A reader posted the following comment.
As a public school teacher on the Northshore across the lake from New Orleans, educated in parochial schools for most of my elementary and high school years, I have been wanting to discuss the truth of education in the State of Louisiana for years, but it cannot be discussed publically, even though most people know the truth, a person could get killed or maimed at worst or at best, fired from a teaching position by openly speaking the unspeakable in today’s irrationally violent world. Under federal mandatory desegregation in 1969, I student taught English IV at a public high school in a Northshore Parish. Prior to this law, schools across the State were segregated into all black or all white public schools—“separate but equal” they called it. My senior high school class was composed of 10 white students and 10 black students, as were all of the other classes in the school. My white students could all read and write at grade level able to do “A, B or C” work. Half of my black students could not read or write at all, two of them could read and write at junior high level, two of them at elementary level and one of them could do B and C work in my class. I was horrified by the levels of illiteracy and low skill levels among my black students. Teachers were not provided with remedial materials to help the students learn at their level nor any books or handouts that would enable the non readers and writers learn the alphabet, the sounds of the letters, nor how to put the sounds together so that they could even begin to make sense of reading and writing. As a secondary level teacher, I was not even given any training to reach students who were not at grade level. I did the best I could bringing in albums of Shakespearian plays and sonnets, so that my lowest level students could get something out of the material by hearing it read, even though they could not pass the written tests on it. No one had ever heard of the accommodation for “Tests Read Aloud” that our immigrant population is given on classroom and standardized tests today. Consequently, all through the 1970’s due to the academic problems, also resulting in behavior issues black students experienced in school system, plus the fact that the majority of students did not have anything to eat before coming to school, they were not making much progress academically. These conditions caused the parents of white students to pull their children out of the public school system and put them in private or parochial schools, so that their children could receive a good education without all the social problems black children brought with them into the classroom. At that time most black children could not attend schools that required tuition because their parents did not have the financial ability to do so since most did not have jobs that paid a middle class wage to do so. In addition, the values of many black parents regarding education, which extended to their children, were not as high as white parents, I think mainly because most of them were not very well educated themselves and could not help their children with homework or did not have time to help them due to other social problems that continue to plague the black community in Louisiana—namely single parent households, drug addiction, poverty, a lack of values shared by the white middle or upper class communities, violence and multiple levels of abuse in the home. The lack of parental support, a stable family structure, and a healthy home environment that supports learning are the main reasons black students are under performing in Louisiana schools today, as well as the inability of many black students to speak standard American English, which many teachers do not insist upon in the classroom out of fear of being called racist at worst or politically incorrect at best. Bobby Jindal does not have the courage to face the real problem in education in Louisiana. He is taking the coward’s way out through scapegoating, blaming public schools and teachers for the failure of some black students to pass culturally biased standardized tests, one of the primary measures in assigning schools a passing or failing grade based on their AYP. The main problem is that when a public school becomes predominately black, with students and teachers alike, the standards are usually lowered and students are socially promoted, even though they cannot pass their course work or earn a basic score on standardized tests. How do I know this not having taught in public schools that have this particular demographic problem? I taught at a New Orleans community college for several years and in one of my classes had a large group of black students from the New Orleans projects, who insisted that I lower the standards in my class so that they could all get “A’s and B’s” for their final grade. They were physically and emotionally threatening in attempting to take control of the class, but I did not cave in as their public school teachers had to have done in order to get through the school year alive. What Bobby Jindal needs to do if he wants change education in Louisiana that will last for generations to come is to have the courage to educate the black community on what it will take for their children to perform well in school and to mentor them until they are able to adopt and embrace a value system that supports their children’s education, and thus, bring them out of the impoverished conditions that keep them like crabs in a bucket into a more productive standard of living. He needs to generate higher paying, skilled jobs for the black community, especially for the women who are usually the sole support of their families, so that they can support their children preparing them for a successful life in the middle class. Through education many black people in Louisiana have done just that over the last four decades, but many more have yet to enjoy that success. Bobby Jindal does not have the courage to do this because he does not have the heart to uplift anyone but himself. His education reforms have not been done for the people of Louisiana, but for himself, so that he can add another feather to cap, putting another initiative on his resume, so that when the time comes that he is seeking the status of President of the United States of America, the unconscious masses of voters in our country may believe he will be able to do something beneficial for them. Just about everyone in the State of Louisiana knows that Bobby Jindal has his eye on the Presidency and whatever he does as Governor of our State is merely a stepping stone to get out of the swamp into the Oval Office. Because the ‘separate but equal’ condition of education in Louisiana has been going on for more than 40 years, superficially changing form very slightly over the years, it is not going to permanently change anytime soon especially though a voucher program that is doomed to failure because the majority of private or parochial schools can see through this smokescreen and are not willing to accept the burden of educating black children from households that do not support the prime values of education. All teachers across the United States know that students who perform well in school are those who have 100% support from their parents. This is not the case for many black children in Louisiana, nor in other impoverished areas of our country. I would like to hear your plan for permanently changing these conditions that plague education and our society all across America because I believe, unlike Bobby Jindal, you have the intelligence, experience in education and heart to dream big.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank you for posting. More of us need to have the courage to speak the truth.
