Sherick Hughes: Why I Am Coming to Occupy DOE in DC
by admin
I am coming to Occupy the DOE 2.0, to fight humbly alongside a group of brilliant fighters (some that know me and some that don’t), because equitable and excellent traditional public schools are not only a democratic right, but a democratic responsibility. The Department of Education has a narrative of civil rights as well, but the aftermath of their current policies in action, seem to be neither civil nor right, particularly for the most vulnerable, traditional public school communities in urban and rural American. Their high stakes proficiency testing game equates to a bell curve efficiency, zero-sum passing game that ultimately hinders learning for understanding, critical analysis, and authenticity and rewards learning the fastest and with only the best of memorization skills, a problem with negative long-term consequences to which retired teacher, Kenneth Bernstein so eloquently details in a recent article in the Post. I am coming to Occupy the DOE 2.0, because I have been a free-lunch qualifying student of color with six older siblings in a trailer with two parents that were denied equitable and adequate post-Brown schools when their Black schools were closed and many Black school personnel lost not only their jobs, but their purpose. I have taught students from similar circumstances, and I am now the father of a daughter who doesn’t qualify for that subsidy. My life has come to a
