September 17, 2015
By CAELAINN HOGAN
Associated Press
Nigeria's young poets hurled words against the injustices plaguing the giant of Africa, from corruption to Boko Haram's insurgency, in the fifth "War of Words" poetry slam.
Scores crammed into a stuffy space in Lagos, Nigeria's chaotic commercial capital, as 20 finalists from across the country battled for first place and $500. That's nearly six month's pay at the minimum wage.
"Now That Change Has Come," was the challenge for the competition, suggesting the reforms promised by new President Muhammadu Buhari.
"You have three minutes to bring that stage down," 13-year-old Oyinkansola Adesewa advised a friend. Soon Adesewa herself took the stage in a bold pantsuit that she created of green and white swirls echoing the colors of Nigeria's flag and launched into a poem about how the "national cake" is not divided equally.
Run by the Word Up organization of Olumide Holloway, banker by day and King Olulu on stage, the competition is part of the country's exploding slam poetry scene. Poetry slams are competitions in which contestants are judged for their content, delivery and audience response.
"We discovered there's so much talent that we haven't even harnessed yet," he said. "It's a dream come true for some of those poets, they never really had any platform to actually showcase their work."
The rousing, rhythmic delivery that the poets use in the slams is similar to rap. Written to be performed with dramatic flair and body language, slam poetry is becoming a catalyst for literacy beyond textbooks.
Many see the performance art as reviving Nigeria's tradition of oral history. "Our elders have what you call 'awi,' like a praise poem," Holloway said. "Now it's coming back."
Young Nigerians are making it their own, crafting a tool to condemn rampant corruption, discrimination against women and poor education.
The performances one recent Sunday were visceral, the audience drumming on tables as a poet's torrent of rhymes built to a crescendo, only to fall to a whisper, hands cupped as if in prayer during rhapsodies about the power of faith or a woman desired.
"Boko Haram could not blow up anything like she blows my mind!" one contender exclaimed.
Poets clenched fists, wagged fingers, and one spread his arms wide as if the words could make him fly.
Sporting a gold-flecked waistcoat and bright red bow tie, Adetimilehin "Vic'Adex" Inioluwa had travelled five hours and said he spent his last cent on bus fare to compete.
"Those who need to bring back our girls are men, not gods," he bellowed, referring to the more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram and missing now for more than 500 days. Vic'Adex left the crowd chanting the refrain of his work melding Spartan legend with African revolution.
Bankole Kolawole, a firebrand in a stars and stripes shirt riffed about Nigeria's graft and the billions and trillions "with wings."
The victor was Ibukun Ajagbe, a 14-year-old from Lagos, who brought the crowd to its feet with her impassioned ode: "By being that change, I am that change, and I have come!"
September 10, 2015
City News Service
Los Angeles County students performed roughly on par with their counterparts across the state in new Common Core curriculum testing, according to results that were released this week by the state and will serve as a baseline for future testing. The California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, administered to about 3.2 million students across the state in the spring, is vastly different from the previous Standardized Testing and Reporting program. The results of the new tests, therefore, cannot be compared to the previous year.
“The results show our starting point as a state, a window into where California students are in meeting tougher academic standards that emphasize critical thinking, problem-solving and analytical writing,” said state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson.
“California’s new standards and tests are challenging for schools to teach and for students to learn, so I am encouraged that many students are at or near achievement standards.
“However, just as we expected, many students need to make more progress,” he said. “Our job is to support students, teachers and schools as they do.”
The tests were administered to students in grades three through seven, as well as those in 11th grade. According to the results, 16 percent of students statewide exceeded the standard in English language arts and literacy, while 28 percent met the standard. Meanwhile, 25 percent “nearly met” the standard, and 31 percent did not meet the standard. In math, 14 percent exceeded the standard, 19 percent met it, 29 percent “nearly met” it and 38 percent fell short.
In Los Angeles County, 15 percent of students exceeded the standard in English, with 27 percent meeting the standard, 26 percent nearly meeting it and 32 percent failing to meet it. In math, 12 percent of Los Angeles County students exceeded the standard, 19 percent met it, 29 percent nearly met it and 40 percent did not meet the standard.
Los Angeles Unified School District students fared slightly worse, with only 10 percent exceeding the English standard, 23 percent meeting the standard, 26 percent nearly meeting the benchmark and 41 percent not meeting it. In math, only 9 percent exceeded the standard, 16 percent met it, 28 percent nearly met it and 47 percent failed to meet it. LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines stressed that it is too early to be “pleased or displeased” with the results, saying they will “provide a roadmap for how we can better prepare our students for college or the workforce.”
“As we all expected, the overall results of these more rigorous assessments show that we still have more work to do,” Cortines said.
“However, we are committed to strengthening our efforts and providing the support our students need to meet these challenging new standards.”
In Orange County, students fared better, with 23 percent exceeding the English standard, 30 percent meeting the standard, 23 percent nearly meeting it and 24 percent failing to meet it. In math, 22 percent exceeded the standard, 23 percent met the standard, 27 percent nearly met it and 29 percent did not meet it.Torlakson said the overall results continued to show an achievement gap among some ethnic groups, English-learners and low-income families.
“Clearly we must continue working to eliminate these gaps,” Torlakson said. “Much work needs to be done, but we are moving in the right direction with our efforts to provide extra resources and services for students and schools with the greatest needs.”
September 03, 2015
By Shirley Hawkins
Contributing Writer
School truancy has reached a state of nationwide crisis and California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris, along with members of The Center for American Progress (CAP) announced a “call to action” by announcing CAP’s recent report entitled “The High Cost of Truancy.”