Unfortunately, the trend now is to force ALL students regardless of ethnic background apart from the rich to be members of the underclass. “Speaking the truth” about so-called race issues won’t do squat because that is no longer the issue in public ed. Jindal won’t do one thing. Neither will Obama. Neoliberalism isn’t partisan, but impoverishing everybody else to enrich the few is destroying the country.
This is a beautiful and true essay.
I’ve taught on both shores of the lake and you are right. Thank you for being so aware and for sharing it. I have much to say, too, just haven’t said it yet. Except that I said it in a blog for the year before the storm when I taught at a 9th ward high school (that I’d gone to from a wonderful northshore school), which really tells one person’s (my) experience of what’s really going on here in New Orleans. I’m longing to introduce it somewhere.
It’s all so daunting.
Thank you, again.
The corporations that currently govern our country have decided they like the Third World best.
So that is what they are turning our country into.
There’s your “turn-around”, folks …
“the values of many black parents regarding education, which extended to their children, were not as high as white parents, I think mainly because most of them were not very well educated themselves and could not help their children with homework or did not have time to help them due to other social problems that continue to plague the black community in Louisiana—namely single parent households, drug addiction, poverty, a lack of values shared by the white middle or upper class communities, violence and multiple levels of abuse in the home.”
Beware the generalization….
Yes, “Beware the generalization. . . ” To me it’s certainly not a race, although their are definitely historical roots in racial segregation especially, but not limited to the south. But it is a socio-economic class issue clouded with Calvinistic vibes such as “we worked hard and we deserve what we have, the poor are just lazy ass ignorant fools”
I just came back from a trip to New Orleans. Not only is Jindal destroying education in Louisiana, but he has also defunded the state library system (NOLA will be okay, as it’s under the jurisdiction of the city, but it is widely assumed that rural libraries will greatly suffer and may, in fact, be forced to close), and a French culture program (both to the chagrin of the Lt. Governor) and–as one of the numerous Republican governors who–ego-driven–have refused Medicaid under the Affordable Health Care Act (because–GASP!–it comes from Obama!)–is closing clinics, mental health facilities and other services for low-income citizens. It is astounding to read of all the damage he is wreaking on the people of Louisiana. He is, without a doubt, the worst of the worst.
BTW–publications I read in NOLA have reported that he has been traveling around the country. Word has it that he is interested in the vice presidency. A poll was taken by NOLA’s independent newspaper, Gambit: Who thinks that Bobby Jindal should be Vice President? 50% agreed–because it would get him out of Louisiana.
A very powerful expression of the reality of Louisiana. I do think there are minority families who want the best for their children. There are neighborhoods in the urban areas that don’t have a day or night go by without a shooting or violent crime. Neighbors are trying to come together to make the streets and playgrounds of those neighborhoods safer. This is the kind of environment many of the school children are coming from. So many children are being raised by grandparents. The problems do all seem to back to poverty. Do I know went wrong, I sure don’t, but I wish something soon would happen so things do change. The ed reform is not the answer.
