States with Most K-12 Black Student Graduates

National Center for Education Statistics new study shows that my home state, Georgia, is not among the top states with the most K-12 student graduates who are African-American/Black. Unfortunately, this is no shocker to me, but I do hope for the days where Georgia can proudly make this this. Here are those states that are above the national average of African-American/Black graduates.

National average: 69% graduation rate for African-American/Black students compared to 73% for Hispanic students, 86% for white students, and 88% for Asian students.

In reverse order, according to an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

10. South Carolina and Arizona (71%)

9. Vermont and Maine (72%)

8. Connecticut, Indiana, Massachusetts and Missouri (73%)

7. Iowa, Delaware, Nebraska, West Virginia (74%)

6. Kansas, New Jersey, North Carolina, Virginia (75%)

5. North Dakota, New Hampshire, Hawaii (76%)

4. Maryland (77%)

3. Arkansas (78%)

2. Montana and Tennessee (79%)

1. Texas (84%)

See 2011-2012 data from Governing.com.

Judge Profits from Jail Sentences

The School-to-Prison Pipeline is real.  Education policy spaces are full of statistics, anecdotes, narratives, and campaigns to inform and correct for what happens to many, many students and youth, particularly our black and brown babies.

Well, here is a REAL account (so it seems) of a JUDGE that has allegedly been sentencing adolescents and teenagers to JAIL and PROFITING FROM IT.

It's sickening.  Deeply sickening.

Judge to serve 28 years after making $2 million for sending black children to jail

2:15 PM EDT

7/30/2013 by Amir Shaw   http://rollingout.com/criminal-behavior/judge-must-serve-28-years-after-making-2-million-for-sending-children-to-jail/

"Judge Mark A. Ciavarella, 63, serves as an example of why the private prison industry can do more harm than good. Ciavarella worked alongside owners of private juvenile facilities to ensure that the prison remained occupied. The more prisoners equated to more profits for the owners of the prison"

(Read more directly from the article.) 

Affirmative Action still not "decided"

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court released its Opinion of the Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin et al. case, also known as our time's Affirmative Action case.

For the non-lawyers, my reading is that the Supreme Court held that a university gets deference in deciding and determining its diversity mission...but University does not get deference in deciding how to go about achieving diversity. Judicial review (strict scrutiny) is required. The case now goes back to lower courts to review whether the university went about achieving their mission in a "narrowly-tailored" (as race-neutral as possible) way.

So, the Court did not do much "deciding" today on the merits on the case (which means they did not get into whether "diversity" is actually a compelling interest, except Justice Thomas who long ago decided his stance that no use of race is acceptable to him) but rather did some clarifying on what the judicial standard is for college admissions cases. The initial Plaintiff, Fisher, did not ask the Court to decide whether past cases on college admissions (Grutter, especially) needed overturning -- a point which Scalia writes separately to justify as his reason for joining the Court's decision on this case. 

I did find some of the Court's point particularly interesting.  First, the Court actually said that universities are not required to exhaust all the race-neutral means of admissions processes that they can think of.  Instead, the Court said that universities are required to have serious, good faith consideration of race-neutral means of admissions and then justify why those alternative admissions process would not work.  570 U.S. ___ at 10 (2013).  Further, the Court reemphasized that the university's decision must be a workable decision, and tipped its hat that an administratively viable solution might be a consideration in the narrowly-tailored analysis that will follow once the lower courts sort out the judicial review.  570 U.S. ___ at 11 (2013).  Finally, the Court also restated that the judicial standard of strict scrutiny not be "fatal in fact"--which means that it cannot be the case that each time a court reviews a program by which the state has taken action or made some type of determination, a court later strikes it down and says that it was not good enough to muster the constitutional protections of the 14th Amendment.  In fairness, the Court also stated that the strict scrutiny analysis cannot also be "feeble" such that state action gets deference or an easy pass in its process.  570 U.S. ___ at 13 (2013).  

For me, I'm kinda happy that the deciding did not come today (dunno if my heart could take it), but in line with many of my colleagues' sentiments, I don't know whether the odds are going to be better years from now... And, I certainly would have loved to hear Justice Ginsburg on the merits of this case another, wonderful time.


As always, I'm providing the actual Opinion:  http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/11-345_l5gm.pdf
 

When you got prosecutors spewing prejudices...

A Texas prosecutor stood before a jury and asked them to make logical connections based on prejudices of what African-Americans and Hispanic people would do with a bag of money.

Have no idea where I was when this story first broke, but I'm reading about it now and it sickens me on sooo many levels.  Usually, I just list the link and ask readers to explore, but because of the gross miscarriage of power that has been entrusted in a prosecutor (presumably a representative of the people to seek justice), here's the text of the story.

I would make my own comments, but Justice Sotomayor has made the points that I feel in a way that is much more thoughtful that I would probably put together.  I've highlighted her comments in purple.

More after the break...

Two Thoughts Emerge In My Mind—On “Bad” Schools & “Race” [Reading Response]

Thought #1: What makes a “bad” school? The general answer might include schools with poor student test scores, school violence, dilapidated buildings and grounds, old textbooks, and unhealthy lunch programs. The unsaid, less politically correct answer is schools with lots of black and brown faces (obviously not because they are black and brown faces—though some of the theorists from last week might propose that it is because of those identities--but because, as this week’s readings amplify, segregated schools (bad) and high concentrations of students on free lunch (bad) are more likely to be the experiences of black and brown faces than white faces). Traits of “good schools” consist of the opposite features (perhaps explaining the teacher transfer trend in Georgia from Orfield and Lee, p. 17). And for the most part, our general solution has been to use money to transform the former into the latter. Yet, I find myself asking the same question asked by others: does one overcome the bad schools of the impoverished simply by having more money? I cautiously assert that the answer is “no” (though I make a sharp distinction between poverty being an aggregate condition that needs a large-scale remedy and “poor” as an individual status that might in fact benefit from a wealth transfer). So, I am left to choose amongst other model solutions to meet the challenge… but I am just not sure the importation of one particular model is the way to go.

Thought #2: In this week’s Washington Post, the conversation arose again about the inability of using race as a factor for diversifying schools as a result of Parents Involved v. Seattle School District (2007) (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/19/AR2010091904973.html?sub=AR). It seems this article and this week’s readings illustrate the core connections between the identities of the education have-nots and the resources of the education haves, and how our decentralized system needs but struggles to disperse identities and resources within its populations. But this effort at social engineering is a huge undertaking. Perhaps I am simplistic—but I drink of the water that says the teacher-leader and student-parent relationships are the key levers for change. Systems have an obligation to diversify student experiences, but if we are to advance student outcomes, the solution requires far more teacher and administrator self-awareness and vulnerability that I think most are ready for.