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Do LGBTQ students feel safe on college campuses?

According to AmericanProgress.org, over 70 percent of LGBTQ students “reported experiencing sexual harassment, compared with 61 percent of non-LGBT students.”

To compound the issue, many college campuses are still in the slow process of growing to become more inclusive regarding the needs of students who identify as LGBTQ.

The report featured on AmericanProgress.org also suggests that some college campuses “may not include certain sexual acts in their definitions of rape” because “the perpetrator is of the same gender as the survivor.”

What an awful feeling knowing that the college that one attends is insensitive to the needs of its students, specifically those within the LGBTQ community.

It’s vital that students have a sense of safety while on campus. It’s supposed to be a place of freedom, a space for creativity, and an educational asylum. When those protections are removed or never placed at all, students are left vulnerable.

LGBTQ students looking for colleges to attend that make safety paramount should look to AffordableCollegesOnline.org‘s new guide, “LGBTQ Resource for College Students.”

The guide features an array of resources for students to utilize, but also offers a way for students to find supportive campuses that are “more welcoming and supportive.”

There are two diversity experts featured in the guide and both are interviewed on the subject of student safety, recommendations for LGBTQ students, and much more.

In essence, it is a total resource of comfort for LGBTQ students to utilize when looking for the school that closely fits their wants and needs.

For more information on the LGBTQ Resource for College Students,” please visit www.AffordableCollegesOnline.org.

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The Role of Public Schools in the Advancement of the Communities

Public schools can play a significant role in the general improvement of their respective communities, and can operate as a major platform for enhancing child welfare in the community. Social reformers, politicians, and educational leaders have utilized various initiatives in the past to strengthen the relationship between schools and communities to achieve the common purpose of improving child welfare, and learning conditions for all children.

These initiatives suffer obstructions similar to those experienced by schools when they are focused on the work of educating. Detrimental poverty, racial and ethnic differences, socioeconomic differences, inactive families, low or no parental involvement, and insufficient political willingness and support for improvement all impact the efforts to advance the welfare of children. Any of these factors may obstruct the learning process of a child, and also may make it difficult to enhance the child’s overall well-being.

Historically, schools have played a significant role in helping communities evaluate issues concerning child welfare and eliminating situations that impede children’s progress. During the Great Migration of 1880–1924, a huge number of impoverished children moved into the schools of American cities. The majority of immigrants were poor and undereducated.

Social reformers and policy makers pressured public schools to work toward improving children’s lives. Many schools devoted themselves not only to educating poor children, but also to providing them with proper nutrition and other amenities required for healthy living. Teachers devoted their time to teaching English to immigrant students. Many schools offered non-academic services, including school nurses, gyms, playgrounds, and mid-time meals or lunches for poor students.

Some schools also started offering night classes for parents to help them learn English and other important parental skills that could assist them in caring for their children. Many schools encouraged teachers to improve school-parental ties by visiting students’ homes and instructing parents on how to offer a better learning environment for children at home. However, such initiatives faced a certain degree of opposition from parents who were not ready to leave their ethnic and racial identities.

A major hurdle was the economic impracticability of sustaining such child welfare activities. Most of these initiatives were criticized as “socialistic,” but many children enjoyed the benefits of programs intended to improve the overall situations of children and their families. Children not only experienced better living conditions; they also gained many opportunities to rise out of poverty. As a result, more immigrant children started coming to school regularly.

Ever-increasing fiscal burdens on schools created by child well-being initiatives caused political opposition and social criticism. In order to reduce costs, many state governments withdrew funding for social services offered by public schools. As a result, the upsurge of underprivileged children in the late 1980s and early 1990s was met with reduced and nonexistent services emanating from schools.

The depressed socioeconomic conditions of underprivileged families were responsible for undermining the learning process and academic achievement of many children. Teachers again tried to find innovative ways to help students and tried to support their local public school systems by assisting in improving social conditions and creating better learning opportunities.

Social reformers began making better use of schools to improve socioeconomic situations in different communities. Many full-service school programs were introduced to bolster the relationship between schools and communities, with the main objective to improve situations and provide better environments for children, their parents, and the community overall.