I have issues with the essay. I taught a total of 27 years and all but about 5 of that was in inner city schools. Except for the three years at an institution for the mentally retarded in the late 1970s, all but perhaps 10 of my students were African-American. Plus there were others that I met, knew and were acquainted with, who worked as student aides in my classes, who conversated with me in the morning because they needed a teacher who was non-judgmental or just cared, or for other unknown reasons.
I loved my inner city kids best. I found middle class kids stuck up and entitled for the most part. Their parents often seemed plastic and were often quite willing to throw their weight around. The poor kids’ parents were often delighted just to be treated like people, even if they had trouble remembering my name and called me “the white lady”.
So that is my background. The truth is that AAs don’t have the wrong values to achieve educational success. It is rather that some don’t know what success looks like. I think of my neighbor a hard working woman whose job pays $8 an hour. She is not well educated but graduated from high school and loves to work. She had 3 children. They all have jobs better than hers and all finished high school. The girls have some kind of vocational skills. One is an insurance clerk for a local clinic and the other is in nursing. The guy takes care of the animals at a no-kill shelter and raises pitbulls at home. He loves his work. The grandchildren are generally well behaved and passed their standardized tests. The oldest will graduate next year and there are plans for college. The two babies are in a gifted program.
I have known a good number of middle class black people and their values are no different from those of middle class white people. I have known a number of poor black people and their values are the same as poor whites. Poverty is not a racial issue anymore, if ever it was. Poor education for blacks is only poor if the school system assumes that they cannot learn. This has happened a lot and not just by white teachers but also by black ones. I saw black teachers in Atlanta who assumed that their children from the public housing projects were headed straight to prison and pregnancy even though they themselves were first generation middle class and sometimes grew up in those same projects. Mama had scrubbed floors to send the daughters to college.
Since Martin Luther King, the schools have been more equalized racially, and I say this because I went to segregated public schools, but less so socio-economically. And therein lies the problem. It is called poverty. The better schools in the more expensive neighborhoods get more middle class children, white and black. They also get more people striving to be middle class and who have good values. Atlanta has a public high school built specifically for middle class black children because the middle class black parents in that area were tired of sending their kids to the schools on the opposite side of town to get them a quality education. (They were still not majority white, just majority middle and upper middle class.) Atlanta has long had open enrollment if there is space available.
AAs will move heaven and earth to get their children into college if they do well in school. Poor ones try the best they can but don’t always know what to do. They need a good guidance counselor. Middle class AAs will call in their fraternity and sorority friends and get the necessary connections if they have to. Poverty is not dictated by the color of ones skin, but by one’s values. I think of a young man I worked with briefly who was the campaign manager for a Louisiana candidate for governor against Jindal. He was a student at LSU. His mother died. She had worked in fast food for a long time. He stayed with his grandmother. She lived in the ‘hood in North Baton Rouge. He was working full time, going to school full time and managing a campaign to gain experience and connections. There was no lack of educational values here either. Nor was there any in a student whose mama worked for a major credit reporting agency and saved a respite program for disabled kids from shutting down because they did some lousy bookkeeping. She needed that program for her child. Nor was the single parent of another child who could not take off of work even when her daughter was sick because she had to pay the bills. (She sent a note to let her child lay around one day. I obliged. It was just tonsilitis and she had been to the doctor.) Yes there were some lazy black parents. There were also some lazy white parents and parents of both races who used drugs or drank. But there were others, both poor and middle class, who worked their tails off. And there were some middle class white mothers who were so wrapped up in their hair and make-up that they did not bother with their children who were angry, depressed, or just plain mean.
All children must be taught. The discrimination comes when poor children are taught by Teach for America and the middle class children get real teachers. The discrimination comes when schools assume the color of a person’s skin OR the neighborhood they live in dictates how much they can learn and whether or not they will go to college. It is not about the color of their skin. It is about how much money is in mama’s pocketbook. It used to be about the color of the skin. Yes it did. But after the Civil War, leaders like Mary McLeod Bethune started work on changing that. Now its about expectations of the school system. You take a child where he is and send him as far as he can go. That requires good teachers and a lot of work. A child who is not expected to learn does not learn. The best teachers belong in the worst schools, with a stipend if necessary. Then the kids will learn. And you start in pre-K. I have done it, but it is real hard to teach basic skills in high school. It can be done, but you have a lot of low expectations to undo.
