President Bush’s education reform proposals are laudable in bringing attention to education, and in the administration’s good intentions to “leave no child behind.” Yet the focus of proposals on school vouchers, reliance on standardized testing and the prominence given to charter schools all run the risk of doing just that.
Solutions based on bottom-line student achievement tend to further disadvantage the disadvantaged. Vouchers of the level proposed by the new administration will not enable the poorest students–those most in need of choice–to attend other schools. Charter schools, positive in their role as educational innovators, tend to attract the most accomplished and motivated students. Determining aid levels through standardized testing will, without safeguards, only encourage districts to shunt low-achieving students into marginal and underfunded “alternative” programs.
In the late 19th Century, following emancipation, as African-Americans variously found their way into the economy and civil life of the United States, there emerged a fortunate few African-Americans who, because of education, especially collegiate education, gradually moved toward the American middle class. In his controversy with Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois coined the phrase “Talented Tenth” to refer to this remarkable group of people. Where Washington would press for the education of all, DuBois stressed higher education for those most able to take advantage of it and to aspire to the American Dream. DuBois was said to support the classes; Washington, the masses. It was a class question in the midst of a rising, hungry group.
In many ways, the Washington-DuBois issue is still with us, though it is no longer isolated to an ethnic or racial group. The issue wraps itself around the question of economic class or caste, regardless of ethnic or racial background. Although a number of issues in poor high school performance are related to race and all that flows from that, by far a larger number transcend race and are found in the numbing poverty of mind, body and spirit of the students.
Harvard educator Howard Gardner has recently pointed out that the only reliable predictor of student performance and high school success is the student’s zip code. The single most prominent variable in student achievement remains location and family income.
To reach all students, we must continue to aggressively engage questions of race, class and poverty. We must continue to develop new models of education based on proven elements of success–smaller classes and smaller schools; making connections between subject content among the disciplines; providing opportunities for parental involvement in the schools; and the basic recognition that, although not all students learn the same way, all students can learn.
We must find ways to motivate students to learn, not just teach the motivated. And school funding in Illinois remains a pernicious source of inequality. Whatever we do must be scalable; our solutions must be adaptable and effective in Naperville and Lawndale, on the North Shore and in South Shore–unless we have in mind excellent education only for the few, only for the gifted, only for certain zip codes.
