SECOND PAGE
PPU'S HUMAN RIGHTS (CIVILRIGHTS) APPROACH TO EDUCATION REFORM MUST BE A COMPLETE
PARADIGM SHIFT
PORTLAND PARENT UNION REPORT CARD PROJECT CATEGORIES = MODEL CODE
Background Education
Children and youth have a fundamental right to a public education that develops each individual’s full potential and
guarantees equal educational opportunities for all. Guaranteeing a comprehensive human right to education is a necessary prerequisite to increasing achievement, ensuring college readiness and ending school pushout. While state constitutions afford protections for specific aspects of the right to education, and with a few exceptions attempt to establish some minimum standards, there is no fundamental right to education in the U.S. Constitution.
Our current legal and policy framework falls significantly short of ensuring equal access to high quality education for all our children and young people.
Consequently, our schools systems are failing entire communities. Despite a high level of wealth, the U.S. sends millions of children and youth to schools with insufficient textbooks, high rates of teacher turnover, disproportionately high numbers of teachers without appropriate credentials or training, a low-quality curriculum and crumbling facilities.
Schools serving low-income students, students of color and English Language Learners, in particular, have the lowest percentages of highly qualified and experienced teachers.
In addition, students of color are disproportionately deprived of high-level courses and challenging curriculum, factors which are strongly related to achievement and educational opportunity.
These students are tracked early on towards a lesser education, and afforded dramatically different learning opportunities—especially disparities in access to well-qualified teachers, high quality curriculum and small schools and classes—[which] are strongly related to differences in student achievement.
PPU Mantra
We are the FAMILIES fed up with the racism, push out, so called achievement gap and exclusion within our education institutions.
We are families who will demand our rights for our children to get the education they deserve. We will take our place as experts of our children back. We will model the strength and tenacity of a strong father/mother/grandparent/guardian who does not give up.
These are our children- pushed out excluded, labeled, profiled, hurting and marginalized... Some have no hope. Through our efforts we will restore that hope.
We will do this with our love, support, education, engagement, mentoring and sometimes even with tough love.
We will take full responsibility along with accountability to galvanize, organize, and strategize the families.
Our goal is to rejuvenate our Family community/families through diverse methods as mentioned above.
Our Vision is to see transformed quality of life within our school communities. Our families will be whole again and the achievement gap closed.
Background Participation
Stakeholder participation is a comprehensive approach to principled, democratic practice that sets out to achieve the highest levels of shared responsibility, leadership and accountability. Public education systems must be built on and bound by high quality stakeholder participation, evidenced by authentic buy-in, trust and mutual accountability among all of the people who comprise the school community.
Stakeholder participation models in high functioning public schools seize the opportunities and face the challenges of achieving and sustaining principled, democratic practices within public institutions that serve diverse, vested interests. More than a system of “checks and balances,” effective stakeholder participation creates quality public school environments that are student, community and success-oriented, build the social and political capital of all stakeholders to collectively self-govern, create high level educational processes and fulfill all human rights standards.
Ensuring that students, parents and other stakeholders have a voice in the vast range of school decisions enhances preparation for citizenship, improves schools and leads to a well supported educational system. It also builds relationships across generations while creating community investment in quality schools for all students. Finally, creating democratic institutions in schools gives teachers and non-administrative school staff a voice in decisions that affect their employment, builds teacher investment and involvement in the school community, and helps establish supportive systems to improve teacher retention.
It is essential that stakeholder participation be re-characterized as both an active, inclusionary practice in and out of the school environment, as well as a means of preventing discrimination in the provision of high quality education to all children. To invoke a process in the name of stakeholder participation is to invoke the fundamental challenge of our democracy—effective and inclusive self-governance ‘by the people for the people’. While this challenge has not always been met in practice, our efforts towards democratically based schooling must go unabated—the health of our public education system depends on it. Schools must develop the infrastructure for supporting and sustaining themselves, and the shared commitment, vision and focus required to educate all students.
SEE:prezi/hhhkh
Report Card Press Conference/ October 2016
DIGNITY=SCHOOL CLIMATE AND DISCIPLINE (3)
Background
In order to ensure that every child receives a high quality education, schools must create healthy, respectful climates for learning where the fundamental dignity of students and all members of the school community are protected and nurtured. A school climate that protects human dignity exists when students feel socially, emotionally and physically safe, when there is mutual respect between teachers, students, parents or guardians, and when students’ self-expression and self-esteem are supported.
