In January, Kelley Williams-Bolar served nine days in jail and was sentenced to two years of probation after being convicted of grand theft and two felony counts of falsifying records. Her crime? Sending her children to a school four miles outside her district of residence in Akron, Ohio.
The divorced mother of two says she falsified school documents because she was concerned about the safety of her two young daughters. “I wanted them to stay at my father’s after school,†she says. “I didn’t want my girls going home to an empty apartment that had recently been burglarized.†She says her decision to enroll her daughters in the Copley-Fairlawn school district wasn’t because the schools her daughters would have attended in 2006 had received a ranking of “Academic Watch,†the state’s second-lowest ranking, in 2008, or because Copley-Fairlawn had merited the state’s top rating, “Excellent with Distinction.â€
Yet in this era of achievement gaps, education reform, and education budget cuts, Williams-Bolar’s story caught the attention of people nationwide who either rallied for her acquittal or applauded her punishment. Seemingly overnight she became an unwitting symbol of the nation’s glaring educational inequities, the powerlessness of the poor, and the four-mile chasm that separates “Excellent with Distinction†from “Academic Watch.â€
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Still Unequal
The educational system in the wealthiest country in the world is largely broken. For the vast majority of black students, the system is dysfunctional and has produced poor results for decades. The persistent achievement gap between white and black children and between high-poverty and high-income families shows up before children even enter school: At 24 months, black babies scored significantly lower than white babies on the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Birth Cohort cognitive assessment. Once they’re in school, low-income children are on average three years behind by the time they reach fourth grade.
The outlook doesn’t improve as students get older. The Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics reports that the high school graduation rate for black students is 62%, compared with 81% for white students. In many large urban districts, it’s even lower, according to the Schott Foundation, which also reveals that black students have the lowest likelihood of all racial groups of attending a well-resourced, high-performing school, and the greatest of attending a poorly resourced, low-performing school.
Those who do graduate high school may be ill-prepared to tackle a college-level curriculum or to attend colleges that can prepare them to compete in today’s innovation economy, since black students have the lowest SAT scores of any racial group, according to the College Board. These stats do not exclude the children of wealthy African Americans. High-income black students score lower on average on the SAT than low-income white students.
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This education crisis is at the root of many of America’s problems and puts the country at an extreme economic disadvantage globally. An education that doesn’t prepare a child to succeed in college or a career doesn’t just stunt that child’s future–it handicaps our economy. The total annual economic burden to taxpayers because of educational inequity is $59.2 billion, according to the Schott Foundation. Closing the achievement gap between American students and their peers in higher performing nations could have increased 2008 annual gross domestic product by $1.3 trillion to $2.3 trillion, or 9% to 16%, according to a report from McKinsey & Co., the global management consulting firm.
Yet, increasing our ability to compete is not just a global issue. Locally, education plays a role in black business growth. Black-owned businesses generate less than 1% of all receipts generated by U.S. businesses. Educational inequities reduce the likelihood that our schools will produce students who start companies that will create more jobs and revenues for the black community. According to the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the Nation’s Report Card, black eighth graders scored lower in math and reading than any other racial group in 2009. It’s hard to imagine black businesses generating, say, even 10% of receipts, when only 14% of African American eighth graders read at grade level.
That’s why Black Enterprise is examining the education crisis in a three-part special report. This month we’re examining what government at every level is doing to improve K-12 education through federal initiatives such as Race to the Top; new state standards governing the development of more rigorous curricula, and mayors taking over school systems in some of the nation’s largest cities. In the next issue we’ll be exploring what parents and teachers can do to improve schools, and in the third installment we’ll delve into what business and community leaders are doing to impact our children’s education.
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Must Be the Money
It’s been well documented by the Center for American Progress that there are racial disparities in school funding in many states both within and between districts. In poor districts–or sometimes in poor areas of the same district–it isn’t uncommon for school buildings to be in decay; to have insufficient textbooks; and to provide little if any teacher support or investment in academic programming, art programs, science lab equipment, or speech and debate teams.
The situation is getting worse as budget cuts across the nation grow and as state-level Recovery Act funds targeted for schools end this fiscal year, which ends this month. In 2011, education budget cuts for some states around the country have resulted in a shortened school year; teacher layoffs; increased class sizes; and the elimination of early learning programs, tutoring programs for low-performing schools, and professional development for teachers.
In Florida, the Los Angeles Times cites, state funds for 15,000 children to attend a school-readiness program for low-income families have been cut. Texas eliminated funding for pre-kindergarten programs that serve about 100,000 at-risk children, and in California, many districts have cut back on high school counselors. And with the $169.4 billion spent on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for fiscal year 2011, 2.6 million elementary school teachers could have been hired or 22.3 million slots in Head Start opened up, according to the 10 Years + Counting Project, a group that advocates against war and for peace via the arts and community engagement.