Thank you, twinkie.
I understand how a lot of older teachers, black and white, in the South and elsewhere, processed their experience of desegregation through this lens. The effects of deep poverty on children are similar, regardless of their color, so there are two levels to the dilemma. It’s a tough thing to stand up in front of, every day, and individuals develop complicated ideological rationales to keep going.
It’s their own experience, and they’re sure they’re right about it. They have served and taught the children in front of them, to the best of their ability. They couldn’t see any objective way to transcend the actual material oppression of their black students (or poor white), so they locate the problem in the childrens’ culture. Their prescription is to
“… educate the black community on what it will take for their children to perform well in school and to mentor them until they are able to adopt and embrace a value system that supports their children’s education, and thus, bring them out of the impoverished conditions that keep them like crabs in a bucket …”
as though every poor child reading years below grade level is afflicted by drunken, lazy parents.
I agree with most of what you say, specifically, that the issue is poverty, not race, but you’re wrong about good teachers being able to change this cycle of poverty.
I work in a high-poverty school that (until this year, when many transferred because of the new reforms) was full of experienced, excellent educators. Many of them had been there for 10 to 15 years. Even if you are experienced and excellent, there is little you can do when you have an large class (class sizes of 25 or more in every grade K to 6), no assistant, and many of the children have severe behavior problems that should be addressed with
counseling, which is not available.
I think smaller class sizes would help a great deal, but paying the best teachers more for working in the most depressed schools under these same conditions will not help. In my district, that is where the best teachers were, until these reforms took hold. It actually makes perfect sense: the worst teachers are unable to survive in these environments, and they either transfer to a better-run school, or leave the profession entirely.
So wrong in many ways! The person writing is not Acadien or Creole so they have been lost in translation. What has been done to the educational system in the past five decades speaks volumes, no matter what language you speak first….But I am a NATIVE and I say you have raped us quite enough! We will tend to our community and you will be still invited to the gathering.
This entire conversation if thought provoking. That we have a destructive dictator in Jindal is clear and the students and families of Louisiana are suffering for it. So much research shows that poverty is the root evil of so much. In 2001 – 2003 I taught in a poor rural area Title 1 HS, huge classes, 80% AA, 25% Hispanic, 5% C and the students with few exceptions all shared poverty. Our Ag/shop program built and sold deer stands and they had a waiting list. I think we need metal and wood shop classes and others like this at every school. The parish is still struggling with court ordered desegregation rules in 2012! The well off white parents sent their kids to one of 2 private schools for K-12. White teachers referred to the custodians as “maids”, braided hair was not allowed as it was gang related, literature selected was primarily white experience and breakfast was as crowded as lunch and for 90% of my students these were their meals for the day. We had a few parents who were unable for many reasons to support their child in school. Certain families were considered bad going as far back as the great great grandparents so their kids were judged before they were born. Most parents were amazing in their efforts, even if they couldn’t read, had never graduated high school, worked many jobs and had no car. Hunting season the school was empty. Kids hunted to put meat in the freezer, not for fun.
Some parents accused me of being racist early in the semester, later once they had time to get to know me, many would apologize and most dropped the accusations. Some parents were in jail or prison, all races, drugs are destroying many rural areas, and the Warden of the small local prison and the Sheriff’s Office would let them call me about their child. I also completed training and taught adult literacy and was stunned to find out that 60% of the parish adults over 18yo read at the 6th grade level or below. Many were totally illiterate.
PTO/PTA seem impossible since parents were working long hours and multiple jobs, permanent phones are rare, literacy and poverty make email useless for so many and notes sent home go unread-if they make it. Backpacks eat things! All those frilly fancy words on pink paper with lots of different size fonts,colors and shape also go unread since all that “pretty” make them impossible to read for adults with low reading skills.
Some of the most useful professional development I have ever attended has been on teaching children living in poverty, working with parents who are illiterate and working with ESL families. I found a great deal of what I learned could be used for all my students.
I moved here from a huge city up north and there are major differences in how urban and rural poverty families cope, but it is still poverty.
