This week, we’re reading about CPS’s lack of plans to back their new mandates, how communities are fighting back against racist immigration policy, and how institutional racism impacts the ways students of color learn math.
1. What Will Happen if Schools Close June 1st? Here’s What We Know – And Don’t : An FAQ on just how little CPS has prepared for a potential June 1st end date to the school year.
“If the school year does end June 1, CPS would be nine days short of meeting the minimum number of days required by state law, according to calculations by the Illinois State Board of Education and CPS officials. That means CPS would lose $58.5 million in state aid during the 2017-18 school year, officials said.”
2. Sanctuary Cities Are Winning : As the federal government pushes to strip critical dollars from cities that refuse to cooperate with racist immigration policies, the judiciary is backing cities.
“In this case, none of the federal grants given to sanctuary cities were conditioned by Congress on compliance with Section 1373 or any other form of cooperation with federal efforts to deport undocumented immigrants. The president cannot impose such conditions on his own.”
3. Confronting Urban Design’s Diversity Crisis With a Return to Black Places : A new initiative out of UT Austin seeks to shed light on how city policies perpetuate racism by keeping people of color out of planning conversations.
“The definition of planning very often seems to be white people moving black people around,” Roberts says. “And the reason is such because a majority of people who are actual planners or planning educators are white.”
4.How Does Race Affect a Student’s Math Education? : A new report examines how racial stereotypes get built into school performance mechanisms and shape the kind of learning that students experience.
“As the theory goes, with white and Asian students consistently at the top of math-achievement rankings—and black and other nonwhite students continuously trailing behind—teachers start to expect worse performance from certain students, start to teach lower content, and start to use lower-level math instructional practices.”
5. Few College Counselors At CPS Add Uncertainty To Post-Grad Push : An investigation by WBEZ reveals what teachers know about Rahm’s new graduation mandate – CPS does not employ enough counselors.
“Counselors at schools with majority Latino student populations have the highest caseloads and have increased significantly since Emanuel was elected mayor in 2011. Counselors at Schurz High School in Old Irving Park on the Northwest Side, for example, are assigned 500 students, up from 337 in 2011.”
