Are Liberal Education Policies Undermining Minorities They’re Intended To Help?

Howard Husock

Almost 40 years ago, I produced a public television film entitled “America’s First School,” which told the story, through alumni interviews, of the Boston Latin School, the nation’s oldest public high school.

It had evolved to become an elite entrance exam-based high school like New York’s Stuyvesant or San Francisco’s Lowell. It’s caught up today in the same controversy dogging all such schools, the “under-representation” of African-Americans.

It comes to mind on the occasion of the appointment of the former Obama administration secretary of education, John King, as chancellor of the 62-campus system of the State University of New York.

Mr. King has long focused on the so-called achievement gap for African-American students and chose to emphasize it again on the occasion of his appointment. One interviewee in my film did so, as well — but in a way that would now be considered unfashionable, to say the least, and at odds with Mr. King’s views on the underlying problem in a way that merits reflection.

It should first be said that the King choice is basically a good one. His background includes founding a successful Boston charter school and leading the charter school network Uncommon Schools.

“I have a long history of supporting good charter schools and not supporting bad charter schools,” Mr. King said. That’s as strong an endorsement of the concept by a public official one is likely to hear.

As New York State’s education commissioner, Mr. King ran afoul of teachers unions for his support of the so-called common core curriculum for public schools, the abortive Obama-backed effort to install more demanding subject matter and related student and teacher testing at the K-12 level. Whatever the merits of that controversial plan, Mr. King made the right enemies — and was willing to do so.

As SUNY chancellor he’ll be in a position to help choose new state-authorized charter school operators — and, one can hope, push the idea of lifting New York city’s current charter school cap. Many have been the very schools which have narrowed or even eliminated the learning gap between the races.

Mr. King, though, has frequently offered an analysis of the situation of Black students that merits reflection. In a speech at Georgetown University, he observed that “for students of color, disparities in educational opportunity and achievement are inextricably linked to our nation’s continued struggle to grapple with issues of race and bias.”

Mr. King added that it was America’s “legacy of slavery and the imposition of segregation that first made the education of black people a punishable offense and then established a separate, inferior system of schools for black children.”

There is no doubt about the history Mr. King cites and its lingering ill effects. Nonetheless, as experienced and sophisticated an educator as Mr. King surely knows there is more to the story, including the teachers unions with whom he’s tangled.

To those complications one hopes that he might add the legacy not just of racism but of the effort to undo it known as affirmative action. In my film, a Black Latin School alumnus, who had gone on to a successful journalism career, tells the story of a teacher who, concerned that his student was not achieving his potential, takes him aside.

“Don’t you know you have to be twice as good,” the teacher tells him. It is shocking to hear and says much about the racial atmosphere of early 1960s Boston. Nonetheless, the alum confides that he’d been both angered by the comment — and motivated by it.

The alumnus’ response suggests that there is more to the gap that so rightly concerns Mr. King than the Jim Crow past. It is the question of whether proposals such as that floated to drop the entrance exam for New York’s examination-based high schools or race-conscious college admission policies generally might be sending a message that perpetuates the achievement gap rather than helping to correct it.

Severing the connection between effort and achievement risks discouraging both. One struggles to understand the racial achievement gap otherwise in cities such as Shaker Heights, Ohio, where, the Washington Post reports, the gap persists even in an upper-middle-class community.

As the Supreme Court prepares to rule on whether affirmative action in elite university admissions has harmed Asians, it is time to consider whether it has undermined those it was intended to help. On this question, Mr. King, himself a Harvard College graduate, will be in a position to influence state policies and guide public opinion.

https://www.nysun.com/article/are-liberal-education-policies-undermining-minorities-theyre-intended-to-help ?

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50 shell-shocked teachers, staff flee chaotic Florida school district

Violent and disrespectful classroom behavior has led to a staggering 50 teachers and bus drivers to quit a Florida school district in the last two years.

Brevard County School District, the state’s 10th-largest, held a heated meeting Thursday that offered an unvarnished and often disturbing glimpse into the state of its classrooms.

“On an everyday basis I am deflecting being attacked, scratched, headbutted, pushed, hit,” teacher Alicia Kelderhouse said as her voice choked with emotion. “I’ve had my hair pulled, and pulled down to the ground. I’ve had my throat gone for on multiple occasions. It’s on an everyday basis right now.”

Kelderhouse said staffers often commiserate in the morning to muster the courage to face the day — and that frightened kids are grappling with the same fears.

“I have students who are afraid every day in the classroom,” she said. “It’s just not fair to them. That’s what hurts my heart the most.”

The head of the district’s beleaguered teachers union, Anthony Collucci, recounted recent incidents reported by staffers to school administrators.

One student began masturbating inside a classroom, an act that was recorded by a classmate and posted to a group chat.

