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We appreciate the work of teachers and educators this week and every day of the year! | | An Open Letter From Arne Duncan to America's Teachers In Honor of Teacher Appreciation Week By Arne Duncan  | | U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan |
I have worked in education for much of my life. I have met with thousands of teachers in great schools and struggling schools, in big cities and small towns, and I have a deep and genuine appreciation for the work you do. I know that most teachers did not enter the profession for the money. You became teachers to make a difference in the lives of children, and for the hard work you do each day, you deserve to be respected, valued, and supported. I consider teaching an honorable and important profession, and it is my goal to see that you are treated with the dignity we award to other professionals in society. In too many communities, the profession has been devalued. Many of the teachers I have met object to the imposition of curriculum that reduces teaching to little more than a paint-by-numbers exercise. I agree. Inside your classroom, you exercise a high degree of autonomy. You decide when to slow down to make sure all of your students fully understand a concept, or when a different instructional strategy is needed to meet the needs of a few who are struggling to keep up. You build relationships with students from a variety of backgrounds and with a diverse array of needs, and you find ways to motivate and engage them. I appreciate the challenge and skill involved in the work you do and applaud those of you who have dedicated your lives to teaching. Many of you have told me you are willing to be held accountable for outcomes over which you have some control, but you also want school leaders held accountable for creating a positive and supportive learning environment. You want real feedback in a professional setting rather than drive-by visits from principals or a single score on a bubble test. And you want the time and opportunity to work with your colleagues and strengthen your craft. You have told me you believe that the No Child Left Behind Act has prompted some schools-especially low-performing ones-to teach to the test, rather than focus on the educational needs of students. Because of the pressure to boost test scores, NCLB has narrowed the curriculum, and important subjects like history, science, the arts, foreign languages, and physical education have been de-emphasized. And you are frustrated when teachers alone are blamed for educational failures that have roots in broken families, unsafe communities, misguided reforms, and underfunded schools systems. You rightfully believe that responsibility for educational quality should be shared by administrators, community, parents, and even students themselves. The teachers I have met are not afraid of hard work, and few jobs today are harder. Moreover, it's gotten harder in recent years; the challenges kids bring into the classroom are greater and the expectations are higher. Not too long ago, it was acceptable for schools to have high dropout rates, and not all kids were expected to be proficient in every subject. In today's economy, there is no acceptable dropout rate, and we rightly expect all children-English-language learners, students with disabilities, and children of poverty-to learn and succeed. You and I are here to help America's children. We understand that the surest way to do that is to make sure that the 3.2 million teachers in America's classrooms are the very best they can be. The quality of our education system can only be as good as the quality of our teaching force. So I want to work with you to change and improve federal law, to invest in teachers and strengthen the teaching profession. Together with you, I want to develop a system of evaluation that draws on meaningful observations and input from your peers, as well as a sophisticated assessment that measures individual student growth, creativity, and critical thinking. States, with the help of teachers, are now developing better assessments so you will have useful information to guide instruction and show the positive impact you are having on our children. Working together, we can transform teaching from the factory model designed over a century ago to one built for the information age. We can build an accountability system based on data we trust and a standard that is honest-one that recognizes and rewards great teaching, gives new or struggling teachers the support they need to succeed, and deals fairly, efficiently, and compassionately with teachers who are simply not up to the job. With your input and leadership, we can restore the status of the teaching profession so more of America's top college students choose to teach because no other job is more important or more fulfilling. In the next decade, half of America's teachers are likely to retire. What we do to recruit, train, and retain our new teachers will shape public education in this country for a generation. At the same time, how we recognize, honor, and show respect for our experienced educators will reaffirm teaching as a profession of nation builders and social leaders dedicated to our highest ideals. As that work proceeds, I want you to know that I hear you, I value you, and I respect you. Arne Duncan is the U.S. secretary of education. |
