Posted on 09/08/2014 5:03:29 AM PDT by Kaslin
Eight days before 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed in Ferguson, Missouri, he received his high school diploma from Normandy High School in the Normandy School District near Ferguson.
In January 2013, Normandy district schools lost their accreditation from the Missouri state Board of Education because of poor performance on standardized tests and poor graduation rates.
The 2014 evaluations have just been issued from the state board and the Normandy district score has dropped even further from last year. Scores are based on compiling results of a number of different performance measures and in order to remain accredited, a district needs a score of 70. The latest score of the Normandy district was below 10.
Michael Brown put on a cap and gown and received a high school degree not worth the value of the paper it was printed on.
So who is Howard Fuller and what is his connection to Ferguson, Missouri and Michael Brown?
Dr. Fuller is Distinguished Professor of Education at Marquette University, where he founded, in 1995, the Institute for the Transformation of Learning. In addition to many other affiliations and honorary degrees, he is the Chairman of the Black Alliance for Educational Options.
He has just published his life story, “No struggle, No Progress: A Warrior’s Life from Black Power to Education Reform.”
The stated mission of Dr. Fuller’s Institute at Marquette is “To support exemplary education options that transform learning for children, while empowering families, particularly low-income families, to choose the best options for their children.”
The Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO) was launched in 2000 by Dr. Fuller’s Institute, forming local chapters nationally, “to empower Black parents to determine the best school options for their children.”
Dr. Fuller’s life’s work has focused on the most immediate and critical problem in low-income black communities such as the one in which Michael Brown lived – achieving education alternatives and choices for black parents.
The largest concentration of the nation’s failing public schools is in these low-income minority communities. According to the BAEO website, “42% of Black students attend schools that are under-resourced and performing poorly.”
The cycle is brutal and unforgiving. Kids already from homes and communities disproportionately absent proper family life have only one hope – to get on the path to a decent life through education. But the public school realities in these communities make this practically impossible.
Either the kids don’t graduate or they graduate with a useless degree that pretends to certify that this child can read and do math. Dropping out of high school is a ticket to poverty, as is often just a high school diploma.
According to the Pew Research Center, 21.8 percent of those in poverty have just a high school degree compared to 5.8 percent with college degree. According to BAEO, 11 percent of black men complete a college degree.
Low-income black parents need options, choices, for educating their children outside the public school monopoly.
The National Alliance of Public Charter Schools, where Dr. Fuller is an advisory board member, reports that there are now more than a million students across the nation on waiting lists to enter charter schools.
Unfortunately, the battle is formidable. Teachers unions retain a stranglehold on public education and don’t want education freedom for these kids trapped in broken schools.
The American Federation of Teachers had the nation’s 14th largest Political Action Committee in the last election cycle – slightly larger than the PAC of Boeing Corporation, an $87 billion dollar corporation. And 100 percent of their $1.74 million dollars in political contributions went to Democrat candidates.
Education options in low income communities – charters, vouchers and tax credits for private schools - is the best hope for eliminating multigenerational poverty and the possibility of more tragedies like that of Michael Brown.
Howard Fuller has the answer for Ferguson.
Is this to say that the few kids who managed to actually graduate in Ferguson can’t even read their diplomas? Is it because they’re printed in cursive?
Teachers unions retain a stranglehold
And that is a HUGE part of the problem. Another part is that too many parents expect the school to raise their children for them. And if little Johnny is disciplined they cry that the teacher must not like their child instead of accepting responsibility themselves.
If he had spent one year studying at Khanacademy.org he’d have had a better education than 12 years in the public school. This is true for a LOT of kids in public school. It is an institution that has outlived its usefulness.
One room school houses with no more “resources” than desks, a blackboard, a wood burning stove, and a small library of standard texts used to produce a public that could read, cipher, and knew its own history. The problem is not some lack of resources it is a whirling mass that contains unionized incompetent teachers and a home and community culture which over generations has come to not just tolerate criminality and ignorance but glorify it.
MB was the exception. Just a few days or weeks from starting college, dontcha know...
Vouchers not only for “poor, minority” communities...but for ALL children. I thought the progressives/liberals were all for CHOICE?
Schools should have a basic program for kids who may not want or be able to go to college or who’s IQ may be low. Their curriculum should only be basic skills to function in society. Forget all that other crap they teach in high school. Give them only classes in learning how to read competently, do basic math necessary for a sales job, and teach them a craftsman-like skill they can use to find a job.
Oh, no, no, no! Acting white is never acceptable!
