Define Achievement Gap-
“Achievement Gap” is a misleading phrase.
Achievement is defined by dictionary.com as- “A thing done successfully, typically by effort, courage, or skill.” People achieve, or don’t achieve, by their own actions. But the circumstances that people have labeled the “Achievement Gap” are not about the Kids failing to achieve. Look at what some Kids in our District have to navigate just to make it through their day, and then tell me that they are failing to achieve.
Minority Children don’t perform as well as Caucasians on standardized tests. African Americans in particular perform poorly in comparison. But the test scores are a symptom of wider issues that need to be dealt with. If these issues were resolved, then test scores would eventually even out.
So, if we don’t call it the Achievement Gap, then what? It has to have a label!
How about “The Effects of Racism and Poverty”? I think that is a much more accurate phrase for what we are seeing in our School System and pretty much every other School System in this country.
Russell Skiba is a guy who has been doing research on this crisis for a number of years. He’s pretty thorough. He (and others) recently published Race Is Not Neutral: A National Investigation of African American and Latino Disproportionality in School Discipline. That link takes you to the report, read the abstract and you get the idea. When the overwhelming amount of research on a given topic confirms a particular theory, then doesn’t it make sense to pay attention to that theory?
In a nutshell-
Students of color are the victims of Racism and discrimination every day in every District in this country that has Minority Students. African American males in particular are disciplined at rates far exceeding their numbers. I was on a team that compiled the discipline statistics for our School as part of a study we were conducting and the results were unbelievable. African Americans comprised approximately 23% of the School population but incurred 66% of the discipline referrals that resulted in out of School suspension. That is completely unacceptable. And no, it’s not because African American males act up more. They get punished more, and they get suspended more than white Kids.
Why?
Some of it has to do with Staff and Students not getting a chance to become more familiar with each other as people. In the absence of familiarity we tend to fall back on stereotypes and generalizations about groups of people. Sometimes we aren’t even conscious that we are doing it.
I have come to believe that Stereotyping is inescapable. All of us label and stereotype others. Why? Probably for the same reason we have labeled and analyzed and theorized about every single thing that has ever been observable. We do that. It’s not best practice when we do that to people, especially if the stereotype causes harm. It's safe to say that the stereotype of a teen aged African American male proves to be very problematic.
Stereotypes can be broken down.
Familiarity (meaning getting to know some one) is one way to do it. But with class sizes increasing the way they are, Teachers have less and less chance to get to know their Students, to become familiar with them as individuals. Guidance Counselors have a huge role to play here. They can help Teachers and Students break through the preconceptions each have. But Guidance Counselors are an endangered species, in Seattle. The vacuum left by their extinction will throw more pressure onto the School’s Administrative Staff, who are already overworked themselves.
It’s yet another shame of modern education.
I have seen some hard-as-nails educators bend over backwards to help a Kid, because they knew and cared about that Child. In one instance, an Administrator who could be unfairly tough, decided not to pull the trigger on the process to send a Student to a harsher placement. She surprised me.
When I thanked her she explained, almost off-handedly that ” _(insert name here)_ is a good Kid that has had some bad things happen to him, we aren’t giving him up”.
“A good Kid.” “We aren’t giving him up.” <------See that. That’s the attitude that saves Kids. But it’s becoming less and less common as we down-size and overload Staff.
What has happened to make matters even worse is that Seattle’s Public Schools have become more segregated. That is the unfortunate result of our new Student Assignment Plan. Check out the demographics here.
It still holds true that separate but equal is inherently unequal. I wonder if people who supported the new plan realize what we have done.
These Children get separated out, punished excessively, suspended excessively, miss out on learning excessively, fall behind excessively and fail excessively. It’s Racism, and we see the evidence of it in the results of their tests.
Minority Children could use a break, but instead, let’s throw a big heap of Poverty at them. Like Racism, Poverty isn’t really talked about much when we talk about education, but it should be the starting point of any serious discussion of real reform.
Currently 42% +/- of all Seattle Public School Students qualify for Free and Reduced Lunch. Nearly half. In order to qualify for reduced lunch a Family’s income has to be no more than 185% of the Poverty Line. The Poverty Line for a Family of 4 for School year 2011-12 is $22,350 per year. A Family of four can make no more than $41,348 per year in order to qualify. No, that’s not a lot of money and almost half of our Kids live in Families that qualify.
Poor households can’t afford much out of School enrichment such as trips to a museum. They tend to have fewer books in their homes and don’t have as much time to spend reading to their Kids. They can’t afford tutors. Parents/Guardians of poor Children are often under-educated. They can’t help their Kids, even if they had the time (which they don’t).
My Family didn’t have much money when I was growing up. It was just my mom and she didn’t make much as a secretary. She took great care of my two sisters and me but there were no extras. Museums, the zoo, camp, vacations, tutors, music lessons...forget about it. I remember hearing her cry over the bills that she didn’t have enough money to pay.
That’s tough, and that’s nothing compared to what some folks are dealing with.
There has been a lot of research done on Poverty and the overwhelming conclusion of all the research is that being poor really sucks. Poverty has a negative effect on a Child’s educational progress. Food insecurity, healthcare insecurity, housing insecurity, neighborhood insecurity, combined with Parental stress over the above insecurities, place undue burdens on Children.
We see the burdens hamper their performance. We see the results of Poverty in the results of their tests.
No comments:
Post a Comment