| In New York City, Chicago and around the country, fewer Blacks are hired as teachers More Black Students...Fewer Black Teachers | | | Fewer Blacks, More Whites Are Hired as City Teachers
By ELIZABETH GREEN, Staff Reporter of the Sun
September 25, 2008
The percentage of new teachers in New York City public schools who are black has fallen substantially since 2002, dropping to 13% in the last school year from 27% in 2001-02, city figures show. The change has dramatically altered the racial makeup of the new teacher workforce, which last year included about 400 more white teachers than it did in 2002 and more than 1,000 fewer black teachers. The overall teaching force has been less affected: Black teachers made up 20% of the workforce in fiscal year 2008, down from 22% in 2001, while the percentage of white teachers has stayed constant at 60%. The changing demographics come in a school system that is increasingly made up of non-white students. Educators and advocates said they have been troubled by the data for several years - and they said they are especially troubled this year, the 40th anniversary of the Ocean Hill-Brownsville crisis, in which black community leaders challenged the city to make school staff more representative of the city. "We want a school system that values educators who are invested in their students and who reflect the communities of which they are part," a member of the Center for Immigrant Families in uptown Manhattan, Donna Nevel, said. The Department of Education's executive director for teacher recruitment and quality, Vicki Bernstein, said responsibility for the declining diversity lies with a state requirement that all public school teachers be certified by 2003. The requirement was introduced in 1998, forcing the New York City public schools to scramble; before 2003, 60% of new teacher hires were uncertified, and 15% of the overall teaching corps in the city was not certified. School officials said the mandate had a chilling effect on diversity, because the state certifies very few black teachers. According to a state report, in the 2006-07 school year, black people made up just 4% of new certified teachers who identified their race. Ms. Bernstein said that she joins educators who are concerned by the trend. Since last fall, she said she has made recruiting black and Latino teachers a priority for her staff. She convened a working group to plot ways to raise the city's figures. She said her strategies so far include visiting historically black colleges to recruit possible teachers; publishing advertisements that focus groups show appeal to black and Latino applicants, and making a concerted effort to follow through with those candidates as they make their way through the application process. The city has also halted a program to recruit teachers from outside of America and kicked off an initiative to attract teachers who themselves attended city public schools, by offering a special award to new recruits who are city school graduates. The 50 recipients of the Gotham Graduates Give Back award receive a $1,000 stipend before the start of the school year and are featured in recruitment materials. "This is a high priority for us," Ms. Bernstein said. "We're looking at it across every level of teacher recruitment." The techniques were more aggressively instituted in recruiting for the group of teachers who earn certification while teaching, the Teaching Fellows, Ms. Bernstein said. Those results are showing up. In the 2006-07 school year, 32% of fellows were black or Latino. This year, 37% were, school officials said. Teaching Fellows make up between 20 and 25% of new teachers in the city, Ms. Bernstein said. The president of the teachers union, Randi Weingarten, said the city should consider another move: encouraging people who are already working in the school system but not as fully certified teachers to become teachers. "I never want to see the mistakes that were made in the '60s and the '70s," Ms. Weingarten said. "Just in watching, in being at new teacher events in the last few years, and in just scanning the crowd, I'm really, really concerned." __________________________________________________________________________________ Pictures provided by Black New Yorkers for Educational Excellence. | | Teaching Teachers to Manage Bullying | | | Teaching the teachers to keep