It's all still the same reformy bubble

I followed the whole "social justice warrior" conversation that took place about a month ago from afar. I pretty much gave up being active in the national ed reform/ed reform skeptic community when I became more active locally. And then I kind of gave up social media activity and writing for pleasure--especially blogging, and tweeting--for my PhD program (as a compromise, I maintain a facebook page called "All Things Education"--you can "like" it without being my facebook friend). But, back to the topic at hand, I couldn't resist jumping into the fray on this one, even if the fray even if everyone else has already moved on.

I read (and cringed at) Robert's Robert Pondiscio's  piece, The Left's drive to push conservatives out of education reform piece the day it came out. When he was with the Core Knowledge Foundation, Robert was one of my favorite education thinkers and writers. We chatted online quite a bit and he even invited me to guest post at the Core Knowledge blog. We agreed especially about the importance of content knowledge, especially in literacy and the mis-guidedness of excessive teaching of "reading skills" at the expense of teaching literature, writing, the humanities, sciences, the arts, PE, math, foreign languages. I still read some of his work with great interest and will share it and recommend it accordingly. But this piece was really alienating and just utterly clueless.

Although there is much to rebut in the piece, I will only point out the problem with using the free market as a means to "take people out of poverty."
a) The free market, essentially where there's a profit motive, should never be used in the following service sectors (and no, I am not including the vending of clocks and what not to schools and to say that I am is just silly): education, military, healthcare, criminal justice, and social services.

b) The free market is dominated by the already powerful: white males and is designed to keep  (poor choice of words there) currently functions in a way that keeps those folks on top. The free market is not a neutral tool, it's not an equitable tool, and it's not a magical tool that you just sit back and let work its magic. It doesn't replace the hard, painstaking work that is obligated in democracy.

I am heartened that The New Schools Teachers Project Teach Plus for America Democrats for Education Reform 50CAN Stand for Children Students First Venture Project Fund are talking about and including voices from Black Lives Matters.

But when it comes down to it, I still fail to see much difference between conservative and centrist (really, centrist is a better term--most of these people aren't true liberals. If they were, they wouldn't be so cavalier about dismantling public democratic institutions) ed reformers. It's all still one bubble. I mean, I guess maybe vouchers separates them but not always. Okay, gay marriage, for sure. But that's about it.

So the centrist reformers are ready to listen and include more of those voices, but ultimately, that doesn't really matter. What matters is: power and on whose terms acts of education reform are committed.

In our society, people who aren't white males, and to a lesser extent white females, and an even lesser extent queer white folks, don't have power. Black people and Native Americans have the least power of all.

So the real questions for these ed reformers become:
1. What are you going to give up? What are you going to relinquish? (And I don't mean the reformy "edu-visionary" version of relinquish as in give up your power and kid to the free market and shut up kind of relinquishment. I mean actually giving up power because you have a unhealthily disproportionate amount of it.)

2. On whose terms are you going to enact and implement education reform policies? Will this be an actual democratic process? Or will you just seek the "buy in" of those folks and wear the titles of their movements as bumper stickers as you drive off and leave them in the dust.

Are you going to listen to actual teachers, parents, and students who don't agree with the policies you push?  To the black teachers who got fired en masse in New Orleans and DC? How about to the parents living in poverty who don't want their schools closed? To the students who don't want to go to schools that are run like prisons ? You gonna have those folks at your conferences? Running your organizations? Helping to make policies? You gonna refer those people to journalists instead of talking to them yourself? Are you going to power share? Are you going to step down from your positions of power? Or are you gonna wait until you're all done? Or will you stay in your bubble and just have representatives from powerless groups who are with The New Schools Teachers Project Teach Plus for America Democrats for Education Reform 50CAN Stand for Children Students First Venture Project Fund? Will you continue to buy journalism or will you let journalists do their jobs? Will you continue to buy educational research that supports your policies or will let the educational researchers do their work?

I know many of you are nice people who mean well, but when you actually become of a part of the communities you like to have so much say over and when you actually step down and aside so those folks can step in and have control over their own communities and schools, when you give up your power and embrace true democracy, then that will be true change.

On the need for more educators of color & why affirmative action is not the issue

I have read and written a lot recently about racism and the intersection of racism and public education, and the need for more teachers of color and more diverse curricula in our schools. I have also had conversations with local leaders and decision makers here where I live in Hanover, Virginia, about the lack of educators and educational leaders of color and have participated in deep conversations on this topic in the course of my doctoral studies in Educational Leadership at VCU.

All of this has caused me to feel a need to articulate why it is important for ALL children in this country to be taught by people of color and to articulate responses to the arguments I have heard as to why the problem of a lack of teachers of color can't be helped or even as to why it's not a problem or how it will cause other problems.

