Failure as Fuel for the Fire

What could have been:  A speech I submitted to the College of Education for consideration for the Graduate Student Keynote Speech...

Needless to say I wasn't accepted.  I've heard one should never let a good speech go to waste so here it goes...

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Thank you President Theobold, Dean Anderson, and distinguished Faculty of the College of Education. It is an honor to be the graduate keynote speaker for the College of Education.  Let me begin by acknowledging a few people, for whom if it were not for their assistance, guidance and support, I would never have made it this far.  The original, OG Doctor Rhoden, my mom.  As they say, the duplicate is never as good as the blueprint. I intend to do my best to honor and uphold the dignity and scholarship of the “family business.” I would also like to thank my Dissertation Committee, which covered three departments and two colleges and helped to guide my intellectual and emotional push towards successful completion.  Without their encouragement, both in person and long distance via e-mail, and Skype, I would not be standing here. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends, and of course, my wife and son, who perhaps one day might be standing here before such an audience.

I would like to focus my remarks around utilizing failure as fuel and motivation.  From middle school on, I wanted to be a lawyer. I read about law, interned at a law firm, and of course, watched every law movie and TV show out there. Fortunately, in my educational background, I never experienced what I colloquially called a “Malcolm X moment” in which, to paraphrase, his teacher told him that he should not aim so high.  My teachers, family and friends all encouraged me to achieve my intended goal.  Of course, standing here today with an educational doctorate, we know that that dream did not happen…yet??  Instead, my intellectual journey was eventually driven, albeit in a crisscrossing, bi-coastal long strange trip, towards urban education.

The greatest basketball player ever, Michael Jeffery Jordan is quoted as saying “I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something.  But I cannot accept not trying…Fear is an illusion.”  Everyone sitting in this audience today understands failure and fear.  Unfortunately in the current microwave society we live in, failure is magnified and fear is unspoken. Rather than being a blip on an overall trajectory of positive outcomes, our failures and foibles are retweeted, shared and posted on social media.

 

One of the key findings from my dissertation is that trust is essential to building resilience. This is vital in helping to counteract fear of failure. We feel immense pressure to be perfect, to not make a mistake, to hold back our true thoughts for fear of offending someone.  If anyone knows me, they know that I’m not afraid of offending anyone.  Not deliberately or maliciously, unless the person opposite me is a New York sports fan, but rather, I seek to engage in meaningful, respectful discussions about controversial issues.  I trust that the dialogue will help advance our knowledge, even if it is sometimes painful. We have to not be afraid to be wrong.  We cannot be afraid to be afraid.  And most importantly as educators, we cannot be afraid of both engaging in uncomfortable discourse and in saying, humbly, “I do not know.” 

As I was writing my dissertation in local coffee shops around both Philadelphia and Phoenix, and let me give a shout out to local coffee shops, I would sometimes be overcome by the magnitude of what I was writing.  Was I honoring the Black male students I interviewed, or just my own educational experiences?  Was I telling their truth or interpreting, or rather misinterpreting their truth through some distorted lens of educational privilege?  Were my conclusions really what I saw, or was my analysis somehow flawed?  All of these negative thoughts, and a few others that I cannot say in a family environment, weighed heavily on my shoulders trying to push me to open Facebook and procrastinate.  Two other important findings from my dissertation are that it is critical to seek out assistance from peers and mentors, and that understanding the connection between socio-emotional, racial and gender identity is extremely important to positive academic outcomes.

My fear of failure, and of not finishing, fueled me towards being, arguably, as focused as I have ever been concerning an intellectual goal.  Thankfully, whenever the inevitable self-doubt and fear crept into my psyche, I had a longstanding support network to lift me up. And that, is indispensable.  I know a lot of quantitative people who looked at my college GPA, or GRE scores and determined “unequivocally” that I would not succeed, nor should I even be in education. Without my network and, of course, the folk at Temple who saw beyond my abysmal numbers and instead saw my intellectual potential, even when I had self-doubt, who knows what I would have become. No doubt, not a lawyer, and not an academic.

