By: Patricia Morris
There is no greater human right than the right to a quality education for all children. Education is a ladder out of poverty and a pathway to equal opportunity for all. For the first time in decades, we have an Administration that is willing to invest significantly in helping to make that dream a reality.
"The Secretary expressed a commitment to great teachers for every student, equal distribution of resources to meet student's needs and a fair and inclusive education for all. That is the American dream, one that all Americans should cherish and be willing to stand with the Administration to fight for," said NAACP National President Ben Jealous.
We applaud the Administration for stating a clear commitment to a quality education for all children, something that no American should oppose. Educating our children of all races, ethnicities and backgrounds is what will make us the competitive, prosperous and thriving nation we need to be. We heard Secretary Duncan state his strong commitment to that goal.
A quality education is not a segregated education. It is not educating children in a racial or ethnic isolation. We are one nation. Yet over 50 years since Brown V. Board, the Supreme Court ruling that overturned segregation in our schools, American schools are more segregated now than since the 1960's. Today, 39 percent of black students and 40 percent of Latino students attend intensely segregated schools, where 90 to 100 percent of the population is nonwhite.
And some states like North Carolina are moving backward, ending its system to foster integration in favor of inequality and segregation. Secretary Duncan confirmed the Administration's commitment to equity and diversity in education throughout our country.
Our current Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is no liberal, said "This nation has a moral and ethical obligation to fulfill its historic commitment to creating an integrated society that ensures equal opportunity to fulfill its historic commitment to creating an integrated society that ensures equal opportunity for all of its children." We agree. We plan to work with the Administration to help local school districts design plans that can assure that all children have an opportunity to learn in diverse and equitable schools with children of all races.
Racial and ethnic isolation causes us to be less competitive in a multiracial world. Business is international, our world is smaller - diversity in education has been proven by study after study to produce a better education and give us a competitive edge.
It is encouraging that the Administration is willing to tackle the issue of reforming discriminatory school discipline policies. We have school resource officers handcuffing children and taking them to jail for writing on a desk with a magic marker in New York. In Florida a five-year-old girl was handcuffed for having a temper tantrum. These occur disproportionately in schools in low income communities and neighborhoods where the majority of children are Black or Brown. While African American youth constitute 19% of the student population in one Florida County, they were 51% of student arrests, and 45% of out of school suspensions. It contributes to unacceptably high dropout rates - as high as 76% in Baltimore, for example. It lands school children in the juvenile justice system instead of college. We have to disrupt the pipeline that funnels justice systems for offenses that only violate school rules and should be handled in the principal's office.
"We are pleased to have the Federal Government as a partner again in securing a high quality education as every child's Civil Right. Returning to rigorous enforcement and clear guidance about laws already on the books is the first step toward ensuring that every child receives an equitable, high-quality, inclusive education," said President Ben Jealous.
Ideally the guidance from the Administration on inclusion would build on Justice Kennedy's suggestions (affirmed by a majority of the court), describing how school districts could increase equity and diversity in schools by using race-conscious policies for:
1) strategic site selection of new schools;
2) drawing attendance zones in general recognition of the demographics of neighborhoods;
3) allocating resources for special programs;
4) recruiting students and faculty in a targeted fashion; and
5) tracking enrollments, performance, and other statistics by race.
That assistance to districts should also take the form of financial assistance to increase racial and ethnic diversity, perhaps using the federally funded magnet school program as a starting (but not ending) point. Such assistance should also include serious federal, inter-agency commitment to targeted fair housing work to increase diversity of particular public schools.
Finally, new guidance should make clear what school districts cannot do, that is, individual students cannot be assigned to school districts solely on the basis of their race. Instead, schools should consider race along with other demographic factors when implementing specific student assignment methods with the goal of securing a quality, inclusive education for all students.
Teachers
Teaching Quality: The most important factors leading to student achievement are not the credentials that teachers bring, although those are important. It's what you actually do in the classroom, how you interact with kids and your levels of skill in helping them grasp content. We want to help struggling students by helping their teachers get better. We want to help our most disadvantaged communities grow by growing better teachers there.
Distribution of Quality Teachers: Right now, our neediest kids have a revolving door of inexperienced teachers. We know that in a teacher shortage we cannot recruit our way out of the problem. We know that in a budget crisis, we cannot offer enough money to entice teachers into low performing schools. And even if we did, without the right supports they probably would not succeed. We have to grow great teachers where they are from among the educators who are committed to our communities.
Why we can't wait: We cannot afford to wait until next school year to get a committed recruit who might or might not last. We cannot afford to wait until the next round of standardized tests show the achievement gap closing by millimeters at a time. When teachers plan together and perfect a lesson today, they can start improving student achievement tomorrow. When an instructional coach helps a teacher use high impact techniques, it changes the game the very next time that person steps in front of a group of students.
