#DoRightByMe
"Prepare the child for the path, not the path for the child."
Much of Do Right By Me focuses on the ways we can love, encourage, and prepare a child for their path. Many of our readers have shared they feel a call to action and want to know how to improve the path and remove the insidious barriers that persist, even today. Here we celebrate those who strive, create, and amplify the mantra- Do right.
#FundOurSchools
Public school funding in Pennsylvania has been failing families for decades now, and this isn’t by accident. PA’s legislature has created a system where the kids who need the most, get the least, usually because of where they live - 86% of public school students are attending schools that are underfunded.
In fall 2021, parents, teachers, students and advocates from six school districts brought this unconstitutional funding formula to court in a landmark trial. Learn more:
FundOurSchoolsPA.org has an abundance of information, research and tools to take action
Underfunded podcast - Inside The Fight To Fairly Fund Public Schools In Pennsylvania
What kind of education does PA owe its public school students? A judge will now decide
WE WON! “The Court concludes (2/7/2023) Petitioners have established an equal protection violation. No compelling government purpose has been espoused for the disparities between low-wealth and high-wealth school districts.” President Judge Cohn Jubelirer No. 587 M.D. 2014
Revisionist History
If you are a consumer of podcasts, Revisionist History is a must listen with the gifted researcher and storyteller, Malcolm Gladwell. A Do Right recommendation for our readers, listen to Season 1, Episodes 4-6:
S1Ep4: Carlos Doesn't Remember is the first in a three-part Revisionist History miniseries taking a critical look at the idea of capitalization—the measure of how well America is making use of its human potential.
S1Ep5: “Food Fight,” the second part on opening up college to poor kids, focuses on a seemingly unlikely target: how the food each school serves in its cafeteria can improve or distort the educational system.
S1Ep6: “My Little Hundred Million” is the third part and looks at the hidden ideologies behind giving and how a strange set of ideas has hijacked educational philanthropy.
Nice Racism
HOW PROGRESSIVE WHITE PEOPLE PERPETUATE RACIAL HARM by Dr. Robin DiAngelo
Drawing on her background as a sociologist and over 25 years working as an anti-racist educator, and writing directly to white people as a white person, DiAngelo identifies many common white racial patterns and breaks down how well-intentioned white people unknowingly perpetuate racial harm. These patterns include:
• rushing to prove that we are “not racist”
• downplaying white advantage
• romanticizing Black, Indigenous and other peoples of color (BIPOC)
• pretending white segregation “just happens”
• expecting BIPOC people to teach us about racism
• carefulness
• and feeling immobilized by shame.
Raising Race Questions
Whiteness and Inquiry in Education by Dr. Ali Michael
Conversations about race can be confusing, contentious, and frightening, particularly for White people. Even just asking questions about race can be scary, because we are afraid of what our questions might reveal about our ignorance or bias. Raising Race Questions invites teachers to use inquiry as a way to develop sustained engagement with challenging racial questions and to do so in community so that they learn how common their questions actually are. Sustained race inquiry is meant to lead to antiracist classrooms, positive racial identities, and a restoration of the wholeness of spirit and community that racism undermines.
The Cost of Racism
There is an enormous economic toll with racism at the root. "It is the the common denominator of our most vexing public problems, the core dysfunction of our democracy and constitutive of the spiritual and moral crises that grip us all...The Sum of Us is a brilliant analysis of how we arrived here. Heather McGhee marshals economic and sociological research to tell an irrefutable story of racism's costs...and offers a new vision for a future in which we finally realize that life can be more than a zero-sum game."
The Color of Money by Jonathan Tran (Sojourners Magazine, August 2022) "Racism naturalizes what are obviously unnatural relationships forced between value and labor and land and bodies."
Culturally-Relevant & Sustaining Education Framework
The Pennsylvania Department of Education has released new standards that ask teachers to interrogate their biases and recognize inequality in schools and school systems, including institutional racism. The standards require teachers to identify and disrupt racist practices, and make sure their approach to teaching incorporates a variety of perspectives. This is the first time the state has included what educators refer to as “culturally-relevant and sustaining education” guidelines as part of its requirements for teacher-preparation programs.
Public Interest Law Center
The Public Interest Law Center uses high-impact legal strategies to advance the civil, social, and economic rights of communities in the Philadelphia region facing discrimination, inequality, and poverty.
The Inequality Machine
We dare you to listen and not figure out a way to take action. In addition to the research and recommended reading, get your hands on Paul Tough's, https://www.paultough.com/books/the-inequality-machine/
Stop and Frisk: Revisit or Resist
Gun violence in Philadelphia has reached a boiling point. Politicians, police and community members are searching for ways to curb the staggering statistics. Stop and Frisk: Revisit or Resist explores diverse perspectives and solutions to the city's gun violence crisis . The five-episode podcast is a production of WHYY News and Temple University's Logan Center for Urban Investigative Reporting.
Educating for Equity
As the Co-Director of the Race Institute for K-12 Educators, Ali Michael, PhD works with schools and organizations across the country to help make research on race, Whiteness, and education more accessible and relevant to educators. Ali is the author of Raising Race Questions: Whiteness, Inquiry and Education (Teachers College Press, 2015), co-editor of the bestselling Everyday White People Confront Racial and Social Injustice: 15 Stories (2015, Stylus Press), the bestselling Guide for White Women who Teach Black Boys (2017, Corwin Press), and Teaching Beautiful and Brilliant Black Girls (2021, Corwin Press). Ali’s most recent books - the Young Adult Adaptation of White Fragility and Our Problem, Our Path: Collective Anti-racism for White People were released in August 2022. Ali sits on the editorial board of the journal Whiteness and Education. She teaches in the Diversity and Inclusion Program at Princeton University and the Equity Institutes for Higher Education at the University of Southern California.
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Building a college pipeline in 7th grade
Temple University launched a pilot “Saturday College” program to begin introducing students to college at a younger age than high school when they are faced with having to apply. The program is free and open to all middle school students who live in Philadelphia,
“The research tells us that decision-making on whether to go to college begins as early as 7th grade,” said Valerie Harrison, vice president for diversity, equity and inclusion. “So pre-college programs give us an opportunity to really enhance what we call college knowledge."