Black Workers Still Face Low Wages, Advancement Obstacles

September 4, 2007

BERKELEY – A new report by the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education finds that more than half of black workers in the United States have jobs that don’t pay well, provide retirement and health benefits, or offer avenues for advancement.

The report, “Job Quality and Black Workers: An Examination of the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York,” analyzes low-wage jobs among black workers, using data from the 2000 U.S. Census.

“It’s no surprise that there’s a jobs crisis in the black community, but what this report shows is that we really can’t keep focusing exclusively on the issue of black unemployment,” said Steven Pitts, a labor policy specialist at the center and author of the report. “This is a two-dimensional problem that includes both the crisis of unemployment in the black community and the crisis of low-wage jobs.”

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New Orleans’ Failed Education Experiment in Privatization

 

Ralph Adamo | August 15, 2007
Privatization runs amok in the post-Katrina New Orleans school system.

At his first public meeting before becoming the new superintendent of Louisiana’s Recovery School District (RSD) in late spring 2007, Paul Vallas took questions alongside his sponsor, state Department of Education Superintendent Paul Pastorek (“the two Pauls,” as they have become known). At one point, Vallas was scolded by a member of the audience for referring, as nearly everyone has, to the current state of public education in New Orleans as “an experiment.” The scolder was a white teacher, who reminded the two Pauls that black people might be sensitive to the idea that they were subjects of an “experiment,” what with the memory of the Tuskegee syphilis protocols and other past unpleasantness not yet entirely forgotten.Mismanaged and undersupplied, the Recovery School District resembled, at the end of the 2006-2007 school year, nothing as much as a failed experiment. It consisted of 22 schools, enrolling perhaps 9,500 students, nearly all of them African American. The other 20,000 public school students in the city of New Orleans (my son among them) in the second year after Katrina were scattered among five officially “public” schools, supervised by the elected Orleans Parish Public School Board (NOPS), and 31 charter schools, answerable either to the local school board or to the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE).

Before Katrina, NOPS had been responsible for 130 schools and 65,000 students. Now, each charter school, operating under an agreement with either BESE or NOPS, maintains significant independence under its own board to hire and fire faculty, select curricula, engage vendors, and determine whether current students are meeting criteria to remain in the school, once admitted. For the most part, schools chartered by NOPS have some leeway to establish admission policies; most chartered by BESE do not, being officially “open admission,” though wiggle room for selectivity remains. One significant common denominator between NOPS and BESE charter schools is that teachers serve without the protections once afforded by a union; they can be punished for public speech, fired without review, and, in general, serve without protection from capricious administrative actions or the limited security they enjoyed when tenure rules were in place.

As state legislators wrote the statutes in the fall of 2005 that allowed the state to take over “failing” New Orleans schools following Katrina, there was a widespread notion that every school that reopened in the city would reopen as a charter school. This was an intention expressed publicly by the ailing superintendent of education (Cecil Picard, since deceased and replaced in March by Paul Pastorek), and one widely embraced by the same crowd that had promoted school vouchers and had been historically hostile to the “public” part of public education. But with too few chartering entities stepping forward, a significant number of students remained unable to locate and enroll in either a charter school or any of the five schools remaining under the control of Orleans Parish. (Those five were schools that had not been designated “failing” and also were not swept up by chartering entities. They do have selective admission criteria.) Those students became the responsibility of the Recovery School District that the state legislature devised in 2005, as did the several thousand students who migrated back into the city after the beginning of the 2006-07 school year.

The story of the RSD is, in part, a story of how the idea that public entities (either systems or individuals) were not fit or competent to run public schools came to dominate the reconfiguration of public education in New Orleans. That narrative was combined, of course, with the narrative that only private, market-driven forces can effectively improve school performance and carry on the tasks of public education.

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Million Father March – A Push To Bring Dads Into Kids’ School Lives

Raleigh: Melvin McNeill, speaks with Shani Galloway, a teacher at Sparc Academy as his daughters look for their desks. McNeill walked his daughters to school as part of the Million Father March. Jeffery A. Camarati/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

Raleigh, N.C. – It’s Monday morning, and Bryan Harris is walking his three daughters down a path he hasn’t traveled before. This year, he’s broken free of his long hours as a furniture deliveryman to be here on the first day of school, following his three daughters up the cement steps and grass-lined walkway to their classrooms at SPARC Academy, a K-8 charter school here. His two youngest, second-grader Shirley and third-grader Jessica, glance back at him with smiles. His fifth-grader, Ceosa, walks with her head held high.

