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Monday, July 21, 2014

Newspapers and the Civil Rights Movement: 1954-1957

Reposted with permission of David R. Davies
In the early postwar years newspapers struggled with a challenging, continuing news story--black Americans' civil rights struggle in the years before and after the United States Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. The civil rights story revealed newspapers' profound difficulty in covering social upheaval. Reporters and editors were as slow to come to terms with the civil rights story as they had been with television, print journalism's other continuing challenge of the 1950s. The complicated story of long-term societal change would eventually strain relations between Northern and Southern editors, exacerbate journalists' questions about objectivity, and sharpen newspapers' competition with television news. Moreover, newspapers' treatment of black Americans in their news pages highlighted the print medium's resistance to change. Desegregation would indeed prove a difficult story to tell.

Before the Supreme Court transformed desegregation into a national imperative, black Americans had long been virtually invisible in the pages of the nation's daily press. By and large, blacks were not mentioned in most white-owned newspapers unless they committed a crime or died a violent death. On the rare occasions when blacks did merit a mention in the newspaper, they were further identified by race, and in many journals "black news" was segregated from "white news." In the late 1940s and early 1950s, however, journalists' treatment of blacks had begun to improve by degrees.
In the early postwar years, some newspapers had retreated from their policy of identifying blacks by race in news articles, and a few had even begun to use courtesy titles. This development was in response to the pleas of black leaders, who believed that racial identification of blacks in crime stories had hurt the public image of the entire black race.(1)

The New York Times had announced a new policy of omitting racial designations in an editorial August 11, 1946. "This may seem like a small thing," theTimes' editorialist wrote. "The Negroes don't think so." The Times, echoing the complaints of black leaders, said that racial designations, particularly in crime articles, increased ill will toward blacks. "The press, we believe, has a special and heavy responsibility, not merely editorially . . . but in its treatment of news." The Times' policy was not to refer to race unless doing so would serve a legitimate purpose, as in articles about a race riot or the search for a suspect in a crime. The new policy was enough of a departure from standard newspaper procedure to attract coverage by Time magazine.(2)Members of the Sulzberger family, owners of the Times, were sensitive to ethnic labels and rigidly enforced the newspaper's policy. Once, for example, after a reader complained to Arthur Ochs Sulzberger that the Times had referred to Lena Horne as a "Negro singer," the publisher demanded an explanation from executive editor Turner Catledge.(3)

A 1952 survey of thirty-four Deep South dailies by the Columbus (Ga.) Ledger found that only half were using courtesy titles for blacks or running regular columns or pages of black news. Still, that represented progress. The Ledger's Robert W. Brown said the figures reflected "a significant change in [the] attitude of the press toward the Negro in the last decade."(4) By 1955, NAACP executive secretary Walter White believed that newspapers were becoming increasingly mature in their treatment of racial matters. "In 1955 a majority of American newspapers were presenting news about Negroes and other racial minorities, unfavorable and favorable, without racial tags," White observed.(5)

But a report on Southern newspapers' coverage of racial news released in 1949 by the Southern Regional Council (SRC), a biracial group of educators based in Atlanta, gave Southern newspapers mixed reviews. "The past ten years have seen a marked improvement in the coverage of racial news by Southern newspapers," the report said. Still, while the Southern press was largely free of the race-baiting common in previous decades, the Council reported, blacks continued to be ignored in most newspapers unless they committed a crime against a white. And many newspapers persisted in inequitable treatment of news of the two races.(6)

"North and South, most newspapers are consistently cruel to the colored man," observed the 1946-47 class of Harvard University's Nieman fellows--nine veteran reporters from around the country--in a 1947 book, Your Newspaper. "As pictured in many newspapers, the Negro is either an entertaining fool, a dangerous animal, or (on the comparatively rare occasions when a Negro's achievements are applauded) a prodigy of astonishing attainments, considering his race."(7) More often, blacks were simply ignored. Simeon Booker of Jet--a black-oriented magazine--in 1955 examined the numerous daily newspapers Jet received and found that most in both North and South included no obituaries or local social, civic, church, and business news about blacks. "It is shocking to appraise the sum total of so-called Negro news," Booker concluded.(8)

Even at liberal newspapers such as the Washington Post, black news did not rate publication. Ben Bradlee, later the Post's managing editor, had just begun work at the newspaper in 1948 when he volunteered to cover a crime he had heard about on the police radio. "Naw," the night city editor told Bradlee, "that's black." At the Post as at other newspapers, Bradlee recalled, "Incidents were routinely not covered because they involved blacks."(9)

"[T]he only time a black man ever got in the paper was if he were in trouble," recalled Ira B. Harkey, Jr., the editor and publisher of the Pascagoula (Miss.) Chronicle from 1948 to 1963. "He'd been arrested for something, he'd been accused of something, he'd been executed, he was being searched for as a fugitive. Particularly in the smaller newspapers, there was never a positive story about a black--blacks winning honors, graduating from school, getting scholarships and so on, nothing of that sort appeared in the newspapers." Such policies applied at most daily newspapers in cities both large and small, North and South. At the New Orleans Times-Picayune, where Harkey worked before and after World War II, photographers had standing instructions not to publish pictures of minorities. "If there was a crowd shot, and black faces were here or there," Harkey recalled, "they would be cut out or they would be airbrushed out or airbrushed white."(10)

Harkey, like a few other liberal and moderate Southern editors, challenged some of the prevailing newspaper practices regarding race during his ownership of the Pascagoula Chronicle. Harkey's egalitarian ideals held that blacks and whites should be treated equitably, and he applied that philosophy to his newspaper. After Harkey bought theChronicle, the newspaper began covering more news of the black community and dropped the practice of separating black news from white news. Harkey gradually began to give the courtesy title "Mrs." to some prominent black women, and, without telling even his staff, he dropped the Negro tag in virtually all news articles. The policy went unnoticed by the public until a local father was charged with beating his four-year-old stepson in 1950, and Harkey's stories about the crime were picked up by the wire services. Sympathetic letters flooded the local police and the victim's home until an Associated Press photographer obtained a picture of the boy, who was black. The show of sympathy halted immediately, and some readers were chagrined. "If you have to write about niggers," one reader told Harkey, "call 'em niggers right up at the top so I don't waste my time reading about 'em." Throughout the 1950s, Harkey unsuccessfully urged his colleagues in the Mississippi press to drop racial tags.(11)

The few Southern newspapers that did print black news often segregated it on special pages, as the Pascagoula Chronicle had done before Harkey bought it, or relegated it to "colored editions" delivered only to black neighborhoods. The St. Petersburg Times, for example, started its "Negro makeover" page in 1939, remaking one newspaper page a week of black news in editions distributed only in black neighborhoods. The special page, printed daily beginning in 1948, was defended on the ground that it gave blacks a dignity not afforded them elsewhere.(12) Such "Negro editions" were not uncommon. The Montgomery Advertiser and the Alabama Journal each published separate editions for blacks for more than thirty years, finally discontinuing them in the 1960s because they were too costly to produce.(13)

An important factor in newspapers' coverage of racial news was the racial makeup of daily newspapers: Most journals had virtually all-white staffs. Blacks were rare in both newsrooms and in journalism organizations, though black reporters made a few important inroads into print journalism in the early postwar years. The Nieman program at Harvard University, one of the journalism profession's most prestigious fellowships, selected its first black Nieman fellow, Fletcher Martin of the weekly Louisville (Ky.)Defender, in 1946. The following year the United States Senate press gallery admitted its first black reporter, Louis R. Lautier of the Atlanta World, then the nation's only black daily. The Standing Committee of Correspondents had denied Lautier admittance because he also worked for a black press association, and committee rules required reporters to work exclusively for a daily newspaper. The Senate Rules Committee overruled the correspondents and admitted Lautier anyway. However, the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE)--the nation's most influential organization of newspaper editors--remained all-white well into the 1950s. Society officials said the scarcity of black daily newspapers had limited blacks' opportunity for membership in the group. ASNE members reported in 1955 that no black had ever even applied for admission to the organization. A.M. Piper of the Council Bluffs (Iowa) Nonpareil, an ASNE veteran, said he'd never seen a black editor at the society's annual convention.(14)

But black reporters made inroads at a few newspapers in the 1950s. The Milwaukee Journal hired its first black reporter, Bob Teague, a former star halfback at the University of Wisconsin, to cover sports beginning in 1950. But the newspaper's city desk did not hire a black worker until 1963.(15) Unusual among Southern dailies, the St. Petersburg Times hired a full-time black reporter, Calvin Adams, in 1951 and even took the dramatic step of integrating both the drinking fountains and the restrooms in the Timesnewsroom.(16) The Detroit Free Press hired Collins George, formerly of the black weekly the Pittsburgh Courier, as the newspaper's first black reporter in 1955.(17)Fletcher Martin, the first black Nieman fellow, began work at the Chicago Sun-Times in the early 1950s after being turned down by the Louisville Courier-Journal, whose city editor had told Martin that the all-white staff would never tolerate a black reporter.(18)By the mid-1950s, black journalists were working at the Denver Post, the Fort Wayne(Ind.) News-Sentinel, the Toledo Blade, the Minneapolis Tribune, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Portland Oregonian, three newspapers in Chicago, two newspapers in New York, and at two of Cleveland's three dailies. But in all, just twenty-one black reporters were at work on white-owned daily newspapers in 1955, according to a study by researchers at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. The pioneering black journalists were concentrated at newspapers in the Northeast and Midwest. It would be years before blacks would enter newsrooms in significant numbers.(19)

Despite their thin ranks, black reporters attracted notice for their pioneering coverage of desegregation. Carl T. Rowan of the Minneapolis Tribune, for example, won wide praise for a three-week series of articles he wrote about the South in 1951. Ted Poston of theNew York Post, George Brown of the Denver Post, and William Brower of the Toledo Blade also did ground-breaking work in the South.(20) But the strain of covering segregation took a heavy toll on some of these journalists, such as Simeon Booker, hired in 1952 by the Washington Post as the first black reporter at a capital city daily. "God knows I tried to succeed at the Post," Booker recalled. "I struggled so hard that friends thought I was dying, I looked so fatigued. After a year and a half I had to give up. Trying to cover news in a city where even animal cemeteries were segregated overwhelmed me." Booker quit the Post in 1953 and went to work for Jet.(21)

The United States Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 pushed newspapers into writing more about blacks and about desegregation. The Browncase, a consolidation of school desegregation lawsuits in Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware, struck down segregation in public schools as unconstitutional. Segregation, the court found, violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The 1954 Supreme Court decision, coupled with the court's 1955 decision ordering desegregation to proceed "with all deliberate speed," transformed race relations and school desegregation into one of the most important running news stories of the postwar years.(22) School desegregation, as one veteran Southern editor observed in 1955, was "the biggest regional story of the century."(23)

A few of the nation's leading newspapers responded admirably to the challenge of covering desegregation, devoting considerable attention and resources to this complex and continuing story. In breadth and depth of coverage of civil rights, the New York Times was the undisputed leader among newspapers. The Times covered the Browndecision in detail from the beginning, publishing ten pages of background and interpretive material on the day of the decision. In 1955, executive editor Catledge dispatched a team of ten Times reporters to fan out across the South on a five-week survey of desegregation efforts in seventeen Deep South and border states and the District of Columbia.(24) The Times both undertook extensive efforts to explain theBrown decision and supported the decision editorially. "No driving force has been more consistent and insistent in beating the tom-tom for the rights of this black minority than the New York Times," the Chicago Defender wrote of the years after Brown.(25)

The Times had first assigned a correspondent to cover the South in 1947, when Catledge, a Mississippi native, had tapped Virginia-born John N. Popham to report on the tremendous social change brewing in the region. Popham quickly established himself as the premier journalistic authority on the South. "There was hardly a cow patch or a shade-tree mechanic below the Mason-Dixon line he did not know or a mayor or sheriff who did not know him, his Jim Dandy hat, and his extraordinary Tidewater Virginia accent," recalled Popham's colleague at the Times, Harrison E. Salisbury.(26) On his rounds Popham met with black leaders, college professors, and moderate Southern editors, from whom he received what he described as "interpretive help."(27)

Popham's reputation for hard work and fairness was legendary among newspaper reporters. After his hiring in 1947, Popham set up shop in the Hotel Patten, near the office of the Chattanooga Times, also owned by the Sulzberger family. He bought a Dodge coupe, paid for with deductions against his Times paycheck, and began a long series of travels across the South, putting 40,000 to 50,000 miles a year on his car. "By now," he wrote Catledge after years of travel, "every hotel clerk in the South knows me personally." His reporting won him both praise and awards. In 1953 he was named the South's most outstanding journalist by Sigma Delta Chi, now the Society of Professional Journalists. Colleagues admired his writing's emphasis on the complicated background of Southern racial strife. "I have a deep love and regard for the South, my people were in on the founding of it in 1607, and I assure you that I never approach an assignment without a measure of diplomacy," Popham wrote to Catledge in 1952.

"I'll always do my best," he added, "to give you good coverage in the fullest sense."(28) Popham worked at the New York Times until 1958, when he left to become executive editor of theChattanooga Times. His replacement was Claude F. Sitton, a New York Times copy reader and former wire service reporter whose reputation on the civil rights beat in the 1960s would rival Popham's.(29)

Just as the Times' coverage was a model for newspapers around the country, so too was the reporting of the Southern School News, the monthly newspaper of the Southern Education Reporting Service (SERS) in Nashville. SERS was founded in 1954 by a group of Southern newspaper editors, as the News once put it, "to tell the story, factually and objectively, of what happens in education as a result of the Supreme Court ruling that segregation in public schools is unconstitutional." Correspondents from Southern and border states provided reports to the News, which quickly developed a monthly circulation of 30,000 among educators, journalists, public officials, and libraries. The newspaper included detailed monthly reports on desegregation issues in Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia. Its correspondents were reporters from the larger dailies in each state. The News and SERS provided journalists across the nation with a clearinghouse for unbiased accounts of desegregation-related developments, serving as both a resource and a model. In addition, scores of journalists, both print and broadcast, used the service's extensive library.(30)

But while the New York Times and the SERS led the way in desegregation coverage, the vast majority of other daily newspapers followed far behind. In both the quality of their news coverage and the vitality of their editorial leadership, many daily newspapers were lacking. Newspaper editors in both South and North reflected the biases of white society and of their readership in racial matters. "Most of the press, no less than most of the politicians, responded miserably," recalled Mississippi editor Hodding Carter II of the years before and after the Supreme Court's desegregation decisions. "For many editors and publishers the response was honest: they shared the values of the land they inhabited and felt it was their duty to reflect them."(31) J. Oliver Emmerich, veteran editor of theMcComb (Miss.) Enterprise-Journal, recalled that it was difficult for most editors to see Southern treatment of blacks as wrong. "The prejudices were recognized as traditions and not as prejudices," Emmerich said. "It was very difficult for some editors even to grasp."(32)

James McBride Dabbs, longtime director of the Southern Regional Council, said Southern newspapers' bias was to be expected. "Local newspapers, with exceptions so small as to be negligible, are owned, published and edited by Southern whites," Dabbs once wrote. "Their subscribers are white; their advertisers are white. Is it not going a little far to expect complete objectivity and candor of a white Southern editor in discussing the duties of his subscribers and advertisers to members of a race that brings him no bread and butter?"(33)

To their credit, at least, newspapers both North and South spoke out against violence. The unanimity of Southern press sentiment was demonstrated in a pamphlet entitled "The South Speaks Out," a compilation of Southern editorial sentiment published in 1958 by national religious groups. The purpose of the publication was to demonstrate that while lawlessness in response to Brown had received national attention, most Southerners--and virtually all Southern newspapers--opposed violence whatever their reaction to Brown. The pamphlet reprinted editorials from across the South opposing race-related violence. "The Southern press," the pamphlet's compilers asserted, "accurately mirrors the sentiments and firm convictions of millions of Southerners that civil order and obedience to law are supreme values overriding any subsidiary issues."(34)
But beyond an opposition to violence, most of the nation's daily newspapers had been slow to exercise editorial leadership on the race issue. Time magazine's media correspondent concluded in 1956 that, with a few exceptions, Southern newspapers in particular were doing "a patchy, pussyfooting job of covering the region's biggest running story since slavery."(35) Jere Moore, editor of the weekly Union Register in Milledgeville, Georgia, said newspapers had failed to exercise much leadership. "They have been weak-kneed when they should have been strong," Moore said.(36)

Southern newspapers were indeed offering little support for the law of the land, in sharp contrast to the enthusiastic support offered by Northern dailies, the black weeklies, and the nation's one black daily, the Atlanta World. Of the thirty largest dailies in the South and border states, the SERS concluded in 1957, all were hostile to Brown except for a dozen in the border states of Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. "Once away from the border states," the SERS found, "no single large newspaper has emerged as enthusiastically integrationist." However, a few large and influential newspapers, such as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Louisville Courier-Journal, had urged compliance with Brown. Others, such as the Nashville Tennessean and Carter's Delta Democrat-Times, had favored gradual integration.(37)

Reed Sarratt, a Southern editor and astute student of the press who had worked for the SERS, believed that in covering desegregation, public opinion molded newspaper opinion, not vice versa. In the 1950s, Sarratt recalled, "most editors were looking over their shoulders to see who was following them." Thus, opposition to Brown tended to be most heated in the newspapers of Deep South, staunchly segregationist states. As Sarratt summarized Southern newspapers' editorial stance by region,
The general pattern is clear. In the border area, where the Supreme Court decision was widely accepted, the major newspapers supported the ruling and urged compliance. Around the outer fringe of the eleven Southern states, public reaction was to recognize the authority of the Court but to hold compliance to a minimum; this was the position taken by most newspapers in these states. In the Deep South the controlling whites denounced the decision and resolutely resisted compliance; the majority of newspapers were in tune with this point of view.(38)

The South had some, but not many, moderate or liberal newspaper editors. Harry S. Ashmore, editor of the Charlotte (N.C.) News in the late 1940s and the Arkansas Gazette in the 1950s, two moderate newspapers, recalled that there were fewer than a dozen Southern newspapers that were liberal in racial matters in these years.(39)Hodding Carter, for thirty years the editor of the Delta Democrat-Times in Greenville, Mississippi, said Southern newspapers reflected the conformist attitudes of the towns and small cities of the South, a factor that diminished the number of Southern moderates and liberals.(40) The few moderates and liberals did not necessarily favor integration; they were simply more likely to favor obeying the law of the land in the Supreme Court's decision or to favor equal treatment of black citizens. The South, as Carter once wrote, was the "only place in the western world where a man could become a liberal simply by urging obedience to the law."(41)

The few outspoken editors who favored upholding the law were vilified in the South but honored by their peers in journalism. In the ten years after 1954, six of the Pulitzer Prizes in editorial writing went to Southern editors who took a stand for moderation during desegregation crises in their communities. The prizes went to Buford Boone of the Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News in 1957; to Harry S. Ashmore of the Arkansas Gazette in 1958; to Ralph McGill of the Atlanta Constitution in 1959; to Lenoir Chambers of theNorfolk Virginian-Pilot in 1960; to Ira B. Harkey, Jr., of the Pascagoula Chronicle in 1963; and to Hazel Brannon Smith of the Lexington (Miss.) Advertiser in 1964. These and other moderate editors--such as Mississippi's Carter--often provided the only voices of reason during the backlash of massive resistance following Brown. "The whole state was so racist that I was totally surrounded by people who didn't believe what I believed," recalled John Herbers, who worked for the Jackson, Mississippi, bureau of the United Press in the 1950s. "They were backed up by tradition, religion, and the law. I'd get up every morning and ask myself, `Is there something wrong with me?' I'd think I was crazy, and I'd see people like Hodding and know the real world was out there . . . If it hadn't been for him I would have left. He gave us hope."(42)
The vast majority of newspapers in Southern states, however, opposed Brown; the South Carolina and Virginia press were typical. Andrew McDowd Secrest, editor of the weeklyCheraw (S.C.) Chronicle in the 1950s, believed that editorially, the South Carolina press was ineffectual in racial matters in these years. "The press as a whole was at best irrelevant in the struggle for equal rights in South Carolina and, at worst, an exacerbating, agitating element in the situation," recalled Secrest, who subscribed to or exchanged papers with all of the state's major weeklies and dailies in the 1950s and 1960s. "Its repeated calls for `law and order' were usually overshadowed by the more insistent theme of resistance to so-called Negro `agitation' and federal intervention with the `sovereign rights' of the states. The treatment by the leading newspapers of racial issues and related problems amounted to a combination in restraint of trade in new ideas."(43) Secrest and others believed that persistent press opposition to Browndiscouraged racial moderates from speaking out. "There are plenty of sensitive people here, and they can be awakened if the right words are said," one prominent educator wrote to Secrest in 1955. "But they are afraid as yet to say so."(44)