Most of these experimental policies for child welfare and social reform suggested that the efficiency of school-community relationships and their positive impact could be maximized by increasing parental involvement in schools. By encouraging parents to take an active role in the education system, policymakers tried to improve school services by making schools more accessible to parents. This also helped schools improve their relationship with parents, and helped them improve students’ performance.

Many researchers set out to substantiate analytically that parental involvement strengthened the school-community relationship by improving social conditions of students. Educational researchers suggested that parental involvement could positively improve the academic achievement of children. Studies revealed that those students whose parents were involved with their learning process were performing better, attended classes more regularly, and scored higher on school examinations than students who were lacking parental support and involvement in their learning.

Studies also suggested that low-performing schools could help failing students by trying to engage parents in the educational process of students. Researchers confirmed that schools could help students who have learning disabilities, or who belong to families from low socioeconomic backgrounds by interacting with and training their parents how to help these students with their learning and schooling processes.

In order to increase parental involvement, many schools use strategies such as inviting parents for open meetings with other parents, arranging social programs, asking parents to volunteer during school social and sports events,  issuing regular newsletters, connecting with parents through phone calls, and arranging for parent and teacher conferences.  These strategies may seem manipulative, and often fail to involve parents in the educational system. Still, school administrators and teachers may use these types of initiatives to increase parental involvement, while excluding parents from serious decision-making processes.

Often school administrations do not allow parents to raise their concerns about ineffective administrative policies, substandard teaching, and faulty grading systems. Regulated initiatives by schools to involve parents in the learning process of their kids often remain lopsided and ineffective because such activities restrict parents from interacting with the education system in a meaningful way.

School administrators and teachers often exploit regular parent-school collaboration methods by providing limited and biased information. They rely on parents being unquestioning and passive, and believe that only education professionals can truly improve student learning. Often they ignore the rights and abilities of parents to make decisions, as well as the ability of parents to contribute information and suggestions for improving the schooling process. Additionally, some administrators are unwilling to make accommodations for parents unable to take part in regular parent-teacher meetings and similar activities because of their work schedules.

Many schools do not engage in unprincipled measures to restrict parental involvement. Most genuinely value the input parents potentially provide. In order to improve parent-teacher collaboration, many have experimented with innovative ideas and have open door policies which allow individuals to observe school processes. Parents can visit at any time to scrutinize teaching methods, and how their children perform within the school structure. Such initiatives demand a flexible structural bureaucracy that allows parents to play a meaningful part in the decision-making process.

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6 Ways Teachers can Foster Cultural Awareness in the Classroom

A multicultural society is best served by a culturally responsive curriculum.  Schools that acknowledge the diversity of their student population understand the importance of promoting cultural awareness.  Teachers who are interested in fostering a cultural awareness in their classroom should actively demonstrate to their students that they genuinely care about their cultural, emotional, and intellectual needs.  To this end, there are several strategies that you can use to build trusting relationships with diverse students. To incorporate cultural awareness into your classroom curriculum, you should:

1.  Express interest in the ethnic background of your students.  Encourage your students to research and share information about their ethnic background as a means of fostering a trusting relationship with fellow classmates.  Analyze and celebrate differences in traditions, beliefs, and social behaviors.  It is of note that this task helps European-American students realize that their beliefs and traditions constitute a culture as well, which is a necessary breakthrough in the development of a truly culturally responsive classroom.  Also, take the time to learn the proper pronunciation of student names and express interest in the etymology of interesting and diverse names.

2.  Redirect your role in the classroom from instructor to facilitator.  Another important requirement for creating a nurturing environment for students is reducing the power differential between the instructor and students.  Students in an authoritarian classroom may sometimes display negative behaviors as a result of a perceived sense of social injustice; in the culturally diverse classroom, the teacher thus acts more like a facilitator than an instructor.  Providing students with questionnaires about what they find to be interesting or important provides them with a measure of power over what they get to learn and provides them with greater intrinsic motivation and connectedness to the material.  Allowing students to bring in their own reading material and present it to the class provides them with an opportunity to both interact with and share stories, thoughts, and ideas that are important to their cultural and social perspective.

