Fair and Just School Resources

Massachusetts is facing a lawsuit that will likely lead to lifting the state’s cap on charter schools, further depriving traditional public schools of funding by allowing a potentially unlimited number of charter schools to develop. To combat this plan, education advocates are trying to demonstrate how lifting the cap will hurt students. The Massachusetts Education Justice Alliance (MEJA) is asking supporters to testify against the plan at a public hearing on Feb. 10th, and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice intends to intervene on behalf of the students who would be most affected by this loss of funding: students learning English, students with disabilities, and students of color. These students are those charter schools typically “push out,” leaving traditional schools to unfairly teach the vast majority of students who require the most resources.

During President Barack Obama’s eighth and final State of the Union address, the President boldly proclaimed the U.S. as “the most powerful country in the world…by far.” As the leader of the most powerful country in the world, President Obama also assessed one of his biggest regrets: his inability to bring Congress together to reach consensus and make progress on a number of critical issues. President Obama’s proclamations highlight a simple fact that future administrations and Congresses must embrace — with power comes responsibility.  

Community Schools have been getting a lot of attention as more and more districts try and implement them in an effort to mitigate affects of poverty on students' opportunities to learn. In Philadelphia, the Mayor-elect Jim Kenney has called for an increase of 25 community schools. A new brief by Research for Action takes an in-depth look at how these types of schools really work in practice, and what methods of implementation have been most effective so far. This research helps to combat some skeptics, who argue that these types of full-service schools are expensive and difficult to implement, in part because they must be so individualized to each community. By pointing out exactly what has been working in community schools, the research brief provides districts and schools with specific ways community schools can work to help improve student success.

Last week President Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) into law, replacing No Child Left Behind as the latest version of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act. With any bill of this size and scope it defies easy description, and as one would expect given the political climate in Washington, DC, ESSA is a decidedly mixed law with the potential for both positive and negative effects.