bullies at bay by MATT WILHALME, Staff Reporter April 26, 2011 A quiet student at a Chicago middle school silently dealt with older boys calling him names and cutting him down. He put up with their comments, but one day he had enough. "He decided to fix things himself," said Sandra Guzman, a counselor with Youth Outreach Services. He grabbed one bully by the shirt to choke him and a fight broke out, but when it was broken up he began violently throwing chairs, Guzman said. The bullies were suspended, the victim expelled. A Roosevelt University class, "Navigating Peace: Exploring Bullying, Conflict and Social Justice Issues in Education," brings teachers and counselors together to find ways to help students develop paths to deal with bullying at school so the abused don't end up with harsher punishment than their abusers. Ernest Crim worked at a Chicago public school where there was no clear manner of handling such tensions, he said. "They just expected the teachers to deal with it," Crim said. But the Roosevelt class has given him and others ways to handle these situations and tools to deal with bullying instead of resorting to expulsions as a first resort. "Conflict is inevitable [for students]," said Kristina Peterson, the Roosevelt assistant professor who teaches the class. "We teach kids how to handle it in a way that isn't violent. We're helping from the ground up, instead of dealing with shooting violence and beatings." In the class, they explore ways not only for instructors to manage these crises, but also how to teach their students to understand their feelings and the right steps to resolve them. Role-playing exercises are based on actual incidents in the news, Peterson said. Students dissect each individual's reactions and determine ways to de-escalate the situation. Almost every week, news stories of students pushed to their limits by cyberbullying - some of which have ended in suicides - become part of the lesson plan. The lessons need to be continual so they can react instinctively, Peterson said. At his school, Crim recognized a girl who was bullied by several people. "The last week, she got into a fight, but the sad part was it was someone she considered her friend," Crim said. | | The South Suburbs Will Rise with Saturday Universities! On Thursday, May 5, 2011, 6:00 pm, people in the Olympia Fields, Matteson, Chicago Heights, Richton Park, Country Club Hills, Park Forest, Glenwood, Homewood-Flossmore, Ford Heights, University Park and other south suburbs of Chicago will come together to discuss opening Saturday Universities in south suburbs. We are on track to open fifty Saturday Universities in Chicago and suburbs this year. Will you join us by attending a meeting of Saturday University volunteers, tutors and teachers for the south suburbs at 56 Graymoor Lane, Olympia Fields, IL 60461? Please call 773.285.9600 for more information about this planning and training session. We thank Helen L. Burleson for this opportunity. | | - Saturday University - Greater Bethesda Campus
- Saturday University - Black Star Campus
- Saturday University - HumanThread Campus
- Saturday University - Chicago Hope Campus
- Saturday University - Parkway Activity Campus
- Saturday University - South Side Help Campus
- Saturday University - DeVry University Campus
- Saturday University - Riverside Resource Campus
- Saturday University - World Outreach Campus
- Saturday University - 7th District Campus
- Saturday University - New Bethel Campus
We educate children of color and all children We need tutors, administrators, mentors, chaperones and new, additional sites for the Saturday University. Please call 773.285.9600 to become the solution to the problem of educating our youth. You must register for these classes before your child attends class. |
| Seven Days Left to Sign Up for Outstanding Conference on Educating Black Boys | | | from Black Star Project Will Hold Conference To Improve Education For Black Boys  | | Dr. Alfred Tatum |
Chicago, Illinois - The Black Star Project, a Chicago-based nonprofit organization that works to improve children's education with the support of students, parents, schools and communities, will hold a one-day conference with top educators to develop strategies and techniques to improve the education of black boys. Four of the educators who are scheduled to speak at the conference on Saturday May 14 at the Ramada Inn Hyde Park in Chicago are Paul J. Adams, III, founder and president of Providence St. Mel School, a kindergarten to 12th grade school, and Providence Engelwood Charter School; Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu, founder of African American Images, a Sauk Village, IL-based publisher and distributor of Africentric books. Dr. Kunjufu also the author of 33 books, including Countering the Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys, Understanding Black Male Learning Styles and Keeping Black Boys Out of Special Education; Umar R. Abdullah-Johnson, a Philadelphia-based nationally certified school psychologist, who speaks on topics such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADD-ADHD) and black boys and classroom management for teachers; and Dr. Alfred Tatum, associate professor and director of the University of Illinois at Chicago Reading Clinic. Dr. Tatum is the author of Reading for Their Life: (Re) Building the Textual Lineages of African American Adolescent Males.  | | Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu |
