by
dominique DiPrima
Now that we have re-elected our President for another four years, it is truly time to be the change we desire. This is a fortuitous moment in history to focus on creating some consensus around a few key issues. It’s the perfect time to come together around a specific agenda. I don’t claim to have the answers. But I am outlining my ideas in four key areas as a way of fueling the dialogue that in turn moves us to action.
THE BLACK AGENDA #2: EDUCATION
Much has been made of the achievement gap – the fact the African American students perform at lower levels academically than young people in other communities. I will save the discussion about why for my radio show, or perhaps another column on another day. My real interest is in how to overcome it. And clearly this should be part of our Black agenda.
• Require Credentialed Teachers in Low Performing Schools – Study after study shows that teachers in predominately African American Schools are less likely to have full teaching credentials or teach in their area of specialization. Seems like a good place to start.
• Throw Money at the Problem! – It’s popular to say that “throwing money at the problem doesn’t fix it.” Oh yeah? Well let’s prove it. Every big city I go to I find the schools in wealthy neighborhoods are doing just fine! Can we mandate the same per capita spending per child in all public schools? The same standards for facilities and upkeep? The same classroom sizes? Can we enforce uniform standards of books and supplies?
• Throw Food at the Problem! – Some districts are starting to take steps toward providing not just supplemental lunches but also breakfasts for needy children. This is a giant step toward educational equality. No one can learn when they are hungry. Too many of our children are struggling academically and/or behaviorally for lack of a proper breakfast. Low income breakfast programs should be available in every public school. (This also creates jobs in the food service industry!)
• Keep Schools Open After School – Extended hours for public school facilities where children can do homework, play safely or participate in supervised activities would go a long way toward closing the achievement gap. Such programs (like L.A.’s Best here in Los Angeles) help kids get homework done, keep them from watching hours of television and protect them from being victims or participants in crime. (This also creates jobs supervising such programs!)
• Expand Gifted Programs for Low Income Youth – Create programs to identify and properly educate gifted children in low income and communities of color. The polar opposite of Special Education is underfunded or non-existent in poor communities. Many of these children end up in Special Education labeled as behavioral problems, or on the streets using their unique talents for crime.
• Create a Parallel Testing System for Special Education – In order to prevent Charter schools from pushing off challenging students on the lowest performing mainstream public schools, these children’s test scores should not impact a school’s API score. Incentives and/or a parallel testing system should be put in place to stop the further marginalizing of these students and to make sure charters are not creating a false sense of educational improvement by simply skimming the “cream of the crop” from local public schools, and abandoning the students who are most in need in order to spruce up their track records.
• Upgrade School Facilities – Working bathrooms, decent libraries and safe grounds should be standard at all public schools regardless of neighborhood. Here is one of those huge infrastructure projects to put American back to work!
• Negotiate Compromise with Teachers Unions Nationally – Stricter teacher evaluations, and making it easier to fire incompetent or shady teachers are already on the table in some districts across the country, but it need to happen everywhere. We also have to look at tweaking seniority rules to avoid constant turnover at low income schools due to budget cuts (last hired first fired hits our schools hardest,) and the dumping of lousy teachers in low income communities.
• Pay Teachers More, Cut the Administrative Fat – Can we mandate percentages of school budgets to go to the classroom (much like the new formulas for insurance companies that have forced them to refund some customers?) When we cut school budgets, instead of shortening school years and increasing class sizes can we mandate cut backs on consultants and administrators?
• Safe Passage Programs – We either need federal/state funding to organize parent/community safe passage to and from school or we need to work with gang intervention specialists to make sure that gang borders and territories do not prevent children from attending or getting safely to and from school.
• Break Gigantic School Districts into Smaller More Manageable Areas – The red tape and bureaucratic layers are just too daunting for the average parent or concerned citizen to take on. Smaller, community school districts seem to function better.
• Create Incentives and Greater Accessibility for Parent Involvement – Initiate programs to facilitate low income and working parents participation in school meetings and activities. From providing childcare for younger siblings to scheduling PTA meetings and teacher conferences during evening and weekend hours, serious effort must be made towards increasing parent involvement, and toward educating parents on how to effectively advocate for their children within the school system.
• Public Summer Camps Programs – Many studies now show a huge contributor to the education gap is in what young people do with their Summers. Most low income families and families of color do not have it in their budget to send their children to the enriching Summer camps enjoyed by middle class and wealthy children. We could help level the playing field by creating such programs that are either free or affordable to low income families. (More job creation here folks! And more crime reduction!)
I know I am missing some key stuff here, but these are the things that come to mind as I think of the things every child should have access to, and every parent wishes for their child. Please add your thoughts. This is part of an ongoing dialogue. I’ll do a couple more blogs on my ideas for our Black agenda. After that, we’ll create forums on the radio and in the community to explore further and see if we can agree on a few concrete things to organize around. We’re fired up and ready to go…So let’s turn that fire into real substantive progress! Let’s be the wind in the sails of our lawmakers and our President! We can…We will…We must!
November 27, 2012 at 8:52 pm
My first question is this: to the other 43 presidents, did we issue them a “Black Agenda”? I recall Marcus Garvey; Martin Luther King and Malcolm X all had a Black Agenda; I don’t want nothing to happen to our First “Black President”? John Kennedy, and Robert Kennedy, also had a “Black Agenda” Lincoln also had a “Black Agenda” by making it law that we (Blacks have the right to vote) are you following me, they were all killed.
