Latest news with #ArkansasStateUniversity
San Francisco Chronicle
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Ashley McBryde to bring Southern charm to the Bay Area
Ashley McBryde's college professor suggested she drop out to pursue music full time when she was studying french horn at Arkansas State University. Once she did, her life changed forever. The musician was raised in a strict Southern household, where she recalled being drawn to tunes by the Carpenters and Kris Kristofferson and trying out her father's guitar. Her early interest in music prompted her parents to buy her a guitar of her own, empowering McBryde to begin writing her own songs at age 12. Since then, the country singer has received a number of country music accolades, from being inducted into the Grand Ole Opry to earning a Grammy Award. She has released four studio albums extolling the honky tonk life and has become known for melding elements of rock, bluegrass and country. Her most recent record, 'The Devil I Know,' was released in 2023. Earlier this year, before embarking on her 30-date tour, the country star received received an honorary Doctorate of Music from Arkansas State University.
The Guardian
17-07-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Black home schoolers push back against racist, unregulated curricula: ‘They called slavery immigration'
In 2018, Dr Timberly Baker decided to home school her children after a local school in Arkansas failed to challenge her eldest child. Her daughter, Baker said, is gifted. But despite routinely testing off the charts during standardized exams, the school had no plan on how Baker's daughter could take more advanced classes. Still new to home schooling, Baker decided to use a Christian curriculum, solely due to its ready-made lesson plans and promise to produce a school transcript in case her children later enrolled into mainstream schools. But Baker, a researcher and associate professor of educational leadership at Arkansas State University, found the lesson plans 'problematic', especially with regard to social studies. A lesson about the 'triangular trade', the transatlantic trading system where people were stolen from Africa and shipped to western colonies to be enslaved, proved to be a final straw. The curriculum 'mentioned enslaved Africans as one of the products that were being shipped, but as a product, rather than in their humanity as individuals and as people', Baker recalled. Baker came up against a common problem facing many parents of color choosing to home school their children: a lack of inclusive, educational material. Even as home schooling becomes more diverse, educational material for families is still mostly conservative, Christian and eurocentric. Major educational companies have been repeatedly condemned for racist and inaccurate material and accused of failing to implement major changes. This isn't a question of dated curriculum, said Jonah Stewart, interim executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, a home schooling advocacy group. 'Those curricula are alive and well'. In light of the gap, some Black home schoolers have taken it upon themselves to create a more comprehensive curriculum, often as a formal tool that can be used by other families. Baker chose to supplement her child's education on the triangular trade by having her watch Roots, a miniseries about enslavement based on Alex Haley's eponymous novel, reading library books, and by speaking with familial elders about their personal relationship to enslavement. 'I took on the responsibility of correcting what I saw as inadequacies or just incorrect perceptions that came out of the curriculum I chose,' said Baker. The rate of Black parents home schooling their children has steadily increased for years, skyrocketing during the Covid-19 pandemic as education shifted to online platforms. In 2020, the number of Black households home schooling went from 3.3% to 16.1%, a five-fold increase between April and October of that year. Preliminary data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) in 2023 on home schooling showed that Black students and their families participated in virtual schooling at higher rates than other groups; future data collection on the state of home schooling and other education methods has now ended after the Trump administration gutted the NCES. Home schooling is increasing in popularity among the general population, said Stewart, and growing more diverse. The school choice movement, which encouraged parents to explore educational options for their children outside public school, has had a resurgence under Donald Trump, who has simultaneously escalated attacks on public education as well as diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives within classrooms. The Trump administration has threatened to withhold federal funding for schools that fail to eliminate their DEI planning. Last month, Trump also signed an executive order that instructs the dismantling of the Department of Education, a key campaign promise. Home schooling laws vary from state to state, with