NEWSEDUCATION REFORM

Teen mothers are expected to fail. Just ask Bee Lavender, who, after she became pregnant at 18, remembers a swift and merciless change in the way most people treated her:

"It was a profound shock to go from being the good kid, the honours student, the girl who talked about youth leadership on television, to being perceived as human detritus," Lavender wrote in The Guardian.

Lavender dropped out of college and moved back home. But you wouldn't know it today if you met her. An acclaimed writer and activist, her books include a memoir about danger titled Lessons in Taxidermy and the anthologies Breeder and Mamaphonic. She's the publisher of the website Hipmama.com and is the founder of Girl-Mom.com, an advocacy project for teen parents. She's also taking a stand today for another teenage mother, Kymberly Wimberley of McGehee, Arkansas.

More than 13,000 Change.org members have signed a petition telling Norwalk, Connecticut to drop charges against Tanya McDowell, a homeless woman who's being prosecuted for sending her son to the "wrong" school. But now, the people behind the petition are saying that dropping the charges against McDowell isn't enough - the prosecutor who brought the charges, Suzanne Vieux, should be fired.

Anthony Crisci, the Norwalk community organizer who started the petition, said initially, it wasn't clear where exactly the charges against McDowell - which he calls "senseless" - came from.

"We later found out that this action was orchestrated mainly by the State Attorney's office, and particularly by Assistant State's Attorney Suzanne Vieux," said Crisci. "We felt that Vieux's handling of the case was not only irrational, but an arrogant waste of taxpayers' dollars."

Jessica Kutch, Director of Economic Justice organizing at Change.org, says the lawyers and prosecutors she's talked to have been outraged by the case, with one even calling it "disgraceful." Tanya McDowell, a homeless mother, could face up to 20 years in jail and pay more than $16,000 for registering her son for kindergarten in Norwalk's school district, where they did not live, using her babysitter's address. Federal law requires public schools to enroll homeless students.

When budgets are slim in Maryland, what's the first thing on the chopping block? Preschool for low-income children.

Late last month, county commissioners in Frederick, Maryland decided the best way to deal with a budget gap was to stop funding a Head Start program geared toward needy families. Now, community members are fighting to bring it back, fully funded - and asking for an apology for sexist comments made by county officials.

Head Start serves children ages 3 and 4 in families that fall below the federal poverty line ($22,050 in salary for a family of 4). This particular Head Start program serves almost 300 students annually and has existed for four decades. It also provides crucial medical and nutritional services. Aside from the children losing valuable education, the 80+ staff members also risk losing their jobs.

Lost in the debate about education reform is the undeniable fact that the public education system in the United States is one of the most violent in the world.

Despite overblown media reports about school shootings and daily exaggerations about youth crime, it is not the students who are perpetrating the majority of this violence. We’re talking about violence initiated by the teachers and administrators that we trust to safeguard our children’s education. Teaching is one of the most admirable professions -- which is why it’s a shame that this profession is muddied by one of America’s darker and more insidious legal practices – corporal punishment.

Of the 20 states that legally employ corporal punishment, Texas hits the most students every year -- nearly 50,000 during the 2005-2006 school year, according to the latest available statistics. In fact, administrators and teachers in Texas legally hit more students every year than the rest of Europe combined. That could change, though, if a bill to end corporal punishment at Texas schools passes this year.

Here's the latest jaw-dropping news about Kaplan University, the commercial chain of schools that made $1.5 billion for the Washington Post Company in 2009.

Turns out Kaplan, as well as other for-profit colleges, explicitly trains its admissions staff to exploit 'pain' and 'fear' as they recruit their typically low-income students. "Uncover their pain and fears," a newly-released Kaplan training document instructs recruiters who are trying to sell potential students on classes. "Once they are reminded of how bad things are, this will create a sense of urgency to make this change."

These underhanded tactics, revealed earlier this week by Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, are bad enough. But the truly horrifying thing is that many students end up worse off, not better, after attending Kaplan, saddled with thousands in debt and unable to find the lucrative "American dream" they were promised. Today, though, they got some new advocates: Students at Columbia University.

Kelley Williams-Bolar, an Akron, Ohio mom slammed with a felony conviction for sending her children to a suburban school district, got out of jail yesterday after serving 9 days of her 10-day sentence.

