If you put racism and classism together and have it pour from the mouths of those who vilify the low-income members of their own race because they have yet to adopt the customs of the middle-class, you have an extraordinarily toxic cocktail that has the potential to gut the bedrock of progressive polices of the 20th century, from Brown v. Board to the Civil Rights Act to affirmative action. I call this toxic cocktail "The New Black Racial Classism."
The New Black Racial Classism appeared on my radar screen when Bill Cosby ripped into low-income blacks in May 2004 at an NAACP gala event to mark the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board. As a way to celebrate, Cosby decided to excoriate poor blacks.
The speech has been called "The Pound Cake Speech" because Cosby referred to an incident in which a young black man was shot and killed by the police after he stole a pound cake: "Looking at the incarcerated, these are not political criminals. These are people going around stealing Coca Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake! And then we all run out and we're outraged, 'Ah, the cops shouldn'ta shot him.' What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand?" (quoted in Dyson, Is Bill Cosby Right?: Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?, p. 59)
Here are some other excerpts: (source - http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2006-05-16-cosby-excerpts_x.htm)
"The lower economic and lower middle economic people are not holding their end in this deal. In the neighborhood that most of us grew up in, parenting is not going on. ... I'm talking about people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit. Where were you when he was 2? Where were you when he was 12? And where were you when he was 18, and how come you don't know he had a pistol? . . . Brown v. Board of Education is no longer the white person's problem. We've got to take the neighborhood back. We've got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It's right around the corner. It can't speak English. It doesn't want to speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk. "Why you ain't where you is go, ra." ... Everybody knows how important it is to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't land a plane with 'Why you ain't ...' You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth."
A similar kind of savage vitriol drips from the lips of John McWhorter, a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Like Cosby, McWhorter also is black. Like Cosby, McWhorter also has a thing about poor people, especially poor black people. Like Cosby, McWhorter also relays a story about a young black man who was murdered. Like Cosby, McWhorter also uses the story rhetorically to suggest that these murders could be understood -- and justified -- given the contexts in which they occurred. These stories are also used by both men as allegories of what has gone wrong with, as Cosby calls them, "these people."
For Cosby, the fact that a young black man was shot for stealing a pound cake is trumped by the thunder of his rhetorical question, "What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand?" While I certainly would not want to defend someone for stealing anything, I would wonder why a young black man would steal a pound cake. I would ask genuinely, not rhetorically, "What was he doing with the pound cake in his hand? Why did he steal it? Why would anyone steal a pound cake? What were the factors that contributed to this action?" I would also wonder why stealing a pound cake warrants being shot and killed. I might also wonder how many young white men had been shot and killed for similar offenses.
For McWhorter, a young black man getting shot serves as a kind of template for poor blacks as a whole. In describing an episode of inner-city violence involving a young black man named Robert Parsons, McWhorter -- like Cosby -- poses his own rhetorical question. In musing on Parson's life and death, McWhorter smirks glibly, "One might expect that someone with four offspring would work nine to five (at least?), but Parsons worked only part-time. He was a 'free spirit,' apparently, and then he also had injured one of his hands. But really, there are so very many ways one can work full-time without having full power in one hand, and there remains the simple question as to why a man with four kids worked only part-time." (Winning the Race, p. 9)
The "simple question as to why a man with four kids worked only part-time" might be answered in a number of different ways. "What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand?" might also be answered in a number of different ways. Unfortunately, neither Cosby nor McWhorter chooses to address these questions at all. If they were to ask these questions seriously and not rhetorically, it would require that they do something that neither one of them is willing to do: put aside their bitter disdain for low-income blacks and consider the issues in depth. But rather than do this, both Cosby and McWhorter choose to use these examples as measures of poor blacks' fall into depravity. They are not interested in analysis. They are interested in morality tales. And the moral of their stories? Poor blacks should quit their whining and assume responsibility for their lives.
