Ethnic Studies In Seattle: A look inside the classrooms of antiracist educators

The Seattle Public Schools recently wrote the below article about the powerful pedagogy of local educators who are piloting a new Ethnic Studies program.  The Ethnic Studies initiative in the Seattle Public Schools is the result of an on going movement that was birthed from the Black Lives Matter At School action last school year.  …

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Graduation Not Incarceration: No to exit exams in Washington!

Some 6,000 high school seniors in Washington are at risk of not graduating because they haven't passed one of the myriad of high-stakes tests, including the Smarter Balance Assessment Consortium (SBAC) Common Core aligned language arts and math exams, as well as a biology end-of-course exam. These students could have met all the other requirements, …

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Ethnic Studies Now!: Seattle students ask, “Why aren’t we learning this in school?”

By Jesse Hagopian First published by The Progressive magazine. From disproportionate discipline rates to its hyper-segregated schools, Seattle is a tough place to be for students of color. The city has an alarming pattern of segregation both between and within schools, and when the district was investigated by the Department of Education, it was found …

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Black to School: The Rising Struggle to Make Black Education Matter

A world where Black lives matter and Black education is empowering will not come easily. It won't be funded by benevolent philanthropists. It won't be promoted by corporate lobbyists or legislated by the politicians they own. It will only happen with an uprising beyond even the scale and militancy of the last century's civil rights and Black Power movements. The contradictions of unhinged police murder of Black people in the "land of the free," coupled with corporate education reformers' racist schooling policies enacted in the name of "closing the achievement gap," are already producing large-scale, renewed social unrest. The question of how powerful this movement grows is up to us.

“Opt out now”: The Seattle NAACP revives the legacy W.E.B Du Bois, demands an end to Common Core testing

“…the Opt Out movement is a vital component of the Black Lives Matter movement and other struggles for social justice in our region. Using standardized tests to label Black people and immigrants ‘lesser,’ while systematically under-funding their schools, has a long and ugly history in this country.” -Gerald Hankerson, current President of the Seattle/King County …

Continue reading “Opt out now”: The Seattle NAACP revives the legacy W.E.B Du Bois, demands an end to Common Core testing