Resources
When the first President Bush gathered governors together in the 1990's to come up with the basis for Goals 2000 (which we never met by the way) it was understood that if we wanted students to meet high standards, we had to ensure they had the supports to get there. They had to have a fair chance to learn what they would be tested on later. Now, New York students have to pass a science laboratory exam, but 31 high schools have no science labs. There are students tested on evaluating literature who never had a chance to read an entire novel. It we are serious about students meeting high standards - and we think they should - then we have to give them the opportunities to be exposed to the content and to practice the skills we want them to learn.
At every level, our policies give more money to the haves and the less to the have-nots. We cannot afford to simply educate the top third of our students to high levels anymore. If we are serious about developing every child's potential, we have to invest in each child equitably - based on that child's needs and strengths, not the zip code or state where she or he is born.
Whether it is buildings, books or project-based learning, our neediest kids constantly get the short end of the stick. Now, we (National NAACP) are considering asking the U.S. Department of Education to ask states and school districts to compete for federal assistance for disadvantaged kids. Do you think most school districts with heavy concentrations of disadvantaged kids have the capacity to compete for those funds that were set aside originally to help them? Why should states in a democracy have to compete for tax dollars to help their neediest kids? Nonetheless, as schools continue to fail across this country, something has to be done, especially in Tangipahoa Parish.
But it's not just more money that makes a difference. It is how that money is spent. Maryland, which has been ranked #1 among states for two years in a row, made an historic investment in equitable funding in 2002. After six years, they had reduced the number of students scoring less than proficient on reading and math tests by half. Evaluators identified a few high-impact reforms that, used together, moved the needle significantly on student achievement: 1) Teachers using student-level data to plan instruction together and discussing instructional practices in grade/subject area teams, and 2) having Reading and Math teacher specialists in schools to provide targeted professional learning that was part of teachers' daily work. So we think we are on the right track by encouraging schools and school districts to invest in supporting one of the most important conduits to student achievement - a child's teacher.
College Readiness
To get students ready for success after school, they need advisement systems and assessments that keep them on track to graduation and competitive with international standards. They need early warning systems that prevent drop-out and trigger the provision of supplemental services. We want policies that reconnect over-age and under-age credited youth to school; and initiatives to offer all students (especially those in high school) opportunities for engagement with challenging and revelant curriculum.
We are encouraging all to demand redesign of middle and high schools so that college planning begins in the eighth grade and that cohorts of students stay with the same teachers across several grades. They may work alongside school districts to target students with excessive absences or low middle school grades for mentorship and apprenticeship programs. The NAACP commits to facilitate the creation of an early college high school agreement between a "dropout factory" and local community college assistance in all school districts.
Discipline
The more we invest in making school engaging and challenging, the less we will have to invest in solving student discipline problems. The number one cause of students acting out, dropping out of getting pushed out of school is disengagement. Students are turned off by a curriculum that is narrow, repetitive, does not challenge their intellect, recognize their strengths or speak to the way they learn. The more we can do to change that, the less we will need to focus on student misbehavior.
But when a student conduct does become a problem, we have to make sure exclusion from learning and referral to the juvenile justice system is the last resort - not the first response. We need to eliminate narrow-minded zero tolerance plans and reform heavy handed discipline policies so the focus is on removing the behavior not the student. And we need to make certain that students who are suspended, expelled or placed in alternative schools have access to the same strong curriculum as if they were in the classroom.
We have to disrupt the pipeline that funnels students from schools to prisons. We need to ensure that the punishments fit the offense and parents receive due process in schools. So students should not be arrested or referred to juvenile justice systems for offenses that only violate school rules. We have to stop relying on law enforcement to solve problems that used to be handled in the principal's office.
Miscellaneous
NY Lawsuit: Our National NAACP joined because we were concerned about how these kids' needs would be met. Show the community there a plan, and you allay lots of their fears. Though the track record of moving some of the same kids that came from other weak schools in New York closed on to new schools seems dubious at best. Used was the plan to absorb every special needs student and English language learner into another traditional or charter school equipped to meet their needs. Perhaps some schools need to be closed, but communities need assurances that what will replace them will be better.
Charters: Students who switch to charters have a 17% chance of doing better that they would have if they stayed in high-needs public schools. Can those odds of success improve? We believe it can in whatever school - for kids of color and disadvantaged kids too. This means that all schools should siphon from the needs of the total child, regardless of which school they are enrolled in, and they should meet the high standards of curriculum, teaching and serving the total range of the student needs.
Fixing schools generally: Diane Ravitch - one of the chief proponents for charters, testing and accountability - now realizes that the data do not show achievement gains from programs that do not work, that without good charters, or good schools period, money drained from one source to another can only test and punish a regime that causes people to work harder to game the system. Since test and punishment failed, why won't we try a diagnose and treatment method.
Afterall, what can it hurt if we simply work together?