Another teacher was hit in the face with a tape dispenser, while a colleague suffered a bite mark the “size of an orange” after a student munched on her arm.

Another educator frequently had to remove all furniture from her class because kids were routinely chucking it around the room or at each other.

One district teacher said behaviors have markedly worsened since the pandemic — but the classroom behavior was already plunging before COVID-19.

“The pandemic was an accelerant to a fire that was already raging,” he said.

The same staffer asserted that sexual misconduct, drug use, theft, violence, targeted spitting and property destruction had become the demoralizing hallmarks of his profession.

Several speakers pointed to the ubiquity of cellphones as a driver of classroom disorder, casting many students as screen addicts no longer capable of sustained attention.

Asserting that a culture of “unbelievable disrespect” has taken hold, one teacher said her kids look at their devices “hundreds” of times each day and keep their earbuds in while lessons are in progress.

“Our students cannot look away from their phones,” she said. “They cannot stop texting.”

Students often tell teachers that they have to wrap up a text message before they acknowledge being called on or addressed in class.

Educators routinely ask colleagues to watch their classrooms for a few moments so they can have a “mini-breakdown” inside a school bathroom, a speaker noted.

Veteran teacher Gene Trent said his colleagues used to call a student’s parent or guardian to address problems — but those efforts have been largely abandoned due to futility.

Trent said previously, a parent would thank a teacher for reaching out and promise to address the situation at home. But in recent years, they often blame the educator for causing poor behavior.

Other parents, staffers said at the meeting, threaten lawsuits for matters as minor as detention.

Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey recorded a video last month vowing to crack down on unruly behavior inside schools, filming the spot in front of a jail.

Ivey said classrooms have descended into chaos because kids no longer fear consequences. “As a result, we are losing teachers en masse,” he said, calling disruptive students “clowns” who are impeding the education of their classmates.

Several speakers criticized Ivey at Thursday’s meeting, and highlighted that suspensions are meted out in disproportionately high numbers to black students.

“Our children are not clowns,” said a local NAACP member. “They are not snot-nosed.” He accused Ivey of using “scare tactics” and “bullying” in pushing for disciplinary clampdowns.

Another speaker said the district should emphasize diversity, equity and inclusion in any new behavior code.

“I would feel more comfortable about the discipline policy if I knew diversity was appreciated in this area,” another district parent said. “And I don’t feel it. My fear is that the practices are inconsistent when I hear about the disparities.”

One parent argued that disruptive students — regardless of race — should be removed from classrooms.

“If you are throwing a chair in a classroom, you do not belong there,” she said. “I’m sorry. If you can’t behave, that’s not my child’s fault. My child’s education should not be hindered because that child doesn’t know how to behave. And by that child I don’t mean black, white, Hispanic or any other thing. I mean the child who wasn’t taught how to behave.”

The Brevard board is developing a new disciplinary framework, and will hold future public meetings on the issue

https://nypost.com/2022/12/09/staff-quit-school-district-over-violent-and-unruly-kids/

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Educator claims advanced technology ‘causing more problems’ for students

Adding more technology to classrooms has hurt students more than helped them, a former teacher said amid speculation about the effects artificial intelligence will have on education.

“We introduce a lot of technology in the classrooms to correct problems that we see, and inevitably we end up causing more problems with the solution,” Peter Laffin, the founder of Crush the College Essay and a writing coach, told Fox News. “Often the cure is worse than the disease.”

Last week, tech company OpenAI unveiled an AI chatbot, ChatGPT, which has stunned users with its advanced functions like generating school essays for any grade level, answering open-ended analytical questions and writing jokes, poems and even computer code. The internet is swirling with predictions about the implications of this sophisticated technology, but at the forefront of Laffin’s concern is the impact it will have on education.

“I personally think that we should be restricting all sorts of technological tools, and this one I think for a very particular reason,” said Laffin, who was an English teacher of over 10 years. “We want to make sure that we’re teaching kids, not just the subject but also values.”

Laffin fears the ability of students to use AI to complete assignments will further impact an already struggling U.S. education system.

Pandemic-related remote schooling took a toll students across the U.S., with 2022 national test scores showing the largest decrease ever in math scores, while reading scores dropped to the lowest levels since 1992 for fourth and eighth graders, according to the Nation’s Report Card.

“We introduced a lot of technology to education to make our lives easier. We’ve been doing that steadily for 20 years,” Laffin said. “I think educators would do well to ask themselves, ‘how did any of this benefit us? Are our kids more educated now that there is an iPad for every student in every classroom?’”

“If we can’t say that’s been a net positive, why on earth would we encourage the use of these technologies going forward?” he added.

https://nypost.com/2022/12/09/educator-claims-technology-causing-problems-for-students/

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