From Desegregation to “No Child Left Behind:” a New Memoir by a Civil Rights Fighter Who Made a Difference. James Meredith’s New Book, A Mission From God: A Memoir and Challenge for America.

September 30th marked the 50th anniversary of the historic desegregation of the University of Mississippi. James Meredith, the student whose courage made this milestone in the fight against segregation possible, has published a new book talking about his journey and challenging what he sees as misguided educational policies today. The book is entitled, Mission from God: A Memoir and Challenge for America. We may publish a review of his book in a future issue of the journal, but readers may want to read the press release now.


PRESS RELEASE OF BOOK:

CIVIL RIGHTS HERO BLASTS OBAMA AND ROMNEY FOR DESTROYING AMERICAN EDUCATION

On the Eve of 50th Anniversary of his Historic Desegregation of the University of Mississippi on September 30, James Meredith Urges Citizens to “Storm the Schools”

September 21, 2012: Civil rights giant James Meredith, author of the provocative, just-released book A MISSION FROM GOD: A MEMOIR AND CHALLENGE FOR AMERICA (Simon & Schuster), charged today that both President Obama and Governor Romney are contributing to the destruction of American K-through-8 public education by proposing failed or unproven policies, supporting the continued waste of billions of dollars of taxpayer funds on education, and neglecting America’s children, especially the poor.

“There is no real difference between the two candidates and parties when it comes to the most critical domestic issue of our age, public education,” Meredith says. “Both Obama and Romney are in favor of multi-billion-dollar boondoggles and money-grabs that have little or no evidence of widespread benefit to K-through-8 children or the community at large, like over-reliance on high-stakes standardised testing; over-reliance on charter schools and cyber-charters; and the funding and installation of staggering amounts of unproven computer products in schools.”

According to Meredith, “Education is much too important to be left to politicians. They have failed. They came up with No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, both of which are largely failures. It is time for parents, families and teachers to take back control, and to step up to their responsibilities to take charge of education.”

His solution? “Storm the schools,” says Meredith, echoing the challenge he issues in his book A MISSION FROM GOD, which has been compared by one reviewer to a work by Dostoyevsky and hailed by Publishers Weekly as “lively and compelling.” He says, “I call on every American citizen to commit right now to help children in the public schools in their community, especially those schools with disadvantaged students.” He also suggests that citizens flood the schools with offers to volunteer to read to young children, and flood every school board and political meeting to demand that politicians and bureaucrats justify, with concrete evidence, every proposal made and every dollar being spent on public education, line by line.

While Meredith does not endorse either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, and does not endorse most individual education policy proposals, he is announcing a 4-point Manifesto to Rescue American Education, that calls for America to:

• Suspend billions of dollars of public spending on unproven high-stakes standardized testing and unproven computer products in schools, and redirect those and other necessary funds to;

• Support sharply boosting teacher quality, qualifications and pay, especially in the poorest neighborhoods,

• Expand early childhood education and community schools, especially in the poorest neighborhoods, and,

• Strengthen the back-to-basics fundamentals of K-8 education, including play-based learning for youngest students; add or restore history, civics, the arts, music and physical education to the core subjects of math, science and English; and provide proper nutrition, medical and social support services for poor children through the schools.

“The outrageous, unjust public shaming and scapegoating of teachers by politicians and self-appointed pundits must end, our problems are mostly not their fault,” says Meredith. “Teachers should be respected, revered, compensated, empowered, loved and supported to give our children the education they desperately need. And that will only happen when we, as a people, take back control of our schools.”

About James Meredith: Meredith’s one-man crusade to desegregate the University of Mississippi at Oxford exactly 50 years ago, on September 30, 1962, is considered one of the great turning points and triumphs of the civil rights era, and led the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. to place Meredith at the top of his own list of heroes in his Letter From a Birmingham Jail. In 1966, Meredith was shot while leading a “March Against Fear,” a campaign that helped open the floodgates of voter registration in the South.

Written with award-winning author William Doyle, A MISSION FROM GOD: A MEMOIR AND CHALLENGE FOR AMERICA is published to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the “Battle of Oxford” and reveals the inside story of James Meredith’s epic American journey and his challenge for Americans to save their education system.

Arkansas School Choice Law Found Unconstitutional

Readers will remember our 2007 journal’s special issue on the U.S. Supreme Court decision, PICS v Seattle School District, when the High Court struck down Seattle’s policies to use race as a factor in public school admissions. Seattle had a long history of attempts to integrate its public schools without (or ahead of) a mandate of a court order, attempts that were constantly challenged by citizen initiatives. Its final attempt to use race as a tiebreaker when enrollment to a desired school choice was filled was found unconstitutional in the 2007 High Court decision.


Recently, a Federal Court struck down an Arkansas school choice law that reflects the reasoning of the earlier U.S. Supreme Court decision. Unlike Seattle, however, the state of Arkansas had a long history of court orders for desegregation and was concerned about preserving its desegregation efforts.


According to an Associated Press release on June 8th, U.S. District Judge Robert Dawson found the provision of the law dealing with race violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and wrote in his decision:

The State must employ a more nuanced, individualized evaluation of school and student needs, which, while they may include race as one component, may not base enrollment or transfer options solely on race.