In Virginia, as in South Carolina, most newspapers--like the state's political leadership--bitterly opposed desegregation. James Jackson Kilpatrick, editor of the Richmond News Leader, the state's most influential daily, launched a campaign in 1955 favoring "interposition," a novel but long-discredited legal doctrine that held that a state could reject Supreme Court rulings that trampled upon its rights. "Once state policy pointed toward resistance," longtime Virginia newspaperman Benjamin Muse observed, "nearly all of the press had fallen into line with it."(45) The one exception was the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, whose editor, Lenoir Chambers, while not an integrationist, opposed massive resistance. Chambers believed that Virginia newspapers were decades behind the times in using illogical and emotional arguments against school desegregation. "I do not mind the expression of contrary points of view," Chambers wrote to fellow editor Ashmore in 1958, "but it has astonished me, shocked me, depressed me, to read much of the attempted rationalizing of points of view and the entirely illogical reasoning that is set up. Most of the press of Virginia has been . . . a discouraging spectacle."(46)

As for newspapers' reporting of the civil rights movement, journalists in the 1950s agreed that the desegregation story after Brown was difficult and that the press had a spotty record of covering it. Press coverage generally concentrated on crises of desegregation as opposed to explanations of social change, said Carl E. Lindstrom, longtime editor of the Hartford Times, in 1960. "The desegregation story is as thorny a challenge as the American press has ever faced," Lindstrom observed.(47) C.A. McKnight, the first executive director of SERS, told the 1955 ASNE convention that newspapers had given the desegregation story considerably less coverage than it had deserved in the first year after Brown. In the fifty Southern dailies clipped by SERS, desegregation had received minimal attention. This McKnight attributed to inexperienced and inexpert reporters, editors' fear of offending readers, and a general lack of initiative at newspapers. McKnight said he knew of only three full-time education reporters in the entire country: Popham, Max Gilstrap of the Christian Science Monitor, and Ed Lahey of the Knight newspapers.(48)

Newspapers not only gave too little coverage to the desegregation story, McKnight observed, but what little coverage there was tended to be "unbalanced and frequently distorted." Articles about racial issues often lacked context and emphasized conflict rather than progress, even though many of the earliest desegregation efforts in border states had been successful. "It is my impression that many of our regional newspapers are still looking at the desegregation issue as something apart from the context of a rapidly changing region," McKnight said. The story, he said, deserved better. The "handling of the race problem in the United States is one of the biggest and one of the most important stories of our lifetime," he said. "Is it asking too much to suggest that there is a field for original, enterprising reporting in the months and years after the forthcoming [Supreme] Court decrees in the school desegregation cases?"(49) McKnight told a North Carolina press group in 1955 that newspapers too often concentrated on legal and philosophical questions surrounding school desegregation while ignoring the practical administrative problems it posed.(50)

The volume of desegregation-related articles in Southern newspapers picked up substantially, the SERS reported, after the Supreme Court's 1955 decision ordering desegregation to proceed.(51) A 1960 Southern Regional Council study of five large Southern dailies found that their handling of racial stories was remarkably similar. Their news stories showed little bias or distortion, but newspapers usually relied upon the wire services rather than their own reporters to cover desegregation news. Southern newspapers were ignoring the opportunity to cover and interpret a story in their own backyards, leaving readers with event-centered wire service accounts that offered little interpretation of complicated events. Still, the Council's study concluded, "Southern newspapers generally are doing a conscientious, thorough, and predominantly fair job of reporting racial news. They are conforming more closely to the accepted standards of good journalism than the atmosphere of the times or the charges of their critics would indicate."(52) Numerous other studies in the 1950s and after found that in reporting the bare facts of desegregation, Southern papers were often fair and balanced but displayed little reportorial initiative or editorial daring.(53)

The desegregation story was difficult because it was a complex story of societal change, a long-term process hard to chronicle for event-oriented daily newspapers. As a result, newspapers tended to play up day-to-day desegregation difficulties while overlooking, as McKnight had pointed out, the longer-term successes of desegregation elsewhere. Sam Ragan of the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer complained in 1957, for example, that the Associated Press (AP) had overlooked "something of a social revolution" when three schools in his state had integrated successfully. Peace and progress, he noted, seldom attracted as much journalistic notice as disorder or bloodshed. "Violence--be it in connection with integration or anything else--is always a better story," Ragan told a meeting of the Associated Press Managing Editors. "That is one of the facts of life in newspapers. Peace doesn't seem to be much of a story."(54)
As desegregation efforts increased in the late 1950s, Northern newspapers turned greater attention to the South, prompting an influx of reporters from Northern news organizations into the region. "There are as many Yankee reporters dropping off planes and trains as there were carpetbaggers in the 1860s," complained the segregationist Thomas R. Waring, editor of the Charleston (S.C.) News and Courier, in 1956. The South's leading moderate, Ralph McGill of the Atlanta Constitution, said of the mass of incoming journalists, "It's been like waves beating on a stern and rockbound shore."(55)Sixty reporters were on hand at the University of Alabama riots in 1956. Seventy-five had flocked in 1955 to the Sumner, Mississippi, trial of the men accused of killing fourteen-year-old Emmett Till.(56)

The Till trial had been a turning point in increasing coverage of racial friction in the South. The murder, as journalist David Halberstam has observed, was "the first great media event of the civil rights movement."(57) Reporters, photographers, television cameramen, radio announcers, and newspaper columnists from across the country crowded into tiny Sumner for the trial of Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, half-brothers accused of killing young Till. The Chicago youth had been visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi, when he had either whistled at or spoken suggestively to a white woman in a grocery. Kidnapped from his uncle's home, Till's body--tied to a cotton-gin fan--was found several days later in the Tallahatchie River. The crush of outside press for the trial of Bryant and Milam prompted the judge, Curtis Swango, to enlist the New York Times' Popham to coordinate press security. "I've got all these reporters coming in--seems like there must be 100 of them--and I've never dealt with anything like this before," Swango told Popham. "I can pledge to you that as far as I can, I'll run a fair and honest trial, but I'd like your help in dealing with the press."(58) Popham complied, stunned at press attention given to a racial story in the region he for years had covered alone. "Never in our region," marveled the Mississippi Sun during the Till trial, "has so much out-of-state interest been taken in a case involving white and negro."(59)

Reporters took over Sumner's only hotel, the Delta Inn, to cover the trial. Popham oversaw press accommodations, obtaining housing for the black reporters in Mound Bayou, an all-black community, and also riding herd on the Northern reporters to ensure they complied with Southern customs, racial and otherwise. Popham once chastised theNew York Post's Murray Kempton, for example, for wearing British walking shorts at dinner.(60) At the trial, reporters sat at segregated tables in the courtroom. Sheriff H.C. Strider had laid down the law to the visiting black journalists; any mixing between black and white reporters would result in ejection from the courtroom. Jet reporter Simeon Booker believed the sheriff's treatment of black reporters was in retaliation for their perceived mistreatment of the South in the news columns.(61) "[T]he Till case was unbelievable," recalled James Hicks of the National Negro Press Association. "I mean, I just didn't get the sense of being in a courtroom." Dan Wakefield of the Nation admitted, "I am not ashamed to confess that I was afraid."(62) At the trial's end, Milam and Bryant were acquitted by an all-white jury.
If the Till trial was the first great media event of the civil rights movement, the largest was the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. The court-approved admission of nine blacks to Central was opposed by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, who called out the Arkansas National Guard, ostensibly to preserve order at the school. Faubus' actions eventually prompted President Dwight D. Eisenhower to nationalize the Arkansas Guard and to enforce integration with federal troops. Only five out-of-town reporters were in Little Rock when Faubus called out the Guard; four weeks later there were 225. Little Rock was "transformed into a kind of giant press room," said NBC reporter John Chancellor.(63)

In covering the Central crisis, reporters faced anger both from Faubus and from the mobs that gathered in front of the school. Faubus was irritated at the pro-integrationArkansas Gazette and believed that its editors were indoctrinating visiting newsmen with prejudice against him. The mobs surrounding the school equated the out-of-town reporters with the enforcement of integration. At various times, members of the mob taunted journalists, called them "nigger lovers," jostled them, and rocked telephone booths when reporters tried to make calls. "Bigots and psychopaths don't like outsiders watching them," reflected Chancellor. "Reporting their activities is sometimes dangerous and always depressing."(64) In all, six white reporters and four blacks were beaten while covering the Central crisis. One burly agitator charged up to Bobby Jones, a slight reporter for the Pine Bluff (Ark.) Commercial, and shouted, "Here's one of those Northern reporters. Let's get him!" The man knocked Jones to the ground. Informed that Jones was an Arkansan, not a Northerner, the assailant turned and walked away. "Oh," he replied. "Sorry."(65)

Scripps-Howard reporter Dickson Preston said that while most reporters had acted with restraint at Little Rock, some "extremists" had acted irresponsibly. On occasion television camera crews had incited crowds to demonstrate for the cameras. And some reporters, such as the New York Times' Benjamin Fine, had appeared openly sympathetic to the nine black students and had angered crowds with pointed questions. "Fine asked the kind of questions that would get anybody's hackles up," Preston said. "He symbolized to Southerners the kind of `Yankee reporting' they dislike."(66) In fact, Fine was sympathetic to integration and had often tangled with crowds. "They hurled insulting remarks and told me to go back North where I came from," Fine reported after one encounter with a mob.(67) A National Guard officer led Fine away and and warned him and other reporters that they would be arrested if they incited violence. Fine's emotional involvement in the desegregation story prompted Times editors to remove him as the newspaper's education editor in late 1957.(68)

At a panel discussion in late 1957 on the press coverage at Central, reporters agreed that journalists had improperly made news by staging pictures and by getting attacked by the mob. Even worse, many reporters--not just Fine--had taken sides. "The Northern newspaper reporter has been definitely tied in with the machinery of enforcing integration," concluded Bob Allison of CBS News.(69) Accordingly, he and other Northern reporters now felt unsafe in the South, whereas before Central reporters had mingled safely in crowds. "Today I feel I am up against a hard wall," Allison said. "Apparently now there is a solidified conviction in the South that the reporter from the North is going to do everything wrong."(70)

Southern resentment against Northern journalists was widespread. Southern editors, particularly those conservative on racial matters, had long resented the influx of Northern reporters covering Southern racial news after Brown. A schism developed among some editors, who divided according to North vs. South and moderate vs. conservative. Southern editors, particularly those who defended Southern racial practices, considered Northern newspapers as overplaying Southern racial strife while ignoring Northern racial problems. Southerners also resented many Northern editors' agreement with the Supreme Court's decision that segregation was inherently unequal and unjust. This North vs. South dispute was evident in public feuds between editors and in spirited, sometimes heated debates at editors' meetings.(71)

Tempers flared at the 1956 ASNE meeting when Southern editors took the floor to complain about Northern reporters during a panel discussion on the difficulties of covering integration. "[D]own in our part of the country we wish you Northerners would ease up just a little bit on the pressure," admonished the Texarkana (Tex.) Gazette's J.Q. Mahaffey. He charged that Northern editors habitually ignored or downplayed their own racial disturbances and racial disputes, a charge that prompted a spirited denial from a contingent of Chicago journalists. Then Harry M. Ayers of the Anniston (Ala.) Star took the floor to defend segregation and to lament the alleged inferiority of blacks, but he was cut off as he was about to undertake a forceful denunciation of racial intermarriage. "The consuming desire of every Negro is to possess a white woman," Ayers declared in what turned out to be his closing remark, which prompted, observers said, a collective shudder from the assembled editors. The day's discussion concluded with editors agreeing that newspapers were adequately covering breaking developments about integration but failing to explain much beyond that. "Our sins, as always, are those of apathy and provinciality, rather than venality," said Forrest W. Seymour of the Worcester(Mass.) Telegram and Gazette.(72)

The most outspoken Southern opponents of Southern race coverage were Waring, of theCharleston News and Courier, and Grover C. Hall, Jr., of the Montgomery Advertiser. Waring declared in speeches and articles that the Northern press was printing propaganda, writing in Harper's in 1956 that "the metropolitan press without exception has abandoned fair and objective reporting of the race story."(73) Hall, a moderate in racial matters, was nonetheless so offended at a New York Post reporter's coverage of race relations in Montgomery that he challenged Post editor James Wechsler in 1956 to provide him with a guided tour of New York for a profile of that city's race relations. Wechsler declined.(74)

In Mississippi, state officials were so convinced of the bias of most Northern accounts that they invited a group of twenty New England editors to Mississippi in 1956 to view the state's race relations firsthand. The weeklong visit was arranged and partially financed by the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, the state agency formed to fight desegregation efforts.(75)The segregation story proved especially vexing for the wire services, which served both Northern and Southern newspapers, whose editors were always scanning the wires for evidence of bias. So many Southern editors complained that the wire services were overplaying Southern racial problems that both the United Press and Associated Press assigned reporters on several occasions to cover race problems outside of the South. At the urging of Southern editors, the United Press agreed in 1958 to send a Georgia-born correspondent to assess school segregation problems in the North. The correspondent, Al Kuettner, wrote a series called "A Southerner Looks at New York Schools," which highlighted racial friction in response to school integration.(76) Similarly, the Associated Press in 1956 had assigned a staffer to survey Northern racial difficulties. His 1,800-word piece was widely used by member newspapers. The piece was part of a conscious attempt by the wire service to cover the explosive topic of desegregation as neutrally as possible. "It is the committee's view," the AP's Domestic News Committee concluded in 1956, "that in this situation the AP walked reasonably straight along the Mason-Dixon line."(77)

Editors in both North and South wanted the wire services to cover racial problems outside their region, on the assumption that racial problems in the other fellow's territory were being downplayed. A Southern-born AP reporter who had worked during the 1950s in bureaus in Jackson, Mississippi, and Little Rock, Arkansas, grew increasingly exasperated at the conflicting demands of AP member newspapers. Each time he had filed a story involving race from Jackson or Little Rock, the correspondent recalled, Northern editors telephoned him to complain that he had failed to tell the entire story and that he was imposing a white supremacist interpretation on his account. After transferring to an AP bureau in the North, the same correspondent was subject to complaints from Southern editors. "The whole process is reversed up here," the correspondent complained to his superiors in 1957. "Now some of my Southern brethren think every once in a while that we're covering up here, which leads me to this conclusion: If the newspapers in both sections would concentrate more on objectivity instead of making us--the AP--prove that the Negro is treated worse in a different section than he is in their own backyard, all of us would be better off."(78)

Editor & Publisher noted with dismay the emotional dispute over desegregation coverage. "[W]e have rarely seen the heat that is now being generated between editors of two sections of the country over the desegregation issue," editor Robert U. Brown observed in 1955, after the trial in the Till case.(79) Northern and Southern differences, a 1957 editorial said, were compounded by the rise of interpretive reporting and by the intense emotionalism evident on both sides. The two camps should recognize the differences in their points of view and desist from name-calling. "We do not condone this situation," Editor & Publisher's editorialist wrote. "Neither side helps its own case by charging the other with errors."(80)

The civil rights story, beginning especially with Central High, also marked the coming of age of the newsgathering capabilities of television news reporters. Television covered the crisis extensively, sometimes with live broadcasts and with dramatic pictures of high impact. "The thing about Little Rock is that it was where television reporting came to influence, if not to maturity," recalled Harry Reasoner, who covered Central as a young reporter for CBS News. "You could not hide from news as delineated by TV."(81) Even to some of the print reporters, such as Wallace Westfeldt of the Nashville Tennessean, it seemed that the new medium might have outperformed print for the first time.(82) The civil rights movement, as former New York Times television critic Peter J. Boyer once observed, was "the first running story of national importance that television fully covered. . . . Television brought home to the nation the civil rights struggle in vivid images that were difficult to ignore, and for television, it was a story that finally proved the value of TV news gathering as opposed to mere news dissemination."(83)

But both television and print reporters fell short at Central, as they had in other civil rights news stories of the 1950s. "The cowboy reporters rode in to the scent of blood,"Arkansas Gazette editor Harry Ashmore recalled in a 1958 speech. The reporters had failed to consider the broader picture of social change in Little Rock and in the South, he said. Reporters had been too concerned with "the sound and the fury on the surface." They had ignored the failure of national leadership before the crisis and its contribution to the rise of extremists afterward. "I think we have got to get over the notion that objectivity means giving a villain equal space with a saint--and above all of paying the greatest attention to those who shout the loudest," Ashmore said. "We've got to learn that a set of indisputable facts do not necessarily add up to truth."(84)
Facing the challenges of both television and of covering rapid social change, newspapers had struggled to adapt. Both challenges increased in the 1950s, and both pointed out the slowness with which newspapers and print journalists responded to change. By decade's end, with the civil rights movement picking up momentum and television growing in influence, newspapers had begun to adjust or at least had recognized their deficiencies. But the process of change was slow, as contrasted with the rapid shift of the media environment. While the rise of television and a shifting social landscape were newspapers' biggest challenges in the mid-1950s, other trends were simultaneously shaping the newspapers in ways that were becoming increasingly clear by decade's end. Observing the wide range of emerging newspaper problems, Barry Bingham of the Louisville Courier-Journal observed in 1959 that newspapers were in crisis. "I think journalism is in the grip of a process that is painful to every human being: the necessity to change," Bingham said.(85)


