adequate yearly progress

Oct. 28-29 Youth & Race Conference

October 28-29, 2005

IAAR 2nd Annual Youth And Race Conference:

"ACTING WHITE" Revisiting OGBU and Fordham's Hypothesis

Co-Sponsored by the Department of African American Studies at Duke
University with Additional Support from the Robertson Scholars Program

Keynote:Dr. Ronald Ferguson, Economist and Senior Research Associate at
the Wiener Center for Social Policy, Harvard University

Featuring recent research and discussions on the educational
achievement gap, racial identity formation, and policy studies,

Engaging panel discussions with your and educators

Free and Open to the Public

Registration Information/Parking/ see-www.unc.edu/depts/iaar or
919-962-6810

Robin C. Gillespie, M. Ed.,  CCC-SLP
Speech Language Pathologist
Clinical Supervisor/Off-Site Coordinator
North Carolina Central University
Communication Disorder Department

katrina & iraq

In trying to process the madness of these times, I remembered back to a commencement address in 2003 by Chris Hedges, one of my favorites. I re-read it today, and found it startling. Here's the money quote from the speech (remember that this was Spring of 2003):

We will pay for this (war in Iraq), but what saddens me most is that those who will by and large pay the highest price are poor kids from Mississippi or Alabama or Texas who could not get a decent job or health insurance and joined the army because it was all we offered them. For war in the end is always about betrayal, betrayal of the young by the old, of soldiers by politicians, and of idealists by cynics. Read Antigone, when the king imposes his will without listening to those he rules or Thucydides' history. Read how Athens' expanding empire saw it become a tyrant abroad and then a tyrant at home. How the tyranny the Athenian leadership imposed on others it finally imposed on itself.

It connects the dots rather well.

views from abroad

Mother Country to Colonies: You Bad!

Colonies to Mother Country: Me not Bad, me just misunderestimated!

Bush says aide will try to counter myths about US

Reuters
Friday, September 9, 2005; 2:43 PM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Karen Hughes, a confidante of President George W. Bush who has long helped shape his policy, was sworn in on Friday with the new task of trying to improve the image of the United States in a world that often takes a dim, if not hostile, view of Washington.

After years of working as a political adviser known for her expertise in helping Bush put out his message to voters, Hughes formally took up the post of undersecretary of state for public diplomacy.

Berliner Article Well Worth a Read

hi cultural studies mavens,

This article is provocative, depressing and a call to action if there ever was one:

Our Impoverished View of Educational Reform
by David C. Berliner — August 02, 2005
Source: Teachers College Record

Here's the first paragraph to wet your whistles:

This analysis is about the role of poverty in school reform. Data from a number of sources are used to make five points. First, that poverty in the US is greater and of longer duration than in other rich nations. Second, that poverty, particularly among urban minorities, is associated with academic performance that is well below international means on a number of different international assessments. Scores of poor students are also considerably below the scores achieved by white middle class American students. Third, that poverty restricts the expression of genetic talent at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale. Among the lowest social classes environmental factors, particularly family and neighborhood influences, not genetics, is strongly associated with academic performance. Among middle class students it is genetic factors, not family and neighborhood factors, that most influences academic performance. Fourth, compared to middle-class children, severe medical problems affect impoverished youth. This limits their school achievement as well as their life chances. Data on the negative effect of impoverished neighborhoods on the youth who reside there is also presented. Fifth, and of greatest interest, is that small reductions in family poverty lead to increases in positive school behavior and better academic performance. It is argued that poverty places severe limits on what can be accomplished through school reform efforts, particularly those associated with the federal No Child Left Behind law. The data presented in this study suggest that the most powerful policy for improving our nations’ school achievement is a reduction in family and youth poverty.