The Elephants in our Schools

by Ruth A. Sheets

This morning, I heard a story on “Weekend Edition” regarding the Kansas City School District.  The District is receiving a failing grade from the state government.  It has not met standards on most of the 14 state assessments.

I teach in a district very much like Kansas City’s.  I am concerned with the comments made about the children of Kansas City and how parents could possibly want their children to remain in such a terrible district.  That is, of course, making the false assumption that all students in KC are failing and that someone coming in “must” know what is best for those poor children.

That is pretty arrogant and the residents of KC should feel the insult that such comments were MEANT TO inflict. 

Have any of the folks condemning the district done the legwork necessary to find out why children are dropping out?  Could it be that the lack of resources and support has made staying in school irrelevant?  Could those young people have family responsibilities that make staying in school impossible?  Could parents’ low-paying jobs leave them too exhausted to motivate their children to do what is necessary to feel and be successful?

Then, there are the test scores.  Do the tests in any way reflect the experiences of the city’s students or are they directed toward the upper middle-class children in the suburbs?  One can say that it shouldn’t matter, but it does.  So, the poorest children are failing on reading and math tests, making the children failures by third grade even though there is research to indicate that some children aren’t fully ready to excel in reading until they are a bit older.  Too bad for them. 

It is interesting how easy it is to blame schools for not meeting particular standards set up by well-paid folks who have no clue of the challenges faced by children in poor, mostly rural or urban districts.  For example, in my district, 80-90% of our students are on free or supported lunch. Many other families do not complete the required forms because they are too embarrassed to admit their poverty.  In Pennsylvania and other states, property taxes pay for the schools.  When property taxes pay, how do communities with such high levels of poverty manage?  The truth is, they often don’t. Then, often, they have to pay huge sums to private firms to tell them what they should be doing and get no refunds when that shiny new program doesn’t work.

A possible “solution” for the KC schools was presented in the NPR piece, splitting up the district among suburban schools.  Why would parents want that for their children?  Would more resources become available to the city schools or will those children just be the poor branch of those other districts?  Who wants their child to be second-class citizens in a district that knows and cares nothing for the challenges of the city kids? 

If the suburban districts are so anxious to help out by taking on the KC schools, why don’t they help out now, sharing some of their surplus with their neighbors? 

I suspect that the state of Missouri will just have to help out in the transition, so lots of money will flow to these “generous” districts.  Why not make that money available NOW to the folks in KC who have some innovative ideas for improving the district? 

There are two elephants in the room that governments are doing their best to exploit or ignore.  The first is a hatred and distrust of cities and the second, the larger is poverty.  How often have we been told in the past few years that “Real Americans” are small town people.  derision is directed to anyone who would live in a city.  And, of course, WE ARE REMINDED OFTEN THAT poor people are poor by choice and deserve what they get.  They’re a serious drain on the rest of society, you know the lines.  Many Americans believe BOTH. 

How do we direct more positive attention toward removing the elephants from the room?  First, we challenge the negative comments about cities and the automatic assumptions that people who live there are somehow less than the rest of America. Cities are here to stay and families with kids live there just as they do everywhere else. 

Second, we make sure that city schools have the same quality and quantity of resources that everyone else has.  Condemning schools for not being as good as schools that have access to the very latest of everything is unfair and unacceptable. 

Third, we have to work harder to encourage more businesses to start up in cities, using facilities that have been vacant or abandoned.  Tax breaks could be offered for those businesses that employ residents of the city.

I suspect that smarter people than I, including our young people have better ideas.  We just have to find ways to listen to them and try the ones that seem doable.