I agree with Brittany Packnett’s call for sharing responsibility for a just educational system. Her voice is one of many within Teach for America and across the nation engaged in blunt debates about academically underperforming children in our schools and our responses to their plight.
Unfortunately, her call to “move away” from the “achievement gap” is comparable to sweeping a huge problem under the rug. It is an invitation to racial exceptions that may accelerate the re-segregation of schools, lower expectations and inadvertently perpetuate educational mediocrity in some school districts.
Given the crisis in American public education, the temptation is great to “move away” from the brutal facts and disparities or envision separate standards of academic excellence. We must avoid these false choices.
Standards of academic excellence are neither white nor black. They are global. Communities and children must compete in a global economy. High dropout rates, low graduation rates, poor academic achievement scores and functional illiteracy mean thousands of children in our communities can neither compete nor take full advantage of incredible economic and social opportunities.
Today, significant numbers of African-American and Hispanic children are doing well in school. The problem is the huge number of children operating at proficiency levels way below grade level expectations. Prisons are full of African-American, Hispanic and white school dropouts.
Too many African Americans, ill prepared for college and careers, are totally unemployable. Thousands of young children in our region are on slippery slopes destined for prison, poverty and massive wastage of their God-given potentials if we fail to unite.
For these children, educational justice requires more than flashy short-term commitments, temporary solutions or polemics designed to feed profit motives of some entities at the expense of children who truly need our collective help.
So, where do we go from here?
First, we must put an end to the overt and subtle denigration of educators who work hard and thanklessly every day to improve educational outcomes for all children.
Second, we must support our school districts as they grow the capacity and pool of consistently caring and culturally competent adults needed to sustainably shift from deficits and remediation to college and career readiness modes.
Third, we must minister to the hearts and minds of parents so that our school districts can meet basic student attendance requirements for state accreditation.
Fourth, the educational justice debate must be about educational excellence. As Missouri moves towards becoming a Top 10 state in education by the year 2020, we must lay the foundations for sustainable school district accreditations.
Broader and deeper collaborations for educational excellence must be created on a truly grand scale. We must unite all sectors of our region, public and private, business and civic, clergy and laity, professional and blue collar, political and fraternal to provide every child born in this community a guaranteed access to quality world-class pre-school education regardless of ethnicity or ability to pay.
The work to improve the quality of life, reduce crime, create more living wage jobs and build stronger and better communities begins with doing a much better job of educating all the children in our communities and neighborhoods.
Yes. The academic achievement gap is real and consequential. It is the tragic and predictable result of a web of opportunity and resource gaps that devalue of the lives of millions of families in our nation today. Its impact on our regional and national economies is too devastating to ignore or sweep under a rug. Let’s close the gaps!
Walle A. Amusa is chair of the Missouri NAACP Education Committee.