“I wanted them to know I support what they’re doing,” he says.

Around the country, many African-American men are doing the same. They’re part of a national movement called the Million Father March that encourages people of all races, but particularly black men, to be active in children’s educational lives.

Created four years ago, the Million Father March is sponsored by The Black Star Project, a Chicago group working to build strong students, encourage parental involvement, and improve life in African-American and Latino communities. The goal is to eliminate the racial academic achievement gap, says Black Star Project founder and director Phillip Jackson. One key, he believes, is the commitment of dads.

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Single-Gender Classes A Growing Trend

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 09/01/07

I’ve been teaching for 12 years, and I’ve noticed how boys struggle,” said Rita-Renée Hunter-Graham, an English teacher at B.E.S.T., who lets her students jump around and dance during “brain breaks.” “I understand … how difficult it is for boys to sit still.”

Research on the benefits of single-gender schooling isn’t conclusive, but many practitioners say it works. Scott Phillipps, an academic dean at The Walker School in Marietta — where girls and boys have been taking middle school math classes separately for 15 years — has been studying the differences between high schoolers who took the single-gender classes and those who did not. He said he’s found small but significant advantages in test scores for girls who took math without boys.

“The problem is that I think a lot of schools are looking at these kinds of things as a panacea, and this alone is not going to solve our education problems,” Phillipps said. “But I think it can be part of a solution.”

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Helping African American Males Succeed in Urban Schools

 

H. Richard Milner, Betts Assistant Professor of Education and Human Development

Helping African American males succeed in urban schools can seem like an intractable problem, but applying some basic principles that empower teachers and students is a key part of the answer, finds Vanderbilt University education researcher H. Richard Milner. In a new article in the journal Theory Into Practice, he argues that teachers and school leaders must move beyond making excuses to turn around failing schools.

“Many black males have been what I call kidnapped into believing that they are inferior and unable to succeed in school,” Milner said. “Teachers have these same misconceptions, and it spills over into their teaching. Both teachers and students need to develop positive images of these students’ abilities to realize how bright their futures can be.”

 

Milner outlines five key principles that he has found through his research and personal experience as a teacher and a student that teachers can use, regardless of the situation the student is facing outside of the classroom, to “teach and empower” students and to help them succeed. Under Milner’s principles, teachers and students:

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Black Entrepreneur Develops Business Learning Web-Portal and Provides Grant Money to Start-Up Businesses

Eugene Allen

Dallas, TX (BlackNews.com) – Business Institute Of Texas — The modern age of technology is changing the way people can learn about business. Today, the Business Institute Of Texas launched an online self paced business lecture web portal dedicated to educating individuals about starting and operating a successful and profitable business. There are no academic pre-requisites to enroll. Courses cost less than $100 with a 30 day – money back guarantee, if participants are not completely satisfied.

Courses currently being offered to prepare individuals for business are:

Introduction To Business — designed to provide individuals with a basic understanding of basic business principles. Covering a wide variety of subject matter including; business structure, management, operations, record keeping, location selection, goal setting, forecasting, break-even analysis, financing, incorporation, ten step process in creating a successful business.

Business Plan Writing — teaches individuals how to design a business plan. Providing a frame work which simplifies the process of transforming business ideas to documented strategies. Learning to compile a business plan is an essential element to the success of a business. Topics include: generating a business idea, creating a business image, suppliers and vendors, terms of payment, marketing analysis, pricing policy, sales policy, operations, technology, customer care, and financing (including financial statements).

Marketing 101 — this course involves an analysis of the role of marketing within the total organization. Specific attention is given to the variables affecting consumer behavior, the identification of marketing elements, the development and use of marketing strategies, and the discussion of different forms of media advertising.

Upon completion of two courses participants (start-up businesses) are eligible to submit a business plan to be considered for a grant (awarded four times a year) from the Business Institute Of Texas.

ABOUT THE FOUNDER:
Eugene Allen was born one of twelve children and raised on welfare in Gary, Indiana. While neither of his parents graduated high school, Mr. Allen, a third grade failure, used education as his ticket to get out of the hood. He obtained a Bachelors degree in Marketing, and Information Systems and a graduate degree in Business Administration. Mr. Allen has started and operated a variety of different types of businesses throughout his career and understands the challenges that a start-up business must endure to survive. Now a Professor teaching business marketing and management and author of Business Basics / Keys To Business Success, Mr. Allen believes that learning how to apply basic business principles can improve the earning potential of anyone. And, he intends to prove it by issuing grants to individuals that successfully complete at least two of the courses offered by Business Institute Of Texas.

