Children in the school districts with the highest concentrations of poverty score an average of more than four grade levels below children in the richest districts.
.. What emerges clearly in the data is the extent to which race and class are inextricably linked, and how that connection is exacerbated in school settings... Mr. Reardon said that educators in these schools may subliminally – or consciously in some cases – track white students into gifted courses while assigning black and Hispanic students to less rigorous courses.
Conservatism After Trump
they insist that the school’s mission to educate kids in a classical manner, according to the Catholic faith, cannot succeed unless the parents are also part of the mission. In other words, people in the community cannot sit on the outside, partaking of its goods as consumers. Real solidarity requires them to assume a role in the overall mission.
Making a Soda Tax More Politically Palatable
Instead of the usual eat-your-vegetables pitch of public health reformers, he is offering Philadelphians something more delicious: a giant pot of money to fund popular city projects. He says his soda tax could raise more than $400 million over five years, enough to fund not just universal preschool, but also renovations of local libraries, parks and recreation centers; “community schools” that wrap up social services with education; and cash for the troubled municipal pension program. He isn’t using the word obesity, or suggesting that people should drink less soda.
.. His tax would raise the price of a 20-ounce bottle of soda by 60 cents, an increase likely to make some shoppers think twice about a purchase
.. In Philadelphia, industry officials are also making more local anti-tax arguments, saying that a tax devised to lower consumption of the taxed good will not be a stable source of revenue for an initiative, like universal prekindergarten, that requires permanent funding.
Three Places Obama Could Teach
No doubt, Columbia would offer him a king’s ransom and every other academic perk imaginable. But, for me, to find the first black President—a former community organizer who has ventured more daringly outside the Oval Office (with a stop at a prison, a speech at a mosque, an impending visit to Cuba) than any other modern President—teaching at Columbia (or any school like it) would be a disappointment. To put it bluntly, rich white kids at rich white schools don’t need him. But there are places, and students, that do. I’d like to suggest three.
..Obama could teach at a historically black college/university, or H.B.C.U., as the common parlance has it. Some of the most illustrious names of the past American century, from Martin Luther King, Jr., to Thurgood Marshall to Toni Morrison, were educated at these schools.
.. Yet another place that could make great use of Obama’s talent and prestige would be any one of the nation’s eleven hundred community colleges.
.. The third place Obama could teach is perhaps the most improbable, but the one I hope he most strongly considers. I think Obama should teach, for one year, for even just part of the time, in an inner-city K-12 public school. A single course in U.S. government for high-school seniors would suit him well.
.. In 2013, less than two per cent of public-school teachers were black men, which tells us that the overwhelming majority of kids, both black and white, have little direct exposure to professional black men in their daily lives. This has had a disastrous effect on the development of black students, and especially black boys, contributing to their staggering levels of behavioral issues, suspensions, and, ultimately, dropouts.
.. A recent study by the Department of Education found that black boys receive more than two-thirds of all public-school suspensions. Another study showed that black students are less likely to be recommended for gifted programs when they are taught by non-black teachers.