A simpler, more powerful moral could not be found. How could anyone argue the merits of such a lesson? Indeed, for blacks like Cosby and McWhorter, it must be especially painful to look at all "these people." As Cosby railed, "People with their hats on backwards, pants down around the crack, isn't that a sign of something, or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up? Isn't it a sign of something when she has her dress all the way up to the crack and got all type of needles going through her body? What part of Africa did this come from? Those people are not Africans; they don't know a damn thing about Africa. With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua, and Mohammed and all of that crap, and all of them are in jail."
But as any simpleton can point out, it's easy for those that have made it to condemn those that haven't. Ironically -- and cruelly -- Cosby knows better. He himself came from poverty. He himself acknowledged the pernicious effects of racism in his own doctoral dissertation. According to Michael Eric Dyson in his book Is Bill Cosby Right?: Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?, "Cosby spoke passionately in his dissertation about the reasons black students fail: because of the urban school's indifference to changing learning conditions; because they have had the right to fail removed; because they are bored, due to the unimaginative methods of teachers interested in controlling the student; and because little of what goes on in class makes sense. Cosby argued that the failure black children experienced would only reinforce 'the debilitating sense of worthlessness whites convey in a variety of ways,' feeding the self-hatred of the black student. (from Bill Cosby's dissertation An Integration of the Visual Media Via Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids into the Elementary School Curriculum as a Teaching Aid and Vehicle to Achieve Increased Learning, University of Massachusetts, September 1976, p. 8; quoted in Dyson, Is Bill Cosby Right?: Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?, p. 70)
Cosby himself made a career -- and a very famous cartoon show called Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids -- about the life and language of inner-city kids. And he himself failed 10th grade not once but three times and eventually dropped out of school. Yet somewhere along the way, Cosby got sick and tired of what he saw. Perhaps he lost faith. Perhaps he has become old and crotchety. Yet his attack on low-income blacks is especially powerful because it comes from him -- Cos, the Jello Pudding Man, the Fat Albert guy, the funny, likeable guy, Dr. Huxtable -- one of the most well-known and well-respected black men in America.
McWhorter is a different story, a classic case of Bourdieu's notion of cultural capital, of power and privilege being bestowed upon those in a particular socioeconomic milieu or what Bourdieu calls "habitus." And, as McWhorter's life story makes clear, power and privilege can be bestowed on anyone, regardless of his or her race.
--excerpt from http://www.racematters.org/mcwhorter.htm --
McWhorter says his "very first" childhood memory is of being surrounded by a group of black neighbors, none older than 8, who demanded that he spell the word "concrete." Although he was only 3 or 4 at the time, he spelled it correctly, only to be rewarded by being smacked upside his head by a little girl while the others laughed and egged her on.
As McWhorter sees it, in one way or another this happens to many black students. Worse, this did not take place in some poverty-stricken inner-city community, but in leafy Mount Airy, Pa., a middle-class Philadelphia community renowned as one of the first purposely integrated neighborhoods in the country.
McWhorter lived in Mount Airy for the better part of his childhood, before moving to Lawnside, N.J., a predominantly black town outside of Philadelphia. He and his younger sister attended private schools and his parents both worked at Temple University, his mother as a social work instructor and his father overseeing student activities.
Unlike many of his peers, McWhorter had no interest in sports as a child, preferring to stay in the house reading, playing the piano or listening to his Spanish language records. His tendency to be a loner is the thing that he believes allowed him to avoid the cultural abyss that he argues consumes so many black students.
"My parents were rather socially insular people who conveyed, without ever being explicit about it, that 'we' were not like 'them,' " McWhorter says. "It wasn't that I didn't spend time with other black kids. But I was inculcated subtly with a sense that 'You do not do what they do.' "
Not only that, he was also a bit of a nerd. He still cringes as he recounts the time his mother virtually pushed him into a neighborhood football game, where he quickly became a source of ridicule when he did not know which way to run with the ball. He also remembers hiding his strong interest in school from his neighborhood peers for fear that it would only prompt further derision.
"We wanted to excel, to make something out of ourselves," says Bernard Tucker, a longtime friend who lived two blocks from McWhorter in Lawnside, and now lives in California where he is a service consultant for Office Depot. "In our neighborhood, the typical thing was to go to school, make mediocre grades, have kids, work in the general vicinity and not move out of the area. John and I were among the few who wanted something different."