1. "Dailies' Cooperation Asked in Solving Negro Problem," Editor & Publisher, 4 August 1945, 7; Robert B. Eleazer, "Churchman Sees Peril in `Negro' Headlines," Editor & Publisher, 27 December 1947, 24. Pressure for the elimination of identification by race had also come from white churches.
2. "Race in the News," New York Times, 11 August 1946, 8E; "Answer," Time, 19 August 1946, 60.
3. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger to Turner Catledge, 23 December 1963, Turner Catledge papers, Mitchell Memorial Library, Mississippi State University, Starkville, Mississippi. Hereafter cited as Catledge papers. Sulzberger pointedly asked Catledge to answer the reader's complaint; the publisher's memorandum was addressed to "Dear Protestant Catledge" and signed "Jewish Sulzberger."
4. Robert W. Brown, "Newspapers of Deep South Liberalize Negro Policies," Editor & Publisher, 13 December 1952, 9.
5. Walter White, How Far the Promised Land (New York: Viking, 1955), 203-204.
6. Southern Regional Council, Race in the News: Usage in Southern Newspapers(Atlanta: Southern Regional Council, 1949), 1-4.
7. Leon Svirsky, ed., Your Newspaper: Blueprint for a Better Press (New York: Macmillan, 1947), 23-24.
8. Simeon Booker, "The New Frontier in Daily Newspapers," Nieman Reports, January 1955, 12-13. A study that quantitatively documents the extent to which such news was underplayed in one Deep South state is Susan M. Weill, "African Americans and the White-Owned Mississippi Press: An Analysis of Coverage From 1944 to 1984," Master's thesis, Jackson State University, 1993.
9. Ben Bradlee, A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 125.
10. Ira B. Harkey, Jr., "Jim Crow Days--The Way We Were" (speech given 28 October 1992 at Bennett Auditorium, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, Mississippi). Harkey later gained fame as the lone Mississippi newspaperman to defend James Meredith's right to desegregate the University of Mississippi in 1962. He won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing the following year. Harkey's career as a liberal editor in Pascagoula is detailed in his memoir, The Smell of Burning Crosses: An Autobiography of a Mississippi Newspaperman (Jacksonville, Ill.: Harris-Wolfe, 1967).
11. Harkey, Smell of Burning Crosses, 54-55, 60-61, 65.
12. Robert N. Pierce, A Sacred Trust: Nelson Poynter and the St. Petersburg Times(Gainesville, Fla.: University Press of Florida, 1993), 146.
13. Roger M. Williams, "A Regional Report: Newspapers of the South," Columbia Journalism Review, Summer 1967, 30.
14. "Negro Gets Press Card by Appeal to Senate," Editor & Publisher, 22 March 1947, 13; Gilbert W. Stewart, Jr., "He Erased the Color Line," Nieman Reports, October 1947, 12; ASNE Proceedings, 1955, 93.
15. Robert W. Wells, The Milwaukee Journal: An Informal Chronicle of Its First 100 Years (Milwaukee: Milwaukee Journal, 1981), 377, 415.
16. Pierce, A Sacred Trust, 143.
17. Frank Angelo, On Guard: A History of the Detroit Free Press (Detroit: Detroit Free Press, 1981), 195.
18. "How Integration Worked on One Newspaper Staff," Nieman Reports, October 1956, 39.
19. Armistead Scott Pride, "Low Man on the Totem Pole," Nieman Reports, April 1955, 21. Earlier surveys, Pride reported, had found fifteen blacks employed at newspapers in 1948 and twelve in 1952. In 1971, a Temple University study found that blacks represented only 2.55 percent of reporters at 196 daily newspapers surveyed. The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reported the same year that blacks and other minorities represented just 6.8 percent of all newspaper employees. (M.L. Stein, "The Black Reporter and His Problems," Saturday Review, 13 February 1971, 58-60; Christopher H. Sterling and Timothy R. Haight, eds. The Mass Media: Aspen Institute Guide to Communication Industry Trends [New York: Praeger, 1978], 225.)
20. Pride, "Low Man on the Totem Pole," 21; John M. Harrison, The Blade of Toledo(Toledo, Ohio: Toledo Blade Co., 1985), 336. For Rowan's reporting in the South later in the 1950s, see his book Go South To Sorrow (New York: Random House, 1957).
21. Quoted in Bradlee, A Good Life, 280; Howard Bray, The Pillars of the Post: The Making of a News Empire in Washington (New York: Norton, 1980), 160-162.
22. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954); 349 U.S. 294 (1955). For a history of the Brown decision, see Richard Kluger, Simple Justice (New York: Knopf, 1976).
23. C.A. McKnight, "Text of Talk to N.C. Press Group," Southern School News, 3 February 1955, 11.
24. "High Court Bans School Segregation; Nine-to-Zero Decision Grants Time to Comply," New York Times, 18 May 1954, 1, 14-23; "Report on the South," ibid., 13 March 1956, S1-S8; "Ten Reporters Traveled in South for Weeks on Integration Story," ibid., 13 March 1956, S8; Arthur Hays Sulzberger, "`The Word Negro is Not to Appear Unless,': One Publisher's Attitude on Race," Nieman Reports, October 1957, 3-4.
25. Chicago Defender clipping, 1963, in Catledge papers.
26. Harrison E. Salisbury, A Time of Change: A Reporter's Tale of Our Time (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 44. Popham's accent was significant. Catledge had purposely selected Southerners to cover the South, and Popham's thick accent left little doubt of his Virginia roots. Claude F. Sitton, Popham's successor at the Times, once compared Popham's accent to "dollops of sorghum syrup sprayed from a Gatling gun."
27. John N. Popham quoted in Eugene Patterson, "John N. Popham, Managing Editor, Chattanooga Times," in Gentlemen of the Press ed. Loren Ghiglione (Indianapolis: R.J. Berg and Co., 1984), 337. A synopsis of Popham's career by historian Robert J. Norrell is found in the pamphlet The Media and the Movement: The Role of the Press in a Changing Society (Birmingham, Ala.: Birmingfind, 1981), the program for a 1981 conference on the media and the civil rights movement.
28. John N. Popham to Turner Catledge, 12 December 1947, 1 December 1952, 31 December 1954; Turner Catledge to Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, 7 April 1953, Catledge papers. Popham's frequent travels quickly wore out his car, and eventually the Timesstarted buying a new vehicle for him every two years or so. "As you know, Johnny does extensive driving at high speeds," Catledge wrote to his superiors, "making it desirable that he have a sound automobile." (Turner Catledge to Orvil Dryfoos, 24 March 1958, Catledge papers.)
29. Turner Catledge to Lester Markel, 14 May 1958, Catledge papers.
30. "The Reporting Service...and How it Grew," Southern School News, 4 May 1955, 1; "SERS Reference Library Now Has 55,000 Items," Southern School News, March 1957, 1.
31. Hodding Carter, Their Words Were Bullets: The Southern Press in War, Reconstruction, and Peace (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1969), 64. A 1956 Gallup poll found that only one in seventeen Deep South whites favored desegregation. (John M. Fenton, "Only 1 in 17 Deep South Whites For Integration," Jackson (Miss.)Clarion-Ledger, 27 February 1956, 3.)
32. Interview with J. Oliver Emmerich, 1973, Mississippi Oral History Program, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, Miss.
33. James McBride Dabbs quoted in Harry Ashmore, Civil Rights and Wrongs: A Memoir of Race and Politics (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994), 63.
34. The South Speaks Out for Law and Order: A Roundup of Southern Press Opinion(National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America et al, 1958), 4.
35. "Dilemma in Dixie," Time, 20 February 1956, 76.
36. Jere Moore quoted in ibid.
37. Don Shoemaker, ed., With All Deliberate Speed; Segregation-Desegregation in Southern Schools; Prepared by Staff Members of the Southern Education Reporting Service (New York: Harper, 1957), 31-34.
38. Reed Sarratt, The Ordeal of Desegregation: The First Decade (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 248.
39. Ashmore, Civil Rights and Wrongs, 63.
40. Carter, Their Words Were Bullets, 65.
41. Hodding Carter, "`Conservatives' Blandly Disregard Rights," Greenville, Miss.,Delta-Democrat Times, 7 November 1948, 4.
42. Quoted in Ann Waldron, Hodding Carter: The Reconstruction of a Racist (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books, 1993), 251. For background on massive resistance, see Numan V. Bartley, The Rise of Massive Resistance (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969).
43. Andrew McDowd Secrest, "In Black and White: Press Opinion and Race Relations in South Carolina, 1945-1964," Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 1971, xiii.
44. James McBride Dabbs to Andrew McDowd Secrest, 6 October 1955, quoted in ibid.
45. Benjamin Muse, Virginia's Massive Resistance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1961), 94.
46. Lenoir Chambers to Harry Ashmore, 6 February 1958, quoted in William Howard Turpin, "Editorial Leadership in a Time of Crisis: Virginia's Massive Resistance, 1954-1959," Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1976, 138.
47. Carl E. Lindstrom, The Fading American Newspaper (1960; reprint ed., Glouchester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1964), 32.
48. ASNE Proceedings, 1955, 81-86.
49. Ibid.
50. McKnight, "Text of Talk to N.C. Press Group," 11.
51. Shoemaker, With All Deliberate Speed, 31.
52. Walter Spearman and Sylvan Meyer, Racial Crisis and the Press (Atlanta: Southern Regional Council, 1960), 27. The New York Times and a black weekly, the Norfolk(Va.) Journal and Guide, were studied along with the five dailies, the Atlanta Constitution, the Charleston (S.C.) News and Courier, the Louisville Courier-Journal, and the Raleigh News and Observer.
53. For studies of newspaper coverage of civil rights issues, see Roy E. Carter, Jr., "Segregation and the News: A Regional Content Study," Journalism Quarterly 34 (Winter 1957): 3-18; Warren Breed, "South's Newspapers Hew to Objectivity," Editor & Publisher, 28 September 1957, 40; Thomas Browning Cox III, "The Georgia Press Reacts to the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1964," M.A. thesis, University of Georgia, 1980; and W. Lance Conn, "Crises in Black and White: The McComb Enterprise-Journal's Coverage of Racial News," M.A. thesis, University of Mississippi, 1991.
54. APME Red Book, 1957, 79.
55. T.R. Waring and Ralph McGill quoted in "Invasion of the South," Newsweek, 2 April 1956, 86.
56. Ibid.
57. David Halberstam, The Fifties (New York: Villard Books, 1993), 437.
58. Quoted in ibid., 438.
59. "Latest News on Till Trial," (Charleston) Mississippi Sun, 22 September 1955, 1.
60. "Mississippi: The Place, the Acquittal," Newsweek, 3 October 1955, 24, 29-30; Halberstam, The Fifties, 438.
61. Simeon Booker, "A Negro Reporter at the Till Trial," Nieman Reports, January 1956, 13-15. See also Warren Breed, "Comparative Newspaper Handling of the Emmett Till Case," Journalism Quarterly 35 (1958): 291-298.
62. James Hicks and Dan Wakefield quoted in Stephen J. Whitfield, A Death in the Delta: The Story of Emmett Till (New York: Free Press, 1989), 36-37.
63. John Chancellor, "Radio and Television Had Their Own Problems in Little Rock Coverage," Quill, December 1957, 9.
64. Ibid., 10, 21.
65. Ray Moseley, "Northern Newsmen Withstood Mob's Abuse to Report Little Rock Story," Quill, December 1957, 8, 18.
66. Quoted in "Preston Raps Press Antics at Little Rock," Editor & Publisher, 2 November 1957, 66.
67. Benjamin Fine, "Guardsmen Curb Newsmen's Work," New York Times, 6 September 1957, 8.
68. Benjamin Fine to Hal Faber, 5 September 1957; Fine to Orval Dryfoos, 18 November 1957, in Catledge papers.
69. Philip N. Schuyler, "Panelists Agree: Journalistic Code Violated at Little Rock,"Editor & Publisher, 2 November 1957, 11.
70. Ibid., 66.
71. See, for example, "Interviews with Southern Newspaper Editors," U.S. News & World Report, 24 February 1956, 44-50, 134-144.
72. ASNE Proceedings, 1956, 72-98. The New York Post wrote that Ayers' remarks "evoked visible pain among Southern and Northern editors." Ayers later defended his speech in letters to Southern newspapers. (New York Post, 22 April 1956; Harry M. Ayers letter to editor of the Journal, 1 May 1956, Harry Mell Ayers collection, Wm. Stanley Hoole Special Collections Library, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama.)
73. Thomas R. Waring, "The Southern Case Against Desegregation," Harper's, January 1956, 39.
74. Hall's invitation to Wechsler is reprinted in "Is Race Friction in North Being Fully Reported?" U.S. News and World Report, 23 March 1956, 48-50.
75. "Say Race Problems Sure to Increase," Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger and Daily News, 14 October 1956, 1; "Twenty New England Editors View Mississippi Race Relations on Tour," Southern School News, November 1956, 3.
76. "Southerner Studies North for the U.P.," Editor & Publisher, 1 March 1958, 59.
77. APME Red Book, 1956, 87.
78. Unnamed AP correspondent's letter to Paul Mickelson, reprinted in ibid., 79, 82.
79. Robert U. Brown, "Shop Talk at Thirty," Editor & Publisher, 12 November 1955, 80.
80. "Emotionalism in the News," Editor & Publisher, 19 October 1957, 6.
81. Harry Reasoner, Before the Colors Fade (New York: Knopf, 1981), 58-59.
82. Wallace Westfeldt cited in Halberstam, The Fifties, 681.
83. Peter J. Boyer, Who Killed CBS? (New York: Random House, 1988), 229-230. Emphasis in the original. A useful documentary source on television and print coverage of the civil rights movement is "Covering the South: A National Symposium on the Media and the Civil Rights Movement," April 3-5, 1987, Center for the Study of Southern Culture, University of Mississippi. See also Robert J. Donovan and Ray Scherer, Unsilent Revolution: Television News and American Public Life, 1948-1991(London: Cambridge University Press, 1992), especially Chapter 1, "Police Dogs, Firehoses, and Television Cameras," pp. 3-22.
84. Harry S. Ashmore, "The Story Behind Little Rock," Nieman Reports, April 1958, 3-7. The article is the text of the Nieman Lecture the editor delivered at Harvard University in February 1958.
85. Barry Bingham, "Newspapers in Crisis," Nieman Reports, October 1959, 17-18.

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    • Redskins/Bon Secours Giveaways & Riverfront Plan D...
    • Richmond Mayor Dwight Jones, "2014 State of the City Address," Jan. 31, 2014.

      Richmond Virginia, "Mayor Dwight C. Jones’ prepared remarks for the 2014 State of the City Address," Jan. 31, 2014.

      Resolutions and cooperation agreements on the training camp deal, resolutions 2012-236-220 and 2012-235-219, from Nov. 26 and Dec. 17, 2012.

      Richmond Times-Dispatch, "West End school site to get new life," Dec. 2013.

      Richmond Times-Dispatch, "Skins camp support split," October 2013.

      Richmond Times-Dispatch, "SMG likely to take over Washington Redskins training camp," July 29, 2013.

      Richmond Times-Dispatch, "Redskins deal passes after last-minute negotiations," Nov. 27, 2012.

      Richmond Times-Dispatch, "Richmond council takes final steps toward Redskins training camp," Dec. 27, 2012.

      Richmond Times-Dispatch, "City, hospital work to sell ‘Skins deal," Nov. 21, 2012.

      Interviews with James Hester, city assessor, Feb. 5 and Feb. 19, 2014.

      Legislative Information System, State Code: 58.1-3203. Taxation of certain leasehold interests; concessions, accessed Feb. 5, 2014.

      Interview with Charlotte Perkins, performance management officer for Bon Secours, Feb. 14,

      Deed of Lease, Bon Secours Washington Redskins Training Center, July 8, 2013.

      Performance Agreement, Richmond Economic Development Authority and Bon Secours, July 8, 2013.

      Naming Rights Agreement, July 8, 2013.

      Leigh Street Development Cooperation Agreement, July 3, 2013.


A brief History of the Redskin Debacle

  • A list of "enhancements" to the deal, the fruit of hours of talks with council members who opposed the deal in its original form, were compiled into a...


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  • Richmond mayor’s task force discusses initiating contact with new School Board
  • Author: ZACHARY REID Richmond Times-Dispatch
    Date: November 14, 2012
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Richmond’s newly elected School Board should have a gentler introduction to Mayor Dwight C. Jones’ school-reform style than the current board, but it shouldn’t expect the pleasantries to lead to a windfall of cash.
    The mayor’s volunteer school finance reform task force spent nearly an hour Tuesday debating the best way to initiate contact with the School Board, which will feature seven newcomers among its nine members in January.
    But City Council President Kathy Graziano, an...


    View the full text of this story »»» Go to top of this page »»» Begin New Search


  • Council passes resolution on Redskins deal
  • Author: ROBERT ZULLO | Richmond Times-Dispatch
    Date: November 12, 2012
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Over vocal opposition from West End residents, Richmond’s City Council tonight approved a broad resolution endorsing Mayor Dwight C. Jones’ proposed deal with Bon Secours Richmond Health System to build a nearly $9 million training camp for the Washington Redskins.
    The proposed agreement with Bon Secours, announced last month, provides $6.4 million in sponsorship for the camp in exchange for a long-term, low-cost lease on the former Westhampton School property at Libbie and Patterson...


    View the full text of this story »»» Go to top of this

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  • Jones: Progress, but also missteps
  • Author: ROBERT ZULLO Richmond Times-Dispatch
    Date: October 14, 2012
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

  • No one could accuse Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones of a lack of vision.
    In the last year of his first term, the Baptist minister and former state delegate has laid out ambitious plans to dramatically transform the city's public-housing complexes, bring the Washington Redskins' summer training camp down Interstate 95 to a new home in the city and make the James River more accessible to residents, among other programs.
    Those initiatives join the ongoing construction of a $134 million...


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  • View the full text of this story »»» Go to top of this page »»» Begin New Search


  • Residents ask Richmond City Council to give schools more funds
  • Author: ROBERT ZULLO Richmond Times-Dispatch
    Date: April 11, 2012
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

  • Residents beseeched the Richmond City Council to meet the school system's request for an additional $23.8 million during a public hearing Tuesday night on the city budget.
    A small but passionate procession of school employees, parents and other residents lined up to ask council members to "fully fund" Richmond Public Schools in the coming fiscal year, which starts July 1.
    The hearing came less than eight hours after a consulting group recommended steps, including staffing cuts and ...

  • UPDATE: Mayor to finance new baseball stadium with debt savings

  • Author: Times-Dispatch Staff Times-Dispatch
    Date: March 2, 2012
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    RICHMOND, Va.
    Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones said today he will use interest rate savings from paying off old debts as debt service for the city's share of a new $50 million baseball stadium for the Richmond Flying Squirrels.
    Jones said the city is using money repaid from an old loan to the Richmond Metropolitan Authority to pay off $26.1 million in debt at an average interest rate of 5 percent and allow the issuance of $36 million in debt at a lower rate, around 3 percent. The...


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  • Richmond picks builder for two schools
  • Author: Will Jones
    Date: September 15, 2011
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Richmond's plans for two new elementary schools on South Side are back on track with a company that initially did not vie for the work.
    Mayor Dwight C. Jones announced this week the selection of MB Contractors of Roanoke to build a new Broad Rock Elementary School and a new Oak Grove Elementary School for a combined $39.2 million. The 650-student schools are scheduled to open in January 2013 - four months later than planned - and they will be the city's first new public school buildings...


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  • Mayor Jones: Mistakes made in Richmond jail-planning process Author: Will Jones
    Date: September 12, 2011
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    RICHMOND
    Acknowledging mistakes in its jail-planning process, Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones' administration revealed Monday that it will seek relief from state design requirements for the facility.
    "There have been some mistakes but, in a project of this size, it's not unnecessarily unnatural," Jones said in an interview, in which he insisted that the city's procurement process had not been compromised.
    Citing new and ongoing concerns about the process, the City Council...


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  • Hurricane briefs for Wednesday, Aug. 31 Author: Times-Dispatch Staff
    Date: August 31, 2011
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Richmond
    Mayor Dwight C. Jones on Tuesday announced a free shuttle service to transport residents who are without power to operating grocery stores. The GRTC City Supermarket Shuttle will be free to the riders today.
    "We want residents to have some ability to get the goods and products that they need that will keep in this environment while power is being restored," the mayor said in a statement.
    Buses will board passengers at specific locations and transport them to nearby...


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  • Search result 384 of 1006

    Michael Paul Williams: With redistricting, Richmond drawing new race issue Author: Michael Paul Williams
    Date: July 29, 2011
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    An African-American member of the Richmond School Board would be redistricted into oblivion as part of an effort to preserve the black voting strength in a neighboring ward.
    Under a draft redistricting plan, the Jackson Ward neighborhood of Kimberly Gray, the 2nd District representative on the School Board, would be absorbed into the majority-black 3rd District.
    That's the same 3rd District that since 2004 has been represented by a white councilman and white School Board members. In...

  • Redistricting plan moves School Board member
  • Author: Will Jones
    Date: July 20, 2011
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    The Richmond City Council is ready to seek public comment on a redistricting plan that would move School Board member Kimberly B. Gray out of her 2nd District and would not spread the city's large public-housing communities across more districts.
    Protecting incumbents wasn't among the council's adopted criteria for redistricting, but the prospect of moving the western part of Jackson Ward and subsequently Gray into the 3rd District is expected to generate controversy.
    "Everyone is...

  • Jones gets final report on Richmond redistricting Author: Will Jones
    Date: July 7, 2011
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones is welcoming but not yet endorsing three options for redistricting, including one that would overhaul the city's electoral map and reduce the number of voter districts from nine to as few as five.
    On Wednesday, Jones accepted a final report from a committee appointed to make recommendations for redistricting in light of the city's 22 percent poverty rate and the concentrations of poor residents in the East End and South Side.
    The City Council, which is...


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  • Search result 387 of 1006

    RMA payout comes with a catch Author: Will Jones
    Date: June 29, 2011
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Richmond will have to wait another decade or longer to take ownership of the expressway system if it collects $60.3 million to settle a long-standing debt with the Richmond Metropolitan Authority.
    Because the city provided early financial support, portions of the toll-road system within the city limits are scheduled to revert to city ownership when the RMA's primary public debt of about $122 million is paid off.
    That's now scheduled to occur in 2022, but the date would be pushed...


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  • Two School Board members would shift districts under redistricting plans Author: Will Jones
    Date: June 25, 2011
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Two members of the Richmond School Board would be drawn out of their districts under a pair of redistricting options that are being finalized by a committee appointed by Mayor Dwight C. Jones.
    School Board member Kimberly B. Gray would be shifted in both scenarios from the 2nd District to the 3rd, while Maurice Henderson would be moved in one of the plans from the 5th to the 2nd.
    Committee members emphasized in a meeting Friday that they had not considered the residency of City...


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  • Ideas for $60.3 million windfall abound Author: Will Jones
    Date: June 24, 2011
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Three members of the Richmond City Council credited Mayor Dwight C. Jones for negotiating a $60.3 million windfall for the city but made it clear that the council would have to sign off on any use of the money.
    "The mayor deserves a lot of credit and congratulations for pulling this coup," Councilman E. Martin Jewell said Thursday. "But we are the governing body ... and it seems to me that we should have some ideas as well as the mayor for how those dollars should be spent."
    Or used...


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  • Panel ponders reducing districts in Richmond
  • Author: Will Jones
    Date: June 19, 2011
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Richmond should consider reducing its number of voter districts from the current nine to seven or five as a way to help tackle the poverty that plagues the city, according to an unfinished report of a commission appointed by Mayor Dwight C. Jones.
    One longer-term option being suggested would involve changing the city charter and redrawing from scratch the voter districts, which grew out of a 1970 annexation fight that created Richmond's ward system.
    The draft report says the purpose...


    View the full text of this story »»» Go to top of this page »»» Begin New Search

  • Needed Now More than Ever ...

    Needed Now More than Ever ...

    Labels

    • Bigger Dogs
    • Community Help Needed....
    • Constitution
    • Dissent
    • Maggie Walker
    • Money
    • RPS SOL Scam

    SOL SCORES AND MORE ...

    Possible Consequences

    § 22.1-19.1. Action for violations related to secure mandatory tests.

    A. The Office of the Attorney General, on behalf of the Board of Education, may bring a cause of action in the circuit court having jurisdiction where the person resides or where the act occurred for injunctive relief, civil penalty, or both, against any person who knowingly and willfully commits any of the following acts related to secure mandatory tests required by the Board to be administered to students:
    1. Permitting unauthorized access to secure test questions prior to testing;
    2. Copying or reproducing all or any portion of any secure test booklet;
    3. Divulging the contents of any portion of a secure test;
    4. Altering test materials or examinees' responses in any way;
    5. Creating or making available answer keys to secure tests;
    6. Making a false certification on the test security form established by the Department of Education;
    7. Excluding students from testing who are required to be assessed; or
    8. Participating in, directing, aiding or abetting, or assisting in any of the acts prohibited in this section.
    For the purpose of this subsection, "secure" means an item, question, or test that has not been made publicly available by the Department of Education.
    B. Nothing in this section may be construed to prohibit or restrict the reasonable and necessary actions of the Board of Education, Superintendent of Public Instruction or the Department of Education or their agents or employees engaged in test development or selection, test form construction, standard setting, test scoring, reporting test scores, or any other related activities which, in the judgment of the Superintendent of Public Instruction or Board of Education, are necessary and appropriate.
    C. Any person who violates any provisions of this section may be assessed a civil penalty not to exceed $1,000 for each violation. Furthermore, any person whose administrative or teaching license has been suspended or revoked pursuant to § 22.1-292.1 may be assessed a civil penalty for the same violation under this section and the reasonable costs of any review or investigation of a violation of test security.
    All civil penalties paid to the Commonwealth pursuant to this section shall be deposited into the Literary Fund.
    D. For the purpose of this section, "person" shall not mean a student enrolled in a public school.
    2000, cc. 634, 659; 2004, cc. 939, 955; 2006, cc. 25, 95; 2011, c. 248.

