In the news recently we have had a lot of information regarding social justice, digital equity, prison to pipeline, and access.
As a SIG in the Site.org ( AACE) we were prompted to take a new look at our task and find out a way to involve more members.Since SIGS usually meet at the same time we wanted to give people a change to meet our ideas, concerns and challenges.
On yesterday, at our meeting, we decided to ask the host organization, AACE, to let us go back to our origins.
The Social Justice and Digital Equity SIG started out as a group of advocates who came to the conference , to network, to find out about new events, resources and to meet innovative ways of solving the digital divide, nationally and internationally.
We intent to have a day long symposium event that is half nationally focused and half internationally focused. We will be presenting the best of the best, and sharing expertise in these areas. At some time during or before the conference we want to reach out to the local schools and universities to share, learn about and discuss good practices. We did this very successfully in Nashville with the leadership of Dr. Kecia Ray.
Dr. Paul Resta is our co-chair, he works with UNESCO world-wide and will give his expertise to use to share in dissemination of worldwide ideas.
The rest of us will work as a group to share great national practices resources, ideas and recommended speakers and programs that we believe are of merit. You may know most of our members because some of us have been at this for a very long time. We have stuck to the subject because of its importance to the future of our nation and the world.
Quote
JULIUS GENACHOWSKI, Former Chairman, Federal Communications Commission: “If you have connectivity, but you don’t know how to use the programs and the software, it doesn’t really help.”
We have concerns about access, use of tools, and appropriate teacher training for the use of technology.
Several Reports
CRP Researchers Reaffirm Findings of Increasing Segregation
Date Published: March 13, 2014
Several researchers have recently published articles claiming that school segregation has actually not increased in recent decades, as we have reported in our publications. It turns out that these researchers preferred to measure something else—the randomness of distribution of four racial groups across metropolitan areas. This measure has never been the goal of desegregation policies, nor the way in which progress was measured in civil rights law and enforcement.
Related Documents
Attached file Statement Reaffirming Findings on School Segregation
Civil Rights Project Researchers Reaffirm Findings:
School Segregation Increasing in Recent Decades
March 13, 2014
Several researchers have recently published articles claiming that school segregation has actually not increased in recent decades, as we have reported in our publications. It turns out that these researchers have not disputed our data, which shows the level of isolation by race and poverty experienced by African American and Latino students. They have, however, preferred to measure something else—the randomness of distribution of four racial groups across metropolitan areas. This measure has never been the goal of desegregation policies, nor the way in which progress was measured in civil rights law and enforcement.
Traditionally desegregation progress has been measured by increased diversity in schools that were formerly of one racial group, and by the percent of black and Latino students concentrated in intensely segregated or substantially integrated schools. These are the central measures we have used. The researchers looking at randomness of multiracial groups conclude that diversity at a metropolitan level has not increased. By carefully examining the Washington metro area, we demonstrate that their measure shows progress. But statistics on the actual schools attended by black and Latino students, our measure, shows a clear increase in isolation from whites and middle class students.
CRP conducted a brief analysis, which foreshadows a more extensive forthcoming report, and found that the randomness statistics are interesting, but they do not sustain the claim that segregation has not increased. Furthermore, the progress they report is often misleading, because the randomness method can produce false negatives and false positives in terms of the segregation or integration of students and schools.
Our analysis explains the dispute and the basis for the conclusions in our reports.
Understanding The Problem
The data proves it: Boys and young men of color — regardless of where they come from — are disproportionately at risk from their youngest years through college and the early stages of their professional lives.
By the time they hit fourth grade, 86 percent of African American boys and 82 percent Hispanic boys are reading below proficiency levels — compared to 54 percent of white fourth graders reading below proficiency levels.
African American and Hispanic young men are more than six times as likely to be victims of murder than their white peers — and account for almost half of the country’s murder victims each year.
School to Prison Pipeline
Many students are endangered by the school drop out problem. We are sharing the website as a resource and will soon have a blog about Prison to Pipeline.. how, what , where, when and what to do.
If you would like to contribute to our use of social media, raise your electronic hand.
Bonnie Sutton