Source: The Root
While some of the gridlock among policymakers today can be chalked up to principled differences in political philosophy, some political stalemates are the result of policies that defy common sense. This most often happens when politicians ignore basic realities in order to further their own ideologies. This behavior is frustrating in any instance but is particularly galling when the needs of kids are involved.

The ACLU, NAACP and NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) announced today that they oppose the Michigan Attorney General’s request to convene a special 16-judge panel to reconsider the court’s decision this month striking down Michigan’s Proposal 2.  The attorney general expressed his plans to request a rehearing by the full court of appeals today.

By Tarice L.S. Gray
Black people in America have had a long-standing love affair with the arts.  When black people in this country were enslaved, laws restricted them from doing much of anything, but they could always sing. Music proved to be more than a lifeline.  Portia Maultsby, Laura Boulten Professor of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University, believes that blacks have always used music “as a centerpiece of [their] social and cultural practices.”  It was and remains a way to affirm their African-American identity and be a spiritual bulwark against oppression.

Today, the Council of State Governments released a new report that helps to raise awareness about the importance of dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline.  Entitled Breaking Schools’ Rules: A Statewide Study of How School Discipline Relates to Students’ Success and Juvenile Justice Involvement, the report is the most in-depth of its kind, examining the academic, disciplinary, and juvenile court records of nearly a million Texas secondary school students.  Sadly, it confirms the national trend that LDF has observed in its Dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline initiative:  educational inequity, excessive reliance upon harsh disciplinary practices, and extreme racial disparities in both.

By Kenneth J. Cooper
Though we never met in our youth, the governor and I were on the back side of the first wave of large numbers of black students to attend New England boarding schools, until then the predominant preserve of the sons and daughters of elite white families.

The leaders of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) and the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) have joined forces to oppose the “State and Local Funding Flexibility Act” – an education bill that would dismantle civil rights protections for poor students, students of color, English language learners and others.

By Kenneth J. Cooper
One of the more important but overlooked provisions of No Child Left Behind was aimed at making sure poor children get a fair share of the better teachers. In the decade since the federal education law was adopted, however, the “teacher equity” provision has not been widely implemented, and the national pattern of low-income students receiving instruction from less qualified teachers has not changed much.

By George E. Curry
“Collectively, the pathway data show that more than 51 percent of Hispanic males, 45 percent of African American males, 42 percent of Native American males and 33 percent of Asian American males ages 15-24 will end up unemployed, incarcerated or dead.”

By The Editors
The results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress examination, given last year to a representative national sample of just over 31,000 pupils in the three grades, are dismaying, to say the least.

Today marks the fifty-seventh anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, a case litigated by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (“LDF”) and considered one of the most important in the nation’s history.