These anecdotes are real, and these struggles against poverty really can be roadblocks to our kids' achievement. But what I can't get behind is the attitude that I should allow these roadblocks to dictate my students' future. A student recently came in having missed several days of school because her family needed to suddenly move out of their apartment and into her cousin's house nearby. It's true that this incident puts her behind, and there isn't much that our school could have done to prevent it. And it's true that shouting the words, "No excuses!" in her face will not bring her up to speed. But giving her reading assignments, video resources, and tutoring time will. And establishing a culture that she cannot allow incidents like this to crush her dreams of being an architect or a doctor will as well.4. Charters, high-stakes tests, merit pay for teachers and closing schools are not the answer; addressing poverty and racism is.Schools are expected to make up for inequities that are bigger than we are, and shutting a school down because it serves poor kids and kids of color isn’t the answer. I’m a teacher. I can do a lot, and I have high expectations for my students. Homelessness, lack of living wage work, lack of affordable housing, the trauma of deep poverty and being young and preyed upon by adults who abuse their power and position are bigger than my willingness to work harder. I can’t tell a kid, “No excuses!” when the reason she’s been out of school for two weeks is because her boyfriend forced her into doing sex work in another city. Or her family is living out of a car. There are many sad and angering stories like this and the stories are more prevalent in some schools than in others. What makes me livid is the idea that these problems can be fixed by creating a “college-going culture” in schools, or by fining students for disciplinary infractions, as some charters in Chicago have done. The thing is, class and race are still stronger predictors of student success than teachers or schools alone.
It's true that schools and teachers are not fully (or even mostly) to blame for the achievement gap. But we have the power and potential to meaningfully improve outcomes for our students if we regularly make and test improvements to the way we educate them. We know that there are both district schools and charters that are changing the odds for kids in high-need communities. Some of the practices from those schools can be painful to implement, but failing to implement them is an acceptance that we will allow our schools to plow forward with results that put our students at a drastic disadvantage in life. Not every program works in every circumstance, but a failure due to experimentation is surely better than a failure from maintaining the status quo.
For our students, meeting a high bar is harder when you're pushing against the weight of poverty and institutional racism. But to tell another generation of kids to sit on the sidelines and wait while we sort out the problems of wealth inequality and implicit bias is not acceptable. Creating cultures of high achievement and the expectation that every student can and will attend college is critical to helping our kids take on that challenge. With some of our students, we may fail to motivate those big efforts that are required. But I really hope that I can't use their income or ethnicity to predict which ones.
