How many of us have hear time and time again, Our School must fix the “Achievement Gap” by our public leadership? These policies are based on a belief that public schools should shoulder the blame for the "achievement gap" between poor and minority students and the rest of the student population. But the new policy report argues that out-of-school factors are the real culprit--and that if those factors are not addressed, it will be impossible for schools to meet the demands made of them.
No Child Left Behind Act, which imposed stiff accountability measures on schools in return for federal aid. NCLB requires public schools to demonstrate "adequate yearly progress" toward the eventual elimination of gaps in achievement among all demographic groups of students and imposes a variety of sanctions if they fall short.
Education Secretary Duncan said that those who would use the social ills of poor children as an excuse for not educating them "are part of the problem. I agrees"but, those who point to schools as an excuse for failure to address social ills are equally at fault."
A half-dozen out-of-school factors that have been clearly linked to lower achievement among poor and minority-group students: birth weight and non-genetic parental influences; medical care; food insecurity; environmental pollution; family breakdown and stress; and neighborhood norms and conditions. Additionally, a seventh factor: extended learning opportunities in the form of summer programs, after-school programs, and pre-school programs. Access to these resources by poor and minority students could help mitigate the effects of the other six factors
I’m calling for an approach to school improvement that would demand "a reasonable level of societal accountability for children's physical and mental health and safety."
In the midst of this discussion is a major irritant for me: The way people tend to default to the parental engagement argument to explain the achievement gaps between white kids in more affluent areas and poor Black children living in struggling communities. “Don’t bother to put more money in schools until parents start raising their children,” they say.
The African American community is not above being called on the carpet because they tend to default to parental engagement (a.k.a., personal responsibility) without trying to understand or solve the funding problem.
Poor parenting, in fact, is a direct result of poor education. Parents of failing students oftentimes attended some of those same failing schools, and graduated to a life of poverty and social ills if they graduated at all. When adults have to work two to three low-paying jobs to keep a roof over head, or cannot read well or understand math themselves, how can they help their children do better in school?
As long as the failure of our children to graduate from high school or go on to graduate from college can be blamed on a lack of parental responsibility, or lack of individual responsibility, policies will be slow to change. It’s your fault, or it’s your mama’s fault or your daddy’s fault you didn’t graduate, right? Wrong.
Now, I do believe that children have a better shot of growing up to be well educated and responsible members of society when they have engaged parents and other adult mentors, when they are taught to reach for the stars but also to respect boundaries. But a child walking hand-in-hand in the desert with the loving gaze of a mother and a father might still die of thirst.
I guess what I’m trying to say is personal responsibility is something we all should aspire to. If you have children, then you should try to be the best parent that you can be. But to put the onus solely on parents to narrow the education achievement gaps that correspond directly to race and improper funding is merely a distraction away from doing the right thing.
The way I see it, parental engagement without equal opportunity and equal access to a world-class education is a smokescreen. In North Carolina, the African American community has got to stand up and demand education funding reform. We owe it to our children to fight to give them an equal chance to succeed before the world tells them it’s their fault they failed.
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