By Mike Rose | Educational opportunity depends on more than what happens within the schoolhouse. Employment, housing, food security, healthcare, safe streets—these are the social and economic issues that significantly affect how children do in school. They are the core problems in the community where I grew up, and in the many communities in our country that bear resemblance to South Central Los Angeles. Read more →

By Christian Coleman | It’s back-to-school season, and the US is still upset by its own sense of identity. James Baldwin knew all about it. In his “Talk to Teachers,” he said that if we changed the curriculum in all schools so that Black students learned more about themselves and their real contributions to US culture, we’d not only be liberating Black people; we’d be “liberating white people who know nothing about their own history.” The side-eye for FL, TX, and other states is warranted and righteous, because they’re still hell-bent on suppressing Black history or completely whitewashing it. Read more →