Today, she visited Change.org and was overjoyed by what she saw there, a family spokesman told us today. She took courage from the tens of thousands of people who have signed the Change.org petition on her behalf, said Rev. Bruce Butcher, an Akron minister working with the family.

"She expressed joy for what she'd seen," Butcher told us today. "She expressed joy in the support she's seeing online. We appreciate what you're doing and we appreciate the support."

As of this writing, more than 36,000 people have sent messages to Ohio Gov. John Kasich in support of Williams-Bolar. The mom of two argued in court that she was trying to keep her daughters safe from the violence in her Akron neighborhood. But because she allegedly falsified residency documents to send her daughters to school in the district where her father lived, she was sentenced to 10 days in jail, three years of probation and 80 hours of community service.

For trying to give her daughters a better life, Williams-Bolar went to jail. Here are three ways to help Williams-Bolar fight this conviction:

In New York City, two sides are battling over the fate of one school: Ross Global Academy. Started in 2005 by the widow of Time Warner executive Steve Ross, the charter school has failed dismally when it comes to state standards.

And yet Courtney Ross and her entourage of lawyers are begging the city to keep funding the school. But last week, a state education official threw up their hands, saying they didn't have the authority to keep the school open if the city decided to close it.

Parents from the New York Charter Parents Association have thrown their lot in with the city. They started a petition on change.org to close Ross Global Academy, citing its low test scores, horrible attrition rates and high teacher turnover as reasons why the school should close.

"The students are fleeing. The teachers are fleeing," said Davids. "They're on their seventh principal in 5 years."

Michelle Rhee, the former DC schools leader who made powerful friends - and powerful enemies - with her brand of education reform is setting her sights a little higher: creating a national education movement.

Her new organization, Students First, is 140,000 strong and has raised $1.4 million. (Small potatoes, compared to her year-long goal: 1 million members, $1 billion dollars.) The group's mission? To transform public education, one school district at a time.

The group's newly-released policy agenda contains many of the same strategies Rhee fought for while head of DC schools: teacher pay based on merit; evaluating teachers based on student results; allowing parents to decide to "pull the trigger" on failing schools. Legislatively, Rhee's arguing for "governance structures that promote accountability" and "only spending money on policies that advance student achievement," among other tactics.

Rhee's quest to bring parents and community members on board is a reaction to what happened in DC, where she was portrayed as a maverick acting without community support. Rhee told the Associated Press that she did have support, but didn't mobilize those supporters to speak up for her flavor of reform. (Rhee's new approach has already gotten pushback: Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, slammed the policy in a press release today, calling it anti-teacher.)

Five years ago, Mississippi’s Governor Haley Barbour signed into law a requirement that civil rights be taught in every grade in Mississippi’s public schools. That law will go into effect this fall.

The fact that the Magnolia State, with a dark civil rights history, is the first state to enact such a requirement is impressive and commendable. The press attention to this law is probably welcome to Barbour, the presidential hopeful who was panned last month for his insensitive remarks about white citizens councils.

All children should be taught and encouraged to know and defend their own civil rights. My organization, the National Youth Rights Association, believes this is a great initiative that should be replicated in every single state.

But Mississippi should go a step further and stop the unforgivable practice of regularly beating public school children.

In Washington D.C. this week, a local nonprofit had to shut the doors of a popular afterschool program for low-income kids.

Why? Because nonprofit City Gate hasn't received any of the tens of thousands of dollars they've been promised from the city to give kids a safe place to go after school. They keep getting assurances from D.C. that the money will come, but it hasn't. City Gate can't pay their bills, the nonprofit's director, Rev. Lynn Bergfalk, told us today.

So on Monday, City Gate had to shut the doors of their afterschool program at the Merrick Center in southeast D.C. This means 40 kids in one of D.C.'s poorest neighborhoods lost a haven where they get homework help, healthy meals and physical activity in a safe place. There's money earmarked by the city to pay for this need, but the check is stuck somewhere on some bureaucrat's desk.

Ridiculous, right? Rev. Bergfalk is asking for help to save this valuable program. With enough public scrutiny, we can press D.C. leaders to take action. Hold them accountable by sending them a letter on behalf of these children.