So here goes:

Why is this important?
Leaders, decision-makers, educators, and teachers are in positions of influence and power. Due to a legacy of racism in our country, the majority of those positions are held by white people. This is unhealthy, unjust, and bad for our society. We need more people of color in those positions, to right power imbalances but also because those perspectives are sorely lacking in positions of power and influence throughout this country. Those perspectives are important not just to represent people of color but to make our institutions and white people less racist over time.


But many people of color just aren't as qualified for those positions.
Research has shown that many qualified people of color are routinely passed over for positions of influence and power due to institutional racism. Additionally, due to institutional racism, people of color haven't had the same opportunities as white people. I have yet to be convinced that people of color aren't just as qualified as white people for positions of power and influence, but if someone is convinced of this then my answer is: a) experience is a way to get qualifications and b) if it means getting to a proper balance of power and equal opportunity for all people, I am fine with putting people of color who might not seem as qualified on paper into more positions of power and influence. As far as I'm concerned, white supremacy is the greatest problem here. Nothing else even comes close.

But affirmative action isn't fair!
White people routinely get hired for jobs or accepted into more prestigious schools due to their family background, their connections, or wealth and not because any superior qualifications--they have benefited from a system of white supremacy for hundreds of years. Affirmative action is a drop in the bucket next to that. Furthermore, affirmative action happens at the end of things, after opportunities have already been denied. By the time "affirmative action" college admissions and hiring take place, those candidates of color that would benefit from affirmative action are just as well qualified if not better than white candidates, especially when you take legacy admissions and connections and wealthy into account. Furthermore, think of how many people of color have been denied opportunities for every one "affirmative action" hire or acceptance. If you really want to end affirmative action, then work to make it so everyone has the same opportunities starting before and at birth. If you want to end affirmative action, you have to end institutional racism.

How can you change this? Isn't it hopeless?

I don't know the answer to that. There are many different ways to change things. There are also many ways to bang your head against the wall. The best route to change is via groups that are local, organic, and led by the people the most impacted.

For me, it also helps first to consistently be aware of, learn about, and reflect upon my own position in society and upon my own implicit biases. I recognize that there is no escaping racism--it's everywhere in this country, whether you live in the North or South, East or West, and whether the racism is explicit or implicit. Second, it helps me to have hope that people can change, and to try to be non-judgmental (given that we all have work to do). This is going to sound corny, but I try hard to love the sinner and hate the sin. 

Some people probably are hopeless, like the ones who call Obama a socialist or who called for the dogs in Baltimore. I know I can't win with those people. I just don't want those people to win and so that's why I can't give in to hopelessness.


My thinking has been influenced by my upbringing but also by the writers in the #educolor collective, and the writer and blogger Ta-nehisi Coates, all exceptional thinkers that I highly recommend you read.

When I grit on grit

A recent post up at Education Week chronicles a presentation that Albemarle County Public Schools Superintendent Pam Moran (I'm a big fan) and Albemarle Assistant Director for Educational Technology and Innovation Ira Socol gave at the recent EduCon 2.7 conference in Philadelphia. It's is getting a lot of attention and some pushback.

"Grit" has in recent years captivated the imagination of educators and policymakers, leading many to embrace the idea that schools should seek to cultivate in their students a set of personality traits demonstrated by researchers to be closely tied to academic and personal success. 

Increasingly, though, critics are offering a different take, arguing that grit is a racist construct and has harmed low-income students by crowding out a focus on providing children with the supports they deserve and the more-flexible educational approach enjoyed by many of their more affluent counterparts. 

I don't believe that the concept "grit" is inherently racist or that Duckworth's work is racist per se. I won't get into too much of a discussion of this as cognitive psychologist Cedar Riener has a much better informed opinion than I do on this:

Research psychologists such as Duckworth would do well to understand the context (and yes, the narratives) that can drive public acceptance and promotion of their science. But equally, policymakers and interpreters of psychological science should seek to situate the scientific evidence within both its scientific context as well as its social and institutional context. The existence and power of traits does not deny the power of situational and motivational context.

But I do think the way the concept is often applied is racist, meaning that the assumptions that educators seem to make when deciding they must teach "grit" to certain kids (usually children of color who live in poverty) are racist. They imply that there is something lacking in the character of those students and that it is that lack which has determined those students' lack of power in our society. I would argue instead that social, economic, and institutional forces have largely determined these students' lack of power and that we should all work on fixing those.

I also have to admit that some of my disconnect with the concept of "grit" comes from the way the word was used when I was growing up in DC. The word "grit" meant to give someone a dirty look, as in, "Why are you gritting on me?" meaning, "Why are you giving me a dirty look?" So I always think of that.

In any case, these were the bits from the post that resonated with me and that are worth thinking about: 

Moran also argued that children from difficult circumstances often demonstrate considerable grit in their day-to-day lives, but those students' strengths are often not recognized by educators. 

And many at EduCon also contended that inside schools, grit is frequently, and wrongfully, conflated with compliance (e.g., completing homework assignments, paying attention in class, or taking standardized tests seriously.)  