Yet in our schools across the country, degrading school environments and exclusionary discipline practices are undermining teaching and learning and pushing young people out of school. Each year, over 3 million students across the country are suspended and over 100,000 are expelled. Rather than improve student behavior, these punitive practices increase the likelihood that students will fall behind academically and drop out, and contribute to an unhealthy school atmosphere affecting students and teachers alike.
Part of creating positive school climates is preventing schools from too hastily removing students from school without considering the full effect of such action. Exclusionary discipline practices like suspension and expulsion result in a loss of valuable learning time and do not typically change the behavior or deter it from occurring again. In rare cases when exclusion must be an option, schools need to ensure that students and their parents or guardians have a right to fully participate in a fair process for determining appropriate consequences.
To achieve this, states, districts and schools must adopt preventive and positive approaches to discipline that support students in building social and behavioral skills, resolving conflicts in a non-violent manner, and creating productive learning environments. Research has shown that positive approaches to discipline can improve student engagement, academic performance and teacher satisfaction, while also reducing violence and disciplinary incidents in schools.Across the country, educators and communities are advocating for school-wide models for discipline such as Restorative Practices and Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS), which give teachers and students the tools to build a positive school community and to prevent and respond to conflict in ways that address students’ social, emotional and academic needs. When implemented, these interventions can reduce suspensions by up to 50%, improve school climate, increase teacher effectiveness and support better educational outcomes for all students.
In order for positive approaches like restorative practices and PBIS to be successful, states, districts and schools must also minimize and work towards eliminating the need for police personnel in schools, The presence of police or other law enforcement personnel (including probation officers) increases anxiety and contributes greatly to the criminalization of low-income youth,youth of color, youth with disabilities and LGBTQ youth, including disproportionate rates of arrest and referrals to the juvenile courts and detention halls system that in turn lead to push out/drop out and incarceration later in life.
Change is also needed in the juvenile and criminal justice systems to ensure students’ human right to education. Criminal penalties for status offenses, including truancy, should be eliminated and juvenile detention, jails and all “lock-ups” must provide educational services that meet the same standards as regular schools. Juvenile and criminal justice facilities, as well as school systems, must also ensure smooth transitions for students from lock-ups back to schools.
PORTLAND PARENT UNION CREATED SOMETHING CALLED RESTORATIVE LISTENINGDIALOGUE (all one word) TO GET PEOPLE TO TALK TO EACH OTHER". THE PEOPLE CELEBRATING PEOPLE PROGRAM IS THE CATALYST. PCP STARTED IN 2006 WHEN PPS KEPT MESSING WITH JEFFERSON AND IS THE MOTHER OF RLD......
The first DIALOGUE CIRCLE, with Teachers and families, was created with Rethinking Schools, Judith Mowry, City of Portland (Restorative Dialogues on Gentrification), Linea King teacher representing P.A.T (Portland Association of Teachers). We invited the City of Portland's facilitators, and Resolutions Northwest's facilitators. The planning started in 2010. The event happened in June 2011.
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” -- Anonymous
If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us walk together…”
--- Lila Watson, Australian Aboriginal woman "Aboriginal activists group, Queensland, 1970s
WE WANT FREEDOM AND PROTECTION FROM DISCRIMINATION (4)
Freedom from Discrimination In PPS. Disparities in both access to educational opportunities and in educational outcomes are denying certain students their right to a quality education based on race, poverty, sexual orientation, gender and other factors. In particular, there is extensive research showing that students of color, students with disabilities, and other vulnerable populations, face disproportionately harsh and exclusionary discipline. Such discrimination takes the form of either policies that intentionally discriminate or policies that are not intentionally discriminatory but nevertheless have a disparate and negative impact on black children. Go To BACKGROUND
Our group PPU pushes against disparities everyday of our lives.
The Portland Parent Union
was founded in April of 2009 by Sheila Warren a, mother, grandmother, activist and advocate in the Portland Or. Public School Community. She saw the interests of the teachers, school administrators, and district leadership well represented and controlling decision making. The parents and students themselves suffering from the lack of a strong collective voice and support.