    Stoney Deal

    Stoney Deal

    Bravo, RPS!

    Jason Kamras‏ @JasonKamras

    We did it! 3,000 Obama Elementary t-shirts sold! Enormous gratitude to RVA: We ❤️ you! Changing a school name is just a symbol. But symbols matter. We’re proud @RPS_Schools to symbolize hope, inclusivity, and the great promise of EVERY child in Richmond.


    DISCIPLINE & DISABILITIES & RACE & GENDER

    Dive Brief:

    • Black students with disabilities miss significantly more instructional time due to suspension than their white peers, according to a new report released Thursday by Harvard University law professors and The Civil Rights Project at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA).
    • "Disabling Punishment" provides state-by-state data on the number of days that students with disabilities missed due to suspension and identifies the five states with the biggest racial gaps. For example, in Nevada, for every 100 students with disabilities, black students were out of the classroom for 209 days, compared to 56 days for white students. The other four are Ohio, Missouri, Tennessee and Nebraska, where the number of days of suspension for black students with disabilities is quadruple that of white students, according to the report.
    • The researchers also argue that some of the student behaviors leading to suspension could be a result of their disability, such as emotional disturbance — calling this the “equivalent of denying that student access to education.” They recommend that state leaders identify districts where these gaps are the largest and have state-level administrators analyze the reasons why the consequences for certain infractions are different for black students with disabilities than they are their white peers.

    Dive Insight:

    Removing students from the classroom should be “a measure of last resort,” the researchers write, and they call for the use of climate surveys, behavior incident reports and other monitoring strategies to determine if schools are improving “conditions of learning.”

    The analysis was conducted in response to U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ efforts to revisit and possibly rescind Obama-era guidance aimed at reducing racial disparities in school discipline. The guidance is related to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act — which states that the U.S. Department of Education (ED) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) will investigate complaints of discipline policies and practices that discriminate based on students’ “personal characteristics”

    Earlier this month, DeVos held back-to-back “listening sessions” with supporters of the guidance — who say it improves school safety and helps them be mindful of using alternative strategies — and opponents who argue that the guidance has increased disruptive behavior in school and that the federal government shouldn’t be dictating local school district policy.

    In addition, DeVos opened a public comment period in order to decide whether to push back until 2020 an Obama administration rule that asks states to identify whether students of color are overrepresented in special education programs. The comment period closes on May 14.

    In a piece on growing efforts to reduce out-of-school suspension — and implement alternatives that change students’ behavior — Barbara Higgins Perez, a former Oceanside Unified School District administrator who founded a consulting group, said that in her 20 years as an educator, she never once had a student return to school following a suspension with any completed assignments. The chances of a student with a disability doing any schoolwork at home are probably even lower, especially if they need the accommodations or support from a special education teacher that is available at school.

    Recommended Reading:

    • Charles Hamilton Houston Institute For Race And Justice, Center For Civil Rights RemediesDisabling Punishment: The Need for Remedies to the Disparate Loss of Instruction Experience by Black Students with Disabilitiesoffsite link

    TO BE YOUNG, GIFTED and BLACK

    Using her family’s experiences in Chicago, Hansberry started work on A Raisin In The Sun. A line from one of Langston Hughes’ poems inspired the play’s title. The work was completed in 1957 in the midst of Hansberry’s growing activism and involvement with feminism and gay rights. It has been theorized that Hansberry was a closeted lesbian, which was supported by secret letters and journal entries discovered after her death.

    The play debuted on Broadway March 11, 1959, earning praise from critics and audiences alike. Set in the Chicago neighborhood of her youth, A Raisin In The Sun examined the impact racial segregation had on Black lives in the Fifties. At age 29, Hansberry was the youngest playwright and only the fifth woman to win the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. So immediately popular was A Raisin In The Sun that for the next two years, it was translated into 35 languages and performed around the globe. Hansberry continued to work as a writer and playwright, but only one other play made it to Broadway.

    In 1963, Hansberry was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and two surgeries failed to arrest its spread. Hansberry died in 1965 at age 34. Paul Robeson and SNCC leader James Forman eulogized Hansberry at her funeral. Messages from James Baldwin and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were also shared. Nina Simone’s “To Be Young, Gifted, And Black” was inspired by Hansberry.

    Like BlackAmericaWeb.com on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.

    What Works?

    Dropout Risk Factors and Exemplary Programs

    By: Cynthia Hammond , D. Linton , J. Smink and S. Drew

    Dropout decisions may involve up to 25 significant factors, ranging from parenthood to learning disabilities. The most effective interventions address the various factors and employ multiple strategies, including personal asset building, academic support, and family outreach. A list of 50 exemplary programs is included.

    Demography as Destiny: How America Can Build a Better Future

    By: Alliance for Excellent Education

    Barely 50% of minority students graduate from high school on time. If this trend continues and the minority student populations increase as projected, the economic strength of the U.S. will be undermined. But if 78% of all student populations graduate on time by 2020, the U.S. can realize stunning potential benefits: conservatively, more than $310 billion would be added to the national economy.

    Dropping Out is Hard to Do

    By: Craig D. Jerald

    Recent research shows that some high schools have much lower dropout rates than would be predicted based on the composition of their student bodies. Moreover, requiring students to work harder and complete a tougher academic curriculum might actually improve graduation rates rather than making them plummet, as so many educators fear.

    Wikipedia

    Search results

    Alphabet Soup

    Acronyms / Glossary:

    FAPE — Free Appropriate Public Education
    IDEA — Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
    IEP — Individualized Educational Program
    LRE — Least Restrictive Environment
    PTI — Parent Training and Information Centers
    Child Find — Child Find requires public school districts to identify, locate, and evaluate all children with disabilities. This obligation to identify all children who may need special education services exists even if the school is not providing special education services to the child.
    Prior Written Notice — IDEA requires that the school/district provide written notice whenever the district (1) Proposes to begin or changes the identification, evaluation, or educational placement of your child or the provision of a free appropriate public education (FAPE) to your child; or (2) Refuses to begin or change the identification, evaluation, or educational placement of your child or the provision of FAPE to your child. [34 CFR §300.503(b)]. The school district must provide the notice in understandable language [34 CFR §300.503(c)].

    Related Links:

    Learn about Self-Advocacy: Speaking Up
    Short, step-by-step video clips of young people sharing their experiences with self-advocacy. Includes a map to help youth find self-advocacy groups in their state.

    Youth Organizing! Disabled & Proud
    A program of the California Foundation for Independent Living Centers (CFILC). YO! Disabled & Proud connects, organizes, and educates youth with disabilities

    Youth in Action! Becoming a Stronger Self-Advocate.
    Speaks directly to young adults with disabilities with a focus on self-advocacy

    KASA (Kids As Self Advocates).
    KASA empowers youth to learn how to advocate for themselves and others through better knowledge of school, health care, technology, and other current issues important to young people

    Youthhood.org
    This engaging site reminds students with disabilities they are not alone as they explore community and build a better collective future.

    Speak Up! Using What You’ve Got to Get What You Want
    Engaging multimedia tool that trains young people with disabilities how to speak up and advocate for themselves.

    Sample Letters

    DREDF Special Education Training Materials

    Find Your Parent Training and Information Center


    DREDF eNews and Special EDitions:

    Special EDitions

    Archived eNews & Special EDitions

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    SaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSave

    Best Comment of the Day:

    Having been a "truant officer" involved in court under CHINS etc this is dear to my heart. You have raised some great points. I would like to add another.

    The Code of Virginia is clear regarding truancy and to some degree dropouts. I looked at Richmond web page and found two interesting reports. Under "Drop Out Rates submitted to VDOE for the 2014-15 school term there were 295 dropouts for grades 9-12. Ok. Then I found that for grades 7-8 there were 55 dropouts.

    This raises several questions? What happened to the 55 middle school kids? How many involved court action ? CHINS? Same is true for high school school students. What were these kids attendance rates at elementary (I think we know)? There are more questions than answers. But somewhere there are records of nothing being done or something being done. Too many dropouts and rate of absences [too] high.

    Thank you for these posts !
    ~ Bob Whytal

    If CHICAGO CAN, WHY CAN'T WE?

    Chicago Schools Lead Country in Academic Growth, Study Finds

    By Sarah D. Sparks
    Exactly 30 years after then-Secretary of Education William J. Bennett labeled Chicago Public Schools the worst in the nation, new research shows that Windy City schools now lead the country in academic growth.

    A new study by Stanford University researchers Sean Reardon and Rebecca Hinze-Pifer tracked reading and math test score growth among public school students from 2009 to 2014. Across racial groups, the researchers found that Chicago students learned significantly faster from grades 3 to 8 than did students in nearly all other U.S. districts—gaining about six years' worth of learning in five years.

    Moreover, there was evidence that incoming student cohorts were improving rapidly. At each of grades 3 through 8, Chicago students' test scores rose two-thirds of a grade level from 2009 to 2014, compared to the average national improvement of one-sixth of a grade level in those grades during that time. Black, Hispanic, and white students all showed that improvement.

    Altogether, only 4 percent of districts in the country—and none of the other 100 largest districts— have growth rates that high, Reardon noted. "Chicago is not just an outlier among large districts; it's an outlier among all 11,000 districts we can measure this for. It's a striking case," Reardon said.

    Reardon and Hinze-Pifer analyzed Illinois state test scores in reading and math for Chicago and compared them to scores nationwide using a database of nationally comparable, district-level test data. They found Chicago students perform below the national average in reading and math, and white students in the city outperform black and Hispanic students by a full grade level on average. But they also found that the city has narrowed its national academic gap as well as some racial gaps.

    In 2008-09, Chicago 3rd graders scored about 1.4 grades below the national average in math and reading. By the time those 3rd graders got to 8th grade, they performed only .4 of a grade level—about half a school year— below the national average. That was 19 percent faster than the average national academic growth during that time. Hispanic students, who made up 45 percent of the school district during that time, grew 1.2 grade levels faster than the national average for all students, helping them close the achievement gap with white students by .4 of a grade level from grade 3 to 8.

    Chicago's Chief Education Officer Janice Jackson said the results mirror the districts' own analysis over the last five years, and "we're really excited to see these data reaffirmed on the national level."

    Chi-Town Challenges

    In the last decade, the 370,000-student Chicago district has been roiled by rising poverty, shrinking enrollment, and shifting racial demographics, but the researchers found the growth rate has been too fast for a changing student body to account for the improvement. The district does hold back about 5 percentage points more struggling students in grades 3 to 8 than other districts, but this could account for only about 1/20th of the difference in academic growth, according to the researchers. And while Chicago was under pressure to improve for federal and state accountability purposes, the researchers found that the improvements they noted on state tests mirrored the district's gains on the Trial Urban District Assessment, part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress that is not used for accountability.

    "This is not driven by cheating or teaching to the test or gaming the system in some way," Reardon said. "I'm persuaded there really are impressive rates of learning in Chicago."

    The researchers suggested the learning gains are likely coming from changes in the preschool and early elementary grades. "But the interesting question is, what is it that is happening in Chicago in the schools, in the city, in kids' early childhood that is leading to both the rapid growth rate from 3rd to 8th grade and the improvement from one cohort to the next. And what can we learn from that, ... for other school districts?" Reardon said.

    CPS' Jackson suggested that the district's focus on expanding preschool attendance, improving professional development for elementary school principals, and aligning the district's curriculum have all played a role in the district's growth. Yet she also said competition from private and charter schools and clearer accountability standards have also helped boost achievement.

    "I believe the level of transparency we have provided around what a quality school is has been transformational in this district," Jackson said.

    Jackson said the district is looking to partner with more researchers interested in digging into district data to identify the cause of elementary and middle-school growth and how it might be replicated in other districts, as well as how academic growth is progressing in high schools, which were not part of the Stanford study.

    Photo Source: Getty


    Related:

    • Study: Most School Districts Have Achievement Gaps
    • Chicago School System Enrollment Declines by Nearly 10,000 Students
    • Can Requiring a Post-Graduation Plan Motivate Students? Chicago Thinks So.

    QUOTE OF THE DAY

    “That was some weird shit.”

    —George W. Bush, immediately following the inauguration ceremony of President Donald Trump, according to New York Magazine. New York reported on Tuesday that three anonymous sources all said they heard W say it. A Bush spokesperson declined to comment.


    Notable Quote from FaceBook About RVA Public Schools ...

    I think people have to open their eyes and their mouths. The obvious answer is that RPS needs additional funds. It is crystal clear to an outsider that the City says one thing and does another. The entire school board needs to go out there on the front steps of City Hall along side the teachers and students and demand that City Council and the Mayor explain how they can find funding for baseball, football and beer manufacturers, but cannot, or will not, adequately fund the schools.

    How many people have to come to Richmond and tell them that if they want to attract middle class residents and decent jobs, while reducing poverty and increasing real estate values, they have to invest in their schools. Baseball stadium jobs, football training center jobs, food vendor jobs, beer company jobs, are all good jobs for high school or college students, but they will not pay big people bills, and they damn sure will not get anyone out of the projects. ~ Glen Allen

    GREAT NEWS!


    The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
    July 6 at 1:57pm ·

    Agency records can be subject to the Freedom of Information Act even if they are kept in an employee’s nongovernmental email account, a federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday.

    The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Competitive Enterprise Institute v. Office of Science and Technology Policy reversed a decision by a district court, which dismissed the case last year. The D.C. Circuit’s decision could set an important precedent for journalists and other FOIA requesters by clarifying that agency records are subject to FOIA regardless of their location.

    Court rules FOIA can apply to private email accounts | Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
    Everything online journalists need to protect their legal rights. This free resource culls from all…
    RCFP.ORG

    Ask Not What Your Country Can Do for You ..

    Ask Not What Your Country Can Do                 for You ..
    But What You Can Do for your Country

    Notable Quote from FaceBook About RVA Public Schools ...

    HOW TO CONTACT RICHMOND CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS

    HOW TO CONTACT RICHMOND CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS
    Make it clear that by not providing the necessary funds to fix the school buildings, the Mayor and City Council members are akin to slumlords who refuse to improve their run-down properties -- despite repeated efforts by the tenants -- to get them to do so. Click on the graphic to read "Landlord Blues" by Langston Hughes.

    GRANTS ...

    Education Hub

    GrantSpaceHave you visited GrantSpace, Foundation Center's learning community for the social sector? In the Education area of the site, you'll find education-themed videos and podcasts, sample grant proposals, the latest education-related reports from IssueLab, funding facts and figures, an FAQ, a Twitter feed featuring the tweets of education funders, and more. Stop by and join the conversation!

    Girls Who Code

    Girls Who CodeFounded in 2012, Girls Who Code aims to close the gender gap in technology by providing young girls with women role models in the tech industry and high-quality instruction in computer science. With the goal of reaching a million young women by 2020, the organization's model pairs intensive instruction with high-touch mentorship led by top female engineers and entrepreneurs. Learn more.

    Women in the South

    The Status of Women  in the SouthFor women of color, the gap in earnings between those with a high school degree and those with at least a bachelor's degree is wider in the South than in other regions, a report from the Institute for Women's Policy Research finds. The report, The Status of Women in the South (259 pages, PDF), examined data from fourteen Southern states related to women's employment and earnings, health and well-being, poverty and opportunity, political participation, and safety and found that millennial women between the ages of 25 and 34 were more likely to have a bachelor's degree than males the same age but less likely have one than millennial women in other states. Download the report.


    Recent Postings on John Butcher's "Cranky" Blog ....Click anywhere on the text below ...

    VCU: Expanding Upon Incompetence/Reversible “Progress” “Educator” = “Criminal”?? /A Modest Proposal/Lynchburg SGP/ Important SGP Data Suppressed by VDOE/Bang per Buck SGP Analysis /Why Publish Teacher Evaluations?/VDOE Is Spending Your Money to Avoid Disclosing the Data You Paid For /Excuses, Excuses.

    Improved Reading Scores Will Improve Writing Scores

    Improved Reading Scores Will Improve Writing Scores
    w/h/t Rayhan Daudani

    Single Gender Education Articles

    http://www.singlesexschools.org/research-singlesexvscoed.htm

    Search Results

    1. NASSPE: Policy > The Virginia Military Institute Case

      www.singlesexschools.org/policy-vmicase.htm
      The Justice Department asserted that VMI, as a state school, could not legally ... with the Justice Department: the state of Virginia could not fund a single-sex ...
    2. Court Approves Settlement Reached in Challenge to West ...

      https://www.aclu.org/.../court-approves-se...
      American Civil Liberties Union
      Jul 8, 2013 - ... to West Virginia Single-Sex School Program Rooted in Stereotypes ... Board of Education has agreed to abandon single-sex education for ...
    3. United States v. Virginia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

      en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Virginia
      Wikipedia
      Commonwealth of Virginia's exclusion of women from the Virginia Military Institute ... but equal facilities separated on the basis of sex: "it is not the ' exclusion of women' that ... any ROTC program at one of the six senior military colleges, including VMI. ... Virginia". Duke Law Journal (Duke University School of Law) 48 (2): ...
    4. United States v. Virginia | The Oyez Project at IIT Chicago ...

      www.oyez.org/cases/1990-1999/1995/1995_94_1941
      Oyez Project
      Virginia failed to support its claim that single-sex education contributes to educationaldiversity because it did not show that VMI's male-only admissions policy ...
    5. United States v. Virginia et al., 518 U.S. 515 (1996). - Legal ...

      www.law.cornell.edu/supct/.../94-1941.ZS.ht...

      Legal Information Institute
      by Supreme Court - ‎1996 - ‎Cited by 4876 - ‎Related articles
      Virginia Military Institute (VMI) is the sole single sex school among Virginia's public institutions of higher learning. VMI's distinctive mission is to produce " citizen ...
    6. United States v. Virginia et al., 518 U.S. 515 (1996). - Legal ...

      www.law.cornell.edu/supct/.../94-1941.ZO.ht...

      Legal Information Institute
      by Supreme Court - ‎1996 - ‎Cited by 4871 - ‎Related articles
      Founded in 1839, VMI is today the sole single sex school among Virginia's 15 public institutions of higher learning. VMI's distinctive mission is to produce " citizen ...
    7. [PDF]The Future of Single-Sex Education After United States v ...

      www.stetson.edu/.../note-dead-yet-the-future-of-single...

      Stetson University
      by J Land - ‎Cited by 13 - ‎Related articles
      Virginia,1 the Court effectively ended the long tradition of male-only admissions ... forms of single-sex education, public and private.3 However, Justice. Scalia's ...
    8. Once plenty, now single-sex colleges in Va. down to 3

      www.newsleader.com/.../same-sex...a.../24373843/

      The News Leader
      Mar 4, 2015 - Virginia at one time boasted many single-sex colleges. ... College student waves to a crowd member during the school's graduation ceremony ...
    9. Judge stops W. Va. single-sex classes: Were they a success ...

      www.csmonitor.com/.../Education/.../Judg...

      The Christian Science Monitor
      Aug 31, 2012 - A federal judge prevented a West Virginia public school from proceeding with its single-sex classes, saying parents didn't get a fair chance to ...
    10. State-sponsored single-gender education does not violate ...

      https://csl.sog.unc.edu/node/831
      Facts: The Virginia Military Institute (VMI) is a four-year military college for men supported by the Commonwealth of Virginia. The United States Department of ...

    Why this ad?

    1. Single Gender Education‎

      Adwww.webcrawler.com/‎
      Search multiple engines for single gender education

    VGLA Math Participation Rates/Richmond Public Schools 2009-2010

    Attendance Matters

    INCUBATING A DEFECTIVE REGULATORY FETUS

    DECEMBER 3, 2014 CRANKY

    In 2013 (latest data on the VDOE site), Richmond had a 93.4% attendance rate. That is equivalent to a 6.6% absence rate, i.e., the average student was absent for 11.4 of the 173 teaching days in 2012-13.

    Too many of those absences were unexcused. For example, that year and in 2014, over 2,000 Richmond students had ten or more unexcused absences.

    image

    Your State Board of Education is required by law to enforce the compulsory attendance statutes. At present, it does not even collect enough data to know whether the school divisions are in compliance with Va. Code § 22.1-258, which requires a set of escalating responses, culminating in court action upon the seventh unexcused absence.

    The Board finally got around to publishing a proposed regulation on January 30, 2012, 1038 days ago. The proposal was grossly inadequate (pdf at 11). They re-proposed the regulation on January 10, 2013, 692 days ago. As of today, the (defective) re-proposed regulation awaits review by the Governor.

    To provide some context, here are a few selected gestation periods:

    image

    All the while, Richmond’s students cut class with impunity.

    Your tax dollars at “work.”

    Post navigation

    By John R. Butcher ...