3.  Maintain a strict level of sensitivity to language concerns.  In traditional classrooms, students who are not native English speakers often feel marginalized, lost, and pressured into discarding their original language in favor of English.  In a culturally responsive classroom, diversity of language is celebrated and the level of instructional materials provided to non-native speakers are tailored to their level of English fluency.  Accompanying materials should be provided in the student’s primary language and the student should be encouraged to master English.

4.  Maintain high expectations for student performance.  Given that culturally responsive instruction is a student-centered philosophy, it should come as no surprise that expectations for achievement are determined and assigned individually for each student.  Students don’t receive lavish praise for simple tasks but do receive praise in proportion to their accomplishments. If a student is not completing her work, then one should engage the student positively and help guide the student toward explaining how to complete the initial steps that need to be done to complete a given assignment or task.

5.  Incorporate methods for self-testing.  Another potent method for helping students become active participants in learning is to reframe the concept of testing.  While testing is usually associated with grades (and therefore stress) in traditional classrooms, in a culturally responsive classroom frequent non-graded tests can be used to provide progress checks and ensure that students don’t fall behind on required material. Teaching students to self-test while learning new information will help them better remember and use what they’ve learned in class and will help them realize on their own when they need to study a topic in greater depth.

6.  Maintain an “inclusive” curriculum that remains respectful of differences.  A culturally responsive curriculum is both inclusive in that it ensures that all students are included within all aspects of the school and it acknowledges the unique differences students may possess. A culturally responsive curriculum also encourages teachers’ understanding and recognition of each student’s non-school cultural life and background, and provides a means for them to incorporate this information into the curriculum, thus promoting inclusion.

Schools have the responsibility to teach all students how to synthesize cultural differences into their knowledge base, in order to facilitate students’ personal and professional success in a diverse world.  A culturally responsive curriculum helps students from a minority ethnic/racial background develop a sense of identity as individuals, as well as proudly identify with their particular culture group. Teachers can play a big role in helping these students succeed through the establishment of culturally responsive classrooms.

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Study: Black professors must be "entertaining"

A new study published by Vanderbilt University underpins the theory of racial bias in higher education.

According to the study, black faculty members are not only wanted for intellectual purposes but to entertain as well. Apparently being an expert in a field is not enough; these professors must step it up to pass the general public’s test for being a “good” teacher.

“Black faculty members are expected to be “entertaining” when presenting academic research to mostly white peers, according to a new Vanderbilt study.”

The survey shows that black academics are expected to tell jokes and keep their presentations loaded with levity.

It gets worse for black women who are academics.

“Black females additionally noted being subject to their colleagues’ preoccupation with their clothing choices and hairstyle, and reported being admonished to play down their “passion” and “smile more.”

A common theme that many black men and women face in the workplace is compounded in higher education. Not to mention that the number of black faculty working in higher education is just nine percent, many academics have likely faced this issue many times before.

One of the authors of the study, Ebony McGee, is hopeful that the study will be used as a way to potentially train others in accepting workplace diversity.

“Our hope is that this study will offer novel and useful insights to those who organize presentations and those who give them, so they will be able to understand, appreciate and provide an improved experience for black and other minoritized scholars.”

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4 States that Want to Change How Much Teachers Are Paid

pass or fail

The amount teachers are paid has been the subject of some controversy. Yet with U.S. teachers spending more time in the classroom than other teachers worldwide, most teachers know that the money is hard-earned.

Indeed, despite the long hours, teachers in American aren’t compensated well, explains OECD director of education and skills Andreas Schleicher. The pay, compared to other countries, is competitive in the US; however, it lags behind that of other American workers with college educations.

The OECD report shows American teachers see smaller salary increases than their foreign counterparts; in the most recent year surveyed, the average teacher with 15 years of experience saw a salary increase of 32.6 percent. The US average was just 26.6 percent.

Because of this, it is not surprising that there are efforts around the country meant to change how much teachers earn. Let’s look at four states that have tried to reform teachers’ paychecks.

  1. Florida: Florida lawmaker Senator Darren Soto introduced a bill that would raise the minimum salary for teachers to $50,000 a year.

The Florida Teacher Fair Pay Act, or Senate Bill 280, calls for the Legislature to fund the Florida Education Finance Program in a manner that guarantees the $50,000 minimum starting salary for teachers with union representation.