ABOUT THE COMPANY:
Business Institute Of Texas offers a non-accredited text book guided presentation / lecture business training, for serious minded individuals (18 years of age or older) who want to learn about starting and operating a successful and profitable business. The mini 4 hour presentation / lectures (Introduction To Business 101, Business Plan Writing and Marketing 101) are content produced and presented by University Professors and subject matter experts that blend professional work experience with scholarly achievement. Upon completion of the courses participants are awarded certificates after showing evidence of their knowledge attainment through testing.

CONTACT:
Eugene Allen, General Manager
Business Institute Of Texas
972-334-9224
www.businessinstituteoftexas.com

Reading’s Racial Disparity

Back to School: The First ‘R’ / Race

Thursday, August 30, 2007

By Tim Grant, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Rebecca Droke/Post-Gazette

Seven members of the monthly reading group Sisters That Are Readers (STARS) gather at the Homewood Library. Clockwise from bottom left, are Nichole Jordan, M. Gayle Moss, Mercedes Taylor, Velma Harris, Denice Coker, Vivian Shelton and Donna Stilo.

When it comes to reading, race can matter.

A young black male has a better chance of getting teased for reading books instead of playing sports. Black children are less likely to have parents who read to them at an early age and expose them to books.

Until recently, black adults were largely ignored by some book publishers who believed black people don’t read books. And many black people had not been reading books because there were fewer books on the market that appealed to them.

“The racial disparity in reading is a reflection of the differences in the kinds of backgrounds that children enjoy,” said Helen Faison, director of the Pittsburgh Teachers Institute at Chatham University.

“We have to surround children early on with reading,” Ms. Faison said. “You have to create an environment where books are everywhere.”

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Nelson Mandela Statue ‘A Beacon of Hope’

LONDON: Former South African president Nelson Mandela saluted the heroes of South Africa’s struggle against apartheid yesterday at the unveiling of his statue at a ceremony in London recognising him as one of the greatest leaders of the age.

British Prime Minister GORDON BROWN, who attended the ceremony, called the statue “a beacon of hope”.

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Billionaire Bob Johnson Provides Foreword To Conversations With Black Millionaire Entrepreneurs

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 29, 2007 CONTACT:
Meredith
info@howtobeablackentrepreneur.com

Bob Johnson

Detroit, MI (BlackNews.com) – The first Black Billionaire, Bob Johnson, Founder of BET and The RLJ Companies, has provided the Foreword for the Book My Conversations with Black Millionaire Entrepreneurs. The book is a compilation of interviews of some of Black America’s most successful Entrepreneurs.

Here is an excerpt of what Mr. Johnson’s Foreword says, “In My Conversations with Black Millionaire Entrepreneurs you’ll get real life changing information from some of the most successful black entrepreneurs in America today. All in one source, all at the same time. Although I didn’t have a book like this when I started, I believe it is a valuable resource for those who are striving to become successful entrepreneurs.”

When asked about the importance of Bob Johnson being involved Bro. Bedford the book’s author and founder of How To Be A Black Entrepreneur.com said, “This is just a wonderful day, a couple of weeks ago Russell Simmons endorsed what we are doing and now to have a giant like Bob Johnson involved just proves that the message of Black empowerment and Black Entrepreneurship is resonating with Black people. There are some others who are coming on board very soon and we’ll be sure to announce them. I feel Truly Blessed.”

Conversations with Black Millionaire Entrepreneurs is literally sprouting entrepreneurs all over the world and is helping to give clarity to entrepreneurs who have stalled in their endeavors.

The book is available for immediate download at: www.conversationswithblackmillionaires.com

About The Author
Bro. Bedford sees Black Entrepreneurship as the answer to curtail unemployment and corporate dependency at a time when both are proving detrimental to the African-American community, as well as provide solutions to the challenges faced by and the limited information available to African-Americans.

Bro. Bedford has been providing information on Entrepreneurship and Investment/Finance in his free e-zine that goes out weekly to over 2,000 subscribers worldwide. To subscribe and have access to this vital information go to www.howtobeablackentrepreneur.com

-END-

Ex-Texas Southern University President on Trial for Money Misuse

Michael Stravato for The New York Times

Priscilla Slade, the former president of Texas Southern University, arriving for the start of her trial Friday in Houston.

HOUSTON, Aug. 24 — With Texas Southern University struggling to survive as one of the nation’s largest historically black colleges, the former president once hailed as its savior faced a state jury here Friday, charged with misspending hundreds of thousands of dollars on personal luxuries.

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