TECHNOS

July 20, 2008

TECHNOS QUARTERLY Fall 1997 Vol. 6 No. 3

Toward Equity: Bringing the Community into the School

By Judith A. Billings

On The Tonight Show, Johnny Carson used to slip into the persona of Carnac the Magnificent, a wise swami who, in turban and cape, would sagely deliver an answer and then, touching an envelope to his forehead, divine what the question had been. Today's answer consists of just one word: education. And it doesn't take a mind reader to figure out the question: what one common activity holds the key to success for individuals and for society?

Most people would agree that a high-quality education for all children would help solve a myriad of contemporary problems. In poll after poll, the American public places education at the top of its list of crucial concerns, even professing a willingness to pay more taxes if the revenue were dedicated to education.

But we are a nation that too often falls short when it comes to following through with the actions needed to bring our words to life. We say we are dedicated to the concepts of equality, educational excellence, and a quality of life second to none. We love to see the plump, smiling faces of children on greeting cards, in advertisements, in our neighborhoods. Most people would nod agreement that, shopworn as they are, the clich's are indeed true: children are our most precious resource; children are our future—and their future is inextricably tied to the quality of their education and their lives. If this truly is what we believe, however, we have a strange way of demonstrating consistent commitment to taking care of all our children.

THEY ARE OUR CHILDREN
This nation has, in the kindest characterization, an appallingly uneven record in ensuring that every child is loved, nurtured, cared for, and given reason to hope, to learn, to succeed personally and professionally.

We shake our heads in dismay at stories of children who are abused, hungry, or homeless, schooled in buildings that are crumbling, with inadequate learning materials, in neighborhoods where used syringes, drug dealers, and guns are much more common than computers—and then we withdraw support for health care, training, food, child care, and school repair and maintenance from families that are struggling to provide for their children.

We have not been able to get beyond the rhetoric and internalize the truth that these children are not “theirs”—they are our children. Unless we are willing to help them all be successful, we fail in our responsibilities to children of privilege as well as to those who need us.

It is not that we do not know that education is the answer or that we do not truly believe it is our top public priority. We just seem to have a difficult time applying our money and our will to do the right thing to achieve what we say matters most.

The crisis reaction—to Sputnik in 1957 and The Nation at Risk in 1983—spurred investment in science and math education, accompanied by appropriate hand-wringing, criticism of the “education establishment,” and well-intentioned promises to do better, to expect more. But it did little to even the opportunities for all children and in many instances even widened the gap between the educational haves and have nots.

COPING WITH SOCIETY'S PROBLEMS
Over the past decade, educators, legislators, parents, and interested citizens throughout the nation have engaged in healthy debate, all seeking solutions to the increasingly complex educational puzzle. As a result, particularly in the past five years, we have launched some promising educational initiatives.

We have developed innovative approaches to teaching and learning—team and cross-age teaching, integrated vocational/academic learning, school-to-work programs, alternative learning sites, magnet schools, group and project learning, technological devices and opportunities that put young people in touch with the world in minutes. Students are expected to be able to demonstrate their learning through measured performance tasks that correlate with higher standards. But high standards and new assessments by themselves are not enough. These new ideas will not be effective without the participation of concerned people who are willing to help.

Our educational institutions are expected to deal with increasing ethnic and racial diversity, the socioeconomic complexities of families, and expensive but critical learning materials, most of the time without adequate resources. Schools are left to cope with the problems of impoverished children who are less healthy, have less support at home and, not surprisingly, are often unprepared to learn.

In addition, these children lack access to current and developing technology that is the key to leveling the educational playing field for all young people. The same conditions that generally limit children's opportunities also severely limit their access to computers, learning progress, and technological literacy. In a neighborhood that can't afford computers for its schools, most homes are without them as well. So our learning game continues to leave behind the very children who most need help to catch up and to acquire skills for lifelong learning.

We know that 90 percent of a student's life through the 12th grade is spent outside the classroom. Thus if schools are to succeed, we need to provide healthy and stable home and community environments.

We know, too, how critical the early home years are in children's lives. Yet of the roughly 45 million children in our schools, more than five million live in poverty, more than six million are not proficient in English, and more than a million are disabled by drugs, including alcohol.

We know that one third of children today are born to unwed mothers and that this proportion is expected to increase soon after the turn of the century.

And we know about the record levels of physical and sexual child abuse, child homelessness, and young people with guns and other dangerous weapons who threaten our schools and society.

A WEB OF SUPPORT
Conditions such as the ones just listed must lead to a broadening of the education debate because they threaten our schools' ability to retain and adequately educate a growing number of students.

The deterioration of the family clearly deprives far too many students of the kind of parental guidance and support they need for effective learning. But we cannot legislate good parenting. And when parents fail their children, a strong outside survival network must be in place to provide the necessary support, comfort, and hope.