So what does failure as fuel mean?  As we embark upon our next journey, for the undergrads, perhaps into grad school, and for us grad school graduates out into academia or the harsh realities of the world as it is, I am reminded of the words of Melissa Harris-Perry, the MSNBC talk show host, and Professor at Tulane University. In a commencement speech at Wellesley College in 2013, she said; “Never become so enamored of your own smarts that you stop signing up for life’s hard classes.  Remember to keep forming hypotheses and gathering data.  Keep your conclusions light and your curiosity ferocious…”

Nelson Mandela eloquently concluded after 27 years of physical imprisonment mostly on Robben Island, that; “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.  The brave (wo)man is not (s)he who does not feel afraid, but (s)he who conquers that fear.”

Let us all go forth, not in absence of fear, but with that fear as a blanket to be used as a fuel to guide us towards making positive social change.  Not for our own financial or professional benefit, but for the honor of using our education to assist in the service of others and in seeking to reduce the educational inequities that exist in this country and elsewhere.

Thank you.  

Guns Don’t Kill People, Bullets Do…

As I stated last week, Teach for America can be considered a piece of low hanging fruit in the discourse surrounding their role in public education.  This week, I’m aiming my sights on another piece of progressive rhetoric, poverty.

In their book of the same title, Howard, Dresser and Dunklee (2009) noted that “poverty is not a learning disability.”  It seems as if progressives, in particular progressive teachers working in low income, urban areas have increasingly wanted to condemn their students because of their parent’s socio-economic status.  This is the epitome of the type of deficit thinking that has permeated public education for the last few decades. Incidentally, I would attribute the increase in this type of thinking to several things. The main elephant in the room in American public discourse is that it is much easier to discuss issues in terms of economics versus race.  However there is an interconnectedness that cannot be uncoupled when it comes to public education, particularly in urban areas (which is another example of us being uncomfortable with race – “urban” more often than not equals “Black and Latino”).  Thus liberals and progressives find it easier to frame the discussion as one of economic neglect rather than racial inequality.  This is problematic.  It is even more so because of the increasing lack of diversity in terms of the teacher population.

Without going too Stephen A. Smith on folk, we have a race problem, not a poverty problem when it comes to public education.  (In best Stephen A. voice) There I said it.

As the teaching population ages, those teachers who mirrored the communities in which they taught are retiring.  As Time Magazine recently reported, one in six teachers are teachers of color.  For some of us who have been in public schools and in teacher training arenas, this is a duh moment.  While there is absolutely nothing wrong with white teachers teaching black children, and children of color, what is cause for concern is how they are teaching them and what kinds of expectations they hold for those children who look different from them.  While I do not have empirical evidence, I would strongly hypothesize that there is a correlation between white progressive thought centered on the “woe is them, those kids” mentality versus the retiring black teachers who came from the community and knew how to balance tough love with reality of their students’ surroundings. Let me be clear, this is not 100%.  There are a silent number of black teachers who also held (hold) a deficit thinking mentality towards their minority students, but the preponderance of them do not.  Equally valid are the small number of white teachers who hold minority students to high standards regardless of their parent’s economic or social status.

In another recent study, Nikole Hannah-Jones from ProPublica found that there is (in her words) a “resegregation” of America’s schools.  As someone who has studied the landmark Brown v Board of Education (1954) Supreme Court decision for years, and has taught the case in AP US Government class, I can attest that desegregation, in urban areas never occurred.  As late as the 1990s there were court cases in the north seeking to racially balance public schools (see: New York Times). What Brown did accomplish was that, in places where there were one or two public school options, especially high schools, they became “integrated.”  However, segregation still took place inside the school walls with white students and higher SES students being “tracked” into one type of academic coursework and those students of color and poorer SES students being tracked into another.  Thus economic and racial inequality in public schools has existed as a unspoken reality for far too many educators unwilling, or unwanting to articulate what was in plain sight, for decades. 

Remember the Titans 2000, Buena Vista Pictures

In an interview with Democracy Now, Hannah-Jones articulated that black and minority students tend to be in schools where they are receiving an “inferior education” based on their lack of rigorous curriculum, unequal access to Advanced Placement courses, and high number of inexperienced teachers.  Thus the notion of “separate but equal” is still par for the course.  What is interesting is that Hannah-Jones articulates this through the lens of comprehensive public schools and not charters.  So the question is can charters contribute positively to level the playing field and reduce the differentiation in educational opportunities for minority students versus their white counterparts?