    CREDULOUS REPORTERS, MENDACIOUS BUREAUCRATS

    OLD NEWS; SAME OLD DISTORTIONS

    OCTOBER 18, 2014

    The Free Press reported on Oct. 14: “Richmond graduation rate up, but dropout rate still among Va.’s highest.” The story relies on “a new state report on on-time graduation.”

    In fact, the story relies on the VDOE cohort report that has been available since at least Sept. 25 (the date on the pdf version is Sept. 19). So it seems that, for the Free Press, it’s “new” if it’s not at least three weeks old.

    More seriously, the Free Press story uncritically spouts the “on-time” statistics that VDOE uses to baldly misrepresent the actual graduation rates Thus, the “almost 81% rate” reported by the paper is VDOE’s 80.5% “on-time” rate that is exaggerated by 9.0%.

    The story lists a “bright spot” at Armstrong. In fact, the 80% “on-time” rate there includes 7.3% modified standard diplomas and 4.6% special diplomas, so the federal graduation indicator of advanced+standard diplomas, i.e., the real graduation rate, is only 68.1%. Hardly a “bright spot.”

    To it’s credit, the story also points out that even the funky “on-time” rate is some ten points below the state rate and that we have one of the worst dropout rates in the state.

    There is good news here: It’s not that Richmond’s 71.5% real graduation rate is good but that it is much better than last year’s 65.1% rate.

    image

    LOUSY SCHOOLS, MENDACIOUS BUREAUCRATS

    THE ACCREDITATION DIRGE

    SEPTEMBER 17, 2014 CRANKY

    Despite VDOE’s inflation of the accreditation numbers, Richmond has been in free fall since 2012.

    accred3

    image

    There also is a graduation requirement: Full accreditation requires an 85 on the “graduate completer index.” All of the mainstream high schools except TJ bombed this requirement again this year:

    accred4

    This is a distinctly awful performance compared to the statewide data:

    accred7

    Your tax dollars at “work.”

    Meet New RPS "Team Bedden"

    New RPS team taking on big challenges - Richmond Times-Dispatch: Education

    View all 13 images in galleryBy ZACHARY REID Richmond Times-Dispatch

    Finding people to help turn around a school system widely regarded as one of the state’s most challenging hasn’t been easy for Richmond Superintendent Dana T. Bedden, but after nine months of searching, he finally has in place the team he wants.

    Of seven top newcomers, none has a connection to city schools or Bedden. Several are young leaders on their way up, but the group also includes a former state bureaucrat eager to again take on a district-level challenge and a well-traveled expert on facilities issues.

    There also are three holdovers from the staff of the previous superintendent, giving the team a measure of institutional knowledge as it begins working to improve a system in which only 11 of 45 schools earned full state accreditation this year and where most buildings are in a state of disrepair.

    “It’s a big mission, but every one of them is professional, and I think they came here because they wanted to be part of something special,” said Bedden, himself a newcomer to Richmond.

    ***

    When Bedden was hired in January after working as superintendent in Augusta, Ga., and Irving, Texas, he walked into a school system in disarray.

    Academic achievement was plummeting, the city’s aging collection of school buildings was falling apart and the school system’s staff was fleeing for other jobs as fast as possible.

    Bedden’s immediate challenge was preparing the new budget and putting out the system’s seemingly endless fires, but he also found time to rework the organizational chart and begin the search for people to help him succeed.

    He expanded the number of people who report directly to the superintendent from two to 11.

    And to fill the positions, he changed the way the city hires. For each position, he recruited a panel of experts from surrounding school systems and private industry to review applications and recommend finalists.

    Of the 11 jobs, 10 are now filled (Bedden is still looking for a chief of staff.)

    The assistant and associate superintendents are new, as are the directors of elementary and secondary education and the school turnaround specialist.

    The school system also has new people in several other key positions, notably in transportation and as principals in four of the city’s eight middle schools.

    “With that many outsiders who don’t feel like they have to defend the ways of the past, it gives us the freedom to be creative, to try new things,” said School Board member Glen H. Sturtevant Jr., 1st District, one of seven people who joined the nine-person board after the November 2012 election.

    That group, plus the two holdovers, have pushed for sweeping changes for a school system that quickly plummeted from full accreditation in 2010 to the ranks of the state’s worst performers in less than three years.

    Sturtevant said the new leaders have a big challenge.

    “I think we’ve already seen some progress,’ he said. “Now they need to present us with some reasonable, achievable goals that can demonstrate we’re going in the right direction.”

    ***

    Sturtevant and other board members said a big difference has been the customer service focus on Bedden’s staff.

    “You see that focus not just to the public, but also to principals and other school leaders,” he said.

    Vice Chairwoman Kristen N. Larson, 4th District, said the new staff is having an immediate impact on the middle school level, a transition point in which the city traditionally loses students to private schools and surrounding counties.

    “I think the fact that they were able to bring in four new principals already is a good sign,” she said.

    School Board member Kimberly Gray, 2nd District, called the change “refreshing.”

    In their sixth year on the board, she and Chairman Donald L. Coleman, 7th District, are the only members, of nine, who survived the 2012 election.

    “What we have before us is a great opportunity,” she said.

    Bedden’s team sees it that way, too.

    While he never worked with any of them before coming to Richmond, he has quickly created deep loyalty.

    “He’s extremely sharp. He knows a lot about everything,” said Ralph Westbay, the assistant superintendent for financial services. “But he doesn’t want to do your job. I’ve worked with superintendents who do.

    “He wants you to do your job, and he gives you the freedom to do it.”

    Tommy Kranz, the assistant superintendent for operations, has been the most visible so far because he has taken the lead on facility issue.

    He likes to downplay his role – “It’s my job to make sure our students have a safe place to go to school,” he likes to say – but what he has done hasn’t been overlooked.

    “He’s done a great job of keeping those issues off my desk,” Bedden said. “When he does that, I can focus on academic issues.”

    Larson said Kranz has also had a meaningful impact on transportation.

    “Early in the year, a parent called me to complain about her child’s bus not being there on time,” she said. “The next morning, he was at the bus stop with her. When you get that kind of commitment, good things happen.”

    D. Timothy Billups

    Title: Executive Director of Human Resources

    Previous Job: chief of staff, Richmond Public Schools

    Career Highlights: worked for Quaker Oats and Deluxe Check Printers Inc.

    Education: Virginia Commonwealth University, bachelor’s; Virginia Tech, master’s

    Why you came to Richmond: Having grown up in the area, for me, the capital city is home; thus, I have a vested interest in seeing it flourish. If each of us, working together, contributes the best of who we are each day, personally and professionally, then the impact that we can make on the children and families of our city will be boundless.

    What you hope to accomplish this year: An even greater expansion of our recruitment initiatives. We will begin using different technology that will allow interaction between HR, stakeholders and applicants.

    Michelle Boyd

    Title: Executive Director, Exceptional Education and Student Services

    Previous job: director, Exceptional Education and Student Services

    Career highlights: Worked collaboratively with the Virginia Department of Education and Virginia Commonwealth University in the development of Virginia’s first public charter school that focuses on enhancing post-secondary outcomes for students with disabilities (Richmond Career Education and Employment Academy, located in George Wythe High School).

    Education: Clarion University of Pennsylvania, bachelor’s; University of Maryland, master’s; College of William and Mary, doctorate

    Why you came to Richmond: I was drawn to Richmond Public Schools by the school division’s and community’s commitment to enhance opportunities for all students, which aligned with my professional beliefs.

    What you hope to accomplish this year: a) increased programming and supports to enhance school climate, b) increased percent of students with disabilities who are educated in general education settings, c) development of transition programs to support students who are over age for their respective grade levels, and d) expansion of professional development opportunities for professional and support staff.

    Janice E. Garland

    Title: Executive Director of School Improvement and Innovation

    Previous job: lead school improvement coordinator in the Office of School Improvement at the Virginia Department of Education

    Career highlights: National Institute of School Leadership (NISL) certification (2014); USED School Improvement Grant Conference, presenter (2013); Program Director for Four Rivers Technology in Education Consortium (2007-09); Fulbright Scholarship Award (study abroad in Japan, 2002); Oxford University Roundtable At-Risk Conference: Oxford, England, Presenter (2003); Virginia Association of Federal Program Administrators Leadership and Service Award (2004).

    Education: University of Richmond, bachelor’s; Virginia Commonwealth University, master’s; Seton Hall University, Ed.D. in Leadership and Policy, anticipated May 2015

    Why you came to Richmond: I was impressed with Dana Bedden’s visionary leadership and focus on improving outcomes for all students. The position allows me to work with a diverse team whose focus is improving conditions that will increase student learning. … The school-level improvement team focuses on a few goals that have the potential to make the most significant impact on student achievement.

    What you hope to accomplish this year: The team’s goal is to deliver on-site building-level support, ensure strategic deployment of resources (human, capital, material) and enhance leadership and instructional capacity in order to have the greatest impact on student learning.

    Anthony W. Leonard

    Title: Executive Director of Elementary Schools

    Previous job: elementary principal from 2004-2014 (Prince William County)

    Career highlights: I advanced Kerrydale Elementary School from the second-lowest performing, non-accredited elementary school (ranking 67 out of 69) to one of the top performing, fully accredited Title I elementary schools. … won Virginia Board of Education Rising Star Award in Prince William County in 2010, the 2012 Virginia Board of Education VIP Competence to Excellence Award, 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 School of Excellence Award.

    Education: West Virginia Institute of Technology, bachelor’s; George Mason, master’s; Virginia Tech, doctorate

    Why you came to Richmond: My education experiences include serving all socio-economic groups. I have been a product of the lower socio-economic groups we serve in RPS and have discovered a way to level the playing field for all students by enhancing their success.

    What you hope to accomplish this year: Support all elementary schools in achieving accreditation and meeting all Annual Measurable Objectives.

    Timothy L. Mallory Sr.

    Title: Chief of Safety and Security

    Previous job: security manager, Chesterfield County Schools, 2007-14

    Career highlights: Served as the Southeast Regional Director of the National Association of School Safety and Law Enforcement Officials Association, Project Director for the Emergency Response and Crisis Management and Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Grants, Norfolk Public Schools and the Project Director for the Readiness and Emergency Management and COPS Grants for Chesterfield County Public Schools.

    Education: University of Maine, associate’s degree; Saint Leo University, bachelor’s; Regent University, master’s

    Why you came to Richmond: I am a native of Richmond and a product of Richmond Public Schools. What a great opportunity to give back to a community and school district of which I am a product. To bring my talents and experiences to support the students and staff in providing a safer school environment and to also be a part of a great school security department.

    What you hope to accomplish this year: To complete security assessments of all schools and provide recommendations to the superintendent. Identify staff development opportunities for security specialists. The School Security Department will continue to build relationships with community stakeholders and work closely with Family and Community Engagement/Truancy Officers.

    Abe E. Jeffers

    Title: Executive Director of Secondary Schools

    Previous job: High school principal, Fairfax County Public Schools

    Career highlights: Trained as a science teacher, I have taught physics, earth science, physical science and chemistry to students in Virginia, Tennessee, Ohio and Maryland. I taught seven years and worked nine as a high school administrator in Fairfax County, two years as an administrator in Southwestern City Schools (Ohio), and four years as an administrator in Oneida Special School District (Tennessee). I have completed the National Institute for School Leaders (NISL) Executive Development Program and am a certified facilitator. I have served on many local division and school task forces, and completed a three-year term on the Virginia Association of Secondary School Principals Board of Directors.

    Education: University of Tennessee, bachelor’s; University of Virginia, master’s; Ohio State, doctoral course work

    Why you came to Richmond: To help build a better district.

    What you hope to accomplish this year: Develop procedural and organizational practices in teacher evaluation and feedback; shift the registration/master schedule work so it is complete prior to students and teachers leaving for the summer; focus our work on instruction and student learning; facilitate principal collaboration.

    Andrea M. Kane

    Title: Associate Superintendent of Academic Services

    Previous job: associate superintendent for school performance, Anne Arundel, Md.

    Career highlights: Prior to joining RPS, Ms. Kane dedicated 23 years of service to Anne Arundel County Public Schools. She held a multitude of instructional roles including computer technologist, classroom teacher, assistant principal, principal, senior manager for elementary school improvement, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, and associate superintendent for school performance.

    Education: Sweet Briar College, bachelor’s; Loyola College, Maryland, master’s; North Central University, pursuing doctorate

    Why you came to Richmond: I wanted to serve an urban population. I also wanted to build my own professional capacity by shadowing and learning from a results-focused, systems-oriented leader, Dana T. Bedden.

    What you hope to accomplish this year: Building teacher and administrator capacity centered on teaching and learning. I am leading a team that will create the district’s Academic Improvement Plan. The plan will address four domains: early childhood education, capacity building for RPS instructional staff, review of RPS resources and programs, and development and implementation of instructional monitoring plans. Research and experience support the notion that quality instructional programs for our youngest and most fragile learners must be a priority. Over time, we will significantly decrease academic challenges that are often observed later in the middle and high school years. Included in the plan is a proposal to increase the amount of time for professional development for teachers.

    Kavansa Gardner

    Title: Executive Director of Information Communication and Technology Services

    Previous job: senior applications developer and project manager at several companies, including Alfa Laval Industries, AMF Reece and ECK Supply Corp.

    Career highlights: Executive director of Information Communication and Technology Services at Richmond Public Schools. In this role, I’m responsible for the day-to-day operations of technology including, but not limited to, networking, user services telecommunications and other information technology functions of RPS. I’ve been with Richmond Public Schools for 12 years, beginning as an applications developer and project manager. I was promoted to director of Information Technology in 2007.

    Education: Virginia State, bachelor’s; Virginia Commonwealth University, master’s

    Why you came to Richmond: I want to make a difference in the lives of inner-city school children by reducing the digital divide.

    What you hope to accomplish this year: This year we hope to complete the deployment of our new student information systems, upgrade our virtual environment, increase the capabilities of our network filtering system and increase wireless reach in our schools. Also, we want to improve the overall technology infrastructure throughout the district.

    Ralph Westbay

    Title: Assistant Superintendent for Financial Services

    Previous job: executive director of Finance & Technology, New Kent County Public Schools

    Career highlights: director of finance for Petersburg Public Schools, assistant superintendent for finance for Chesterfield County, executive director of Finance & Technology for New Kent County Public Schools.

    Education: University of Northern Colorado, bachelor’s; Virginia Commonwealth University, master’s

    Why you came to Richmond: I was inspired by Bedden’s strong leadership skills and I wanted to be part of the team to help make a difference by improving the quality of education outcomes for the youth of the city.

    What you hope to accomplish this year: The goal for this year is to develop a strong financial services team that supports the mission of educating every child of this city by maximizing the value of the dollar in a transparent, accountable manner that engenders the trust and support of the citizens through our stewardship.

    Thomas Kranz

    Title: Assistant Superintendent for Support Services

    Previous job: private industry

    Career highlights: Served 10 years with Okaloosa County School District in Florida as assistant superintendent and chief operation officer and in the Hamilton County School District in Tennessee as assistant superintendent and chief financial officer

    Education: University of New Orleans, bachelor’s

    Why you came to Richmond: I was interested in the opportunity to return to public sector where I felt I could do the most good.

    What you hope to accomplish this year: For the entire operations team to improve the delivery of our services with an emphasis on customer service.

    zreid@timesdispatch.com

    (804) 775-8179

    GOOD NEWS TODAY: Teach for America NOT Coming to Richmond

    My phone messages and e-mail have exploded with messages from Richmond teachers and professors charged with educating our next generation of teachers, all of whom who are thrilled to learn that the controversial "Teach for America" program will NOT be coming to Richmond Public Schools. Style Weekly has the scoop, click here to READ MORE.

    As one professor aptly put it: "Our kids need stability, not some do-gooder wannabe teachers offering little more than 'face-time' before they return to college to get their MBAs or whatever ... "

    What Works? Some expert advice from educational leaders

    • What Does Virginia Law Say About School Attendance...
    • Innovation and Improvement: Truancy, Drop-Outs and Graduation Rates
    • Poor Teaching for Poor Children(Originally publish...
    • HIPPA Violations and Enforcement
    • Fact Sheet: Comparison of FERPA and HIPAA Privacy Rule for Accessing Student Health Data
    • Education Research Links & Blogs

    Can't Help But Wonder What Was on the Menu ...


    Check out Chelsea Rarrick's (WTVR-6) recent delicious and disturbing story detailing how some Richmond School Board members spend A LOT of money on food for public meetings in their respective communities. Seems that, Tichi Pinkney-Epps (9th-District) and Mamie Taylor (5th-District) -- the two Richmond School Board members who travelled to Miami and stayed at the posh Four Seasons Hotel on the public's dime -- are now going overboard on the food they offer at district meetings.

    Why Teach Children to Read?

    Why Teach Children to Read?

    Digital Journalist's Legal Guide

    http://i.imgur.com/f1p3isu.png

    Welcome to the Reporters Committee's Digital Journalist's Legal Guide.

    If you are gathering and disseminating news and information in any medium, this guide is for you. It will be as useful to bloggers as to a staff reporter at a national newspaper.

    Please note: This site is meant to help educate you about your rights, and is not meant to be taken as legal advice from an attorney or a substitute for direct consultation with an attorney. The Reporters Committee can usually help journalists, traditional or digital, find an attorney in your jurisdiction when you are sued or arrested. In such cases, contact our hotline for help.

    This guide is arranged by the legal topics below, which will also always be on the menu to the left. Please pick a topic to start:

    Gathering news and getting information:

    Open records & meetings (FOIA)

    Are you having trouble getting access to information from federal, state or local governments? Do you need to follow the latest on how privacy and national security issues are affecting access?

    Access to courts

    Are you being kept out of a judicial proceeding, or denied access to court documents? Do you need to contest a sealing order that has placed newsworthy information off-limits?

    Newsgathering (Access to places)

    Have you been stopped by police while covering a news story? Have you been kept out of a news scene because you've been denied credentials? Do you have other issues and concerns related to official interference with your right to gather news and information?

    Protecting and defending your work:

    Sources and Subpoenas (Reporter's Privilege)

    Have you been served with a subpoena? Is someone demanding that you reveal a source, or provide what you feel is protected newsgathering information? Do you have a question about the reporter's privilege -- the right not to be compelled to testify or reveal sources in court?

    Libel

    Is someone threatening to sue you over what you've written, or claiming that what you printed is not true? Do you have a question about libel cases or related issues, like anti-SLAPP laws and the fair report privilege?

    Invasion of Privacy

    Are you worried about how to present what may be personal yet newsworthy details in a news story? Do you have a question about other privacy claims, like intrusion upon seclusion and publication of private facts?

    Knowing the legal restrictions:

    Government Censorship (Prior restraints)

    Has a court ordered you not to print information that you lawfully obtained, ornot to report what you heard in open court?

    Content Regulation

    Are you being threatened with revocation of a domain name? Do you need to know what the FCC and FTC are doing to regulate the Internet? Need to know how the "fair use" exception to copyright law works? Have you been told to take down something from your site for copyright reasons? Or, has someone else taken your work without permission?


    TRUANCY: A LIFE AND DEATH ISSUE

    Consider:

    • The 2004 case of Justin Creech. Justin was a 15-year-old student at Thomas Jefferson High School who was stabbed to death by another TJ student in the middle of the day at Broad Street and Malvern Avenue. Both boys were truant.
    • The 2012 case of Antonio I. Shands Jr. Antonio was days from graduation at Huguenot High School when City of Richmond truancy officers engaged in a high speed chase of a carload of students they suspected of being truant. That chase resulted in Antonio's death. (One of the other consequences of that tragic scene was that members of Mayor Dwight Jones' staff and City Truancy officials realized that they had not received proper training nor were they legally designated truancy officers).
    • A Richmond Times-Dispatch story noted: "In an email June 1 to School Board members, a copy of which was obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Richmond school officials said Shands and other Huguenot students in the car had been caught skipping school by truancy officers.
    • Initial reports indicate that these individuals were observed by city truancy officers at Pony Pasture during a truancy sweep this morning. Once these individuals sighted truancy officers, they fled in a vehicle, subsequently being involved in a car accident. "

    Harrell & Chambliss Lawyers -- RPS Legal Eagles Habit Soars

    Harrell & Chambliss Lawyers  -- RPS Legal Eagles Habit Soars
    Click on the chart to read the contract that shows come July 1, 2011 RPS lawyers will be paid $32,500 per month, that's $390,000 per year or, for a 365.25 day year, $1,067.76 per day(!) or $1,494.87 per work day...(with a hat-tip and a high five to John R. Butcher for his chart and excellent assistance on this).

    Their (Still) Cheating Hearts

    Save Our Schools: School Report Cards: Beware Their Cheating ...
    Dec 06, 2012
    The School Report Cards on the VDOE Web site provide a lot of data but no way to compare schools or divisions except to copy the data out of the individual reports (Can you spell "pain"?). Recently, however, they put up a ...
    http://saveourschools-getrealrichmond.blogspot.com/
    Save Our Schools: Beware Their Cheating Hearts
    Mar 29, 2010
    Beware Their Cheating Hearts. (Originally posted 6/21/2009, Revised 3/28/2010). Time was when teachers and school administrators had to concern themselves with the possibility of children cheating on tests. Nowadays, it is the other way ...
    http://saveourschools-getrealrichmond.blogspot.com/

    Everything You Need to Know About Common Core ….