The CAP report, which outlines the many consequences of truancy, explores the students most at risk of chronic absenteeism, examines how and why students become disconnected from schools, and identifies state measures that have the potential for expansion across the country.
“Truancy and absenteeism come at a high cost to children’s education, but also to the economy and to public safety,” Harris pointed out. “The CAP report sheds light on this national crises and it highlights innovative, data driven and proven solutions to keep children in school and on track.”
“The lifelong impact of truancy is alarming,” said Carmel Martin, executive vice president for policy at CAP. “It is a predictor of low student achievement, increased dropout rates, and can be a gateway to the school to prison pipeline. Truancy can also have a negative impact on lifelong earnings. Students who drop out of high school earn $300,000 less over a lifetime than high school graduates and are more likely to be unemployed.”
It seems that who truancy affects is just as important as how it affects teens.
“Truancy particularly affects low-income students and students of color, who are more likely to be absent from school,” Martin continued. “Lawmakers and education activists are troubled by this trend because people of color are projected to be the majority of the U.S. population by the early 2040’s.”
The report also revealed that there were significant disparities based on the race of the students. Chronically low income students and students of color are 60 percent more likely to experience the negative effects associated with chronic absenteeism and experience poor academic attendance.
“The truancy numbers are staggering,” Harris pointed out. “Nationally, high school dropouts are three times more likely than high school graduates to be arrested and more than eight times more likely to be incarcerated.
“In California, I focused on truancy as a public safety and an economic issue and the connection between chronic absenteeism and third grade reading levels,” said Harris. “In California, 83 percent of truant kindergarten to third grade students will not read proficiently by third grade and they are four times more likely to drop out of school than students reading at grade level.”
The report outlines that, according to the most recent CAP findings in 2012, an estimated 7.5 million students in the United States were chronically absent from school.
“In California, 250,000 elementary school students were chronically absent during the 2012 to 2013 school year,” Harris stated.
The CAP report also pointed out that truancy and absenteeism lead to criminal justice involvement.
“So the result is that nationally, you are looking at an African American man between the ages of 30 to 34 who is a high school dropout and the data tells us that he is two-thirds more likely to have been in jail, be in jail or dead,” said Harris.
“Truancy and absenteeism costs cost us billions of dollars a year in California alone,” Harris continued. “We estimate that dropouts cost 46 billion dollars a year in the burdens they place on California’s public safety, our public health, and our social service systems.”
The CAP report presented federal, state and local policy recommendations to combat truancy, including improving data collection for early warning systems as early as 6th grade; increasing wrap-around services in schools; and conducting outreach to parents and guardians for children at risk for truancy.
“This issue of truancy is a public safety and an economic issue, but I think we can solve it,” said Harris. “The good news is that truancy is preventable. Just a small investment in students can make a difference in the next generation of workers, innovators and leaders.”
August 27, 2015
By Freddie Allen
NNPA Senior Washington Correspondent
On Tuesday [Aug. 25], the Thurgood Marshall College Fund (TMCF) opened the application process for the Apple HBCU Scholars program to help the most valuable company in the world identify the next generation of high-performing leaders of color in technology.
The program, which targets students attending historically, Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), includes a scholarship for up to $25,000 during the recipient’s senior year, a summer internship at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., career-development opportunities, and the chance to serve as a TMCF Diversity Initiative/Apple brand ambassador.
Students will also earn the opportunity to participate in the Apple HBCU immersion experience in Cupertino, Calif., during the spring of 2016 and access to an Apple employee for a unique mentoring experience.
In the press release about the launch of the program, Denise Young Smith, the vice president of Worldwide Human Resources at Apple Inc., and a graduate of Grambling State University in Louisiana, said that the program is about exposing gifted students from HBCUs to careers in technology.
The tech industry has recently come under increased scrutiny for its lack of diversity by civil rights leader Jesse Jackson and others after companies like Google, Apple and HP published data on the ethnic and gender diversity of their workforces.
“We’re big believers that innovation will be strongest when talented people from diverse backgrounds are part of the creative process,” said Smith. “That’s why we’re so proud to be partnering with TMCF to help us find the next generation of innovators.”
The Apple Scholars program is just one element of the $40 million partnership between TMCF and Apple announced earlier this year that will include the development of a talent database for hiring managers, research grants for faculty members and investments in entrepreneurship programs.
“The call out to our community is that when an organization as big and as well-known as Apple says, ‘I’m going to invest in you,’ they have actually lobbed the ball into our court and, if we miss it, we’re going to be hard-pressed to argue that HBCUs are relevant and worthy of future investments,” said said Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., the president and CEO of TMCF.
Taylor added that the partnership will also involve serious discussions about how to make HBCUs sustainable in the future.
“[Apple] is absolutely convinced that if they want to solve their diversity challenge, they have to expand the schools that are producing the pipeline,” said Taylor. “Majority schools are not enough because everyone’s fighting for that same small pot of Black students.”
Taylor said that the stakes are high for HBCUs and Apple to prove targeted investments like this can reap long-term rewards for industries pushing to diversify their ranks. Taylor added that it may be the last chance for Black colleges to make the case that they are not just historically relevant, but that they’re also currently relevant, as well.
“This is Apple, one of the sexiest, most ubiquitous companies on the globe, so all eyes are watching and it’s just not limited to the technology space,” said Taylor. “I have meetings now with other companies in other sectors that say, ‘I am dying to hear how the Apple [investment] works out.”
The application process opens on August 25, 2015 and closes September 18, 2015. Parents, students and faculty can learn more about the Apple HBCU Scholars Program at http://tmcf.org/our-scholarships.