The Real Problem with Our Schools

I had an interesting conversation with a friend this past weekend.

As a disclaimer, I have worked as a schoolteacher in the past.

My friend, a woman whose opinion I respect, was lamenting the fact that her students are being ill-prepared to compete with other kids from more affluent districts. Her school district does not have the money for the latest computer programs and other curriculum enhancing materials that she believes will push her pupils’ test scores into the stratosphere. She also lamented having to teach material as it related to the standardized tests, which she believes are culturally biased. Those tainted scores determined the overall health of her district, and indirectly are a reflection of her ability. In short, she’s frustrated. We talked about it for a while, and I understood where she was coming from. In life, somebody always has it a bit, or a lot, better than you do. There is no way around this. Bill Gates’ son is going to have a leg up on mine n many areas. It comes with having a gozillionaire for a Daddy.

I can’t just give up on my kid, though, because he lacks a billion dollar trust fund. There are parents who had a lot less to work with than I do, and they churned out some pretty spectacular kids. In short, I have to play the cards I’ve been dealt. It would be nice if we were all equal, but that just isn’t so. It’s never been so, and probably won’t be.

How my kid turns out will have more to do with how his mother and I raise him, and less to do with what we don’t have.

In my opinion, how kids turn out has more to do with how they are taught and how much of the total teaching process gets applied, and less to do with how much money his school district has.

Be real: there are schools that even if you put state of the art everything under one roof, their attendance numbers are so shabby that it wouldn’t matter.
Parent involvement is so nonexistent that whatever the kids get in the seven hours they are on campus would be lost overnight and almost completely eradicated over the summers.

What’s scarier, standardized tests, while anathema to many, and are a reality of modern day education. Everything from class placement to college admission is based on them.

I am not saying this is right, but merely pointing out this is, as they say, the way it is.

I understand that resources are important, but part of the problem, as a former educator, is parenting, or the lack thereof. There are people coming from poorer circumstances, outside of the US, that manage to make it here and excel in our schools, and ace the same standardized tests we have a problem with. The biggest difference: parents who value education beyond lip service (“You have to go to school, Lil Man.”) I agree that teaching to the test is not the best way to teach.
I agree, Education has lost something in our classrooms, such as the ability to reason, to analyze something and draw conclusions based on context and inference. The funny thing is there were schools in the Deep South and west decades ago that had squat in resources that were able to teach that and produce some of the greatest minds in our country. By comparison, economically, our districts are better off these days, and we can’t even get kids to learn the basics and score well on a standardized test?

What’s scary is how students of color from South America, the Caribbean and Africa come here, and through sheer hard work and study, ace those same tests. Now, call me wrong, but a kid who grows up in a suburb of Lagos probably is even more culturally challenged by an American standardized test than one who is reared on 43rd and Prairie on Chicago’s low end.

Man, I roll by the parks even in some Chicago suburbs, where kids have way more than they do in immigrant Black communities. Basketball courts full from the first day the weather is above freezing. Libraries empty as my Saturday nights when I was single.

Just for kicks, I went to one of those school-parent meetings on the North Side, where parents look like me but speak with thick accents and look at me with disdain.

The room is packed, and there is none of the political jostling that I see at similar meetings further south. This is about accountability. What’s up with my kid learning?

This isn’t, “My kid is getting picked on.” “My kid keeps saying the teacher don’t like him.” “Ya’ll racist/out for self/you wouldn’t let your kids go here.”

The biggest joke I have heard is that parents who take an active role in their children’s education, up to an including investing in private education, are robbing public schools of their best resources.

What?

The biggest investment I have on this planet is my child. I truly have no responsibilities beyond prepping him to navigate through the waters of life, and how he does so is a direct reflection on me.

When parents make the decision to sacrifice even further in the hopes that it gives their kid an edge, boots the numbers on that standardized test score, they are robbing other kids?

I always wondered: are other parents robbing my kid when they don’t force their child to attend school? Are they screwing up the available resources when they do not instill any sense of self control in their kid? When they basically use the schools as free day care, and only get involved when their child gets in trouble? Time and again?

A lot of school districts are suffering, but be real: districts with much less turned out Thrurgood Marshall, Percy Julian, Daniel Hale Williams, Mae Jemison, Benjamin Mays, Carter Woodson and scores of others.

There was a stronger push for Black education during a time when an education was a lot harder to earn.

There were fewer excuses for a lack of achievement at a time when, honestly, there were a whole lot more structural things in place to retard Black academic excellence.
It was less about defeatism and teaching conspiracy theories and more about getting folk to learn, achieve and excel beyond excuses and rampant racism.

There was a time when Black teachers were respected members of their community. Keep it real: these weren’t folk in it for the short hours and long vacations. Very few of them taught in say, Chicago but lived in Olympia Fields. Teaching was like being a physician. The money meant something, but the work was more important than the money. Teachers have lost some of that respect for a reason, but it’s still no excuse. For them to be effective, your kids have to respect them. Period.

I feel for my friend. I believe she is a good teacher, and I pray she gets what she needs, and that it helps her students be all they can be.


My experience, though, is that no amount of money, resources, curriculum restructuring based on stats, whatever, is going to take the place of the basics: having kids show up to school, having kids respect teachers, and having parents involved in the education process.