    Read Diane Ravitch's "Everything You Need to Know" analysis of what is wrong with the "Common Core" ….

    ADVOCATES/SCHOOL REFORM
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    A remembrance of things past ...

    Bradley v. School Board of City of Richmond involved two different decisions by the Supreme Court of the United States. In Bradley I (1973), more properly known as School Board, City of Richmond v. State Board of Education, the Court summarily affirmed a decision by the Fourth Circuit, which reversed an early order calling for an interdistrict remedy to eliminate school segregation.

    In the second case, Bradley v. School Board of City of Richmond (1972, 1974), which became known as Bradley II when it reached the Supreme Court, the Court upheld an award of attorney fees to the plaintiff parents.

    Bradley I was the result of extensive litigation to bring about the desegregation of the schools in Richmond, Virginia. The Fourth Circuit affirmed that an interdistrict remedy was inappropriate.

    Chesterfield and Henrico counties, which were adjacent to the city of Richmond, challenged a federal trial court’s joining them to the suit in order to effectuate a unitary school system.

    The Fourth Circuit began by noting that in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1972), the Supreme Court limited the remedies that the judiciary could use to achieve unitary systems.

    The court pointed out that previously, the board agreed that its freedom of choice plan to desegregate the schools was insufficient to achieve its goal.

    In addition, a federal trial court ruled that the third plan, an interdistrict remedy developed by the city, would eliminate racially identifiable schools to the extent possible in the city. Subsequently, the adjoining counties were added to the suit.

    As part of its judgment, the Fourth Circuit reviewed research on the percentages of Black and White students in each school that would have indicated the achievement of a unitary system.

    The court thus observed that joining the neighboring counties to the Richmond district would have been tantamount to imposing a quota by limiting the number of spots at some schools available to minority children.

    At the same time, the court could not uncover any evidence that the establishment of the school district lines 100 years earlier was racially motivated.

    Also, the court found no evidence of an interaction among the districts to keep the adjoining school systems White by confining Black students to Richmond.

    The Fourth Circuit ruled that requiring the consolidation of the three school systems would have ignored Virginia’s history and traditions with regard to the establishment and operation of schools.

    The court thought that such action would also have invalidated legislative acts that created the public school structure currently in place in Virginia.

    If the court were to ignore the history and tradition that created the public school system in Virginia,
    then the court feared that it would create budgeting and financing nightmares.

    Further, the court examined the Tenth Amendment, which reserves to the states the authority to structure their internal governance, including schools. Absent evidence of a constitutional violation in the establishment of the school districts, the Fourth Circuit maintained that remedy was beyond the authority of the trial court.

    The vestiges of segregation, in the opinion of the circuit court, had been eliminated in the City of Richmond. An equally divided Supreme Court affirmed in a one sentence per curiam order.

    Bradley II came about as the result of an award of attorneys’ fees. The trial court had awarded the plaintiffs attorney fees for the costs they incurred in the litigation. However, the Fourth Circuit reversed in favor of the school board. While Bradley II was pending, Congress enacted Section 718 of the Emergency School Aid Act as part of the Education Amendments of 1972.

    This amendment allowed the award of attorneys’ fees when appropriate in desegregation cases.

    Under this law, courts can apply the law as it exists at the time that they render judgments, even if infractions occur before relevant statutes come into effect, as long as doing so would not result in injustice or violate the laws involved.

    When Bradley II reached the Supreme Court, the justices noted that a reading of the act’s legislative history seemed to allow an award of attorney fees in this situation. In fact, the Court noted that since 1968, the board had been remiss in its duty to create a unitary school system.

    To this end, the Court decided that it was pertinent that the board was aware that it could have been liable for attorney fees. Therefore, the Court reasoned that Section 718 allowed the award of attorney fees when it is appropriate to do so pursuant to the entry of a final order in a school desegregation case.

    The Court explained that fees could be awarded for the services that attorneys provided before the law was enacted where the propriety of a fee award was pending resolution on appeal. The Court added that the award was appropriate, because it was not necessary for a fee award to be made simultaneously with entry of a desegregation order.

    Bradley I and II illustrate that because it took a long time for school boards to realize that they had a duty to effectuate unitary school systems in an expeditious manner, those that failed to do so were liable to pay the costs of litigation.

    Aside from the historical interest, it is worth noting that deliberate acts by school boards to delay remedying segregation when complying with known legal requirements can result in the unnecessary expenditure of funds for legal fees and awards of attorney fees.

    ~ J. Patrick Mahon

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    This was Oliver W. Hill's Favorite Frederick Douglass Speech

    Danny Glover performing Frederick Douglass' "What Does the Fourth of July Mean to the Slave?"

    (Click on the text above to hear the speech performed).

    Ten years before the Civil War, the city of Rochester, N.Y., asked Frederick Douglass to speak for its July 4, 1852, celebration. He accepted, but rather than join in the "celebration," Douglass took it in an unexpected direction. Here, Danny Glover performs a brilliant retelling of that speech.

    If you recall, Douglass was a freed slave who educated himself and became a noted writer, orator, and social reformer. At 1:09, he suggests why the idea of a freed slave speaking at such an event was...well...weird. At 2:22, there's a great bit about the "blessings" that all free people had but slaves did not. At 3:43, he really nails the rising sentiment of abolitionists at the time.

    Fearless

    §


    Let Your General Assembly Members Know that You Support HB 1054.

    2014 SESSION

    HB 1054 High school diploma course and credit requirements; computer science.


    Just click on the individual legislator's name and you will be taken to a page that has their e-mail and telephone number. Send them a copy of this blogpost and tell them you support HB1054.

    HOUSE PATRONS

    • G. Manoli Loupassi (chief patron)
    • Thomas A. "Tag" Greason (chief co-patron)
    • Jackson H. Miller (chief co-patron)
    • Terry L. Austin
    • Mamye E. BaCote
    • Richard P. Bell
    • Jeffrey L. Campbell
    • Mark L. Cole
    • Bill R. DeSteph, Jr.
    • Peter F. Farrell
    • Christopher T. Head
    • William J. Howell
    • Mark L. Keam
    • Terry G. Kilgore
    • Barry D. Knight
    • Dave A. LaRock
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    • Roxann L. Robinson
    • Christopher P. Stolle
    • Ronald A. Villanueva
    • Jeion A. Ward

    If We Build It ...

    From the Virginia Code: § 22.1-140.

    Plans for buildings to be approved by division superintendent. No public school building or addition or alteration thereto, for either permanent or temporary use, shall be advertised for bid, contracted for, erected, or otherwise acquired until the plans and specifications therefore have been approved in writing by the division superintendent and are accompanied by a statement by an architect or professional engineer licensed by the Board for Architects, Professional Engineers, Land Surveyors, Certified Interior Designers and Landscape Architects that such plans and specifications are, in his professional opinion and belief, in compliance with the regulations of the Board of Education and the Uniform Statewide Building Code. The division superintendent's approval, architect's or engineer's statement, and a copy of the final plans and specifications shall be submitted to the Superintendent of Public Instruction.

    (Code 1950, §§ 22-97, 22-152, 22-153; 1954, cc. 257, 291; 1959, Ex. Sess., c. 79, § 1; 1968, c. 501; 1971, Ex. Sess., c. 161; 1975, cc. 308, 328; 1978, c. 430; 1980, c. 559; 1991, c. 550; 1993, c. 227; 1998, c. 27.)

    HOW TO CONTACT RICHMOND CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS

    HOW TO CONTACT RICHMOND CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS

    Do the Math ....

    RPS CHECK REGISTRY
    RPS HOTEL SPENDING
    $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

    2011 Graduation Rate

    2011 Graduation Rate
    Compare 2011 with most recent grad rates

    2011 Students with Disabilities Graduation Rate

    2011 Students with Disabilities Graduation Rate

    2011 ALL STUDENTS Graduation Rate

    2011 ALL STUDENTS Graduation Rate

    Dull Hatchet Job

    By John R. Butcher

    The RT-D on Dec. 21 published a hit job on Richmond School Board member Kimberly Gray. The piece is based on a really sloppy hatchet job by Ron Broadbent, who appears to be on the staff of the Darden Curry Partnership for Leaders in Education at UVa.

    Broadbent’s report is a three-page cover memo to LeAnn Buntrock, Executive Director of the Partnersip, with eleven short memos, each two pages or so, summarizing Richmond School Board meetings during 2010 and one longer memo gushing over the school board’s retreat at Darden on May 21-22.

    The RT-D story focuses on Broadbent’s criticism of Gray “who was cited for speaking out and not following protocol during meetings.” The story overlooks the much juicier content in Broadbent’s report.

    Who is this Broadbent?


    Broadbent’s reports all are directed to the Darden Curry Partnership but neither the
    Darden faculty directory nor the University’s People Search lists Broadbent.

    Broadbent’s
    cover memo tells us that he is a “former public school educator with over thirty years of experience, twenty-four of which were in administration.” Whatever that experience may have been, it did not leave Broadbent a friend of the Mother Tongue. For example he says:

    Warning: Do not read this if you already have a headache:

    · James Pughsley in January of 2007 [et al] are examples of where they (sic) board had training on how to be a more effective board . . .

    · One of the most positive aspects of the Richmond Public School Board meetings is when . . .

    · The board spent 25% of the meeting hearing a final presentation on the proposed budget for 2010-2011, discussing and voting on.

    · Ms. Gray voted against the measure sighting (sic) the need for public comment and input.

    ·
    Further more, it would appear to be a violation of school board policy and protocol in my opinion.

    · By a 5-4 vote, the school board voted to approve an alternative sight (sic) for the Patrick Henry Charter School . . . .

    · The board spent 91% of its time . . . on matters related to the Balanced Scorecard. This is the highest percentage in quite
    sometime.

    Perhaps it is a good thing Broadbent got out of teaching and went into administration, where his illiteracy wouldn’t directly harm the kids.

    What did he actually say?


    As reported in the RT-D, Broadbent criticized Gray repeatedly for speaking out. For example, regarding the August 16, 2010 meeting, Broadbent reports:

    Ms. Gray continues to attempt to dominate with her numerous comments and personal opinions on practically every agenda item. Towards the end of the meeting so as to keep the board on task and be able to vote on the “consent agenda”, (comma sic) [Chairman] Bridges had to request of Ms. Gray that she end her comments and questions.


    Read that carefully, please: Gray is being assertive (bad!) while the Chairman is not doing her job (no comment!).

    Again, regarding the 8/2/10 meeting, Broadbent criticizes Gray for speaking “five different times regarding the audit and four times during the discussion of the A.D.A. report.” He neglects to mention that the Chairman allowed this.

    In a related vein, Broadbent chastises Gray & Murdoch-Kitt for voting against the budget on Feb. 16: “By its 7-2 vote, the board did not present itself as a unified/cohesive board with respect to the proposed 2010-2011 budget.”

    Then Broadbent praises the board for its deportment on May 3 in the 5-4 vote on the temporary Patrick Henry relocation (Bridges, Gray, Murdoch-Kitt, Scott, & Coleman voting aye; Page, Smith, Wilson, & Henderson, nay). As to the latter meeting he reports: “Concerns: None.” Apparently “no” votes by Page, Smith, Wilson, & Henderson are fine but those by Gray and Murdoch-Kitt demonstrate a lack of cohesion.

    Conclusions

    1. Broadbent’s reports broadcast both his biases and his inability to tell a straight story, not to mention his distant acquaintance with the English language.

    2. Kudos to the Times-Dispatch for posting the Broadbent reports that it so badly misreported.


    3. Great Praise to Kim Gray for standing up to the school board that is
    wasting tens of millions of dollars every year.























































    VGLA Math Participation Rates/Richmond Public Schools 2009-2010


    Bellevue Elementary 76%

    Overby-Sheppard Elementary 70%

    Oak Grove/Bellemeade Elementary 67%

    Woodville Elementary 65%

    George W. Carver Elementary 61%

    George Mason Elementary 56%

    Lucille M. Brown Middle 55%

    Ginter Park Elementary 52%

    Blackwell Elementary 50%

    Henderson Middle 50%

    Albert Hill Middle 48%

    Binford Middle 46%

    Martin Luther King Jr. Middle 45%

    Chimborazo Elementary 45%

    Thomas C. Boushall Middle 41%

    Fred D. Thompson Middle 40%

    Westover Hills Elementary 40%

    Fairfield Court Elementary 40%

    Miles Jones Elementary 39%

    Clark Springs Elementary 38%

    G.H. Reid Elementary 36%

    Summer Hill/Ruffin Road Elementary 35%

    Amelia Street Special Education 34%

    J.L. Francis Elementary 33%

    John B. Cary Elementary 32%

    Broad Rock Elementary 30%

    Elkhardt Middle 30%

    E.S.H. Greene Elementary 26%

    Southampton Elementary 25%

    Maymont Elementary 24%



    J.E.B. Stuart Elementary 23%

    Swansboro Elementary 22%

    Linwood Holton Elementary 20%

    J.B. Fisher Elementary 15%



    Elizabeth D. Redd Elementary 14%

    Mary Munford Elementary 11%

    Source: Virginia Department of Education

    VGLA Reading Participation Rates 2009-2010


    Overby-Sheppard Elementary 75%

    Woodville Elementary 75%

    Bellevue Elementary 68%

    Blackwell Elementary 68%

    George Mason Elementary 68%

    Oak Grove/Bellemeade Elementary 67%

    George W. Carver Elementary 67%

    Clark Springs Elementary 59%

    Lucille M. Brown Middle 55%

    Miles Jones Elementary 52%

    Fairfield Court Elementary 52%

    G.H. Reid Elementary 52%

    Chimborazo Elementary 51%

    Thomas C. Boushall Middle 50%

    Albert Hill Middle 49%

    Martin Luther King Jr. Middle 48%

    Ginter Park Elementary 47%

    Henderson Middle 47%

    Westover Hills Elementary 44%

    Binford Middle 43%

    John B. Cary Elementary 42%

    Swansboro Elementary 41%

    Summer Hill/Ruffin Road Elementary 41%

    J.L. Francis Elementary 39%

    J.E.B. Stuart Elementary 39%

    Linwood Holton Elementary 38%

    Fred D. Thompson Middle 37%

    Amelia Street Special Education 37%

    Broad Rock Elementary 36%

    E.S.H. Greene Elementary 35%

    Elkhardt Middle 31%

    Southampton Elementary 31%

    Elizabeth D. Redd Elementary 24%

    Maymont Elementary 24%

    Mary Munford Elementary 17%

    J.B. Fisher Elementary 6%

    William Fox Elementary 0%

    Source: Virginia Department of Education





    What Works? Education Experts Say ...

    Could You Pass This Test?

    1. Curious about what skills and knowledge are needed to pass Virginia's Standards of Learning (SOLs) tests? Click on the link below:

      IXL alignment to Virginia math standard

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    Virginians with Disabilities Act (VDA)

    VDA commemerative seal in circular shape, with yellow outline of  Viginia map and words 20th Anniversary in center, and words Virginians  with Disabilities Act 1985-2005 in gold letters within outer blue band.In the 1980's, sixty-four disability organizations formed a coalition known as INVEST (INsure Virginians Equal Status Today) to accomplish passage of the Virginians with Disabilities Act (VDA). This landmark civil rights legislation declared the state's commitment to support and encourage persons with disabilities to participate fully in the social and economic life of the Commonwealth. It preceded the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by five years, and is considered by many to be the model for the federal legislation that created the ADA.

    Signed in 1985 by former Gov. Charles S. Robb, the law was a landmark in the protection against discrimination in employment, housing, education, voting transportation and access to public accommodations.

    Today, the Virginians With Disabilities Act protects nearly one million state residents.

    The act declared "it is the policy of this Commonwealth to encourage and enable persons with disabilities to participate fully and equally in the social and economic life of the Commonwealth and to engage in remunerative employment". The Act protected Virginians with disabilities from discrimination under any state program or activity, by employers in hiring and promotion, by educational institutions receiving state funds, in the use of public places and in places of public accommodation, in housing, and in the exercise of the right to vote.

    Price of Public Education in Richmond




















    General Education Student in RPS: $13,155

    CCP:
    based on a 330 enrollment:
    $14,202
    based on a 380 enrollment:
    $12,333

    TOTAL per year: $4,686,617.00

    Maggie Walker Governor's School:
    based on 195 slots: $7,920
    TOTAL per year:
    $1,544,400.00

    Appomattox Governor's School:
    based on 59 slots: $7,115
    TOTAL per year:
    $419,785

    * Data supplied by Lynn Bragga,
    RPS Director of Budget

    Dare to Ask Why the Richmond School Board Refuses to Let This Happen Here


    We live in a nation in which one out of every four African-American males will either be incarcerated, institutionalized or dead before they are 21 years old. Our city school system continues to suspend and expel far more students than it graduates. Yet, our elected leaders refuse all efforts to open their minds to the possibility that we can -- and must -- do better for the sake of all our children and our city.

    As you read the Chicago Tribune story, please know that the members of the Richmond School Board, Supt. Yvonne Brandon, Mayor Dwight Jones, the Legislative Black Caucus and the Crusade for Voters are all absolutely opposed to charter schools -- which means that as long as this mindset prevails, Richmonders cannot ever hope to share in the success that these students in Chicago recently experienced.

    I hope you will dare to ask them to re-think their positions. How many more generations must be sacrificed because adults cannot act in the best interests of our children?

    And, remember the immortal words of Robert F. Kennedy:

    "If we fail to dare, if we do not try, the next generation will harvest the fruit of our indifference; a world we did not want - a world we did not choose - but a world we could have made better ...."

    Courage Under Fire & Suspensions of Disbelief ...

    Two members of the Richmond School Board struck a blow to help dismantle the "School-to-Prison Pipeline" when they voted June 15th against the pro forma acceptance of the RPS Code of Conduct.

    By their votes, Adria Graham-Scott (4th District) and vice-chair, Kimberly B. Gray (2nd District), each demonstrated "Courage Under Fire" to stand up to -- and apart from their colleagues -- on behalf of RPS children.

    The good news is that the RPS School Board, thanks to a change in state law effective July 1, will no longer be able to suspend students for tardiness or truancy.

    High fives to Richmond Free Press reporter, Danny C. Yates, who kept the group honest when some members postured that the action originated with the RPS Board.

    "The new suspension policy is the only major change from last year's Standards of Conduct. Some members hoped for additional revisions," reported Yates in the most recent edition of the Richmond Free Press.

    Indeed. Change is needed.


    RPS' excessive use of school suspensions and abusive zero-tolerance policies are well-documented -- thanks to the hard work of Style Weekly reporter Chris Dovi and Style's editor, Scott Bass.

    Click here to read about how RPS suspends far more students -- by 10,000 -- than the Washington, D.C. public schools do. Although the D.C. public schools have 46,000 students — nearly twice Richmond’s enrollment -- only 2,245 children were suspended last year, here to read Jason Roop's excellent article detailing the "how and why" CCP (Community Education Partners) came to be in Richmond and why RPS needs to re-think its zero-tolerance disciplinary policy.

    Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE)

    If






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  • Search result 148 of 1006

    City Hall renovations: $54 million in 15 years
    Date: August 29, 2014
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    On several occasions, Richmond officials have considered building a new City Hall to avoid costly renovations. By choosing to stay in the towering structure on East Broad Street, the city has had to budget about $54 million for the building to cover repairs and renovations during the past 15 years.
    Many of the decisions to spend heavily on City Hall upkeep were made by officials long gone from office. But the current crop of political leaders is now faced with the question of how much...



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  • Search result 149 of 1006

    After Richmond spends millions on City Hall, renovation focus turns to schools
    Date: August 28, 2014
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    On several occasions, Richmond officials have considered building a new City Hall to avoid costly renovations. By choosing to stay in the towering structure on East Broad Street, the city has had to budget about $54 million for the building to cover repairs and renovations during the past 15 years.
    Many of the decisions to spend heavily on City Hall upkeep were made by officials long gone from office. But the current crop of political leaders is now faced with the question of how much...



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  • Search result 150 of 1006

    Mayor's diversion won't help city schools Author: Staff Writer
    Date: August 22, 2014
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    OPINION
    "I don'twant the distraction of poor building maintenance to keep us from focusing on teaching our children and maximizing the potential of every last child in the city of Richmond," Mayor Dwight C. Jones said Monday.
    The late-summer jab at the school district - in response to its report listing $35 million in immediate maintenance needs - could hardly have been more off the mark.
    With all due respect, poor building maintenance is more than a "distraction" to the...



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  • View the full text of this story »»» Go to top of this page »»» Begin New Search

  • Search result 263 of 1006

    Richmond City Council vote could close loophole that aided Skins deal Author: ROBERT ZULLO Richmond Times-Dispatch
    Date: March 23, 2013
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    The loophole in city law that Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones’ administration used to help secure a major sponsor for the Washington Redskins training camp last fall would be closed under a proposed ordinance that cleared a City Council committee Tuesday.
    The ordinance would amend city code “for the purpose of providing that revenues from the sale, lease or other use of former school properties be set aside for the construction of new public school facilities or for the operations of the...



