Meme of the Day

Some sad statistics to consider from Presente.org.

Sorry its size looks so sloppy on my website.  This was the only way I could upload it to have the text big enough to read.

Goldstein: Why Cities Increasing Faster Than Suburbs Is Good For Education

It appears that, for the first time since World War II, major American ubran cities are increasing at a higher rate than those of suburban areas.  There seems to be a number of reasons for this that has taken place.  There are also a number of reasons to be skeptical that this is just a temporary statistical "blip" and not a long-term trend.  Here is an exert from Will Oremus of Slate:

This shift has been in the making for over a decade. As early as 1999, a Brookings report noted that “declining crime statistics, falling unemployment rates, balanced municipal budgets, and a resurgence in downtown living have cities across the country claiming that they are in the midst of a renaissance.” Back then, though, those claims were undermined by Brookings’ finding that suburbs were still outpacing cities in job growth. According to Frey’s new analysis, just five of the largest metropolitan areas saw greater urban than suburban population growth between 2000 and 2010. (One caveat: The U.S. Census itself can't confirm Frey's numbers, since it doesn't break down the data in this way.)

The question now is whether the past year’s reversal is a blip or a leading indicator of America’s urban future. If you think it’s the former, you blame the housing bust and the economy for the suburbs’ short-term slowdown, and predict that they’ll resume their growth when the market clears.

In any case, let's suppose this is a long-term trend.  If that is a case, than this means potential benefits for American education and the cause for integration of public schools, according to Dana Goldstein:

We know school segregation is a major social crisis because—despite the good performance of some high-poverty schools—poor children tend to have better academic outcomes when they attend school alongside middle class students.There is also some evidence that highly effective teachers prefer working in integrated schools.And it is my own strongly held belief that all children benefit from exposure to other children whose backgrounds are different from their own.

With more middle and upper-income young families now showing a predilection for urban living, city school districts have a wonderful opportunity to create more integrated schools. There are several ways they can do this:

1. By purposefully drawing school enrollment boundaries to encompass both high-income and low-income housing stock. My small Brooklyn neighborhood of Cobble Hill/Boerum Hill contains multimillion dollar, single-family brownstones, as well as a large housing project. Yet only one of the local elementary schools is truly diverse while the other two—both in easy walking distance—are segregated.

2. By asking charter schools to embrace diversity as part of their mission statements, and recruit students from across all races and classes, instead of focusing solely on poor children.

3. By creating magnet schools that draw students from across the city, and that do not require high test scores for enrollment. (Chris Hayes’ new book, Twilight of the Elites, is eloquent on the problem of frantic, expensive test-prep contributing to urban school segregation.)

4. And by attacking residential segregation head-on, in part through the sort of housing policies that Slate’s Matt Yglesias proposes in his book, The Rent is Too Damn High.

All of these suggestions have merit to them, and should at least be up on the table for debate in policy and political circles.  I do have one suggestion for the second proposal above regarding charter schools, assuming they are part of this picture to begin with.  Right now, they do more to hurt the cause of integration in public schools than help.  And it is one thing to "ask" charter schools to embrace diversity, but I think they will.  I am uneasy about how selective charters would become if they are given the ability to recruit white, middle-class students.  The one fear I have is that they may overrecruit white, middle-class students who tend to perform better on standardized tests.  School boards and politicians have to make sure that in such a scenario as Goldstein is proposing, that such selectivness doesn't take place.

I would also add that redrawing boundary lines is a good suggestion, but good luck getting the public and local politicans (especially in more, white suburban districts) to agree to it.  Here in the Kansas City metro area on the Kansas side for example, I have a hard time imagining Johnson County schools (Shawnee Mission, De Soto) agreeing to share students with Wyandott County schools (Turner, KCK).  Goldstein expresses similar skepticism at the end of her post:

Sadly, no American governor or big city mayor I know of has committed to school integration as a central, clearly articulated facet of his or her education reform agenda. In part, this is because so many middle and upper class parents still feel skittish about sending their children to school with poor kids, and so “school choice” policies have evolved, in many cities, as a way to de facto segregate the children of the creative class. If we continue down this road, we simply won’t be taking advantage of the social, civic, and academic upsides of our rapidly diversifying cities. That would be a national shame. 

Justice Scalia Truly Doesn't Give A Fuck, Does He?

Photo from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Today, the Supreme Court gave a split ruling on President Obama's challenge against Arizona's controversial immigration law, S.B. 1070.  The court struck down multiple provisions, but did leave the statute that said law enforcement officials could demand to see paperwork if they suspected an individual of being an illegal immigrant.  This, of course, has lead to concerns there would be mass amounts of racial profiling.

The good news for civil libertarians like myself, is that the Court did strike down provisions that said illegal immigrants weren't allowed to seek employment, as well as a provision that allows police to make a "warrantless arrest of anyone they had probably cause to believe they made a deportable offense."