"If you just push the idea of grit, you avoid a conversation about, 'To what end?'" said Larissa Pahomov, an English teacher at Science Leadership Academy, the magnet high school in Philadelphia that hosts the annual conference.In order to avoid the "terribly racist" consequences of "the grit narrative," said Socol, the Albemarle County administrator, schools and districts should focus on creating an environment of "abundance," especially for students of color and children from circumstances of poverty. 

"There's [grit], and then there's the ability to get back up with the help of people around you, which is what the wealthy always do," said Socol in an interview prior to the conference. "The trick is in how you build a community around [students] and help them find the tools that will help them solve their problems."

UPDATE 1/29/2015, 2:45: I want to give Benjamin Herold credit for covering the session and for writing such a great post in the first place. Great work!

If we teach it, they will write it.

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know that I am a convert to the concept that literacy development (beyond decoding) is based primarily on knowledge, not skills. I used to think otherwise and even taught that way.

I write about this all of the time, especially in the context of ramped-up emphasis on reading tests, specifically in Virginia on Reading SOL tests (more on the recent ones soon). See this guest post at the Core Knowledge blog,and see this post, this post, this post, this post, this post, this post, and this post chez moi.

So, yes, I am a fan of E.D. Hirsch's work on content-/knowledge-based curriculum as well as of Dan Willingham's cognitive-science-based rationale of such an approach. However, there's one place where I have to disagree: that we cannot change whose ideas we study.

From a recent article in Politico by Peg Tyre about Hirsch's influence (bolded emphasis mine):

Knowing the national language of culture, even haphazardly, has a vast, far-reaching and brutally cumulative impact on learning. For those who begin their education with sufficient stores of background knowledge, it forms a virtuous circle: They have higher levels of reading comprehension, which helps them understand the daily social, intellectual and political discourse, which in turn helps them obtain more background knowledge. Those who do not have it languish. To level the playing field between rich and poor, schools should intentionally build background knowledge in all children in a wide range of subjects, or, says Hirsch, “It will be impossible to break the cycle of illiteracy that persists from parent to child.”  

Which is where his List came in. To make it, Hirsch, along with two professors, scanned newspapers and popular journals for high-frequency concepts and then polled 500 professionals—lawyers and writers—to determine which of those concepts were the most crucial for cultural literacy. “I have a Spock-like mind,” he reflects. “I like to take things to their logical conclusion.”  

Still, critics loved to point out—and they were right—that it is long on the Founding Fathers and the English literary canon. Isn’t championing, say, John Locke over Lao Tzu a choice rife with unspoken values and cultural biases? Hirsch sighs. “I agree with those who say we have to change American culture, but we cannot do it at the expense of people at the bottom,” he says when I ask the inevitable question. “Vocabulary—and cultural literacy—is shaped by history. There is really nothing to be done about that.” OK, I say, that might have made sense in the 1970s, but what about now when the complexion of American public schools is changing? The population of Latinos is growing and this year, the majority of children enrolled in public schools are expected to be non-white. How can any dictionary of cultural literacy keep pace with such a rapidly changing world? Hirsch grows crisp. “Why do you think one’s color or ethnicity would affect one’s vocabulary? Without a doubt, Latino culture is having a big influence on America, and the language of culture will change around the margins. But educated conversation is still going on. And you want to make sure those kids—particularly those kids—have the tools they need to be included.”

Dan Willingham said something rather similar in his book Why Don't Students Like School (page 36):

We might ask ourselves, Which knowledge should students be taught? This questions often becomes politically charged rather quickly. When we start to specify what must be taught and what can be omitted, it appears that we are grading information on its importance. The inclusion of omission of historical events and figures, playwrights, scientific achievements, and so on, leads to charges of cultural bias. A cognitive scientist sees these issues differently. The question, What should students be taught is equivalent not to What knowledge  is important? but rather to What knowledge yields the greatest cognitive benefit? The question has two answers. 

For reading, students must know whatever information writers assume they know and hence leave out. The necessary knowledge will vary depending on what students read, but most observers would agree that a reasonable human target would be to read a daily newspaper and to read books written for the intelligent layman on serious topics such as science and politics. Using that criterion, we may still be distressed that much of what writers assume their readers know seems to be touchstones of the culture of dead white males. From the cognitive scientist's point of view, the only choice in that case is to try to persuade writers and editors at the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and so on to assume different knowledge on the part of their readers. I don't think anyone would claim that change would be easy to bring about. It really amounts to a change in culture. Unless and until that happens, I advocate teaching that material to our students. The simple fact is that without that knowledge, they cannot read the breadth of material that their more knowledgeable schoolmates can, not with the depth of comprehension.