I do not believe that Rodney King drowned in his pool either. Consider what i am saying to you.
November 28, 2012 at 7:08 am
Substantial adjustments in California’s education policy will be necessary to mitigate the problem outlined in Dominique’s blog. The solutions are likely to be as complex as the problems and clearly Dominique understands the complexities associated with the deficiencies we face. The comments that follow are submitted from the bias/perspective of a parent of a child who is enrolled in public school, a graduate of a public high school, and a former teacher who taught in public school for more than twelve years before resigning. There are several points that each of us should consider as we discuss or consider the possible solutions to the problems before us:
(1) Require Credentialed Teachers for Low-performing Schools: NCLB (No Child Left Behind) legislation attempted to address this by requiring that schools hire fully credentialed teachers and phase out all educators who were working in classrooms on emergency permits. Licensure or certification is only part of the solution. Certainly, students do better when taught by a credentialed teacher; however, and most teachers know: the correlation between the achievement gap and teaching credentials is a weak one. There remains an appalling number of schools in our state that are staffed by teachers all of whom are credentialed, yet fail to reach or maintain their AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) goals school-year after school-year. Our efforts to attract and retain gifted educators have been abysmal. The “Emergency Permit” was not created because job seekers had an emergency; it was created because schools had an emergency. The legions of educated professions who enter k -12 education and leave is usually left out of the discussion. There are too many former teachers that quietly leave the profession. The dialog is incomplete without their voices. They are the ones who can speak with candor without fear of administrative reprisal.
(2) Stricter Teacher Evaluations: Most teachers who are committed to helping their students to get the most out the school experience would not protest a reconstruction of the evaluation system. They want to provide the best education possible and they realize that we grow through critique. Many teachers are concerned about how a school administrator would inappropriately use the evaluative process to harass them with inaccurate characterizations of them as a professional. Whatever problems that exist with public school teachers are also prevailing problems with public school administrators. It is imprudent to discuss teacher evaluation without discussing the evaluation process for administrative staff as well. Marva Collins and Jaime Escalante are two individuals who are thought of as luminaries of the teaching profession. They are also fine examples of teachers who routinely received unfavorable teacher evaluations and whose gifts for teaching went unrecognized and undocumented by the administrators who had the responsibility to do so.
(3) Pay Teachers More: Teachers will be paid higher wages when the values and priorities of our society changes. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is projecting a significant shortfall in the number of college graduates for the number of jobs in the United States in the coming years and colleges and universities are increasingly concerned with the number of applicants who lack the ability to write at the collegiate level. These developments reflect on the lower institutions, namely the public schools that are responsible for feeding these higher institutions. These developments will in the long-term bring a new focus on these feeder schools and methods to improve k-12 education including increasing teacher pay. In the short-term, we could create and institute a program by which teachers could sign up for a merit pay option, receiving a bonus at the end of the school year when their students perform or improve significantly on standardized tests.
(4) Throw Money at the Problem: Proposition Thirteen remains public education’s largest and most controversial policy issue. When Proposition 13 passed in 1978 it was originally sold to voters as a protection for homeowners, helping ensure lower taxes for average Californians. With Proposition 13 in place, California schools are forced to rely on Sacramento for most of their funding. Prior to Proposition 13, in Serrano vs. Priest, the California Supreme Court ruled that reliance on property taxes violated the California Constitution in 1976. It broke the connection between local school spending and property taxes. Serrano required changes in existing school financing in order to insure the equal financial ability to educate children in all school districts and equal education opportunity for all children in California. To comply with the Serrano vs. Priest ruling, the California legislature passed Assembly Bill 65 in September 1977. AB 65 contained provisions for extending equity and equality of opportunity of all California children by giving both dollar aid and taxpayer relief to tax-poor school districts while limiting spending in tax wealthy school districts.
(5) Incentivizing Parent Involvement: There is regular discussion on the web and beyond about the dearth of parental involvement in public schools, and this is accurate to a large degree. But this is an issue where schools have botched their opportunity to lead. The staff at schools located in neighborhoods with lower property values usually makes only feeble attempts at developing the collaborative empowerment networks that are necessary for the overall success of the student population. Experience has taught me that although parents and local business owners are less involved than they could be, they are ready and willing. They don’t often receive the leadership and vision that they expect and are entitled to from school personnel. I spent all of my teaching years working with underserved children who came to me from underserved households. These overworked and underpaid parents were always willing to donate their time and money to support my efforts as a teacher. Those people and their children were special to me, but I cannot accept any claims that they were any different from parents all over California. In spite of what any of us may read: parents will always step up to support a good teacher, but teachers are obligated to open the proverbial door and invite parents in and talk openly and honestly with them.
December 2, 2012 at 7:22 pm
I understand they above comments, however nothing I read in the above comments were directly aimed at Black children.
Post desegregation did we have highly paid teachers?
Did we have the most upto date books?
How about small classroom sizes?
The answer to all those questions are no! To solve the Black educational problem requires a Black assessment, not a White Liberal agenda painted Black.