McWhorter says it was a relief when at 15 he was accepted to Simon's Rock College, which is designed for high school students who want to begin college early. Not only did it free him from the neighborhood strictures, but it also allowed him, he says, to escape a household where his parents did not always get along.
After earning an associate's degree at Simon's Rock, he went to Rutgers University, where he earned a bachelor's. He went on to New York University for a master's, then to Stanford University, where he earned a doctorate in linguistics. He did postgraduate work at the University of California-Berkeley before he began teaching at the school.
But even in the cloistered world of academia, McWhorter says he could not escape the troubling attitudes that he says are prevalent among both black students and some of his black colleagues. Not only did he find black students not working hard, but he believes they tended to overstate the presence of racism to confound whites and fit in with one another.
--end excerpt--
So, once again, Cosby's and McWhorter's moral is, "Poor blacks should quit their whining and assume responsibility for their lives." Coming from Cosby, this spiritual tonic might have some legitimacy. But coming from McWhorter -- someone whose parents were both middle class and who both worked at universities, who went to private school, who shunned sports for books, who shunned other black kids ("You do not do what they do") -- there is no legitimacy whatsoever in his trashing poor people. His "analysis" reminds me of something that Professor Henry Higgins might have written. But instead of singing, "Why Can't the English Teach Their Children How to Speak?", McWhorter would sing, "Why Can't the Negro Teach Their Children How to Speak English?"
But even if we grant this message some currency -- that everyone must assume a greater degree of responsibility for their lives and spend less time blaming others for their shortcomings -- we can never, never, never simply leave it at that. But this is precisely what McWhorter's colleagues at the Manhattan Institute want to do. The New Black Racial Classism gets eaten up by the Manhattan Institute and others like it. If all we have to do is convince poor blacks to quit their whining and assume responsibility for their lives, think of the billions that would be saved!!
It's understandable why conservatives eat McWhorter's stuff up. But it's also eaten up by "progressive" organizations like Teach for America, schools for inner-city kids like the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), by Democratic politicians like NCLB co-sponsor and architect George Miller, by editorial staffs like The New York Times, and by educational activists like Susan Uchitelle (who helped fight segregation in St. Louis but who now serves on the board of an Edison-run charter school in inner-city St. Louis).
Miller, a staunch liberal and the ranking Democratic member of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, wrote an op-ed with Education Trust’s Russlyn Ali that read:
--begin Miller and Ali op-ed--
Perhaps the most insidious myth being perpetuated is that California's demographics make it impossible to expect much of its kids. This sentiment is more than just collective apathy. It is bigotry. Schools all over the country, in every type of community, have shown that all students--minority and non-minority, rich and poor--can succeed if they are held to high standards and given the requisite resources. It is time to put this myth to rest for good.” (Miller, G. and Ali, R., "The fate of our schools." San Francisco Chronicle, 3/18/03, p. A25)
--end Miller and Ali op-ed--
As evidence of the voracious appetite that white conservatives have for McWhorter's gilded truffles, consider the comments made by Stephan Thernstrom, a white Senior Fellow at Manhattan Institute and the Winthrop Professor of History at Harvard. Thernstrom, along with his wife Abigail, is the author of No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning. "The Thernstroms urge a daunting overhaul where every urban public school becomes a charter school; longer school days, weeks and years are common; and school vouchers are more broadly available to low-income, urban families." (source - The Seattle Times, 10/8/03; "Stop making excuses: Close the learning gap" by Matt Rosenberg) Here is what Stephan Thernstrom had to say when introducing McWhorter (source - http://www.manhattan-institute.org/rm/mcwhorter_01-12-06.ram):
--begin Thernstrom intro--