While I agree with Hirsch and Willingham in how literacy develops, I disagree there's nothing we can do about whose history or culture we learn about or that changing whose ideas we learn about depends upon who writes and edits major newspapers. Obviously, writers and editors of newspapers have a lot of influence but there are other places of influence, like schools.

Hegemony as defined by Autumn Tooms Cypres (2013) is:

"a socio-political construct that explains how groups or individuals can maintain their dominance over other groups of individuals in a society via coercion rather than violence. This phenomenon is achieved through persuading those in the subordinate group to accept, adopt, and internalize the dominant group's definition of what is normal. This kind of veiled oppression is achieved via mechanisms such as the media and school curriculum, which are used to inculcate and maintain this viewpoint and the power of the dominant class."

If I say that there's nothing I can do, I am accepting and aiding unhealthy and imbalanced cultural hegemony of white males. Since schools and curricula (and not just newspapers and publishers) can help achieve hegemony then one of the best places to "change the culture" and over turn hegemony of white males is to start teaching the ideas and work of non-white males, too. Essentially, if we teach it, they will write it.

Jane M. Gangi, an associate professor in the Division of Education at Mount Saint Mary College in Newburgh, New York, and Nancy Benfer, an instructor in literacy and literature at Mount Saint Mary College and a fourth-grade teacher at Bishop Dunn Memorial School, have endeavored over the course of their careers to expand what is read in their classrooms and in the classrooms of the teachers they teach. They also have also worked with architects of Common Core, to see that a more diverse set of literature and authors are included with other works in Common Core recommended texts. They explain their reasoning here:

One is rooted in the proficient reading research. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, researchers asked, “What do good readers do?” They found that good readers make connections to themselves and their communities. When classroom collections are largely by and about white people, white children have many more opportunities to make connections and become proficient readers. Appendix B of the CCSS as presented added to the aggregate that consistently marginalizes multicultural children’s literature: book lists, school book fairs and book order forms, literacy textbooks (books that teach teachers), and transitional books (books that help children segue from picture books to lengthier texts). If we want all children to become proficient readers, we must stock classrooms with mirror books for all children. This change in our classroom libraries will also allow children of the dominant culture to see literature about others who look different and live differently.

A second reason we must ensure that all children have mirror books is identity development. For African American children, Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. are not enough. They must also see African-American artists, writers, political leaders, judges, mathematicians, astronauts, and scientists. The same is true for children of other ethnicities. They must see authors and illustrators who look like them on book jackets. Children must be able to envision possibilities for their futures. And they must fall in love with books. Culturally relevant books help children discover a passion for reading.

Unfortunately, no changes to the Common Core Appendix B have been made.

Education writer, edu-color activist, and Montgomery County Public School parent Melinda Anderson has advocated for public education to better serve students of color including recruiting and retaining more teachers of color, developing more culturally competent teachers, and teaching richer and more relevant curricula including literature by and about people of color:

The mirrors metaphor is strong and powerful. Writers of color started a Twitter campaign #WeNeedDiverseBooks as a rallying cry to build momentum for greater diversity in literature. The need for people of color to see themselves reflected in the pages of books, in school curriculum and classrooms, and in leadership positions is real and inescapable. Equally, people of color need to be recognized for their excellence – it matters who we as a society lift up as worthy of recognition.

I would argue further that all students would benefit from a shift in the canon. As a K-12 student, some of my greatest experiences with literature were with works by authors of color: Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Amy Tan, Ralph Ellison, Claude Brown, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Sandra Cisneros. In later and more recent years I have added: Amy Tan, Yiyun Li, Kazuo Ishiguro, Haruki Murakami, Julia Alvarez, Junot Diaz, Edward Jones, Manil Suri, Jhumpa Lahiri, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Esmeralda Santiago, Isabelle Allende, Reinaldo Arenas, and Naguib Mahfouz. And those are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head. I read these books because many of my teachers assigned them (and most of my K-12 teachers were African-American) but also because they were in my house growing up--my parents read them and gave them to us to read. Then I was hooked and on on my own, I read more.

The cultural canon is movable.  It takes hard work, but it can be done. After all, Hirsch said he had a "spock-like" mind. Star Trek isn't exactly what comes to mind when we think of the "cultural canon," is it? No matter your stance on it, the Common Core would be a great place to start as would Virginia's Standards of Learning.

If we say that we value black lives, that black lives matter, then we also have to show that black ideas, inventions, research, and creativity matter and have been integral, not just to students of color but to our country as a whole.

In the past twenty-five (not 15!) years, the overall number of teachers of color in DC has decreased by almost a third.

In one of my last posts, I wrote about the decline of and need for more teachers of color and about my own PK-12 schooling at DCPS.

In private conversations, a few DC friends have asserted that while they don't entirely agree with the Rhee and now Henderson regime of policies, that there was "nothing racial" about them. I'm not so sure. I don't think that Rhee, etc.'s approach to reform has been intentionally or explicitly racial, but they have been racial at the very least in perception and effect.