In addition, the bill would prevent school districts from setting their own lower salary, and would leave base pay negotiation with teachers unions to be decided upon by each individual district. Teachers’ salaries would also require adjustment each year after based on inflation from the year prior.

Soto hopes to help teachers after hearing from many who are threatening to walk away from their careers in the Sunshine State unless something changes. He believes that the minimum starting salary for teachers will help.

A study obtained last month ranked Florida’s Orange County teachers as some of the lowest-paid in the country. The starting salary in Orange County is around $38,000.

“Even if we don’t get to the $50,000 mark, this is part of a larger debate of getting teacher salaries up from where they are now,” said Soto.

  1. North Carolina: According to the National Education Association’s ranking from 2012-2013, the average North Carolina teacher salary is around $46,000, 46th in the U.S. The nation’s average salary is over $55,000.

Events were held earlier this week in Asheville, Waynesville and Black Mountain to emphasize the push for higher pay for the states teachers.

North Carolina lawmakers are discussing a pay raise for teachers, but the proposals vary and if approved, will result in some changes for teachers beyond just an increase in their paycheck. The A.N.C. Senate proposal states that teacher’s assistants would be cut, yet tenure would remain. The House version would keep teachers assistants, but give the teachers a smaller raise.

Gerrick Brenner of Progress North Carolina, one of the groups involved in the Aim Higher Now petition says advocates aren’t seeking the pay raise in a single year, but instead over the next four or five years.

Parent Misty Miller attended the event on Monday. She says, “I came out today to support our teachers. I would like to see our teachers be treated as professionals.”

  1. Colorado: Not all proposed solutions seem to work for the benefit of the teachers. For example, leaders from the teacher’s union asked the Colorado Department of Education to review an evaluation system, also called CITE, that ties teacher pay raises to evaluations conducted by school principals. The teacher evaluation plan designed by the Douglas County School District in Colorado was found to comply with state law, according to the state’s Department of Education.

Under the educator effectiveness law, SB 191, school districts were granted the option of creating their own teacher evaluation system as long as it adheres to state guidelines. This was the first state review of a teacher evaluation system developed by a school district.

The review that approved the system did find that the district may not have effectively communicated to teachers information about other district-initiated reviews that occur when an initial review seems to be an outlier. The state suggested including that information in the evaluation guide and on the website to ensure the teachers are well informed.

It’s essential to find a measuring system to ensure that these individualized ways of evaluating teachers doesn’t harm the school quality and penalize teachers.

  1. Ohio: In another effort that may not be entirely beneficial to teachers, the Reynoldsburg school board in Ohio wants to change the way the district pays its teachers through eliminations of scheduled raises and the health insurance plan.

Instead teachers would receive increases in pay based on the ratings they receive in the state’s new evaluation system.  If their schools perform well on state report cards and they perform work above and beyond classroom duties, they would also be eligible for bonuses.  The district would provide the teachers with an undisclosed amount of money to buy their own insurance instead of being offered health-insurance coverage.

The school wants to revere good teaching by paying higher salaries and distributing bonuses to teachers. If teachers don’t attain a rating of excellence, the goal is to encourage rapid improvement.

The state’s new teacher-evaluation system would put the highest rating teachers up for a 4 percent raise, skilled teachers would get a 2 percent raise and developing teachers would earn a 1 percent raise. Teachers in the lowest category would not receive an increase in pay.

In addition, teachers who work in schools with a composite grade of an A on the state report card would receive a bonus of $500, and those in schools with a B would receive $250.

The school board’s plan would also allow teachers to apply for a $30,000 “fellowship award” if the performance of their students exceeds expectations and the teacher has taken on additional district responsibilities rendered high in value.

The current teachers’ pact expires July 31.

I like that Reynoldsburg wants to reward its teachers with solid pay increases and eligibility for bonuses. However, I do fear that some high quality, hardworking teachers may receive low evaluations despite their dedication.

Respect for teachers is an important metric for the strength of a school system on a national scale. Paying our teachers well is one way to demonstrate respect for teachers and their profession.

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Parallels Between Entrepreneurial Traits and School Leadership

Most school leaders don’t play a part in recruiting teaching staff, but are largely responsible for their development. Career development of teachers depends on the school culture and environment. School leadership must shape a school system in order to allow the growth of teacher professionalism and instructional capacity.

