Tag Archives: Poverty

Welcome to…

18 Friday Oct 2013

Posted by in Poetry

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A society that consumes all that it can
without any regard to others
is a troubling reality for many.
An insatiable diet
of appropriated culture and stagnant ideologies
that benefits those who’ve always received social favor.
Corruption is a word used
yet avoided for certain acts
when dominant norms are sustained or even cultivated
to protect the invaluable status quo.
Change requires more than most beneficiaries wish to entertain
as the theory’s interest reigns supreme
in a land which indulges in cultural gluttony
at the expense of all who have been deemed expendable.
An appetite of this variety knows nor accepts any limits
as its privilege and power
have historically been made clear
to all who have the ability to comprehend.
Welcome
Welcome to the tragic world
of the donkey and elephant
during the Barack Obama presidency….

Amid A Changing Landscape

13 Sunday Oct 2013

Posted by in Poetry

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Language, both constructive and damaging, is often used without thought of consequence
Impacting the thoughts and minds of all those within reach
Challenging is the nature of life’s path
Causing us to reflect on what has been as we seek to make things anew
Laws are passed with the expectations that they will
in some form or fashion
Provide a livable framework that we, the people, will experience the benefits
Our worlds are based on this idea
Whether it’s accurate or inaccurate is not often what we wish to ask ourselves
Anarchy is not an option, as it requires things from us that we are more inclined not to:
Demand
Sacrifice
Persevere
Fail
Resist
Become ostracized
These sets of circumstances are foreign to those who seek the comforts and the spoils of a system that historically and habitually negates those who are most vulnerable
And then blames them for all that these influences result
Echoing words or images of “Che” or El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz
on commercialized t-shirts does little to represent the struggles and ideals
resulting in their martyrdoms
Instead they further alienate us from key principles that should acknowledge the complexities that exist within our figured worlds
We are a collection of beings that range an array of beliefs, sizes, and histories
All of which only capture a glimpse of who we really are
As each are vulnerable to the limited interpretations of all who come in contact with us
As if we were a painting from one of the great artists over time
Yet, we don’t get the luxury of intense and time demanding reflection and understanding that is often afforded these inanimate objects
We are passed over as if we never existed in the first place
And then society wonders why those who are marginalized dare to:
Resist
Rise
Yell
Revolt
As if the world has gone deaf to their calls and cries
To remind all of us that they are
Still here
Still human
Still belong

Amid a changing landscape
one thing remains constant
The world can be a cold and uninviting space
for those who do not fit within the acceptable box
A box that is too rigid and constraining for many of us
Yet, we operate as if we are willing participants
of a pathological social experience that
Destroys more than it helps
Devalues more than it promotes
Hates more than it loves
Constrains more than it frees

Freedom is what we were sold
Yet, how many of us actually reviewed the bill of sale as we do when buying our favorite pair of jeans in our favorite store?
How many of us ask for a refund or exchange when our purchase doesn’t suit our needs?
Why does freedom not receive the same level of critique, if not more?
A self-proclaimed “land of the free, home of the brave”
could at least not default on its promises to all of those who it has depended on since before its inception like it’s currently attempting to do
during this present-day
Debt Limit Ideological coup d’état
that’s ultimately affecting those same persons who often go nameless
until we want to blame them for their perceived deficiencies
The members of our society who are poor, uneducated, ill, unemployed, disabled, elderly, and/or children are on our economic and social frontlines
These lines are invisible to most of us until life’s challenges place us there
To toil, linger, or bounce back
Welcome to the new age
Which is actually an evolved representation of a segregated past that maintains our separation from each other and more importantly to any meaningful and life sustaining form of an inclusive humanity

Amid a changing landscape what will your role be?
What will your actions amount to?
Amid a changing landscape…
Will you represent the change that it truly needs?
Or will you represent what’s already represented?

Moving Beyond the Polarized Debate – Bridging Differences – Education Week

27 Tuesday Nov 2012

Posted by in Educational Trenches

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This contribution is by Dr. Pedro Noguera. As you read this entry courtesy of Education Week, please think about its message and the implications it has to you as a student who wishes to become a teacher, pre-service teacher, and/or veteran teacher. All of us who are in the educational trenches are seeking better solutions for enhancing the educational opportunities of future generations of learners. As you read this post, think about what side of the debate you are on. I look forward to reading your thoughts.

