More Dropouts

Today, in the Sacramento Bee, dropout statistics were released for several local districts. One district, with a high minority population “improved” from 33% to 25%. This “improvement” has occurred in the past year

A dropout rate of 5% would be reason for serious concern. A person simply cannot function at ANY level in the current economy with no high school diploma. Moreover, the lack of actual education is telling, and there are hosts of studies that show a high school dropout is virtually assured of a life filled with poverty.

So, why in the world do we have 1/3 of our inner city youth dropping out of high school all around the country?

Meanwhile, yet another “school reform” movement is gaining steam, this time assaulting teachers and unions for allegedly blocking reform. Yet again, we will see months of effort and lots of money thrown at reforming education, new studies, endless debates, and little progress.

What happened, why can’t America get this right?

First of all, we blew it over 50 years ago; in the 1960s, due to the prodding of Martin Luther King, America finally addressed the social, psychological and economic damage that over three hundred years of institutionalized racism had caused. Studies of this damage were done, and college classes developed to study this damage (I took several). The Civil Rights Act was passed over southern filibusters, in 1964 and the Voters Rights Act followed. Jim Crowe finally died, and the S.E.C. had its first black football player in 1972. 1972? I thought the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, why an eight year hiatus?

Why indeed… In 1968 Bob Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated. And, Richard Nixon was elected President. In 1968 real reform that was embodied in President Johnson’s War on Poverty stopped; meaning only four years (1964-1968) dealt with three hundred years of discrimination, violence and racism. And, we were fighting the Vietnam war during that time. Four years was all we took to try to address 300 years of discrimination. No wonder we failed.

Nixon won the Presidency with a “southern strategy” that essentially was a rebirth of centuries of racism and prejudice. Forced integration through busing was resisted and defeated, fair housing was resisted, everywhere a backlash took place and the “silent majority” reacted, flooding into a new Republican Party that now houses the southern racist Democrats who had successfully resisted civil rights reform since the Civil War.

There was no systematic approach socially, politically or economically to mend the centuries of abuse and racism. Anything that was started was snuffed out. “Law and Order” was the reaction to the riots of the 60s. Jim Crowe, cleverly disguised this time, re-emerged on the Republican side.

Education had been selected by the Supreme Court in “Brown vs. the Board of Education” as the institution to lead civil rights reform. It took a little more than 20 years to stop this fledgling reform in its tracks.

Private schools in the south moved the rich white students out of public schools, and now Charter Schools do the same thing, moving African American students out of public schools into Charter Schools, with the mistaken idea that segregation from poor public schools will somehow help the inequalities of the society.

And the schools? Well, in the last 50 years we have removed almost all vocational classes from the curriculum, transforming the schools to college prep academies for all. Any vocational orientation is attacked as racist, relegating minorities away from college.

The problem is, many young people do not want to go to college; or their family backgrounds have no college tradition in them.

What this actually has done, is to discourage millions of students, of all backgrounds, who need vocational orientated curriculum to keep them connected to school.

Students drop out of high school because they encounter failure constantly and find the college prep curriculum irrelevant. They do not want to go to college; they want to graduate and go to work. They want to work in technical fields. They want to farm. They want to be trained to work in specific, non-college required fields, like air conditioning repair, install solar panels, etc.

For three hundred years, African Americans were subjugated, discriminated against, and beat down. There are lasting social and economic consequences of this injustice. America has never adequately addressed this injustice.

The Black family was destroyed; African American men were attacked if they attempted to move up. The consequence of this, especially in the ghettos of the north, was to develop a caste system of American males, relegating them to low paying jobs and essentially emasculating them. Soul on Ice was a classic that explained this, and was immediately attacked by the white majority as reverse racism. The book hit too close, that is why it was attacked.

In the black community, a matriarchy developed, with men practicing a kind of polygamy, not held accountable for their multiple families, with women bearing the family responsibility. The male African-American was attacked, reviled, and belittled.

The damage to male African-Americans persists today and is reflected in the 25% incarceration rate. There are positive role models that have emerged in the past fifty years, we do have an African-American President after all. And, African-American men have emerged in professional circles and in the athletic arena, but gang activity, rap, and unemployment has once again dragged them down to the lower ranks of society.