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Running the Race
Despite the grim outlook, tremendous energy is being expended by the federal government and local school districts to change the equation. The $4 billion Race to the Top grant program launched in 2009 is President Barack Obama’s answer to President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind, which is also still active. While No Child Left Behind seeks to hold schools accountable for low performance on standardized tests, Race to the Top seeks to provide resources and foster best practices to turn around struggling schools. The program encourages states to work with teachers unions, school superintendents, and elected officials to propose comprehensive reform plans in a competition for federal dollars.
In the first round eleven states and the District of Columbia won awards due to their willingness to execute reform initiatives. These states have made commitments to raise their academic standards and create new teacher evaluations. For example, before they can compete, states are required to have removed legal, statutory, or regulatory barriers to linking data on student achievement or student growth to teachers and principals for the purposes of teacher and principal evaluation.
Tennessee was one of the first states to receive Race to the Top funds, in part because of its willingness to change its laws, explains Kriner Cash, superintendent of Memphis City Schools, an independent authority that governs public schools in the city. The student population is 93% African American, 95% of whom take part in the National School Lunch Program, which offers free meals for children from families with incomes at or below 130% of the poverty level and reduced-price meals for children whose family incomes are between 130% and 185% of the poverty level.
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In 2009, the state passed legislation that allowed districts to use the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System as one criterion to evaluate teachers. The tool gives feedback to school leaders and teachers on student progress and assesses the influence of schooling on that progress. The assessment system allows districts to follow student achievement over time and provides schools with a longitudinal view of student performance. In the future, it will also help dictate how Memphis City Schools teachers will be compensated.
The federal dollars have been like a lifesaver, given the economic realities of the state in recent years. “If we had not been aggressive about going after these competitive grant opportunities at a time when we were seeing fiscal retrenchment, it would be catastrophic,†says Cash, who had to cut $66 million out of the city’s education budget three years ago.
So far, it seems to be working. In the two years since the city implemented Prep Academies to accelerate graduation for students who are over age for their grades, the district’s graduation rate went from 62.1% to 70.8% between the 2008—09 and the 2009—10 school years. Prep Academies students have longer school hours and an 11-month school year, among other differences. The graduation rate at one of the city’s low-performing high schools, Booker T. Washington, increased from 55% up to nearly 82% over four years. As a result of their progress in preparing students to graduate college- and career-ready, the school won the 2011 national Race to the Top High School Commencement Challenge, a reward that included having President Obama speak at their graduation. “The nature of our interventions helped with the graduation rate. These were students who had failed repeatedly in the early grades. We’ve graduated more than 1,000 students in the last two to three years who ordinarily would have dropped out,†says Cash. “We think over the next three to four years the college retention and college readiness rate will improve. But it will take about 10 years to see the kind of change that will make everyone proud.â€
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Getting on the Same Page
Another game-changer in education reform has been the development of Common Core State Standards by 48 states, two territories, and the District of Columbia. Tennessee used the standards to develop its current standardized test, the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, which has been used the past two school years. Before Common Core, each state had its own process for developing and implementing standards, which caused inconsistencies between each student’s opportunity to learn.
“When you left it up to the states to do it, you had a variable game–from a very low bar to a very high bar depending on what state you were in,†says Cash, who admits Tennessee had set one of the lowest bars for education standards in the country before they adopted the CCSS. “We didn’t give our children and families a fair indication of how they measure up against national competition let alone international competition. You can’t have such variation across the states and expect to stay competitive.â€
The new standards, whose development was spearheaded by the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, will increase the rigor of both the English and mathematics taught from kindergarten through high school across America and align everyone’s expectations about what students should be learning and what teachers should be teaching. States receive points toward the Race to the Top competition if they have adopted the common standards.
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The Choice is Yours
In some cities, such as Detroit and New Orleans, new
laws have given mayors the autonomy to close low-performing schools in an effort to increase school choice. The concept of school choice has existed since the ’50s, when white families unsuccessfully sought to elude the Supreme Court’s Brown v. The Board of Education ruling with school vouchers, government funds that parents can apply to private schools. More recently, the call for school choice has come from inner cities, minority families, low-income communities, and rural towns where there are more drop-out factories than schools that excel.In its newest incarnation, school choice has become associated with charter schools, which are publicly funded elementary or secondary schools that also receive financial support from private organizations and/or foundations. Charters have been freed from some of the rules, regulations, and statutes that apply to other public schools and in some cases the teachers are not required to join the teachers union. In exchange, charters are expected to produce certain results, which are delineated in each school’s charter.
In the past 20 years, numerous charter organizations–from KIPP to Green Dot Public Schools and Stand for Children–have worked to expose the inequities in our nation’s public schools and to mitigate the challenges that poverty brings. Some cities are replacing or co-locating traditional public schools with charter schools.
