Pedro Noguera

... inquiry, documentation, speaking back, and the reimagining of pol-icies for social justice (Burns, 2004; Guinier & Torres, 2004; Leach, Snider, & Iyer ... One such example occurred at a “speak back” at a high school when Kareem Sergent, one of the youth researchers, was trying ...

When it comes to serving students who learn differently or have other special educational needs, we should be most concerned with whether or not the schools they attend have the ability to serve them well. This is what the Individuals with Disabilities Education (IDEA) Act requires, this is what the legally binding Individualized Educational Plans (IEPs) specify, and this is what most parents want for their children. Of course, many parents also want to ensure that their child is not marginalized, isolated, or separated from other children. Rather than insisting that a school accept a student, however, we should first seek to ensure that school has the resources and staff to meet the child's needs. This is not what is occurring in several cities where school districts have developed choice systems. The data suggest that in many districts, school choice has increased the likelihood that the neediest children--special education students, English language learners, homeless children, and others who are typically low-achieving--will be concentrated in a small number of schools. Under existing policies that judge schools based on student test scores, schools that serve a disproportionate number of such "high need" students are also more likely to be labeled as failing. Many such schools are more likely to fail not only because they are overwhelmed by their students' needs, but because in many cases they lack resources to meet their students' needs and are often staffed by the least-prepared personnel. This is what has happened over the last 10 years in New York City. A 2009 report by Parthenon Group, a private consulting firm commissioned by the NYC Department of Education, showed that the city's "failing schools" had enrolled a disproportionate number of "high need" students. Though vague on how the city's choice system had contributed to the problem, the report implied that because a small number of schools were serving a disproportionate share of "high need' students, their likelihood of failure had increased. The report also suggested that the problem was related to the fact that many selective public and charter schools were allowed to screen out or counsel out the most disadvantaged children. In explaining why some schools were outperforming others, the report found, "Nearly 804 of variance among individual schools performance can be explained by a few factors, amongst which, enrollment size and concentration of low level students (both ELA and Math) are the most important." This report reminds us that it is not only charter schools that may have found ways to avoid serving significant numbers of special education students. Many high-performing public schools employ strategies to screen out such students as well, either by not providing the services needed for special education students, or by employing admissions policies that make it difficult or unlikely for such students to gain access. Charter schools frequently point to the fact that they admit students based on a lottery to defend themselves against accusations of bias in admissions. Anecdotal evidence obtained from the parents of special education students, however, suggests that in some cases, parents are counseled to take their children out of a school due to a lack of "fit," or told explicitly that their school of choice lacks the resources to meet the learning needs of their child. While the extent of such practices is difficult to document, there is evidence that the lottery process itself is unlikely to include parents of some of the most disadvantaged children. …

Page 1. Responding to the Crisis Confronting California's Black Male Youth: Providing Support Without Furthering Marginalization Pedro A. Noguera, University of California-Berkeley Pointing to a range of social and economic indicators, activists, educators, and policymakers ...