I enjoyed teaching there and miss it. Now where I teach I have many students and parents who DEMAND everything, make excuses for their child’s disrespect and lack of effort and including apologies from me for homework, high expectations and my lack of effort to “help” their child-who cares about the rest of the class! They attack at the bat of an eye and skip me and go straight to the principal, then to the Superintendent. They badmouth good teachers who are too hard by name, post about us by name on Facebook and Twitter. No way to battle that -once it is out in cyber land it is permanent. And they have NO consequences and teachers have NO legal recourse and the schools don’t help since it is OFF CAMPUS.
This letter is incredibly racist.
I don’t think you actually read this letter, Ms Ravitch. It is an abomination. The fact that she praises you and condemns Jindal is no reason to display this nonsense on your routinely insightful blog.
To the writer of that letter: Yick. Stop trying to pass off ahistorical and misinformed beliefs as fact. It seems you’ve had over forty years to come to your senses; alas, this has not come to pass.
Never mind, Ms Ravitch, if you were referring to the writer of the letter when you wrote the title of this post. The writer’s benighted notion of the state of education in LA is definitely part of what went wrong.
If you’ve ever taught in a high poverty school in Louisiana it is easy to know what parts of the story are based in fact.
Bridget, for what it’s worth, I went to a public high school in Louisiana.
Are you the writer of that letter to Ms Ravitch? If you are, the first problem is you extrapolate a personal experience at a suburban, exurban, or rural school (I don’t know which –you provide no identifiable context aside from “Northshore”) in the immediate aftermath of desegregation to reach a conclusion about all black students in Louisiana post-segregation.
The second problem is this:
“Consequently, all through the 1970’s due to the academic problems, also resulting in behavior issues black students experienced in school system, plus the fact that the majority of students did not have anything to eat before coming to school, they were not making much progress academically. These conditions caused the parents of white students to pull their children out of the public school system and put them in private or parochial schools, so that their children could receive a good education without all the social problems black children brought with them into the classroom. At that time most black children could not attend schools that required tuition because their parents did not have the financial ability to do so since most did not have jobs that paid a middle class wage to do so. In addition, the values of many black parents regarding education, which extended to their children, were not as high as white parents, I think mainly because most of them were not very well educated themselves and could not help their children with homework or did not have time to help them due to other social problems that continue to plague the black community in Louisiana—namely single parent households, drug addiction, poverty, a lack of values shared by the white middle or upper class communities, violence and multiple levels of abuse in the home. The lack of parental support, a stable family structure, and a healthy home environment that supports learning are the main reasons black students are under performing in Louisiana schools today, as well as the inability of many black students to speak standard American English, which many teachers do not insist upon in the classroom out of fear of being called racist at worst or politically incorrect at best.”
This is utter racist garbage, vulgar and outdated culture of poverty tripe. There, I said it.
If you are a still a teacher, may I suggest you find a new profession?
Just to set the record straight. I am not the writer of the original letter. I am not racist. I am still an educator. I don’t really know why you made all of those assumptions based on one sentence. I usually choose not to entertain ignorance. We all have our own experiences and those guide our actions. We can choose to perpetuate racism in our own lives, or not. You can pretend it doesn’t exist, but those who are faced with it know better. I can not speak for those who have had to deal with racism, but I can choose not to participate in racist language or actions.
Many older white people think that way here, and there are ALOT of older white people. Trying to help them change their perceptions is very hard. Many women lived a very very home centric life, and their husband did all the decision making and his viewpoint was the households view point. It is sad but it was and still is accepted here in many areas.
It is living history sitting there describing this in her letter, yes it IS racist then and now, however we can learn and move on and it is informative to acknowledge that in some parts of our country there are many people black and white who have led very sheltered lives, believed what someone else told them to believe, are totally racist and life long church going Christians (even though that seems ironic to me) and THEY VOTE.
They are the grandparents who raised the parents who raised the kids in our classrooms. They sit on school boards, participate in communities and hold prominent positions in towns. They raise children who sometimes model their views after their parents, and they then have kids…and so on.
If they only associate with others who think like them, believe what they believe and rarely travel to areas with people they distrust due to race or religion, they never even try to change their point of view. They are racist.