Dr. Tatum will train teachers to reconceptualize literacy instruction to help black boys read well above the third-grade level. Adams will share his ideas about creating exemplary high schools. One hundred percent of the students who graduated from Providence St. Mel have been accepted at the nation's best colleges and universities for the past 30 years. Dr. Kunjufu will teach principals how to build elementary schools that produce academically high-performing black-male students. And Abdullah-Johnson will show parents how to keep black boys free from disruptive behavior-disorder labels and out of the stream of special education.  | | Paul Adams, Jr. |
Black boys suffer from the lowest grade point average and lowest graduation rates. They also have the highest school suspension and dropout rates, which lead to high unemployment and prison-incarceration rates. Two reports in the last year have addressed the issues facing young black males who attend the nation's schools. In November 2010, the Council of the Great City Schools, a Washington, D.C.-based coalition that represents the nation's largest school districts, called the lack of black male achievement in America a "national catastrophe." "And Yes We Can, The Schott 50 State Report on Public Education and Black Males" reported that only 47 percent of black boys graduate from high school. "Currently, the rate at which black males are being pushed out of school and into the pipeline to prison far exceeds the rate at which they are graduating and reaching the high levels of academic achievement," the Schott Report concluded ( http://blackboysreport.org/). The Schott Foundation for Public Education is based in Cambridge, Mass.  | | Umar Abdullah-Johnson. |
Phillip Jackson, founder of The Black Star Project, said the conference is an important step in addressing issues that affect black boys. "When we are able to successfully change the trajectory of education for black boys in America, we will have made America better," Jackson said. "We will have made America stronger. We will have made America more humanistic. And if not, all Americans are to blame." The conference is from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The cost per person is $275. For more information about the conference, call 773-285-9600 or visit the website www.blackstarproject.org. Click here to read the complete The North Star News and Analysis. The Northstar News & Analysis, Inc.
Chicago, IL | 312.498.9214 Founder & Publisher: Frederick H. Lowe Editor: Susan M. Miller Reporter: Frederick H. Lowe II |
| Michelle Alexander and the New Jim Crow Social Justice Campaign Arrives in New York City, New York | | | | | These public school mothers decided that no one would stop them from creating a great school for their children! "Desperate women will do all kinds of things. We just wanted Nettelhorst to be viable. What has happened has surpassed my wildest dreams." Jacqueline Edelberg The Nettlehorst Moms | | | Nettelhorst Elementary School's Remarkable Turnaround 
January 14, 2011 THE MOM BRIGADE: Nettelhorst was a failing educational backwater in Lake View (Chicago, Illinois) when some determined moms got involved-and sparked a tremendous improvement. On a windy morning this past fall, 20 parents gathered inside Nettelhorst Elementary School in east Lake View, some with paper coffee cups and notebooks in hand. Greeting them was Jacqueline Edelberg, an apt choice for a guide given that the 43-year-old mother of two spearheaded the school's remarkable turnaround and wrote a book about the experience.  | | Jacqueline Edelberg |
