We versus me

That's what it all comes down to in politics, religion, sports, isn't it?  Are you playing for yourself?  Or for the team? 

In sports I've found a new hero, John Goncalves of North Portland who coached his Junior Baseball team to the 9- 10 year-old state championship.  Quite a feat for this real life version of the Bad News Bears, some of whom could barely throw or catch a baseball before the season began.  Perhaps this is a harbinger of the revival of Roosevelt High baseball. 

It ranks right up there with Roosevelt's runner-up finish in the Class 5A basketball championship last March.  That team was coached  by my son's former JV coach at Cleveland, Robert Key.  Key is a good coach and a good person.  He's a team man all the way, in the best sense of the word.

As I said, that's what life as we live it comes down to, in an ethical and moral sense.  You're either a team person or you're in it for yourself.  Take for example the simmering and divisive issue of school choice.  Two of my recent posts have elicited a record (for this site) number of comments on the effect of choice and school transfers on lower class, racially diverse neighborhood schools.

Steve Rawley on his blog provides evidence that the district transfer policy tends to exacerbate school racial segregation.  Earlier studies have also shown that transfers leave already poor schools with an even greater percentage of poor students, regardless of race.  So in effect, parents who choose "better" schools for their children are arguably doing harm to the children of other parents who, for whatever reason, "choose" to stay behind in their neighborhood schools.

In a comment to my post on charter high schools, Rawley points out that, in the scramble to do well by their own children, people tend to "forget about the common good."  I agree.  In fact, the political divide in this country falls squarely between those who believe we should provide for the common welfare and those who believe in individual responsibility.  The "individualists" are currently in the ascendance, and perhaps always have been, which is why we have no European style universal health care and why the schools are under increasing pressure to privatize.

Religious ascetics, Catholic monastics, for example, take vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity for good reason --to serve the greater good.  The last vow, celibacy, enables the devotee to avoid the trap of particular, or exclusive, love*, say for a wife or a child or brother.  That frees him to embrace a greater, more universal love for all people regardless of family, tribe, clan, or ethnic connection. 

Am I recommending that we all become monks and forsake our families?  Hardly. But the ethics --the morality-- of providing for the common welfare should not be ignored.  Even the most irreligious and agnostic among  us should be forced to answer the question asked of Jesus, "Am I my brother's keeper?"

My answer to that, in the Jesus sense of brotherhood, is --yes, I am.

* (love, not lust)

Comments

[Hope]

Terry,
Great point about the need for public education to serve the common good. It's understandable for individual parents to seek the best education they can for their child. But the public education system shouldn't be set up in a way that allows some families to get a better education at the expense of other children. The system should offer a quality education for every child. I know some parents are unaware of the negative impact their transfer decisions are having on their neighborhood schools, but other are fully aware and choose not to care (especially in gentrifying neighborhoods).

What is particularly disturbing is the parents and leaders who actively advocate for policies that will specifically cater to middle income white families to keep them in our public schools, wanting us to believe that these policies will have the best outcome for all children in the system. But it's absurd to expect that keeping some middle and upper income families in the system in segregated schools or charter programs has trickle down benefits for the children in the lower income schools that get drained of enrollment and resources (state funding, parent involvement and fundraising capacity) as a result. I don't know how they can advoate for it without blushing.

Everyday I am thankful for the parents, teachers, and community members who are advocating for a public school system where every neighborhood school strives to meet the education needs of all students regardless of background, learning style, or achievement level. There is not a single neighborhood in this city where all children have identical learning styles and skill levels. Sure we'll always need a few special schools to educate students with special needs that can't effectively be met in a neighborhood school. But those schools should be the exception not the rule.

Current district policies show that our leaders don't believe that low income schools are good enough for middle and upper income families. Do they really believe that we should be satisfied with a system where low income kids learn to read in their schools, and middle income kids learn the basics plus have a wide array of enrichment opportunities? PPS rhetoric talks about high expecations for all students, but creates a segregated system that delivers inequitable educational opportunites to our children.

