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The presidential election had me so stressed that I had to run my ass across the border to the beaches and palm trees in Mexico to save my sanity. Thankfully by the time I’d landed, we had a new president-elect in Joe Biden and the first ever Black, female vice president-elect in Kamala Harris . In my lifetime I've gotten to see a Black man elected president of the United States and a Black woman elected #VP . That's magic…the ancestors are proud. @KamalaHarris @BarackObama #KamalaHarrisVP #BarackObama #Election2020results — PeeplesVoice (@PeeplesChoice85) November 7, 2020 I don’t think a lot of people understand how bad Black people were suffering under the Trump reign, which is why 87% of those of us who vote showed up to give his ass the boot. If you don't understand why Black people are most distraught and stressed by how close this race is then you haven't been paying attention. #Election2020 — PeeplesVoice (@PeeplesChoice85) November 4, 2020 A...

Dear Mr. President-elect Biden,  You have given us all a welcomed  message : I pledge to be a president who does not see red or blue states, but United States…This is the time to heal America. Let this grim era of demonization in America begin to end, here and now. Nowhere will that message be more critical than in education. In this area, political division and parochial turfism has poisoned public debate and robbed millions of children of their opportunity to learn.  Driven by an entrenched sense of scarcity, we have seen the powerful lobbies representing public education systems position themselves as the victims of much smaller players in education. They have wrongfully labeled charter schools, private schools and home schools enemies of the common good. Education has become so divisive that many families who choose alternative learning programs for their children fear talking openly about their choices. I hope you live up to your promise of being a president fo...

Even before President-elect Joe Biden offered his inspiring remarks to the nation this weekend, the social media posts declaring, “Bye, Betsy” clearly signaled that the education community was long-past ready to move on from U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Earlier in the week, Democrats for Education Reform provided a shortlist of public school superintendents it would support for the position . More recently, Politico  offered an analysis  of the contenders for all Cabinet posts, naming American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten , former National Education Association President Lily Eskelsen Garcia , and Linda Darling-Hammond , president of the California State Board of Education, as the three most likely candidates. These choices should surprise no one. All three are solid choices with a lifetime commitment to improving public education. All three are so solid that they were also leading names 12 years ago, when Barack Obama was considering his ...

The people of the United States have voted to replace Donald Trump with Joe Biden. It is the first step in repairing the massive rifts in our democratic society. This moment feels good to those disgusted by the anger, vitriol, corruption and authoritarianism spewed from the White House over the past four years. And the alternative would have been a devastating blow to American democracy and common decency.  But, this change alone fixes nothing. We must immediately ask, “What’s next?” The same forces that led to the election of Donald Trump in the first place, the same influences that elevated Betsy DeVos to be the Secretary of Education, the same structural inequities, the same corruption in our civic institutions, the same codified oppression, the same ability for those in power to consolidate and wield it by pitting one disadvantaged group against another—all of these undemocratic systems remain.  As Americans, we will use this moment to demand the dismantling of those sy...

Last week, I was part of a conversation around creating equality and equity for Black students in the public school system . One message that was heavily floated in this forum was the need for more Black-run charter schools as a solution and an outlet to free our kids from the evils of the traditional system—and it irked the hell out of me. Failing schools, curricula designed for white learners, severe lack of preparation for higher education, and more are why Tanesha Peeples said we need to fight against the “false American dream” in an appearance on @thetammimacshow on @foxsoultv . https://t.co/goYpUiQ0EA — PeeplesVoice (@PeeplesChoice85) September 23, 2020 Now, I don’t disagree with the notion that we need more schools independent of the oppressive system our kids are currently in, and I’m all for more Black leaders in schools. But at a time like this—when there’s so much against us and education is literally a matter of life and death—we have to be mindful of how our mes...

In a time when concerns about public health are stealing precious learning time from America’s children, it’s sad that this week’s presidential debate was another dispiriting lesson in failed leadership. As citizens, we should expect the contest for the American presidency to be a top civics learning opportunity, but instead, we got schoolyard rock-throwing on Tuesday that wasn’t worthy of our children’s eyes, ears, or seat time. That’s a shameful sign of three-plus errant years of declining decorum and lost integrity at the top of the American leadership pile—mostly because a lout has led us into moral anarchy. If a president is the nation’s exemplar of our values and virtues, and a presidential debate is a test, then Donald J. Trump spells trouble. The president I saw on Tuesday was a peevish and sweating example of everything I teach my kids not to be. He was rude, accusatory, irresponsible, blame-shifting, dishonest, and, worst of all, a nasty  bully . Let’s be honest here...