(McWhorter's work) helps to explain a very troubling paradox. That is to say, the status of African-Americans in American society has been revolutionarily changed over the past half century or so. My wife Abigail and I published a book several years ago, America in Black and White, which has several dozen tables which indicates that by almost every measurable way enormous, phenomenal progress has been made towards equality on the part of African-Americans since the Civil Rights revolution. And if I were to update those tables today, almost all the trend lines continue upward. And the two areas that were very troubling in the mid-90's, the last data we had available then, have also turned around in a remarkable way. That is, the crime rate has declined precipitously and the disproportionate involvement of African-Americans in committing crimes. And, second, the black family structure, which had been deteriorating sharply since the 1960's when Senator Moynihan first warned of that tendency. In the last several years, that has been turning around a little. The rate of out-of-wedlock births for African-Americans is down two to three points. The percentage of African-American children living in two-parent households is up four or five points. So it isn't a remarkable shift, but it's a very impressive and positive one. So, progress almost unimaginable to people half a century ago. But you wouldn't know it if you listened to what the leadership of that community is saying and doing. Both the civil rights groups, whose mission is supposed to be to improve the welfare of the group, and certainly the political leadership -- the members of the Congressional Black Caucus -- are talking about a totally different world than the one I see. They are talking in hysterical and paranoid terms, finding racism in the most unlikely places. And it almost seems that the greater the progress, the more shrill and despairing the voices of that segment of the black community become. . . Katrina did display that tendency in very vivid terms. . . The question is, "What's going on? How could this have happened?" Some part of it reflects the simple fact that the African-American leadership is almost entirely, monolithically, part of the Democratic party's left wing. And the Democratic party left wing, for reasons I can't fully understand, seems to have been driven totally bonkers by the Bush administration. It has such an acute case of the "Hate Bush Syndrome" that they can't think clearly any more. . . . Another part of it, of course, is the old cliche the "revolution of rising expectations." Groups that are totally down-trodden can appreciate even a few extra crumbs and may feel grateful. Groups that have made the kind of progress blacks have made by the end of the 1960's were now impatient with waiting any longer for full equality. I can't say much more than that by way of explaining it, but I do think that John McWhorter's really interesting book tells us a lot to explain where we are today and what needs to happen for, in fact, the crisis in black America to be resolved.
--end Thernstrom intro--
In our society today, this is as far as a white man can go without being called a racist. In our society today, a white man can't say, "Poor blacks should quit their whining and assume responsibility for their lives." But a black man can. In response to Cosby's speech, Kweisi Mfume, the NAACP president who was on stage with Cosby, said "The issue of personal responsibility is real. A lot of people didn't want him to say what he said because it was an open forum. But if the truth be told, he was on target." (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55656-2004May25.html)
So Thernstrom contends there has been phenomenal progress for blacks. He contends that critics of this notion "are talking in hysterical and paranoid terms, finding racism in the most unlikely places." But phenomenal progress for whom? It's clear that there has been phenomenal progress for blacks entering the middle and upper classes. But for blacks still trapped in poverty, all there is for them to do is pull themselves up by their own bootstraps or shut the hell up. No, there aren't actual signs any more that say "For Whites Only." But these signs still exist. They're just invisible today. Or, even worse, they are simply accepted as "the way things are."
Thernstrom mocks the reaction to Hurricane Katrina. It's estimated that 10,000 people died as a result of the hurricane. While we all mourned the devastation the storm brought, it's wise to remember the devastation that a shockingly large number of Americans are experiencing on a regular basis. The horrible truth is there's a Hurricane Katrina every day in America. The effects are not as noticeable and not as dramatic. But they are no less devastating.
According to the Children's Defense Fund:
Every 9 seconds a high school student drops out.
Every 20 seconds a child is arrested.
Every 23 seconds a baby is born to an unmarried mother.
Every 35 seconds a child is confirmed as abused or neglected.
Every 36 seconds a baby is born into poverty.
Every 37 seconds a baby is born to a mother who is not a high school graduate.
Every 42 seconds a baby is born without health insurance.
Every minute a baby is born to a teen mother.
Every 2 minutes a baby is born at low birthweight.
Every 4 minutes a baby is born to a mother who received late or no prenatal care.
