For the nation’s 50 million public school students, another school year is about to begin. Are they ready? Even if they get new backpacks, notebooks, and pencils, most of our students are not prepared to do the schoolwork expected of them.
Two out of three American eighth graders can neither read nor do math at grade level. Schools serving low-income communities perform particularly poorly on a whole range of measurable outcomes including language, reading, and mathematics — critical skills for performing well and succeeding in society.
Two years after Devon Simmons was released from prison, he completed his associate degree — following through on the educational start he got at Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, N.Y. And Simmons is not stopping there: He plans next to pursue a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice at the John Jay College of the City University of New York.
It all started in 2012, when, while still serving a 15-year sentence, Simmons applied for the Prison-to-College Pipeline, an initiative at CUNY that provides access to higher education for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people. After Simmons took a CUNY admissions test, interviewed, and submitted essays, he was selected to take classes taught by CUNY faculty at Otisville Correctional Facility, a medium-security federal facility for male inmates.
If I’m completely honest, I’ve been really discouraged as of late. A major source of my discouragement has been the way the American evangelical church (a tribe I have identified with for most of my life, so my critique and exhortation will be directed there) has chosen to engage the world in this season marked by division, violence, and trauma. Now, I admit I’m speaking in generalities, but rather than being the healing balm to society’s gaping wounds, we have often contributed to the bleeding by either withdrawing in fear or adding fuel to the violence.
Thinking of jumping in your car and driving to Louisiana to help those affected by the flood? Wondering how you could mail some food or hand-me-down clothes to help? If you answered yes — don’t do it.
Yet, that is.
Nearly 500 years after Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the Castle Church door, the largest Lutheran denomination in the U.S. has approved a declaration recognizing “there are no longer church-dividing issues” on many points with the Roman Catholic Church.
Currently, only 13 of the 54 member states offer liberal access (visa free or visa on arrival) to all Africans. African Development Bank recently released a report aimed at highlighting the economic benefits of visa ppenness by citing examples of Seychelles (a country that has been an early reformer in relaxing visa requirements to boost its tourism sector), and Mauritius and Rwanda (both of which saw an increase in African business and leisure travelers and consequently, an increase in economic activity).
While the positives are plenty, there’s also a lot that the AU could learn from the EU.
It’s good to remind ourselves of this underlying truth of our human family. We hear so many fearful voices in our world nowadays saying we can’t trust those who are different from us. They insist that we can’t let people from other countries get close to us because we don’t know who they are. Instead, they want to build walls and patrol borders and practice exclusion.
Police were questioning a possible suspect in the double homicide of a popular imam and his associate in Queens but there was still no clear motive even as the shocking daylight murders were becoming a flashpoint in the national debate over anti-Islamic rhetoric.
Authorities and news reports on Monday said police had taken a “person of interest” into custody on unrelated charges and were interrogating him about the Saturday shootings of Imam Maulama Akonjee, 55, and his associate, Tharam Uddin, 64.
Why We Can’t Wait is the familiar title of Martin Luther King Jr.’s book from 1964. The volume includes his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (written April 16, 1963) and makes an argument to recognize 1963 as the beginning of “the Negro Revolution” while extolling the effectiveness of nonviolent resistance.
King’s “Letter” issues a call for urgency. He wrote it as a response to eight local white clergymen who had criticized his activities in Birmingham and appealed for a more patient and restrained approach to lobbying for civil rights. The “Letter” expresses King’s deep disappointment with “the white moderate,” who “paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom.”
Stopping on the campaign trail in Wilmington, N.C., Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump suggested that violence might be the only way to stop Hillary Clinton. He spent the following day basking in the shock value of his words while maintaining that he’d been misunderstood. I’m not sure Mr. Trump understands the demons he has unleashed, but Wilmington is a good place to learn.