As usual Brad has activated memories from my past, since I too used Tinker v. Des Moines along with other Supreme Court* cases in which parents sued school districts. My context, however, was quite different from Brad’s and, yet, in so many ways similar.
When I was a Faculty Associate at Claremont Graduate University, the Director of Teacher Education asked me to take on a special assignment of not only supervising our intern teachers at Pasadena High School, but also teachers who had been hired through the fledgling program, Teach for America (TFA). I met with the principal, touted as an innovative visionary from Harvard, and developed a positive working relationship. She had come to California committed to changing the future of non-white students in a school that had been the epicenter for the 1970 court ordered desegregation ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Manuel Real. Nearly 20 years after Brown v. Board of Education, stating “separate is not equal,” Real’s finding came as an indictment of practices of the Pasadena Board of Education who had ”knowingly assigned” blacks and whites to separate high schools. The principal and I met frequently to discuss and strategize how to better support the enthusiastic academic types from TFA now thrown into urban classrooms. However, for some teaching was not really a career, just an opportunity to try it on or perhaps long enough to get their student loans forgiven which was only available if supported by districts. Others flourished and found education to be their passion, but not as teachers.
The principal also wanted to address the drop out problem which was predominantly non-white students and English Learners. The vision was to develop a Center for Independent Studies as a personalized learning environment with a student teacher ratio of 1-25. I was recruited with another colleague with work-study experience to design the school-within-a school in 1989. There were just two of us and a Spanish speaking paraprofessional. For me the learning was intense and deep. What I quickly discovered was that students, who were referred to CIS and in danger of not graduating because of credit deficiency, were not just incredibly talented, but had been systematically disenfranchised by policies, practices and mindsets that were non-responsive to them, their families, and the conditions of their lives. After two years, I had an opportunity to go to the main campus as the Lead Teacher in one of the five Houses of the newly re-structured high school of 2500 students. My goal was to better understand the system that, from my limited view, was broken.
The restructured high school was shaped by the 1990s research, from both Harvard and Stanford, and advocated for personalizing large comprehensive high schools. The five smaller houses of 500 students with teams of teachers, used a structural approach which then became another sorting mechanism. Students astutely wise-cracked: “Oh, that House has all the smart kids.” They knew the students in one House had been programmed by the counselors, at the bidding of parents, into Honors courses.
This experience helped me see that the language of “reform” (now labeled “innovation” or “school choice”), is generally never disruptive of the status quo. Bureaucratic institutions make structural changes while rarely addressing the fundamental questions of organizational culture, values, beliefs, social and economic justice. My view is that changing labels on an organizational chart generally increases hierarchy and maintains privilege by the few over the many. This is not to suggest that I am a fan of “mobocracy” or a theocratic oligarchy based on religious belief or worse yet, ill-conceived quick-fix programs voted into existence by a simple majority. I believe in the human capacity for dialogue and civil discourse based on the skillful practice of questioning all ideas, concepts, policies and practices. Why? To uncover and elucidate both the implications and unintended consequences of decisions that impact those who are most vulnerable in our communities.
I re-located to Utah nearly twenty years ago because I was invited by a Superintendent to design a high school summit addressing the issue of inequitable access to early college experiences for non-white and low income students. Fast forward 20 years and I am now on a committee at the direction of the Utah State Board to develop a plan to – yes, you guessed it – to remediate the problem of inequitable access to and success for under- represented students in early college course work.
Like Bill Murray in the film Ground Hog Day, I seem to be stuck an never-ending, recursive loop. My role, administrator or teacher, makes no difference in any system of schooling; and during my career I have worked in a variety of settings: traditional public, alternative, charter, and parochial. So what do I personally make of this ongoing conundrum? Our history, in some ways, has solidified our beliefs about who “deserves” access to quality learning experiences, despite the current rhetoric of “educational equity.”
In my work with one of Utah’s Assistant Attorney Generals, we have explored the history of what a “Free Appropriate Public Education”really means for Utah children. This new learning opportunity about the history of public education has been shaped by another court case: the 1994 permanent injunction, brilliantly written by a Utah judge in response to a certified class action suit by families in five Utah school districts on behalf of their children’s right to educational opportunities despite economic hardships.
From the beginning of the Republic, I did not use “democracy” on purpose, the privilege of education was seen to be best suited for the children of wealthy landowners in New England since they attended private academies or could afford tutors. The common-schools crusade of the 1830s was conceived as a vehicle to maintain “moral values considered essential to the American social order:” that is, industriousness, frugality and personal responsibility – values inherited from the Puritans. By 1850 educational reformers led by Horace Mann attempted to generate a common commitment to educating the “huddled masses.” However, for the wealthy classes the idea of taxing the citizenry in order to finance the education of working-class and poor children was seen as not just wasteful, but an infringement on property rights. Labor reformers favored common schools but resented the stigma of “pauper” or “charity” schools because they looked at education as a means to reverse the growing inequality which they considered the main threat to society. Does this sound familiar?
