Beyond integration: Better teaching is post-'Brown' frontier
By Gail Russell Chaddock | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON - Half a century after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawed deliberately segregated schools, more than 60 percent of black fourth-graders can't read.
It's a stark indicator of how the Brown decision, for all its transforming effect on US society, has left America still struggling to educate its least-advantaged children.
That's the grim news. But as the nation remembers the Supreme Court's historic ruling, some signs are more promising. A new generation of equal-opportunity activists is pushing to close the performance gap, focusing not on how to racially integrate classrooms but on how to boost achievement of the poorest kids. And these advocates appear to be winning converts, from teachers' unions to politicians of both parties.
Their recipe for rescuing inner-city schools includes a range of ingredients: More preschool and after-school programs, more funding, more measuring of how schools are performing.
But one element, they say, is the most crucial: How to get better teachers into the neediest classrooms. It's a goal that runs against the grain of nearly every incentive in American public education, from local funding of schools to seniority perks within the teaching profession. Yet this central issue, talked about for years, is starting to take hold now on many fronts.
"Until governors, legislators, and local leaders break the trend of assigning the least qualified teachers to the neediest children, the achievement gap between poor and middle-income children will continue to grow," says Gov. Mark Warner (R) of Virginia, chairman of the Education Commission of the States, which has adopted this reform as a key goal.
Posted by P6 at May 20, 2004 07:49 PM
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Comments
As someone who has worked in a lot of different public schools in Nueva York (as a teaching artist of theatre and writing) I want to bring up two additional components crucial to the educational success of our children. Components that never seem to get discussed - the parents and the students themselves.
Efforts always seem to be directed at the teachers, fine but getting a good education is a three-legged stool. You can go to the most expensive private school in the country but if the parent isn't involved with supporting and supplementing what is done in the classroom, the student isn't going to do as well.
Students need to take responsibility for their education. That may sound harsh, but that is at least the mindset I encourage when teaching. Too many kids have the attitude that it's the teacher's job to make them learn. They don't have any sense of being pro-active participants.
I could go on cause this is a pet peeve of mine but putting the success or failure of our children's future solely on the teacher's back isn't realistic. We need training for parents. We need media that encourages our kids to become something other than basketball players. We need role models that aren't doing 25 to life. We need...we need a community.
Posted by Janine at May 20, 2004 09:16 PMYeah, a couple posts earlier has the Leadership Council on Civil Rights' 12 steps to better education. I actually think some of those steps belong to a different agenda that strictly education, but since I approve of the agenda I won't bitch.
Anyway, they have your other two leg combined in the "In The Community" category.
The reverse chronological order of blogs sometimes gets in the way. It's one reason I use syndication feeds so heavily; I can display unread messages only, in chronological order.
Posted by P6 at May 20, 2004 10:00 PM