by Kat Sánchez, Policy Manager — Reproductive Healthcare
Bold Futures NM
“What? Are you and your muscle going to kick me out? Isn’t that what you people do?”
Nearly verbatim, this was said to me and one of my dearest friends and colleagues at the recent Las Cruces Public School (LCPS) board meeting. My colleague and I are both Latinx women, both parents, and just moments before, I had openly self identified as queer. We knew whom he was referring to with his accusatory “you people.”
That blatantly racist, gendered, and homophobic statement caught me off guard. It surprised me…
by Rosemary Rivera, Co-Executive Director, Citizen Action of New York
As a Puerto Rican growing up in New York City, I knew very well that the existential conditions and educational outcomes for Puerto Ricans were shared with our Black brothers and sisters. We were, after all, experiencing structural racism much in the same way. Yet just as our Black brothers and sisters’ history is so often mistaught or completely left out of American education, Puerto Rican history is basically non-existent in New York public schools.
Like other individuals from disenfranchised and oppressed groups, I have had to learn about my history on my own. I’ve known about George Washington and…
If we are focused solely on “learning loss” and “academic deficits” then as a country, we have learned nothing at all from the past year. The concept of “learning loss” is being used to reflect the learning challenges students are experiencing as a result of virtual/hybrid learning configurations due to the impact of COVID-19.
It reflects a deficit lens, or a negative view when looking at student academic growth over the past year. Ultimately, using the term places the burden of the educational experience of the past year solely on the students to bear, especially underserved…
by Mary González and Kathryn Wiley
We are in a power-filled time where political, social, and economic realities have brought us to the precipice of a turning point. The relationship between school funding and racial justice is currently being spotlighted as community organizers work to ensure public institutions are divesting from police.
We are all living amidst systems that were created by white people and are harming Black people and other people of color. That includes police systems, but also the public education funding system that is our focus. So it’s crucial to ask questions that have been at the…
As the November election approaches and too many students still don’t have access to the high-quality education they deserve, education leaders are calling for action to create a comprehensive and more inclusive education system.
Education 2020 (ED 2020), a coalition of organizations representing educators, parents, children and youth, people of color, people with disabilities, and more spanning the child well-being, early childhood education, K-12 education, and higher education sectors, is calling for the presidential candidates to enact a list of Education Principles. …
What Past School Discipline Reform Suggests About Racial Disparities and Exclusion
by Kathryn Wiley, Faculty Fellow, School of Education University of Colorado Boulder and Yolanda Anyon, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Social Work, University of Denver
The police-free schools movement entered mainstream consciousness during the recent Summer 2020 Racial Justice Uprisings. This movement, rooted in generations of racial justice activists, advocates, and scholars, calls for replacing school police and surveillance systems with policies and programs that youth and families of color actually want within public schools. …
By Moira O’Neil
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we asked grandparents to sacrifice themselves for the economic wellbeing of their grandchildren. For example, Lieutenant Governor of Texas Dan Patrick explained that grandparents should be “willing to die to save the economy for their grandkids.” Now the Trump administration is asking teachers to put their lives at risk because, as they say, our nation’s economic recovery depends on schools re-opening.
Trump criticized the CDC guidelines for how schools might open safely for being overly cautious and impossible to implement and even threatened to cut off federal funding to schools…
Cyrus Driver, Senior Director
Mary González, Associate Director
Partnership for the Future of Learning
Right now, a lot of people claim to have the answer to solving the problem of equity in our education system. It seems that equity in education is a value many of us share, regardless of political leaning. There are a number of roads that people think will take us there, but not all roads are clear on the reality that education is a public good and a key ingredient in a healthy democracy.
Our government is responsible for protecting, strengthening, and advancing our education system…
