COE Exchange

Recently, I attended a kindergarten pageant in the (PSD). PSD is well-known for excellence in overall educational programming, exemplary character education, and an award winner in state assessments. My daughter successfully completed kindergarten in PSD and will be moving on to first grade. The outstanding reputation of her elementary school has resonated in my ears since I moved into the school district. Personally, I had found the quality of education, parental involvement, and community building above average at the elementary school where the pageant was held. I’ve been a public school teacher for eleven years. For the past three years,…

Black Paper #1: Clery Report as Symptom of Student Surveillance in Amerikkkan1Schools Note: The Social Justice Section of The COE Exchange welcomes commentary from a variety of perspectives. To date, the essays have focused upon racial oppression. In continuation of this spirit of resistance to racial oppression in schooling, this essay begins a new series of writing here at The Exchange. For far too long, an “authoritative report” from governmental or commercial sources has been labeled a “White Paper.”2 Here at this corner of The Exchange, voices that resist the altogether too common authoritative power of white privilege will be…

Review of Charles E. McCrary Sr., Urban School Security from Behind the Scenes: Views from a Retired Urban School Security Director Shawnee Mission, Kansas: Colonel Publishing 2007. Educational policies such as Zero-Tolerance and Safe Schools Act have created punitive and criminal consequences to students in our public schools.  The terrifying trend of mass incarceration of African American males and other people of color has impacted our society in a detrimental way; crippling communities and dissolving families in our urban centers, and continued impact to people of color.  These punitive policies stemming from Lyndon Johnson‘s War on Crime and continuing with…

The “school to prison pipeline” that overwhelmingly affects students of color concerns an increasing number of citizens. (Kim, 2009) Academicians, as well as activist organizations, raise critical objection to this growing phenomenon, claiming that, at the very least, structural racism persists as strong as ever. Alternatively, routine public rhetoric assigns blame to the child’s home environment and community for the rising rates of incarcerated youth, particularly those of color. Critical scholars suggest that through such rhetoric, inflected by the ravages of systemic racism, many citizens outside of the racialized school to prison pipeline, find it is easy to blame the…