Every 4 minutes a child is arrested for drug abuse.
Every 8 minutes a child is arrested for violent crimes.
Every 19 minutes a baby dies before his first birthday.
Every 41 minutes a child or teen dies in an accident.
Every 3 hours a child or teen is killed by a firearm.
Every 5 hours a child or teen commits suicide.
Every 6 hours a child is killed by abuse or neglect.
Every day a mother dies in childbirth.
-- 18,314 deaths occur annually due to uninsurance; that's about 50 every day (Source: Care Without Coverage, Institute of Medicine, 2002)
-- 45.6% of all bankruptcies involve a medical reason or large medical debt (Source: Norton's Bankruptcy Advisor, May, 2000)
-- 326,441 families identified illness/injury as the main reason for bankruptcy in 1999 (Source: Norton's Bankruptcy Advisor, May, 2000)
-- 47% of women surveyed delay prenatal care when they know they are pregnant because they had no money or insurance (Source: MMWR 5/12/2000; 49:393)
-- 50% of African-American and 47% of Hispanic children drop out of school (Source: Civil Rights Project, Harvard University)
-- U.S. children under age 15 are:
9 times more likely to die in a firearm accident
11 times more likely to commit suicide with a gun
12 times more likely to die from gunfire
16 times more likely to be murdered with a gun
than children in 25 other industrialized countries combined. (Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
-- The U.S. ranked lower on maternal mortality than 32 other countries (140 of 172) including Ghana, Lithuania, Croatia, and Syria. We lagged behind 33 other nations (160 of 193) on infant mortality rank. (Source: UNICEF's 2004 State of the World's Children)
And perhaps most shockingly of all, especially in light of Cosby's choice to vilify low-income blacks on the anniversary of Brown v. Board, public schools in America's largest cities have experienced re-segregation on an unprecedented level. As Jonathan Kozol recounts in The Shame of the Nation,
--begin Kozol excerpt-- (http://www.edst.educ.ubc.ca/courses/EADM565/Kozol.pdf)
In Chicago, by the academic year 2002-2003, 87 percent of public-school enrollment was black or Hispanic; less than 10 percent of children in the schools were white. In Washington, D.C., 94 percent of children were black or Hispanic; less than 5 percent were white. In St. Louis, 82 percent of the student population were black or Hispanic; in Philadelphia and Cleveland, 79 percent; in Los Angeles, 84 percent, in Detroit, 96 percent; in Baltimore, 89 percent. In New York City, nearly three quarters of the students were black or Hispanic.
Even these statistics, as stark as they are, cannot begin to convey how deeply isolated children in the poorest and most segregated sections of these cities have become. In the typically colossal high schools of the Bronx, for instance, more than 90 percent of students (in most cases, more than 95 percent) are black or Hispanic. At John F. Kennedy High School in 2003, 93 percent of the enrollment of more than 4,000 students were black and Hispanic; only 3.5 percent of students at the school were white. At Harry S. Truman High School, black and Hispanic students represented 96 percent of the enrollment of 2,700 students; 2 percent were white. At Adlai Stevenson High School, which enrolls 3,400 students, blacks and Hispanics made up 97 percent of the student population; a mere eight tenths of one percent were white.
A teacher at P.S. 65 in the South Bronx once pointed out to me one of the two white children I had ever seen there. His presence in her class was something of a wonderment to the teacher and to the other pupils. I asked how many white kids she had taught in the South Bronx in her career. "I've been at this school for eighteen years," she said. "This is the first white student I have ever taught."
--end Kozol excerpt--
So this is "phenomenal progress"? This is "talking in hysterical and paranoid terms, finding racism in the most unlikely places"? For conservatives like McWhorter and Thernstrom, the answer is "yes."