The fact is black men still occupy the lowest rungs of the social and economic ladder, with upward mobility still a dream for many. Black males make up a large proportion of the 1/3 of students who drop out of American high schools every year.

White Americans have traditionally been repulsed by this socio-economic reality, and deny any responsibility. Whites, especially the working class, constantly stereotype African Americans as promiscuous, lazy and welfare cheaters. This is a core value of the Tea Party Movement, that poor people, especially those of African Americans and Latino immigrants, are lazy, cheat, do not work hard. The stereotypes of America's racist past are still very strong in the white, uneducated working class middle class male, who make up most of the reactionary political right.

They conveniently forget 300 years of slavery and discrimination, and act like the Civil Rights Act fixed everything. It did not! The fact that the vast majority of what is left in the"reformed" (cheaper) welfare system are white is ignored. By weakening welfare, the racist white male, feels they can punish lazy men of color. Of course, by attacking welfare, poor whites are most affected, AND children of color are damaged, resulting in high drop out rates. It is tough to attend school, when your family is broke and you need to work so there is food. The streets win again.

These are all social facts that scores of studies have determined. All of these studies have been ignored for years, because of huge social, economic and political costs. To really address the damage will take billions of dollars in retraining, education, building a nation where social and economic justice is the norm, not the exception.

And the results of these efforts will be slow in coming, taking great patience. It could take 100 years to undo the damage of 300. Real change will be generational.

So, who did we assign this almost impossible task to, without any real funding or national commitment: the educator; the individual teacher, who decides to teach in a poverty area, for less pay, more stress, more danger, and no appreciation whatsoever.

What do the other “bright” college grads do? Why, they go into investment banking and cheat/steal their way to riches. Or, they quickly pass though a superficial association with education then declare themselves born again reformers, write books, and get rich like Ms. Rhee.

Only “losers” go into teaching and stay there; according to Michelle Rhee only the dull get credentials. Of course she was in Teach for America, a Cornell Grad, who then got a Masters from Harvard, spent three years teaching, not bothering to get a credential, gets appointed chancellor of Washington D.C., screws that up, and now is touted by Oprah as the answer to America’s educational “crisis”.

Please….this is nonsense! It is yet another excuse to not really pay legitimate attention to the social and political disaster that is already consuming the nation.

This sore on the nation’s conscience has been there for 150 years. Radical Re-constructionists failed during the 1870s to go into the south and protect the freed slaves, resulting in Jim Crowe repression. In the north, institutional racism existed until the mid-twentieth century. Then, as I have explained, there was a brief, glimmer of hope, which was crushed by the conservative wave of the late twentieth century.

And Michelle Rhee, a Korean immigrant, somehow can change this? Give me a break!

How do I know this? I taught and worked in schools and districts where students came from the aforementioned families, where you could taste the anger, smell the frustration and lived the violence every single day. I sat across from Native American children, and even though I am part Native American myself, listened to the hatred of the white ranchers who “stole our land”, and" raped my grandmother". This came from a 14 year old Native American, who hated white people so much she would not attend school (she suffered from fetal-alcohol syndrome).

We cannot ignore history. We have tried and it keeps catching up with us. It is finally manifesting itself in the slow decline we see today, as a 10% unemployment rate is the norm and is made up mostly by people of color.

That is why there is widespread disdain and distrust for educators in these communities. History follows us. People lash out at those closest to them. Investment bankers do not go into Watts!

It is not cool to like school in the Hood. Some even see schools as white man’s repression. And, negative images of education are supported with comments like the ones Michelle Rhee constantly makes: teachers are selfish, dull, underachievers, who worry more about retirement than kids.

She stresses that we need to talk about the students, and not the adult problems. She preaches that educators spend more time on themselves than on the kids. She obviously has not spend ANY time in a typical elementary school lunch room, where all they talk about EVERYDAY are kids, their problems, their issues; endlessly. What planet is she on? Go by any elementary school, and note the teacher cars in the parking lot at 5 or 6 o'clock. These are teachers who only care about themselves?

