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I am a mathematics educator with a long interest in DCPS and other urban school districts (I've worked in San Diego, New York, and Newark). The concern with having defacto two school systems, a white wealthy district based in DCPS west of the park and a poor, minority set of charter schools forming a district east of the river is that that sounds exactly what Brown vs. Board of Education was working against - separate and unequal. The presumption that the only way to educate poor, minority kids is the KIPP way is based in many premises that I would NOT want to embrace. When I taught future teachers, I made sure to remind them that group membership (race, socioeconomics, language) is not determinative about a child. Do not reduce a child to his or her groups. The question is how best to educate this child. To assume that all poor kids or black kids or ELLs need the same thing educationally is essentialist and can screw kids up. I tell a story about how I was moved out of the high math group in 3rd grade for no apparent reason. When I complained to my parents, my mother called the school. She was told that I was chatty and they thought I needed a "male influence" in my life to help with my behavior. Of course, my 6'5" black male father who has now been married to my mother for 50 years flipped out. They made an assumption that I was chatty because I was black and therefore must have a single, undereducated mother. WRONG! I was chatty because I was bored because even the gifted class was too slow for me. My 4th grade teacher totally figured it out and supported my learning to fit MY needs, not the black girl's needs. I may never have gotten a PhD if I had been reduced to my gender and race. And we were solidly upper middle class!

But, this discussion also assumes that the demographics of the city will not change in the next 20 years, which I also think is unlikely. One of the major ways in which segregation has been maintained in most US cities and suburbs is through housing patterns (my best friend did her masters thesis on this project based on Chicago schools). That is the basis of busing. And as a kid who was bussed in Prince George's County in the 1980s, there are clear drawbacks, but also major benefits to the racial diversity that I experienced in my schools at the time. But there real way to get diverse schools is create diverse neighborhoods that feed those schools. Creating affordable housing within the same school boundaries as wealthy enclaves will do more to increase diversity (of all types as many other types than race are also highly correlated with income) in schools than most any other attempt to encourage diversity. Of course, that is a much harder nut to crack.

by kdking on Jul 21, 2012 11:15 pm • link • report