So implies Thelma Jackson, a consultant and former educational advisory board member from Olympia, Washington.
The gap is blamed on everything from racism and bias to under-funding and racial isolation (implying that blacks can’t be properly educated unless they’re with whites). Why not teacher sick days? (Source)
Jackson’s 40-page report traces the city’s integration efforts during the civil rights movement and acknowledges that Tacoma’s desegregation process was relatively smooth. Part of the problem now, which is only hinted at, is that half the students in government schools in Tacoma are racial minorities. That doesn’t bode well for the idealistic and overly ambitious goal of racial balance.
At present, Americans have the right to live wherever they can afford (and not afford, unfortunately), and parents with the means and/or determination move to neighborhoods with better government schools, or opt to homeschool or pay for private schools. A social engineer’s desire for racially balanced government schools won’t happen anytime soon, unless the government begins coercing people to live in certain neighborhoods.
Barring that scenario, folks like Jackson want school districts to take a “comprehensive approach” to closing the gap, which includes raising the quality of teachers, and placing more black students in programs like Advanced Placement and the “Highly Capable” program by making “necessary changes to eliminate the gross disproportionality that currently exists for African American students.”
What sort of changes is Jackson referring to? Let’s speculate: lowering standards for black students. Lowering standards for ALL students would render such programs useless.
I’m not certain why the News Tribune article linked to in this post focuses on teacher absenteeism’s purported relationship to the gap. Perhaps the paper considers it a novel idea. According to the report, which doesn’t analyze the relationship, if any, between absenteeism and the gap:
“[O]n any given day, hundreds, if not thousands, of students in Tacoma schools are without a qualified teacher and/or substitute due to chronic absenteeism. This occurs mostly on Mondays and Fridays and before and after holidays (specific data is available from Human Resources). With no teaching there can be no learning. It is apparent that student learning cannot happen under these conditions. According to Education Trust, if districts took the simple step of assuring that African American and other low-performing students had teachers of the same quality as other children, about half of the achievement gap would disappear.”
Half the gap would disappear? First time I’ve heard that. Just about everything Jackson recommends for closing the academic achievement gap between blacks and everyone else has been tried before.
The gap still exists.
Solutions?
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