I hoped this ruling would have gone further, and activists need to push for Arizona to change the law completely.  However, in addition to sharing the news about the ruling, I also want to share a quote from the ever-modest, Justice Antonin Scalia.  Here is some of what he had to say while defending he Arizona law in his own ruling:

Notwithstanding “[t]he myth of an era of unrestricted immigration” in the first 100 years of the Republic, the States enacted numerous laws restricting the immigration of certain classes of aliens, including convicted crimi­nals, indigents, persons with contagious diseases, and (in Southern States) freed blacks. Neuman, The Lost Century of American Immigration (1776–1875), 93 Colum. L. Rev. 1833, 1835, 1841–1880 (1993). State laws not only pro­ vided for the removal of unwanted immigrants but also imposed penalties on unlawfully present aliens and those who aided their immigration.

I know Justice Scalia tends to take a more traditional view of the law, but he seems to be crossing a moral line here, especially because he is apparently citing some of these laws as precedent.

UPDATE:

The day after I wrote this post (everything above), E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post wrote an editorial saying that Scalia should resign from the Supreme Court.  On the face of it, I suppose one could say that this is just some left-wing pundit spewing out liberal rhetoric and talking points.  Well, that isn't totally inaccurate, but Dionne makes some excellent points.  As he points out, Scalia wants to be a politician or pundit as much as anyone:

Unaccountable power can lead to arrogance. That’s why justices typically feel bound by rules and conventions that Scalia seems to take joy in ignoring. Recall a 2004 incident. Three weeks after the Supreme Court announced it would hear a case over whether the White House needed to turn over documents from an energy task force that Dick Cheney had headed, Scalia went off on Air Force Two for a duck-hunting trip with the vice president.

Scalia scoffed at the idea that he should recuse himself. “My recusal is required if . . . my ‘impartiality might reasonably be questioned,’ ” he wrote in a 21-page memo. Well, yes. But there was no cause for worry, Scalia explained, since he never hunted with Cheney “in the same blind or had other opportunity for private conversation.”
Don’t you feel better? And can you just imagine what the right wing would have said if Vice President Biden had a case before the court and went duck hunting with Justice Elena Kagan?

Then there was the speech Scalia gave at Switzerland’s University of Fribourg a few weeks before the court was to hear a case involving the rights of Guantanamo detainees.
“I am astounded at the world reaction to Guantanamo,” he declared in response to a question. “We are in a war. We are capturing these people on the battlefield. We never gave a trial in civil courts to people captured in a war. War is war and it has never been the case that when you capture a combatant, you have to give them a jury trial in your civil courts. It’s a crazy idea to me.”

It was a fine speech for a campaign gathering, the appropriate venue for a man so eager to brand the things he disagrees with as crazy or mind-boggling. Scalia should free himself to pursue his true vocation. We can then use his resignation as an occasion for a searching debate over just how political this Supreme Court has become.

This is why we need to amend the Constitution and implement term limits on Supreme Court Justices.  I'm just saying . . .

A Video for Sunday

 Photo from The Urban Daily

Recently, I have been listening to the late Manning Marable's biography of Malcolm X on audiobook, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention.  So far, it is a fascinating book, and I am learning a lot about Malcolm that I never knew (and some things I am sure he didn't want people to know).  As I listen to it, I keep thinking back to Spike Lee's classic film, Malcolm X based partially upon Malcolm's famous autobiography. 

 Photo from Rotten Tomatoes

It is a film that is about as good as any biopic I have ever seen.  It is also a film that, as a white person, helps me understand the significance of what Malcolm truly meant to African-Americans, despite the racially-charged language he used in his time as a member of the Nation of Islam.  I feel a good clip for a Sunday is the scene where Malcolm (played masterfully by Denzel Washington) is still in prison (after recently converting to Islam), and he challenges the prison chaplain on the race of Jesus.

Unfortunately, I cannot embed the clip to my blog.  But you can view it here.

Patrice O'Neal: 1969-2011

Photo from Wikipedia

Rest in Peace.  He was absolutely hilarious, and one of the most underrated comics out there.  Him and Greg Giraldo (another great comic who left us too early) were my favorite Tough Crowd comics. Here is a sample clip of O'Neal's stand-up material.  Look up other clips on YouTube and Funny or Die.  I promise you will be laughing your ass off.

Patrice O'Neal on A Woman's Worth - watch more funny videos

MLK, Poverty, and Occupy Wall Street

Picture of Martin Luther King at a march for sanitation workers in Memphis.  Photo comes from San Francisco Bay View website.

Today, nearly everyone from every political background admires King.  But if King were alive today, he probably would have been called a "a left-wing nut", a "socialist", and even "anti-American".  And just like the Occupy Wall Street movement today, King was considered both radical and controversial during his time.