But many teachers here have to deal with them, and not just in Louisiana! I am white and I have been attacked as racists, so it works both ways, it is problem for anyone who is a teacher, the races just change depending on the part of our country you are in. There are racist people everywhere. Sometimes no matter how much you try you will be accused by certain families as racist. It is horrible to have to deal with. You can’t change their minds and if you are following policies you can’t back down. It gets very ugly sometimes. If you have never dealt with racism and live somewhere very diverse and think that after Brown vs Board of education everything got better letters like this may be shocking to you. In some parts of the USA, people like the letter writer will strike up conversations with you in Wal-mart along the same lines like it is perfectly okay. All you can do is walk away, shaking your head! You try harder in your classroom to support all students and watch for your own personal biases, because we all have them, identify them for what they are, change them and go on. Repeat.
Confused, thanks for speaking the truth. The reader above, BMWeber, makes assumptions about me. Based on one sentence. I chose not to respond at first, but I guess I should set the record straight. No, I did NOT write the original letter. I did attend both private, parochial, and public high schools in Louisiana and didn’t experience any of the things in the original letter. It wasn’t until I became a teacher in a high poverty school that I was confronted with those other realities. Anyone who has not experienced them has no right to say they don’t exist. Yes, WM, I am still in education. I am not racist, but I am confronted with racism on almost a daily basis. It is alive and well, and shows up on all sides of the table. The distrust comes from both people who are racist and those who have experienced the ugly face of racism. Just like Confused, I can only speak for my own actions and I work hard to support my students and not let racism be a part of my own actions. My students and their parents can tell which adults have their best interest at heart. Saying racism doesn’t exist, though, is foolish.
Dear Bridget,
First of all, I did not think you wrote the original letter; however, because you’re in full agreement with its content, I responded as if you were. Second, if you are teaching in a “high poverty school” and also concur with the content of the original letter, then I must say that you’ve learned nothing from your experience except how to rationalize your own acceptance of bogus culture of poverty nonsense. Instead of gaining an actual understanding and appreciation of the well-established link between class and student achievement from your teaching experience –and, consequently, calling for more approaches to teaching that actively compensate for the student performance disparities related to this link– you resort to endorsing the maligning of all black students in Louisiana from poor, working poor, and lower-middle-class families.
Read that letter again. Here is one passage (of several) that would cause any rational person to wretch: “In addition, the values of many black parents regarding education, which extended to their children, were not as high as white parents, I think mainly because most of them were not very well educated themselves and could not help their children with homework or did not have time to help them due to other social problems that continue to plague the black community in Louisiana—namely single parent households, drug addiction, poverty, a lack of values shared by the white middle or upper class communities, violence and multiple levels of abuse in the home. ” I don’t know where to begin, so I won’t –the literature refuting much of this has been around since the 1980s.
I am actually mostly confused by the rest of what you wrote.
Oops! Awful mistake alert: My fingers typed “retch” instead of “wretch.” Sorry, teachers!
Darn it, again. I meant to write “retch” instead of “wretch” in the second paragraph of the last reply to Bridget. Sorry again, teachers!
BM Weber,
The letter writer has already been acknowledged to be racist and was someone who, being racist for her entire life, is expressing her perception. To her, as to many, her perceptions, while racist, are her truth. Bridget’s statements are based on her experiences, and mine are similar, both she and I agree this is wrong AND that we deal with this sort of old-fashioned museum display type of racism daily.
Please explain your statement “well-established link between class and student achievement”. Define class.
Please explain your statement “calling for more approaches to teaching that actively compensate for the student performance disparities related to this link– you resort to endorsing the maligning of all black students in Louisiana from poor, working poor, and lower-middle-class families. ” Define compensate.
You accuse Bridget of “endorsing the maligning of all black students in Louisiana from poor, working poor, and lower-middle-class families. Bridget did nothing of the sort and the writer of the letter is your source of frustration. The letter writer shared her recollections of a time long ago, they aren’t being agreed with by anyone here. Since they are her recollections their only value is in how we the readers respond to what was said. Perhaps, to remind us the presence of racism comes in all forms, from the mouths of young and old, and may exists in a form long thought to have died out. The 40 years of life the letter writer has had since she had those experiences did little to change her perceptions because, I suspect, she had no reasons to change since she may be surrounded by others with the same perceptions.
