Washington D.C. Dispatch: Senate Hearing Spotlights Homeless, Migrant, Foster and ESL students

Amina reports from Washington on today’s Senate Health Education Labor and Pension Hearing --homeless, migrant, foster and English as a Second Language students are the focus

Homeless Students: Good Law, Little Funding

Nationwide there are approximately 800,000 homeless children in public schools. Ms. Denise Ross of the Homeless Education Office of Prince George County Public Schools, MD is a fervent champion of the McKinney-Vento Act. The law has great aspects. It provides services and support to meet the needs of homeless children. Yet it remains underfunded. Only 9% of school districts receive McKinney-Vento funds! A well-to-do county like Prince George is able to step in where the federal government falls short, but what about the other school districts?

A System That Can’t See Immigrant Student Success

Mr. Michael Hinojosa, the Superintendent of Dallas Independent School District is an eye-opener on policies that miss the point in the real world. Many immigrant students are under-credited and over-aged. Language differences and other issues make them less likely to graduate in four years. Currently schools are judged on their four year graduation rates. As a result many immigrant graduates go unrecognized by the system. The system actually creates a disincentive to educate youth who need more than four years to graduate. It’s a classic case of a well-intended policy with unintended and negative real world implications.

The Amazing Ms. VanDyke

There was a ring of heart wrenching thoughtfulness in the air as Kayla Van Dyke addressed the senators. She’s a Minneapolis student with a lifetime of experience in homelessness and foster care and is now on her way to a four year college. The graduation rate for foster students hovers somewhere around 50%. Senators and the audience sat a little awestruck by this spectacularly thoughtful and confident senior. She explained how it was more than luck and talent that accounted for her ability to beat the odds. After a life in flux she found stability. A counselor to inform her of available services and to offer support during the difficult moves. A therapist to ensure that she dealt with emotional issues. Good foster parents who provided three years of stability and assisted her in catching up with her studies. These are real programs and they reap real benefits.

A Straight Shooter Senator

Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) a former social worker pulled no punches. She stated at the outset “the foster care system is broken”, “we track terrorists, but have no way of keeping track of the well being of these children”. Whammo! “How do we attract teachers to a high needs school for special education facing all sorts of sanctions and mandates when they could just as easily go to highly resourced equally paid suburban school?” Whammo, again! She gets it-- the system makes no sense.

All in all, a good hearing on Capitol Hill today.

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Guest Blogger: Susan Sandler writes about the mission of our nation's schools

What Starts with a “C” and Stands for Building A Healthy, Just, and Caring World?

by Susan Sandler

OK, it doesn’t really have to start with a C.  But we do need another word to go along with “college” and “career” in the goals for schools set out in the Obama administration’s Blueprint for Reform (http://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/blueprint/publicationtoc.html).

By stating that schools should prepare students to be college and career ready, the administration is “engaged in a historic effort” to change the country’s paradigm for schools  (http://www.ed.gov/blog/2010/03/president-discusses-proposal-for-esea/).  The Obama administration is saying that we have to dramatically raise our expectations for what schools should be doing.

If we’re going to change our paradigm for schools, let’s really change it.  Let’s put out a full vision for what our schools should be and do.  While college and careers definitely have a place in a vision for schooling (and perhaps another posting could unpack these ideas from a racial justice perspective), they do not cover the full picture of what education should do.

Socially Responsible Public Schools  

Yes, our schools should prepare individual students for college and fulfilling work that allows them to care for their families.  Yes, they should enable a thriving  economy.  But we also need our schools to be places where students learn to build a healthy, just, and caring world.  As Justice Matters’ Executive Director Olivia Araiza says, our schools should be creating “leaders, solution-builders, peace-fighters, and lifelong learners.”

If our schools were fully accomplishing this part of their mission today, maybe the financial sector would be run on a different model that would not have led us into economic crisis.  And maybe each neighborhood would have more community leaders and solutions to survive this crisis as it hit us on the local level.  And if students learned in school that they are citizens of the world; not just the U.S., and that this includes learning about the histories and cultures of ALL nations and not just European ones, perhaps our foreign policy could begin to reflect a more intelligent policy built on human rights and knowledge.

Racial Justice and Public Education

How is expanding the paradigm for schools in this way a racial justice issue?  Of course, building a healthy, just, and caring world is something we need based on many perspectives and values.  But we need it from a racial justice perspective for a couple of reasons:

1. Communities of color, as a group that faces systemic oppression, have an urgent need for a more healthy, just, and caring world.  As studies have shown, people of color bear disproportionate harm from societal practices that are unhealthy, unjust, and uncaring.  Whether the problem is an out-of-control criminal justice system (http://www.sentencingproject.org/template/page.cfm?id=122), predatory and unfair lending practices (http://www.insightcced.org/uploads/CRWG/Racial%20Gap%20in%20Debt%20and%20Credit%20June%202009.pdf), access to healthy food (http://ecolocalizer.com/2009/02/07/beyond-food-deserts-mapping-racial-disparities-in-access-to-healthy-food/ ), or almost any other problem affecting our society as a whole, communities of color are disproportionately impacted.

2. Many students of color come to school with personal experiences of an unhealthy, unjust, and uncaring world: too often, they have been on the front lines of unequal access to health care; they know what neglected, crumbling neighborhood looks like; they have seen the effects of toxic dumping; they have been in the offices of unresponsive institutions that have treated family members disrespectfully.  When schools take on the mission of changing that, their relevance and connection increases dramatically for these students.

So, please let me know if you think of a third word for the mission of our country’s schools!

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