What is…insidious in the underlying insinuation of this question and of the overall tone concerning the use of such terms as “resegregation” or worse “apartheid schools” (more on that in a minute) is that it perpetuates the problematic tome of “if it’s white it’s right, if it’s black, it’s whack.”

Hannah-Jones highlights important points concerning rural and small town areas in which there is great possibility to increase racial equity in public schooling.  However, in large urban areas there is another factor which contributes to racial inequity in public schooling, housing.  In many of my graduate classes, I received the side eye from not just professors but colleagues as well when I proposed that perhaps it is time to open up enrollment citywide for all urban public schools.  What this idea has the potential to do is to try to diversify schools in a more equitable manner.  What we cannot do is legislate where people can and cannot live.

Finally, the new buzz word around trying to discredit charter schools, is the argument focusing on them being “apartheid schools”- meaning they have over 90% minority enrollment.  I’m sorry, but if you examine ANY urban area, there is a strong stench of “apartheid” in every type of public school imaginable, perhaps save for magnet schools.  Why single out charters?  Here’s why…

People are pontificating about “silver bullets.”  There is no such thing as a silver bullet, not for the Lone Ranger, not for a sports team, not for a city, and definitely not for a public education fraught with as many moving parts, and as many localities as we have in this country.  PERIOD.  Stop trying to find one.

So in short: Poverty is not destiny, stop looking for silver bullets, stop looking at economic inequity without coupling it with racial inequality, and let’s move towards ways to increase positive academic and social outcomes for minority students -especially in all minority settings, rather than trying to single them out as being in “apartheid” conditions or worse. 

Failure IS an Option...

My last post of 2013 was an introduction to my educational journey. After a few more recent dust ups on social media, my credentialing still being challenged, and other personal attacks being aimed in my direction, let me aim back and set the record straight.  I completely understand that in this microwave era, many folk have already made up their minds about my positionality to respond to the inequities in public education, education policy, and my intellect all together. However, if you are someone willing to listen to truth and complexity, here we go...

As I left the Public Relations agency and entered the world of formal education, I came to the profession with trepidation.  My grades never reflected my “true abilities.” This was a term I saw all too often on report cards all through middle school, high school, and if there had been a place for them to have made the comment, in college too.  I have always been a cerebral person who tries to think from multiple angles.  What that means is that while I can write with precision, that precision becomes less impactful when given multiple choices via test or through short answer responses.  Further, the more personal my relationship was with my teachers and professors, the more they understood that I my poor outcomes on testing demonstrating “text anxiety” and not “laziness,” or lack of intellect.  

In retrospect, some 25 years later, seeing the pervasive and disparate numbers of black boys in special education, remediation, suspensions and the like, I wonder if I too would have fallen “victim” and become a negative statistic rather than a positive one?  If I had attended public school for more than a year in high school and two in grade school, would I have succeeded in all the arenas I have entered?  Would I have been exposed to the same opportunities?  Would I have the same friends who have been there for decades to pick me up and motive me towards success?  Of course I cannot definitively say, but one can wonder...

When I started teaching Service Learning (called Community Learning) at Lab, I was “going home.” 

Having been a student there for four years, I was, by no means a lifer as so many of my friends were, but I did feel a sense of home that had been absent from many of my professional endeavors.  My position gave me the best of both worlds at Lab.  I was able to explore the city with students who had been out of the country abroad, but had hardly scratched the surface of their own city.  Because of my status as an alum, which I never wore on my sleeve, but was quickly found out nonetheless, I was able to connect with the day to day milieu that so many students experience in independent school settings – test, homework, community service (both religious and “required” from school), extra-curricular activities, travel, college expectations and pressures, and of course being a high school teen. This meant that I "understood" them and expected their excuses and challenges before they even were uttered.