She has always and always will view life through her very filtered and racist eyes. The writer’s perceptions of the source of the unsuccessful black students in her classroom are the same reasons being given today by people who are isolating themselves from any contact with those they have always hated and always will feel no need to change. Bridget’s point is also my point, it is very very difficult to deal with this form of long term entrenched racism in a student or a student’s family, and this isn’t just about blacks as you mentioned. Racism is an equal opportunity problem and found in some of the nicest appearing people around, which is why it still shocks me to encounter it now.
I’m not frustrated by any of this, Confused. But the more I reread all the responses, the more it seems virtually everyone here is endorsing what the letter writer wrote, to some degree or another.
This is what Bridget wrote right after my first post: “If you’ve ever taught in a high poverty school in Louisiana it is easy to know what parts of the story are based in fact.”
Because it came directly after my first reply, I treated her reply as a response it. If that is not so, then I can maybe see that she was saying something not quite what I initially thought. What she wrote is a bit too ambiguous, however, for me not to treat it as a reply to my reply.
Rereading everything she wrote, I now feel just about everything she’s written is a bit too ambiguous. She should just come out and say clearly what’s “based in fact.”
Define “class”? Define “compensate”? This is a bit weaselly, Confused. Really? Didn’t I refer to the poor, the working poor, and the lower-middle-class (however it is defined –it doesn’t matter for the purpose of all this) in one of my responses? About my use of “compensate”: Dare I say, Jedem nach seinen Bedürfnissen?
I am firmly in the anti-privatization-of-the-public-sphere camp, but I must tell you, after reading many of these responses to this letter and to the Berliner research Ms Ravitch posted yesterday, I’m beginning to feel as though lots of public school teachers are striving to place more and more blame on parents and students, the more entrenched the privatizers become. Just in terms of public relations, this is not a very beneficial position to take.
It may be true, however, that I have shown up in the middle of things, and have missed quite a bit of context from messages Bridget might have left in the past. Still, I cannot shake the feeling she’s in some agreement with the letter writer.
I am myself confused by much of what’s written here and its overall relevance to the continuing vitiation of public schools in Louisiana.
Brian,
It is just a matter of common sense that children who are homeless, hungry, and sick are not going to do as well in school as children who don’t have those problems in their lives. The privatizers don’t offer any answers. They just say more testing, fire more teachers, close more schools. What good does that do?
Diane
I agree with everything you just wrote. My only contention (and it’s not a major one, for now) is that some of the writers here appear to focus lots of energy on the failures of parents and students, to the point where their arguments appear to deflect from what they themselves could possibly do, or hope to do, to help compensate –yes, I am using that word again– for subpar student performance. As I implied in my last reply, the teachers responding here are not doing themselves any favors by appearing to treat these students as hopeless, uneducable drains of their (the teacher’s) time, energy and talent. (By the way, I didn’t think I needed to address here two of the main problems, school underfunding and administrative failure. I see those as given, so please, other readers, don’t write back to mention them.)
I have written before on the issues of poverty in our school settings. I feel it is extremely dangerous when we speak in terms of poverty as being only an issue in the black community. I teach children in poverty, both black and white. Actually, many of the white children at my school are much poorer than the black children here. The problems of poverty don’t discriminate by skin color. The cycle of poverty is hard to break and as teachers, I feel it is NOT our job to ” fix” it. Our job is to educate ALL children who come to us. The danger comes when we become judgmental of certain family cultures and feel our own culture is somehow ” better” . Having worked with families in poverty for 16 years, I have come to appreciate the subtle differences in different types of poverty, and also the hidden rules and supports that are part of their cultures. The difficulty comes when we begin judging their circumstances. That is when racism begins to rear its ugly head. As I have stated before, the danger comes when we pretend racism no longer exists.
I guess my biggest worry in all of these conversations is that our children in poverty will not be afforded a quality education when schools become privatized and profits become the goal. This is because I know that the support systems they need are both costly and time consuming. I know, because I deal with this on a daily basis. My bottom line is student success, not profits.