Ed Kindall & blaming low-income students

One more thing from that Tennessean article about the state's average ACT scores and the achievement gaps it revealed:

“The gap is there [between black and white students], and there’s never going to be improvement unless we look at the reasons,” said Ed Kindall, outgoing Metro Nashville Public Schools board member . 

Kindall thinks one issue could be motivation. “How do we motivate children to look at education as a way to get out of poverty?” he asked.

(The brackets are mine.)

I don't agree with Kindall on much, but I grant the following:

• He knows what life in segregated Nashville was like. I'm sure he has vivid memories of a time when black children were explicitly told what they could -- and more often, what they couldn't -- do.

• I'm sure he knows all too well what systemic racism has done to the education of generations of minority students.

• Kindall has a deep knowledge and experience of racism in a way that I will never know and cannot viscerally understand. That I am deeply empathetic and have dedicated my professional life to helping take down the barriers erected by decades of discrimination isn't enough; there's no substitute for experience.

So when he says things like this about the achievement gap shown on ACT average scores, I'm not so much angry as confused. Surely Kindall knows the students I teach. He visits their schools, talks to them at church, and sees them at the grocery store. Surely he knows that low-income students lack a lot of things, but a desire to get out of poverty isn't one of them. Surely he doesn't think the 2,880 students who graduated from MNPS in 2011 with ACT scores below 21 did so because of lack of motivation.

I've helped hundreds of low-income students in Nashville prepare to take the ACT. One thing I can say is that they don't lack the desire to do well. What most of the students lacked is the skill level -- not the raw intelligence or potential, mind you, but skill level -- necessary to get the score they wanted. This is the result of a public education system that has systemically failed to develop those skills.

 Contra Kindall, most students know exactly what their ticket out of poverty is. When I taught in an MNPS district high school, I remember counseling my 11th graders when their ACT scores came back. I watched more than few kids cry. Saying that our kids don't want to do well on the ACT is simply false.

And, for the moment, let's put aside the typical "blame the parents" riposte I see so often in these sorts of debates. If you'd like hold kids accountable for a choice they didn't make -- who their parents would be -- then you miss the entire point of public education. Also, you're reading the wrong blog.

Instead, let's focus the significant impact we can make. Namely, the quality of a school (and school district) matters. One proof point: a RAND study showed that Chicago's 5-12 charter schools (which are non-selective) "produce substantial positive effects on ACT scores."

If you're one of those people who reflexively dismiss data showing success in charter schools, here's a district-level example: the Broad Prize-winning Gwinnett County Schools in Georgia (which is very racially diverse, has a 50 percent free/reduced price lunch student population, and is almost twice the size of MNPS) was able to narrow achievement gaps and average a 22.3 on the ACT. The racial breakdowns, while still showing gaps, show much more progress than what we've seen in Nashville: black students - 19.2, Latino students - 20.7, white students - 24.0. While Georgia doesn't require all students to take the ACT, Gwinnett has high participation rates. Also, state-specific tests given to Gwinnett students have shown similar results in increasing achievement and closing gaps.

The point is that the quality of a school and school district can make a difference on college-readiness. What we control as voters, public servants, and educators can make a significant, positive impact on the prospects for low-income and minority students.

Kindall wants to look at the reasons for why there's an achievement gap and why low-income and minority students aren't scoring well on the ACT. But if most of our students do, in fact, have the motivation to do well and other schools and districts have shown success in getting poor and minority students to increase achievement and close gaps, then we must look at other reasons. Of course, all of those other reasons put the responsibility squarely on the adults who set up and run the public education system we have.

Ed Kindall knows exactly how a system can, for decades, deny poor and minority students the opportunities to achieve their potential. He also served on the Nashville school board for more than 20 years. Few people have had more influence on how the modern MNPS educates poor and minority students.

And at the end of his time on the board, he's blaming the kids for not being college-ready?