For one, I refer you to this post I wrote in response to Rhee biographer Richard Whitmire's take on education reform in DC, where he continually refers in coded and loaded language to the majority black DCPS system that Rhee came into as "incompetent," "corrupt," and full of blinding race pride. This seems to encapsulate the collective mind-set of the DC rhee-formers and repeats many erroneous bits of what became collective wisdom that so many even earnest journalists repeat.

Second, the three sets of numbers I will present tell somewhat of a racial story.

Before I present them, a few caveats:

1.  Data sets 2 and 3 (from 2007-2008 and 2011-2012 respectively) include both the charter and the district sectors. While both may be complicit in the decline of teachers of color, since in DC DCPS and the charter schools system are totally separate entities, one can’t hold the division responsible for the human resources policies of the charter sector nor the inverse.

2.  Teacher recruitment and selection plays a role in the number of teachers of color in DCPS (and in any school system). Changes in DCPS’s approach to teacher recruitment and selection began way before Michelle Rhee’s chancellorship. In 2000, the DC New Teacher Project contracted with DCPS that same year to do an alternative teacher certification program and not long after to run teacher recruitment for DCPS. Coincidentally, however, Kaya Henderson was the Executive Director of DC TFA in the late 1990s, and in 2000 became head of the DC New Teacher Project (an organization founded and headed by Michelle Rhee).

3. As I mentioned in my last post on this topic, there has been a decline nationally in the percentage of teachers of color and the decline is projected to continue. I'm not sure if this is a decline in gross numbers or just in proportion or percentages and I can't seem to find any hard numbers that make that distinction. In any case, DC may simply be part of that same trend.


Now for the data:

1. There is, historically, very little in the way of data about DCPS teacher and staff demographics I asked DCPS watchdog, budget analyst and Keeper of all DCPS Stats Mary Levy what she had from the past and the only thing she could find was the table below which is DCPS data for school year 1988-1989, provided to the Committee on Public Education (COPE), a project of the Federal City Council. She got the data from DCPS in her role as a consultant to COPE, and included it in her report to them:

Teacher Demographics for DCPS 1988-1989

Race/ethnicity	Female	Male	Unknown	Total	Percentage
Black	4,747	1,207	6	5,960	93%
White	223	107		330	5%
Other	58	28	15	101	2%
Total	5,028	1,342	21	6,391

Race/ethnicity	White	Black	Other	Total
Number	330	5,960	101	6,391
Percent	5%	93%	2%

2. This is for the 2007-2008 school year, taken from the Center for American Progress's 2011 Teacher Diversity Report (see Appendix A, page 12):

Teacher Demographics for DC 2007- 2008

State	White	Black	Hispanic	Asian/Pac Islr	Nat Amer
DC	26%	65%	5%	X	2%

3. This is from the 2011-2012 school year, taken from the Center for American Progress's 2014 Teacher Diversity Report (see Table 2 on pages 7 and 8):

Teacher Demographics for DC 2011-2012

State	White	Black	Hispanic	Other	Two or more
DC	36%	52%	7%	5%	7%

So,

• In 1988-1989, DCPS teachers were 93% black, 5% white, and 2% other. Or, 95% of color and 5% white. 

• In 2007-2008, DCPS and DC charter school teachers were 65% black, 26% white, 5% Hispanic, and 2% Native American (The Native American number is footnoted as doubtful. In surveys, “Native American” is occasionally interpreted as meaning “I was born in America”). Or, 70 - 72% of color and 26 to 28% white.

• In 2011-2012, DCPS and DC charter school teachers were 52% black, 36% white, 7% Hispanic, and 5% other, Or, 64% of color and 36% white. 

Or, for the bar graph version:

So, while there has been an increase in non-black teachers of color, which is a positive trend, since 1989, there has been a decrease in the number of black teachers in DC public and charter schools from 93% to 65% to 52% and an overall decrease in the number of teachers of color in DC from 95% to 72% to 64%. That is an overall decrease of 41 percentage points for black teachers and 31 percentage points for teachers of color overall. There has also been an increase in white teachers, from 1/20th or 5% of the teacher corps in 1988-1989 to a little over 1/4th or 26% in 2007-2008 to well over a third or 36% in 2011-2012. In short, there's been an overall increase in the number of white teachers in DC from 5% to 26% to 36%.

Meanwhile the student body has changed but not proportionally so, or rather, the demographics of the teacher population have not changed in proportion with the student demographic changes. In DC in 2007-2008 there was a 21 percentage point difference between the percentages of nonwhite teachers and nonwhite students. In 2011 - 2012 that difference grew to 28 (source: CAP Teacher Diversity Reports, Table 1). Here are more data points regarding DC public and charter school student enrollment:

• In Fall 1989, the enrollment of DCPS was 90.7% black, 4.6% Hispanic, 3.7% white, and 1% Asian. Or, 96.3% of color and 3.7% white (source: DCPS Annual Membership Report, Fall 1989). 

