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Citizen Stewart Profile picture
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14 Dec, 4 tweets, 2 min read
Magnet schools have a historic bias problem. How do they escape scrutiny?

This from 1992: "At some magnet programs in Broward County's public schools, a sign might as well read: "Blacks need not apply."

sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-19…
And this from Baltimore 1994:

"Even before they open, two of Baltimore County's new magnet schools are drawing fire from families whose children were denied admission because of their race, their sex or the neighborhoods where they live."
Read this from a mother who was asked if her child had an IEP before applying to a magnet school.

#HowAreTheChildren
What about the families that are able to game the system and get into magnet schools illegally?

You got all this energy for charters, let's see some comparative attention to magnets.

courant.com/news/connectic…

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More from @citizenstewart

Citizen Stewart Profile picture
14 Dec
"Discrimination in City Schools Lives On" But Basis Is Magnet Schools, Not Race"

St. Louis Post-Dispatch
February 20, 1994

Between 1983 and 94 the district spent $ 1 billion in state money to implement all aspects of a court-ordered desegregation plan.

This is how it went.
"For at least 10 of those years, the district has consistently spent more money per student on those attending magnet schools than on those in non-magnets. Last year(1993), average spending per student at magnets was 30 percent higher than spending at non-magnets."
The district tried to start programs in the Black schools that were lesser funded than the magnet schools. They failed and had their budget cut year-by-year. There was no rigor or real teaching.

One program was so bad the courts ordered it to be defunded.
Read 6 tweets
Citizen Stewart Profile picture
13 Dec
An interesting bit of history for my "school-choice-originated-in-segregation" folks.

"For Klansmen, like many nativists, public education was the best, indeed, the critical, means of Americanizing "Un-American" foreigners."

Awkward.

cuomeka.wrlc.org/exhibits/show/…
"The public school, Oregon nativists claimed, was the "only sure foundation for the perpetuation of and preservation of our free institutions."
"Yet in the frenzy of post-war hysteria about foreigners, Oregon's Klansmen and their allies were not just concerned about whether public schools would do their duty, they began to worry about the potentially subversive poisons spread by private especially, Catholic, schools."
Read 6 tweets
Citizen Stewart Profile picture
13 Dec
Open Tweet to @professorJVH.

Sir,

It has come to my attention that the @JoeBiden is considering you for a position at the Dept. of education.

Congrats.

Perhaps this is why you have scrubbed and protected your Twitter account, and paused your website.

A few thoughts...
For a guy who has talked a lot about democracy and community control of school policy, it's odd that you would avoid contact with the same public you want to represent in @JoeBiden's administration. Shouldn't you be vetted by the public rather than installed behind closed doors?
Further, this seems to be a trend with you. Stealth, anti-democratic, and nasty political maneuvering rather than actual grassroots action. For instance, the way you and Roxana Marachi spirited the charter school moratorium through the California NAACP was masterful.

But....
Read 10 tweets
Citizen Stewart Profile picture
26 Nov
About 10 education truths I hope the next president understands.

1. Our kids are capable of achieving far more than their teachers and schools think they are capable of achieving.

The #BeliefGap is real and dangerous.

#HowAreTheChildren @JoeBiden
2. Money matters in education, but money properly spent matters much more.

The way districts spend money on staffing, programs, and buildings is rife with inequity and waste.

#HowAreTheChildren @JoeBiden
3. Good teaching matters regardless of where students come from. At present, students who struggle the most are assigned to teachers least capable of providing great teaching. That is a national scandal.

#HowAreTheChildren @JoeBiden
Read 11 tweets
Citizen Stewart Profile picture
20 Oct
Thinking people have to stop talking about public education with the emotive, illogical, and ahistorical happy talk.

No, public education is not and never has been the "cornerstone of democracy" or the "great equalizer" or a "public good." Trading in these memes stunts us.
In truth, the public education system was a Prussian project intended to create unthinking soldiers and model citizens/workers for elites to use. It may be too late to revisit the true origins of what is now a $750 billion public ignorance project, but there's time for truth.
How can you look at the boundary line used to assign students to "public" schools and not see the glaring red lines used to ghettoize some students into dream-killing failure factories and others into islands of unearned privilege?

Are you blind? The great equalizer?
Read 8 tweets
Citizen Stewart Profile picture
29 Feb
Since we are kissing another Black History Month goodbye, and there have been so many posts about the importance of Black educators, I thought I'd offer a few historical points I gathered from Dr. Vannessa Siddle-Walker and old news stories.
In 1954 82,000 Black teachers taught 2 million Black children.

In the 11 years immediately following Brown, more than 38,000 Black teachers and administrators in 17 Southern and border states lost their jobs.

90% of Black principals lost their jobs in 11 Southern states.
Some of the Black teachers that kept their jobs were made to call the parents of every white student and ask for permission to teach their children.

Obviously, White teachers did not have to do this with Black parents.
Read 13 tweets

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