Recent news of some troubling comments reveals two false assumptions: that teaching kindergarten isn’t work and that sexual harassment isn’t a problem in schools.
What do you do with a teacher who provides students with authentic learning opportunities? A teacher who invests her own resources to support students? A teacher who was voted Teacher of the Year two of the last three years? If you’re Superintendent Jacqueline Cassell at the Pontiac Academy for Excellence Middle School in Pontiac, Mich., you fire her.
Every time a new study is released showing black students are suspended at far higher rates than any of their peers, the public seems shocked. Words like “race” and “school to prison pipeline” and “discrimination” find their way into headlines—and then the issue fades away yet again.