• In 2007-2008, the enrollment of DC public and charter schools was 83% black, 10% Hispanic, 5% white, and 1% Asian/Pacific Islander. Or, 94% students of color and 5% white (source: Appendix A, page 16 of CAP 2011 Teacher Diversity Report).

• In 2011-2012, the enrollment of DC public and charter schools was 78% black, 13% Hispanic, 7% white, 1% Asian, and 1% two or more races. Or, 93% of color and 7% white (source: Table 3 of CAP 2014 Teacher Diversity Report).

Hence, the decline in teachers of color does not correspond with the decline in students of color and the increase in white teachers is significantly out of step with the increase in white students.

Lest you think I believe Virginia somehow exists outside of a glass house, I will be checking into their data next. Stay tuned. . .


UPDATE 9/18: I'm not sure how I missed this, but Melinda Anderson published a piece in Ebony in May 2014 succinctly chronicling the story of black teachers from the Brown v. Board era to now (in NYC, New Orleans, Chicago, and Philadelphia). Please read that here.

To fix racism is to fix poverty is to fix education

I am cooking up a follow-up post to my recent post about teacher diversity but given recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, I feel I needed to finish and publish another post I have been planning for a while.

As I explained in that post about teacher diversity, growing up going to the schools that I did in DC, with the classmates and teachers I had, was a positive experience that meant I grew up surrounded by people of color as well as by regular conversations about race and racism. This has granted me a unique white person's point of view, one that is perhaps a much more open and tolerant one. However, it has also meant that not only did I sometimes have blinders on as to my own work to do on racism, I had blinders on as to the extent of racism in our country. For example, I went through a it's-no-longer-about-race-it's-about-poverty/ it's-the-classicism-stupid phase, but I've since been convinced otherwise. Classicism certainly exists, but racism is also still alive and well. So the blinders are now off, but only in so much as they can be off given that one is always blinded to a certain extent by their own perspective/privilege, experiences, and surrounding culture.

The post I was planning was in honor (or maybe in response to?) the 60th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, but not in the conventional sense. I am not big on anniversaries, for one. Second, for as monumental as Brown v. Board was, it has not accomplished  (see, for example, this 2005 report on segregation in DCPS) what many seem to says it did or hoped it would. And I think that's at least partly because so many other policy areas, such as housing (think of restrictive housing covenants) did not or have not adequately, if it all, addressed racism in their manifestations.

My life's work is teaching, writing, and education. I know a great deal of change can be affected within classrooms, schools, and school systems but the current reformers' saying "fix education and you've solved poverty" is dangerously and hopelessly myopic, especially when many reformers and their funders are actually hostile to the idea (like the Waltons) of solving inequality or don't agree ( like Bill Gates) that income inequality is a problem.

But also those who want to work on solving poverty first can be myopic; they don't always look at what causes poverty. So much poverty among people of color is caused by institutionalized racism. People who say we must fix poverty in order to also fix education must also acknowledge that we must also fix institutional racism in order to fix poverty. As I said recently on twitter:

#Ferguson isn't an isolated incident. It's part of a pattern of institutional racism &of disinvestment in communities &pub dem institutions.
— Rachel Levy (@RachelAnneLevy) August 12, 2014

And by the way, by pattern, I don't mean conspiracy; I mean a pattern.

So, in honor of Brown v. Board's 60th anniversary and in light of what's happened in Ferguson and in so many other places, I am asking that all education organizations, groups, and high-profile individuals, of all stripes, endorse the following agenda:

• Reparations for those descended from slaves. African-Americans are responsible for generating huge amounts of wealth for our country and for individuals in it and the vast majority have yet to truly share in that prosperity. I don't know if reparations would be awarded to individuals or to communities, but if compensation to 9/11 victims and their families could be worked out, then so can reparations to African-Americans.

• Compensation should also be paid to African-American victims of racist housing policies, racist education policies, and racist public safety and criminal justice policies. 

• Major reforms to current public safety policies, many of which disproportionately and negatively impact people of color. Included in this is de-militarization of police forces, an end to stop and frisk policies, better pay and funding for police departments so that there is no more reliance on corrupt civil forfeiture practices, better training for police officers that emphasizes preventative, non-discriminatory neighborhood/community based policing.

• Major reforms to our criminal justice system, which also disproportionately and negatively impacts people of color. (Even if you don't agree with me on the humanitarian reasons, look at it from a financial standpoint. It is unreasonably expensive to imprison people both is terms of real costs and in terms of long-term costs, including those to society.):

• The dismantling of the War on Drugs. Decriminalization of most illegal drugs (notice I did not say "legalization"; I said "decriminalization"--those are two different things). 
• Immediate clemency for all those imprisoned for non-violent drug offenses. A shifting to mental health care rather than imprisonment for offenders.
• Better funded and staffed public defenders' services.
• An end to imprisonment for non-payment of fines, and an end to imprisonment for minor, non-violent offenses. (I am not advocating for no consequences, mind you, just for ones other than imprisonment.)
• No more privatized prisons and the return to the public sector of all privatized prisons.
• An end to capital punishment.