At the beginning, some of those sophomores who entered my “classroom” (i.e. the Van that carried about 25-40% of the students to and from their service site) thought I was nothing more than a glorified bus driver.  That sentiment quickly vanished when they realized that in most instances (hospitals being one area where I did not), I volunteered right alongside them, modeling how to work with the various populations of ‘other;’ Latino grade school kids in Pilsen, Senior citizens in Woodlawn and Uptown, and Black youth from the Cabrini Green Housing complex on the near north side, just to name a few of my favorite sites.  In each of these areas, for the duration of my tenure I not only modeled, but taught, mentored, comforted and educated bilaterally – meaning those we were serving had preconceived notions of our students, and of course our students had preconceived notions of where we were volunteering.  One of the best ways I acclimated many of the students not just to the volunteer site, was through immersing them into the community, oftentimes through food, but also various cultural events.  This, as I found out later, was the epitome of John Dewey’s philosophy of “learning by doing.” Thus whenever someone ask me about my number of years “in the classroom,” I always include my years at Lab because the community and van were my classroom and I affected intellectual change deeply in those students who entered this domain as much as any book or test about community would have, even more so. 

After a point, as I was approaching 30, I realized that as much as I loved (and still do) this position, it was time to take my knowledge from Capitol Hill and the communities of Chicago to my desired career goal, law school.

As the new century approached, I applied to many law schools on the west coast.  I was rejected from most, in part based on my poor LSAT score, and was wait listed at one, in northern California. Rather than wait to find out if a spot opened, I took a crazy chance and went up to the Bay Area to meet with the admissions folk and a few professors face to face.  After a few weeks of pounding the pavement in the Bay Area, nothing worked out.  Not only did I not get into law school, I couldn’t even find a job in the area.  In retrospect, perhaps then I should have looked at entering the classroom as a substitute teacher then, but it was not on my radar at that time.

Rather than come back to Chicago, I flew down to Los Angeles, a place where I had gone to college and still had a few contacts and friends.  I came to LA LA Land at exactly the wrong time.  There was a transit strike going on, and of course, here I was without a car.  Again, I persisted and tried to make things work for a few weeks, but eventually returned home to Chicago.  Broke, embarrassed, and a failure.

Part III coming soon…

The Gas Face

I have a tremendous amount of respect for those who put themselves on the front lines, even if I disagree with their tactics and conclusions.  I am quite aware of the multitude of confusing information and misinformation that passes as “news” in this hyperbolic, 24/7, social media era.  Consequentially, I can understand how some can be in a state of confusion...a little bit.

With that said, let me be clear, “opting out” is a copout.

Photo from Kelly Ann Photography

The picture of this young lady on the left has become “viral” and is being used as conclusive evidence surrounding the idiocy of "high stakes testing."  As I have said previously, ANYONE who knows me personally, knows that I abhor testing and most simple quantifiable measures of academic performance.  As an avid sports fan I can see the merits of numbers.  However, when it comes to the classroom and life outside the lines, there are so many variables which enter the equation that it is difficult to quantify performance exclusively by using such measures as A,B,C or “proficient,” “basic,” or the dreaded “below basic.” 

So Stuart, since you think it is wrong to opt out of this overindulgent, excessive amount of "high stakes testing," you are in favor of testing our babies incessantly and measuring the worth of their hard working teachers by their test scores?  If I had $5 for every time someone wanted to pin that on me, I’d be riding around in my new 2014 Range Rover.  So for the umpteenth time, let me clarify my position and my disdain with the incomplete conclusions drawn from my fellow bloggers at The Chalk Face and by those who call themselves so called Badass Teachers. 

     1) To describe the face of the young girl as “hearbreak” is well…disingenuous.  I know countless teachers who would look at that face of frustration and see not just the frustration but also persistence (yes a dirty word for some of y’all) and resilience (even worse, I know).  What these two words mean to me is that yes, things are hard, but with time, patience, practice and yes teaching (both from parents and educators) it will get better. 

I am 100% positive that James Baldwin, Miles Davis, Itzhak Perlman, John Lennon, Michael Jordan, Hank Aaron or any other person who has achieved excellence in their respective profession (intellectual or otherwise) has had, at some point, that same exact look, or worse, on their face as they drove to reaching the highest levels of proficiency in their professions. 