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  • Search result 264 of 1006

    Williams: RMA deal falls apart amid dysfunction
    Date: March 15, 2013
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    “At the first of a series of neighborhood rallies, it was proposed that the county residents boycott all city-owned facilities and city-sponsored events, such as concerts, lectures and sporting events.” — reaction to a 1972 plan to consolidate the Richmond, Chesterfield and Henrico school districts, from Robert Pratt’s “The Color of Their Skin“
    “The city can have it.” — RMA board member Charles Richard White of Chesterfield, regarding The Diamond in Wednesday’s Richmond Times-Dispatch...



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  • Search result 265 of 1006

    City’s elected, appointed school boards find common ground in balanced budget Author: ZACHARY REID Richmond Times-Dispatch
    Date: March 5, 2013
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    The Richmond School Board got a vote of approval Monday that would have seemed highly unlikely a year ago.
    On a unanimous vote near the end of a morning meeting in City Hall, Mayor Dwight C. Jones’ Schools Accountability and Efficiency Review Task Force offered its support of the balanced budget the city School Board passed last week.
    The group also pledged to ask Jones to look for additional money for at least two school needs: financially rewarding staff members, who are finishing...



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  • Search result 266 of 1006

    Upcoming Public Meetings Author: Staff Writer
    Date: March 4, 2013
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Monday
    Richmond City Council will hold a special meeting at 5 p.m. in Council Chambers on the second floor of City Hall, 900 E. Broad St. On the agenda is a measure to set March 12 as the date for Mayor Dwight C. Jones’ submission of the proposed budget to council. A resolution that would reverse the decision of the city’s Commission of Architectural Review on the appropriateness of vinyl windows for a house at 2916 Monument Ave. is also on the agenda.
    Richmond Mayor Dwight C....



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  • Search result 267 of 1006

    Chesterfield board receives update on Hull Street revitalization Author: JEREMY SLAYTON Richmond Times-Dispatch
    Date: February 7, 2013
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Could the joint Richmond-Chesterfield County project to revitalize a nearly 5-mile stretch of Hull Street Road be a sign of similar partnerships on the horizon?
    One member of the Chesterfield Board of Supervisors believes so.
    “It is frankly too rare to see the jurisdictions coordinating a planning effort like this,” Midlothian District Supervisor Daniel A. Gecker said Wednesday. “We are better than some people think in the broader regional issues, and not as good at some of this...



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  • Search result 268 of 1006

    Local News for Sunday, Author: Staff Writer
    Date: January 27, 2013
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    State of the City, budget sessions set in Richmond
    RICHMOND — Mayor Dwight C. Jones will deliver his State of the City address at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at Richmond CenterStage’s Carpenter Theatre, 600 E. Grace St.
    Jones, sworn in for a second term Jan. 12, has made overhauling the city’s public housing, combating poverty and spurring economic development major priorities.
    Jones’ administration also has scheduled a series of public budget planning meetings over the next two weeks:...



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  • Search result 269 of 1006

    Richmond expecting $11.5M schools deficit Author: ZACHARY REID Richmond Times-Dispatch
    Date: January 22, 2013
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    It’s going to be another tough year for educators and students in the city of Richmond, with teachers and programs likely to be in the middle of an effort to close a budget gap of about $11.5 million.
    Superintendent Yvonne W. Brandon is due to present her budget for the next fiscal year to the School Board during its meeting today.
    Before the budget had even been released, School Board Chairman Jeff M. Bourne offered a friendly but firm challenge, saying the board wasn’t likely to...



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  • Search result 270 of 1006

    School Board requests help from city auditor Author: ZACHARY REID Richmond Times-Dispatch
    Date: January 12, 2013
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    The Richmond School Board has asked city auditor Umesh Dalal to complete a “base line” audit of the school system’s $320 million in annual spending, but the effort won’t likely be a duplication of a private review last year.
    School Board Chairman Jeff M. Bourne delivered the request in a two-page letter sent to Dalal and several others Friday.
    “This is a look fully and completely at how we do everything,” he said by telephone after the letter was delivered. “We’re not under any...



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  • Redskins deal passes after last-minute negotiations Author: ROBERT ZULLO Richmond Times-Dispatch
    Date: November 27, 2012
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    After lengthy negotiations over the weekend and Monday secured concessions on schools funding in exchange for key votes, Richmond's City Council approved Mayor Dwight C. Jones' economic development package that will build a nearly $9 million training camp facility for the Washington Redskins and allow two major hospital expansions.
    A list of "enhancements" to the deal, the fruit of hours of talks with council members who opposed the deal in its original form, were compiled into a...



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  • Search result 288 of 1006

    Richmond mayor’s task force discusses initiating contact with new School Board Author: ZACHARY REID Richmond Times-Dispatch
    Date: November 14, 2012
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Richmond’s newly elected School Board should have a gentler introduction to Mayor Dwight C. Jones’ school-reform style than the current board, but it shouldn’t expect the pleasantries to lead to a windfall of cash.
    The mayor’s volunteer school finance reform task force spent nearly an hour Tuesday debating the best way to initiate contact with the School Board, which will feature seven newcomers among its nine members in January.
    But City Council President Kathy Graziano, an...



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  • Search result 289 of 1006

    Council passes resolution on Redskins deal Author: ROBERT ZULLO | Richmond Times-Dispatch
    Date: November 12, 2012
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Over vocal opposition from West End residents, Richmond’s City Council tonight approved a broad resolution endorsing Mayor Dwight C. Jones’ proposed deal with Bon Secours Richmond Health System to build a nearly $9 million training camp for the Washington Redskins.
    The proposed agreement with Bon Secours, announced last month, provides $6.4 million in sponsorship for the camp in exchange for a long-term, low-cost lease on the former Westhampton School property at Libbie and Patterson...



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  • Search result 290 of 1006

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  • Search result 306 of 1006

    Jones: Progress, but also missteps Author: ROBERT ZULLO Richmond Times-Dispatch
    Date: October 14, 2012
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    No one could accuse Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones of a lack of vision.
    In the last year of his first term, the Baptist minister and former state delegate has laid out ambitious plans to dramatically transform the city's public-housing complexes, bring the Washington Redskins' summer training camp down Interstate 95 to a new home in the city and make the James River more accessible to residents, among other programs.
    Those initiatives join the ongoing construction of a $134 million...



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  • Search result 307 of 1006

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  • Search result 365 of 1006

    Residents ask Richmond City Council to give schools more funds Author: ROBERT ZULLO Richmond Times-Dispatch
    Date: April 11, 2012
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Residents beseeched the Richmond City Council to meet the school system's request for an additional $23.8 million during a public hearing Tuesday night on the city budget.
    A small but passionate procession of school employees, parents and other residents lined up to ask council members to "fully fund" Richmond Public Schools in the coming fiscal year, which starts July 1.
    The hearing came less than eight hours after a consulting group recommended steps, including staffing cuts and...



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  • Search result 366 of 1006

    UPDATE: Mayor to finance new baseball stadium with debt savings Author: Times-Dispatch Staff Times-Dispatch
    Date: March 2, 2012
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    RICHMOND, Va.
    Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones said today he will use interest rate savings from paying off old debts as debt service for the city's share of a new $50 million baseball stadium for the Richmond Flying Squirrels.
    Jones said the city is using money repaid from an old loan to the Richmond Metropolitan Authority to pay off $26.1 million in debt at an average interest rate of 5 percent and allow the issuance of $36 million in debt at a lower rate, around 3 percent. The...



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  • Search result 367 of 1006

  • Richmond picks builder for two schools Author: Will Jones
    Date: September 15, 2011
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Richmond's plans for two new elementary schools on South Side are back on track with a company that initially did not vie for the work.
    Mayor Dwight C. Jones announced this week the selection of MB Contractors of Roanoke to build a new Broad Rock Elementary School and a new Oak Grove Elementary School for a combined $39.2 million. The 650-student schools are scheduled to open in January 2013 - four months later than planned - and they will be the city's first new public school buildings...


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  • Search result 382 of 1006

    Mayor Jones: Mistakes made in Richmond jail-planning process Author: Will Jones
    Date: September 12, 2011
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    RICHMOND
    Acknowledging mistakes in its jail-planning process, Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones' administration revealed Monday that it will seek relief from state design requirements for the facility.
    "There have been some mistakes but, in a project of this size, it's not unnecessarily unnatural," Jones said in an interview, in which he insisted that the city's procurement process had not been compromised.
    Citing new and ongoing concerns about the process, the City Council...


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  • Search result 383 of 1006

    Hurricane briefs for Wednesday, Aug. 31 Author: Times-Dispatch Staff
    Date: August 31, 2011
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Richmond
    Mayor Dwight C. Jones on Tuesday announced a free shuttle service to transport residents who are without power to operating grocery stores. The GRTC City Supermarket Shuttle will be free to the riders today.
    "We want residents to have some ability to get the goods and products that they need that will keep in this environment while power is being restored," the mayor said in a statement.
    Buses will board passengers at specific locations and transport them to nearby...


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  • Search result 384 of 1006

    Michael Paul Williams: With redistricting, Richmond drawing new race issue Author: Michael Paul Williams
    Date: July 29, 2011
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    An African-American member of the Richmond School Board would be redistricted into oblivion as part of an effort to preserve the black voting strength in a neighboring ward.
    Under a draft redistricting plan, the Jackson Ward neighborhood of Kimberly Gray, the 2nd District representative on the School Board, would be absorbed into the majority-black 3rd District.
    That's the same 3rd District that since 2004 has been represented by a white councilman and white School Board members. In...


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  • Search result 385 of 1006

    Redistricting plan moves School Board member Author: Will Jones
    Date: July 20, 2011
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    The Richmond City Council is ready to seek public comment on a redistricting plan that would move School Board member Kimberly B. Gray out of her 2nd District and would not spread the city's large public-housing communities across more districts.
    Protecting incumbents wasn't among the council's adopted criteria for redistricting, but the prospect of moving the western part of Jackson Ward and subsequently Gray into the 3rd District is expected to generate controversy.
    "Everyone is...


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  • Search result 386 of 1006

    Jones gets final report on Richmond redistricting Author: Will Jones
    Date: July 7, 2011
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones is welcoming but not yet endorsing three options for redistricting, including one that would overhaul the city's electoral map and reduce the number of voter districts from nine to as few as five.
    On Wednesday, Jones accepted a final report from a committee appointed to make recommendations for redistricting in light of the city's 22 percent poverty rate and the concentrations of poor residents in the East End and South Side.
    The City Council, which is...


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  • Search result 387 of 1006

    RMA payout comes with a catch Author: Will Jones
    Date: June 29, 2011
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Richmond will have to wait another decade or longer to take ownership of the expressway system if it collects $60.3 million to settle a long-standing debt with the Richmond Metropolitan Authority.
    Because the city provided early financial support, portions of the toll-road system within the city limits are scheduled to revert to city ownership when the RMA's primary public debt of about $122 million is paid off.
    That's now scheduled to occur in 2022, but the date would be pushed...


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  • Search result 388 of 1006

    Two School Board members would shift districts under redistricting plans Author: Will Jones
    Date: June 25, 2011
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Two members of the Richmond School Board would be drawn out of their districts under a pair of redistricting options that are being finalized by a committee appointed by Mayor Dwight C. Jones.
    School Board member Kimberly B. Gray would be shifted in both scenarios from the 2nd District to the 3rd, while Maurice Henderson would be moved in one of the plans from the 5th to the 2nd.
    Committee members emphasized in a meeting Friday that they had not considered the residency of City...


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  • Search result 389 of 1006

    Ideas for $60.3 million windfall abound Author: Will Jones
    Date: June 24, 2011
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Three members of the Richmond City Council credited Mayor Dwight C. Jones for negotiating a $60.3 million windfall for the city but made it clear that the council would have to sign off on any use of the money.
    "The mayor deserves a lot of credit and congratulations for pulling this coup," Councilman E. Martin Jewell said Thursday. "But we are the governing body ... and it seems to me that we should have some ideas as well as the mayor for how those dollars should be spent."
    Or used...


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  • Search result 390 of 1006

    Panel ponders reducing districts in Richmond Author: Will Jones
    Date: June 19, 2011
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Richmond should consider reducing its number of voter districts from the current nine to seven or five as a way to help tackle the poverty that plagues the city, according to an unfinished report of a commission appointed by Mayor Dwight C. Jones.
    One longer-term option being suggested would involve changing the city charter and redrawing from scratch the voter districts, which grew out of a 1970 annexation fight that created Richmond's ward system.
    The draft report says the purpose...


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  • you have a child with a disability, your child is entitled to a free appropriate public education (FAPE). This page has articles, law, cases, books, and other resources about FAPE.


    You should also review information about these topics: IEPs, Least Restrictive Environment (LRE),Extended School Year (ESY), Evaluations, Tests, and Retention & Social Promotion.


    Who is Responsible for Providing FAPE?


    In this article, you will learn about the "free, appropriate public education " (FAPE) your child is entitled to under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, who is responsible for providing a free, appropriate public education and how it is delivered. You will also learn strategies you can use if you have a disagreement with your child's IEP team.

    How Can I Get the School to Provide an Appropriate Program? Read one parent's journey from emotion to advocacy as she lobbies for the services her son needs.

    High-Stakes! Can the School Use a Single Test to Retain My Child?

    Should I Allow the School Retain My Child?


    Advice to a parent's frequently asked questions about retention - generally, it is not a good idea.

    To Promote or Retain? Summary of research on retention which shows that retention is not an appropriate intervention for children who have academic delays.


    Homebound Services: Two Hours a Week = FAPE? The IEP controls the services, regardless of where they are delivered - at home or in the public school.


    When a School Refuses to Protect a Child with Life-Threatening Allergies. A complaint filed alleging that the child on the basis of her disabilities, was denied a free and appropriate public education that addressed her needs, and failed to ensure a safe educational environment.

    Individualized Instruction is Not One-Size-Fits All. You are right. A program the school considers “good”may not be adequate for every child, depending on the child’s needs.The bottom line is the child has a right to a free appropriate public education (FAPE).

    What Does "swine flu" Have to do with FAPE? Guidance from US Dept of Education addresses the obligations of, and best practices for, state agencies and local schools with regard to the requirements for providing FAPE for children with disabilities when planning for an H1N1 outbreak.

    To Top
    Articles about FAPE

    Accommodations and Modifications. Some children with disabilities need accommodations and modifications in their special education programs. This 4 page printer-friendly article defines accommodations and modifications and gives examples for books, curriculum, instruction, assignments, and behavior.

    Free Appropriate Public Education for Students with Disabilities: Requirements Under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. (Rev. September 2007). This pamphlet answers the following questions about FAPE: Who is entitled to a free appropriate public education? How is an appropriate education defined? How is a free education defined?Evans v. Rhinebeck: Your Roadmap to FAPE. How do judges determine if a child is receiving FAPE? Learn about procedural and substantive issues, educational benefit, and how to use test scores to show educational benefit.

    FAPE? Ohio Child Entitled to an Education That is Appropriate -- and Free. What is FAPE? Court of Appeals says child entitled to appropriate education that is also free; orders district to reimburse parents for child's tuition at private school.


    Garret F: Congress Intended to Open Door to All Qualified Children. U. S. Supreme Court decision clarifies that schools must provide related services when necessary for children to attend school.


    IDEA Requirements: Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) & FAPE. The IDEA includes two fundamental requirements: that the child receive a free appropriate public education (FAPE) in the least restrictive environment (LRE). What does least restrictive environment mean? What is mainstreaming?

    Loving Parents Want What's Best for Child - But Schools Only Need to Provide FAPE. Learn why you cannot use words like "best" or "maximizing potential" in discussions with school staff; article includes Four Rules About FAPE.

    Reexamining Rowley: A New Focus in Special Education Law. Attorney Scott Johnson argues that the "some educational benefit" standard in Rowley no longer reflects the requirements of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. State standards and educational adequacy requirements provide requirements of FAPE; these standards exceed the "some educational benefit" benchmark. This requires a fundamental change in how courts, school districts, and parents view special education services.


    Unilateral Graduation & Compensatory Education: Kevin T. v. Elmhurst. Court finds that school district did not provide a FAPE, attempted to unilaterally graduate child, orders compensatory education.


    Tests and Measurements for the Parent, Teacher, Advocate & Attorney. Because FAPE describes a program that is designed to meet the child's unique needs and from which the child receiveseducational benefit, you need to understand test scores and what your child's test scores mean.

    The Untold Story - Florence County School District IV v. Shannon Carter. The inside story of the Shannon Carter case from due process, appeals, to oral argument before the U. S. Supreme Court.

    To Top

    From Emotions to Advocacy - The Special Education Survival Guide

    Our advocacy book, Wrightslaw: From Emotions to Advocacy - The Special Education Survival Guide, 2nd Edition , is published by Harbor House Law Press. Use the links below to preview the book. To order


    Introduction

    Getting Started - Chapter 1

    Reviews

    SMART IEPs - Chapter 12

    Skim Book

    Complete Table of Contents

    Legal Definition of FAPE

    The legal concept of “FAPE” is shorthand for “free, appropriate public education.” You will find FAPE defined in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) at 20 U. S. C. § 1401(3)(A)(9) (Wrightslaw: Special Education Law, 2nd Edition, page 51) and in the Code of Federal Regulations at 34 C.F.R. § 300.17 (Wrightslaw: Special Education Law, 2nd Edition, page 196).

    In a nutshell, FAPE is an individualized educational program that is designed to meet the child'sunique needs and from which the child receives educational benefit, and prepares them for further education, employment, and independent living.

    How can you tell if your child is receiving educational benefit? If you compare the child's educational achievement test scores over time, you will know if your child is receiving educational benefit.

    For more information about educational benefit and test results, download, print and study Tests and Measurements for the Parent, Teacher, Advocate and Attorney.

    To Top
    Caselaw About FAPE
    (more caselaw about FAPE & IEPs)

    Bd. Ed. Hendrick Hudson Sch. Dist. v. Amy Rowley The first special education decision from the U. S. Supreme Court in 1982 defines FAPE.

    Cleveland Heights-University Heights v. Sommer Boss (6th Cir. 1998). School ignores red flags, does not offer an IEP, child placed in private school, parents entitled to reimbursement.
    Evans v. Rhinebeck (S.D. NY 1996). Learn about FAPE for child with dyslexia; substantive and procedural issues, educational benefit. Includes excellent discussion of IEP goals and objectives.

    Kevin T. v. Elmhurst Comm. School Dist. (N.D. IL 2002) Witness credibility, failure to review and revise IEP goals and objectives, regression of skills, assistive technology, statewide assessments, transition plans, unilateral graduation, and compensatory education as a remedy when a school district fails to provide a FAPE.

    T. R. v. Kingwood Township (NJ) (3rd Cir. 2000) Clarifies requirement to provide a "free appropriate education (FAPE)" in the "least restrictive environment, meaningful benefit, continuum of placements.
    Walczak v. Florida Union Free School Dist. (2nd Cir. 1998). Loving parents want what's best for child but school need only provide an appropriate education
    .

    Books about Special Education Law, NCLB & Advocacy

    Wrightslaw: Special Education Law, 2nd Edition (ISBN 978-1-892320-16-2) by Peter W. D. Wright and Pamela Darr Wright is published by Harbor House Law Press, Inc.
    Available as a print book/e-book combo.
    Wrightslaw: From Emotions to Advocacy - The Special Education Survival Guide (ISBN 978-1-892320-09-4) by Pam and Pete Wright is published by Harbor House Law Press. The book is supplemented by theFrom Emotions to Advocacy website.
    Wrightslaw: No Child Left Behind (ISBN: 978-1-892320-12-4) by Peter W. D. Wright, Pamela Darr Wright and Suzanne Whitney Heath is published by Harbor House Law Press; includes the No Child Left Behind CD-ROM.

    • Demand Counselors, Not Cops ...
      Posted October 19, 2018 by Tafari Melisizwe New York, NY – Parents, students, teachers and other members of the nationwide Dignity in...
    • If Kenya Wins the 3rd District School Board -- We All Win
      [Editor's Note:  The following is from RVAdirt.com written by Jessee Marie, a citizen who lives in the 3rd District.  I warn you that i...
    • Beware Their Cheating Hearts
      (Originally posted 6/21/2009, Revised 3/28/2010) Time was when teachers and school administrators had to concern themselves with the p...

    Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE)

    If






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  • Search result 148 of 1006

    City Hall renovations: $54 million in 15 years
    Date: August 29, 2014
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    On several occasions, Richmond officials have considered building a new City Hall to avoid costly renovations. By choosing to stay in the towering structure on East Broad Street, the city has had to budget about $54 million for the building to cover repairs and renovations during the past 15 years.
    Many of the decisions to spend heavily on City Hall upkeep were made by officials long gone from office. But the current crop of political leaders is now faced with the question of how much...



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  • Search result 149 of 1006

    After Richmond spends millions on City Hall, renovation focus turns to schools
    Date: August 28, 2014
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    On several occasions, Richmond officials have considered building a new City Hall to avoid costly renovations. By choosing to stay in the towering structure on East Broad Street, the city has had to budget about $54 million for the building to cover repairs and renovations during the past 15 years.
    Many of the decisions to spend heavily on City Hall upkeep were made by officials long gone from office. But the current crop of political leaders is now faced with the question of how much...