a general lack of oversight, said Stewart. Only a handful of states, including Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts and Vermont, require home-schooled children to participate in standardized testing for assessment. Other states don't even mandate that parents notify state officials if they unenroll their children from formal schooling. The lack of regulations on home schooling is a double-edged sword, said experts. With more lax rules, families are able to teach and learn Afrocentric culturally-specific material without state interference, said Baker. But, extremists have also taken advantage of limited regulation. Home school materials, particularly from Christian publishers, have been known for teaching creationism versus evolution. Some home schooling material has described slave masters as 'caregivers' for enslaved people and the practice of slavery as 'Black immigration'. Rightwing material remains a baseline throughout home schooling education, with some parents sharing even more hateful material with their children. In February 2023, the Ohio department of education investigated a group of home schooling parents who reportedly dispersed pro-Nazi material in a local home schooling group. 'When states do take the effort to ensure that basic education is occurring in core subjects, it is protective against those really extreme iterations of home schooling,' said Stewart. 'It doesn't fix everything, but it is a way of just capturing intent to educate.' For Black families, many who have reported racism and bias in public education, home schooling is a way to guarantee a culturally affirming educational environment for their children by having greater control of the lesson plan and education, said Najarian Peters, a professor of law at the University of Kansas and researcher of home education. 'We continuously have these issues with Black children in formal education, where they are disproportionately represented in exclusionary discipline, and special education that does not seek to amplify their individual talent, but categorize them as inferior learners.' Delina McPhaull, the creator of Woke Homeschooling curriculum, which is available to home educators looking for inclusive education material, sought out home schooling in 2016 after the killing of Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager in Florida, by George Zimmerman. Zimmerman was later acquitted, sparking massive outrage across the country around racially motivated shootings. Home schooling for her family, McPhaull said, was largely due to her conservative school district in Keene, Texas. 'Seventy-seven percent of the people in this county voted for him,' McPhaull said, referring to Trump. 'These were the people educating my kids.' Home education has been a 'tradition' for Black families, dating back to the 18th century, said Peters, a time when enslaved people were prohibited from learning how to read. Prince Hall, a prominent abolitionist in Massachusetts, ran a school for Black children out of his home after decrying the lack of educational opportunities. The African Free School, a school for children of enslaved people and free Black people, was founded in New York City in 1787. In the 1970s, fundamentalist Christians launched the current iteration of the home schooling movement as a way to avoid what they described as moral failings in public education, such as sex education and teachings on evolution. Organizations such as the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), founded in 1983, were born out of conservative anxieties about attacks against home schooling and school choice. It remains a right-leaning leadership base with connections to groups such as Alliance Defending Freedom. Will Estrada, senior counsel for the organization, contributed to the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025. The potential for extremism, especially given the involvement of far-right individuals in home schooling advocacy networks, is a part of the 'good and bad of the wild, wild, west of home schooling', said Baker. 'When we talk about home schooling being a part of school choice, it is a choice,' she said. '[It's] probably one of its purest forms in terms of schooling action, because it is so unregulated.' For Black parents and their families, the ability to craft a more individualized curriculum has become a pathway to help correct flaws in home schooling curriculum for themselves and others. McPhaull's Woke Homeschooling curriculum has served over 13,000 families since 2019. Home schooling cooperatives, like Brown Mamas in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, have helped support and empower families looking into home schooling as a possible refuge for their children, including with access to culturally appropriate material. Peters added: 'When we talk about a deficiency in materials, that's not the end of the conversation. That is just a pathway to really dig into the agency, self determination and subsidiarity engagement that Black parents have consistently done since the founding of this country.'
