Carol Caref taught high school mathematics in CPS for 26 years before coming to work at the Chicago Teachers Union as a researcher. She has been involved in anti-racist, anti-capitalist struggles since her teens.
Want to improve the education of Black students living in poverty? Try what worked in the 1970’s and 1980’s: integration. In that period, the height of school integration, inequities between Black and White educational outcomes were the lowest ever. Now,…
Paternalism is back. Discarded in the 1960s as racist, it has returned as a “successful” education philosophy, promoted by charter operators and Teach for America. Their guru is Lawrence Mead, author of The New Paternalism.
School and housing segregation, and their detrimental effects on students, are directly linked. A report by Richard Rothstein reveals the role of the federal government in promoting housing segregation.
A Just Chicago makes the case that poverty and achievement (as measured by test scores) go together. A recent study by the Daily Herald and WBEZ confirmed that these correlations on a national level hold up in Chicago also.
Despite…
A Just Chicago reports on the educational damage suffered by children whose parents are incarcerated. It discusses the disproportionately high suspension rates of Black students, and the "school to prison pipeline". A more gruesome aspect of the racist injustice system is the murder of children, particularly Black children, at the hands of the police and the courts.