Beyond Cosby's and McWhorter's revulsion, beyond their savage attacks, and beyond their cruel assaults lies a deep shame. As Cosy incanted, addressing the middle-class blacks who were in the room at the NAACP gala but speaking to the lower-class blacks who were not, "Where were you when he was 2? Where were you when he was 12?" From this series of aggressive questions, only one conclusion can be drawn: these parents are wrong, bad, lazy, and are messing it up for the rest of the black community. As the character Master Sergeant Vernon Waters said in the 1984 film A Soldier's Story, "You know the damage one ignorant Negro can do? We were in France in the first war; we'd won decorations. But the white boys had told all them French gals that we had tails. Then they found this ignorant colored soldier, paid him to tie a tail to his ass and run around half-naked, making monkey sounds. Put him on the big round table in the Cafe Napoleon, put a reed in his hand, crown on his head, blanket on his shoulders, and made him eat *bananas* in front of all them Frenchies. Oh, how the white boys danced that night... passed out leaflets with that boy's picture on it. Called him Moonshine, King of the Monkeys. And when we slit his throat, you know that fool asked us what he had done wrong."
Cosby's and McWhorter's metaphorical throat-slitting begs the question, "Why should anyone hate people and be ashamed of them for being poor?" Perhaps Colonel Nivens' comments from A Soldier's Story shed some light: "Remember, you're the first colored officer most of these men ever seen. The Army expects you to set an example for the colored troops... and be a credit to your race."
Joseph Bottini, a retired teacher who spent 35 years in the classroom, posted recently to the Assessment Reform Network (ARN) list: “If a kid comes to school high, tired, hungry, abused, jaded, or otherwise not ready to focus, the best teacher in the world can't be successful with too many of them. It is not the kids, teachers, school or not even the tests; it's the life they are living. Tests do little more than tell us what we already know and steals time away from teaching/learning.”
So the question remains: is this an excuse? Does being poor serve as a "Get Out of Jail Free" card (pun intended)? Moreover, do we just turn our backs on poor people and say, "Well, what do you expect? They're poor, so they will never be able to achieve anything." And even more pointedly, do we simply turn a blind eye to inner-city violence, to addiction and crime and squalor and say, "There's nothing we can do"? And finally, is being "a credit to their race" the only acceptable option available to black people today?
Let's start with the last question first and turn it on its head by asking this question: how many whites strive to be "a credit to their race"? Of course, this is an absurd question. Whites don't have to prove anything to anyone. But people like McWhorter believe -- whether they admit it or not -- that blacks still have a lot of proving to do. The extent to which blacks work over and above the call of duty to prove they are worthy of something reveals an extraordinarily insidious form of internalized racism and oppression. It is this kind of racism, the kind that the oppressor cannot or will not see, that is the most dangerous.
As for the other questions -- Does being poor serve as an excuse? Do we just turn our backs on poor people and say they will never be able to achieve anything? Do we turn a blind eye to inner-city violence, to addiction and crime and squalor and say, "There's nothing we can do"? -- the answer is clear: no. Being poor is not an excuse. We will not turn our backs on poor people. We will not turn a blind eye to inner-city violence, addiction, crime, and squalor and claim there's nothing we can do.
At the heart of the great debate about poverty between conservatives and progressives is the very simple yet very powerful disagreement that people are either completely in charge of themselves or they are completely controlled by forces outside of their control. I think most people, when asked to reflect, would conclude that it's a little of both. In fact, I think most politicians would even argue that it's both. And yet, when it comes to formulating public policy, these sensible people line up and start shouting ideological one-liners at each other. Because we have a conservative political machine in place, we are getting one side of the argument more than we are getting the other (when and if we do get it at all). Hurricane Katrina raised the issue again and gave Democrats a chance to tell their story about poverty, but because their story was so ideological and so political, it quickly faded from view.
I believe that there is a way to talk about educational reform that does not devolve into ideology when it comes time to discuss the root problem of education, i.e., poverty. Policies need to be formulated that recognize that -- paradoxically -- individuals are both totally responsible for themselves and totally shaped by their environments. However, it's important to point out that policies cannot be formulated that make people be more responsible for themselves. But it's also important to point out that policies HAVE been formulated that punish people -- mostly poor people -- for NOT being responsible for themselves. This, for me, is a moral and ethical dilemma, but it's also a practical dilemma: does punishing people for being "irresponsible" work? Is it effective? Does it achieve what it sets out to achieve, i.e., does punishing "irresponsible" people make them become more responsible? For me, the answer is no, it doesn't.