2) What message are we sending to children of this generation if we insist that if they, or others think something is “hard” then they can “opt out?”  It is already bad enough that there is a false sense of accomplishment with this generation concerning receiving awards for simply showing up and participating on the soccer field or other sporting endeavors. When these same kids enter the classroom, they expect that if they do the same thing (show up) their simple attendance equals positive academic achievement.  Sorry, it doesn’t work that way, no matter how many ways people try to spin it.  Hard work and success require significantly more than showing up.

      3) “The testing culture has created an environment where kids are told almost constantly, by way of test scores, that they are not good enough, regardless of how hard they try.” (The Chalk Face - Nelson 2/12/14)  Really?  I constantly see people on social media, in professional development trainings in my years in the classroom, and at academic educational conferences, constantly repeat the refrain that teaching is as much an “art as it is a science.” 

With that said, science is about the process of failing, learning from ones mistakes, making adjustments and retrying from the beginning, and ultimately succeeding.  So yes, you’re not good enough on your first try, or maybe your second, but if you simply “opt out” you’re never going to learn.  Does that take the joy out of learning?  I’m sorry, my perspective is that is EXACTLY where the joy is.  In finding different routes to conclusions, in examining the inquiry process, in learning with and from your classmates, in finally finding the answer and quickly raising your hand to be acknowledged.  THAT is the joy…So for all of you who think that because something is hard, we should not try, think about your own life experiences.  Did you give up?  Did you simply crawl into a hole because you could not do something?  Sure, sometimes that hole is comfortable and comforting, but as the saying goes “if you can make it through the night, there is a brighter day.”

So in my most humble opinion, don’t opt out, opt in…


We can all agree that we should reform the incessant high stakes test preparation that passes as pedagogy these days, but overall we need to keep going, keep fighting, and keep pushing towards teaching our children to find the joy in the simplest discoveries, and yes, in the process.  Another adage that I used to have on my classroom wall was from the inspirational speaker Marianne Williamson, “it is not up to you what you learn, but whether you learn through joy or pain.”  

Find the joy.  

Dear Arne:

Don’t do it!  Don’t fall prey to those with whom, on most issues, we both agree.  Don’t fall into the trap they are setting by using terms like “racial disparities”, “inequities” and “segregation.”  Don’t listen to many well-intentioned but politically naïve people who do not understand how Washington works.  

Friends of Whitney Young High School

Let me be clear.  I am a strong advocate for equitable, good schools.  However, I believe that for decades, many public schools in urban areas, have experienced neglect, disorganization, lack of infrastructure, safety concerns and the like. Unfortunately, the suit being brought forth by community activists from 15 cities (including my hometown and yours of Chicago, as well as Philadelphia, where I currently reside) is without merit, has the potential to be detrimental to educational reform for decades and is not in the best interest of those with whom the plaintiffs think they are defending – young children of color from urban neighborhoods in this country. (see: Education Department to Hear School Closing Complaints - NYT 1-29-13)

Here is the simple assertion, in many urban areas, poor performing schools are concentrated, for the most part, in poor performing neighborhoods.  They are asymptomatic of bigger structural inequalities which exist throughout, but are best exemplified through the neighborhood school – specifically the high school since there are fewer high schools than other types of public schools.  Whether this is the “fault” of public schools or public policy is open for debate and interpretation.  What is clear is that as long as we have had public schools in this country there has been inequality.  The Supreme Court decision of Brown v Board of Education in 1954 did not “end” inequality; it ended legalized segregation of the races.  Brown did not integrate neighborhoods based on race, class or social standing.  In fact, some would argue that Brown did the reverse; it created inner cities which increasingly became populated with more people of color as “white flight” took place.  What is not discussed openly at least in this country, is that in addition to “white flight,” there was also class flight where middle class black and brown folk also left these neighborhoods as soon as they were able to become “upwardly mobile” with redlining and other restrictions being eliminated.

So what does this all mean for the current state of not just public education, but of urban areas in this country?  We have now, in the wake of the increase in accountability, social media and 24/7 news cycles, become incensed about a problem which has been in the shadows of public policy for decades.  Feigning indignation about this situation now is being tardy to the situation at best, and at worse being, in the words of Holden Caulfield, phony.