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Charter school proponents believe charters will not only better educate students, but that their existence will create a free market educational system where schools will compete to educate our children. They theorize that charter schools that are able to increase test scores and college acceptance, while also decreasing the dropout rate and the operational costs of running a school, will lift the tide and cause all boats–or in this case schools–to rise to meet these exceptional expectations.
In many cases, the idea is more than theory. Some charter schools are getting outstanding results with low socio-economic students in urban and rural communities. A New York City study finds that 51% of New York City charter schools show significantly larger growth in math, and 29% saw larger growth in reading than district schools. In California, about 90% of graduates from Green Dot schools, which are primarily charter, fulfill California’s curriculum compared to less than 30% of graduates at Los Angeles Unified School District. Finally, In New Orleans, where nearly 60% of public school students now attend charter schools, the percentage of schools performing below the failing mark fell from 64% in 2005 to 36% in 2009.
Charter schools are also politically popular as an issue that both Republicans and Democrats are rallying around. President Obama has been one of their most staunch advocates. He plans to double funding for the Federal Charter School Program to support the creation of more successful charter schools.
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Not everyone is convinced that charter schools alone are black America’s saving grace. The NAACP and the United Federation of Teachers brought a lawsuit against New York City in an effort to keep 20 failing public schools open instead of transitioning them into charter schools. The lawsuit accused the city of New York of creating and funding a two-tiered, separate and unequal education system that favors charter schools, which educate only 4% of the city’s students. In Detroit, a similar scenario is being played out as plans are under way to transition 41 of Detroit’s 142 public schools into charter schools against the wishes of many parents and community leaders.
And not all charter schools are successful. A Stanford University study revealed that 17% of charter schools provide education that exceeds local public schools, while nearly half are no different, and 37% are significantly worse. The schools that have been successful attribute it to a multifaceted approach that includes: an extended school day, a longer school year, a college prep curriculum, increased professional development for teachers, fiscal and managerial accountability, and parental and community involvement.
Q & A with U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan comes to his post with a unique personal advantage. He is probably the only education secretary in history who spent his childhood playing with, learning alongside, and tutoring low-income black students in an after-school program (run by his mother). He also took a year off from Harvard to work in the program, and credits it with informing his understanding of urban education. Duncan, who has been called a “moral force,†recently sat down to talk with black enterprise about the state of education in the U.S. today, what the federal government is doing to improve it, and the challenges that lie ahead for our nation’s young people.
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Black Enterprise: Can you share with our audience why it’s an economic imperative to make sure everyone–including black people and the poor–get a quality education?
Arne Duncan: Unlike in the past, when you could drop out of high school and still land a decent job at the steel plant or auto factory, there are no good jobs for high school dropouts. Today’s students compete for jobs and higher education not just with the kids in their neighborhood but with students from China, Canada, India, and Ireland. And in a global knowledge economy, the country that out-educates us will out-compete us. The economic toll of children dropping out of high school today is devastating–both for the economy and because of the additional taxpayer costs of providing government services for students who are not prepared to succeed.
BE: Speaking of the global economy, the top 5% of students in the U.S. correspond with the top 50% of students in Japan, where even blue-collar factory workers are competent in calculus. How are we going to change that?
Duncan: The biggest game-changer in education is the new academic standards developed by states. Before states worked together to create these new standards, 50 different states had 50 different goal posts. Many states had dummied down standards. Now, 44 states and the District of Columbia have adopted higher shared standards, which, for the first time, are truly aligned with expectations of college and career readiness. These new standards will greatly increase the rigor of both the English and mathematics taught in high schools across America.
BE: We know funding is only part of the achievement gap. Still, it’s discouraging to hear the report from the Center for American Progress about racial disparities in school funding.
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Duncan: Education has always been funded chiefly at the state and local level in the United States–the federal government contributes only about 8% of total K—12 dollars. And that basic division of responsibilities is not going to change anytime soon. Fortunately, most of the great ideas for improving education come from state and local government. And federal Title I dollars substantially reduce funding disparities between high-poverty school districts and better-off districts. The Excellence and Equity Commission, a panel of leading experts from across the political spectrum, is developing recommendations for restructuring school finance systems to achieve greater equity in the distribution of educational resources and further student performance, especially for the students at the lower end of the achievement gap.
BE: But what’s being done now to make sure those students facing the greatest obstacles to academic success will receive the greatest support?
Duncan: This is a paramount concern of the Obama administration. It runs like a ribbon through all our initiatives, from dramatically expanding the Teacher Incentive Fund (which rewards effective educators who serve in high-need schools and subjects), to the Investing in Innovation Fund, Promise Neighborhoods, and Race to the Top, which incentivized states to direct more resources to high-need students. Still, as a nation we have a long, long way to go to achieve educational equity.
–Additional reporting by Robin White Goode