Why Our Children Fail

4. Obsessive racial number counting
The headline on a recent Minnesota Department of Education press release reads, “NAEP Data Shows Increased Achievement for Most Student Groups in Minnesota,” followed by the subhead, “Data also shows achievement gap still exists between black and white students.” A more accurate subhead would have read: “Achievement gap still exists between rich and poor students, stable and transient students, native English speakers and non-English speaking immigrants, and students with well-educated parents and those without.” Those are the true indicators of student performance. It’s not about race; it’s about class.

Minnesota has many racial and ethnic groups, some of them relatively new arrivals and poor, and the state today enthusiastically tracks each one. Unfortunately, state education officials and the media rarely talk turkey about what research shows matters most: parental income and education levels and family.

The era of court-ordered desegregation is essentially over. No matter what their color, parents don’t seem to mind that schools are nearly resegregated, provided education funding is equal to the seriousness of the task and directed at the right problems. Minnesotans should scrap the “racial achievement gap” used to pound the schools and inflame citizens of all races and focus on and solve the far more accurate “poverty achievement gap.”

5. Failing the “average” student
Minnesota’s public schools have outstanding programs for high-achieving students and those dealing with physical, mental, and emotional challenges. But ask any teacher what the presence of a seriously disruptive child does to the teaching environment in the classroom. While she chases such a child down the hall or attempts to calm him, she loses essential teaching time with other students. Minnesota teachers such as Lakeville South’s Lisa King know that teachers, even in our best public schools, “basically need to prepare four daily lesson plans for the range of abilities” in each of their classes.

Smaller classes are especially important in urban schools where English is often not the first language, many students come out of chaotic family situations, and many have significant learning disabilities. Mainstreaming challenging students is a huge improvement over the bad old days of flunking them or socially isolating them, but classes containing such children must be radically smaller so all students—including the quiet learner in the corner—get the educational attention they deserve.

The public must not forget that public schools, unlike their private school counterparts, are obliged to take and teach everyone.

6. No respect
Public school teachers can’t be blamed for feeling a bit like the late Rodney Dangerfield: They “don’t get no respect.” Not from students, parents, or public officials.

Growing student incivility takes its toll. “It’s not like when I started teaching,” says David Astin, a biology teacher who recently retired after twenty-eight years at Wayzata High School. “Then students were respectful because you were a teacher. That’s changed.” 

Meanwhile, there are two kinds of disrespectful parents. One is the overinvolved Mommy (or Daddy), who storms up to the teacher and slams down a report card because her (or his) third-grade progeny received a B, not an A. The other is the under- or uninvolved parent, who, because of lack of interest, energy, time, or language skills, rarely attends a conference and fails to supervise homework assignments.

Finally, there are the attack-dog and angling public officials. When Rod Paige, President Bush’s first secretary of education, called the National Education Association a “terrorist organization,” the official antiteacher rhetoric may have hit bottom. Many parents may not remember such scandalous statements, but every teacher does.

It’s bad enough that we don’t fully empower teachers to do their jobs—especially when, according to data compiled by Education Minnesota, the state’s largest teachers’ union, more than half the state’s public teachers annually spend $200 or more of their own money on supplies for ill-equipped students and classrooms. Let’s not dis them too.