December 26, 2021 School board meetings are often venues for contentious discourse. While common topics of controversy vary over time depending on national and local issues, we saw a significant increase this past year in extremists’ leveraging these meetings to express their beliefs around COVID-19 mandates and state laws banning “Critical Race Theory (CRT)” and “divisive concepts.”
As schools find themselves in the…
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March 24, 2020 Over the last several weeks, we have seen the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic pervade every facet of daily life. Of course, the chief concern about the novel virus is its impact on community health and our healthcare systems. Beyond the immediate threat of contracting, spreading, and treating the virus, however, are the undeniable ripple effects COVID-19 has on systems and structures in society.
States and major cities have taken historic measures to increase social…
March 20, 2019 The U.S. Department of Education (DoED) recently announced that it will ignore a longstanding requirement of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) limiting federally funded contracts, which provide schools with services such as special education or instruction, to secular vendors. As a result, religious organizations, including houses of worship, are now eligible to be such contractors. This decision is not legally required, will compel taxpayers to fund…
October 28, 2015 We live in an increasingly pluralistic, multicultural and connected world. In order to prepare students to live, learn and eventually work successfully in society, we need to prepare them. Diversity in the United States is rapidly increasing, especially among young people entering our school system. 2014 was the first school year when more children of color were enrolled in U.S. public schools than white children. However, the diversity of our teaching force is…
by: Oren Segal December 17, 2014 Malala. Ferguson. Immigration. Ebola. Voter ID Laws. Climate Change. These are just a few of the topics teachers are regularly and actively bringing into their classrooms.
Whether they teach English, Social Studies, Advisory or another subject and whether they have five minutes or decide to do a week- long study, teachers know that topics in the news will engage and interest students in a deep and meaningful way. Research…
by: Oren Segal December 05, 2014 In the wake of two grand jury decisions—in Ferguson, MO and Staten Island, NY—not to indict the police officers who were involved in the killing of black men, the time has come to ask ourselves: Where do we go from here? There are a myriad of ideas and legislation on the table--diversity training for the police, funding to provide body cameras for police officers and legislation to tighten standards on military-style equipment for local police…
by: Oren Segal May 15, 2014
Sixty years after Brown v. Board of Education the promise of equal educational opportunities in the United States remains unfulfilled. On May 17, 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in Brown desegregating America’s schools. Finding that “it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education,” the Court concluded that education “is a right…
January 14, 2014 Suspensions and expulsions are among the best predictors of which students will drop out of high school. pipeline from the schoolhouse to the jailhouse.
Last week the Department of Justice and the Department of Education jointly issued groundbreaking guidance on school discipline, taking a crucial, positive step toward dismantling the “school-to-prison” pipeline. As the Dear Colleague guidance noted, harsh school discipline policies…