September 15, 2011
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Leila McDowell is an innovative strategic communications professional with a proven track record of success in developing campaigns to impact the national debate, advance new social change narratives, affect policy change and achieve legislative and legal victories.
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January 13, 2011
Youth United for Change, a Philadelphia-based youth organization, and Advancement Project, a national civil rights organization, released a report at City Hall today criticizing zero tolerance in Philadelphia schools as a failed policy that makes city schools less safe, criminalizes or pushes out of school tens of thousands of students every year, and creates a School-to-Prison Pipeline.
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January 13, 2011
Advancement Project, together with Youth United for Change, a Philadelphia-based youth organization, released Zero Tolerance in Philadelphia: Denying Educational Opportunities and Creating a Pathway to Prison, which criticizes zero tolerance in Philadelphia schools as a failed policy that makes city schools less safe, criminalizes or pushes out of school tens of thousands of students every year, and creates a School-to-Prison Pipeline.
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June 23, 2010
By David Eubanks
An article in the June 11, 2010 issue of the Washington Examiner reported that D.C suburban high schools exhibit some of the highest graduation rates in comparison to the nation’s top 50 largest school districts. The statistics are based on an analysis by Education Week magazine that used the most recent data from 2007. The results were published in “Diplomas Count 2010: Graduation by the Numbers”. According to the report, Montgomery County has the highest national graduation rate among the 50 districts, with 83.1 percent of students graduating in 2007. Fairfax County comes in at a close second with a graduation rate of 82.5 percent. However, just adjacent to Montgomery County, Prince George’s County schools report a graduation rate of 59.3 percent; almost 10 percent below the national average. Baltimore was among the bottom five districts with a graduation rate of 43.4 percent.
January 20, 2010
“Test, Punish, and Push Out” provides an overview of zero-tolerance school discipline and high-stakes testing, how they relate to each other, how laws and policies such as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) have made school discipline even more punitive, and the risk faced if these devastating policies are not reformed. The report explores:
- The common origins and ideological roots of zero tolerance and high-stakes testing;
- The current state of zero-tolerance school discipline across the country, including local, state, and national data;
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November 14, 2007
When Leslie Auceda was in the sixth grade, her mother arrived at George Washington Middle School for a parent-teacher conference ready to learn about the progress her daughter was making in school. But she did not speak English, so she waited; after an hour and a half of waiting, Leslie’s mother surmised that the teachers were giving preference to the English-speaking parents. So she gave up and walked out — never to return to another parent-teacher conference.
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March 25, 2008
Beginning next year, Maryland students will face an additional hurdle to graduate from high school - passing four state tests. Students will be unable to receive diplomas if they fail the Maryland High School Assessments (HSA), even if they pass all of their classes during the year. Fortunately, the General Assembly is considering legislation that would eliminate this one-size-fits-all graduation requirement.
If we want to fix our schools, punishing students is not the answer. Instead, we must provide students with the resources they need, and rely upon other measures to assess them.
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September 4, 2008
As students head back to the classroom for a new school year this week, administrators are grappling with an age-old question: how to solve the achievement gap in Alexandria. School Board members campaigned on closing it, and a generation of city leadership has advocated its importance. Yet statistics released by the Virginia Department of Education last week show that the divide between those making the cut and those falling behind is increasingly drawn along racial lines.
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November 11, 2008
An hour and a half after his night shift ended at the grocery store, Jefferson Lara is sitting in art class, sketching warriors -- strong and armored.
Lara's education has never been neatly laid out in class schedules that flow into extracurricular activities. A former gang member, he was expelled from ninth grade, spent time in Peru with his father and entered Arlington Mill High School Continuation program his junior year. He took the night job so his mother could quit one of hers.
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