May 17th is the 59th anniversary of the historic Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. Decades later, students, parents, teacher and advocates are still fighting against education policies that leave students of color and low-income students deprived of the resources and opportunities they need to succeed. But a grassroots revolution is brewing, what blogger Jeff Bryant has been calling an "education spring," and this past week has seen headline-grabbing victories and inspiring actions.

Thousands of students in Philadelphia are staging a massive, city-wide walkout today to protest the under-resourcing of their schools and school closures. A number of OTL allies are participating in the event, including the Philadelphia Student Union and Youth United for Change, two of the largest student organizing groups in the city. Follow #walkout215 on Twitter for for live updates!

Mark your calendars for an exciting, free webinar on Wed. May 22nd at 7:00 p.m. (ET) hosted by the Center for Teaching Quality, OTL Campaign, National Education Association, and the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education.

It’s time we recognize that students fall behind not because of inherent character flaws, but because our education policies for the past two decades have focused on implementing tough standards while failing to build support systems that address the societal factors that create barriers to academic success.

Standards-based reform creates an inherent system of winners and losers by raising the bar and assessing who makes the cut. Supports-based reforms provide and strategically align the needed resources so each student has the opportunity to reach that bar—and surpass it.

In the three years since high school student Jawaan Daniels was fatally shot at a bus stop after being suspended from school for wandering the halls, advocates and organizers in Buffalo, NY, have built a movement to reform the district's discipline policies. Their hard work paid off in April when the school board approved a new student code of conduct that limits the use of out-of-school suspensions.

Great news coming out of Arkansas on the school discipline front! A soon-to-be-signed bill is heading to the governor's desk that will make big changes in how the state gathers, examines and acts on school discipline data. Under the new law, the state Department of Education will submit a report each year to the State Board of Education containing district-level data on suspensions, expulsions and referrals to law enforcement. The Department will provide districts with strategies and resources for implementing positive discipline reforms.