Thanks to the pandemic, college as we knew it has been seriously disrupted. This year could be the biggest gap year ever for recent high school graduates delaying starting college. At the same time, emerging research shows the pandemic has knocked many current college students off their path toward on-time graduation. Yet it remains the case that about sixty % of jobs will require at least some education beyond high school, thus affirming that a college degree is critical to socioeconomic stability and upward mobility. Something must be done to prevent a lost generation, further disconnected from education beyond high school. We propose a national initiative to engage people in public service and award college credits for the experiences they gain doing that work.  National service is a longstanding tradition with bipartisan support. The Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), an independent federal government agency, was first created under President George H....

When the families of Chicago’s Spry Elementary and I launched Spry Community Links High School , the city’s first community school serving students from pre-K through high school, we shared a vision to see our students graduate and experience postsecondary success. This was not the experience our elementary graduates were routinely having at local high schools. Our driving force was a simple premise: Education does not occur in isolation from the rest of a student’s life. Family, community, nonprofit organizations, businesses and universities all play an important role in a child’s educational success. By expanding their boundaries, schools become stronger and engage parents and the community. Health services, counselors, social workers and nurses play critical roles. Today, data show that three-quarters of our students graduate and about 60% go on to college, outpacing the traditional high school in our neighborhood and approaching the district average. Most importantly, 80% of t...

Do you know how it feels to almost drown? I will never forget that feeling. I was 7 years old and knew that I could not swim; still, I just had to dangle my feet into the pool’s deep end. The neighborhood prankster thought it would be funny to yank my foot and pull me into the water. As I clawed my way up, I shrieked with terror and began to ingest water between my screams. I. Could. Not. Breathe. Just as I was sinking to the bottom of the pool, someone reached in and grabbed me out. I remember lying on the side of the pool, coughing—freeing the water from my lungs. I will never forget that feeling. I feel it raising a Black boy, and I felt it while watching “ Black Boys .” There were moments when I could only place a hand on my chest to try to catch my breath and moments when I saw my beautiful Black son and nephews in each young man on the screen. I watched the film and came away with a deep healing, a deeper understanding, and a deeper calling on what Black boys need—someone to bel...

Can a white teacher still be decent at their job if they hold and express racist views? Educator Jay Wamsted joined Chris Stewart for a special edition of “Education is Power” on the evening of July 22 to ask that hypothetical question—and to reiterate that we are seriously lacking enough “decent” learning in the education system no matter how you define it.  Maybe, as Stewart noted to Wamsted’s question, we shouldn’t use the term “decent” at all. Maybe we should think in terms of “effectiveness.”  “By ‘effective,’ I just meant, being able to help kids get to [academic] proficiency. It’s not a very high bar,” Stewart said.  “But we’re not even meeting that bar right now.”  No state, no region in this country gets education right for all their students, especially not for their students of color.  So we are left with too many teachers, racist or not, failing to meet that bar. How Do We Throw Racist Teachers Out? Wamsted says there’s a simple math p...

The angry  protestors are coming for public statues  of historic Americans as diverse as Confederate traitors like Robert E. Lee and slave-owning American founders like George Washington. But what do you do when a school building or an entire school system is the monument representing past wrongs? That might be more of a problem than you think. Starting with a piece for Ed Week, Corey Mitchel notes  a cluster of the nation’s public schools still bear the names of Confederates. He notes: At the beginning of June 2020, at least 208 schools in 18 states were named for men with ties to the Confederacy , an Education Week analysis of federal data found. Since June 29, five of the Confederate-named schools have changed names. Currently, 56 schools are named for Lee and more than a dozen each honor General Stonewall Jackson and Sidney Lanier, a poet and private in the Confederate Army. Countless other schools bear the names of individuals with racist histories, including...

This afternoon, President Donald Trump said , “We want to get our schools open. We want to get them open, quickly, beautifully in the fall.” I agree. We need children to go back to school in the fall. And I believe schools can do this so students and teachers stay out of harm’s way as much as possible. President Trump says he'll put pressure on governors to reopen schools this fall. At a White House roundtable, speakers minimized the risk of the spread of COVID-19 among children but acknowledged it's important to protect the vulnerable. https://t.co/3NGu2SoNZx — The Associated Press (@AP) July 7, 2020 But our federal and state governments and our teachers unions are keeping their heads in the sand about the two biggest obstacles to overcome :  The fiscal crisis schools are facing. The increasing acceptance of virtual learning as a way to avoid making painful but necessary investments in schools. We’re already seeing the signs. Thanks to the pandemic closures, stat...

When we think of education equity, we typically think of issues along the lines of traditional opportunity gaps disproportionately affecting children of color. As equity-minded educators, our thoughts may automatically go to how to improve practices in the classroom to improve academic outcomes for those children, so that their future can be painted with more opportunity than what is currently present.  But we all know the classroom is only part of the story. There are always societal complexities being laid on top, and never have they been clearer than in the present moment as we are continuing to reel from the inequities laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic, while simultaneously asserting that Black Lives Matter and we have had enough of this country’s racist pandemic.  When it comes to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the Supreme Court protected the program on Thursday, ensuring that undocumented immigrants who are eligible as originally outlined in 2012 can ...