So Mr. Secretary, I implore you and Mr. Holder to acknowledge that while school closings are not the most desirable situation, they are an important component to restructuring and rebuilding infrastructures.  Not just for downsizing, or “right sizing” Districts, but also because after years of persistent failure (even before the NCLB era), we cannot afford to continue to do the same thing, change the chairs on the Titanic (by replacing administrators, teachers and the like) and expect students (namely students of color) to succeed.

Beverly Hills High pool/basketball court

Change is hard.  That goes without saying.  What needs to be acknowledged openly is that schools are perhaps the last vestiges of what used to be a cohesive, close knit community.  Schools have served as beacons and anchors of neighborhoods for decades, as in the decades of the 1950s and earlier.  In many higher socio-economic and higher social strata communities, they still do – which is why their schools are not called into question, or being closed.  If there is a “problem” in schools in those areas, the community possesses the social capital to make change happen – both politically and economically.  In many urban school districts however, those conditions of social capital change does not exist. Instead, these schools have been persistently, slowly eroding ever since the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s. 

How long, not long.  How long must we wait to create not just surface change, but long lasting meaningful change that, in the short term, may hurt, may be an affront to our “normal way of doing things,” but in the long run has the potential to transform lives?  Clearly the current structures and systems are inadequate and not working.  Why not take a chance and work together to not fight the closures, but to make sure that they never happen again by supporting good public schools from their inception.  Not only do we need “school reform” we need a serious discussion and commitment to “neighborhood reform” as well.  In order to achieve change, we need to eliminate these types of frivolous, attention grabbing law suits, and being the difficult task of working together.

Sincerely yours,

Stuart Rhoden

Miseducation Nation

“This is a song Charles Mansion stole from the Beatles, we’re stealing it back!” – U2

This week’s blog post is a topic that is on the front burner of social media “critics” and hashtag twitter  activists.  There is a strong belief by some that simply by citing the 2009 CREDO Stanford University study which finds that –‘charters only perform 17% better than neighborhood schools’ it is somehow written in stone as a fait accompli.  I do not dispute the accuracy of the research or the methodology – rather, I want to suggest a few things.  One, that the 17% statistic often cited is not a static number but is rather fluid, and  that the rational behind the number itself is misleading, especially in light of another hot topic in education reform/debate, “high stakes testing.”

I find it disingenuous at best that people want to highlight test scores of charter schools while at the same time deriding testing (or as they couch it “high stakes testing”) as a whole.  We cannot look at some schools and say, “they are failing” by citing testing while at the same time arguing for, correctly if I may add, the elimination of the emphasis on high stakes testing in public education.  This railing against the “privatization” of public schooling based on "high stakes test scores" is based on the foundations of a flawed premise.

Perhaps if we looked at the graduation rates and college acceptance of charter schools in comparison to their local neighborhood counterparts we'd begin to see a different story.  Examine any city with a significant number of charters and low income, minority neighborhoods, and you will see that charters not only “outperform” their local neighborhood schools. They blow them out of the water.  Let me be clear, I am not advocating for the elimination of neighborhood public schools, quite the contrary.  I am arguing that we need to stop being so divisive about determining what is and isn’t a public school, railing about the closing of one type of school while vigorously promoting the closing of another and instead find commonalities and examine what is working in these (and other) successful schools which are increasing the graduation rates among minority students in impoverished areas.   

It is illogical to argue that charters are “creaming,” “cherry picking” and the like when the pool of applicants for charters (i.e students) have been infected with the same maladies as those who attend the neighborhood schools – poverty, crime, homelessness, hunger, etc.  To simply imply that parents who have placed their children in charters have a higher “social capital” than their non-charter parental counterparts doesn't even come close to being a sufficient argument.

 Some of the findings from the CREDO Stanford Study: (http://tinyurl.com/27k5lkl)

• Students do better in charter schools over time.   First year charter students on average experience a decline in learning, which may reflect a combination of mobility effects and the experience of a charter school in its early years.   Second and third years in charter schools see a significant reversal to positive gains.   
•  Charter schools have different impacts on students based on their family backgrounds. For Blacks and Hispanics, their learning gains are significantly worse than that of their traditional school twins.   However, charter schools are found to have better academic growth results for students in poverty.

