Thinking and Linking by Joanne Jacobs
When high school graduates need remedial classes in college, who pays? Mississippi and Maine may hold school districts responsible for the costs of teaching basic skills in community colleges.
As many as 70 percent of entering community college students nationwide are placed in remedial courses.
If Mississippi allows charter schools, blacks fear losing jobs and clout, notes the Hechinger Report. Currently, the state’s charter law is “so restrictive that no charters have opened,” but that’s expected to change this year. Republicans control the legislature, some Democrats will vote for a new charter bill and the governor “has made the issue one of his top priorities.” Most black legislators are skeptical.
Mississippi State Sen. (David) Jordan, a retired public-school science teacher, said he fears charters partly because they could bring more white out-of-state educators to Mississippi who won’t be able to relate to the children there. “Teachers who come in claim they can do a yeoman’s job,” he said. “But I don’t think someone can come from Illinois and do a better job with the kids of the Mississippi Delta than the teachers who are already here.”
Jordan also worries that charters could mean a loss of black power and leadership in rural communities where the black community fought long and hard to claim top positions in the schools.
In the Mississippi Delta, nearly 90 percent of children in public schools are black. “In rural counties, the school districts are the main employer,” said Mike Sayer, senior organizer at Southern Echo, a black leadership organization that opposes charters.
In New Orleans, several very successful charters were started by veteran black educators, says Kenneth Campbell, president of the pro-charter Black Alliance for Educational Options.
New Orleans has also attracted national charter-school networks such as the Knowledge is Power Program and Future Is Now Schools; and most of the school leaders recruited by the charter “incubator” New Schools for New Orleans have come from out of town.
. . . Before Katrina, New Orleans had one of the highest percentages of black educators of any city in the country. But starting in 2007 that percentage began to drop steadily, to 63 percent during the 2007-08 school year, and 57 percent the next year, according to data from the Louisiana Department of Education.
Test scores are going up in New Orleans. Parents are more satisfied with the city’s public schools. But some “worry about the psychological effect on black children who come to equate both education and authority with whiteness,” wrote Times-Picayune columnist Jarvis DeBerry.
If 57 percent of educators are black, why would black kids equate education and authority with whiteness?
The education minded should keep an eye on Mississippi, Illinois, Indiana and Iowa in 2013, advises Dropout Nation. And from last year’s states to watch list, Florida, Louisiana, New Jersey and Michigan will continue to be interesting.
Misbehaving students will not be handcuffed to railings or poles at an alternative school in Jackson, Mississippi. In response to a lawsuit, the school district has agreed to stop shackling students at a school for suspended and expelled students.
. . . The lead plaintiff in the case was described in the suit as an unidentified eighth grade student with a history of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, asthma and seizures.
On one occasion, when he was handcuffed to a pole for hours, he was forced to call out to ask to be taken to the bathroom, the lawsuit said.
The district agreed not to use handcuffs on students under 13 or to handcuff older students as punishment or for non-criminal conducts. That seems to leave the door open to some use of handcuffs.
As community colleges cut classes, students are turning to for-profit schools, despite the much higher costs.
Cierra Nelson spent four years trying to complete prerequisites for a nursing program at a community college in southern California. Again and again, she was turned away from science classes she needed, such as anatomy and physiology. Finally, she borrowed more than $50,000 to attend a for-profit, Everest College.
Everest has no wait lists.
Also on Community College Spotlight: Mississippi colleges can’t hire enough instructors to meet the demand for nursing classes.
Only whites can run for class president at Nettleton Middle School in Mississippi, reports Mixed and Happy, a site for racially mixed families. The offices of eighth-grade vice president and school reporter, seventh-grade secretary treasurer and sixth-grade reporter are reserved for blacks. The school elects two homecoming kings and queens, one white and one black.
After reading the school handbook, Brandy wrote to the school board asking which offices are open to her mixed-race children.
“They told me that they “Go by the mother’s race b/c with minorities the father isn’t generally in the home.” They also told me that ” a city court order is the reason why it is this way.”
The school, which has a black principal, is 74 percent white and 26 percent black. I suspect the policy was written to ensure that blacks would win a share of class offices. And it will be dropped like a rock very quickly.
Once the policy went public, the superintendent put up a statement saying “the processes and procedures for student elections are under review.”
Update: As predicted, Nettleton has abandoned its policy of reserving student offices for blacks or whites on a rotating basis.
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