Because the provision could not be separated from the rest of the law, the court struck down the entire school choice law.  The decision in Teague v. Arkansas Board of Education came down on June 8^th.

School Segregation: An Update on our Journal's Continuing Coverage

One of the purposes of our blog is to provide updates on topics covered in the Journal of Educational Controversy. Indeed, the journal itself is an experiment in creating a concentrated study of current controversies that is more than a one–time coverage of ideas but rather an ongoing in-depth look at a topic. Many of our journal’s issues have included an introductory section with articles that provide a broader context for understanding the topic, articles written in response to the actual controversy posed, and a section for related issues connected with the topic. The rejoinder section is intended to continue the conversation through peer review responses to the articles and the blog is intended to continue a more informal discussion of the ideas. Even our video series, “Talking with the Authors,” is intended to bring a broader understanding of the ideas by exploring the topic with the author in an interview that provides a look at the person behind the article. And our public forums, that are also videotaped and often made available in the journal, try to continue the exploration of these ideas in the context of a discussion or debate among the authors. Indeed, each issue of the journal is conceived as almost a mini-course on the topic with the conversation continuing into the future, something, we believe is unique for journals. Our goal is to provide a public space where scholars, educators, policymakers and the public can come together and engage in a deeper understanding of the controversies that arise in a pluralistic, liberal democracy.



Our winter 2007 issue on “Jonathan Kozol's Nation of Shame Forty Years Later” tried to do all these things. Dedicated to Jonathan Kozol, who was the journal’s distinguished speaker at our university, the journal published his prologue to the topic along with the video of his talk. The issue was published at the time his new book, The Shame of the Nation, the Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America, had just come out. Fortuitously, it was also the time the U.S. Supreme Court had decided to hear arguments in the Seattle case on the use of race as a factor in public school admissions policy in PICS v. Seattle School District No.1 et al. So in addition to the articles in response to the controversy, we published a special section on “Washington State Politics and the future U.S. Supreme Court decision.“ After the issue went online, the High Court rendered its decision and we covered it in our rejoinder’s section. Some key players took part in our public forum that year.


Our Introductory Section for that issue contained a background essay to provide a context for the theme. Gary Orfield, distinguished professor of education at UCLA and co-director of the Civil Rights Project/El Proyecto de CRP, had permitted us to excerpt sections of his 2006 Report on Racial Transformation and the Changing Nature of Segregation. A member of our editorial board provided a short introduction to a selection of excerpts along with a link to the entire report. This morning, we just learned about a new manual that was released by the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA on Integrating Suburban Schools: How to Benefit from Growing Diversity and Avoid Segregation. According to the press release, the manual is intended to provide “invaluable guidance for education stakeholders in suburban school districts — including school board members, parents, students, community activists, administrators, policymakers and attorneys “ as they try to achieve “positive and lasting multiracial diversity.”


The 2010 census indicated a very large movement of African American and Latino families to suburbia. As CRP Co-director Gary Orfield notes, “Many hundreds of suburban communities that were all-white when they were constructed, and had experienced little diversity until the recent past, are now facing important questions about how they can achieve lasting and successful integration and avoid the destructive resegregation by race and poverty that affected so many areas in the central cities a half century ago.”


The manual offers the following information:

• A comprehensive discussion of the critical importance of diverse learning environments in racially changing suburban school districts.


• The history of court-ordered desegregation efforts and an overview of the current legal landscape governing school integration policy.


• General legal principles for creating racially diverse schools.


• The vital role that teachers and administrators play in building successfully integrated schools and classrooms.


• Specific examples of suburban school districts promoting high quality, inclusive and integrated schools.


• Strategies for teaching in racially diverse classrooms.


• Methods for building the political will and support in your community for voluntary integration policies.


• An extensive and reader-friendly list of education and legal resources including easily disseminated fact sheets on important topics related to school diversity.

Our readers can download the manual by going to the website of the Civil Rights Project at: K-12 Research Section.  The press release also indicates that the manual may be copied or reprinted and used in classes without permission or payment.

The Journal is now on YouTube

In the interests of getting these educational issues to the largest audience possible, we have begun posting excerpts from our "Talking With the Authors" series. First up is former Ballard High School principal David Engle.

In the fall of 2000, David Engle became the principal of Ballard High School in Seattle. At the time, the Seattle School was implementing an integration plan that allowed families to choose which high school they would like to attend. In the event of high enrollment at a particular school, the district had made provisions for a "racial tiebreaker" to be used, giving minority groups priority over the substantial population of white students in the area. When, after the protests of many of the white neighborhoods in the Seattle area, the 9th Circuit Court ruled against use of the "racial tiebreaker," Engle resigned his position in protest.

Stay tuned for excerpts from our interview with Aaron Caplan, and our forthcoming interview with Bill Lyne.


Go to the video on YouTube.

David Engle's article, "As Our Students Watched," first appeared in our Winter 2007 issue "Jonathan Kozol's Nation of Shame Forty Years Later."

Click here to watch our full interview with Engle.