Luck and the purposes of public education

Education reporter Peter Merrow is making a lot of sense: 

Are are we also polarized about the purposes of public education? I am not sure whether we are polarized, indifferent or excluded from the conversation, but we have a real problem. The goal of school is to help grow American citizens. Four key words: help, grow, American, citizen. Think about those words:

Help: Schools are junior partners in education. They are to help families, the principal educators.

Grow: It’s a process, sometimes two steps forward, one back. Education is akin to a family business, not a publicly traded stock company that lives and dies by quarterly reports.

American: E Pluribus Unum. We are Americans, first and foremost.

Citizen: Let’s put some flesh on that term. What do we want our children to be as adults? Good parents and neighbors, thoughtful voters, reliable workers? What else?

Merrow hits a lot of good points in the whole article. You should read the whole thing. I don't disagree with anything he wrote above. That said, I've got some footnotes about the role of luck and what public schools can do about it. 

 On "Help": Schools aren't going to take the place of families. However, we are charged with educating the students we have. These kids -- through no fault of their own -- may come from broken families, from impoverished households, from parents working two or more jobs, from caregivers who value education but were never able to acquire one themselves. As a result, we have two options: 

Option #1: We can shift into blame mode. We can search around for a villain -- poverty, parents, politicians -- and talk about how educators can't really do anything until that villain goes away. 

Option #2: We can do the best we can to compensate. For kids who lack stability at home, school can be an oasis of calm. Teachers can't replace parents, but I see every day the power of a school where each child is known by each adult. I've also worked in schools where that didn't happen. Anonymity is the first step towards falling through the cracks. 

On "Grow": Merrow is exactly right. The only thing I'd add is that we should have multiple measures, subjective and objective, to chart the "two steps forward, one back." As the fifth norm on a poster in my classroom states: "It's OK to make mistakes as long as you learn from them." In my experience, the difference between functional and dysfunctional schools is that the former uses data to pinpoint where the mistakes are, then does something about them. The latter does neither. 

Accountability isn't the enemy. It's the inertia that results in its absence. 

On "Americans": I agree one hundred percent. Our schools are the fuel of our democracy. This is one of many reasons that I agree with both Michelle Rhee and Diane Ravitch -- teaching should be a top-tier profession in the U.S. and teachers should be compensated as such.

** As Basher in Ocean's 13 asked, "Do you know what Chuck Berry said every night before counting 1, 2, 3, 4?"

 

On "Citizens": My only addition to Merrow's list is that our schools should help each child reach his or her full potential. The tricky thing about teaching is that it's impossible to know what that is. Thank God that my future wasn't based on what I did as a 14-year-old. (The Fifth Amendment excuses me from giving details about this and, hopefully, my parents have forgiven and forgotten. Or at least, forgiven.) 

Now, as a teacher of 14-year-olds, I have to balance holding students to high expectations and being understanding as they inevitably fall short some of those expectations. We teachers can't hold a grudge, even with the kids who require near-constant coaching.

The problem is that for too many kids, particularly those trying to break out of poverty, the mistakes they make as adolescents haunt them for the rest of their lives. This, to me, is the worst thing about poverty in the United States -- it's life with not much of a safety net. 

To create the citizens we want to have, it's incumbent on us -- especially those of us born into stable families, secure incomes, and a predictable path to an education -- to use those privileges to help others who weren't so lucky. 

Because that's the thing -- luck plays a bigger role than it should in determining whether a child becomes who he or she is capable of being. 

Luck decides who a kid's parents are, but the the idea behind public education -- beyond facilitating the development of "good parents and neighbors, thoughtful voters, reliable workers" -- should be to offer a children an opportunity and a choice to determine who they'll be. 

Public education will never entirely compensate for the advantages and disadvantages of who one's parents are. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't do a much better job than we're doing now.   

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?

Going from "they" to "we"

I was a child when the United States invaded Iraq for the first time. Since I was pretty typical boy, I spent hours in the woods near my house, playing "soldier." My friends and I shot at imaginary Iraqis with our imaginary guns. We always won. 


One time, though, one of my friends fell backward, saying, "They got me!" 


Alone in my room that night, I thought about how sad it would be if my friend had actually been shot. I pictured his mother crying. 


Then I thought about the pretend Iraqis we'd been shooting. I realized that they, too, had mothers who would cry if they were shot. 


I lost my interest in playing "soldier."