Today, the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial had it's long-awaited dedication.  It is only by coincidence that the Occupy Wall Street movement is gradually increasing support across the country, and around the world.  There is no doubt that today, MLK would not only support the movement with his words, but would be right there with the protesters risking arrest.

Indeed, right before he was assassinated, King had helped organize the "Poor People's Campaign", which was focused on economic justice in the United States.  43 years later, the Occupy Wall Street movement is protesting economic justice in a similar manner as the protests King was involved in, but under different circumstances.  Just as Americans all love Martin Luther King now, and realize how right he was, will America look back to the supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement in 40 years, and realize how right they are?  I can only hope so.

Here is a link to a YouTube video from a few months back by the amazing Tavis Smiley. He discusses the vital need for American politicians to tackle the issue of poverty (he quote King at the beginning of the video).  This was made before the Occupy Wall Street movement, but it does allude to the disgusting fact that so much wealth in America (the richest, most powerful nation in the history of the world), is occupied by the richest 1%.  This is one of the main things the Occupy Wall Street protesters are standing up against.

Disintegration

Stephen Colbert takes a look at a part of North Carolina where racial and economic integration has lead to great success and popularity . . . and how the Tea Party is now trying to undo this progress.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word - Disintegration
www.colbertnation.com
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Some Final Reminders of MLK

I thought I would share a couple of videos for reflection upon this MLK Day.  The first one is from the Adult Swim show, The Boondocks.  This episode, toying with revisionist history, pretends that MLK was never assassinated, but rather, goes into a coma until the year 2000.  He wakes up to find a very different world.  I will admit that it is a commentary on the modern African-American community (of which I have no authority to speak upon), and it does use the N-Word several times.  Having said that, it is perhaps the smartest, funniest piece of social satire I have ever watched, and well worth 22 minutes of your time to watch.








The second video (found at this link) is a re-airing of this morning's Democracy Now.  The entire episode plays two of Martin Luther King's famous speeches (neither of which are the "I Have A Dream" Speech").  Both Speeches deal with King's stance on controversial issues (at the time).  None the less, they show King's dedication to social justice and standing up for what is right.

Some Articles on American Education on MLK Day.

Dana Goldstein points out that schools are more segregated today than they were when Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in 1968.  She also notes the following:

And make no mistake--integration is one of the most powerful school reform tools in the kit. 

Here's how we know that: At the macro level, four decades of data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress--the "nation's report card"--show that the achievement gap between white and minority students shrunk fastest during the 1970s and 1980s, the era of Court-mandated school desegregation. Between 2004 and 2009, on the other hand--our NLCB, "standards and accountability" era--the achievement gap between white children and black and Latino children did not shrink at all.

Sarah Mead explains that simply making MLK a day of services, as well intentioned as it is, misses the point in teaching what MLK was really about:

I'm particularly uncomfortable with the decision to make King's holiday a "day of service," on which young people are encouraged to engage in service projects. Not that there's anything wrong with any of these projects. They're nice things to do. But the progress of the civil rights movement didn't come from people working in soup kitchens, cleaning up parks, or doing similarly nice, service-y things. It came from people nonviolently but directly standing up to unjust power structures and engaging in civil disobedience. People actually broke unjust laws--and got arrested for it. Teaching our kids that this is a day about service seems to get the message dead wrong--or at least to suggest that our nation and world are no longer plagued by injustices that require more than volunteer work to right them.

In the South, many school districts do not let there students off school for MLK Day (along with other holidays) in order to make-up for missed snow days.

I have two things to say to these school districts: First, given your less than stellar history on race relations, using MLK Day as a snow day is not the smartest move (at least from a purely PR standpoint).  In fact, it is quite disrespectful and offensive.  Secondly, you should do what other districts in the country do for missed snow days: build in snow days when making your calender, and if you use them up, add on days to the end of the year. 

Finally, there is also this piece from my favorite education writer these days, Diane Ravitch.  She  published this on last year's MLK Day.  She asks if you can imagine Martin Luther King standing along side businessmen and billionaires in favor of more testing and charter schools. I know that what is known as "education reform" gets a lot of positive attention from progressives and leaders in the African-American community these days.  However, MLK was a supporter of public workers and unions, and would just as likely been on the side of supporting public schools, teacher unions, and more money for poor districts (not based on test scores).  He would also have likely pointed out that the real culprit of the achievement gap was poverty.  The NYC Educator blog shares Mrs. Ravitch's views on MLK and union support by quoting him:

"The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress. Out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old age pensions, government relief for the destitute and, above all, new wage levels that meant not mere survival, but a tolerable life. The captains of industry did not lead this transformation; they resisted it until they were overcome."
-- MLK Jr., Illinois AFL-CIO Convention, 1965.