Should charter schools be required to enroll students labeled special needs at the same rate as local school districts, that is, educate their "fair share"? Or is it reasonable for a charter school to counsel special education students to go elsewhere, if another school would be a better fit? If "fair share" requirements are not appropriate, what is? Can any school be expected to meet every need of every child? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Exploring these questions are Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington; Gary Miron, professor in the College of Education at Western Michigan University; and Pedro Noguera, professor of education at New York University. It's never acceptable for charters to refuse to provide special education services or to "counsel out" or refuse to serve students with disabilities, but it's a particular problem when charters comprise nearly half of all public schools in a district. In Detroit, where more than 40 percent of students attend charters, traditional district schools are slowly taking on a higher and higher proportion of students with special needs. Concentrating students with disabilities in a certain cluster of schools is not good for kids, and because these students represent higher-than-average costs, this imbalance is not financially sustainable for districts. It's also not good for the reputation of charter schools to say they serve the neediest students--just not that kind of needy. If charter schools want to be treated as a scalable solution, they have to act like it. In terms of national averages, the difference between charter and district special-education enrollment is about 3 percentage points: according to the Government Accounting Office, roughly 11 percent of students enrolled in regular public schools were on special education plans in 2009-10, compared with 8 percent of charter school students. While the national differential is not huge, it concerns some and gives ammunition to others. The problem is, when lawmakers become concerned about this issue, their instinct is to pass quotas or other special ed enrollment targets for charters, to ensure a "fair share" of students are being served. This is a bad idea, for a number of reasons. There is no magic number that will mean the charter sector has fulfilled its duty to special education, and policy should not be created under this assumption. First, averages mask variation. The numbers differ greatly by state and city. Some charters serve large percentages of special education students, others very small. The same is true for district schools, as the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) found when it analyzed enrollment in New York City. Schools specialize: some are designed specifically for kids with special needs, some have pre-K special-ed programs that feed into certain schools, and so forth. Some schools, both charter and district, tell families that the school may not be a good "fit" for their child or that the school simply doesn't offer the special education programs or services their child needs. A fair-share policy, then, should be applied to both sectors. Even then, a quota pegged to the average would be impossible to achieve without drawing some students away from specialized programs that may be serving them perfectly well. Second, sometimes a low special-education percentage doesn't mean that a school is failing to serve students with special needs, but that it is serving them without applying the often-overused special-education label. Charter schools frequently make the argument that, as researcher Marcus Winters found in his 2013 study of New York City charters, they are less likely than traditional schools to identify a student as having a disability. Instead of assuming a child is "learning disabled" if she falls behind her peers academically, they might provide intensive tutoring to help the student catch up. …

This introduction to Race, Equity, and Education: 60 Years from Brown offers a reflection on the state of race and education 60 years after the historic Brown versus Board of Education decision (1954). The chapter considers racial barriers and racial progress; it presents a discussion of racial segregation in the United States, of biological and cultural explanations for outcomes that differ among racial-ethnic groups, of demographic changes that schools must adjust to in the twenty-first century, of narrow approaches to school reform, and of efforts to ensure educational equity.

The only thing that more testing will tell us is what we already know: The schools that disadvantaged children attend are not being given the supports necessary to produce achievement gains. Students cannot be tested out of poverty, and while NCLB did take us a step forward by requiring schools to produce evidence that students were learning, it took us several steps backward when that evidence was reduced to how well a student performed on a standardized test. Why not give parents the right to opt out of tests when they realize states have not done the work of guaranteeing their children are being adequately prepared?

APRIL 2006 573 W HAT ARE the responsibilities of educators while our nation is at war? This is not a question that comes up at most conferences or workshops on education, even though anyone familiar with our work as educators knows that it is nearly impossible to avoid taking a stance on the issue. Should educators be expected to promote patriotism and support for the military effort in Iraq or Afghanistan? If our students seek our advice and counsel, should we encourage them to enlist? Or should we tell them that the decision is theirs to make? What about the Patriot Act? Should we urge our students to accept curtailments of our civil liberties as a necessary sacrifice in the “war on terrorism,” a war against a stateless enemy that is not confined to a particular territory? Or should we

What happened? Most discussions focus on the details of the more than 1,000-page law, which has provoked widespread criticism for the myriad issues it has raised. All of its flaws deserve scrutiny in the reauthorization debate, but it's also worth taking a step back to ask what the ...

... Pedro A. Noguera is assistant professor, School of Education, University of California, Berke-ley. Address correspondence to Dr. Pedro Noguera, Social and Cultural Studies ED 08, Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720. ...

... Author guidelines: www.ascd.org/write Gene R. Carter, Executive Director; Judy Zimny, ChiefProgram Development Officer; Gayle Owens, Managing Director, ContentAcquisitions and Development; Scott Willis, Director, Book Acquisitions & Development; Julie Houtz, Director ...