With her auburn hair pulled back into a ponytail, Edelberg lifted a black-and-white tote bag bearing the words "Obama, Hope, Change" over her shoulder and ushered the group down the hallway. "Everything you see with an ounce of color, we've done," she told the parents, explaining how, roughly a decade ago, eight mothers set out to perk up their ailing neighborhood school. What began as a quick six-month makeover-painting halls, floors, doors, and walls and renovating the school library-evolved into what some call "the Nettelhorst revolution," and it's now one of the more celebrated tales in Chicago urban education. An early stop on the tour showcased one of the newest-and most impressive-parent-propelled capital improvements: a $130,000 kitchen designed by Nate Berkus, complete with stainless-steel appliances from Home Depot and white wooden tables and black chairs donated by Pottery Barn. "This is nicer than my kitchen," Edelberg quipped. The group then traveled to the French-bistro-inspired cafeteria, accented by a long mural of a café scene with boxes of faux flowers in the painted windows. Edelberg drew attention to the colorful soundproofing pads (donated by a dad) and the surround-sound system (donated by Audio Consultants) that pipes in jazz or classical music during lunch. "Wow, how amazing is this?" one woman asked her husband. Edelberg continued on, explaining how one parent was working on placing solar panels atop the school. Later the group passed another colorful mural, donated by the National Museum of Mexican Fine Arts, and visited the so-new-it-still-smells-like-paint science lab, christened recently by Rahm Emanuel and funded by grants of $100,000 from U.S. Cellular and $50,000 from the Anixter Family Foundation. Then it was on to the air-conditioned gym, where a class of kids was shrieking, running, and laughing during a game of shark. There, the touring families saw a glimpse of the $100,000 fitness center, made possible by a donation from the Chicago Blackhawks: It's filled with treadmills and exercise bikes, which are connected to flat-screen televisions equipped with Nintendo Wii games. There are stations where students can play the interactive video game Dance Dance Revolution. "Look at this," one dad whispered. "Oh. My. God." Pointing toward the bikes, Edelberg explained, "The TVs only turn on when the kids start pedaling."  | | Parents and neighbors listen to the Nettelhorst story. |
Parents would be hard pressed to find a smart fitness center or gleaming community kitchen in many other public schools in Chicago-in fact, some local schools don't even have gymnasiums, auditoriums, or libraries. By many measures, Nettelhorst is an exception. Just 11 years ago, the facility at Broadway and Melrose Avenue was a failing school on the verge of closing. Shunned by the surrounding neighborhood (not one child who lived nearby attended), it was a catchall for kids from other, overcrowded schools, 90 percent of whom were considered below poverty level. Test scores showed that only 30 percent of students performed at or above grade level. Then, in 2001, Edelberg and seven other determined moms teamed with the principal at the time, Susan Kurland, to turn the school around. "Desperate women will do all kinds of things," Edelberg says. "We just wanted Nettelhorst to be viable. What has happened has surpassed my wildest dreams." Today the pre-K-to-8 school, with 632 students, is held up as a model of public education revitalization. So many neighborhood children attend Nettelhorst that the school rarely takes students who apply through the Chicago Public Schools lottery. Most important, test scores have jumped dramatically. In 2001, roughly 35 percent of students met or exceeded state math and reading standards; by 2010, the rate had jumped to 86 percent. Meanwhile, the demographics shifted. In 2001, the majority of students came from poor neighborhoods. Now about one-third of the students live below poverty level, according to data on a 2010 state report card.  In a city where mothers in Pilsen staged a month-long sit- and sleep-in to campaign for a school library, Nettelhorst serves as an example of what a committed group of parents can achieve. "You've got a community seizing the reins of a school," says Timothy Knowles, director of the University of Chicago Urban Education Institute. "That's a very powerful story for how more Chicago schools might flourish." But a decade into the experiment, Nettelhorst has found that the fiercest fundraising campaigns and the most involved families can only do so much. Despite the donations and the parade of politicians, Nettelhorst has yet to break into the top tier of elementary schools academically, with its test scores lagging behind some of its stronger-performing neighbors. Principal Cindy Wulbert knows she has work to do. "We need to increase rigor," she says. In fact, according to Knowles, landing the nationally syndicated talk-show host Nate Berkus may be easier to orchestrate than a 10 percent increase in test scores. "There's no doubt it's easier," Knowles says. "To improve a building you need money and clout," whereas to exact educational change you need strong leadership, committed teachers, and parental involvement. "It doesn't happen overnight." Click here to see a video of the transformation of Nettlehorst School | | Support the Work of The Black Star Project | | | For more information on our other programs and how you can get involved, click on these links below or please call 773.285.9600: |
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