Literacy as a Civil Right

Literacy as a Civil Right PDF Author: Stuart Greene
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9780820488684
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
The urgency to create equity in schools has never been greater, especially since legislators are considering the re-authorization of No Child Left Behind as a means to eliminating the achievement gap. Studies continue to show that increased standards, testing, and accountability have simply maintained the status quo. In response, this book proposes alternative ways of addressing these educational inequities, taking an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the complex historical, social, and global issues that stand in the way of ensuring that all students have access to literacy - issues that policy makers and educators can no longer ignore. Literacy as a Civil Right assembles an impressive group of essays that broaden the conversation taking place about school reform, unmasking an ideology that maintains unequal relations of power in school and society. The ideas presented here will help readers re-imagine success in schools by understanding the possibilities that grow from a democratic vision of education. Together, this book provides an alternative framework to increased testing, offering a more humane vision of education that values agency, rigor, civic responsibility, and democracy.

Literacy as a Civil Right

Literacy as a Civil Right PDF Author: Stuart Greene
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9780820488684
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
The urgency to create equity in schools has never been greater, especially since legislators are considering the re-authorization of No Child Left Behind as a means to eliminating the achievement gap. Studies continue to show that increased standards, testing, and accountability have simply maintained the status quo. In response, this book proposes alternative ways of addressing these educational inequities, taking an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the complex historical, social, and global issues that stand in the way of ensuring that all students have access to literacy - issues that policy makers and educators can no longer ignore. Literacy as a Civil Right assembles an impressive group of essays that broaden the conversation taking place about school reform, unmasking an ideology that maintains unequal relations of power in school and society. The ideas presented here will help readers re-imagine success in schools by understanding the possibilities that grow from a democratic vision of education. Together, this book provides an alternative framework to increased testing, offering a more humane vision of education that values agency, rigor, civic responsibility, and democracy.

Literacy and Racial Justice

Literacy and Racial Justice PDF Author: Catherine Prendergast
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN:
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
In anticipation of the fiftieth anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, Catherine Prendergast draws on a combination of insights from legal studies and literacy studies to interrogate contemporary multicultural literacy initiatives, thus providing a sound historical basis that informs current debates over affirmative action, school vouchers, reparations, and high-stakes standardized testing. As a result of Brown and subsequent crucial civil rights court cases, literacy and racial justice are firmly enmeshed in the American imagination--so much so that it is difficult to discuss one without referencing the other. Breaking with the accepted wisdom that the Brown decision was an unambiguous victory for the betterment of race relations, Literacy and Racial Justice: The Politics of Learning after Brown v. Board of Education finds that the ruling reinforced traditional conceptions of literacy as primarily white property to be controlled and disseminated by an empowered majority. Prendergast examines civil rights era Supreme Court rulings and immigration cases spanning a century of racial injustice to challenge the myth of assimilation through literacy. Advancing from Ways with Words, Shirley Brice Heath’s landmark study of desegregated communities, Prendergast argues that it is a shared understanding of literacy as white property which continues to impact problematic classroom dynamics and education practices. To offer a positive model for reimagining literacy instruction that is truly in the service of racial justice, Prendergast presents a naturalistic study of an alternative public secondary school. Outlining new directions and priorities for inclusive literacy scholarship in America, Literacy and Racial Justice concludes that a literate citizen is one who can engage rather than overlook longstanding legacies of racial strife.

Self-Taught

Self-Taught PDF Author: Heather Andrea Williams
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807888974
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
In this previously untold story of African American self-education, Heather Andrea Williams moves across time to examine African Americans' relationship to literacy during slavery, during the Civil War, and in the first decades of freedom. Self-Taught traces the historical antecedents to freedpeople's intense desire to become literate and demonstrates how the visions of enslaved African Americans emerged into plans and action once slavery ended. Enslaved people, Williams contends, placed great value in the practical power of literacy, whether it was to enable them to read the Bible for themselves or to keep informed of the abolition movement and later the progress of the Civil War. Some slaves devised creative and subversive means to acquire literacy, and when slavery ended, they became the first teachers of other freedpeople. Soon overwhelmed by the demands for education, they called on northern missionaries to come to their aid. Williams argues that by teaching, building schools, supporting teachers, resisting violence, and claiming education as a civil right, African Americans transformed the face of education in the South to the great benefit of both black and white southerners.

Ring the Bell

Ring the Bell PDF Author: Karessa Morrow
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781733568401
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This book is written for School Administrators, Educators, Reading Specialists, Academic Instructional Coaches, and Parents. One of the most vexing problems confronting educators is helping students read on grade level. In this aspiring and though provoking book, veteran educator, Dr. Morrow shares her own story of how she rallied teachers, parents, community members, and students to tackle low reading achievement in an urban school, where she served as Principal.