PSD~

Moving Beyond the Polarized Debate

Dear Deborah,

While the debate over the direction of education policy continues at national and local levels and the new administration begins to consider what, if any, new initiatives it might take to promote school reform, we know there are educators across the country who are thinking about what schools can do right now to meet the needs of the students they serve. I think it is important for us to weigh in on these matters for the sake of the educators who are on the front lines of school reform and their students.

This is clearly an area where your leadership in developing new ways of thinking about how schools might be organized and about how teaching and learning might be carried out has been so helpful to so many. The schools you have been instrumental in creating and leading—Central Park East in New York City and Mission Hill in Boston—have served as models of possibility for educators who have sought to create learning environments that are thoughtful, creative, and most importantly, humane. Education activist Sam Chaltain is using the experiences of Mission Hill to create a series of videos that will be aired nationally to encourage educators and the public in general to think about how we might educate children differently. This kind of work is essential because we can’t wait until we put the right policies in place or until our society becomes more just and equitable to figure out how to create schools that can succeed in educating all kinds of children.

Certainly, policy and politics matter. As we have seen and discussed, policy is shaping how assessment (i.e. high-stakes testing) is used, and increasingly, assessment is determining what children learn, how they learn it, and how schools and teachers are judged. Moreover, as we’ve pointed out before, the fact that education policy largely ignores the effects of poverty and inequality and the way they influence on child development and the performance of schools is yet another reminder that educators are working under major constraints.

These constraints—the political, the economic, and the social—are real and should never be discounted or minimized; otherwise, we end up sounding hopelessly naïve about possibilities for change. Yet, naming them is not good enough.

A big part of what is wrong with the current debate about reform is that it is dominated by what I think of as naïve optimists and radical pessimists. The naïve optimists are the ones promoting simplistic solutions like: “fire bad teachers,” “lengthen the school day,” “close failing schools,” or radically expand the number of charter schools without any real public accountability. What these so-called reformers have in common is that they seize upon a single idea or set of ideas to promote change and then assume that if we just follow this narrow prescription schools will improve. The record shows that they never do, especially not in the communities that suffer from the greatest economic and social challenges.

The radical pessimists largely offer critiques of policy. They remind us that the obstacles to school change on a mass scale lie in the structure of our society, in, for example, the way wealth is distributed, poverty is concentrated, and race continues to operate as a means to deny access to opportunity. They force us to acknowledge that hard-working teachers and visionary principals are insufficient if these are the only forces we rely upon to overcome the obstacles.

The problem with the radical pessimists is they typically have very little to offer in the way of advice to the hard-working teacher who seeks to use education to inspire and impart tangible skills to students. They are even less helpful to the school leaders who seek to transform struggling schools into safe and caring environments where children can be intellectually challenged and supported in their development.

This is one of the reasons why the radical pessimists are losing the reform debate and why the naïve optimists are winning. Ideas matter and if we can’t offer practical suggestions about what can be done to improve schools right now we make ourselves marginal to the debate over reform. Of course it helps to have private foundations and hedge fund managers behind you, and the so-called reformers are generally well financed, even when there is little evidence to support their change agenda. Clearly, the naïve optimists really aren’t that naïve. Some are quite clear that their goal is to dismantle teachers’ unions and privatize public education. If they win, you and I both know our entire society will be at risk.

That is why we need to weigh in on this debate. Not merely from the standpoint of making the case that new policies are needed, but also from the standpoint of practice. Let’s use some of our exchanges to assist the educators who are looking for help and guidance right now, as well as the parents and community organizers who know we can’t wait for the right policies to be enacted to create the schools our children deserve.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Pedro

Moving Beyond the Polarized Debate – Bridging Differences – Education Week.

Florida School Closures: Why Are High Poverty Schools Under the Gun? – Living in Dialogue – Education Week Teacher

19 Monday Nov 2012

Posted by in Educational Trenches

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As I think about the state of public education and what our future teachers will face, I find myself both optimistic about their passions and desires for entering the profession but simultaneously, I find myself fearful of what type of educational system that they will inherit. After living and teaching in some form or fashion in three states (Colorado, Florida and Texas) what is so clear is that public education remains under attack. In conversations with educators in states such as the ones I’ve mentioned, I hear harsh realities from those whose hearts are still student centered.

As this blog grows, I hope to hear your stories about what teaching is for you as a profession as well as what it is not. As most educators may attest, we wear an array of hats and use a plethora of skills to get our lessons across to our students. We won’t even discuss the amounts of hours and money we sacrifice for those of whom we have dedicated our academic years  and lives to–our students.

