Author Archives: IolaHopkins

This List Shows You How Divided America’s Schools Are

Mother Jones

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In the wealthy West Jefferson Hills School District in western Pennsylvania, a new high school with an eight-lane swimming pool and terrazzo flooring was recently approved for construction. Meanwhile, in neighboring Clairton, where the district’s poverty rate is 48 percent, officials wrestled with whether to close schools earlier this year.

That striking disparity is just one of many in a new report that maps the country’s 33,500 school district borders and highlights places where high-poverty districts bump up against wealthy neighbors. The report, put out by the nonprofit EdBuild, sheds light on how these well-established boundaries create “barriers to progress that segregate children” and even worse inequities in the public education system. It also notes that existing school finance system, in which districts rely heavily on property taxes as a source of local funding for schools, creates an incentive for wealthier families to move across district lines to more well-resourced areas.

Between 1990 and 2010, income-based segregation among American school districts grew, according to Stanford’s Center for Education Policy Analysis. Such disparities among districts result in unequal access to resources, such as underqualified teachers and subpar facilities, and could lead to gaps in academic achievement. Another recent Stanford study found that children in the wealthiest school districts performed, on average, four grade levels above children in the poorest school districts. In May, on the anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, the Government Accountability Office found that the share of schools with a high concentration of poor, black, and Hispanic students increased from 9 to 16 percent between 2000 and 2014.

“We’ve created and maintained a system of schools segregated by class and bolstered by arbitrary borders that, in effect, serve as the new status quo for separate but unequal…” conclude the authors of the EdBuild report. “Increasingly, the story of American school districts is a tale of two cities, one well-off and one poor—one with the funds necessary to provide its children ample educational opportunities and one without adequate resources to help its children catch up.”

Here’s a look at the biggest disparities in poverty between neighboring districts:

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This List Shows You How Divided America’s Schools Are

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How US Evangelicals Helped Create Russia’s Anti-Gay Movement

Mother Jones

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In November 2010, Russia’s Sanctity of Motherhood organization kicked off its first-ever national conference. The theme, according to its organizers, was urgent: solving “the crisis of traditional family values” in a modernizing Russia. The day opened with a sextet leading 1,000 swaying attendees in a prayer. Some made the sign of the cross, others bowed or raised their arms to the sky before settling into the plush red and gold seats of the conference hall at Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral.

On the second morning of the conference, the only American in attendance, a tall, collected man, stepped up for his speech. Larry Jacobs, vice president of the Rockford, Illinois-based World Congress of Families (WCF), an umbrella organization for the US religious right’s heavy hitters, told the audience that American evangelicals had a 40-year track record of “defending life and family” and they hoped to be “true allies” in Russia’s traditional values crusade.

The gathering marked the beginning of the family values fervor that has swept Russia in recent years. Warning that low birth rates are a threat to the long-term survival of the Russian people, politicians have been pushing to restrict abortion and encourage bigger families. Among the movement’s successes is a law that passed last summer and garnered global outrage in the run-up to the Sochi Winter Olympics, banning “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations to minors,” a vague term that has been seen as effectively criminalizing any public expression of same-sex relationships.

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How US Evangelicals Helped Create Russia’s Anti-Gay Movement

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GOP Food Stamp Cuts Would Kick 170,000 Vets Out of the Program

Mother Jones

Republicans will salute America’s veterans Monday, while simultaneously trying to deny them benefits. In addition to reducing housing aid, and denying health care to vets, the GOP is also trying to remove thousands of vets from the food stamp program, known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

At least 900,000 veterans rely on SNAP. The House Republican version of the farm bill, the five-year piece of legislation that funds nutrition and agriculture provisions, would slash funding for the food stamps program by nearly $40 billion and boot 2.8 million people off the program next year. That includes 170,000 veterans, who would be removed through a provision in the bill that would eliminate food stamps eligibility for non-elderly jobless adults who can’t find work or an opening in a job training program.

CHARTS: The Hidden Benefits of Food Stamps.

Veterans returning home from service have more trouble finding work than other folks, and rely more heavily on the food stamp program. The unemployment rate for recent veterans—those who have served in the past decade—is about 10 percent, almost 3 points above the national unemployment rate. War-related disabilities are one reason why. About a quarter of recent veterans reported service-related disabilities in 2011. Households that have a disabled veteran who is unable to work are twice as likely to lack access to sufficient food than households without a disabled service member, according to the nonprofit Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

This month, SNAP funding was reduced by $5 billion as extra stimulus money for the program expired. While the Senate will never approve the $40 billion in further cuts to the food stamps program that House Republicans want, deeper cuts are pretty much inevitable. The two chambers are in the middle of negotiating a final version of the farm bill, which will contain food stamp reductions somewhere in between the $4 billion level the Senate wants and the level the Republicans want.

Whatever the final number, veterans will likely feel the pinch.

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GOP Food Stamp Cuts Would Kick 170,000 Vets Out of the Program

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