Schott FoundationSchott Foundation for Public Education Search
Close

Category: Analysis

COVID-19 and Mass Protests: Lessons Learned and Future Directions

by Marianna Islam, Ignacia Rodriguez and Mark Warren

On August 20, 2020, The People’s Think Tank (PTT), an intersectional movement space for re-imagining a radically democratic future for education justice, held a virtual convening: COVID-19 and Mass Protests: Lessons Learned and Future Directions.

The online gathering brought together more than thirty of PTT’s fifty-plus members, which included a diverse representation of the educational justice movement and social justice allies. Together, members engaged in a deep conversation about how the education justice movement is responding to the COVID-19 crisis and the rise of mass protests against police killings and systemic racism.

Trump’s Denial of 1619 Project: Unworthy of a Democracy

Dr. John H. Jackson

John H. Jackson

Dr. John H. Jackson

Schott Foundation President & CEO

In our democracy, the federal government has been the entity that the people looked to take steps  to ensure educational equity. President Trump is dangerously intent on reversing the role of the federal government on equity and public education.

Last week, Trump threatened to withdraw federal funding from California public schools that use the 1619 Project curriculum. That educational program is based on Pulitzer Prize winner and Schott Foundation Fellow Nikole Hannah-Jones’ in-depth exploration of the legacy of Blacks in America since 1619, the year that the first African slaves were brought to our shores. Trump doesn’t dispute that historical fact—even he can’t dub it “fake news,” so he doubles down on the notion, embraced by too many, that slavery is now over, no legacy or current injustices exist, end of conversation. With his penchant for extremism, he even claims it’s un-American to teach our children this history.

Live Conversation: Do America’s Cities Love Black people?

Schott Foundation President & CEO Dr. John H. Jackson and Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools Executive Director Keron Blair talk about racial injustice, inequities in public education, and how COVID-19 has revealed the lovelessness of institutions toward Black children and their families.

The Fight For Police-Free Schools: Lessons from the Past, New Directions for the Future

Leading organizers in the educational justice movement discuss how the last ten years of parent and youth organizing helped lay the foundation for the emergence of mass protests and the campaign for police free schools and where the movement is going.

Do America’s cities love Black people? Here’s what the data says

Dr. John H. Jackson

John H. Jackson

Dr. John H. Jackson

Schott President & CEO

Communities are more than just the places we live and work, they are our homes. They are where we meet friends and partners, where we start families and raise children. They can also be places that cause joy and pain. That pain is often targeted, methodical and overwhelmingly impacts Black people.

This pain doesn’t come from the city itself, but it actually is rooted in the lack of love that grows out of the policies and practices created by often misguided elected leaders. 

This month, the Schott Foundation for Public Education released the second phase of its Loving Cities Index, which provides a comprehensive look at the systemic racism prevalent across education, health, and economic opportunity in ten of America’s largest cities. 

There Can Be No Safe and Just Re-opening Without Communities and Educators Working Together

Today, August 3, is the National Day of Resistance by the Demand Safe Schools Coalition. This coalition, a nationwide partnership between community advocates and educators, has “come together to unite students, educators, parents and community to advance a racial justice agenda in public education, in particular by organizing for police-free schools. We’re working to galvanize a strong and growing student/educator/parent/community voice; a voice that says the government must go much further to provide the resources to ensure a safe and equitable school reopening and must provide for our communities and working families through transformational Common Good demands.”

Will “Loving Cities” Improve Public Education?

Schott President Dr. John H. Jackson was a guest on The Damage Report to discuss the launch of the second installment of Schott’s Loving Cities Index. As John explained, “We want to provide the public sector and philanthropy a new way to invest and assess whether or not cities are doing what’s necessary to provide the ecosystem where all students can learn and all families can thrive.”

9 Things to Make Black Lives Matter in Our Public Schools

by Dr. Andre Perry, Jitu Brown, Keron Blair, Richard Fowler, Stacy Davis Gates and Tiffany Dena Loftin

George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and now Rayshard Brooks — all Black people whose lives and purposes were snuffed out by White Supremacy. These four slain Americans were fathers, brothers, mothers, sisters, and one-time students of our nation’s public education system.

If we acknowledge the truth about the systemic racism in our country, we must also acknowledge the impact that racism has on our children and their classrooms. For us, #BlackLivesMatter is more than just a hashtag or social media post. #BlackLivesMatter is a policy doctrine that should govern how we think about safety, health care, the economy and certainly our nation’s public schools. 

For Black lives to matter, we must reconstitute our nation’s classrooms and ensure that they are places that push back against the epidemic of racism and anti-Blackness. Its symptoms include under-resourced school buildings, oversized classrooms, over-policing, less access to necessary protections, lack of opportunity, and disinvestment. 

Together, we — parents, students, community, educators and our local unions — believe we can cure anti-Blackness in our children’s classrooms 

Here are the 9 things we can do today to combat anti-Blackness and racism for the sake of our babies and their neighborhood public schools: 

Addressing Disparities in America’s Education System Amid Push to Reopen Schools

Dr. John H. Jackson

John H. Jackson

Schott President Dr. John H. Jackson appeared on Fox News this past weekend, arguing that the COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the inequities in America’s cities far beyond the schoolhouse, and that educators, districts and states will need billions of dollars in support from the Federal government in order to re-open safely this fall.

He also discussed the new Loving Cities Index relates to this moment. “We know that parental income is the best predictor of student outcomes, and in many respects parental income is a proxy for a host of indicators,” Jackson said, “access to healthcare, access to transportation, healthy foods. So we have to be able to measure the degree to which cities are able to provide these infrastructure supports, and do it in an equitable way, if we care about all students having a fair and substantive opportunity to learn.”

National Report Highlights Root Cause of Pervasive Racism and Inequality in America’s Most Populated Cities

Contact:
Richard Fowler
richard@richardmediacompany.com
202.412.7745
The Schott Foundation for Public Education’s Loving Cities Index, with a foreword written by Nikole Hannah-Jones, offers a framework to help cities transform systems to dismantle racism and institutionalize love.