I write all of this to set up the following submission that was originally posted on Education Week Teacher. We are in tough times both economically and morally in terms of what we choose to value in our society–not hear to play the “morality card” but it is what it is. We, as educators, are held responsible for shaping and instilling the values and beliefs of a new generation of citizenry for better or worse. So why do we continue to find the following entry still happening in places that are attempting to make a way out of no way?

To all of my fellow educators across the country, I’m with you in the educational trenches. I hope, in my current role, to help shape those who will walk and teach by your sides in the not so distant future. They are trying and will need your wisdom as well as the space to bring in new ideas for a new generation of student. So be prepared and ready for the new wave of teachers/learners, but in the meanwhile please review the harsh reality as we wait for better circumstances for our schools, communities, children and parents…

Carry on…

PSD~

Actual link to the following comments provided below courtesy of Education Week Teacher

Florida School Closures: Why Are High Poverty Schools Under the Gun? – Living in Dialogue – Education Week Teacher.

Guest post by a Florida teacher.

On Election Day, residents in Brevard County, Florida, rejected a sales tax increase to support schools. According to the Florida Today, the sales tax would have raised about $32 million annually, which the district planned to use to buy new school buses, replace roofs and chillers and purchase new computers to meet a state mandate. Three days after voters shot down the proposed half-cent sales tax, Brevard Public Schools officials recommend closing four schools during the 2013-14 school year. The closures are estimated to save the district about $3 million, a fraction of the shortfall it is facing. Board Chair Barbara Murray stated, “We will rise to the occasion. Our public has sent us a clear message, and we will do whatever it takes to maintain our quality education under the current restrictions.”

It’s simply unfathomable that Superintendent Brian Binggeli considers closing South Lake Elementary School a means to maintain quality education in the district. South Lake Elementary is a school that has found success with students living in poverty while schools all over the nation scramble to find a way to do just the same. According to Florida’s 2010-2011 Rankings, South Lake Elementary was in the top 13% of all the elementary schools in the state and ranked 4th amongst all schools that had a population of students with over 80% classified as being on free/reduced lunch. The Florida Department of Education (DOE) has found the school to be “high performing” for nine consecutive years. Additionally, AllThingsPLC recognizes the school as a National Model of Professional Learning Communities at Work.

Even more disturbing is the fact that the school board voted to close another Title 1 school in the same town as South Lake Elementary just one year ago, and hundreds of students were redistricted. Not just the students from the closed school were affected, but students from 5 other schools as well. A school board vote in favor of the superintendent’s proposal will lead to hundreds of kids attending their third school in as many years. Substantial evidence and studies show that mobility is correlated with lower academic achievement levels; even Florida’s VAM formula recognizes that! It has been found that children who moved 3 or more times had rates of school dropout that were nearly one-third of a standard deviation higher than those who were school stable. Frequent mobility was also associated with significantly lower reading and math achievement.

Where is the logic in the superintendent’s thinking? Some parents at the school, such as Mike Nunez, ask the poignant question, “Does it really all come down to money, class, and/or race?” Nunez notes South Lake Elementary has one of the highest poverty and minority rates of all the nearly 100 schools in the district. He stated that in the history of Brevard County, six schools in the North Area have been closed, with each of them lying in economically depressed areas (never in any areas considered to be “Affluent” neighborhoods). Additionally, Nunez suggests that no written criteria for how schools were chosen for possible closures have been found.

According to the Brevard County’s School Board’s own 2012 Capital Needs Assessment, South Lake is in need of fewer capital improvements than most schools in the district, including some of the schools to which South Lake Elementary students would be relocated. South Lake is 97% utilized while another area school that is both older and in greater need of capital improvements is 91% utilized. For whatever the reason, the School Board is not looking at closing schools in the more densely school populated Central Melbourne area where schools are under-utilized averaging around 80% utilized.

Nunez asks, “Did the school board feel the parents and community would fail to rally behind the school due to economic status?” If that is the case, the school board was woefully wrong. In one week nearly 1,400 people have become part of the effort to save South Lake on Facebook, about 700 have signed this petition, parents and community members came in droves to a rally last week, all the area elementary schools under PTO leadership are united, and politicians from all over the state are supporting the cause, as well as numerous national parent organizations.

Tuesday, November 20, the School Board will vote on whether or not to accept the superintendent’s proposal. Hundreds will be there hoping that the school board will support the case for South Lake and find budget cuts that will not be so detrimental to a population of vulnerable students.

What do you think? Are low income schools more likely to be closed down in your experience?

(The author of this post is a teacher in this District, who asked to remain anonymous.)