And wealth can be stolen, or cooked in the drug market: Rap music and the popular culture looks down on education as not hip. It is cool to drop out, sell dope, live in the fast lane, join a gang, resist authority, be a street tough; which for some lands them in prison. Why listen to that loser teacher, nobody else does!

And, to make it worse, schools today do not offer any valid alternatives to a strict college prep curriculum, leaving nothing for students who want to pursue a career as a mechanic, or technology specialist. In California you have to pass Algebra to graduate, and because the state does not trust schools, a high school exit test has to be passed, at about the 8^th grade level, even though billions have been spent on “standards based textbooks”. The mistrust of teachers and Principals is palatable.

It is always interesting to talk to most of my college graduate friends. A vast majority pick Algebra as there most hated subject in high school, and least utilized in their adult lives. But, all California high school graduates must now pass a subject that the vast majority hate, and find useless. No wonder so many drop out! How about forcing all seniors to pass a class in everyday economic skills, how to avoid being taken by banks who sell credit cards that are traps, how to figure a mortgage so you don’t walk into foreclosure, things like that? Oh no, we graduate algebra students, who as adults are incurring huge debts, making horrible consumer decisions, and don’t know how to balance a checkbook!

The only thing everyone keeps harping on is going to college; not telling students that the economy can only support about 20% college graduates, while churning out 40%. Someone is going to lose!

There is no alternative but the street for the young man or woman who does not want to go to college. So, they drop out!

In a sense the streets are winning out over college, because there are no other choices. And politicians like Rhee are insuring this continues, because of the unremitting attack on teachers. If the system does not trust you, and blames you, how on earth are the kids going to respect you?

And, what better way to set up an excuse for the lack of a student’s achievement? The student comes to school already being told the teacher is lousy, lazy and selfish. How does that build any kind of trust in a population that already hates school? It’s not MY fault; it’s the teacher’s fault!

Progressives and racist conservatives are actually both contributing to a system that encourages students to drop out. Progressives hate vocational courses because they think students would be “discriminated against” by being in a vocational track. Racists are happy with the highly charged curriculum, because they know a student from a broken home, with little parental support, will rarely succeed in a college track course of study.

They then stand back and say, “See, I told you the Blacks couldn’t learn. My great great grandfather was right not allowing Blacks to learn how to read, they are inferior”.

The racist myth is encouraged by progressives trying to do the right thing, in the wrong way.

Reformers like Rhee push for standardized tests to evaluate teacher performance, and want to apply them to inner city school systems. Now we see pre and post tests in the year a teacher has a student, which is somehow “fair”.

Of course, the fact that at risk students usually come into a class, years behind in grade level reading, and the longer they are in school, the more behind they are (try reading a 12^th grade textbook with a 5^th grade reading level), and the smaller the annual growth.

High school teachers in poverty areas are guaranteed to fail! I will bet Ms. Rhee NEVER took a class in how to teach a child to read. That’s right, read! Reading is the cornerstone of a student’s learning tools, without an at level reading level, failure is almost certain.

Most people, who proclaim themselves experts on learning, do not have a clue about basic learning skills. Reading achievement is a building block of all learning, yet is ignored by politicians like Rhee.

A teacher is expected to perform miracles, with students who literally hate her guts because they can’t read the book. We content ourselves with the occasional “Stand and Deliver” story, of the exceptional teacher who actually breaks though and gets smart underachieving kids to produce, while the vast majority fail.

And, those “exceptional teachers” usually quit teaching and get rich writing a book, or making a movie. Like Rhee, their experience with schools is from a distance and is fleeting, but profitable.

So, the public schools fail. And the teachers who have the courage to go into inner city schools are lambasted as incompetent, or worse, and made scapegoats for the failings of American society. Everyday, thousands of young, bright teachers are consumed by this monster. Everyday, they fail, and take thousands of students with them.

Everyday, another reformer pops up, spouting the nonsense that gives America the excuse to continue the failure.

Meanwhile, Charter Schools, Private Schools and Religious Schools are celebrated, offering sanctuary for students fleeing the dysfunctional public schools. A recent movie “Finding Superman” pathetically shows students waiting for the results of a lottery, so they can escape the poor public schools for charter schools, where they might have a chance.

