Silver screens across the nation will soon be buzzing with “Waiting for Superman” directed by Davis Guggenheim and the team that brought us “An Inconvenient Truth.” Backed by media powerhouses like Oprah, the film has the potential to change the nation’s perspective of education and what needs to be done. While this is promising, conspicuously absent from these bubbling discussions on changing education is the issue of race. The absence of race is not just a pitfall of the film; race as a taboo topic permeates most of the education reforms being considered. In both national and international conversations about educational quality, gaps between racial majorities and minorities are routinely overlooked. When they are acknowledged, race is seldom considered as a tool for remedying educational woes. If we want to turn around education and develop our children more fully, we must face race.
Not all United States schools are failing. The reality is that Black and poor families are more likely to be lodged in failing schools than their White and affluent counterparts. So when the conversation about turning around failing schools takes on the national spotlight, that spotlight is often focused on the schools that Black and Brown children most often attend. In 2006, nearly 40 percent of Black students attended schools that are 90-100 percent non-White. In 2008, 43 percent of Black and Latino students attended schools where 80 percent of their classmates were poor, which compares to just 4 percent of White students who faced similar conditions.
The continued racial and economic segregation of our schools should make us think of race; instead we are becoming more “colorblind” in our solutions to school failure. With such stark racial disparities in experience, it would be a disservice to our children to ignore race. Schools have the unique responsibility of educating all students that walk through their doors. This means that students from varying races and cultures sit side by side and educators must educate all equally.
When education reform is discussed you are more likely to hear curriculum than the word culture. While most can acknowledge race factors into inequality, few discussions consider race as part of the solution to these inequalities.
Increasingly, charter schools are looked at as a solution to urban educational woes. The Civil Rights Project at UCLA found that charter schools’ students populations are actually more segregated than traditional public schools. Not only do student populations lack diversity, but so does the composition of teachers. Nationally, 73 percent of teachers are White, about 8 percent Black, and less than 4 percent are Latino. Notably, only 1.7 percent of teachers are Black men.
The numbers for school administrators are equally dismaying. The absence of a strong teaching and administrative force of African descent should raise the question of role modeling; however, education reform’s current fascination with test performance has muted this issue. There is mixed evidence that having a teacher of the same race can lead to improved academic outcomes, and for that reason, many districts and schools have failed to seriously undertake initiatives to increase the recruitment and retention of teachers of color. But test scores are not the only measure of what a teacher can and should do.
When most of us recall our favorite teachers, we think not just of someone who taught us algebra but someone who taught us how to negotiate and navigate life. Gloria Ladson-Billings called these teachers “dreamkeepers” because they offered not only academic but also cultural and social guidance to Black youth. While it is certainly possible for White teachers to provide guidance, as Lisa Delpit’s research reveals, White teachers often spend too little time grappling with the issues that come with their own race, class, and gender as they teach “other people’s children.”
Too often the serious work of how to relate to youth, how to value cultural difference, and how to leverage culture to one’s advantage is given little time as teachers zero-in on preparing students for tests that carry high stakes. For many, it is more comfortable to not discuss race, than to discuss it. If we continue to allow these silences to govern policies and conversations, we run the risk of silencing the voices of our youth who are plagued by issues of race in schools.
As the nation looks to raise test scores, we should also look carefully at what role teachers have on children’s views of themselves and their communities. Being a teacher in an urban school composed of Black and poor youth is challenging and studies show that teachers often leave soon after arriving. We cannot afford to simply look at test scores as the indicator of our children’s development.
Our schools remain segregated and bastions of poverty because of economic and social policies that for centuries have prevented adequate access to equal resources. Rather than fight these deep levels of resource and social stratification, we are now focused on creating success within them. In 1933, Carter G. Woodson wrote the Mis-Education of the Negro and proclaimed, “We do not show the Negro how to overcome segregation, but we teach him how to accept it as final and just.” If we do not look seriously at equipping our children with tools to see themselves and their communities differently, we run the risk of making Woodson’s words ring true nearly 100 years later. We must be diligent in making sure our children learn not just how navigate a test, but learn how to love themselves and change the world.
R. L’Heureux Lewis is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Black Studies at the City College of New York – CUNY. His research concentrates on issues of educational inequality, the role of race in contemporary society, and mental health well-being. He blogs regularly at www.uptownnotes.com and you can follow him on twitter @dumilewis
