Expectations in our city schools

I wrote in my Reason post this week that I was encouraged to see the significant attention paid to education in The American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan making its way through Congress this week:

The sobering thought is that so many of these areas–education, for example–need a complete overhaul to really meet our needs today. Can we possibly address these needs while trying to patch so many leaks? Will we be able to effectively address any long-term needs while fighting fires?

The New York Times covers this topic, too, in “Stimulus Plan Would Provide Flood of Aid to Education:”

The economic stimulus plan that Congress has scheduled for a vote on Wednesday would shower the nation’s school districts, child care centers and university campuses with $150 billion in new federal spending, a vast two-year investment that would more than double the Department of Education’s current budget.

The proposed emergency expenditures on nearly every realm of education, including school renovation, special education, Head Start and grants to needy college students, would amount to the largest increase in federal aid since Washington began to spend significantly on education after World War II.

Alyssa Lenhoff’s new post on Working-Class Perspectives suggests that all the money in the world won’t make a difference if the expectations teachers and administrators–and, perhaps, all of us as a community and a society–hold towards inner-city students aren’t also expanded:

East High School’s students are mostly African-Americans from poor families, while Boardman has mostly white students from middle- or upper middle-class families. A few Working-Class Perspectives readers expressed interest in what she found.

Kelli [Cole] learned that it’s not about the money spent to educate students. Both school districts spend nearly the same. It’s not about the quality of the teachers, either. It’s about the armed guards who greet students in the hallways at the predominantly African-American school, and it’s about the police cars who routinely circle the parking lots. And at the white school, it’s about the pep assemblies, and the science club, and the band’s reputation as one of the best in the state.

Simply put, what Cole found is that it’s about expectations and perceptions. One student at the African-American school told Cole that officials expect students to perform poorly and so they do.

I appreciate this post for putting things into perspective. I was naively hoping more money would solve the problem, but I should know better by now, especially after our own experience.

When we first returned to Youngstown, we enrolled Boston at Harding for Kindergarten. I insisted that we at least try the public schools rather than simply sending the kids to private school or outsourcing them to a nearby open-enrollment district. Gradually, we noticed his attitude change. He was more defiant, more unruly. We hoped it would pass, and we stuck it out for the remainder of the semester. But there was one incident that really told Jaci this wasn’t where we wanted our son to learn.

She was visiting school to drop something off or volunteer, I don’t remember which. As she passed a train of children in the hallway, one of the boys walked close by Jaci in the opposite direction. He didn’t do anything wrong–he didn’t brush against her or otherwise molest her. Yet, his teacher called him out in a loud voice, “Didn’t you see that woman walk past? What were you thinking?”

Jaci was astonished by the near brutality of her tone to this young boy who had done nothing but walk down the hallway. I understand that, after years of dealing with young children, many of whom are underprivileged and some of whom are indeed troublemakers, it is tempting to paint them all with a broad brush and feel like one must always rule with an iron fist and a quick temper to maintain order. But I wish for a big reset button. How can we allow these children to escape their stereotype–to forge for themselves a new identity of their choosing, rather than of ours?

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