The Poverty of School Reform

[proud2BlibKansan]

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The children have lost hope,” says Phillip Jackson, director of the Black Star Project, a community education hub in Bronzeville. “I see them now as two groups–those who have actively given up and those that have subconsciously given up.” When President Obama was elected, he says he could see the pride “even in crackheads’ eyes” amid the spontaneous celebrations along Martin Luther King Drive. Now those eyes are empty and despondent.

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The former CEO of the Chicago Housing Authority and a former CPS official, Jackson now devotes his time and energy to fight this hopelessness. His far-reaching projects–from after-school mentoring to the Deborah Movement, which organizes women to mentor, protest and patrol neighborhood streets–bring parents, teachers, volunteers and students together.

But as to how Chicago got to this point, where only three out of 100 black males earn a college degree, where, in the last three years, 263 young Chicagoans have been killed and 4,000 have survived a shooting, Jackson casts blame widely. “Schools, communities, churches and the government have all failed young black children.”

In the year following 16-year-old Derrion Albert’s fatal beating in a melee near Fenger High School in September 2009, 78 Chicago children were killed. Jackson keeps a list of their names, ages, dates of assault and causes of death. He runs his fingers across the names and says, “These didn’t happen in a vacuum.” The children saw them or heard about them, but “didn’t process these deaths. They weren’t given treatment for PTSD, though they are living with post-traumatic stress. Now they’re operating under a siege mentality–they don’t know if they’re going to be alive tomorrow.”

“If you go to a fourth-grade classroom,” says Brown, “and ask who’s seen someone get shot, ninety percent of the class will raise their hands. If you ask who lives near a liquor store, who’s seen a drug deal, who’s seen the police beat someone up, you’ll get the same response.” To Brown and Jackson, the crushing poverty and the violence that it breeds is the root cause of low-performing students and schools. “Oppression is a culture that has taught kids this is what they deserve,” Brown says.

more . . . http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/12407/the_poverty_of_school_reform

[Starry Messenger]

1. recommend.

[Karmadillo]

2. K&R. One would think a community organizer elected president would be doing a little bit more to

address this sort of disgrace. Maybe a little less for the war machine and a little more for the people.

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. He thinks Arne is going to solve all of our problems.

[Trillo]

4. "three out of 100 black males earn a college degree"

Those 97 out of 100 may have a hard time earning a decent wage, but on the other hand, they won't become strawpersons enacting a corporate agenda and policies that sometimes, oftentimes(?), seem to involve routine lying and financially parasitizing others, perhaps considered as "just another day at the office".

The framing of a group that doesn't have a college degree as criminal crackheads with guns ablazin' is unreasonable and divisive.