• Healthcare policy reform including Medicaid expansion for now and a single-payer system eventually.

• An increase to American workers' wages including minimum wage increases and the passage of living wage ordinances.

I hope that fellow education activists, educators, and education policy people understand that such policy reforms will only help our students and improve our schools and school systems and that they will endorse these recommendations. These flawed policies are impediments to the progress of people of color and people living in poverty, as well as to the progress of our society.

I'm so DC that. . .

Glenn Sullivan, a recent graduate from Lake Area New Tech Early College High School. in New Orleans published an op-ed in the Washington Post entitled, "My school district hires too many white teachers":

In my school, as in many schools — especially in reform-oriented school districts — a lot of the good, black teachers have been replaced by younger white teachers. Before Hurricane Katrina in 2005, nearly 75 percent of the city’s public school teachers were black. That began to change after Katrina, when charter schools began to grow in number. The percentage of minority teachers across New Orleans public schools dropped from 60 percent to 54 percent between 2010 and 2013, according to data compiled by Tulane University’s Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives. This troubles me. Particularly upsetting to me was the departure of the music teacher, a veteran black educator who helped run the New Tech school choir and put together trips for students.

This sparked some conversations in the grassroots ed reform community about teacher diversity. In one instance, Rutgers student, aspiring teacher, and education activist Stephanie Rivera blogged about reactions to the New Orleans student's commentary on the Bad Ass Teachers' facebook page, which in many cases was dismissive of Mr.Sullivan's point of view. From Stephanie's post:

What I find frustrating about most of these comments is their complete dismissal of the greater issues reflected by this post. The comments that argue that “there aren’t enough teachers of color” are ignoring the boundaries that keep many people of color pursuing this career. Many had oppressive\racist\non-cultural relevant education experiences, so many are reluctant to enter an environment they grew up hating. Many ignore that college-access, especially for people of color, is limited. Thus, completely leaving out the opportunity to even pursue a teaching certificate. As long as students of color are given more barriers than their white counterparts to go into teaching, the longer teachers of color will be the minority.

Another irritating argument includes that “it doesn’t matter what color a teacher is, as long as the teacher is good, that’s all that matters.” That is completely missing the point of the importance and benefits of students of color having teachers who look like them (see: Study: Minority students do better under minority teachers, Why students need more Black and Latino teachers). Yes, all teachers regardless of race can be trained to be effective teachers of black students, but black teachers can “be more adept at motivating and engaging students of color.” Additionally, by having students of color see people who look like them in successful positions, it can help prove to them that they can hold such positions too. Also, comments such as “color doesn’t matter,” is possibly one of the most racist statements one could make. By saying, “I don’t see color,” or “color doesn’t matter,” is basically saying “I don’t see your experiences, your stories, your struggles. Those elements of your identity and life don’t matter to me.” Colorblindness is not justice, equality, or being a good teacher. Colorblindness is ignoring the very issues that your students need you to fight against.

Indeed. According to the Woodrow Wilson-Rockefeller Brothers Fund Fellowships for Aspiring Teachers of Color,

• Nearly half of the nation’s students (44 percent) are students of color, but the latest data show that just one of every six teachers (16.7 percent) is a teacher of color."

• Research also shows, overwhelmingly, that students of color perform better – academically, personally, and socially-when taught by teachers from their own ethnic groups." 

• Current trends indicate that, by 2020, the percentage of teachers of color will fall to an all-time low of 5 percent of the total teacher force, while the percentage of students of color in the system will likely exceed 50 percent.

And, according to this Washington Post analysis, the student-teacher diversity gap is widening:

Students of color make up almost half of the public school population, but teachers of color make up just 18 percent of that population nationwide. And the disparity is even larger in 36 states. It’s largest in California where 73 percent of students are nonwhite while just 29 percent of teachers are nonwhite.

Teacher demographics can have an impact on students, CAP argues. Studies have shown that minority students fare better when taught by minority teachers and nonwhite educators may also find it easier to relate to students with whom they share a background.