The Guardian
17-07-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Black home schoolers push back against racist, unregulated curricula: ‘They called slavery immigration'
In 2018, Dr Timberly Baker decided to home school her children after a local school in Arkansas failed to challenge her eldest child. Her daughter, Baker said, is gifted. But despite routinely testing off the charts during standardized exams, the school had no plan on how Baker's daughter could take more advanced classes. Still new to home schooling, Baker decided to use a Christian curriculum, solely due to its ready-made lesson plans and promise to produce a school transcript in case her children later enrolled into mainstream schools. But Baker, a researcher and associate professor of educational leadership at Arkansas State University, found the lesson plans 'problematic', especially with regard to social studies. A lesson about the 'triangular trade', the transatlantic trading system where people were stolen from Africa and shipped to western colonies to be enslaved, proved to be a final straw. The curriculum 'mentioned enslaved Africans as one of the products that were being shipped, but as a product, rather than in their humanity as individuals and as people', Baker recalled. Baker came up against a common problem facing many parents of color choosing to home school their children: a lack of inclusive, educational material. Even as home schooling becomes more diverse, educational material for families is still mostly conservative, Christian and eurocentric. Major educational companies have been repeatedly condemned for racist and inaccurate material and accused of failing to implement major changes. This isn't a question of dated curriculum, said Jonah Stewart, interim executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, a home schooling advocacy group. 'Those curricula are alive and well'. In light of the gap, some Black home schoolers have taken it upon themselves to create a more comprehensive curriculum, often as a formal tool that can be used by other families. Baker chose to supplement her child's education on the triangular trade by having her watch Roots, a miniseries about enslavement based on Alex Haley's eponymous novel, reading library books, and by speaking with familial elders about their personal relationship to enslavement. 'I took on the responsibility of correcting what I saw as inadequacies or just incorrect perceptions that came out of the curriculum I chose,' said Baker. The rate of Black parents home schooling their children has steadily increased for years, skyrocketing during the Covid-19 pandemic as education shifted to online platforms. In 2020, the number of Black households home schooling went from 3.3% to 16.1%, a five-fold increase between April and October of that year. Preliminary data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) in 2023 on home schooling showed that Black students and their families participated in virtual schooling at higher rates than other groups; future data collection on the state of home schooling and other education methods has now ended after the Trump administration gutted the NCES. Home schooling is increasing in popularity among the general population, said Stewart, and growing more diverse. The school choice movement, which encouraged parents to explore educational options for their children outside public school, has had a resurgence under Donald Trump, who has simultaneously escalated attacks on public education as well as diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives within classrooms. The Trump administration has threatened to withhold federal funding for schools that fail to eliminate their DEI planning. Last month, Trump also signed an executive order that instructs the dismantling of the Department of Education, a key campaign promise. Home schooling laws vary from state to state, with a general lack of oversight, said Stewart. Only a handful of states, including Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts and Vermont, require home-schooled children to participate in standardized testing for assessment. Other states don't even mandate that parents notify state officials if they unenroll their children from formal schooling. The lack of regulations on home schooling is a double-edged sword, said experts. With more lax rules, families are able to teach and learn Afrocentric culturally-specific material without state interference, said Baker. But, extremists have also taken advantage of limited regulation. Home school materials, particularly from Christian publishers, have been known for teaching creationism versus evolution. Some home schooling material has described slave masters as 'caregivers' for enslaved people and the practice of slavery as 'Black immigration'. Rightwing material remains a baseline throughout home schooling education, with some parents sharing even more hateful material with their children. In February 2023, the Ohio department of education investigated a group of home schooling parents who reportedly dispersed pro-Nazi material in a local home schooling group. 'When states do take the effort to ensure that basic education is occurring in core subjects, it is protective against those really extreme iterations of home schooling,' said Stewart. 'It doesn't fix everything, but it is a way of just capturing intent to educate.' For Black families, many who have reported racism and bias in public education, home schooling is a way to guarantee a culturally affirming educational environment for their children by having greater control of the lesson plan and education, said Najarian Peters, a professor of law at the University of Kansas and researcher of home education. 'We continuously have these issues with Black children in formal education, where they are disproportionately represented in exclusionary discipline, and special education that does not seek to amplify their individual talent, but categorize them as inferior learners.' Delina McPhaull, the creator of Woke Homeschooling curriculum, which is available to home educators looking for inclusive education material, sought out home schooling in 2016 after the killing of Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager in Florida, by George Zimmerman. Zimmerman was later acquitted, sparking massive outrage across the country around racially motivated shootings. Home schooling for her family, McPhaull said, was largely due to her conservative school district in Keene, Texas. 'Seventy-seven percent of the people in this county voted for him,' McPhaull said, referring to Trump. 'These were the people educating my kids.' Home education has been a 'tradition' for Black families, dating back to the 18th century, said Peters, a time when enslaved people were prohibited from learning how to read. Prince Hall, a prominent abolitionist in Massachusetts, ran a school for Black children out of his home after decrying the lack of educational opportunities. The African Free School, a school for children of enslaved people and free Black people, was founded in New York City in 1787. In the 1970s, fundamentalist Christians launched the current iteration of the home schooling movement as a way to avoid what they described as moral failings in public education, such as sex education and teachings on evolution. Organizations such as the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), founded in 1983, were born out of conservative anxieties about attacks against home schooling and school choice. It remains a right-leaning leadership base with connections to groups such as Alliance Defending Freedom. Will Estrada, senior counsel for the organization, contributed to the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025. The potential for extremism, especially given the involvement of far-right individuals in home schooling advocacy networks, is a part of the 'good and bad of the wild, wild, west of home schooling', said Baker. 'When we talk about home schooling being a part of school choice, it is a choice,' she said. '[It's] probably one of its purest forms in terms of schooling action, because it is so unregulated.' For Black parents and their families, the ability to craft a more individualized curriculum has become a pathway to help correct flaws in home schooling curriculum for themselves and others. McPhaull's Woke Homeschooling curriculum has served over 13,000 families since 2019. Home schooling cooperatives, like Brown Mamas in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, have helped support and empower families looking into home schooling as a possible refuge for their children, including with access to culturally appropriate material. Peters added: 'When we talk about a deficiency in materials, that's not the end of the conversation. That is just a pathway to really dig into the agency, self determination and subsidiarity engagement that Black parents have consistently done since the founding of this country.'
