A well-designed and thoughtful tri-fold mailer, entitled “The Cleveland Plan, Four-Year Strategy for the Transformation of Cleveland Schools,” arrived at my home yesterday, and it set forth a comprehensive vision of how the $63 million that will be generated by the passage of the recent school levy will be leveraged to solve our persistently poor public educational outcomes. Go to: http://CMSDNet.net.
While perusing it I began to take hope that real, systemic change was about to occur in our beleaguered — but nonetheless loved — school system … one that I’m proudly a product of. East Tech, Class of ‘61 (no, not 1861!), class president, no less … Go Scarabs!
But my hopes were soon dashed and reality once again set in when I read the report of the results of Washington DC’s five-year plan (which was initiated in 2007, with the outcomes made public on Dec. 17). Despite Herculean efforts by the very bright folks who operate the DC public school system, reading and math scores for third-graders, in spite of an infusion of money, didn’t budge over the five years … not one bit.
“We are spending way too much effort and money in education reform not to see results,” said HyeSook Chung, the executive director of the nonprofit DC Action for Children, the compiler of the report.
So the first question that comes to mind is: What are we going to do differently or better with our plan than the DC school system did with theirs? For our schools to succeed where theirs failed would have to mean either our administrators are pretty smart … or the folks in DC are pretty dumb. But, the fact is, I don’t believe either to be true. What I think will happen is … our results — five years down the road — will pretty much mirror the results announced on Dec. 18 regarding DC schools: Failure to improve.
The simple fact is, there are no magical solutions when it comes to fixing public schools, no arcane miracle cures are out there just waiting to be discovered. What one administrator in one district knows, so too does another in any other part of the country … that’s why superintendents are so readily interchangeable. Indeed, most inner-city districts in America obtain pretty much the same outcomes — no matter how much money is spent trying to fix the problem.
But the problem, the reason for failure, isn’t solely or even mainly with the schools … the problem started well before the child arrives at the schoolhouse door, and it’s a problem no four- or five-year plan — no matter how well thought out and executed — can overcome.
It’s the problem of children that have not been properly prepared to enter kindergarten. Sadly, for some kids their first day at school might be the first time they’ve ever held a book of their own in their small hands. As outlandish as that sounds, in my work in prisoner reentry (and even before, as a kid growing up in one of the worse neighborhoods in Cleveland), I’ve actually been in homes in some neighborhoods where no signs of books or any other educationally-enriching experiences were present, or even appeared to have ever been present. And this wasn’t just an off-day in these households … this was the norm, a way of life.
The problem of course is, most of you folks reading this have never been in such an environment (neither, for that matter, have many of the school teachers or officials who are tasked with solving the problems of the unprepared children that have been dumped on them), but trust me, I have.
We are expecting children coming from backgrounds and family situations where little, if any, value is placed on education … to enter kindergarten and be ready and eager to learn — in spite of the fact history has proven over and over again this simply can not and does not work.
Now, I’m not into beating up on disadvantaged parents … most of them are stretched to their physical, financial and mental limits simply attempting to feed and clothe their progeny … while keeping a safe and secure roof over their heads. In many cases these parents were failed by their parents, who in turn, were failed by theirs — generation upon generation, all the way back to the door of that slave cabin … during a time when — for blacks — learning to read was against the law.
While some slaves surreptitiously learned to read and taught their children (thus creating the foundation for the black middle-class) … other slaves were too obedient and remained illiterate, and these families have passed their negative values and positive fears down from one generation to the next … to this very day. The new slave cabins are the projects.
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Thankfully, a successful model of what should be done to assist these undereducated families in facing their challenges already exists, and it’s been working — empirically proving itself — for a couple of decades now. And yes, it could work here … indeed, some folks are already attempting to implement a version of it.
It’s called the Harlem Children’s Zone, and its director, Geoffrey Canada, isn’t a magician or a wizard … he’s simply a man bright enough to start with the child at the appropriate time and place: The beginning. In fact, his programs start even before the beginning — he gives classes to expectant mothers on nutrition and child care; simple things like how to change a diaper. While this type of training might seem rather mundane for those raised in better circumstances, trust me, in some cases it’s completely necessary.
Canada’s success (and this is why I love what he does) has vividly demonstrated there’s nothing genetically wrong with people of color; he’s been fishing in this exact same gene pool for years, accepting all comers without cherry-picking … and has helped disadvantaged parents to turn out college graduates at an astoundingly high rate.