Tired of seeing parents - including herself and her family - pushed out, and after struggling with conflicts that should have been easily resolved, Sheila realized there was no organizational framework designed explicitly to advocate for parents and families and represent them when dealing with the school district. Other stakeholders have institutionally powerful support systems: teachers and staff have unions, principals have district administrators, district administrators have the superintendent, and the superintendent has the school board and full-time legal counsel. Against this institutional juggernaut, a family stands alone!
After many failed attempts to get a fair process and closure for her and her family, she was determined that no other family should go thru what she and her family had gone thru.
The Portland Parent Union was born of the desire to give parents representation and a collective voice equal with what teachers have. We will be a centralized group of parents and families connected to resources and supports necessary to be powerful advocates for our children and for each other, and ultimately for positive institutional changes and the greater common good.
" WE GOT PARENT POWER "
PORTLAND PARENT UNION trusts that by empowering and collecting our voices we will be a force for Social Justice Equity and progress in our communities as well as in the educational system.
Background
Students, parents or guardians, educators and all stakeholders in the educational process have a right to know what is happening in the educational system in order to hold schools and governments accountable. Regular access to critical information and the ability to bring about systemic changes when necessary are essential elements of the human right to a quality education. Schools and districts must allow for relevant information to be reviewed in each of the areas described in the previous chapters of the Model Code.
Substantive and detailed information must be collected for all critical indicators—from special education referrals and educational outcomes to disciplinary incidents and interactions with police officers in schools. In order for the data to be analyzed in an efficient but thorough manner, definitions of basic categories must be consistent across school districts and states, and data collection methods must be standardized. To be useful in assessing educational equity, the information collected needs to be dis-aggregated and broken down by disproportionately impacted groups. Reporting must be conducted with sufficient detail and accessibility to allow for in-depth review by all stakeholders.
Once data is collected, it must be put to work. It is critical for institutional actors at the federal, state, local and school levels to use data in making decisions to guide instructional practices, monitor disciplinary practices, provide data on student performance to determine the current level of learning, measure and report progress toward school goals, and for ongoing reevaluation to determine if additional support is needed after initial assessments and findings. This means establishing an infrastructure to analyze the data that is collected and draw true comparisons across schools, districts and states allowing parents or guardians and students to know what is expected and what is needed to improve school climate. Teachers must have organized records of student and school performance for schools to know what is working or not working with instruction and disciplinary practices, and school and district-level teams need to have comprehensive data on student performance for decision making.
Achieving this goal requires more than simply making the data publicly available in a readable and consistent way; it means creating intentional structures that allow institutional actors and stakeholders to see where they stand and take steps to improve the educational circumstances of students. Thus, PORTLAND PUBLIC SCHOOLS must also put in place meaningful and comprehensive internal analysis structures
“I’ve been suspended five times, been to alternative schools, they made me feel like I was a bad kid… I probably would have graduated on time.” —Youth Listening Sessions
DATA MONITORING AND ACCOUNTABILITY (5)
click this one to enlarge to read
Organizing Parents for Better Outcomes
PPU has made important steps so that we, amongst the rest of the Family communities, can go forth to do the work that we are called to do. Every family of the educational system has a right to be heard and the children have a right to a great education. We are created in the divine likeness of those who came to demand before us. We live a struggle that we know to well but are creating/demanding safe spaces for us to be heard.. This is what will sustain us.
We write of mental and physical oppression that attempts to keep our children bound to that educational slavery (testing, exclusion, labeling, profiling, privilege). Even though our Families have been indoctrinated with the belief that they are inferior, we will be courageous enough to know that families will evolve into the strong advocates who are respected and listened to as well as looked at as the true leaders.
Our educational oppression is a timeless message that tells of the struggle of our marginalized families and how every day we push our children to rise above the education system's expectations. We must see and name the process of knowing and connecting to the RLD's message as our Families' capital.
We are dedicated to the growth and maturity of our Families/Students and have an inner courage to conquer the trials we come across.
When asked for a word to describe the capital of our Families, we call it "unifiedcollaborative" capital. Ours is a community built on the strength drawn from the love of our Children. This is
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CHILDREN EXPECT LOVE AND A SAFE ENVIRONMENT
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PARENTS EXPECT TO BE HEARD
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FAMILIES EXPECT ACTION ON THEIR BEHALF
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OUR COMMUNITIES EXPECT CULTURALLY RELEVENT TEACHINGS FOR OUR CHILDREN
