Thinking Big About How to Close the Gap
At TC’s Fourth Annual Symposium on Educational
Equity, a star-studded cast of researchers, educators
and policymakers argued for nothing less than a full-scale
attempt to combat poverty and its attendant ills.
Journalists tend to be cynics, but when Paul Tough talks
about the Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ)—the
massive effort to provide educational, social and community
support services to more than 7,400 children and 4,100
adults in a 100-square-block area of central Harlem—he
leaves no doubt he’s a believer.
“My own journalistic investigation into the questions
of poverty and education started a little more than
five years ago, not far from here, when I first visited
[HCZ Founder] Geoffrey Canada,” Tough, an editor
at The New York Times Magazine, told an audience at
Teachers College’s fourth annual Symposium on
Education Equity in November. “By the end of our
first conversation, I knew I wanted to write an article
about Geoff’s work, and by the time that article
came out in The New York Times Magazine in 2004, I knew
I wanted to go further and write a book.”
Tough, author of the recently published Whatever It
Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem
and America, concluded that, “a true solution
to the problem of underachievement in inner-city schools
is going to require more nurturing families and safer
neighborhoods, as well as better teachers and more accountable
schools. It’s not only possible to fix both problems
at the same time, it’s essential.”
Those sentiments stood as the near-consensus view of
the large cast of researchers, educators and policymakers
who spoke at the two-day TC symposium titled, “Comprehensive
Educational Equity: Overcoming the Socioeconomic Barriers
to School Success.”
Michael A. Rebell, Executive Director of TC’s
Campaign for Educational Equity, which organized and
hosted the symposium, argued that access for children
and families to what he calls “comprehensive educational
equity”—in essence, the range of services
outlined by Tough—should be viewed as a moral,
statutory and constitutional right.
“This is how we bring about social change,”
Rebell said. “I think what we’ve got to
do is establish a political platform and a legal platform
that says we can no longer have limited, sporadic and
unstable services in these areas. We’ve got to
have a right to comprehensive educational opportunity.”
Rebell announced that he is working to form a legislative
campaign to provide necessary comprehensive resources
and services on “a stable, statutory basis”
to all children in New York State who require them.
Meanwhile, several researchers at the symposium documented
existing gaps in specific areas of comprehensive equity
and outlined current or future interventions that could
make a difference in educational outcomes.
“Healthier students make better learners,”
said TC Richard March Hoe Professor of Health Education
Charles Basch. “Yet health issues have mostly
neglected in school reform issues. But we now have a
track record of programs and policies that have been
demonstrated to favorably influence these factors and
help reduce the achievement gap.”
Basch identified six health disparities—vision,
asthma, teen pregnancy, aggression and violence, physical
activity and breakfast—that disproportionately
affect inner-city youth and negatively affect their
educational achievement. For example, during 2001 to
2003, annual prevalence for asthma for black children
ages 5 to 14 was 45 percent higher than for whites,
as were asthma attacks. Asthma is highly correlated
with school absenteeism and also with disturbed sleep,
which has a major impact on school performance. Teen
pregnancy rates are also far higher for black and Hispanic
females ages 15 to 17 than for whites. The education
impact is clear: teen mothers are 10 to 12 percent less
likely to complete high school and 14 to 29 percent
less likely to attend college than their female peers.
Even small reductions in the rate of non-marital teen
births would have “substantial effects on the
numbers of children living in poverty,” Basch
said.
TC faculty member Jeanne Brooks-Gunn informed the audience
that only 13 percent of low-income youth participate
in after-school programs, compared to 20 percent of
youth from the highest income bracket. If the percent
of participation among low-income youth were to rise
to 100 percent, said Brooks-Gunn, it could decrease
the achievement gap by four to five percentage points.
“Even population-wide participation in after-school
programs among poor youth is highly unlikely to completely
eliminate existing achievement gaps, but it may be an
important part of a multifaceted approach toward achieving
this goal,” Brooks-Gunn said.