I am not opposed to choice and I believe there are some very valid reasons for transferring schools. I also believe that school boundaries should be drawn so that neighborhood schools are serving children from the surrounding neighborhood (unlike Boise-Eliot which is gerrymandered into the Grant cluster, and the former Meek attendance area west of 33rd that is gerrymandered into the Jefferson cluster, and others). The current system isn't really about offering choice though - it's purpose is to cater to the district's most influential parent group. Some of those parents are acting upon their prejudices and others are just caught up in a system that results in institutionalized racism regardless of the motivations of the individual parents. It's an abhorrent system and it has to change. Thank you Terry and others for keeping the issues of equity and the common good at the forefront of the public education debate. Eventually the school board will have to listen.

[Terry]

Thanks, Hope, and well said.

Curious about which specific district policies you have in mind that provide only "trickle down" benefits for low income children.

[Hope]

First, let me be clear. I don't think the trickle down policies provide benefits for low income children in general.

The policies I was referring to are those that are adopted specifically to retain middle and upper income parents who may otherwise choose to send their children to private schools if they have to attend a school with (gasp!) a significant number of low income or minority students, or to a school that doesn't offer an adequate range of course offerings and enrichment opportunities that should be available to ALL students not just those who have the option to choose private school if they don't get it through PPS:

- Excessively liberal transfer policies and focus on "school choice", over and above what is required by NCLB, which encourage families to transfer out of low income schools;
- Allowing education funding to follow students in optional transfers (non-NCLB mandated) draining resources from successful low income schools to more popular schools in wealthier neighborhoods;
- Approval of new magnet schools and charter schools during a time of declining enrollment, which mostly attract white middle/upper income parents and drain enrollment from neighborhood schools and makes low income schools particularly susceptible to closure;
- Jefferson Dancers program, which is the only magnet school in the district where students can participate in the program while attending a different school for their academic program, with free school-to-school transportation too;
- Reassigning the Boise-Eliot attendance area (in the recently gentrified N. Mississippi Ave. neighborhood) to feed into Beaumont Middle School and Grant even though Boise-Eliot is located blocks from Tubman and Jefferson;
- Acknowledging the error of the Boise-Eliott reassignment, but passing a board resolution that would only return Boise-Eliot to the Jefferson cluster in 3 years, "after Jefferson has had time to improve" for the kids in the gentrified neighborhood. (The board apparently feels that the school currently has adequate educational offerings for students from low income neighborhoods but not students from a gentrified neighborhood.)
- Inadequate oversight of the Portland Schools Foundation which allows wealthy parents to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for their schools and spread a few leftover fundraising dollars among a bunch of low income schools, through a competitive grantwriting process;
- High school programs that require incoming ninth graders in low income neighborhoods (Roosevelt, Madison, Marshall, Jefferson) to choose a small focused "academy" for their high school program, while high schools in wealthier neighborhoods offer a comprehensive array of academic programs and course offerings that are available to all students in the school;
- Inequitable course offerings between low income and wealthier high schools (just see language offerings to get an idea of the inequities);
- Expanding the building facility at Lincoln to allow more transfer students to have access to the schoolwide, optional IB program at Lincoln, while delaying implementation of an IB program at Jefferson that was promised during the Jefferson redesign process last year;
- The stark contrast between how the district worked with Rieke parents and Jefferson parents who want to increase enrollment at their schools to prevent them from being closed;
- The district's divestment of successful programs at Tubman Middle School, as proposed in the 2002 Long Range Facilities Plan, and shift of those programs to DaVinci Arts magnet school and others;
- Retaining middle school programs with wide array of enrichment offerings primarily in wealthier neighborhoods.

Is that enough examples of policies that disproportionately benefit white middle/upper income families often at the expense of lower income families? According to the district they're all good policies because they retain wealthier families who might "flee" to private schools, and therefore they supposedly somehow also benefit all children.

