Schools are the Single Issue

I want to finish my thinking on the achievement gap and “No Excuses.” by bringing it back to the kids.

Here’s a five-minute profile of some of what’s trying to slow my kids down this year. I just picked the first handful that came to mind.

R---‘s mother doesn’t really believe in the education of girls and pulls her out about once a week, mostly to take care of littler siblings.

Q--- missed over three weeks of class because of emergency kidney surgery, and missed all of geometry. He can’t stay late or come early to make it up because of the family schedule.

S---‘s sister, who is effectively her mother, is frequently off and on trips “away,” (on drugs? in jail? with a new man? V--- doesn’t know) bringing her to school distraught and disruptive.

T---‘s parents are constantly peddling wares around the country, leaving him with little supervision and no affection.

B---‘s parents are getting a divorce. He was finally attaining grade-level abilities in reading and math, but now comes to school near tears.

M---‘s father is back from jail and constantly comes around drunk. She was just getting her act together too.

L---‘s family is fighting over who has to take care of him. All that’s clear is no one wants him.

F---‘s father died last month. His mother now works double to cover the bills and he never sees her either.

This list represents about a third of my class and is almost identical with any of the classes I’ve taught. These are also simply the issues my students elected to share. I have little doubt that there are many of more, of equal or greater gravity, that have not been brought up.

Certainly, well-to-do kids have their share of knocks, but I think few will argue that they compound as do those faced by the poor. Poor kids seem to face a great reason not to focus in school every other year, at least! Further, for students entering school on level, success is a simple act of maintenance. For children entering with a tremendous deficit of experience and language, achievement requires a dedication that these life events make difficult to muster.

Yet, the necessity of learning to read or add does not decline with the difficulties of life. By now, millions of children, of all colors and countries, have acquired their basic skills despite the grandest obstacles. I don’t know what common strengths they have shared ---that is a topic worth researching--- but I deeply suspect that one asset was not a teacher so “understanding” as to permit them to fail. As a self-purported “No Excuses” teacher, I am still cognizant of these issues as they weigh in the minds of my students. The difference is that while I might accommodate them in my approach they do not modify my expectations. To a degree it is heartless. It must be. My students cannot afford another year of failure. I care about their trials and traumas, but I choose to focus on helping them succeed anyway.

The same is true of our schools writ large. Child-focused explorations of the “achievement gap” will always yield grand excuses. We know that our students are experience-deprived, that their parents can’t help with homework, that their role models are rarely Ph. D.’s, and that focusing in class often requires the sequestration of tremendous distractions. It doesn’t take a study to convince anyone that poor families cannot support their children’s education as well as rich families. Few educators would find their work informed by studies that detail what particular articulation of hate or history perpetuates the under-achievement of black and Latino students.

What more do you want to know? We can ask a thousand different questions; we can find a thousand different specificities for why our children fail. The repercussions of economic inequity and historic racism will be as varied as the life of each child, but they still reverberate from the same blows. I need only know that outstanding schools can be the reason kids succeed. The creation of those outstanding schools, then, becomes the single issue. Our profession's and society's inability to do so, then, becomes the single failure worth discussing.

Blaming the families or the children will always be a fruitful approach for those who seek to conceal their own shortcomings, whether it is a lack of competence as an educator or a lack of compassion as a citizen. I have no time nor tolerance for it. We can change nothing about our children’s heritage or color. We can change little about their families’ focus and our society’s racism. We can change everything about our schools. Let’s start there.