And TC’s Sharon Lynn Kagan, noting the wealth
of data showing that pre-K education can improve children’s
subsequent school performance and life chances, applauded
the fact that “a movement toward universalizing
early learning services for all prekindergarten children
is taking root in the nation.” But, Kagan said,
access to quality pre-K programs is income-stratified
in the United States. “Without equitable access
to quality services early childhood faces the challenges
of doing more but doing it poorly.”
What’s the price tag for providing access to such
services to the children who need them most? Richard
Rothstein, a research associate at the Economic Policy
Institute and The Campaign for Educational Equity, presented
research demonstrating that a comprehensive program
of pre-natal care, parent education, literacy support,
health care and teacher salary incentives could be provided
to 1 million of the nation’s neediest children
at a cost of $15,000 annually per child. By spending
that sum, Rothstein said, “the United States could
substantially narrow its education achievement gap”
and achieve significant savings down the road in health
care, crime, welfare, worker productivity and tax revenue.
Or, as Geoffrey Canada himself put it during an afternoon
session at which he shared the stage with Arne Duncan,
Chief Executive Officer of Chicago Public Schools, and
Pedro Noguera, Professor of Teaching and Learning at
New York University’s Steinhardt School: “It’s
more expensive and more difficult the longer we wait,
but the price never approaches the price we pay when
we lock kids up.”
The recent election to the U.S. Presidency of Barack
Obama—whom Teachers College President Susan Fuhrman
described as “a strong believer in education and
its power to transform lives”—was taken
as a sign of hope by many at the symposium that the
ideas under discussion at the event could eventually
be acted on. Indeed, as Fuhrman noted, during the recent
campaign, Obama pledged to create 20 “Promise
Neighborhoods” modeled after the Harlem Children’s
Zone, in cities across America.
“This is in many ways a propitious moment to consider
the findings and proposals that will be put forth here
today,” Fuhrman said. “Clearly, intervening,
on a mass scale, to provide such services and programs
is not something that can happen overnight. It will
take years, and the twin challenges it poses of devising
programs that work and mobilizing the political will
to support them, are equally daunting.”
She added that “the bottom line is that America
has been wrestling, since its beginnings, with the question
of how to enable all children to receive an education
that equips them to become full and productive citizens
in our society. It may be that we have now reached a
point in our history when, to paraphrase Sherlock Holmes,
having eliminated the impossible, we are ready to recognize
that what we are left with, however seemingly improbable,
just might be the solution.”
Nevertheless, the reality of the country’s current
economic crisis hovered like a dark cloud over the Equity
Symposium’s ambitious agenda.
New York Governor David Paterson, in a videotaped address,
pledged his ideological support for educational equity
and acknowledged the need for additional resources to
help disadvantaged students. However, he said that New
York’s current $1.5 billion budget deficit—a
figure he projected to balloon exponentially over the
next few years—was forcing him to take the harsh
step of cutting education spending at mid-year, as governors
in some other states also are doing.
Still, in remarks at a special dinner for symposium
participants on the evening of the first day, Chicago
Schools CEO Duncan said he believed that education will
remain a top priority on the national agenda, even despite
the current economic outlook.
“I have a friend back in Chicago—he lives
in my neighborhood,” said Duncan, who has led
the development in Chicago of 150 “community schools”
that offer comprehensive services. “His children
attend the same school I attended. We play basketball
together. And whenever we have a few minutes alone,
we often end up talking about education. He is a passionate
believer in public education—he attributes his
personal success to education—and throughout his
life he has used his position to advance the cause of
public education. As it turns out, my friend was just
elected President of the United States, so I’m
feeling pretty hopeful about the prospects of a more
progressive national education policy.”
Resources:
• To view all papers and summaries of findings
presented at the Equity Symposium, click here.
• Video of the 2008 Symposia and other Equity
Campaign related events can be viewed and downloaded
through Teacher College's iTunes U store here.
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