The Upward Students at CVCA High School in Chicago will be going on college tour Atlanta Georgia. and to  Nashville Tennesee. We will be touring Morehouse, Spelman, Clark Atlanta and Georgia Stae in Atlanta. We will also visit Tennessee Stae, Meharry , Fisk and Morris Brown.

Support C.A.U.S.E. Educational Programs

Give Chicago children a chance to learn all about economics. Fund a child with supplies for our Economics Project. Give children a safe place to be during the holidays as they learn about technology, science , robotics, economics and entrepreneurship . $100.00 will buy necessary supplies for 1 child to participate for 8 sessions during the Xmas, Spring and holiday breaks. You can also support one child for 1 day with a donation of just $10..00.

 https://funds.gofundme.com/dashboard/29edvk#

Drinking From The " Whites Only " Fountain

Drinking From the “WHITES ONLY” Fountain

A book about Black Educators and the history of The American Education system and its impact on today’s African American communities.

   DEDICATION

This Book is dedicated to all the Black veteran teachers  who have spent years of service teaching in our most disadvantaged communities and have been terminated by the system of educational Racism and White Supremacy .

There have been over 100,000 terminated in the last 10 years due to nationwide “school reform” initiatives.

  We honor and respect your service to our community, our parents and students. Also, to the memory of all of our parents that sacrificed to educate us. This book is especially to the memory of my mother Roberta Jackson Jurnakin.

Forward

            The education of African Americans has always been a contested issue in America. For over 400 years, education for many African Americans has included the denial of access to basic human privileges such as the ability to read and write and to have access to a quality education. This phenomenon still seems to still plague our communities today. With government initiatives like No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top education reform initiatives, Brown V.S. the Board of Education and the basic denial of the access to education for Blacks in America. Historically, reading and writing have been so taboo for African Americans that it was even punishable by death. The United States government, national, state- wide and local systems have systematically interfered with the access to education for African Americans over a period of 400 years.

           The impact and denial of access to quality education  for over 400 years has historically created a great divide in terms of the basic quality of life of African Americans in America. The absence of relevant curriculum that has an Afrocentric as opposed to Eurocentric curriculum has created a third class educational system for a majority of low- income African American children who are left with a sub-standard education. African Americans lag behind other minorities like Hispanics who have created EEL and ESL educational initiatives that support and embrace the diversity of their culture and language. As African American children are left to navigate an educational system where they are expected to understand the language and adapt to an educational culture that defies the very essence of their cultural existence. 

            Added to that is the expectation that inner city African American children will be able to master high- stakes test that are basically written in a language that they do not adequately comprehend. Also, the lack of qualified experienced teachers who are products of the community of students that they serve, adds to the instability of the infrastructure of schools in low- income communities. Young inexperienced teacher interns are recruited in programs like Teach for America that have high teacher turnover and retention rates. Often having interns that stay only the duration of their contract which allows them to have their student loan debts reduced or totally eliminated. 

              In an article by Kenya Downs she explains the “White Teacher Hero “Phenomenon that plagues our inner city schools today. In this article, What ‘white folks who teach in the hood’ get wrong about education BY Kenya Downs  March 28, 2016 at 2:29 PM EDT , She states, “There’s a teacher right now in urban America who’s going to teach for exactly two years and he’s going to leave believing that these young people can’t be saved,” says Dr. Chris Emdin, associate professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College. “So he’s going to find another career as a lawyer, get a job in the Department of Education or start a charter school network, all based on a notion about these urban youth that is flawed. And we’re going to end up in the same cycle of dysfunction that we have right now. Something’s got to give.”

          In addition, Race to the Top and No Child Left Behind national education polices coupled with the mandates for competitive “High Stakes” testing, have left many African American children floundering without proper funding and resources to meet the national and state-wide objectives. One example is the administration of the PARCC computerized assessment, when in many schools students don’t have access to computers at school or at home. This creates a huge disadvantage for students who are not proficient in computer adaptation skills.

          The underlying rational for inexpensive and non- certified teachers has created a dynamic of the expansion or proliferation of charter schools that offer at best,  an education barely equal to some of the so called “failing” schools that the charter schools have replaced.  Coupled with racist school reform initiatives that offer up its most inexperienced young White non-certified teacher’s jobs as “Educators”, we have a system that is broken for minority inner city children, A system that lacks effective culturally based discipline, while simultaneously creating education reform initiatives centered around the idea that racial purging and racial cleansing of African American veteran experienced educators is an acceptable norm.