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Southern Echo is a leadership development, education and training organization working to develop effective accountable grassroots leadership in the African-American communities in rural Mississippi and the surrounding region through comprehensive training and technical assistance programs. Our work has carried Southern Echo staff into 12 additional states across the south and southwest.
Southern Echo's underlying goal is to empower local communities through effective community organizing work, in order to create a process through which community people can build the broad-based organizations necessary to hold the political, economic, educational, and environmental systems accountable to the needs and interests of the African-American community.
“08/01/2010″ to “09/30/2010″ - Redistricting Public Hearings – Legislative Reapportionment Committee will hold public hearings to elicit public input concerning adoption of guidelines to redistrict the Congressional, Legislative and Judicial offices in 2011.
“08/14/2010″ - Convening on School Consolidation – Southern Echo and MS Delta Catalyst Roundtable will hold convening at MS Valley State Univ. regarding school consolidation as the wrong path in Mississippi and which strategies are preferable.
Jackson, MS – Led by US Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the Obama administration is ignoring the authoritative negative research-based evidence about charter school experiments across the nation. In the face of major national studies that charter schools are not what they promised to be, Education Secretary Duncan is threatening to withhold federal education funds from states that fail to adopt laws that authorize the creation of privately-owned, privately-governed charter schools.
Charter school movement advocates contend charter schools are the answer to failing traditional public schools because charter schools provide higher student performance, generate innovations in the delivery of education, build competition with traditional public schools that will force public schools to improve, and deliver a more effective education to students of color than do traditional public schools.
But what does the research-based evidence reveal? The Rand Corporation, Stanford University and the University of Minnesota have each published in the last year major multi-state studies of charter schools. The studies demonstrate that students in most charter schools are not performing any better on standardized tests than students in traditional public schools; charter schools are not proving to generate competition for traditional public schools; most charter schools are not significantly more innovative than traditional public schools; most charter schools experience an achievement gap between white students and students of color; and that charter schools have expanded rather than reduced student economic and racial segregation.
The Rand, Stanford and Minnesota studies, and some articles, are accessible on the Southern Echo website under “Publications”.
Southern Echo’s Census & Redistricting Team will meet from 10:00am to 1:00pm on Thursday, August 20, 2009 to prepare a program outline to present to the agenda committee, which meets on Thursday, August 20, 2009, in preparation for the staff retreat (date to be determined).
Southern Echo’s Education Committee will meet from 10:00am to 3:00pm on Wednesday, August 19, 2009 to prepare a program outline to present to the agenda committee, which meets on Thursday, August 20, 2009, in preparation for the staff retreat (date to be determined).
Southern Echo’s Resource & Development Committee will meet from 1:30 to 3:30pm on Tuesday, August 18, 2009 to prepare a program outline to present to the agenda committee, which meets on Thursday, August 20, 2009, in preparation for the staff retreat (date to be determined).
Yesterday the S x SW Experiment Committee on Accountable Governance, comprised of representatives from SWOP, SWU, Echo and the Roundtable, agreed that Southern Echo would host in Jackson on Friday, November 13 – Sunday, November 15, a strategic planning summit of activists and public officials to plan the development of a model of accountable governance and strategies to implement it.
It is expected that the summit will begin Friday afternoon or evening and run through noon or very early afternoon on Sunday.
Each state organization will choose 16 (sixteen) delegates from its state, comprised of a deliberately chosen mix of younger and older activists and public officials ready to participate in Jackson in this first step in the strategic planning process. The state delegations are limited in size to facilitate an effective planning process.
Southern Echo will take immediate responsibility for selecting a location for the summit, arranging for food and finding a suitably priced lodging for participants.
A timeline for delegate selection, agenda, and so forth will be forthcoming soon.
Jackson, MS – Led by US Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the Obama administration is ignoring the authoritative negative research-based evidence about charter school experiments across the nation. In the face of major national studies that charter schools are not what they promised to be, Education Secretary Duncan is threatening to withhold federal education funds from states that fail to adopt laws that authorize the creation of privately-owned, privately-governed charter schools.