So if it doesn't work, then why do we do it? And what, if anything, can work?
To begin with, we need to eradicate poverty by addressing the educational achievement gap. We can accomplish this by doing the following:
1. smaller class sizes at every level
2. comprehensive social services so no child has to go without food, shelter, medicine, and dental care
3. adequate prenatal care and postnatal follow-up so children reach school age healthy
4. free, high-quality, universal pre-K that is developmentally appropriate
5. parent education for young parents
6. comprehensive job training and placement for parents at a real living wage
7. universal healthcare coverage for all Americans, especially the poor and "working poor"
8. free, high-quality onsite child-care or free transportation to and from child-care facilities to make it possible for parents to work and raise children
9. high-quality training and ongoing professional development for elementary teachers in reading instruction (not drill-and-kill phonics)
10. high-quality training and ongoing professional development for all teachers in classroom-based formative assessment
All of these proposals speak to the most important environmental factors that shape success and failure in our country, not just in school but in life overall. Then comes what I call my leap of faith. Ready? I take it as a matter of faith that, if these environmental factors were addressed and that material suffering were ameliorated, people would be motivated to take responsibility for their lives. How do I know this? I don't. But it occurs to me that if people live in misery, they themselves will be miserable. It's hard to want to be responsible for what you are told is your own self-induced, self-created misery. But if people live with their basic needs met, there's a greater likelihood that people will not only be able to take responsibility for their lives, but they'll also want to.
NCLB focuses exclusively on school-based reform, completely ignoring the inextricable link between students and the reality in which they are immersed (their homes and neighborhoods).
NCLB, through initiatives such as Reading First, defines "school-based reform" as an obsessive focus on basic skills like phonemic awareness. Such "reform" comes at the expense of a comprehensive education that all students need to grow and thrive. The recent report from the Center on Education Policy (http://www.cep-dc.org/nclb/Year4/Press/CEPNewsRelease24March2006.pdf) confirms what many of us already knew anecdotally, that such "reform" comes at the expense of non-tested subjects such as history, music, and foreign languages. Most disturbingly, this narrowing of the curriculum occurs most often in schools with high percentages of poor minority students, the very subgroups that NCLB was ostensibly designed to serve.
In order to accomplish substantive school-based reform, we need to focus on the factors that most contribute to the reasons why schools struggle in the first place. Do schools struggle because children are not as phonemically aware as they need to be, or is something more substantive involved? One basic yet powerful reform is class size reduction: make classes smaller, especially in urban school districts, and watch what happens.
Of course, making classes smaller means creating a lot more classes. More classes means more buildings. And more buildings means more teachers. More classes, buildings, and teachers means a lot more money. Quite a lot more.
We can also commit as a nation to improving the quality of teacher preparation and dedicate the funds necessary to provide on-going, high-quality professional development to people charged with shaping the future of our country, i.e., teaching our children. This will cost a lot more money, too. Quite a lot more. Richard Rothstein, in his book Class and Schools, estimates it will cost somewhere around $156 billion.
But this is not a money issue. This is a political will issue. Love him or hate him, George W. Bush summoned the political will to invade Iraq and commit more than two billion dollars per week to its care and feeding . . . with no end in sight. On occasion, a voice such as Senator Russ Feingold’s is heard, raising objections to this enterprise. But by and large, we do not say, “This costs too much.” The reason? Because it is believed to be vital to our national security. And so we spend whatever it takes to get it done.
But for the cost of a year and a half in Iraq, we can create smaller classes, we can train and support teachers, and we can take substantive actions towards closing the educational achievement gap. And why would we do this? Because it is vital to our national security to do so.
So the Bush administration can talk all it wants to about its educational priorities, about how much it wants to leave no child behind, and the need to stay competitive in the global marketplace by improving math and science education. But as long as the federal government contributes a paltry 10% to the education of America's children, such talk is cheap.
