Forgotten Milwaukee
By Frizell Bailey
In the December 2005 issue of Vital Source, the “Forgotten Milwaukee” series began to examine school choice. School choice has been controversial politically, with white Democrats largely opposing the policy and Republicans among the staunchest supporters. This does not hold true among black Democrats. Black parents overwhelmingly support school vouchers. According to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 60 percent of African Americans support school vouchers and only 35 percent oppose them. This is almost the same margin of support as Republicans hold for the voucher program.
But that “choice” is somewhat limited. The Wisconsin program only allows 15 percent of public school students in MPS to choose a charter or voucher school. There’s also the problem of transportation. More than half of choice schools offer either limited or no transport for students, and the program itself doesn’t provide any transportation guidelines or requirements.
I found this out firsthand as a middle and high school teacher in the Mississippi Delta. Like many new, young teachers I thought I’d march in like Sidney Poitier in To Sir, With Love. Instead, I found the job to be far more difficult than I had imagined.
Here’s the problem. What I didn’t understand at the time was that when poverty is extreme, people loose hope. It’s difficult to see the value of education when the only people around you that have educations are teachers or people who don’t look like you.
I spoke with two local educators to explore this idea within Milwaukee Public Schools. Dr. Aquine Jackson is the chief academic officer for the district. Kathy Williams leads the Division of Teaching and Learning for MPS. Both agree that income plays a role in the success or failure of students.
The key issue, according to both, is one of preparedness. Students whose parents don’t have the time and resources to provide educational experiences to complement what happens in the classroom are at a disadvantage. This doesn’t change the reality that schools have a responsibility to educate such students, but it does make it more difficult to close the achievement gap.
It is widely believed that a socially, economically and ethnically diverse student body benefits students, especially poor students. Just as is true for concentrations of poverty in housing, having a student body that is comprised primarily of students from disadvantaged backgrounds adversely affects their academic success.
“There has been research that supports the idea that when there is economic diversity in schools, students make more rapid gains than when they are all in the lower income bracket,” William says. “There is not as great a concentration of needs and students learn from each other.”
Williams believes that the problem is one of overtaxing the system.
“When you have a high concentration of students in poverty in one school, the constant need for tapping into certain types of resources can exhaust the will and the resources of a staff.”
Another often-overlooked reality of educating students is that it’s not just the job of schools. Yes, we need more accountability on the part of teachers, but we also need more accountability on the part of business people, the clergy, elected officials and regular folks like you and me.
“I think Horace Mann said it very eloquently,” Jackson says. “Free public education is man’s greatest invention. It enables students of all income levels to strive for the American Dream. But the school is only one component. It’s up to the community to address problems of poverty.”
No child left behindIt’s been almost four years since President Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act into law. With similar rhetoric as the proponents of school choice here in Wisconsin, the Bush Administration sold the policy as the answer to under-performing schools, incompetent teachers and the achievement gap. According to a report recently released by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often referred to as The Nation’s Report Card, NCLB has had little effect.
The report finds that reading scores have seen only modest gains in the eleven largest school districts in the nation. Average scores for 4th graders at those eleven districts were still far below the national average, with the exception of Charlotte, North Carolina.
There is a fundamental problem with NCLB. You can’t boost student achievement simply by testing them more. Tests are an evaluative tool, not an instructional tool. The law also overlooks the fact that most school districts regularly tested students before NCLB.
Each one, teach oneSo what can be done? First, we need smaller class sizes. It’s not necessarily a question of lower teacher workloads. The benefits of smaller class sizes are well-documented, most notably in the STAR (Student Teacher Achievement Ratio) project, Tennessee’s long-term longitudinal class-size study. A teacher is much more likely to reach a majority of students in a class when it’s not brimming over with 30 or more students. The NEA (National Education Association) supports class sizes of 15, with even lower numbers in classes for students with special needs.
Second, we need class desegregation of our schools. Admittedly, this will be difficult. Desegregation must be addressed through providing living wages and affordable housing, not busing. After all, if concentrated poverty is bad for neighborhoods, it’s also bad for schools.
Third, we need to all be teachers. The job of educating our children is not the exclusive domain of teachers and principals. We need business and community leaders involved offering internships and mentoring, and to actively support parent employees in their work as advocates of their children’s education. Without addressing these basic issues, no amount of legislation will affect the change needed to avert Milwaukee’s, and the nation’s, educational crisis. VS