As national and state policy or as a matter of conscience, we have not yet established such a web of support for children in need. It is not that we are a nation of uncaring, selfish people; we respond to human crises with swift and incredible generosity. But it often seems that the children who need us most are invisible to policymakers.

Or perhaps it is that, hearing one story at a time, we somehow can't seem to recognize the enormity of the problem. We should be more easily stirred to action when we see increasing numbers of children who suffer daily from the effects of neglect, abuse, poverty, and intolerance than when we see the effects of floods, fires, or tornadoes. Natural disasters are something over which we have little control, but we can do something about children's lives.

It's too easy to play the ought to/if only game—“if only teenagers wouldn't get pregnant and have babies”; “parents ought to feed their children, talk to them, teach them values”; “students ought to stay in school instead of dropping out.” But one of the things we really ought to know is that if we're going to solve a problem, we have to begin where we are, with what is.

CENTERING THE SCHOOLS
Education is the answer in so many exciting ways. Schools, for example, should become neighborhood learning and activity centers, not only for children but also for parents and other community members.

The surest way to garner support for children's education is to make school a place where adults also feel welcome, where they can see their tax dollars at work, where parents share in a true partnership with the educators on behalf of their children. If we kept schools open year-round and from early morning into the evening, the neighborhood center concept could quickly become the norm.

One of the greatest benefits of this concept for both generations is the opportunity for young people to teach adults and to display what they're learning. Accessible schools provide community members an opportunity to be mentors, role models, counselors, and friends to students and their parents. Students begin to understand what it means to be a member of the community, to know that there are people who care about them.

Today, approximately 75 percent of adults have no school-age children. Accessible schools let them learn about and get to know the wonderful cultural mix of children who are our future artists, engineers, managers, heavy equipment operators, medical personnel, salespeople, teachers, legislators, print and media reporters, pilots, generals, attorneys—as well as those who will fill the as-yet-unknown and even unimagined jobs that will move this nation through the next century.

A common objection to the concept of accessible schools is cost: heat, lights, air conditioning, maintenance, hiring persons other than the educators to provide adult supervision and nurturing. Is it too great a cost? What does it cost to police the streets, run juvenile correction facilities, pay for remedial education, train young people who have no salable skills because traditional school did not meet their needs and they fled the system?

It costs us between $30,000 and $36,000 to keep one person in prison for one year. The national average cost of keeping a student in school for a year is $5,000 to $6,000. The important matter to note here, however, is not the difference of a few thousand dollars; it is the difference between cost and investment.

FIRST, REFORM THE COMMUNITY
Conditions in the United States are such today that if public education is to provide a quality education for all students irrespective of life circumstances, it will require community reform, not merely academic or school reform. As a 1992 Carnegie Foundation special report stated, “The evidence is overwhelming that the crises in education relate not just to school governance but to pathologies that surround the schools.”

More than a place to learn academic subjects, tomorrow's schools must be at the heart of our communities. But they will not be able to fulfill this role in the 21st century if they were designed for the 20th century. We are setting out to remake our teaching and learning system so that it will serve children well into the future. As part of that we must also recognize that school is only one aspect of education, only one place to learn.

There is a part here for everyone to play. In the future we will need more than just increased parental involvement in schools. We will need the involvement of the entire community. Those students with little or no adult support and encouragement, whose living conditions make simple survival difficult, are unlikely to prosper in a tough academic environment.

The harsh truth is that in many communities the family is a far more imperiled institution than the school, and teachers are being asked to do what parents have not been able to accomplish. Without our willingness to implement solutions that are based on an understanding of the complex and interrelated problems besetting children today, the gaps we want to close could instead very easily widen.

EXPEDIENCY—OR EQUITY?
If we are going to raise the achievement bar, will we be wise enough to raise the level of resources? Will we finally match our rhetoric with action? Will we truly value all children more than political expediency, personal comfort, and power?

This time the questions do not come with preformed answers. They sit as challenges facing a nation rich enough and powerful enough to meet them—but seemingly unwilling to do so.

Many of us believe that public education is essential to our nation, the foundation of our democracy, the medicine for our ills—the answer. We are encouraged that public education holds the high priority which, pollsters assure us, it has in the minds of most Americans. We can only hope that equitable educational opportunity for all children will gain the same priority in their hearts—and in their actions.

Judith A. Billings, an educator for 36 years, twice won election (1988 and 1992) as Washington State's superintendent of public instruction. A member of the Agency for Instructional Technology's Board of Directors, she now runs a private consulting service, Targeted Alliances, that emphasizes equal opportunity for high-risk students and HIV/AIDS education. Billings announced in 1996 that she had contracted HIV from donor sperm while undergoing artificial insemination in the early 1980s. Since then she has been an inspirational speaker on AIDS prevention, treatment, and service to many school, community, and professional groups. She may be reached at dcbjab@aol.com.