First of all, I wish that white teachers would not take assertions such as "we need more teacher of color" so personally or as an attack on them. I am a white teacher who has mostly taught students of color. While I am certain that I can always do better as a teacher and in particular with students of color, such statements and conclusions are not directed personally at me or usually at other white teachers; they are addressed to public education as an institution. Second of all, the research shows that there are objectively disproportionately fewer teachers of color and that students of color do objectively do better with when taught by people who share their culture and background. Instead of focusing our energies on defending ourselves, we white teachers should a) see how we could help attract and retain more teachers of color to the profession and b) reflect on and act upon improving our own practice in order to counter racism and to be more culturally appropriate for all students

And this is one instance, as public education and edu-color activist Sabrina Joy Stevens has pointed out, where people of color run into the arms of reformers--when they experience racism or culturally irrelevant education in the public education system and when statements about those experiences aren't acknowledged or acted upon. I would expand on that to say that such educators are no better on matters of race than reformers like Michelle Rhee are. Reformers like Rhee may differ with most teachers on what shows and how to show what a great teacher is or what makes great teaching, but she sounds the same as defensive white teachers when she says, I don't care who you are or what your background is, all that matters is that the teacher is a great one.

And it is not just students of color who should have more teachers of color. White students need more teachers of color, too. I'm going to go in a more personal direction now and I hope you'll stick with me. As I may have mentioned before, I grew up in DC in the 1970s and 1980s. I went to DC Public Schools for my entire PK-12 career. I was in the minority in all four DC public schools I went to and the majority of my teachers, principals, and counselors were black. I can't quantify the influence this has had me, and frankly, for a long time, it was just an experience I took for granted, as the natural state of things because I didn't know any different. But as the realizations of this influence have come to me in different pieces and in various stages and varying levels of intensity, I can qualify it.

My mother only recently told me the following story: My older sister and were young enough to be in elementary school and we were having a conversation with our parents about racial demographics in this US. It came up that the US was majority white and my sister and I asserted that it was majority black. My mother felt pleased that our experiences in DCPS had led us to such a conclusion, but as a civil rights lawyer, she also wanted to make sure we understood the reality, that the rest of the country was not, in fact, majority black even if our city and our schools were, so she made sure to correct our understanding.

When I got to college (and I went to "Diversity University") we had these frosh year workshops (there are no freshman at Wesleyan) where we explored topics of diversity, racism, sexism, gender, and homophobia. During one discussion in the spirit of openness the workshops encouraged, one white male student from rural New England said he had never been around or gone to school with so many students of color. That really surprised me, especially because Wesleyan didn't really seem to me to have so many students of color. I looked around and thought that, well, I have never gone to school with so many white people. I don't think I said anything at the time, but it was then that it started to dawn on me how unique my experience might have been. Toto, we ain't in DC anymore. For the most part I received a great education and I dearly love the friends I made there, but I experienced a certain amount of culture shock at Wesleyan and wonder sometimes if I would have been happier at a big state school.

This came up a few other times at Wesleyan--many of my classmates took a look at my blond hair and blue eyes and soccer cleats and assumed I was fresh out of a Massachusetts boarding school. This took me aback because my parents would never ever have sent me to a DC private school, let alone to a boarding school in New England, though in retrospect that's kind of what Wesleyan is, only for older teenagers and in Connecticut. I remember finally breaking out my high school yearbook to show one dubious hallmate from New York City that my school was not anything like a Massachusetts boarding school.

Again, I can't say anything concrete to speak to how my PK-12 schooling experience was good for me but I know I wouldn't trade it. And, I don't claim that the DCPS schools I went to existed in some racism-free bubble, that I am personally immune from contributing to racism or that I have no work to do. Just as being in a majority black setting in school influenced me, so must have the racist culture outside of school (see Shankar Vedantam on how the culture we grow up in influences our point of view).  I think given the racial composition of my neighborhood (mostly white) and given what I could pick up from the culture that surrounded me outside of school once I got older than I was during the afore-mentioned US demographics conversation, I well realized the role of racism in our country. But imagine what it was for a middle class white girl with educated parents to be the minority in her school and to go to schools where African-Americans were in most of the positions of authority. As I said, I have long taken this experience for granted, but now imagine how different (for the worse) I would be and how differently I would think and see the world without it.

DC, like New Orleans, has lost many black teachers (a post on this is in the works). The principal, counselor, and teacher corps in DCPS is markedly more white than it used to be even when factoring in that the white population of DC has increased.

And, while they are not in the minority, my own children are now in schools that are fairly diverse socioeconomically and racially (though not that diverse beyond back and white), I noticed right away when we moved here that the vast majority of their teachers and principals and people in leadership roles are white. This isn't to say that the teachers and administrators they have aren't good at what they do--they are fabulous, but it troubles me that there isn't more diversity. My husband and I can have frank conversations with our children about US history and racism and about racial dynamics in our own communities, but those conversations ultimately can't replace experiences.

I'm so DC that I know that the lack of teachers of color in my childrens' schools is a problem, but I am also so DC that this lack still surprises me and I get overwhelmed by where to start to try and change it, in what can sometimes feel like a foreign country.

But I have to start somewhere, right?


UPDATE 9/18: I'm not sure how I missed this but Melinda Anderson published a piece in Ebony in May 2014 succinctly chronicling the story of black teachers from the Brown v. Board era to now (in NYC, New Orleans, Chicago, and Philadelphia). Please read that here.