Andre Perry

McComb Superintendent Cederick Ellis untangles a student’s medal from his beaded necklace. Ellis honored students who maintained an A average for three consecutive grading periods. Photo: Andre Perry MCCOMB, Miss. — Monique Gilmore, who directs school and community relations for the McComb Public School District, enthusiastically greeted students at a school celebration last month, placing […]

But what will it take to keep improving education?

Educators must be banned from applying out of school suspensions on our youngest kids. Action must be taken when more more than 7,400 Louisiana children from kindergarten to third grade are suspended for loose charges like “willful disobedience” (aka being a kid). The state’s black families are feeling the brunt of those suspensions. Black students […]

There’s a rare opportunity in New Orleans to show local and national arenas that constant community engagement matters, as the city’s new public schools superintendent revisits the facilities master plan for education. This plan hasn’t been revised in four years, a breach of a previous administration’s promise to look at it biennially. Now, Supt. Henderson […]

New Orleans Parish voters can approve a new property tax that amounts to a finger in the dike of our struggling library system, on May 2. Voters can also on that day approve a tax that continues to feed the beast of the prison industrial complex (which by the way hasn’t made us safer). The […]

Higher tuition hurts students more than it helps budgets

It’s “March Madness,” and we still don’t compete for black children. A recent report out of the Education Research Alliance of New Orleans found that principals, compelled to compete in the highly decentralized environment of New Orleans, reacted to market pressures by curating their student bodies. In hopes of academic improvement, these principals recruited per […]

In this Feb. 12, 2015 photo, Marquez Allen, age 12, reads test questions on a laptop computer during in a trial run of a new state assessment test at Annapolis Middle School in Annapolis, Md. The new test, which is scheduled to go into use March 2, 2015, is linked to the Common Core standards, […]

Five women in blackface in the 1945 Terrapin. You don’t have to hope for a “snitch” to find racist traditions. If you want to learn more about bigoted customs of fraternities and sororities like the chant captured in a video of University of Oklahoma students, just look in back yearbooks. Racist traditions are simply part […]