What is ironic is that nowhere in the Executive Summary of the Report is there a discussion about graduation rates, student/parent satisfaction, or college acceptance.  While this study suggest that the longer students stay in charters, positive gains are more likely, it also critiques Black and Latino student success based on testing.  Nonetheless, simply by examining test scores exclusively, we are stuck gauging public schools (both charters and neighborhood schools) based on a metric which many find offensive, wrong and demeaning both in terms of evaluating teachers AND students.

In a 2011 study done by Mathematica Policy Research which examined  other metrics, they found that by “Applying these methods, we find that charter schools are associated with a higher probability of successful high school completion and an increased likelihood of attending a 2-year or a 4-year college…” (http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/658089)  

Clearly there is a strong movement to examine public schools by metrics other than simply test scores.  While it appears to be socially acceptable to view some public schools (neighborhood) by more than their test numbers, others (charters) are not afforded the same perspective.  Until we can firmly ascertain what our educational aims are – either creating students who perform well on test as a measure of success, or having students achieve high school graduation and college acceptance be the marker, we will continue to languish in the oftentimes contentious debate over school choice and the numbers game.  While we adults, pundits and prognosticators are having this debate, school children all over the country will continue and are continuing to fall through the cracks.  Perhaps, as Paul Tough and other have begun to articulate, it is time we look at character education, grit, resilience and determination in determining "student success" and not just test scores.

Note: To see an example of "success" as well as the vitriolic tone surrounding this debate, see Op-ed from Chicago Sun-Times from Principal of Urban Prep in Chicago. (http://tinyurl.com/8jg9vg2)

Broken Glass Everywhere...

Very rarely on this blog have I discussed my dissertation topic or even presented ideas surrounding black boys and public education.  Today I want to raise the issue because of two recently released reports concerning the issue.  The most widely distributed report noted that Black students (especially boys) face more harsh punishment in school than their peers. (http://tinyurl.com/86sfkod) The second report, less published in popular media (such as the New York Times) focuses on Black male student success in college (http://tinyurl.com/7thdcdn).  Both reports focus on Black males and public education, but one, the former, takes the usual deficit model perspective of this particular population, while the second report focuses on the successes of this population.  One is left to wonder why the New York Times focused on one but not the other.

What has been continually problematic in the public discourse is how various groups who have historically not had a voice have been presented in the public domain –i.e. popular media such as the Times and other mainstream publications including Time, Newsweek, the three major networks and three major news channels (CNN, MSNBC, FOX).  One question is why is it more “popular” to continue to talk about Black boys (or persons of color in general for that matter) as a deficit, rather than from a more positive perspective?  In plain language, what is so unique about highlighting faults rather than focusing on successes?

This trend of focusing on the negative is not unique to discussions surrounding Black boys and public education, but arguably has taken over the discourse in the public arena.  Putting the focus on the harmful aspects of student behavior, in particular Black boy’s negative behavior, serves what purpose?  It is as if the Department of Education (who released the report) needed validation for what many of us in public education already knew.  To use a sports analogy, for an example as glaring as this, we didn’t need empirical data for something which obviously passes the eye test with 20/20 clarity.  In other words, walk into any public school in America and look around. What do you see?  If it is a low performing school (especially high school), what you are likely to see is that an overwhelmingly large number of Black male students classified as Special Education, in detention or labeled (either publicly or through the teacher “grapevine”) as “troubled.”  Consequentially teachers, who more often than not do not reflect the diversity of the school where they are employed (see: Ann Ferguson’s excellent book Bad Boys: Public Schools in the Making of Black Masculinity), rather than seek solutions, immediately seek to eliminate the source of their “problems.”

What this ostracism does is create a self fulfilling prophecy for many Black boys.  In contrast, how often do we hear about a teacher, counselor or administrator taking a Black boy under their wing and mentoring them to achieve college acceptance?  Ironically, it takes place more often than people in the public discourse think.  Dr. Shaun Harper’s report on Black boys and college success demonstrates that more research needs to be done from the perspective of what these students can do academically rather than continually placing the emphasis on the low expectations anticipated of them by too many in public education.