Yahoo
01-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
These new Arkansas laws take effect on July 1: What to know
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (KNWA/KFTA) — A set of new laws is set to go into effect in Arkansas on July 1, ranging from state department name changes to an increase in the number of positions colleges can fill. Here are some of the laws set to take effect on July 1: Act 796 will merge the Arkansas School for the Blind and the Arkansas School for the Deaf into the Arkansas School for the Deaf and Blind. The law will also create a superintendent position for the school. Act 477 will increase the number of 'new or additional' positions that some Arkansas colleges and universities are allowed to fill. Arkansas State University increases from 375 to 425 positions. NorthWest Arkansas Community College increases from 80 to 100 positions. University of Arkansas at Fayetteville increases from 750 to 1,000 positions. University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff increases from 150 to 200 positions. The law also increases the number of vehicles that several schools are allowed to have. Arkansas fire-related deaths surpass 2024 total Act 567 will amend the annual cap for laboratory services within Arkansas' Medicaid program. The law says that if the service is not radiology services, the annual cap is either $500 or $1,800 if the person is diagnosed with chronic pain or being treated for managing pain. The state's Department of Human Services has until Jan. 1, 2026, to finalize rules on the new law. Act 672 will increase the fee for copies of either vehicle accident reports and traffic violation records for someone who wasn't involved with the incident. The law says the fee will jump from $10 to $25, and there will be a charge of $1.50 for each copy of a supplemental report. If the person asking for a copy of the report was involved in the accident, the cost will be $10. A portion of the funds from those fees will go to the State Police Retirement System, according to the law. Act 416 will add a list of cancers that allows for the payment of certain benefits when an active member enrolled in the Arkansas Local Police and Fire Retirement System dies before retirement from injury or disease while serving in the line of duty. The list includes leukemia, lymphoma, mesothelioma, or multiple myeloma. Cancers of the brain, urinary tract, liver, skin, breast, cervix, thyroid, prostate, testicle, colon or digestive tract are also listed. Thunder signs former Razorback Jaylin Williams to multi-year contract extension Act 499 will amend the Arkansas State Employee Student Loan Program and the requirements needed to be eligible for the program. The law says a state employee would have to complete a six-month probationary period that begins on their first day, show proof that their degree is related to their employment, show that their student loan is unpaid and agree to stay employed with the state agency for a 'reasonable' amount of time. If approved, the payments made by the program would go directly to the creditor, and the payments total $10,000 and not exceed five installments, according to the law. Other laws going into effect on July 1: Act 944 will transfer the Arkansas Development Finance Authority from the state's Department of Commerce and allow it to operate independently from a Cabinet-level department. Act 462 will transfer the Arkansas Wine Producers Council from the state's Department of Commerce to the Department of Parks, Heritage, and Tourism. Act 412 will change the name of the Arkansas Division of Information Systems to the Office of State Technology. Act 205 will change the name of the Arkansas Department of Transportation and Shared Services to the Department of Shared Administration Services. It's worth noting that most laws will take effect 90 days after the conclusion of the legislative session, which would be Aug. 5. However, the laws listed above were passed with an emergency clause, which goes into effect on July 1. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Newsweek
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Newsweek
Woman's Daily Routine With Mom Since Dad Passed Leaves the Internet Bawling
