Those numbers alone are daunting, but they also disproportionately affect children of color. Currently, white and Asian students are more than twice as likely to be proficient in math and English as their black and Hispanic peers. In fact, 90 of the city’s schools failed to pass even a single student of color on a state test. And results show a persistent (and growing) achievement gap: On the 2014 state tests, black and Hispanic students improved their scores by 1.5 percentage points (while white students improved 2.8 percentage points). If that trend continued for a decade, still less than 40 percent of black and Hispanic students would be proficient.
Last month, Families for Excellent Schools released a report, titled A Tale of Two Schools, that highlights New York City’s 371 persistently failing schools, where no more than 10 percent of students are passing state exams. These schools make up a nearly a quarter of the city’s total and educate roughly 143,000 children.
Those numbers alone are daunting, but they also disproportionately affect children of color. Currently, white and Asian students are more than twice as likely to be proficient in math and English as their black and Hispanic peers. In fact, 90 of the city’s schools failed to pass even a single student of color on a state test. And results show a persistent (and growing) achievement gap: On the 2014 state tests, black and Hispanic students improved their scores by 1.5 percentage points (while white students improved 2.8 percentage points). If that trend continued for a decade, still less than 40 percent of black and Hispanic students would be proficient.
5 Comments
In 2002, the nation of Malawi had one of the worst famines in living memory—more than 50,000 people died because of hunger and hunger-related causes. But even that number understates the devastation. Many families clung to survival only by selling all of their possessions, land, and livestock, leaving them no livelihood. Malnourished children contracted debilitating illnesses like kwashiorkor, decreasing their resilience and likelihood of surviving future hardship. Communities were broken by distrust, children sent away from their families, and countless other tragedies occurred that most of us can only imagine. Floods were the natural cause, but government policies were the true disaster.
Education policymakers are rarely faced with such clarity of failure. But I often think of this story when leaders talk about new initiatives or recommendations, because it provides such a stark example of policy backfiring. (I studied and worked in international development before moving to domestic education.) There was a common belief among development “experts” at the time that governments were too involved in their economies and in service provision, and that introducing market forces would improve the system. There are many education leaders today who say the same thing, and it’s this thought process that underlies the premise of charter schools. In urban areas, with more infrastructure, money, and greater population densities, it’s a solid premise with a lot of potential. But rural charters are a bad idea for many of the same reasons “market liberalization” was a disaster in southern Africa. A book that chronicles the history of the District of Columbia has turned out to be a powerful tool for engaging teens in the controversial past of the nation’s capital. Dream City: Race, Power, and the Decline of Washington, D.C., written by long-time journalists Harry Jaffe and Tom Sherwood, examines the complicated mayoral tenure of civil rights activist and drug abuser Marion Barry during the 1980s to mid-1990s. The book, originally published in 1994, was recently released as an e-book and includes a new afterword on what’s changed in the District in the last 20 years. Teachers and students came out this month to participate in a book discussion hosted by the Center for Inspired Teaching, where they engaged with the authors and shared their own classroom experiences around Dream City. Bill Stevens, a history teacher at the SEED School in southeast DC, said Barry’s rule struck a personal chord with some of his students. "One of my students realized his relative's first job was with Marion Barry," said Stevens. His students were all the more engaged in class during Dream City discussions, he added, as they discovered their own historical connections to the city. In recent years a lion share of the political commentary on education has focused on the need for expanding funding and access to early childhood education. At the same time, however, tackling early childhood education while ignoring adult education is equally as detrimental. Just as a lack of early learning impacts that child for years into the future, so do households with parents lacking the education necessary to guide their children’s academic growth. Beyond that, ignoring adult education has meant leaving generations behind and accepting a paradoxical economy with devastatingly high unemployment and jobs that can’t be filled by laborers without the skills they need to get them. Twenty-five years ago, Albert Shanker, then-president of the American Federation of Teachers — the nation’s second-largest teachers union — delivered a stinging rebuke of the reform movement of the 1980s and the majority of students it was leaving behind with its one-size-fits-all approach. He analogized our education system to a doctor who blames a patient when the pill he prescribed doesn’t work — rather than trying a new remedy. His speech, five years after A Nation At Risk, laid out a vision for teacher-inspired and teacher-created schools and later became the ideological foundation for the first charter school initiatives. Now, more than 5,600 charter schools in the United States serve more than two million students. Every one of those schools has a stated mission that serves as a creed to distinguish their approach. But divided, they’ve lost sight of the broader picture: the mission of the charter school movement first envisioned by Shanker. This past month, I stood in front of a room full of my students, mostly recent immigrants to the United States. They were taking a national exam that tests English-language learners’ (ELLs) ability to comprehend and work with academic language. I read my students the instructions and then each question, as required, in English. It was the last week of May, and for most students across the country, one of the final weeks of school before summer break. By now, most students have a year’s worth of instruction and practice to prepare for the exam. So why was I looking at a room full of blank stares?
|
aboutYEP-DC is a nonpartisan group of education professionals who work in research, policy, and practice – and even outside of education. The views expressed here are only those of the attributed author, not YEP-DC. This blog aims to provide a forum for our group’s varied opinions. It also serves as an opportunity for many more professionals in DC and beyond to participate in the ongoing education conversation. We hope you chime in, but we ask that you do so in a considerate, respectful manner. We reserve the right to modify or delete any content or comments. For any more information or for an opportunity to blog, contact us via one of the methods below. BloggersMONICA GRAY is co-founder & president of DreamWakers, an edtech nonprofit. She writes on education innovation and poverty. Archives
May 2017
Categories
All
|