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  • Search result 150 of 1006

    Mayor's diversion won't help city schools Author: Staff Writer
    Date: August 22, 2014
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    OPINION
    "I don'twant the distraction of poor building maintenance to keep us from focusing on teaching our children and maximizing the potential of every last child in the city of Richmond," Mayor Dwight C. Jones said Monday.
    The late-summer jab at the school district - in response to its report listing $35 million in immediate maintenance needs - could hardly have been more off the mark.
    With all due respect, poor building maintenance is more than a "distraction" to the...



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  • Search result 263 of 1006

    Richmond City Council vote could close loophole that aided Skins deal Author: ROBERT ZULLO Richmond Times-Dispatch
    Date: March 23, 2013
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    The loophole in city law that Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones’ administration used to help secure a major sponsor for the Washington Redskins training camp last fall would be closed under a proposed ordinance that cleared a City Council committee Tuesday.
    The ordinance would amend city code “for the purpose of providing that revenues from the sale, lease or other use of former school properties be set aside for the construction of new public school facilities or for the operations of the...



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  • Search result 264 of 1006

    Williams: RMA deal falls apart amid dysfunction
    Date: March 15, 2013
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    “At the first of a series of neighborhood rallies, it was proposed that the county residents boycott all city-owned facilities and city-sponsored events, such as concerts, lectures and sporting events.” — reaction to a 1972 plan to consolidate the Richmond, Chesterfield and Henrico school districts, from Robert Pratt’s “The Color of Their Skin“
    “The city can have it.” — RMA board member Charles Richard White of Chesterfield, regarding The Diamond in Wednesday’s Richmond Times-Dispatch...



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  • Search result 265 of 1006

    City’s elected, appointed school boards find common ground in balanced budget Author: ZACHARY REID Richmond Times-Dispatch
    Date: March 5, 2013
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    The Richmond School Board got a vote of approval Monday that would have seemed highly unlikely a year ago.
    On a unanimous vote near the end of a morning meeting in City Hall, Mayor Dwight C. Jones’ Schools Accountability and Efficiency Review Task Force offered its support of the balanced budget the city School Board passed last week.
    The group also pledged to ask Jones to look for additional money for at least two school needs: financially rewarding staff members, who are finishing...



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  • Search result 266 of 1006

    Upcoming Public Meetings Author: Staff Writer
    Date: March 4, 2013
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Monday
    Richmond City Council will hold a special meeting at 5 p.m. in Council Chambers on the second floor of City Hall, 900 E. Broad St. On the agenda is a measure to set March 12 as the date for Mayor Dwight C. Jones’ submission of the proposed budget to council. A resolution that would reverse the decision of the city’s Commission of Architectural Review on the appropriateness of vinyl windows for a house at 2916 Monument Ave. is also on the agenda.
    Richmond Mayor Dwight C....



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  • Search result 267 of 1006

    Chesterfield board receives update on Hull Street revitalization Author: JEREMY SLAYTON Richmond Times-Dispatch
    Date: February 7, 2013
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Could the joint Richmond-Chesterfield County project to revitalize a nearly 5-mile stretch of Hull Street Road be a sign of similar partnerships on the horizon?
    One member of the Chesterfield Board of Supervisors believes so.
    “It is frankly too rare to see the jurisdictions coordinating a planning effort like this,” Midlothian District Supervisor Daniel A. Gecker said Wednesday. “We are better than some people think in the broader regional issues, and not as good at some of this...



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  • Search result 268 of 1006

    Local News for Sunday, Author: Staff Writer
    Date: January 27, 2013
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    State of the City, budget sessions set in Richmond
    RICHMOND — Mayor Dwight C. Jones will deliver his State of the City address at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at Richmond CenterStage’s Carpenter Theatre, 600 E. Grace St.
    Jones, sworn in for a second term Jan. 12, has made overhauling the city’s public housing, combating poverty and spurring economic development major priorities.
    Jones’ administration also has scheduled a series of public budget planning meetings over the next two weeks:...



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  • Search result 269 of 1006

    Richmond expecting $11.5M schools deficit Author: ZACHARY REID Richmond Times-Dispatch
    Date: January 22, 2013
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    It’s going to be another tough year for educators and students in the city of Richmond, with teachers and programs likely to be in the middle of an effort to close a budget gap of about $11.5 million.
    Superintendent Yvonne W. Brandon is due to present her budget for the next fiscal year to the School Board during its meeting today.
    Before the budget had even been released, School Board Chairman Jeff M. Bourne offered a friendly but firm challenge, saying the board wasn’t likely to...



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  • Search result 270 of 1006

    School Board requests help from city auditor Author: ZACHARY REID Richmond Times-Dispatch
    Date: January 12, 2013
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    The Richmond School Board has asked city auditor Umesh Dalal to complete a “base line” audit of the school system’s $320 million in annual spending, but the effort won’t likely be a duplication of a private review last year.
    School Board Chairman Jeff M. Bourne delivered the request in a two-page letter sent to Dalal and several others Friday.
    “This is a look fully and completely at how we do everything,” he said by telephone after the letter was delivered. “We’re not under any...



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  • Redskins deal passes after last-minute negotiations Author: ROBERT ZULLO Richmond Times-Dispatch
    Date: November 27, 2012
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    After lengthy negotiations over the weekend and Monday secured concessions on schools funding in exchange for key votes, Richmond's City Council approved Mayor Dwight C. Jones' economic development package that will build a nearly $9 million training camp facility for the Washington Redskins and allow two major hospital expansions.
    A list of "enhancements" to the deal, the fruit of hours of talks with council members who opposed the deal in its original form, were compiled into a...



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  • Search result 288 of 1006

    Richmond mayor’s task force discusses initiating contact with new School Board Author: ZACHARY REID Richmond Times-Dispatch
    Date: November 14, 2012
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Richmond’s newly elected School Board should have a gentler introduction to Mayor Dwight C. Jones’ school-reform style than the current board, but it shouldn’t expect the pleasantries to lead to a windfall of cash.
    The mayor’s volunteer school finance reform task force spent nearly an hour Tuesday debating the best way to initiate contact with the School Board, which will feature seven newcomers among its nine members in January.
    But City Council President Kathy Graziano, an...



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  • Search result 289 of 1006

    Council passes resolution on Redskins deal Author: ROBERT ZULLO | Richmond Times-Dispatch
    Date: November 12, 2012
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Over vocal opposition from West End residents, Richmond’s City Council tonight approved a broad resolution endorsing Mayor Dwight C. Jones’ proposed deal with Bon Secours Richmond Health System to build a nearly $9 million training camp for the Washington Redskins.
    The proposed agreement with Bon Secours, announced last month, provides $6.4 million in sponsorship for the camp in exchange for a long-term, low-cost lease on the former Westhampton School property at Libbie and Patterson...



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  • Search result 290 of 1006

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  • Search result 306 of 1006

    Jones: Progress, but also missteps Author: ROBERT ZULLO Richmond Times-Dispatch
    Date: October 14, 2012
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    No one could accuse Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones of a lack of vision.
    In the last year of his first term, the Baptist minister and former state delegate has laid out ambitious plans to dramatically transform the city's public-housing complexes, bring the Washington Redskins' summer training camp down Interstate 95 to a new home in the city and make the James River more accessible to residents, among other programs.
    Those initiatives join the ongoing construction of a $134 million...



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  • Search result 307 of 1006

  • View the full text of this story »»» Go to top of this page »»» Begin New Search

  • Search result 365 of 1006

    Residents ask Richmond City Council to give schools more funds Author: ROBERT ZULLO Richmond Times-Dispatch
    Date: April 11, 2012
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Residents beseeched the Richmond City Council to meet the school system's request for an additional $23.8 million during a public hearing Tuesday night on the city budget.
    A small but passionate procession of school employees, parents and other residents lined up to ask council members to "fully fund" Richmond Public Schools in the coming fiscal year, which starts July 1.
    The hearing came less than eight hours after a consulting group recommended steps, including staffing cuts and...



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  • Search result 366 of 1006

    UPDATE: Mayor to finance new baseball stadium with debt savings Author: Times-Dispatch Staff Times-Dispatch
    Date: March 2, 2012
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    RICHMOND, Va.
    Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones said today he will use interest rate savings from paying off old debts as debt service for the city's share of a new $50 million baseball stadium for the Richmond Flying Squirrels.
    Jones said the city is using money repaid from an old loan to the Richmond Metropolitan Authority to pay off $26.1 million in debt at an average interest rate of 5 percent and allow the issuance of $36 million in debt at a lower rate, around 3 percent. The...



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  • Search result 367 of 1006

  • Richmond picks builder for two schools Author: Will Jones
    Date: September 15, 2011
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Richmond's plans for two new elementary schools on South Side are back on track with a company that initially did not vie for the work.
    Mayor Dwight C. Jones announced this week the selection of MB Contractors of Roanoke to build a new Broad Rock Elementary School and a new Oak Grove Elementary School for a combined $39.2 million. The 650-student schools are scheduled to open in January 2013 - four months later than planned - and they will be the city's first new public school buildings...


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  • Search result 382 of 1006

    Mayor Jones: Mistakes made in Richmond jail-planning process Author: Will Jones
    Date: September 12, 2011
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    RICHMOND
    Acknowledging mistakes in its jail-planning process, Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones' administration revealed Monday that it will seek relief from state design requirements for the facility.
    "There have been some mistakes but, in a project of this size, it's not unnecessarily unnatural," Jones said in an interview, in which he insisted that the city's procurement process had not been compromised.
    Citing new and ongoing concerns about the process, the City Council...


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  • Search result 383 of 1006

    Hurricane briefs for Wednesday, Aug. 31 Author: Times-Dispatch Staff
    Date: August 31, 2011
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Richmond
    Mayor Dwight C. Jones on Tuesday announced a free shuttle service to transport residents who are without power to operating grocery stores. The GRTC City Supermarket Shuttle will be free to the riders today.
    "We want residents to have some ability to get the goods and products that they need that will keep in this environment while power is being restored," the mayor said in a statement.
    Buses will board passengers at specific locations and transport them to nearby...


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  • Search result 384 of 1006

    Michael Paul Williams: With redistricting, Richmond drawing new race issue Author: Michael Paul Williams
    Date: July 29, 2011
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    An African-American member of the Richmond School Board would be redistricted into oblivion as part of an effort to preserve the black voting strength in a neighboring ward.
    Under a draft redistricting plan, the Jackson Ward neighborhood of Kimberly Gray, the 2nd District representative on the School Board, would be absorbed into the majority-black 3rd District.
    That's the same 3rd District that since 2004 has been represented by a white councilman and white School Board members. In...


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  • Search result 385 of 1006

    Redistricting plan moves School Board member Author: Will Jones
    Date: July 20, 2011
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    The Richmond City Council is ready to seek public comment on a redistricting plan that would move School Board member Kimberly B. Gray out of her 2nd District and would not spread the city's large public-housing communities across more districts.
    Protecting incumbents wasn't among the council's adopted criteria for redistricting, but the prospect of moving the western part of Jackson Ward and subsequently Gray into the 3rd District is expected to generate controversy.
    "Everyone is...


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  • Search result 386 of 1006

    Jones gets final report on Richmond redistricting Author: Will Jones
    Date: July 7, 2011
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones is welcoming but not yet endorsing three options for redistricting, including one that would overhaul the city's electoral map and reduce the number of voter districts from nine to as few as five.
    On Wednesday, Jones accepted a final report from a committee appointed to make recommendations for redistricting in light of the city's 22 percent poverty rate and the concentrations of poor residents in the East End and South Side.
    The City Council, which is...


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  • Search result 387 of 1006

    RMA payout comes with a catch Author: Will Jones
    Date: June 29, 2011
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Richmond will have to wait another decade or longer to take ownership of the expressway system if it collects $60.3 million to settle a long-standing debt with the Richmond Metropolitan Authority.
    Because the city provided early financial support, portions of the toll-road system within the city limits are scheduled to revert to city ownership when the RMA's primary public debt of about $122 million is paid off.
    That's now scheduled to occur in 2022, but the date would be pushed...


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  • Search result 388 of 1006

    Two School Board members would shift districts under redistricting plans Author: Will Jones
    Date: June 25, 2011
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Two members of the Richmond School Board would be drawn out of their districts under a pair of redistricting options that are being finalized by a committee appointed by Mayor Dwight C. Jones.
    School Board member Kimberly B. Gray would be shifted in both scenarios from the 2nd District to the 3rd, while Maurice Henderson would be moved in one of the plans from the 5th to the 2nd.
    Committee members emphasized in a meeting Friday that they had not considered the residency of City...


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  • Search result 389 of 1006

    Ideas for $60.3 million windfall abound Author: Will Jones
    Date: June 24, 2011
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Three members of the Richmond City Council credited Mayor Dwight C. Jones for negotiating a $60.3 million windfall for the city but made it clear that the council would have to sign off on any use of the money.
    "The mayor deserves a lot of credit and congratulations for pulling this coup," Councilman E. Martin Jewell said Thursday. "But we are the governing body ... and it seems to me that we should have some ideas as well as the mayor for how those dollars should be spent."
    Or used...


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  • Search result 390 of 1006

    Panel ponders reducing districts in Richmond Author: Will Jones
    Date: June 19, 2011
    Publication: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

    Richmond should consider reducing its number of voter districts from the current nine to seven or five as a way to help tackle the poverty that plagues the city, according to an unfinished report of a commission appointed by Mayor Dwight C. Jones.
    One longer-term option being suggested would involve changing the city charter and redrawing from scratch the voter districts, which grew out of a 1970 annexation fight that created Richmond's ward system.
    The draft report says the purpose...


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  • you have a child with a disability, your child is entitled to a free appropriate public education (FAPE). This page has articles, law, cases, books, and other resources about FAPE.


    You should also review information about these topics: IEPs, Least Restrictive Environment (LRE),Extended School Year (ESY), Evaluations, Tests, and Retention & Social Promotion.


    Who is Responsible for Providing FAPE?


    In this article, you will learn about the "free, appropriate public education " (FAPE) your child is entitled to under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, who is responsible for providing a free, appropriate public education and how it is delivered. You will also learn strategies you can use if you have a disagreement with your child's IEP team.

    How Can I Get the School to Provide an Appropriate Program? Read one parent's journey from emotion to advocacy as she lobbies for the services her son needs.

    High-Stakes! Can the School Use a Single Test to Retain My Child?

    Should I Allow the School Retain My Child?


    Advice to a parent's frequently asked questions about retention - generally, it is not a good idea.

    To Promote or Retain? Summary of research on retention which shows that retention is not an appropriate intervention for children who have academic delays.


    Homebound Services: Two Hours a Week = FAPE? The IEP controls the services, regardless of where they are delivered - at home or in the public school.


    When a School Refuses to Protect a Child with Life-Threatening Allergies. A complaint filed alleging that the child on the basis of her disabilities, was denied a free and appropriate public education that addressed her needs, and failed to ensure a safe educational environment.

    Individualized Instruction is Not One-Size-Fits All. You are right. A program the school considers “good”may not be adequate for every child, depending on the child’s needs.The bottom line is the child has a right to a free appropriate public education (FAPE).

    What Does "swine flu" Have to do with FAPE? Guidance from US Dept of Education addresses the obligations of, and best practices for, state agencies and local schools with regard to the requirements for providing FAPE for children with disabilities when planning for an H1N1 outbreak.

    To Top
    Articles about FAPE

    Accommodations and Modifications. Some children with disabilities need accommodations and modifications in their special education programs. This 4 page printer-friendly article defines accommodations and modifications and gives examples for books, curriculum, instruction, assignments, and behavior.

    Free Appropriate Public Education for Students with Disabilities: Requirements Under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. (Rev. September 2007). This pamphlet answers the following questions about FAPE: Who is entitled to a free appropriate public education? How is an appropriate education defined? How is a free education defined?Evans v. Rhinebeck: Your Roadmap to FAPE. How do judges determine if a child is receiving FAPE? Learn about procedural and substantive issues, educational benefit, and how to use test scores to show educational benefit.

    FAPE? Ohio Child Entitled to an Education That is Appropriate -- and Free. What is FAPE? Court of Appeals says child entitled to appropriate education that is also free; orders district to reimburse parents for child's tuition at private school.


    Garret F: Congress Intended to Open Door to All Qualified Children. U. S. Supreme Court decision clarifies that schools must provide related services when necessary for children to attend school.


    IDEA Requirements: Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) & FAPE. The IDEA includes two fundamental requirements: that the child receive a free appropriate public education (FAPE) in the least restrictive environment (LRE). What does least restrictive environment mean? What is mainstreaming?

    Loving Parents Want What's Best for Child - But Schools Only Need to Provide FAPE. Learn why you cannot use words like "best" or "maximizing potential" in discussions with school staff; article includes Four Rules About FAPE.

    Reexamining Rowley: A New Focus in Special Education Law. Attorney Scott Johnson argues that the "some educational benefit" standard in Rowley no longer reflects the requirements of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. State standards and educational adequacy requirements provide requirements of FAPE; these standards exceed the "some educational benefit" benchmark. This requires a fundamental change in how courts, school districts, and parents view special education services.


    Unilateral Graduation & Compensatory Education: Kevin T. v. Elmhurst. Court finds that school district did not provide a FAPE, attempted to unilaterally graduate child, orders compensatory education.


    Tests and Measurements for the Parent, Teacher, Advocate & Attorney. Because FAPE describes a program that is designed to meet the child's unique needs and from which the child receiveseducational benefit, you need to understand test scores and what your child's test scores mean.

    The Untold Story - Florence County School District IV v. Shannon Carter. The inside story of the Shannon Carter case from due process, appeals, to oral argument before the U. S. Supreme Court.

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    From Emotions to Advocacy - The Special Education Survival Guide

    Our advocacy book, Wrightslaw: From Emotions to Advocacy - The Special Education Survival Guide, 2nd Edition , is published by Harbor House Law Press. Use the links below to preview the book. To order


    Introduction

    Getting Started - Chapter 1

    Reviews

    SMART IEPs - Chapter 12

    Skim Book

    Complete Table of Contents

    Legal Definition of FAPE

    The legal concept of “FAPE” is shorthand for “free, appropriate public education.” You will find FAPE defined in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) at 20 U. S. C. § 1401(3)(A)(9) (Wrightslaw: Special Education Law, 2nd Edition, page 51) and in the Code of Federal Regulations at 34 C.F.R. § 300.17 (Wrightslaw: Special Education Law, 2nd Edition, page 196).

    In a nutshell, FAPE is an individualized educational program that is designed to meet the child'sunique needs and from which the child receives educational benefit, and prepares them for further education, employment, and independent living.

    How can you tell if your child is receiving educational benefit? If you compare the child's educational achievement test scores over time, you will know if your child is receiving educational benefit.

    For more information about educational benefit and test results, download, print and study Tests and Measurements for the Parent, Teacher, Advocate and Attorney.

    To Top
    Caselaw About FAPE
    (more caselaw about FAPE & IEPs)

    Bd. Ed. Hendrick Hudson Sch. Dist. v. Amy Rowley The first special education decision from the U. S. Supreme Court in 1982 defines FAPE.

    Cleveland Heights-University Heights v. Sommer Boss (6th Cir. 1998). School ignores red flags, does not offer an IEP, child placed in private school, parents entitled to reimbursement.
    Evans v. Rhinebeck (S.D. NY 1996). Learn about FAPE for child with dyslexia; substantive and procedural issues, educational benefit. Includes excellent discussion of IEP goals and objectives.

    Kevin T. v. Elmhurst Comm. School Dist. (N.D. IL 2002) Witness credibility, failure to review and revise IEP goals and objectives, regression of skills, assistive technology, statewide assessments, transition plans, unilateral graduation, and compensatory education as a remedy when a school district fails to provide a FAPE.

    T. R. v. Kingwood Township (NJ) (3rd Cir. 2000) Clarifies requirement to provide a "free appropriate education (FAPE)" in the "least restrictive environment, meaningful benefit, continuum of placements.
    Walczak v. Florida Union Free School Dist. (2nd Cir. 1998). Loving parents want what's best for child but school need only provide an appropriate education
    .

    Books about Special Education Law, NCLB & Advocacy

    Wrightslaw: Special Education Law, 2nd Edition (ISBN 978-1-892320-16-2) by Peter W. D. Wright and Pamela Darr Wright is published by Harbor House Law Press, Inc.
    Available as a print book/e-book combo.
    Wrightslaw: From Emotions to Advocacy - The Special Education Survival Guide (ISBN 978-1-892320-09-4) by Pam and Pete Wright is published by Harbor House Law Press. The book is supplemented by theFrom Emotions to Advocacy website.
    Wrightslaw: No Child Left Behind (ISBN: 978-1-892320-12-4) by Peter W. D. Wright, Pamela Darr Wright and Suzanne Whitney Heath is published by Harbor House Law Press; includes the No Child Left Behind CD-ROM.

    Look Away, Look Away ...

    The bureaucrats at the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) knew this train wreck was on the way. And they knew they had children sitting on the tracks. Yet, they did precious little to save the children.
    The Richmond scores are a disaster. Here are the pass rates of the bottom ten divisions in each subject area as well as the five-subject average:

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    image

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    You may recall that we were second from the bottom in reading last year and sixth from the bottom in math.

    Adventures in VDOE's SOL-Wonderland

    "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less. "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things. "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - - that's all." ~ Through the Looking Glass, By Lewis Carroll, Chapter 6)

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