I just finished reading a new book which I highly recommend to anyone interested in education in the US:
The Children in Room E4, by Susan Eaton. Eaton is a journalist with an education degree who spent several years following kids in the Hartford Public Schools. As she describes it, Hartford is the poorest city in the richest state in the country.
She also follows the course of a lawsuit filed against the state of Connecticut,
Sheff v. O'Neill, which claims that the de facto school segregation which exists in Connecticut is unconstitutional because it denies equal educational opportunity to all, as specified in the state constitution. The case, of course, drags on for years and years, and even when the plaintiffs win in court, they seldom win much in practice. A few more magnet schools get created, a few programs allow a few more kids to transfer from inner-city schools to suburban schools, but basically, Connecticut schools are just as segregated as ever. Connecticut is not unique in this situation; some sixty years after
Brown v. Board, many schools are as segregated as ever.
Unlike the overt racism behind the de jure segregation in schools that existed before
Brown, the de facto segregation of today has more subtle roots. White flight to the suburbs has been supported by policy, from local zoning regulations in the suburbs to FHA loans to the highway system, all encouraging the model of a single-family home, during a period of time when African-Americans were less likely to be hired for the job that would enable them to pursue that American Dream, and even if they had the money, were often subtly or not so subtly discouraged from moving to a "white" neighborhood.
With the demise of the bussing desegregation programs of the 60's and 70's, this housing segregation leads to school resegregation. "Local control" and "neighborhood schools" are the mantra of today, and there are many reasons why both are a good thing. However wonderful their benefits are, though, they still come at a cost, and that cost is being paid by poor, minority children. Local control and neighborhood schools lock these children into environments with fewer resources and little to no exposure to a different way of life.
Eaton is most compelling when she focusses on the children in Ms. Luddy's class at Simpson-Waverly Elementary School. Luddy is a dedicated, veteran teacher, the kind of teacher any school would be delighted to have on staff. In addition to all the usual heart-breaking stories about the children, though, you really see the impact of the latest fads in educational reform: highly-scripted curricula, standards, and high-stakes testing. The children spend two years with Ms. Luddy, third and fourth grade, and virtually all of their time in the classroom, plus more time after school, on weekends, and during the summer, is spent preparing for the CMT, the Connecticut Mastery Test, taken by all 4th graders in Connecticut.
All that work did pay off; Simpson-Waverly had tests scores much better than would be expected given their demographics, and in some cases, better than even most suburban schools. In writing, 80% of the 4th graders at Simpson-Waverly met the state's writing goal. But what about the cost? Science, social studies, art, physical education, recess - all had to be sacrificed in order to focus on the test subjects. The test subjects, reading, math, and writing, had all the life drained out of them, reduced to worksheets and writing formulas and proscribed reading materials, stripped to the basics for what the CMT is testing.
Affluent suburban districts aren't immune from this either, though they don't have to spend as much time on test prep. The writing curriculum in my daughter's suburban neighborhood school is just as formulaic and mind-numbing and lifeless as the writing curriculum in the book, and a friend of mine who teaches in a wealthy, very high test scores district in California told me her district just adopted the same curriculum. These new curricula, in reading, in math, in writing, are an attempt to "teacher-proof" instruction. The specificity of the scripts, even down to the gestures the teacher should use, are demeaning to a professional teacher.
While recess and science and all those "extras" still exist at my daughter's school, those students who fail to meet the standard on the WASL get pulled out during those time periods to do more prep for the test. There's no recognition of different ways of learning, no conception of developmental readiness, and no understanding of how people actually learn evident in these approaches; just keep pounding until the test is passed.
In theory, high standards and testing to evaluate whether students are achieving them sound like good things, but in practice, rather than just highlighting the achievement gap, the process can actually exacerbate the achievement gap. Not only do a focus on testing remove all the passion and love for learning from school, but test scores become a key factor in housing choices, driving up the price of housing near more desirable schools, and further segregating our schools, racially, ethnically, economically. Given that these costs are disproportionately paid by the underclass, though, the political will to change anything is small. Everybody wants inner-city schools to be better, but only as long as it doesn't cost them anything.
