, the primary funder of public schools. As the Santa Monica, California-based think tank The Rand Corporation noted:

Indeed, Proposition 13 marked a dramatic turning point in funding for K–12 public education in California. Revenues and expenditures per pupil had grown fairly rapidly both in California and nationwide until the early 1980s. But California fell well behind the nation by the late 1980s. Despite recent funding increases for K–12 education, California schools have continued to spend far below the national average. Measured in year 2000 dollars, spending per pupil in California went from more than $600 above the national average in 1978 to more than $600 below the national average in 2000.

Prop. 13 — which also makes it next to impossible to raise any new revenue in California to address the state’s dire budget problems — is a good example of what happens when taxes are cut without regard for the consequences. And it appears Romney is in denial about the consequences.

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