[VIDEO] Well I shared a video about the Great Lakes which includes Lake Michigan. Now a news story about Chicago's shoreline along Lake Michigan. To start with there is a concern with regards to rising water levels on the lake and gov't efforts for the shoreline. Here's the story from WTTW's Chicago Tonight.
[VIDEO] Dunbar High School is located in our nation's capital Washington, D.C. and is considered a Black school. In the late 19th century it was one of four high schools in D.C. and the only one for Black students the other three were for white students. You will hear this voiceover use M Street and Dunbar interchangeably during this video.
Dunbar High School had over its history a very excellent reputation and students who attend there were often able to translate that into success when it came to their collegiate careers or their professional careers as you will see in this video.
However, as happens with schools like this - especially public schools - is that sadly they fall victim to urban public education politics. This voiceover was taken from a book by economist Thomas Sowell titled Black Rednecks & White Liberals: Hope, Mercy, Justice and Autonomy in the American Health Care System.
Here's a quote from Sowell that discusses how Dunbar High fell so far in recent years
For Washington, the end of racial segregation led to a political compromise, in which all schools became neighborhood schools. Dunbar, which had been accepting outstanding black students from anywhere in the city, could now accept only students from the rough ghetto neighborhood in which it was located.
Virtually overnight, Dunbar became a typical ghetto school. As unmotivated, unruly and disruptive students flooded in, Dunbar teachers began moving out and many retired. More than 80 years of academic excellence simply vanished into thin air.
Nobody, black or white, mounted any serious opposition. "Integration" was the cry of the moment, and it drowned out everything else. That is what happens in politics.
The fall of Dunbar began with the landmark case of Brown vs. Board of Education. Though don't get it twisted you should be able to go to any school you want, especially if changing schools will provide for the best education. Indeed some parents out there are still fighting for that for their own children some fight to get their children into charter schools in some cases they try to get their children into another school district they consider much better. Still the decline of the formerly prestigious Dunbar seems to be a cautionary tale.
More of this, please https://t.co/URqKUP5m5Y— Rich Miller (@capitolfax) January 16, 2020
The seven-county area's murder rate could be cut by 30 percent, its economy could churn out an additional $8 billion in goods and services and its African-American residents could earn another $3,000 a year if it could reduce racial and economic segregation to the median level for the nation's largest metro areas.And 83,000 more residents could have earned bachelor's degrees, spurring another $90 billion in collective lifetime earnings.Those were the findings of a study by the Metropolitan Planning Council, a Chicago-based public policy research group, and the Urban Institute, a Washington think tank.
After analyzing homicides locations in conjunction with demographic data, I found that of these thousands of homicides from 2010-2015, two thirds of them occurred in neighborhoods that are two thirds or more black. Compared to just over 12% in predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods and under 2% in predominantly white neighborhoods, it is clear that violence is not equally shared.Conclusion:
Unfortunately, this is not news. Most Chicagoans understand the disparities that exist in the city so studies like these can seem repetitive. But the significance of this map, and other studies like it, lies not in the data displayed on its surface but in the social interactions that create it. While what is occurring is certainly of importance, only in understanding why something is occurring can change happen.
That is why the story this map tells, the story of Chi-Raq, is an important one.
With the mention of that term, many readers may have moved on from this piece, and with understandable frustration. With massive clusters of homicides isolated in the South and West sides of the city, to many Chicagoans, Chi-Raq, the city more deadly than a warzone, is not the city they know nor is it the reality they face. For this reason, there has been constant backlash to the city’s new name, dating from the term’s inception to Spike Lee’s recent film. However, is this image of Chicago really a misrepresentation? More importantly, is our outcry over the term Chi-Raq really more important than the larger socioeconomic, racial, and violent disparities that it brings up?
Similarly, for city officials and community members to continue a blasé approach towards reading these stories is a form of complicity, permitting the city to continue its violent polarization. Instead of becoming numb to statistics and these stories, we instead need to mobilize when Chicagoans like Bettie Smith, Quintonio LeGrier, and Tyshawn Lee are killed. We need to call our aldermen, protest, and make our dissention known.Now how do we change this idea of violent polarization in those violent communities?
In the end, this map tells the story of Chicago’s segregation. This story is not just one depicting a lack of cultural integration but one telling of a social isolation which disproportionately impacts black communities. But just because this may not be the story of your Chicago does not mean it is a story you should ignore.
It’s Their Behavior, Not a DisabilityOf course there is more to this than that, but it's something that is of concern. Especially with the news in CPS that Black male students faces a greater possibility of disciplinary action than students of other ethnicities in the public schools here.
Many Black boys who end up in special education do not have a disability. Rather, they have circumstances that spur behavior patterns that are not compatible with the school environment, according to researcher Ivory Toldson. This behavior usually can be corrected by changing something about their surroundings. Researchers divide students into five categories: a true negative — children who do not have a disability and have never been diagnosed; a true positive — children who have a disability and have been accurately diagnosed; a false negative — children who have a disability but have never been diagnosed; a false positive — children who do not have a disability but have been diagnosed with one; or have a specific disability and are diagnosed with the wrong one.
Published Wednesday, the report shows that despite steady improvements over the last decade, Chicago still lags behind most major U.S. cities in math and reading at the fourth- and eighth-grade levels.
The gap in fourth grade math test scores between black and white students in Chicago widened to 40 points — the largest gap since the national study began in 2003, and significantly wider than the 31 point gap in the average major U.S. city.
Though the average white student was graded as “proficient” with “solid academic performance” in fourth grade math, the average black student had only “basic” understanding, or a “partial mastery” at that stage, according to the report.
The sobering statistics included a few bright spots for CPS officials, however. Despite the widening race gap, Chicago recorded the joint biggest fourth grade math bump in the nation.
Forget cookies and milk, nap time and finger painting. Kindergarten has gotten serious in the past 20 years — and even more so in the past 10. Due to forces ranging from rising parental expectations to the No Child Left Behind Act, many children now attend full-day programs complete with homework and standardized testing.You know, I wish I could find some studies on the importance of pre-school or pre-kindergarten (pre-k). Hillary Clinton advocated for universal pre-k, same effect as turning Kg into the 1st grade. It seems today's parents want to push their children harder!
"Basically, kindergartens have become first grades," said Nancy Carlsson-Paige, a professor of education at Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass.
The growing expectations are controversial, with some experts saying the new kindergarten squeezes out forms of spontaneous play (building with blocks, for instance, or playing make-believe) that are vital to a child's long-term academic success.
Edward Miller, a senior researcher at the nonprofit Alliance for Childhood, points to a pivotal — and seemingly counterintuitive — German study that found that kids who had attended play-based kindergartens actually did better in reading and math at age 10 than kids who had attended academic kindergartens.
"I think the child's innate interest in learning things gets suppressed and basically atrophies" in academic kindergarten, Miller said.
"It starts this process of burnout where they don't learn to love learning and they don't really enjoy school. School becomes a chore. They're exhausted by the experience of school, even in the really early grades, and the long-term effect is that, by the third or fourth or fifth grade, they're done. They're really not interested anymore."
On the other side of the issue are researchers who say that play is important, but academics are, too, particularly for disadvantaged kids who may start school far behind their peers.
"If you want children to know how to read, you don't work on their social skills" in a play-based kindergarten, said Tom Loveless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, D.C.