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. A touching moment between a daughter and her mother in hospice care has struck a chord online. Karen Shields (@realkarencontent), 56, first lady of Arkansas State University and a growing voice on social media, shared a heartfelt video of her 83-year-old mother, Patty Jensen, carefully arranging roses in a vase while seated in a sun-drenched garden. The clip has since gone viral, amassing over 993,000 likes and 4 million views. "She loves to garden. This spring the roses have been exquisite. I do feel like God gave her and me this gift of seeing and experiencing the beauty of a rose," Shields told Newsweek. "I know it sounds so simple, but at this stage in life you LEARN to appreciate something as simple as a rose. I will cut the roses from the bushes and bring them to her to finish and put in a vase. We do this daily and it makes her very happy. It's almost heaven on earth." The TikTok formed part of the "almost forgot this was the whole point" trend which encourages viewers to pause and appreciate meaningful experiences that might otherwise be overlooked in the hustle of daily life. A split image showing Patty Jensen making her floral arrangement. A split image showing Patty Jensen making her floral arrangement. @realkarencontent/@realkarencontent In the video, Jensen—once a dental hygienist from Southern California—sits beside her walker, nicknamed "WALTER," carefully trimming the stems and placing each flower with intention. At one point, she looks up and tells her daughter, "You're the best. Did you know that? You really are. I love you so." Shields shared that her father passed away in September 2024. In the wake of his death, she moved her mother into the chancellor's residence at Arkansas State, where she lives with her husband, who currently serves as chancellor. The home's downstairs suite—with a bedroom, bath, and a large window overlooking the trees—became Jensen's new sanctuary. "My amazing dad passed in September 2024. We immediately took her in after that," Shields shared. "I had to go through all the processes of selling her house, going through all their things, financials, insurance, etc. to get her set up in our house. We lived four hours apart at the time. I was traveling back and forth between Jonesboro and Fayetteville as my mom had stage 4 ovarian cancer and my dad was in heart failure." Now two years into her cancer journey, Jensen is under hospice care and no longer seeking treatment. One nurse comes into her home weekly and recently another nurse comes in to bathe her. "She manages her pain on her own. She is the sweetest soul I know. And even though this is a very difficult time, her presence brings me peace," Shields said. Despite the hardship of caring for sick parents, Shields is grateful to having had the extra time with them. "I know I will look back on this extra time I have with mom and probably our most special time in our relationship," she said. "My husband once said it's beautiful and brutal, as I know she will probably die in the house. That is her wish, to be in her own bed. I know that sounds weird to talk about, but it's reality... I also know this is not her final destination. My faith keeps me strong." Her mother, despite her diagnosis, has continued to find joy in small moments—and has even gone a bit viral before. "A couple months ago, she was dancing to a Janet Jackson song while chopping vegetables and Janet reposted it on her stories! So great," Shields said. Shields thinks sharing an authentic account of caring for her mom can help others and the social media response has been amazing. "This part of life (parents dying) will happen to EVERYONE and I didn't see a lot out there of people talking about what is actually happening. It's an emotional, physical, next level of learning that we all experience but no one sees it and captures the feelings as there are so many. Mom reads the comments too and is amazed at all the support," she concluded. The response from viewers has been overwhelmingly emotional: "'I'm afraid I'll be homesick for you, even in heaven.'—Louisa May Alcott, Little Women," wrote Jaclyn Bohanan. "I'm crying again, this damn app," said Melanie. "I cannot handle this. My mom has Frontotemporal dementia and this just wrecked me," shared Sheridan. "You will play this video over and over for the years to come. What an absolute treasure," commented Vallie. "My mom passed away last month. What I wouldn't give to hear her say 'I love you' one more time," added another user. Shields poignantly summarized the experience of navigating love, grief, and memory in the digital age: "I think in this age of technology, (even though I'm posting this on social media I'm aware!)—Life. Gets. Lost. On that TikTok 'I almost forgot this was the whole point' and that line is really accurate. Love on people. Learn to love yourself. Know you are created for purpose." Do you have any viral videos or pictures that you want to share? We want to see the best ones! Send them in to life@ and they could appear on our site.
