New York City’s Bill de Blasio announced recently that the NYC Public School system will phase out the Gifted and Talented Program. Beginning next fall, no new kindergarteners will be enrolled into gifted elementary school classes, which accounts for about 16,000 students. Of those students, about 75 percent are white or Asian American (who make up about 25 percent of…
Tag: Black students
In CPS, Classrooms Are Cotton Fields And Students Are Exploited
As a student on the South Side, I can tell you that most of the schools that I have stepped in have metal detectors, including my own high school. Every single student that walks in the school has to walk through metal detectors, every single day. Every single day, I set my phone and watch on the table, and I…
My Toxic but Open Relationship With Education Activism
As activists and storytellers, we have to break it down and make it make sense to the communities we’re fighting for.
School Discipline Is the Modern Day Chattel Slavery and Damn Near Everybody Is In On It
This post originally appeared in Hope + Outrage on March 5, 2021. Let me drop some numbers on y’all real quick. We know that starting as early as Pre-K, Black students are three times more likely to be suspended and expelled from school than white students and represent 31% of school-related arrests. To add to that, Black kids are five times more likely to be detained…
Critical Race Theory Bans Are White Supremacy’s Trojan Horse
This post originally appeared on Hope and Outrage from Tanesha Peeples on July 15. Y’all, are they still teaching Greek mythology in schools? Interestingly, it used to be one of my favorite subjects in grammar school. Now, in retrospect—and with an abolitionist mind—I realize it was just another subject taking up space that could’ve been used to teach real history.…
CPS’ New Mental Health Initiative Offers Huge Opportunities to Help Students of Color
You know who’s about to get a mental health team to help them live healthier lives? Chicago’s students, at 500 schools around the city over the next few years, paid by the funds directed to the city from the American Rescue Plan stimulus package. Chalkbeat Chicago has more on the new mental health pilot program at North-Grand High School in…
Young Black Men, Get Re-Energized This Saturday!
Saturday’s workshop is open to high school and college African-American males. To register visit www.EZTaylor.org.
CPS Black Student Achievement Task Force Now in Development
Thanks to the advocacy of Natasha Dunn, Tanesha Peeples and other Black parents and community advocates, the Chicago Public Schools has agreed to launch a Black Student Achievement Task Force.