The evidence is abundantly clear: Children from homes devoid of books, where learning isn’t made a priority (and made fun), will start their educational careers a number of steps behind other children, and just as the DC study indicates, there’s little we can do — no matter how well designed and carried out our efforts — to help them catch up. Once the die of future failure has been cast, it sets too firmly well before the child enters school.
So the obvious question is … why not start the child off right in the first place?
We currently send nurses into homes of the underprivileged to assure the physical health of newborns … but Kurt Karakul, the executive director of the Third Federal Foundation, asks: why not send tutors into these homes to assure the child’s educational health soon after … to help establish an environment that will lead to eventual success in the educational arena … and have tutors stay with the parent and child until the mission is accomplished? Indeed, the parent, in some cases, will be receiving tutoring right along with their child, but that’s all for the better.
While conservatives (and the mean-spirited) posit that this is something parents should be doing on their own for their children, the question is, how can they do something they don’t know how to do … something that was never taught to them? We’re expecting parents — who were failed themselves — to turn their children into success stories. Sure, it does happen, but just not nearly often enough. We might as well ask these undereducated parents to build a new space shuttle in their spare time while they’re at it … they’d have just as good a chance of accomplishing that mission as they have of turning out a scholar, academician … or in many cases even a high school graduate.
Our nationwide dismal test results and high-school dropout rates are proof positive basic educational goals are not set in far too many families, and we simply have to help them. To those who say we can’t replicate Canada’s success (initially, on a smaller scale), I say “we simply must.” And for those who say we can’t afford to initiate such programs I say “of course we can.”
As the T-shirt legend says: “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”
We spend too much of our national treasure (upwards of $65 billion annually) to guard, house and feed the failures of our current educational system in prisons all across the country, at a rate of roughly $25,000 per year, per prisoner … and we do so without blinking an eye. The prison/industrial complex and right-wing politicians have convinced us these expenditures are necessary … in spite of the fact we’re over-spending by close to 75 percent … money that could be better used for education.
One tutor could keep as many as 30 or 40 kids out of the criminal justice system, eventually saving taxpayers over $750,000 per year in direct costs; and the multiplier effect of having more educated, working taxpayers, instead of more incarcerated tax takers, is incalculable.
It’s either we’re going to pay a little more now to solve and prevent the problem, or we’re going to pay a whole lot more later trying to fix it. For us, as a society, to take the latter course borders on criminality … actually akin to behavior perilously close to being traitorous — considering the overall damage our persistent nonfeasance does to the Republic.
We simply can’t continue on with an educational system set up to begin its job in kindergarten when we know that by this time it’s far too late … that too many kids will fail. We have to change the national educational conversation to incorporate new realities.
Sadly, education politics being what they are in America, Geoffrey Canada’s success sometimes is ignored … or marginalized as heretical … simply because he goes outside traditional boundaries and explodes some myths in the process. He was one of the first people in the country to call for teacher accountability … something all school districts are bargaining with teachers’ unions over. It’s been tough, but now the rank and file understand things can’t keep going on as they have in the past … where the biggest concern of teachers was preserving their three months off each year and being the first one out the door when the last bell rings.
As progressives move to take the reigns of political power in America we simply have to find ways to change the educational culture; we have to find the political will to redesign how education (from birth to kindergarten) is carried out in this country … and here’s the great thing: We’ll only have to do it for one generation to break the cycle of low goals and lower expectations.
The alternative is to do nothing; in which case we here in Cleveland should take all of that $63 million, put it in one big pile, and light a match to it. Unless we help our schools by giving them better prepared students to work with, the best made educational plans will continually come up short, and expensively so. Our schools, as currently configured, simply can’t do it alone. We simply have to change the way children from the underclass are prepared for kindergarten. All we have to do is start at the beginning.
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://www.neighborhoodsolutionsinc.com.
2 Responses to “MANSFIELD: Starting at the Beginning”
MARTY HANDFINGER
AHMEN! AHMEN! AHMEN!
Having been a frustrated 5th grade teacher – I can agree completely.
Let’s also work on productive jobs for the parents to give them good nutritious food and pass on a culture of achievement.
bob
LUV mr.EDENs title above…and His sense of perception…SEEN some LONGER,’innovative’ titles then that on biz cards but NOT many…