What about the millions who don’t have anywhere to run? Why not fix the public schools rather than run from them?

Racists love this, since it returns us to the segregated schools of the past that were a bulwark of the Jim Crowe system.

And, statistics show that American’s schools are as segregated today as they were in the 1960s. We are going the wrong way.

As America competes in the global economy, with nations of color, we segregate our schools based on color. Doesn’t anyone wonder what an Indian Engineer might say; walking through a Charter School that is all African-American, while the nearby public school is a cesspool of failure and violence, where the whites are all living on the hill, sending their kids to private schools?

I will bet that Indian businessman will think twice about building a factory in such a dysfunctional community.

Here are my credentials: Two years in Del Paso Heights, Sacramento, teaching Opportunity Class for kids on Probation and Learning Handicapped Jr. High kids. Eight years in a rural school, half as a teacher of at risk kids, half as Assistant Principal and Principal with a Native American population of about 20% and a very low socio-economic population. Two years as a Superintendent of a poor rural district with a 40% Native American population. The rest of the 35 years were in a suburban/rural district; however four years as Principal of an Alternative Education Continuation High School.

So I have been there. At least 16 of my 35 years were spent in at risk, low socio-economic, minority dominated schools, encountering everyday the learning problems/challenges listed above.

I started as a Stanford graduate, from an elite college like Ms. Rhee, wanting to make a difference precisely because of the civil rights history explained above.

I remember encountering the “old pros” that had to adapt a tough, almost non-caring exterior; otherwise the poverty and injustice would drive them mad. This exterior, I think, is what so turned Ms. Rhee against teachers. She never taught long enough to find out why the teachers were so jaded. Try spending a career dealing with difficult children who hate you and the system you represent!

I saw many of my peers quit because they got tired of literally risking their well-being to teach. We used to call it the seven year itch, the most dedicated lasted about that long, and either quit or transfered to suburban “safe” schools.

I saw assaults, verbal abuse, and was more than once threatened with death by students and parents. In fact, my last year, was completed under a death threat for suspending a Native American student. That is the way I went out, with sheriff deputies protecting me.

Those are the realities of teaching in “mean street” schools. It pounds you, it smashes your idealism, and more often than not, you are ignored or hated by those who try to help, you fight the fight alone, everyday for years, unappreciated and scorned.

What does this do? It creates the “loser teachers” than now are being blamed for the “failure” of inner-city schools in America. People like Michelle Rhee, blame the teacher for the failure of inner city schools, blame the unions, blame everyone but who is REALLY to blame: the American People.

We are to blame. A citizenry that ignored three hundred years of brutal racism, people who have no feelings for genocide that killed over 90% of Native Americans in 300 years, and who then incredibly expect everything to be “fixed” because a couple laws were passed and a Supreme Court ruled a certain way.

This is patently nonsense. Ask the teacher in the failing school; ask them why it isn’t working. They will tell you because America does not care. Americans have been allowed to run away, to hide, and to not own up to the damage that has been done.

America everyday brutalizes its children, fixes the game so over 30% drop out of high school, and then cuts programs to help the poor because of political agendas.

And the cost is enormous. In my native state of California, we spend far more on incarceration than on higher education, our prison population per capita is one of the largest IN THE WORLD.

We incarcerate more people of color as a percentage of our population than anywhere else on earth! That includes the dictatorships of North Korea, Iran; etc.

An African American male has about a 25% chance of being in prison during his lifetime in the United States!

And it’s the teachers’ fault. It’s the teacher unions’ fault. And the solution is to privatize schools, shut down public schools, give up on the American Dream.

The only good thing is that history cannot be conned. Social and economic rot ultimately will bring a society, even one so dominated by the rich as ours, DOWN.

Talk to a teacher. Ask them what is wrong. They will tell you. One is telling you right now. WE ARE WHAT IS WRONG. QUIT BLAMING THE TEACHER. START TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE MESS WE HAVE CAUSED.

Finally, we are not an “exceptional nation”; look at any statistical ranking, test scores, or health care, and we rank well down the list.

We are a country that has ignored the racial, social and economic injustices of the past, and carry them over into a future that is looking bleaker all the time.