School leaders are supposed to shape teaching staff to gain other skills by assigning duties that are non-academic : e.g., bus duty, sports supervision, and coaching instruction. Similarly, school leaders should try to retain the most productive teachers without stifling their growth. The same predicament befalls entrepreneurs in Small Market Enterprises (SME’s). An entrepreneurial school leader strives to ensure that their school retains the most competitive, productive teaching staff, leading to better student results.

Good entrepreneurs conceive and implement workable communication channels to achieve meaningful results. School leaders could use this in dealing with teaching staff and students. Communication has always been an important part of leadership. Since successful entrepreneurs are good communicators, school leaders need to keep their communication channels open and develop good listening and negotiation skills.

School leaders also need to keep teaching staff motivated, because satisfied employees produce better results. It is up to the school leader to create innovative motivation techniques for staff satisfaction. While school leaders don’t have the same powers as entrepreneurs in raising teachers’ wages, they must implement non-monetary motivation techniques, such as creating a conducive workplace with reduced stress and burnout levels, and a friendly school culture.

Most teachers quit work for similar reasons as other employees, including feeling under-appreciated , broken agreements, harassment by superiors, or unpleasant working environments. Entrepreneurial school leaders should avoid the mistakes that lead to those situations. Employees associate leader empathy and fairness with a highly motivational culture. Therefore, school leaders should try to develop these traits. Job satisfaction is strongly influenced by the sense of job freedom, as well as satisfaction with the leadership style .

The basic requirements for successful entrepreneurship include appropriate wage systems, team building, and a satisfactory internal communication system. Since higher wages are not necessarily a motivator , team-building and internal communication systems are most applicable to the school setting.

Separating entrepreneurs into “employee friendly” and “employee distant,” we assess how these two entrepreneurial characters apply in relation to the teaching staff’s perception of the school leader.. “Employee friendly” leaders are more creative in designing the right motivational and communication structure in their organizations, and possess empathy and fairness, providing higher motivation and job satisfaction for employees than “employee distant” leaders. Teachers would almost certainly prefer the friendly leader over the distant one.

This preference, however, does not affect entrepreneurial leadership, since it is more concerned with ends than means. Entrepreneurial leaders find a balance between empathy and authority.

Empowering leadership behavior includes encouraging self-reward systems, self-leadership, opportunity perception, participative goal-setting, and autonomous behavior by followers. In the school setting, freedom should be granted to teachers where classroom instruction is involved, and they should also be involved in decision-making processes.

Empowering school leaders increase the motivation and confidence of their followers toward the accomplishment of the school objectives through positive encouragement and support. In the school setting, the school leader should distribute leadership among senior staff-members, who can assist in certain school administrative functions such as student discipline, running sports activities, and participating in tasks that can be delegated.

School leaders should draw a line between the issues that need consensus, and those where they should intervene and make quick decisions. As schools are diverse, due to the variety of careers and interests that converge in the school setting, school leaders should be careful not to allow the problems that come from diversity to slow down decision-making processes. It is advisable that entrepreneurial school leaders in dynamic environments where there is external pressure should avoid complex decision-making processes.

However, in stable environments, such as private schools, leaders can allow the empowered staff to spend more time considering what alternative strategies are available and exploring the potential for various activities, since consensus is not urgent.

Directive leadership behavior in the school setting is instructional in nature. School leaders should instruct teachers on matters regarding the curriculum, formulation of rules, and state policies on educational matters.

School leaders can create a common vision in their school through the setting of rules and by enforcing them through instruction. The benefits of this type of leadership are often faster decision-making and clearer goals.

Exceptional entrepreneurial leadership entails a combination of directive leadership and the other mentioned traits, such as empowerment, recruitment, motivation, and communication. School leaders who wish to pursue this entrepreneurial perspective in their running of the school should adopt this approach. A model of entrepreneurial leadership that is inclusive, participative, motivating, and directive seems to be the most suitable in the school setting.

When it comes to entrepreneurial leadership, research on the application of this model in the school setting is rare. Since the model has been used successfully in the business sector, we can relate the factors that enhance its success to the school setting by drawing parallels. It is possible that most school leaders may also be entrepreneurs, and therefore would embrace this leadership style, which involves the use of talents they may already possess.