The results of a school system have almost NOTHING to do with how much money is spent, as long as the rooms are warm in the winter, the toilets work and the roof doesn’t leak. It’s the quality of the people in it and the support structures of the student families. I saw the figures comparing my Catholic high school to the local public school when I was a student there, and, in this measure, the Catholic school was actually laughable. Not so funny were the results of the public school’s student performance in comparison - and that was 40 years ago.
Education options in low income communities – charters, vouchers and tax credits for private schools - is the best hope for eliminating multigenerational poverty and the possibility of more tragedies like that of Michael Brown.
*****
I agree...vouchers for ALL children/communities.
Unfortunately....for kids, everywhere....including the “Michael Browns”...the leftists do not want improved education choices and options/vouchers, for the masses. They want to keep EVERYONE as dumbed down as possible, to continue their destruction progression.
You got that right!
The school is not responsible for the educational failures of the children. The teachers may not be helpful and may be counterproductive, but they ultimately are not responsible for the failure of the children to acquire an education. The parents bear the burden of making sure their children gain a proper education, but they are not the parents cannot be the ultimate reason for the failure of the children to gain an education. There is only one party who ultimately responsible for the failure to gain an education, and that party is each and every individual child. Any person, child or adult, can gain an education by taking the time and trouble to teach themselves by any and every means available around them. Only the disabled have any sort of excuse for not having a basic education and proficiency in the fundamental skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Everything else is a false excuse. If anything, schools and school teachers are too often an impediment to gaining an education, because they monopolize the time of the children who would be better off teaching themselves and each other using books, videos, and computers to read and perform mathematics. The time is long overdue when the children, parents, and teachers are held personally responsible for their own performances and failures to perform.
If I have a failing school district with 5,000 students in it, and I say, "OK you can all have vouchers to go to any school you want" then what? Where do they go? Do they troop across district lines to the successful school district next door, thus adding 5,000 students to their enrollment? Where would these extra students be put? What if they are so far behind that they drag down the district scores to the old district's level? Are people to establish private schools? What guarantee is there that they will be any better or any more successful than the public schools were? And how are the students supposed to get to the new schools? Will the state provide transportation? And finally this scheme does nothing to address the primary reason why school districts fail - lack of support for education by the families in the district. Teachers have the kids for less than 8 hours a day. Unless the family is pushing for school work to be done during the other 16 then the kids are going to fail.
Shame on American Blacks that keep voting for the party that destroys their children. It's time for a spanking.
The solution is to teach students who aren't academically oriented trades and life skills along with enough academics to function independently and successfully. Going back to Shop, HomeEc, Hands-On Skills, Budget Management and Small Business Development would also cut down on discipline issues.
I find the idea that everyone should go to college totally absurd. Not everyone is qualified for it, and what is wrong with craftsman -like skills? Absolutely nothing. I also believe that smart students whose parents can not afford to pay for for their kids college education should get help
Well, that's true. Those schools were better, and more students would be helped if they came back. BUT NOT ALL.
That is the key to the education wars. MANY STUDENTS CANNOT AND SHOULD NOT GO BEYOND EIGHTH GRADE.
Since both "sides" in the education debates cannot accept this obvious, fundamental truth, failure is baked in.
If the excellent public schools of 1900-1960 were given the mandate to educate all persons born or residing in the United States to the academic twelfth grade level, and then to send virtually all of them into baccalaureate programs, the system you (and I) so admire would have collapsed in short order.
You say that one room school houses used to produce "a public that could…" The white high school graduation rate in 1941 was 25%. Say another 10% had to drop out because of dire financial circumstances, so that 65% of the departures were voluntary.
That's about where we are today, except that we have built massive detention centers where the 65% of the white population that has no interest and lacks the ability to complete a twelve-year academic program are detained until they are 18.
It can't work, it is not working, and it isn't going to work.
Compared to the existential impossibility of it all, the teacher's unions and all the other epiphenomena of modern US public education matter not at all.
Oh, one more thing. The 35% or so of the white population that CAN achieve twelfth-grade level work are not being educated properly because of the challenges of running these detention centers.
I see in Memphis Tennessee the sheriff or police chief is calling for laws that charge the parents of teens who commit crimes like the racially motivated beating that happened at the Kroger store there.
I’ve got mixed feelings on it because teens can be more than a parent can handle and with black teens its pointless because the parents just don’t care.
Personally I think we need to bring back reform school type settings where release is largely dependent on completion of school and learning a useful skill. Maybe releasing them as self supporting adults away from the old neighborhood.
The Black Alliance for Educational Options
So why is OK to point out by race the problems here and have race organization for this?
Either race matters and is a factor or it isn’t.
I believe your right..but also, I might add, I believe the UNIONS have a lot to do with squashing a voucher system.
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