of NCLB, the achievement gap and the poor

[ulysses]

The neighborhood is gentrifying now.

The city is in the final stages of closing and razing its public housing units. Along Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, in the same neighborhood where Coretta Scott King lived until her death last year, they're tearing down whole blocks of largely derelict storefronts, revealing $250,000 condos springing up behind. And the people who have been here are leaving, to be replaced, one imagines, with people who can afford condos.

I've taught middle school special education in this neighborhood for three years. No matter how Vine City changes, I can forget neither the kids I've met here nor what I've seen them experience.

If you're raised in the middle class, it's difficult to imagine with any clarity what it's like to be deeply poor in the city. Even now, there's a lot I don't think I'll ever understand. The social pathologies I've witnessed are mind-numbing. What makes a child write on a bathroom wall with his own feces? Perhaps the final outrage is that, as the city turns its attention to this area, bringing new buildings and new jobs, it pushes out those who have needed just those things for so long.

In the midst of this, we teach. Perhaps more to the point, we experience daily the hypocrisy of No Child Left Behind as we teach the children who have been pointedly left behind already by the very creators of the law itself. I'm reminded daily of Maslow's hierarchy:



The idea here is that, before one can reach higher levels of functioning, the needs of the lower levels must be met. In other words, if you haven't eaten in 24 hours (or longer), you're not coming to my class ready for problem solving. Yet that is what NCLB requires of my kids.

It certainly isn't that the kids I teach *can't* problem solve, or be creative, or maintain a moral outlook. But to expect them to attain high levels of evaluative thought every day while refusing to adequately address, as a society, what they lack in food, shelter and safety is a deep moral failing in the wealthiest nation on the planet.

They say that we have to address the "achievement gap", in which African-American children achieve at a lower rate than their white counterparts. That much is certainly true. But that goal will not be achieved until we widen our focus to address, not school achievement in a vacuum, but the economic issues that negatively impact the learning of children of all races.

[SutaUvaca]

1. This says so much:

"...we experience daily the hypocrisy of No Child Left Behind as we teach the children who have been pointedly left behind already by the very creators of the law itself."

And:

"But to expect them to attain high levels of evaluative thought every day while refusing to adequately address, as a society, what they lack in food, shelter and safety is a deep moral failing in the wealthiest nation on the planet."

So much of our population is blind to THESE gaps, or we don't want to see. And, as you say, there's the problem of the "lawmakers."

[ulysses]

5. it's easy to be blind to those gaps in this society.

If I hadn't worked where I do, I would never have believed it, to be honest.

[proud2BlibKansan]

17. I think you would have believed it over time

I have the benefit of age. And I have seen this society ignore our poor for over 5 decades now. For my generation, it is especially heart breaking, since we can remember the War on Poverty from our childhood. The war that the republics have worked overtime, especially since the contract on America in 94, to stop.

Because I know you are compassionate person, I believe you would have come to believe the reality you now see.

Now I am wondering how many families will move into those condos and enroll their kids in your school district? They are doing the same thing here in some KC neighborhoods, but the condos are bought by people with no kids. I am still trying to figure out where the kids who once lived there are going.

[ulysses]

19. I don't think I would have,

not out of a lack of compassion, but because the conditions in which some of these kids are coming up are breathtaking in their violence and depravity. I have no problem imagining a child being raped on her way to school - as awful as that is - but what does it say that she comes on to school anyway as if it's no big deal? I wouldn't have believed it, no.

I am still trying to figure out where the kids who once lived there are going.

Here they seem to be headed to the suburban counties, which is causing *all* manner of screeching from them.

[sandnsea]

23. Can you write a book?

Somehow weave together the shocking circumstances and incidences with the structural contrasts of performing schools. There had to be concerned parents in your district, what were their limitations as well. It seems to me we're not hearing that voice from educators anymore, I don't exactly know where it went.

[ulysses]

24. I already have the title.

"I don't know you, white man!" Long story. :)

To really do that book right, though, would take a lot more time and energy than I have right now.

[Morgana LaFey]

14. That is the whole entire point of "the other side of the RR tracks"

Somewhere along the line I became aware of two things. One is that the well-off (including, I'm afraid, plenty of middle class people) insist upon removing the poor and devastated from their vision as completely as possible.

The other was a stark understanding that dawned on me one day while driving through a small town of the physical reality -- imperative, actually -- that having different neighborhoods for rich and poor, preferrably with a very clear boundaryline (such as a RR track, esp. in decades gone by) serves that purpose very well.

[EFerrari]

2. Nominated.

:hi:

[ulysses]

4. hey!

:hi: Thanks!

[EFerrari]

8. Thank you! Wonderful post. Can't have a pinnacle without a base!

:)

[ulysses]

12. you just gave me

the perfect visual analogy for NCLB - another pyramid with the pinnacle bright and shiny but the base crumbling and bleak. Any artists out there want to take that on?

[EFerrari]

18. That's a great idea for an image -- a revision of Maslow, no?

What about you, ulysses?

Or, what about posting it in the artists forum? :)

[ulysses]

20. my photoshop skills are rusty.

Besides, I'm supposed to be cleaning the house. :D

[countingbluecars]

3. Excellent post.

K&R

[ulysses]

6. thanks!

:)

[Maestro]

7. The ravages of NCLB continue.

For more about NCLB don't forget to visit, Susan Ohanian. I work in a very poor area of town with many kids who enter school as English as a second language, but the testing craze and the other stupid requirements of NCLB are hurting them. It's outrageous.

[ulysses]

9. I've read that the damned thing

might actually be rewritten this year to be more fair to special needs kids. I guess that's something.

:hi:

[mzteris]

10. I think you've hit the nail squarely on the head.

:thumbsup:

I nominate you to be on the committee to rewrite the damned thing!!


:kick: & r

[ulysses]

11. ha!

I nominate you to be on the committee to rewrite the damned thing!!

Five minutes into the first meeting you'd probably find me bound and gagged in the corner. :D

[ulysses]

13. for the pm crowd...

:kick:

[Morgana LaFey]

15. Heartbreakingly true, no doubt nt

[EFerrari]

16. Kick

[Corgigal]

21. Thanks from this mom

of a Special Ed kid (CAPD) for all you do. While his "basic" needs are met, every year it gets harder and harder to fight the school system. We are lucky, because we can attend school functions and will contact who we need to contact. I feel for the little people who's parents don't have resources or the time to fight. I'm sure you saw it all the time.

[ulysses]

22. saw and see, yeah.

A lot of them have given up.