Right-wing groups are attacking diversity, equity, and inclusion work in public schools because they want to get rid of public education.
By Jeff Bryant
“No one deserves the school I went to,” says Celia Gottlieb.
Gottlieb is currently enrolled in Middlebury College and working as an intern with New York University’s Metro Center, but she is talking about the high school she attended in Highland, New York, a small community in the Lower Hudson River Valley region of the Empire State.
The Highland Central School District would raise few concerns to the casual observer. Its state data report card says the district graduates 89 percent of its students, above the national rate of 86 percent, with a college, career, and civic readiness level of four, the state’s highest rating. But Gottlieb’s negative recollections about her high school years have more to do with what went on inside the building.
“There was not a single day that I didn’t hear a student openly use the n-word,” she told me in a phone call. “Confederate flags were common. Students had Confederate flags on their cars and on their clothes. One kid wore a shirt with a Confederate flag on it nearly every day and was never told to take it off, even though a student who wore a shirt with an LGBTQ message on it was told to take it off.”
Read the rest at LA Progressive.
Jeff Bryant is a writing fellow and chief correspondent for Our Schools. He is a communications consultant, freelance writer, advocacy journalist, and director of the Education Opportunity Network, a strategy and messaging center for progressive education policy. His award-winning commentary and reporting routinely appear in prominent online news outlets, and he speaks frequently at national events about public education policy. Follow him on Twitter @jeffbcdm.