Civil Rights Literacy

Civil Rights Literacy PDF Author: Alicia Lydia Holeman Sproul
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 662

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Book Description


Quality Education as a Constitutional Right

Quality Education as a Constitutional Right PDF Author: Theresa Perry
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807032824
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
In 2005, famed civil rights leader and education activist Robert Moses invited one hundred prominent African American and Latino intellectuals and activists to meet to discuss a proposal for a campaign to guarantee a quality education for all children as a constitutional right—a movement that would “transform current approaches to educational inequity, all of which have failed miserably to yield results for our children.” The response was passionate, and the meeting launched a movement. This book—emerging directly from that effort—reports on what has happened since and calls for a new scale of organizing, legal initiatives, and public definitions of what a quality education is. Essays include · Robert Moses’s historically rooted call for citizens, especially young people, to make the demand for quality education · Ernesto Cortés’s view from decades of work organizing Latino communities in Texas · Charles Payne’s interview with students from the Baltimore Algebra Project, who organized to make historic demands on their district · Legal scholar Imani Perry’s nuanced analysis of the prospects of making a case for quality education as a right guaranteed by the Constitution · Perspectives from scholars Lisa Delpit and Joan T. Wynne, and by teachers Alicia Caroll and Kim Parker, who provide examples of what quality education is, describing its goal, and how to guide practice in the meantime

Designing Socially Just Learning Communities

Designing Socially Just Learning Communities PDF Author: Rebecca Rogers
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113584092X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
Demonstrating the power and potential of educators working together to use literacy practices that make changes in people's lives, this collaboratively written book blends the voices of participants in a teacher-led professional development group to provide a truly lifespan perspective on designing critical literacy practices. It joins these educators’ stories with the history and practices of the group - K-12 classroom teachers, adult educators, university professors, and community activists who have worked together since 2001 to better understand the relationship between literacy and social justice. Exploring issues such as gender equity, linguistic diversity, civil rights and freedom and war, the book showcases teachers’ reflective practice in action and offers insight into the possibilities and struggles of teaching literacy through a framework of social justice. Designing Socially Just Learning Communities models an innovative form of professional development for educators and researchers who are seeking ways to transform educational practices. The teachers' practices and actions – in their classrooms and as members of the teacher research group – will speak loudly to policy-makers, researchers, and activists who wish to work alongside them.

Literacy in American Lives

Literacy in American Lives PDF Author: Deborah Brandt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521003063
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
This book addresses critical questions facing public education at the twenty-first century.

Exploring and Expanding Literacy Histories of the United States

Exploring and Expanding Literacy Histories of the United States PDF Author: Samuel DeJulio
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040123074
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
Exploring and Expanding Literacy Histories of the United States brings together new scholarship and critical perspectives hitherto missing from dominant narratives to offer a racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse record of the history of American reading instruction. This book addresses the many important developments in the history of literacy in the United States that occurred outside of mainstream public education, in marginalized communities in and outside of traditional school contexts. Instead of a “top-down” approach of prominent thinkers and theorists, the book intends to cover key blind spots, including literacy education in Indigenous nations, and how marginalized groups have fought for access to education, by applying a critical lens to the under-recognized histories of literacy. This volume is essential reading for courses on History of Reading Education and Foundations of Literacy.

Radical Equations

Radical Equations PDF Author: Robert Moses
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807031690
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
The remarkable story of the Algebra Project, a community-based effort to develop math-science literacy in disadvantaged schools—as told by the program’s founder “Bob Moses was a hero of mine. His quiet confidence helped shape the civil rights movement, and he inspired generations of young people looking to make a difference”—Barack Obama At a time when popular solutions to the educational plight of poor children of color are imposed from the outside—national standards, high-stakes tests, charismatic individual saviors—the acclaimed Algebra Project and its founder, Robert Moses, offer a vision of school reform based in the power of communities. Begun in 1982, the Algebra Project is transforming math education in twenty-five cities. Founded on the belief that math-science literacy is a prerequisite for full citizenship in society, the Project works with entire communities—parents, teachers, and especially students—to create a culture of literacy around algebra, a crucial stepping-stone to college math and opportunity. Telling the story of this remarkable program, Robert Moses draws on lessons from the 1960s Southern voter registration he famously helped organize: “Everyone said sharecroppers didn't want to vote. It wasn't until we got them demanding to vote that we got attention. Today, when kids are falling wholesale through the cracks, people say they don't want to learn. We have to get the kids themselves to demand what everyone says they don't want.” We see the Algebra Project organizing community by community. Older kids serve as coaches for younger students and build a self-sustained tradition of leadership. Teachers use innovative techniques. And we see the remarkable success stories of schools like the predominately poor Hart School in Bessemer, Alabama, which outscored the city's middle-class flagship school in just three years. Radical Equations provides a model for anyone looking for a community-based solution to the problems of our disadvantaged schools.