 

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Past, Present, and Future of Sustainable Leadership

Sustainable leadership builds on the past in an effort to create a better future for schools. This is against most educational change theories, which do not find a place for the past, since the “arrow of change” is thought to move only in a forward direction. Past problems are generally either ignored, or overcome in a rush to get to future improvement.

For those leaders attracted or addicted to change, the past is seen as a monument of backward thinking and irrational resistance for those whom they consider to favor the status quo, or those emotionally incapable of letting go of old habits and beliefs. These leaders consider the past to be a dark era of weak or poor leadership practices that leave negative legacies, models of schooling, or “uninformed” professional judgment in classroom instruction. All of these are negatives are seen as barriers to modernization.

Reform based only on the present or future becomes the opposite of sustainability. Sustainable development has the distinction of respecting, protecting, preserving, and renewing all the valuable elements of the past and learning from those elements to build a better future. One way of getting in touch with the past is to see teacher resistance and nostalgia among members of the profession not as obstacles to change, but as sources of wisdom. Teachers’ years of classroom experience should not be discounted.

Change theory must strive to create proposals that are built upon past legacies, instead of trying to ignore or destroy them. While contemplating changes, sustainable leadership calls on leaders to look to the past for precedents that might be reinvented or refined. Events of the past may also be used as evidence of policies that have succeeded or failed before.

However, the above proposal does not mean that leaders live in the past, but value and learn from it. We have to end “creative destruction,” where leaders see the need to wipe out the past in order to create a future. Creative destruction usually leads to endless back-and-forth movements, increased employee burnout, and the unnecessary waste of expertise and memory that has been accumulated over time. Instead, a creative recombination of the best parts of the past in a resourceful and renewing way should be used.

Through sustainable leadership, leaders should find new structures, technology, and people by finding, redistributing, reusing, and recombining mismatched parts that have been lying around in the school’s organizational “basement.” Sustainable leadership and improvement is concerned with both the future and the past. It refuses to treat people’s knowledge, careers, and experience as disposable waste, because, in reality, they are valuable and renewable resources. In conclusion, sustainable leadership does not blindly endorse the past, but respects and learns from it.

 

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Adopting a New Paradigm in K-12 Education

Substantial educational change will never occur until we as a country decide that enough is enough and make a commitment to change, no matter what it takes. When America realizes all children deserve a stellar education regardless of who their parents are, what their socioeconomic status is, or where they happen to live, we will be able to reform our education system. The American K-12 education treats minority students in under performing urban environments like collateral damage.

The disheartening reality is that America has billions of dollars to fight a two-front war, but cannot or will not properly educate its children. If a hostile country attacked the U. S., it would take less than 24 hours for American troops to be mobilized into battle. However, we seem unable to mobilize a sea of educated teachers and administrators to wage war against academic mediocrity, which is a bigger threat to our national security than Iran or North Korea.

The structure of schools in the U.S. is no longer able to meet the educational needs of children today. No longer are the poor restricted to the prospect of becoming manual laborers in a local factory or simply entering just another blue-collar job. Nor are the benefits of education confined to the elite in society. Times have changed and it would only be natural to expect that the demands on our education system have changed as well. No longer can we rest assured that the best and brightest members of our society will educate our children.

Educational change will never occur if school systems are expected to implement change on their own. State and federal governments need to oversee changes to ensure that local school districts are held accountable for needed changes. School administrators often seem to buy in when educational reform is suggested, but somehow genuine change in education is rarely implemented.

Over the last century, many reform movements have come and gone, but in the end it seems there have been no substantial changes. Some might even believe the American educational system is now worse off than ever. From Bush’s No Child Left Behind to Obama’s Race to the Top, presidents have shown an inability to tackle the real issues of education reform. Reform is primarily used as campaign rhetoric, and when it comes time to take real action, the politicians simply unveil a grandiose plan with all the bells and whistles amounting to a dog and pony show.