Yes, it would be nice to have more middle income and wealthy parents at my overwhelmingly low income school, because they would bring additional resources such as volunteer hours and fundraising capacity to the school. But passing a bunch of inequitable district policies to retain some of those parents in the public school system, in a wealthy segregated neighborhood school across town or a new charter or magnet school in my neighborhood is on balance harmful to low income schools and students. I would much prefer that the district focus on creating quality neighborhood schools for all students across the district, even if we lose a few wealthier segregationist parents as a result.

[Steve Buel]

Wow, Hope, what a great list. Very thought provoking comments also. People who pay attention can not really be faulted for trying to get their children the best education they can and doing so in the manner they see fit. (I am not necesarily implying you do.)uI believe these decisions should be based on reality however, not their prejudices, nor narrowly held incorrect beliefs. But, at the same time we need to see that some schools are not very good places for every child. If we don't address this and in fact call people racist or elitist for wanting the best for their children then this clouds the solutions for all children. If every kid is truly equal in the system this means we want the best educationally and developementally for every child, rich or poor, boy or girl, white or not. I believe the most sensible approach is to improve the schools in the lower economic neighborhoods so parents can feel comfortable sending their children there. The things you talk about are certainly part of the problem, but each neighborhood school is, as you suggest, very different. The solution does not lie in equitable resources, but in resources tailored directly to the needs of that particular school. Hence, in one school parents may be able to offer their children after school sports and music opportunities by buying them, while another school needs to have that provided. In one school huge amounts of resources need to be aimed at controlling classroom disruptions and systems need to be put into place that allow parents the opportunity to put their children in orderly classrooms. Maybe there is a huge need for counselors, or for programs to engage kids in school, or for more intellectual enrichment. Each school is different and it is just as big a ruse for the powers that be to suggest an equitable system, i.e. a district-wide curriculum or equal school to school programs as it is to do the types of things you suggest in your list. Great post, Hope.

[Hope]

Thanks Steve. I have to say though that I think pretty much every parent wants the best for their child, which is as it should be. It's only classist or racist if the parent thinks that "best" means a school without low income or minority students. Also, if we're talking about a public school system, then parents shouldn't advocate for a system that provides the "best" education to their student at the expense of someone else's child. It's wrong, period.

Of course I believe that "systems need to be put into place that allow parents the opportunity to put their children in orderly classrooms." Every classroom in the district should be orderly. What is disturbing is the common perception that schools with a lot of low income or minority students automatically have disorderly classrooms and major discipline problems that don't exist at wealthier, whiter schools. It certainly isn't the case at my low income, high minority school, and I suspect it's not the case at most regardless of your particular experience at a few schools. I just wish that parents would visit the school before passing judgment based on their prejudices about a schools demographics.

Also, I think there needs to be more emphasis on how schools can meet individual children's needs rather than generalizing about the needs of all students in any particular school, neighborhood, demographic group, etc. Every school should have orderly classrooms AND quality educational offerings, adequate counselor positions for the student population AND intellectual enrichment equal to other neighborhood schools. Just because a child attends a school where many of the students need extra attention from a counselor doesn't mean that child (or any child in the school) doesn't also need intellectual enrichment equal to what is available at a school that has less need for counselors.

[Terry]

That's quite specific, Hope. Thank you. I don't think we disagree on any of those policy issues. I appreciate your detailed and intelligent responses to what I've written. Keep 'em coming, if you have the time and inclination.

You too, Steve. Only do me a favor and use some paragraphing. It makes what you have to say much easier to follow.