Between 1850-1920, the increasing diversity from immigration provided the impetus for compulsory attendance laws. During the same period a confluence of three pernicious ideas solidified a dominant viewpoint about who deserves a quality education:
1) Spencer’s Social Darwinism gave birth to America’s Eugenics movement resulting in the forced sterilization of poor women and women of color, legalized by a 1927, 8-1 Supreme Court ruling, Buck v. Bell: paving the way for Nazi Germany’s justification for genocide;
2) Taylor’s Scientific Management theories influenced our fascination with the language of “efficiency” and mechanized technologies to increase ROI – Return on Investment for stockholders; and,
3) Binet’s I.Q. test, commissioned by the French government, adapted by Stanford and used by the United States military to determine who was best qualified to be officers in World War I and those suited for trench warfare.
This kind of deterministic thinking about who deserves a good life and who has equitable access begins as early as pre-natal healthcare and available housing for homeless families and their children. Then it continues as we use systems to track students into courses best suited for their abilities. This convergence of ideas along with our own insecurities, fueled by fear of those not like us, have been used by demagogues in every country, not just ours. These unchallenged assumptions about innate abilities, the value of IQ, and inferior classes based on conditions of birth, ZIP code, or economic status have shaped policies and practices that legitimize divisive discourse and political posturing whether on social media or in governing bodies from Poland and India to Myanmar and Moscow, from the Knesset to the Bundestag. The antidote?
Recent advances made in neuroscience and the empirical validation of the brain’s plasticity, provide hope for all of us: starting with the groundbreaking research of Davidson and Begley in 2012 with The Emotional Life of the Brain: How its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel and Live – And How You Can Change Them. In a 2016 book, Peak: Secrets of the Science of Expertise by Ericsson and Pool, recommended to me by a Utah State Senator, challenges our beliefs about innate abilities by articulating a common sense approach: Purposeful and deliberate practice, focused on a specific goal with feedback from a teacher or coach who has experience with getting around barriers. In the 2016 edited collection by Stanford’s Shelley Goldman and Smith College’s Zaza Kabayadondo, there are multiple examples of children and youth using the Design Thinking Process, including empathy mapping, to create fast prototypes with feedback from “clients” by practicing the skills for social entrepreneurship. These references provide us with opportunities to re-think a wide range of educational settings and how learning happens for children and youth in the 21st century. The commonality among the previous resources is that learning is social and we have the power to change; we make our future by collective action in the present.
With Brad and many other colleagues across the country, including members of state and local school boards as well as state legislators, I agree that education for equity and excellence must be our priority. This is a common purpose. However, the way in which we might accomplish this monumental task can be easily derailed by ideology, doctrine, or dogma. This means we must listen care-fully to each other and always question.
I make no apologies for my lifelong commitment as an advocate for free, universal public education as a RIGHT of each child, especially those who have been systematically disenfranchised along with their families and communities. My commitment has been shaped by what I believe the purpose of education is. I stand with one of my heroes, James Baldwin, and quote his brilliant 1963 essay, A Talk to Teachers: “The purpose of education is to ask questions of the universe and then to learn to live with the questions.” The “learning to live” is our task for ourselves and our children.
NOTES:
*New Jersey v. TLO (1985); and, Hazelwood School District v. Kulhmeier (1988)
Desegregation of Pasadena Schools – 12 Years later: https://www.csmonitor.com/1983/0128/012850.html
Tinsley v Palo Alto Unified School District
https://www.leagle.com/decision/197996291calapp3d8711890
Tinsley Desegregation – 22 years later
http://www.mercurynews.com/2010/02/23/tinsley-program-still-attracting-students-22-years-later/
Center for Independent Study: https://www.pusd.us/Page/1172
Educational Reform of 1990s (Harvard) – Ted Sizer and the Coalition of Essential Schools
Stanford’s Center for Research on the Context of Teaching
http://web.stanford.edu/group/suse-crc/cgi-bin/drupal/
Why NCLB Failed & How Can States Avoid Same Mistakes: Christensen Institute
https://www.christenseninstitute.org/blog/nclb-failed-states-can-avoid-making-mistakes-essa/
James Baldwin, A Talk to Teachers from the Saturday Review, 1963
Across The Divide: A Dialogue 