****


It's obvious and easy to condemn the latest batch of bigotry spewing forth from those trying to prevent Muslims in Murfreesboro from exercising their First Amendment right to worship. Bob Smietana's  story in the Tennessean speaks for itself:

Currently one Muslim student at Central Magnet School in Murfreesboro is allowed to pray in an empty room during lunch, said James Evans, spokesman for Rutherford County Schools. 

Evans pointed out that Christian students hold a lunch Bible study at the same school and that a Christian club there called First Priority has several hundred members. 

[Pete] Doughtie said Muslim students should assimilate to Christian culture. Rather than allowing Muslim students to pray, he’d rather see all students take part in a Christian prayer each day at school.

“We have been a strong Christian country, and if we don’t get back to it, the whole face of this nation is going to change,” Doughtie said.

Doughtie, a 71-year-old retiree who publishes a small newspaper featuring right-wing views, is featured heavily the article. I hope the idea in giving him such a prominent platform is to give a human face to the opposition.  In a typical article, the idea is for us to empathize with him. In this case, though, the statements attributed to Doughtie (and the other major subject of the article, Rev. Darrel Whaley) seem to function the same way a freak show does at a carnival. We readers get to observe and note that, whatever our shortcomings, at least we're not that.


In an odd way, even Whaley seems to exhibit some level of self-awareness on how repugnant his views are:

An evangelical Christian pastor, Whaley believes Muslims will go to hell if they don’t leave their faith and become Christians. 

He says that he’s not a bigot and doesn’t hate Muslims. 

But he can’t stand their religion and will do whatever he can to limit the spread of Islam in Rutherford County and in the United States. 

“We are not against Muslims praying in a mosque,” Whaley said. “We are against Islam.”

It's a relief to know he doesn't hate them for practicing their religion. He's just hates their religion, period.


But as I said, it's easy to condemn. It's much harder to do what they're refusing to do -- extend empathy and compassion.


So let's first try to understand why they reject empathy and compassion:

Doughtie also worries about a so-called “stealth jihad.”

He learned that term from a book by the same name by author Robert Spencer, who runs a blog called Jihad Watch. The book says that Muslims want to undermine America from within. 

Since at least 2009, that claim has been repeated by local activists meeting in churches and community groups in Middle Tennessee. 

Those meetings have regularly featured anti-Islam speakers and authors like Spencer, Brigitte Gabriel of Act for America, Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, and Bill French, a former Tennessee State University professor who goes by the pseudonym Bill Warner. 

They’ve persuaded activists like Doughtie to see almost every action by Muslims with suspicion.

Fear is a black hole sort of feeling, feeding on itself until it infects everything one perceives. It destroys reason, logic, compassion, and empathy. One sees everything "with suspicion." Fear lives off its cousins: lies and ignorance.


Doughtie and Whaley fear Muslims because they've been fed lies by people who profit off demagoguing against Muslims. They've failed to truly educate themselves, to seek out views balancing the poison of people like Frank Gaffney. 


I don't know why they've been satisfied with this fear. Perhaps it offers some sort of cold comfort, a sense of place in our ever-more integrated and diverse world. Many don't feel safe until they've divided the world into "us" and "them."


Whatever the cause, fear tears at the soul. It destroys lives and communities. The object of their fear will return the same to them. 


The only way out of this cycle of fear is to practice its opposite. The most revealing statement in the entire article is this:

Until the new Islamic Center was approved in 2010, “I didn’t know that there were any Muslims in this community,” said Pete Doughtie, owner of the Rutherford Reader, a local free newspaper.

Doughtie simply didn't know his neighbors. His ignorance turned to intolerance when he started relying on outside hatemongers like Gaffney for information rather than engaging with his fellow citizens of Murfreesboro.


It's a telling that our communities can be so diverse, yet we can so easily wall ourselves off from each other. If I didn't work as a public school teacher, I wouldn't know many Muslim families. I wouldn't know that their values are the same as our values, that their community is a part of our community.


If it weren't for my job, I wouldn't know that there is no "they" and "them." There is, in this community, only "we" and "us."


Pete Doughtie, Darrel Whaley, Wilson Boyd, Muslim families, all of Middle Tennessee -- we -- are all in this together, but there's a rift in our community. For us to find a way out of it, we're going to have to do the opposite of what fear tells us: take a risk and truly become neighbors.


For me, that will be hard. For me, the "they" is Doughtie and Whaley. 


How do we acknowledge the humanity of those who don't acknowledge the humanity of others?