April 27, 2011

Education Roundup: Handcuffing First Graders?

Marjory Collins/Zumapress.com

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  • After a special education first grade student became upset that his Easter egg painting didn’t work out, police restrained him using metal handcuffs, Huffington Post reports. The New York Police Department says the 7-year-old boy was “spitting, cursing and acting in a threatening manner.” The boy’s mother has retained a lawyer. Handcuffing first graders is apparently a trend. Last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of a Louisiana first grader who was handcuffed by an armed security guard at school. And in Florida, a first grader was handcuffed last year and then committed to an adult mental health facility by her school without her parent’s knowledge.
  • Tanya McDowell, a Connecticut homeless woman, may face up to 20 years in prison and pay up to $15,000 in fines for enrolling her son in kindergarten using her friend’s address. Like Kelly Williams-Bolar, the Ohio mom who was jailed for using her father’s address to send her kids to a better-performing school, McDowell is black, sparking questions of race and poverty’s role in these prosecutions. The NAACP has appointed a lawyer to McDowell’s case.
  •  Ironically, about 400 Baltimore parents faced possible jail time this school year because their kids are repeatedly absent from school, The Baltimore Sun reports. Critics, on the other hand, argue courts are not the way to improve student attendence.
  • Out of 2 million undocumented minors in the US, only an estimated 20 percent enroll in college. Mother Jones reporter Kristina Rizga tells one undocumented teen’s harrowing tale of defying deportation to make it to college.
  • Definitely biased is SB 49, the Tennessee bill banning kindergarten through eighth-grade teachers from talking about homosexuality in their classrooms because if teachers talked about gay sex, it would suddenly exist? To be clear, Tennessee teachers can teach human sexuality if the bill passes; just hetero human sexuality. 
  • Which outspoken public education reformers never taught in a public school in their life? In Education Week’s latest forum, teachers comment on the negative portrayal of educators in the media and dish out on some education reformer bios.
  • No Child Left Behind has yet to be revised. But in 2009, Arne Duncan granted 315 waivers so schools and districts to circumvent some NCLB requirements.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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