America’s schools were originally intended to ensure that all citizens were literate. The founding purpose for American schools has long been obsolete, and Americans must have the courage to realize that in order for us to remain a world power, we must institute change. The risks have never been greater; the future of our country and its children is at stake. Americans cannot continue to allow the educational system to operate in its current state. While there is no magic formula or configuration to solve the problems our schools face, we must engender change, and we must do it now!

On the surface, the concept of sustaining school reform is an oxymoron, simply because change is inevitable. In many ways, what is needed is sustainable change! In other words, schools must change to meet the current needs of children and youth in order to support their development into contributing and productive adults. As the needs of our society shifts, our education system must adapt to ensure that it prepares an educated populous to meet society’s needs.

Education reform is possible, but it depends on what the nation is willing to do to achieve its educational goals. Will America develop and pass effective educational legislation aimed at creating viable solutions to the problem at hand? Or will America continue to develop legislation, such as No Child Left Behind, that operates under the fallacy that 100% of our students will be proficient in their core subjects by 2014? The bar for education should be set higher, but there has to be exceptions and differentiated goals in order to effectively accommodate all the differences among teachers, students, administrators, and school cultures.

Our youngsters are the future of this great country, and our educators must do their part to help put America back on top as a major world power in both economics and education. Lasting and beneficial change in our schools will require hard work from a committed group of stakeholders — teachers, administrators, parents, policymakers, and community members alike. Ultimately, it is the children who matter most. At the end of the day, they are the reasons why we must champion the work of public education and adopt a new paradigm.

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Civil Rights groups caution against watering down ESEA

**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.**

A guest post by Derek Black

Yesterday, thirty six civil rights groups released a letter to the Senate on ESEA reauthorization.  The signatories included all the major organizations, including the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the NAACP, NAACP LDF, MALDEF,  Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, National Urban League, and Ed Trust.  This is not the first time civil rights organizations have weighed in on reauthorization in the past year or so, but it may be the most significant.

That they penned the letter yesterday is probably indicative of the growing sense that we could be on the verge of reauthorization.  As noted earlier this week, the House has revived their earlier bill. The letter is also significant in the poignancy and substance of its recommendations.  Overall, the letter reflects a fear of erosion of the federal role in education, which is the general effect in the current bills before the House and Senate.

The letter makes four points: keep accountability for all schools, keep disaggregated demographic data, ensure resource equity,  and maintain the Secretary’s authority to enforce the law.  Keeping accountability and disaggregated data are really just requests that Congress not throw the baby out with the bathwater in reauthorization.  Mend it, don’t end it.  The last two points, however, have a lot of depth to them.

When reauthorization was being seriously debated in 2007 to 2008–the time it should have been reauthorized to begin with–a tremendous amount of focus was on how irrationally Title I dollars are distributed and how little current standards do to actually ensure comparability in resources across schools.  Most notable is the fact that teacher salaries are about 80% of schools’ budgets, but are exempted from any real dollar comparability.  It is an enormous loophole.  While we can and will debate substantive theories about how to improve educational outcomes for decades to come, equity is reality simple and should not require debate.  Racial and socioeconomic equity of resources was one of the founding pillars of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.  Yet, it has been increasingly lost in recent reauthorizations.  The current conversation suggests it will happen again this time.  See here for more on this point.

The last point about the Secretary’s authority is an outgrowth of the legal and political contests surrounding NCLB waivers.  As I explain here, the conditions that the Secretary imposed on NCLB waivers were either beyond his statutory authority or unconstitutional.  And legalities aside, the authority the Secretary exercised during the waiver process enraged many.   The backlash has prompted a legislative move to strip the Secretary of much of his or her power.  It has also prompted what I would call a minimization of the federal role in education, which appears to be more of an overreaction than a reasoned reaction.

One can only hope this messages do not fall on deaf ears.

This post originally appeared on lawprofessors.typepad.com, and was republished with permission.

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Derek Black is a Professor of Law at the University of South Carolina School of Law. His areas of expertise include education law and policy, constitutional law, civil rights, evidence, and torts.

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Diverse Conversations: School Diversity Program Mirrors Workplace

Business schools around the country are thinking about ways to implement programs that increase school diversity on campus. Steve Reinemund, Dean of the Wake Forest University School of Business, instituted the Corporate Fellowship program shortly after he arrived at the school in 2008, which helped the Master of Arts (MA) in Management program achieve the same kind of diversity found in today’s workplace.