[Steve Buel]

Hope, good points. I don't lump minority and low income together in my comments unless they actually go together. I also am talking generally about middle schools. I don't know where you work but elementary schools can have excellent behavior no matter where they are. But, middle schools, I am very skeptical. I remember at one point Harriet Tubman evidentally was pretty well organized and orderly. Haven't seen it much or heard about it anyplace else. Schools often proceed in steps. If you have 100 kids who can hardly read in a middle school then you need to get them help so they can. Usually a lot more help than PPS gives them. If you are loaded with kids who read great then you need to address their needs. If your school is out of control disciplinary-wise then you need to do something about it. It is a lengthy discussion but generally the testing at middle school can get in the way of good education.

You are correct in saying that parents in public schools should consider the overall needs of education itself instead of just their child's needs. Trouble is, it doesn't work that way for such a huge number of higher income parents. So, trying to bring about solutions to the problems in lower income neighborhoods by expecting upper income parents to carry any part of the true load and in their head sacrificing their kid's education is an exercise in futility. In my opinion, you have to directly improve the lower income schools and in order to do that you need to identify the problem areas and correct them. Since no school people in PPS want to say my school and our classrooms have serious problems, and for good reason I might add, then the problems won't get addressed unless it comes from the outside, like the school board. Sometimes we, as teachers and educators, have a tendancy to accept the status quo as relatively o.k. when in fact, compared to what it could be, (like the Vancouver schools) it is horrible and short-changes poor kids terribly. Here is an interesting stat to back up my case -- George had 34% or their kids suspended from school during the year, while Sylvan had 2%. Now, based on those statistics where would the average parent most want to send their kid? This is all I am saying. Let's recognize the problems in these schools and fix them, whether or not they have active parents or whether or not the people running this district care one whit about them. It is just not fair to a kid whose mom is in jail and whose father is on drugs (had a lot of kids like that in my classrooms over the years) that he or she needs to suffer through a worse education too. It isn't right.

[Hope]

Steve you say "In my opinion, you have to directly improve the lower income schools and in order to do that you need to identify the problem areas and correct them." I agree.

Problem: In mixed income neighborhoods a lot of middle and upper families in the neighborhood won't send their children to the neighborhood school based upon their preconceived notions about a school that has a significant number of low income or minority students. They make decisions to transfer without ever stepping foot inside the school. This is particularly devastating in gentrifying neighborhoods where long time residents are being displaced by whiter wealthier families. When enrollment declines due to higher transfer rates, the per student funding, course offerings, parent volunteer hours, etc. get drained from the school. And in some cases schools actually get closed because not enough of the new families will support the neighborhood school. In my gentrifying neighborhood 50% of the neighborhood families don't send their children to the elementary school. The neighborhood is becoming whiter and whiter, but only a small fraction of the student body is white. And as I have said, there is no good objective reason for families not to send their children there.

Solution: The district should not make it so easy for parents to transfer based on uninformed prejudices about a school. In the mid 1980's when my family moved from a small white community to a racially diverse community on the east coast my mom tried to get me enrolled in a whiter school in an adjacent neighborhood. Fortunately the school district policies wouldn't allow me to enroll in the school outside my neighborhood.

[Steve Buel]

Hope, you certainly write your ideas clearly. I don't dispute your conclusion. All I am saying is the district needs to step outside their policies they have now and fix those lower economic schools regardless of anything else. This would retain many of the neighborhood parents. What is important is the actual education in the school not people's impressions of it. The district does PR instead of truly identifying and fixing the problems. They go at it backwards. Fix the problems --- this will give you the PR. Maybe this is just six of one and half a dozen of the other. But I don't think so.

[Marcia]

Steve, I absolutely agree with your statement that the district goes at this backwards. I refuse to participate in the marketing agenda set up by PPS. This year it was held at the Expo center, and I guess they just expected teachers to be clamoring to be there on a Saturday to sell their schools. HOGWASH! Give the schools their due. Provide money for full programs and let them thrive. Don't cut them back to the bare bones and then tell us to show up and sell our schools to the public. And now we get to go begging to PSF for money to market ourselves. I'm thrilled! NOT!