03.28.10
Fly Me To The Moon. What about right around the corner?
I have been watching a lot of post of twitter concerning education reform, failing school, sorry teachers, school closure and student achievement. I saw a post recently where a parent was quoted as saying that they would drive to the moon for the best education. It’s funny how we will go to such extremes for what we think is a good deal. No real knowledge, no real understanding, but rather what someone has told me is a good deal. You really don’t know anymore, there than you did you at your previous school about what quality education is about, but their test scores are through the roof so they must be doing something right. Their teachers work on the weekends for free so they must really care about the students. What I am talking about is the lack of knowledge about what education is really about and how the people who desperately need to know it the most, don’t , nor do they realize that they need to.
I think we confuse inclusion with integration. It’s not enough to be at the table, but what are you bringing to the table? The day of dropping our kids off in kindergarten and picking them up in the 121th grade are over!. It’s time out for just sending our kids to school to get a good education. We must make sure that they are getting that education and not just a good grade or benchmark score. There is a fire sale on schools. Everything must go, but a good deal of them are in our neighborhoods, but that’s okay. What bothers me about all of this rhetoric on school reform is that it sounds a lot like assimilation. See if you remove enough of certain symbols and structures within a group’s culture or community, they will become submissive to anything eventually. This is how education was used from the beginning of our relationship with this country and much has not changed since then. Gloria Ladson-Billings refers this and other similar issues in her article , “From the Achievement Gap to the Education Debt: Understanding Achievement in U.S. Schools”
She refers to a conversation with Professor Emeritus Robert Haveman of the University of Wisconsin’s Department of Economics, La Follette Institute of Public Affairs, and Institute for Research on Poverty, he stated:
The education debt is the foregone schooling resources that we could have (should have) been investing in (primarily) low income kids, which deficit leads to a variety of social problems (e.g. crime, low productivity, low wages, low labor force participation) that require on-going public investment. This required investment sucks away resources that could go to reducing the achievement gap. Without the education debt we could narrow the achievement debt.
We know more about Tiger Woods’ mistresses than what a good, quality, differentiated curriculum looks like. We give more thought and input to the voting and scoring process of “American Idol” than what the NAEP, SAT and state scoring “really” says about how are kids are doing, the current and future trends and what constitutes as failure. But the car is all gassed up to take a trip to the moon. I could never understand why black folks who never became involved in any form with their “failing” neighborhood school went across town to a charter school and baked cookies, parked cars and volunteered time they didn’t have in the own neighborhood. Recently Bill Maher was criticized by many for saying “fire the parents” when it comes to school reform. While I don’t think it is to that extreme, I think that there is something to be said about parent involvement beyond coming to a play, concert or sporting event. We as parents should know what makes good education inside and outside the classroom. In Ladson-Billings article, she categorizes several “debts” that contribute to the overall eduction debt. They being
- historical
- economic
- socio/political
- moral
We should be trying to control as much of the educational landscape of our communities as possible instead of abdicating to someone else’s philosophy of how we should and can be educated. If we would study history we would see the need. Since I am talking about our response to our “failing” neighborhood schools and getting those frequent-flyer miles to the moon, I want to point to something she said in the article as part of the section on socio/political debt.
As a result of the sociopolitical component of the education debt, families of color have regularly been excluded from the decision making
mechanisms that should ensure that their children receive quality education. The parent–teacher organizations, school site councils, and other possibilities for democratic participation have not been available for many of these families. However, for a brief moment in 1968, Black parents in the Ocean Hill–Brownsville section of New York exercised community control over the public schools. African American, Latina/o, Native American, and Asian American parents have often advocated for improvements in schooling, but their advocacy often has been muted and marginalized.
We should know what test scores mean thoroughly instead of the “Gong Show” version we see on television. We might as well hire those judges to assess our schools and tell us who’s the best and who’s not because we have so oversimplified school reform.
Do this. At the New Moon School District look and ask for these things.
- Diversity Statement apart from the school vision and mission statement
- Ask if there is a diversity committee and what is done through out the year to address, recognize and celebrate the diversity of the school.
- Ask someone qualified to explain differentiation in the classroom and ask to observe your child’s classroom and look for it.
- Ask to see lesson plans.
- Find out what percentage of the kids that graduate have to take remedial courses once they get to college and how many have actually graduated from college.
- Ask about the highest level of degrees among teachers at the school and what is in place to increase it.
- Ask about the diversity of the teaching and administrative staff. Does it reflect the school population? Does the school board reflect the community’s population?
- Find out if there is a discipline disparity
- Ask about the dropout rate and what dropout prevention process is in place
- Then ask yourself, why didn’t I ask these questions of my “failing” neighborhood school before I abandoned it.