Q: What prompted you/the university to institute the Corporate Fellowship program?

A: We had several objectives: We wanted to create a program that would attract liberal arts graduates, with no prior work experience, and offer both the educational background and the vocational discernment to prepare them for successful careers in business. It’s important to know how to lead in a multicultural environment; so one priority of this program was to recruit a student body that mirrors the global marketplace in, as a start, its racial and gender makeup. Graduate business education does not typically have the representation in these two areas that the marketplace demands, so we set out to attract a diverse student population. We asked corporations to fund and sponsor students in our MA program, offering both financial and developmental support. Ten percent of the class receives a Corporate Fellows scholarship each year.

Q: What has been the impact of the program, thus far?

A: For the institution, it has helped us reach a broader network of corporations. We think that people knew about the Wake Forest School of Business, but this fellowship allowed us to tell companies more about our MA program and how it allows them to interact directly with our students.

We believe students receive a richer, fuller education and are better prepared for the challenges and sensitivities of the workplace when they are exposed to many different backgrounds and points of view, and are educated in an environment that that reflects the diversity found in the marketplace.

Q: What lessons can corporate sponsors teach these students (from underrepresented groups) that cannot be otherwise learned in a classroom?

A: The sponsors bring a real-life perspective to students and help them understand the types of situations they’re going to face in the marketplace, situations those students may not have otherwise considered. It’s an opportunity for companies to mentor these students before they enter the marketplace. I know from personal experience the benefits of having interns and establishing mentoring relationships with students: it builds a stronger bond with the students, they become more loyal, more knowledgeable and, potentially, more successful.

Q: How does this program foster networking opportunities, then further develop those professional relationships?

A: Throughout the MA program, we encourage formal and informal relationships, ranging from mock interviews to mentoring sessions, so students are prepared not only with book knowledge, but with practical knowledge about relationship-building. This varied interaction is particularly important, because many of these students have not had prior work experience.

By working with their mentors, students learn where their interests lie, how to make informed choices about where they can excel, and feel prepared to succeed when they are hired into those jobs. We address the challenges and sensitivities found in the workplace, so students are comfortable in social situations, such as business lunches, that are important to success and can leave candidates at a disadvantage if they’re underprepared.

Q: What are your application/award goals for the program?

A: In the 2009-10 academic year, we had 80 students participate in our MA in Management program. We set a goal of creating Corporate Fellowships for 10 percent of the class, and kept that steady as our MA program grew exponentially. In 2013-14 the class has increased to 140 students, 12 of whom are Corporate Fellows. Our goal for next year is 180 students; at least 18 of whom (10 percent) will be Corporate Fellows.

Q: What benefits exist for the corporate mentor, as well as his or her company, by participating in this program?

A: The mentors are investing in, and contributing to, an educational environment where the class represents the marketplace, a program we hope to see modeled elsewhere. The companies and organizations are gaining exposure to talented graduates who understand how to lead in a multicultural environment, and they’re learning about diversity and inclusion on a broader scale that applies, in many cases, to the workplace. It’s a laboratory for them.

Q: What suggestions might you have for other schools looking to create such a program?

A: We do our students a disservice if they are educated in classrooms that aren’t representative of society and the marketplace in which they’re going to lead and make a difference. The way you structure the program has to make practical sense to all participants, so there’s not one formula that would fit every program; the vision may be similar, but the execution may differ. We’ve done it with full tuition scholarships and stipends.

Every student and participating employer benefits in a program that teaches leadership in a multicultural environment. And the school clearly benefits, because this program has an impact on every other program in the School of Business. For example, in the 2013-2014 academic year, we have 12 Corporate Fellows in an MA class of 140 students. Thirty-five percent of the MA student body is African-American/Hispanic/Native American, so there are three times as many underrepresented students who are not on scholarship as those who are, and about half of our MA students are women. This is a byproduct of creating an environment that is welcoming and inclusive to all constituents.

The diversity effort is absolutely integral to the culture and success of our business program, and the student experience is dramatically richer because of it.

Well, that concludes my interview with Dean Reinemund. I would like to thank him for taking time out of him busy schedule to speak with us.